* DEC 18 1908 * 
 
 BV 4253 .C35 1908 
 Campbell, R. J. 1867-1956 
 Thursday mornings at the 
 City Temple 
 
THURSDAY MORNINGS 
 AT THE CITY TEMPLE 
 
THURSDAY MORNINGS 
 AT THE CITY TEMPLE 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Rev. R. j/ CAMPBELL, M.A. 
 
 Minister of the City Temple^ London 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE NEW THEOLOGY" 
 
 mew l^ocH 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1908 
 
[AU Rights Reserved] 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The following sermons, with a few exceptions, 
 were preached at the Thursday mid-day service in 
 the City Temple during the last twelve months. 
 The Thursday congregation differs greatly in 
 composition from that of Sunday; it is made up 
 of more diverse elements. Not a few of those who 
 attend habitually are out of touch with organised 
 Christianity and never darken a church door else- 
 where than at the City Temple; even then they 
 confine their interest to this one service in the 
 middle of the day in the middle of the week. City 
 merchants, young clerks and shopmen, ministers 
 and students, social workers and Labour members 
 of Parliament are to be seen seated side by side in 
 democratic friendliness. There are not many work- 
 ing men, for the reason that working men cannot 
 easily find their way to the heart of the City of 
 London at twelve o'clock on a working day; but 
 occasionally a railway guard or engine-driver drops 
 in. Women come too — some who have to get their 
 living in the City and some who make long jour- 
 neys from outlying suburbs. Altogether it is the 
 most interesting congregation in the world, and 
 probably one of the keenest and most intelligent; 
 it is no slight to my Sunday congregation to say 
 that I feel more at ease on Thursday than I do in 
 
VI 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 the more formal worship of the Sabbath. It has 
 been a custom from the first to allow applause and 
 interjections on Thursday which, of course, would 
 be out of place on Sunday; Dr. Parker's practice 
 in this respect has been continued under my 
 ministry. It does no harm — rather, I think, the 
 moderate indulgence in the expression of feeling 
 by the congregation helps to keep preacher and 
 hearers en rapport with each other. The only 
 danger associated with it became apparent at the 
 height of the New Theology controversy, when a 
 few eccentric individuals made their way to the 
 City Temple Thursday service with the express 
 object of creating disturbance. Happily this 
 behaviour has ceased without affecting for the worse 
 the latitude allowed to the regular congregation. 
 It may be that the character of the congregation, 
 and the nature of the service, have influenced to 
 some extent the form as well as the matter of the 
 sermons contained in this volume. They may be 
 more colloquial and direct than is usual with pulpit 
 utterances. As most of them were preached while 
 the New Theology controversy was raging most 
 fiercely, the controversial note will be detected here 
 and there. It was impossible to avoid it, although 
 I hope it contains nothing of bitterness and ran- 
 cour. When the history of this period comes to 
 be written, those who take the trouble to read it 
 will be amazed at the extremes to which serious- 
 minded people permitted themselves to go in their 
 alarm for the orthodox positions. No falsehood, 
 however absurd and extravagant, seems to have 
 been too much for their eager credulity to swallow 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 so long as it could throw discredit upon the char- 
 acter and motives of the pioneers of the new move- 
 ment. Of such misrepresentations the worst has 
 been that which has credited New Theologians in 
 general, and the minister of the City Temple in 
 particular, with belittling sin. As a consequence 
 there are many good people throughout the length 
 and breadth of the land who are firmly convinced 
 that I am a very wicked person, whose teaching 
 denies the reality of sin and encourages men to 
 gratify their lower nature as they think fit. One 
 might suppose that common-sense would come to 
 the rescue, but, when a prominent and much- 
 respected preacher stands up before an enlightened 
 congregation and tells his hearers that a promiscu- 
 ous audience would be sure to cheer a man who 
 tells them that sin does not matter, one begins to 
 despair not only of common-sense but of the sense 
 of humour, not to speak of common honesty. For 
 there is no congregation in the wide world who 
 would cheer any such sentiment, and no preacher 
 has ever existed who would utter it. 
 
 The truth is, though it will be a long time before 
 it is clearly seen, that it is the ordinary Christian 
 doctrine of sin which blinds men's eyes to the real 
 seriousness of sin. It is an immoral doctrine. It 
 regards sin in a vague, unreal kind of way as 
 something which has entered into human nature 
 and corrupted what would otherwise have been 
 immaculate. There never has been any such cor- 
 ruption : no faculty of human nature is radically 
 and essentially bad : whether it shall be good or 
 bad depends upon its outcome in conduct and the 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 character created by conduct. The ordinary doc- 
 trine ignores this, and teaches that a man can be 
 legally justified in the sight of God by an act of 
 faith, and can have the righteousness of some one 
 else imputed to him. This is not only untrue but 
 morally mischievous, and one of its most evil effects 
 consists in the fact that it practically ignores sins 
 of omission. It is this which, more than anything 
 else, lies at the root of the alienation between the 
 churches and the masses in every country of the 
 civilised world to-day. This doctrine of abstract 
 justification for abstract sin enables people to go 
 on living comfortable, self-satisfied lives while 
 assuring themselves that they are washed in the 
 blood of the Lamb and on their way to heaven. 
 It enables the religious plutocrat to exploit the 
 poor while remaining a devout believer in the 
 efficacy of the Atonement of Christ. It enables 
 most men to separate their standing with God 
 from their duty towards their fellows. It fails 
 altogether to take cognisance of the fact that the 
 whole aim and purpose of the message of Jesus 
 was not to induce men to get their sins forgiven 
 but to lay down the life of selfhood to take it again 
 in the larger good of humanity as a whole. The 
 emphasis is entirely different, and the New 
 Theology is an attempt to recover the strenuous 
 moral note of the teaching of Jesus. All through 
 these pages it will be seen that that object has been 
 kept well in view. 
 
 It is perhaps too much to hope that those whose 
 eyes are blinded to the artificiality of the traditional 
 doctrine of sin should be able to see this and to 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 recognise that, so far from belittling moral obliga- 
 tions, the New Theology insists upon them with a 
 clearness and force which has long been wanting 
 to the old; but at least they might show a charit- 
 able spirit, and, if they continue to hold to forms 
 of stating religious truth which they regard as of 
 vital importance, they need not believe that those 
 who challenge them are necessarily less sincere 
 and earnest than themselves. 
 
 The advocacy of Socialism by most of the ex- 
 ponents of the New Theology has helped to create 
 additional prejudice against their theological 
 views. It is as well that it should be so, for no 
 theology is worth the preaching which does not 
 find a social expression. The combination may 
 make progress a little slower, but the ultimate 
 triumph of the principles enunciated in the New 
 Theology is made all the more certain by their 
 practical application to social needs. Whether 
 theology lives or dies I care but little; it is 
 humanity I love and fain would serve. The day 
 is not far distant when the religion of Jesus Christ, 
 the glad tidings of the Kingdom of God, will 
 regain all its former power over the toilers of the 
 world, and inspire them with faith and hope in the 
 dawning of a better and a more glorious day. 
 
 R. J. Campbell. 
 
 May 19, 1908. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 I. THE IMAGE OF GOD 
 
 II. KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL . 
 
 III. TRAMPLING THE SERPENT 
 
 IV. Jacob's wrestling 
 
 V. THE inner voice . 
 
 VI. THE ROCK AND THE PIT 
 
 VII. THE SOCIAL JUDGMENT . 
 
 VIII. MINISTERING THE BREAD OF LIFE 
 
 IX. THE HATE THAT IS LOVE 
 
 X. THE MASTER ON THE SHORE 
 
 . XI. SOWING AND REAPING 
 
 XII. CHRIST DYING FOR SINNERS 
 
 XIII. THE TWO NATURES . 
 
 XIV. SPIRITUAL STRENGTH . 
 XV. FAMINE AND PLENTY 
 
 XVI. THE SILENCE OF HEAVEN 
 
 XVII. THE CRYSTAL SEA . 
 
 XVIII. THE HOLY CITY AND ITS TEMPLE 
 
 XIX. THE lamb's book OF LIFE 
 
 XX. THE LIFE BEYOND 
 
 xi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 V 
 
 I 
 
 i6 
 
 30 
 
 44 
 
 59 
 
 74 
 
 89 
 
 106 
 
 121 
 
 139 
 
 155 
 
 174 
 
 193 
 210 
 ^23 
 239 
 254 
 266 
 284 
 298 
 
THURSDAY MORNINGS 
 AT THE CITY TEMPLE 
 
 I 
 
 THE IMAGE OF GOD 
 
 "5^ God created man in His own image ^ in the 
 image of God created He him j male and female 
 created He themP — Gen. i. 27. 
 
 It should be fairly clear from a statement of this 
 kind that the phrase " in the image of God " means 
 more than the crude anthropomorphic idea that 
 man is like his Maker in the structure of his 
 physical frame. In fact, it is not the physical 
 frame that the writer is thinking about, although 
 millions have read this venerable sentence in that 
 sense; and even now there are some who seem to 
 think of God as having two eyes, two hands, and 
 two feet; and of man as being like God because 
 similarly furnished. But anthropomorphisms of 
 this kind have become repugnant to the mind of 
 the generation in which we live, and it is well that 
 it should be so. We have, I hope, for ever out- 
 grown the state of mind which led mediaeval monks 
 to represent the Trinity as three men standing in 
 one pair of boots. But there are some other 
 anthropomorphisms which we have not outgrown. 
 
2 THE IMAGE OF GOD 
 
 and I suppose never will. Indeed, it is difficult 
 to see how we ever could. I refer, of course, to 
 the practice of picturing or describing God as 
 having human attributes. We are always being 
 told of the absurdity of trying to represent the 
 infinite by means of finite analogies. But how can 
 we help it? We can but read God through what 
 we know of man. We can know nothing else 
 about Him. It has often been pointed out that 
 the most original artist or poet can invent nothing 
 which does not already exist in nature, and is 
 familiar to all who have eyes to see. He may 
 portray the most grotesque monsters, but every 
 one of them must have feet, or wings or tail; he 
 cannot invest them with any physical attribute the 
 like of which has never been known before. He 
 may draw monstrous wings, claws, and tails, but 
 still they are wings, claws, and tails of the same 
 order as those of the creatures we see walking or 
 flying about every day. It is just the same in the 
 realm of religion. Man builds his God from what 
 he knows of himself, only he tries to make Him 
 bigger. Sometimes he succeeds in making Him 
 grotesque or even horrible, but the attributes with 
 which he credits Him are all the while his very 
 own. In the breast of a savage there is not much 
 room for pity, so his God has none. He observes 
 the terrible effect of power in human hands or in 
 the world without, so he promptly thinks of God 
 as hurling thunderbolts or tearing mountains from 
 their foundations, without much care as to what 
 happens to the weaker beings who cower in fear 
 before Him. The God of the savage, you see, is 
 
THE IMAGE OF GOD 3 
 
 just a big savage. As time goes on men's ideas 
 of the Creator expand with their self-knowledge, 
 and are as full of contradictions as they themselves 
 are. Man lords it over creation; he therefore 
 imagines that he represents the supreme effort of 
 the Almighty and the sum of His interests; he 
 cannot easily bring himself to think that God may 
 have other interests. He is conceited even in his 
 self-abasement; and when he acknowledges his 
 loathsomeness before God he still imagines that 
 God has nothing else to think about but him. He 
 bullies and crushes woman ; she is not made in 
 the image of God, bless you I God is an almighty 
 He, Who ever heard of such a thing as woman 
 being made in the image of God? In fact, is it 
 not more reasonable to suppose that woman's 
 mischief-making influence has been responsible for 
 preventing man from being a better image of God 
 than he actually is? 
 
 This is the way we have been talking for a good 
 many centuries, and we can hardly be surprised at 
 the tendency or its results. There is no mistake 
 about the fact that God has all along been thought 
 of as the magnified projection of man, as man 
 knows himself. He has credited God with his 
 own cruelties, whimsicalities, pride and vanity, 
 petty jealousies, and general unreasonableness. 
 Happily this has not been the whole of the picture. 
 It is not that we are too anthropomorphic when 
 we picture God, but that we are not anthropo- 
 morphic enough. Men have read something else 
 in their own hearts besides vindictiveness and 
 desire for the subjection of others, and in their 
 
4 THE IMAGE OF GOD 
 
 hours of illumination they have seen that this, too, 
 
 must belong to God. Then came Jesus, that 
 crowning product of the long and painful struggle 
 of humanity towards that manhood which seeks 
 not its own good, but only the best for all, and 
 henceforth they have thought of God as love 
 revealed in sacrifice. Too often they have proved 
 traitor to this conception ; too often they have seen 
 only a small part of what it means; but little by 
 little, and age by age, the whole civilised world 
 is moving on into the light that shines from the 
 cross of Jesus. 
 
 But how strange and sad it is that even to-day 
 men should be so slow to see what is involved in 
 the venerable declaration that God is love ! At one 
 time we speak as though His love involved a kind 
 of yearning sentimentality over wayward children 
 whom He seeks to recover from the consequences 
 of their folly; in the next breath we speak of Him 
 as the implacable guardian of a righteousness 
 which can concede nothing to His love. Truly, 
 the contradictions of the religious mind are mani- 
 fold as well as pathetic. The ordinary pre-supposi- 
 tions of evangelical Christianity are utterly absurd, 
 and every one of us must have felt their unreality 
 from time to time. The fact is we seem to have 
 two Gods whom we call one, but who by no pos- 
 sible stretch of the imagination could be combined 
 in one personality. The first is a sort of old 
 woman who made the world and man as though 
 He expected every thing to go right, and no evil 
 or misery to mar the work of His hands. But He 
 laid His plans so badly that the whole scheme 
 
THE IMAGE OF GOD 5 
 
 went awry, and heaven has been in mourning ever 
 since. Poor God I He is not to blame, the theo- 
 logians tell us; it is wicked man — more especially 
 woman. God has done His best, and the result 
 has been untold ages of chaos and unimaginable 
 suffering. All God can do is to provide a redeemer 
 to save a few out of the wreck, and to keep on 
 pleading with humanity — " O prodigal child, come 
 home." You will, I am sure, forgive me for the 
 seeming irreverence of saying that God is a fool. 
 And the other God — or God with the other face — 
 is not much better. This other God has prepared 
 a hell for the poor helpless victims of what is 
 called His righteous wrath. He has made it big 
 enough to contain the whole race, and into it the 
 whole race will have to go unless they repent in 
 time and avail themselves of the sufferings which 
 He has graciously inflicted upon somebody else for 
 their benefit. He has been sitting up there in 
 heaven ever since Creation first went wrong, brood- 
 ing darkly over what He means to do to perverse 
 and rebellious man when his time comes. One 
 would think that perverse and rebellious man had 
 not had such a specially good time already, and 
 that, on the whole, there was not much need of the 
 additional torments which we are told divine 
 justice is preparing for everybody indiscriminately. 
 This is a hateful sort of a God which the theo- 
 logians have made in their own image, and I hope 
 He will soon be dead and buried. 
 
 Just face the facts for a moment. Has the God 
 of the revival meeting ever existed? Could He 
 exist and yet be God? Has the God with the 
 
6 THE IMAGE OF GOD 
 
 ready-made hell ever existed? Could He exist 
 and yet be God ? Put yourself in the place of the 
 Supreme Being for a moment — if such a thing is 
 remotely conceivable. Make God in your own 
 image so far as to imagine yourself endowed with 
 omnipotence and seated on the throne of eternal 
 glory. Look down upon the world as it now is, 
 and what will you do? Will the ** prodigal-child- 
 come-home " business satisfy you? Can you hear 
 the sobs of little children who are hungry and cold, 
 or ill-treated, or dying of painful disease? Can 
 you watch with equanimity yonder strong man 
 battling with heavy odds, and yet feeling the 
 ground give way beneath him as he struggles? 
 What is going to become of the wife and bairns 
 when that fiend called consumption or cancer, 
 which has been slowly strangling him for years, 
 has tightened its fateful grip and crushed the 
 breath out of him at last? Did you hear that 
 mother^s shriek of agony just now when her boy 
 was brought home dead, mangled to pieces by the 
 machinery in the workshop where he earned her 
 living as well as his own ? Could you have saved 
 him — you God, you — or did you think it was not 
 worth while? Are you going to tell me that you 
 are very sorry for humanity, but that, of course, 
 it has brought all this upon itself ? Are you going 
 to maintain that we have sinned against you ? Are 
 you not sinning against us ? What are you doing, 
 sitting up there on your sapphire throne, and let- 
 ting people come into this torture-chamber with 
 the glad tidings of your marvellous love? What 
 do you mean by your marvellous love ? You have 
 
THE IMAGE OF GOD 7 
 
 plenty, and we are starving ! You can see, and 
 we are blind I You have omnipotence, and we are 
 crushed by pitiless fate ! And what about that hell 
 of yours? Ought you not to be in it for awhile 
 yourself ? Bah ! you are contemptible, you King 
 of kings and Lord of lords, if you have nothing 
 more to say than that you will accept our peni- 
 tence and remit our tortures when we are dead if 
 we only believe I I would rather trust my own 
 humanity than your divinity. 
 
 This is, I admit, a rather startling way of putting 
 the case. Remember, I am addressing you, you 
 upon the throne of God. What would you do if 
 you were there? It is quite a legitimate thing to 
 put you there, for you are made in His image, you 
 see. And so indeed you are. God may be incom- 
 parably wiser and better than you, but His good- 
 ness must surely be at least equal to yours. Can 
 you imagine yourself, then, seated on that sapphire 
 throne and doing nothing while the world 
 welters in agony and blood? You made it, you 
 know; you are responsible, no one so much as 
 you ; and you can alter it, for you are omnipotent. 
 Why don't you do it? From this point of view is 
 not ordinary Christian talk about God fairly near 
 to blasphemy? You can see how utterly and 
 lamentably it breaks down in the presence of the 
 facts of life when once we look them squarely in 
 the face. What is the God of conventional religion 
 but a big plutocrat who talks of the wickedness 
 of the victims He crushes under the chariot-wheels 
 of His success ? Imagine a man in the place of 
 God. Imagine him so wise that he never makes 
 
8 THE IMAGE OF GOD 
 
 a mistake, so rich that all the wealth of the world 
 is as a drop in the ocean to his abundance, so 
 strong that he can carry the whole universe in the 
 palm of his hand. Then imagine this big, strong, 
 wealthy man talking about his own goodness and 
 contrasting it with the wickedness of the little 
 human beings who, he says, have been sinning 
 against him. Would you not instantly question 
 his assumption of superiority and even his right 
 to call the world wicked ? Would you not ask him 
 how we are to judge of his goodness? He is 
 superior to all the ills of life; he knows nothing 
 of the force of temptation ; he is not subject to the 
 delusions of ordinary human ignorance. And yet 
 he sits in his heaven, enthroned far above all reach of 
 evil, and allows the awful torrent of human anguish 
 and iniquity to pour on in its dreadful course. 
 I say, imagine a man endowed with divine power 
 and behaving like this. Pick up any ordinary 
 broker from the Stock Exchange, and seat him on 
 the eternal throne, and imagine him taking this 
 point of view about himself in relation to humanity 
 as a whole. What would you call him ? I think, 
 perhaps, you would call him a scoundrel or a 
 maniac, but you would neither love nor adore him. 
 You would make no pretence about the matter. If 
 you had a spark of manliness in you you would 
 shake your fist in his face and tell him that in your 
 helplessness you were greater than he. And yet, 
 remember, the God whom many of us devoutly 
 worship is neither more nor less to our imagination 
 than a kind of big man whom we credit with con- 
 duct which would disgrace the ordinary man of 
 
THE IMAGE OF GOD 9 
 
 our everyday acquaintance. Is it not obvious? 
 The moment we try to put ourselves in the place 
 of God we begin to see how impossible are some 
 of our most familiar conceptions of His nature 
 and doings. Why, we are better than the God in 
 whom we profess to believe. 
 
 No, the truth is that neither the sentimental God 
 of the revival meeting nor the God with the ready- 
 made hell would be tolerable to us for a moment 
 if we were really to put one of ourselves in His place. 
 The worst of our anthropomorphic religion is that 
 we have all along been picturing a man on the 
 throne of the universe, but a wrong-headed kind 
 of a man, a man who does not behave quite so 
 well as we should in his place if we followed the 
 promptings of our better nature. If we must make 
 God in the image of man, why cannot we make 
 Him as noble and truly human as man can show 
 himself to be at his best? You may say that that 
 is precisely what we do when we call Him a God 
 of love. But you are wrong; we do not. The love 
 of God must mean something different from what 
 the ordinary Christian says it means, or else this 
 sad and weary world would be different from what 
 it is. It is, I verily believe, a dim perception of 
 this fact which has led men to try to apologise 
 for God, as it were, by throwing all the blame of 
 the world's woe upon the shoulders of humanity. 
 When a man ceases to try to do this, he gives up 
 his God of love. There are thousands of men in 
 this and every other civilised country to-day who 
 have given up believing in God, because they feel 
 that if there were such a God as the Christian 
 
10 THE IMAGE OF GOD 
 
 believes in He would not tolerate such a world as 
 this for a single hour. There, then, is your 
 dilemma. It is absolutely impossible to believe in 
 the God of ordinary Christian dogma. Is it, then, 
 impossible to believe in any Supreme Being to 
 whom the name of love could fitly be applied? I 
 think not, but we shall have to read more into that 
 word " love " than most people ever seem to think 
 of doing. There is no need to shrink from the 
 anthropomorphic argument if only we are willing 
 to give it scope enough. Imagine a man upon the 
 throne of the universe, if you like, but credit him 
 with the best of which earthly humanity has yet 
 shown itself capable. Do not go back on that; 
 hold firmly to it, permit no half-measures. Believe 
 it to be incredible that God — or the universal order 
 — could produce in your mother that which is 
 superior to itself. God's excellence may be some- 
 thing infinitely greater than frail humanity has yet 
 produced, but we cannot be deceived in thinking 
 that that which is morally beautiful in man must 
 be worthy even of God. You may call this beg- 
 ging the question, but, if so, you are welcome to 
 think so. I absolutely refuse to believe that the 
 universe which could produce the heart and mind 
 of Jesus is not the outcome of a heart and mind at 
 least as great and noble. I would willingly rest 
 my whole faith on that one proposition. I face 
 life in the strength of it. God may be inconceiv- 
 ably better than my best, but He must not be 
 worse. I am even willing to admit that good and 
 evil are relative terms which will lose their signifi- 
 cance when we come to experience infinite blessed- 
 
THE IMAGE OF GOD ii 
 
 ness, but it is safe to affirm that God is all we 
 mean by good, and infinitely more. Cling fast to 
 that, and it will bear you through most of the ills 
 that can assail the soul in this world or the next. 
 There is a profound wisdom, and a bold and rever- 
 ent worship, in the lines which supplied George 
 MacDonald with the inspiration for one of his 
 best-known books : 
 
 Here lie I, Martin Elginbrod ; 
 Have mercy on my soul, Lord God, 
 As I would do, if I were God, 
 And Thou wert Martin Elginbrod. 
 
 But there is a position even beyond this to which 
 I wish we people of the Western world could better 
 accustom ourselves. It is this : To be made in the 
 image of God involves far more than most of us 
 in our present state of probation ever dream of. If 
 we only knew all that it means to say that man 
 is made in the image of God we should cease to 
 be perplexed by the age-long problem of pain, and 
 sorrow, and sin. So far from seeing in these 
 things an indictment of the love of God we should 
 see in them the demonstration of it. Love is a far 
 greater thing than the finite mind can grasp; it 
 is not merely a part of life but the whole of it. I 
 seem to be speaking in riddles, but wait a moment. 
 Ask yourself what it is that by general consent 
 we feel to be greatest and most divine in man — that 
 is, most worthy of God, if God there be — and you 
 do not need to wait long for the answer. It is 
 that awe-inspiring something which outshines all 
 merely moral considerations in obedience to the 
 inward impulse to realise all life as one. When 
 
12 THE IMAGE OF GOD 
 
 ever you meet it you have no doubt about it. It 
 may be allied to a religious profession or it may 
 not, but we know it at once for the deepest thing 
 in our nature. We may fairly say that all history 
 is a commentary upon it, and that its presence is 
 the one thing which renders human life worthy of 
 an immortal destiny. You know well enough what 
 I mean. I mean that in you which at some great 
 moment makes you willing and ready to accept 
 annihilation for the sake of the larger life of 
 which yours is but a part. Something tells you, 
 preacher or no preacher, that this is somehow the 
 thing for you to do. You are not always like it; 
 in fact, you are very seldom like it; but you are 
 never in any danger of mistaking it when it comes. 
 When the enemy is at the gate, and some child of 
 the home-land accepts torture and death rather 
 than betray his country, we make songs about it 
 and tell the story to our children and our chil- 
 dren's children. When plague and pestilence are 
 desolating whole communities we honour and 
 revere the men and women who go to meet death 
 with a smile in the cause of struggling life. Even 
 when the great deed has nothing dramatic or out- 
 wardly impressive to recommend it, or when it 
 is a deed which covers the whole life, we feel just 
 the same about it if we are able to see clearly and 
 truly what that deed or life really is. During the 
 earlier part of my ministry in Brighton I was once 
 called upon to remonstrate with a poor woman whose 
 besetting sin was drink. Inquiry revealed where 
 the temptation had come from, but that is a ques- 
 tion into which I need not enter. Months after- 
 
THE IMAGE OF GOD 13 
 
 wards I heard that the poor creature was dead. She 
 had died of pneumonia contracted while walking 
 around her room with her baby on a cold winter's 
 night. She had stripped herself to keep the child 
 warm, and her constitution, already enfeebled by 
 poverty and foolish habits, had succumbed to the 
 chill which followed. The friend who told me the 
 circumstances added that the most affecting thing 
 about that poor woman's death was her solicitude 
 about the children she was leaving. All thought 
 about her own fate in the next world was com- 
 pletely absent. Neither heaven nor hell entered 
 into her calculation. The only thing she was 
 afraid of was leaving her children to be knocked 
 about in this world without a protector. Only two 
 or three people at most would ever hear of the 
 manner of that woman's death or realise the great- 
 ness of soul which shone forth therein. But do we 
 not feel much the same about it as we do about the 
 soldier who dies at his post or the fireman who 
 loses his life in the effort to save a child from a 
 burning building? In this poor, ignorant, even 
 debased human being something was displayed 
 which helps us to feel that humanity is not entirely 
 of the dust. Nobody would quarrel with you for 
 saying that. My point is that, although we may 
 be blind to the greatness of a life or a deed while it 
 is being enacted in our midst, we always reverence 
 it when we see it for what it is. The world always 
 has done so, and always will; it is the one thing 
 that stirs the soul in reading history or in viewing 
 life as it unfolds itself before our eyes. In fact, 
 our blindness in particular instances does not 
 
14 THE IMAGE OF GOD 
 
 matter much ; the splendour of the life or the deed 
 may even be enhanced by the blindness of the 
 world as to its true nature. If we only see the 
 thing itself we are nobler by the vision, even 
 though we may discern it in but one instance out 
 of a thousand. We may see it in one and ignore 
 it in another, but if we can see it all we bow before 
 it and worship. You know now what I am talk- 
 ing about, don't you ? I am talking about the 
 cross. I am talking about that which has given 
 the name of Jesus its power over men's hearts. A 
 Christ without the cross would be no Christ. We 
 may go farther and say, a God without the cross 
 would be no God; man without the cross would 
 not be man. What we are witnessing in this 
 strange, sad, earthly life of ours, with its impene- 
 trable mysteries and sharp limitations, is the forth- 
 coming of the God in man by means of the cross. 
 Why, you know it is so, every one of you. The 
 seeming evil of life is but the means towards that 
 grand end, and the gain is worth the price. The 
 very thing which at times staggers us and makes 
 us feel that there can be no God is the thing that 
 makes the God in ourselves a reality. Made in the 
 image of God ! I should "think so. What is God ? 
 He is that which shows itself in man when he lays 
 down his life at the call of duty or what is beyond 
 and above duty. Yes, I have seen God on His 
 sapphire throne. I saw Him in that mother of the 
 slums; I see Him in you as you rise triumphant 
 over that which is base and sordid in your en- 
 deavour to serve that which is holy and true. I 
 have seen Him in that fleeting look which can 
 
THE IMAGE OF GOD 15 
 
 make a coarse face beautiful when the soul is stirred 
 to noble aim and high endeavour. I have seen 
 His glory in the light that sometimes flames out 
 of the midnight blackness of human cruelty and 
 depravity. Life has no other meaning than this; 
 it is the manifestation of God in man. Evil will 
 not last for ever ; it is the cross whereby we mount 
 the throne of divine glory. Every victory over 
 evil is a manifestation of divine love. No lesser 
 manifestation would be worthy of the name of love ; 
 and from this point of view all life is love — that is, 
 the self-giving of God. Can you see it? I would 
 not exchange the knowledge that it brings for all 
 that heaven could show apart from it. As the poet 
 makes the man say to the angel : 
 
 All your beauty cannot win 
 
 Truth we learn in pain and sighs ; 
 
 You can never enter in 
 To the circle of the wise. 
 
 They are but the slaves of light 
 Who have never known the gloom, 
 
 And between the dark and bright 
 Willed in freedom their own doom. 
 
 Brother pilgrims through the darkness, let this 
 truth sustain you in your conflicts or your passive 
 endurance. It is the gospel at the heart of every 
 creed; it is all life has to teach. Reveal the image 
 of God, the real God who suffers and achieves in 
 you. Say to yourselves as you go to meet the task 
 that waits for you outside the door, To-day the 
 eternal light must shine through me; to-day God 
 shall be glorified in what these feeble hands can 
 do; to-day, to-morrow, and to all eternity what is 
 born of lore shall live in the life that never dies. 
 
II 
 
 KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL 
 
 " Your eyes shall be opened^ and ye shall be as gods^ 
 knowing good and evil.^^ — Gen. iii. 5. 
 
 The story of the temptation and fall of primitive 
 man, as given in this chapter, is one of considera- 
 able interest and no little difficulty. It presents 
 problems which up to now have proved to be 
 practically insoluble. In its present literary form 
 it is of comparatively late date; but a far more 
 important question is that of the nature of the 
 different elements contained or presumed in the 
 narrative as it now stands. One of the most per- 
 plexing of these elements is that which forms our 
 text: '* Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and 
 evil." If the mind of the average Bible reader 
 were not so uncritical, and if it were not so com- 
 monly taken for granted that the story of the Fall, 
 as contained in the book of Genesis, is exactly the 
 same as the modern doctrine of the Fall, this 
 sentence would be sure to arrest attention at once. 
 There are some startling things here. Some primi- 
 tive beliefs are taken fo^r granted which are far 
 removed from our ordinary way of looking at the 
 relations of God and man to-day. Let us look into 
 this question for a moment. 
 
 16 
 
KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL 17 
 
 According to the legend as it stands, Adam and 
 Eve, the primitive man and the primitive woman 
 of tradition, lived in the Garden of Eden in a state 
 of complete innocence. They were forbidden to 
 eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and were 
 told by the Almighty that disobedience in this 
 respect would mean immediate death. Then the 
 serpent comes along — how this serpent comes by 
 his wisdom is not explained — and tells them that 
 God has been deceiving them : they will not die, 
 and that God knows they will not die; that, in 
 fact, His real motive in forbidding them to eat of 
 this particular tree is that He knows they will 
 become as wise as Himself. The peculiar use of 
 the plural number — *'gods," instead of *' God " 
 — ought to be noted here, for it is not without 
 significance. It seems to me that we have here a 
 distinct reference to that belief in the jealousy of 
 the gods so characteristic of many ancient peoples. 
 I suppose you all know what I mean. Readers of 
 Greek literature will not need to be reminded of the 
 frequent recurrence of references to the jealousy 
 which the gods were supposed to feel lest humanity 
 should aspire to their wisdom and strength. It 
 was held that all human misfortunes were traceable 
 to this source. So soon as a man became wiser, 
 braver, and more fortunate than his fellows, he was 
 sure to excite the jealousy of the gods, who forth- 
 with proceeded to work him harm. The legend 
 concerning Prometheus is of this order. Prome- 
 theus was punished for having conferred a boon 
 upon humanity by stealing fire from heaven where- 
 with to increase their power over natural forces; 
 2 
 
i8 KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL 
 
 certainly no greater step forward in the history of 
 the race has ever been taken than that which 
 followed from the discovery of the use of fire. 
 But, according to the Greek form of the myth, the 
 gods were so exasperated with Prometheus for 
 having conferred this boon upon mankind that he 
 was chained to a rock for the offence, and his flesh 
 was torn by vultures. Here in this Genesis story 
 we have a Semitic version of the attitude of the 
 gods towards any aspirations of mankind in the 
 direction of divine wisdom and power. The use of 
 the plural number shows that in its original form 
 the story was polytheistic. Here we have the gods 
 telling primitive man that he must not seek to know 
 too much, or he will be destroyed. When he yields 
 to the temptation, however, he is not destroyed, 
 but all kinds of evil results pursue him. Another 
 interesting point is the reason given for driving 
 him out of Eden. " Behold the man is become 
 as one of uSj to know good and evil " — plural 
 number again, you see. *' And now, lest he put 
 forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and 
 eat and live for ever : therefore the Lord God sent 
 him forth from the Garden of Eden, to till the 
 ground from whence he was taken." Here we are 
 distinctly told that the motive for sending man 
 away from his pleasant surroundings was that he 
 might possibly aspire to the immortality of a divine 
 being, and this the gods were resolved not to per- 
 mit. The two trees — the tree of knowledge and 
 the tree of life respectively — are plainly intended as 
 the symbols of an experience wherein man becomes 
 a sharer in the privileges of deity. Who the serpent 
 
KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL 19 
 
 was it is impossible to say. He does not answer 
 either to the dragons of other Semitic myths or to 
 the Satan of later Jewish religion. It is clear, 
 at any rate, that his appearance at this stage 
 is out of ill-will to the deity, whom he wishes 
 to vex by tempting mankind to a dangerous dis- 
 obedience. 
 
 In this brief examination of the story presumed 
 in our text I have necessarily had to leave some 
 interesting questions on one side, as having nothing 
 to do with the subject I wish to discuss this morn- 
 ing. But sufficient has been said, I trust, to show 
 that the original motif of this peculiar saying was 
 not of the most exalted order. Probably this 
 sentence is one of the oldest parts of the literary 
 whole which constitutes this chapter. It assumes 
 a plurality of divine beings, a sort of cosmic aristo- 
 cracy who are most unwilling that man should 
 enter into their fellow^ship and share their privileges. 
 Hence, when he takes one step forward they pre- 
 vent him from taking a second by expelling him 
 from the conditions where it would be possible. 
 The threat that he would surely die was a piece of 
 deceit such as those ancient deities were quite 
 capable of, and was merely intended to deter him 
 from attaining to a knowledge which might make 
 him dangerous to them. There was no question 
 of right and wrong about the matter. It was very 
 much like the behaviour of a civilised race to a 
 subject one, such as was exemplified in the history 
 of the South African Chartered Company when the 
 natives were warned to let the telegraph wires 
 alone. The method adopted in giving the warning 
 
20 KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL 
 
 was to make a few of them take hold of the wires to 
 which an electric battery was attached. As a result, 
 of course, they received a severe shock, and were 
 forthwith informed that this was what would always 
 happen if they touched the telegraph wires, only that 
 the shock would be more severe, and would be cer- 
 tain to cause a sudden and painful death. I think the 
 parallel is obvious in the case of this Genesis story, 
 or that part of it, at any rate, which forms my 
 text. Probably by this time the eyes of South 
 African natives are so far opened that they know 
 what telegraph wires are for, and why the white 
 men wished them to let them alone. 
 
 I have felt it imperative to scrutinise the principal 
 ideas thus presumed in the text, because it is not 
 honest to read into any Scripture passage what is 
 not there. If this were all my text had to tell us, 
 I should not care to pursue the subject farther, 
 although most of you will admit that it is at least 
 interesting. But the most striking thing about it 
 is the tempter's statement of the reason why it was 
 worth while to eat of the tree of knowledge. He 
 says the gods know good and evil, and that man 
 can enter into their knowledge. Now what can 
 this mean ? It seems to me that we have in this 
 expression an example of profound psychological 
 insight. The knowledge of good and evil is a 
 higher state of consciousness than that of the 
 beings which are below humanity in the scale of 
 existence. Moreover, the desire to possess or in- 
 crease this knowledge is the root motive of every 
 act of moral transgression. I wish to examine 
 these two allied propositions before proceeding to 
 
KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL 21 
 
 apply to our own experience the lesson they 
 contain. 
 
 In the first place, then, I remark that the know- 
 ledge of good and evil is a higher stage of con- 
 sciousness than that possessed by the lower 
 creation ; when man first arrived at this altitude he 
 may be said to have crossed the threshold between 
 the brute and the god. The insight displayed in 
 this passage is therefore truly marvellous, so early 
 in the history of man's thought about himself. I 
 do not wish to read too much into it. It is possible 
 that by the phrase ''good and evil" the writer 
 only means "the secrets of existence." He may 
 mean the command of resources, the power to dis- 
 tinguish between what is beneficial and what is not. 
 The primitive man of Genesis is shown to be a 
 helpless dependent upon the bounty of the gods; 
 the gods themselves are masters of all the forces of 
 earth and air and sea ; they know how to use them, 
 and what will hurt and what will not. I am afraid 
 this is all we can say with certainty as to the mean- 
 ing of this statement, but I think we are justified 
 in inferring a little more. I will tell you why I 
 think so. Early as this sentence may be, it is not 
 so early as the wisdom of the East, which has 
 always insisted that the knowledge of good and 
 evil, in the sense of choosing between a higher and 
 a lower, was a stage intermediate between simple 
 consciousness and divine consciousness. Some 
 forms of this teaching have been wholly pessimistic, 
 and have amounted to the declaration that it would 
 have been better never to have possessed this know- 
 ledge at all; but the best of them have held that 
 
22 KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL 
 
 it must be accepted in order to be transcended; 
 that is, we must know good and evil in order to 
 arrive at a realisation of that state of being wherein 
 is neither good nor evil, but only the unbroken 
 blessedness of the eternal life. So ancient is this 
 teaching, extending apparently from far Japan to 
 the shores of Greece, that I cannot but feel that it 
 has had some influence upon the wording of my 
 text. To know good and evil, then, means to have 
 arrived at that stage of self-consciousness wherein 
 it becomes possible to see and choose a higher in 
 the presence of a lower. There must have come a 
 day in the history of the world when the first glim- 
 merings of a conscience became apparent in that 
 part of God's creation which, in virtue of that very 
 discovery, became something which the rest of 
 creation was not. It is impossible to say when that 
 hour arrived. We cannot say even now when it 
 first arrives in the dawning consciousness of a child. 
 But it did arrive; and because of it man began to 
 know himself, and to know himself potentially 
 divine. He saw before him the triple ideal of the 
 true, the beautiful, and the good. He did not see, 
 and does not yet see, how far this trinity in unity 
 can take him ; but he knows he ought to seek it, 
 and he knows that to turn his back upon it is to 
 disobey his own highest. 
 
 But this knowledge has been bought at a heavy 
 price. When the good to be sought first opened 
 before him, the bad to be avoided opened also with 
 sinister force. The beasts of the field know nothing 
 of duty, and hence they know nothing of guilt; 
 they are naked and unashamed. It is far otherwise 
 
KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL 23 
 
 with man. He knows something which his brother 
 creatures do not know, and hence he can not only 
 rise higher but sink lower than they. Compare, 
 for instance, the trickeries and lies of some fashion- 
 able society lady, who degrades her body to pay 
 her bridge debts, with the unconscious dignity of 
 her Newfoundland dog; he knows nothing of foul- 
 ness and deceit. Or compare the meanness and 
 craftiness of the bookmaker, who ensnares unwary 
 youth, with the simple innocence of the horse he 
 drives or makes bets upon ; the horse knows 
 nothing of the unholy triumph of getting the better 
 of a fellow-creature. I do not care to enter too 
 narrowly into the question thus indicated. We 
 are now face to face with the old antinomy between 
 philosophy and religion. Philosophy can find 
 little scope for human freedom ; it tends to throw 
 all the responsibility for human wrong-doing upon 
 God, and thus to eliminate all sense of moral re- 
 sponsibility. Broadly speaking, this is the con- 
 clusion to which philosophy, hand in hand with 
 science, is taking us at the present time, and on 
 purely intellectual grounds I can see no escape from 
 it. The more closely we examine into the nature 
 of a moral choice the more the reality of that choice 
 tends to disappear. But, on the other hand, 
 religion, hand in hand with morality, insists just 
 as strenuously on man's power of self-direction and 
 self-control, and his responsibility for the use of 
 that power. This is a position with which we can- 
 not afford to trifle, and, to tell the truth, there 
 seems little or no disposition to trifle with it. We 
 all know well enough that the very foundations of 
 
24 KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL 
 
 our social existence rest upon belief in the reality 
 of human freedom and the power of distinguishing 
 between right and wrong. You will hear theo- 
 logians cry out from time to time that So-and-so is 
 destroying the sanctions of morality. Do not be 
 afraid. No one can destroy the sanctions of 
 morality; the good sense of the general public, 
 religious and non-religious, will take care of that. 
 But, all the same, we have to admit that antinomy 
 in thought. On the one hand we have the absolute 
 sovereignty of God; on the other, the freedom of 
 the human will. It is difficult to see, too, how 
 there can be any real knowledge of good which 
 does not imply knowledge of evil. How can the 
 real nature of any positive excellence be understood 
 except in the presence of its opposite? It seems, 
 therefore, that any advance from simple conscious- 
 ness to a knowledge of God must lie along the 
 pathway of the choice between good and evil. I do 
 not shrink from affirming this, for it will hold good 
 whatever view we take of the relations of God and 
 the soul. 
 
 We come now to the further question of the root 
 motive of sin. Is it not always the desire to know, 
 to gather into one's self and possess that which 
 lies beyond the present threshold of experience? 
 If you will interrogate some young lad who has 
 gone wrong amid the temptations of a great city 
 you will find that what first lured him on was the 
 desire to enter untrodden regions and taste for- 
 bidden fruit. Watch your own children, boy or 
 girl, and you will learn a good deal that seems to 
 have been present to the mind of the waiter of this 
 
KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL 25 
 
 Old Testament passage. The thing that fascinates 
 is the unknown; the lust of the flesh, the lust of 
 the eye, and the pride of life begin in curiosity. 
 I have heard of a man who had tried every vice 
 and every form of excess usual with voluptuaries, 
 and pronounced them rotten. He had plunged 
 into them, he said, because of the fascination of 
 wanting to know what they were like; the only 
 result was nausea and remorse. It may be con- 
 tended that there are some forms of sin which can- 
 not be thus explained, and I quite agree. Mean- 
 ness and treachery, for instance, are not a rush for 
 the tree of knowledge, but they are part of the 
 result of eating the forbidden fruit. Such sins as 
 meanness and treachery always appear as the serv- 
 ants of some deeper motive. When a man cheats 
 at cards or slanders a friend, he does so because of 
 some course of action he has already adopted; he 
 has been in search of something just beyond his 
 reach, and these are means towards helping him 
 to obtain it. Thus when Adam had eaten his 
 apple he tried to shift the blame upon Eve, as he 
 has been doing ever since. The man who first 
 wrote that story was a pretty shrewd observer 
 of human nature. You smile, but I am perfectly 
 serious. 
 
 Adam's cowardly lie about Eve is still being told 
 in the wickedly unjust social custom which ruins 
 a woman for an offence from which the greater 
 sinner goes scot free; it is just the same old lie. 
 But I must not allow you to lose sight of my im- 
 mediate point, which is that all sin begins in the 
 desire to know, to possess, to absorb into one's 
 
26 KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL 
 
 consciousness that which lies beyond it. All forms 
 of sin owe their being ultimately to this. 
 
 Now there is nothing intrinsically blameworthy 
 about this impulse; blameworthiness begins with 
 the mode of its exercise. Curiosity has been the 
 compelling motive in every great discovery which 
 has yet been made for the benefit of the human 
 race. An expedition is just being got ready for 
 the purpose of attempting to reach the South Pole ; 
 we should not say that those who have organised 
 it deserve censure on account of the sinfulness of 
 their action; quite the contrary. No; the sinful- 
 ness of sin arises from the fact that it is an attempt 
 to separate between one man's good and another's; 
 there is no sin which is not this. It is the desire 
 to subordinate the larger to the lesser, the higher 
 to the lower. There is no such thing as sin which 
 the sinner does not know to be sin. When 
 preachers and theologians assert the contrary, they 
 are just talking nonsense. The essence of sin, I 
 repeat, is the attempt to separate between the good 
 of the individual and that of the race. Nothing is 
 good for me which does not imply larger life for 
 you, and nothing is good for you which means 
 deprivation and loss to me; our goal is one. At 
 our present stage of self-consciousness it necessarily 
 seems that my interest is separable from yours and 
 from the whole, but it is not so, and the saints and 
 seers of the race have always been telling us that 
 it is not so. The way to arrive at the highest life, 
 which is full knowledge of God, is to be willing to 
 surrender the gratification of the finite self, and to 
 live as though the only self were God. The man 
 
KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL 27 
 
 who is doing this crucifies the poor little finite ego 
 at every turn, and yet he does so because he sees 
 that self-service in the lower sense bars the way to 
 that self-realisation which consists in living the 
 life of love, which is the life of God. This is the 
 life that Jesus lived, and therefore, in a world where 
 other people were not living it, He had to be nailed 
 to a cross; but then — here is the wonderful thing 
 about this life — he who lives it would rather be 
 nailed to a cross than be without it, and while any 
 selfishness or unhappiness remains in the world he 
 will gladly and willingly go on accepting the cross 
 until there is nothing left but love. 
 
 I am afraid some of you will feel that this is a 
 statement which needs expansion, and some time 
 I shall hope to return to it. For the moment, what 
 I want you to see is that the tempter in my text and 
 in human experience everywhere only speaks the 
 literal truth. The sinner does become wise, with 
 a terrible wisdom ; he does know good and evil, 
 but it is from the under side. The attempt to 
 capture life and subordinate it to the lesser self is 
 inevitably to lose it. The eating of the forbidden 
 fruit means sooner or later that the eyes are opened 
 to the worthlessness of the gratification thus at- 
 tained, and the result is shame and remorse. There 
 is no lasting joy except the joy of love. No sinful 
 deed ever achieves what it seeks. As George Eliot 
 puts it: "It was not worth doing wrong for; 
 nothing ever is in this world." 
 
 Among those who hear me this morning there 
 may be some who need this word of warning. 
 Before you stretches the great unknown, and your 
 
28 KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL 
 
 soul is stretching out towards it. There is nothing 
 wrong in that; but what will you do with it? 
 Some of you are absorbed in the rush for com- 
 mercial success. Well, be it so, but understand it 
 for what it is; this is only one mode in which the 
 soul reaches out towards the infinite. It is not 
 money you are after, even though you think it is; 
 it is self-expression. You want to expand your 
 consciousness of life, to reach forth and gather in 
 from the boundless beyond. If it were not for 
 that longing there w^ould never be any millionaires, 
 neither would there be any bankrupts. But if in 
 this form of self-expression you mistake the means 
 for the end, and lose the soul amid its own 
 machinery, you will learn a lesson indeed, but it 
 will be a sad onet later on you will come to know 
 the good you have missed and the evil you have 
 gained. Still more, if on the road to material suc- 
 cess you crush down a weaker brother, and continue 
 your advance over his prostrate fortunes, or if you 
 enrich yourself at the expense of the community 
 whence your resources are drawn, you will live to 
 rue the day. The hour of disenchantment will 
 surely come, and you will know the emptiness and 
 the sadness of the life that is lived for self alone. 
 No life is worth the living, no joy is worth the 
 having, that is not love. Each for all and all for 
 each is the spiritual law that binds the universe 
 together and makes it a universe at all. Disobey 
 that law, and you become wise with the wisdom 
 that knows good and evil; but the former has 
 eluded your grasp, and left only the sadness of 
 disillusionment behind. 
 
KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL 29 
 
 It is the same with every form of sin in which 
 you try to indulge. The tempter (your baser self) 
 always says: "You shall know what you yearn 
 to know," and he is right. But to come out on 
 the under side of that knowledge is hell. You love 
 a woman; have you sinned for her? Then you 
 have lost her. You want to sit on the seats of the 
 mighty; have you broken a heart to get there? 
 Then your coronation is damnation. You want 
 the glittering bauble of worldly success. Well, 
 you can have it, but if it represents only what you 
 have stolen from humanity, instead of what you 
 have ministered to it of more abundant life, it will 
 be to you the messenger of death. If at this 
 moment you are meditating some deed that means 
 snatching at the good of another — some lie that is 
 murder, some smile that is the Judas kiss, some 
 honeyed word that is the tongue of the serpent — 
 beware ! You know not what you do. You are 
 telling God that you believe His universe is ordered 
 so that the lie can prosper as well as the truth. 
 Pause, ere it be too late, and you have to know in 
 sorrow the wisdom of God concerning the wages of 
 sin. For, believe me, there is but one way to 
 eternal bliss, and that is the laying down of life 
 that all mav live. 
 
Ill 
 
 TRAMPLING THE SERPENT 
 
 " / will put enfnily between thee and the womany and 
 between thy seed and her seed ; it shall bruise thy head, 
 and thou shall bruise his heeW — Gen. iii. 15. 
 
 This part of the Bible is not preached from so 
 much as it used to be, because, I suppose, both 
 preachers and hearers have become somewhat be- 
 wildered as to what they ought to think about it. 
 Time was when the difficulty did not exist to the 
 devout Christian. He was brought up to believe 
 that the Garden of Eden was an historical spot, just 
 as real as, say, Hyde Park, and that Adam and 
 Eve were personalities just as distinctive as his own 
 grandparents, and with similar failings. The exe- 
 gesis of my text would not have troubled him at all. 
 He would have taken for granted that the serpent 
 was the devil ; that the seed of the woman here 
 alluded to was Jesus Christ; and that the bruising 
 which was to take place would be that which was 
 finally accomplished at Calvary. Jesus bruised the 
 devil by redeeming mankind from his fateful grip, 
 and the devil bruised Jesus by rendering His suffer- 
 ing and death a necessity. Any other explanation 
 than this of the passage which forms our text would 
 have been deemed unthinkable. 
 
 30 
 
TRAMPLING THE SERPENT 31 
 
 But for some time past this explanation has 
 ceased to satisfy intelligent people, no matter how 
 orthodox they may think themselves to be in other 
 respects. So the subject simply disappears from 
 the pulpit. Preachers let it alone. And yet there 
 is no need that they should ; if the cruder explana- 
 tion has ceased to be possible, it has only made way 
 for a larger and truer. In what I am now about to 
 say, therefore, I wish you to understand that my 
 main object is to bring out and apply to present- 
 day conditions the essential spiritual truth under- 
 lying this and all such-like Bible narratives. If 
 there were no spiritual truth here; if it were simply 
 a meaningless fable, I should say so with perfect 
 frankness, for I do not believe there is anything 
 whatever to be gained by pretending to see what 
 does not exist. But there is a great truth here, a 
 truth which was really present to the minds of those 
 who originally told the story, as well as those who 
 made literature of it. The critical problem is a very 
 complicated one, and is still to a large extent un- 
 solved, but we can get near enough to a solution 
 to be able to see the main ideas declared in our 
 text. Legend or legends and literature, the story 
 in its present form draws upon two main sources — 
 the Babylonian and the North Arabian, and these 
 two were originally so different that they have pro- 
 jected inconsistent elements into the Genesis ver- 
 sion. Probably, if we could get back far enough 
 into the dim regions of Semitic legend and folk- 
 lore, we should find that the serpent was at one 
 time the personification of wisdom, and at another 
 the personification of evil. In one part of this nar- 
 
32 TRAMPLING THE SERPENT 
 
 rative it appears as the well-meaning friend of man, 
 whereas in our text it is shown as a malignant 
 being who had tempted him to his ruin. In the 
 earliest versions of the Creation myth — that is, ages 
 before the book of Genesis was written — the reason 
 given for the expulsion of man from the garden of 
 happiness was not his disobedience so much as the 
 fear of the divine beings that he would aspire to 
 the fellowship of the immortals. Those of you who 
 are familiar with Greek mythology will know what 
 a large place this notion occupies therein ; it was a 
 favourite idea of the Greek tragedians to ascribe 
 human misfortunes to the ''jealousy of the gods." 
 You can easily find traces of this same idea in the 
 story of the Garden of Eden as given in the book 
 of Genesis. I do not mean that the educated men 
 who finally turned it into literature were really 
 influenced by such a belief, but their modification 
 of the original legend still preserves features which 
 show where it came from. Thus we are told that 
 the gods — for the word is in the plural number — 
 warn man that if he eats of the tree of knowledge 
 he will surely die, whereas he does not die. 
 The serpent — that is, wisdom personified — tells 
 him this, and tells him, too, the real reason why 
 the gods are deceiving him ; it is because they are 
 afraid he will find out the way to gain immortal- 
 ity and thus become dangerous. This motive 
 is actually confessed in the context by the gods 
 themselves: "And the Lord God said, Behold, 
 the man is become as one of us (observe the plural 
 pronoun) to know good and evil ; and now, lest he 
 put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, 
 
TRAMPLING THE SERPENT 33 
 
 and eat, and live for ever " — so they drove out the 
 man. It was for opening man's eyes apparently, 
 that the serpent was cursed, not because it had 
 done anything really wicked. Please understand 
 that I am here speaking of the original sources of 
 the Creation myth, and not of the purpose with 
 which it is employed here. 
 
 But another element is introduced by regarding 
 the serpent as the personification of evil, the baser 
 or earthly part of man, the degrading animal pas- 
 sions. And this element is just as real as the one 
 we have been examining, although it comes from 
 quite a different source, as I said a few minutes 
 ago. The insight of this later writer here becomes 
 quite remarkable when we remember that this great 
 saying was written thousands of years ago. The 
 thought is this : A day arrives when man becomes 
 aware of a dual nature within him, a divine and 
 an earthly, one in which he shares with the gods, 
 and one which is his in common with the brutes. 
 But he pays a heavy price for his self-knowledge. 
 Henceforth he is at war with himself, the God and 
 the serpent within him fighting for mastery. On 
 the whole, victory rests with the former, and in the 
 end will do so completely, but it will not be a scath- 
 less triumph ; the God will crush the serpent's head, 
 but the latter will wound the heel that tramples it. 
 
 This is quite a felicitous figure to express what 
 every man and woman in this place knows to be 
 absolutely true, and I could not imagine a much 
 better way of putting the case. The whole upward 
 progress of humanity towards the stature of the 
 superman has been a continuous bruising of the 
 3 
 
34 TRAMPLING THE SERPENT 
 
 serpent's head ; but in the process we have had to 
 suffer ; the heel that tramples down the evil has to 
 feel the serpent's fangs. I am not going to enter 
 upon a dissertation as to the reason why such a 
 sinister conflict should ever have been necessary; 
 I have done that before and may do it again ; but 
 all I want to do this morning is to show that all 
 true manhood is compelled to fight the battle with 
 the serpent which has given us our knowledge of 
 good and evil, and yet has power to wound and 
 sting. It is better to have the conflict than be with- 
 out the knowledge. Sad and terrible though human 
 history may be, it becomes sublime when we see it 
 from this point of view. We stand where we do 
 to-day because of those sons of the morning who in 
 all generations past have set their foot firmly on 
 the serpent's head, regardless of the pain and 
 danger to themselves ; and we, too, in our turn, are 
 called upon to face the same dread monster on 
 behalf of generations yet unborn. It is ours to 
 
 Tread all the powers of darkness down 
 And win the well-fought day. 
 
 You will at once recognise the close resemblance 
 between the figure in which this truth is declared in 
 our text, and the hosts of legends about typical 
 heroes of antiquity who stand for the God-like 
 achievements of humanity itself. Such are the 
 infant Hercules strangling the vipers; St. George, 
 the supposed patron saint of England, destroying 
 the dragon — the effigy of which you will see on every 
 gold coin of the realm ; and Perseus coming to the 
 rescue of Andromeda, by killing the reptile which 
 
TRAMPLING THE SERPENT 35 
 
 was to devour her. These resemblances are too 
 close to be accidental. They show that the main idea 
 of the age-long conflict between the spiritual and 
 the material, the pure and the foul, the God and 
 the brute, has always been quite naturally symbol- 
 ised as the struggle of humanity against the ser- 
 pent. It is not for nothing either that Christian 
 devotion has usually associated our text with the 
 name of Jesus, for on the field of human history 
 that great name sums up all that has ever been 
 attempted or attained in the overthrow of evil and 
 the triumph of good. Of course it may plausibly 
 be contended that Jesus is only an abstraction, an 
 ideal, a creation of the Christian consciousness, and 
 that, if He ever lived at all, the real Jesus must have 
 been far inferior to the estimate formed of Him by 
 posterity. 
 
 Perhaps most of you have read Clough's poem, 
 '' The Shadow," in which this idea is worked out 
 in form of a satire. He imagines the spirit of 
 Jesus as sitting upon the tomb wherein His body 
 has long since mouldered into dust, and listening 
 with amazement to what the long succession of 
 cunning ecclesiastics and superstitious devotees are 
 saying about Him : 
 
 I dreamed a dream : I dreamt that I espied, 
 
 Upon a stone that was not rolled aside, 
 
 A shadow sit upon a grave — a shade. . . . 
 
 "The night is past, the morning is at hand, 
 
 And I must in my proper semblance stand, 
 
 Appear brief space and vanish — Hsten, this is true, 
 
 I am that Jesus whom they slew." . . . 
 
 And shadows dim, I dreamed, the dead apostles came, 
 
 And bent their heads for sorrow and for shame — 
 
 Sorrow for their great loss, and shame 
 
 For what they did in that vain name. 
 
36 TRAMPLING THE SERPENT 
 
 And the Shade answered, " What ye say I know not ; 
 
 But it is true 
 
 I am that Jesus whom they slew, 
 
 Whom ye have preached, but in what way I know not." 
 
 How far the poet means this view to be taken 
 seriously it would be impossible to say, for the 
 poem was left incomplete, but it represents what a 
 fairly large number of people have feared was the 
 truth about Jesus. He lived. He fought His 
 fight, made His niistakes like other men, and died 
 His death never to rise again except in human 
 imagination. A terrible conclusion this ! and one 
 that turns this earth of ours into a charnel-house 
 wherein life sports with death, and noble and 
 ignoble alike become the food of worms. Some 
 time ago a badly written book called When it was 
 Dark attempted to show that if it could be proved 
 beyond dispute that Jesus had never conquered 
 death, all the baser passions of humanity would in- 
 stantly be let loose in a frenzy of despair. That is 
 sheer nonsense, and even worse ; but if it be main- 
 tained that Jesus never deserved the reverence He 
 has received for nineteen centuries, then we should 
 one and all have to admit that it was the serpent 
 who won in the conflict he provoked, and that 
 everything great and noble which has since been 
 wrought in His name will perish like the baseless 
 fabric of a dream. But it is unthinkable. Jesus 
 cannot be less than His contemporaries believed 
 Him to be ; like all great souls, He must be more. 
 Dogmatic systems represent a vast amount of 
 labour and ingenuity; but they can do nothing to 
 commend Jesus to the world, any more than sceptic- 
 
TRAMPLING THE SERPENT 37 
 
 ism can do anything to discredit Him. His cre- 
 dentials are His acliievements. I am not interested 
 to prove whether He was sinless or not, and I do 
 not think He was sinless or not, and I do not think 
 He would have been interested in the matter either ; 
 the very question is artificial. I do not care three 
 straws about His supposed flawlessness ; for, at the 
 best, that sort of test is only negative, and, to be 
 worth anything, a character must be positive. 
 Probably the most contemptible character in this 
 church this morning is the man who is too colour- 
 less to have either big virtues or big vices. But 
 I will tell you what I do care about. I care about 
 this fact that this Jesus was an explosive force. 
 His Titanic moral energy was thrown upon the 
 side of weakness and suffering in their conflict with 
 strength and selfishness in alliance with venomous 
 hypocrisy. The reason He has lived is that with all 
 the intensity of His mighty soul He declined all 
 compromise and braved the worst in the service of 
 what He thought to be the true and good. And 
 posterity has vindicated His insight. We have 
 come now to see that the highest kind of life is that 
 in which the unit lives only in and for the whole. 
 Slowly and painfully is the lesson being learned, 
 but when it is learned the triumph of Jesus will 
 be complete. He set his foot upon the serpent's 
 neck, and, although at the moment it seemed strong 
 enough to destroy Him, He has kept it there, and 
 will keep it there until its poisonous breath has no 
 longer any power to blight and injure the human 
 soul. It struck its fangs into Him— of course it 
 did; what else was to be expected? But it could 
 
38 TRAMPLING THE SERPENT 
 
 not destroy him. The turning-point of human 
 history was the execution of Jesus on Calvary, not 
 because it did anything to appease the wrath of 
 God on account of human sin — puerile nonsense ! — 
 but because it was the deepest w^ound ever inflicted 
 by the serpent of human baseness upon the spirit 
 of human nobleness, and because from that moment 
 the God in humanity has shown itself able to crush 
 the serpent's head. The world has never looked 
 back since, no, not even in its darkest hours. The 
 most convinced materialist would surely admit that 
 the issue fought out at Calvary was the issue 
 between truth and falsehood, right and wrong, 
 heaven and hell, and that the former won the day 
 by seeming to lose it. 
 
 Here is the same issue before us still. Do not 
 imagine for a moment that it is a simple one. 
 Nothing is easier than to talk about right and 
 wrong, the true and the false, as though they were 
 always easily distinguishable and absolutely differ- 
 ent on the outside. They are nothing of the kind. 
 If they were, duty would be a good deal simpler 
 than it is in practice. The difference between right 
 and wrong is only the difference between a higher 
 and a lower self-interest. The self-interest which 
 refuses to consider one's own individual life as 
 having either meaning or value apart from the life of 
 the whole is that for which Jesus stood, and which, 
 in our heart of hearts, every man of us knows and 
 feels to be the highest form of self-expression. It is 
 not a question of the rightness or wrongness of 
 deeds but of attitude, and we know^ quite well when 
 we are taking the true attitude, although w^e may 
 
TRAMPLING THE SERPENT 39 
 
 not be quite sure of the wisdom of the particular 
 deed in which the attitude is declared. You are all 
 conscious of that tendency in your nature which 
 makes you wish to score off your neighbour, or 
 take advantage of weakness, or gratify the lusts of 
 the flesh, but perhaps you have never asked your- 
 selves why these things are wrong. They are 
 wrong, because they represent the tendency to in- 
 dulge the self apart from or at the expense of the 
 common good. The particular way in which this 
 is done is a secondary matter; what matters is that 
 you should succumb to a tendency which, if vic- 
 torious, would break up human society itself, and 
 make even the survival of individuality impossible. 
 On the other hand, you do not need to be told that, 
 whether your deeds are wise or not, their nobleness 
 consists in the fact that they are the expression of 
 the impulse to find the soul by losing it in the ser- 
 vice of the universal life. To put the case in para- 
 doxical fashion — there is no individuality worth the 
 having which does not imply the surrender of indi- 
 viduality; or, to put it another way, no man can 
 find himself until he has discovered that he has no 
 self but mankind. This was the whole secret of the 
 life of Jesus, and this, too, is the divine something 
 which thrills our souls in the presence of anything 
 really great and noble in human character and 
 achievement. When we think of things in this way 
 how inexpressibly silly it seems to talk of this or 
 that human peccadillo as being terrible in the sight 
 of God ! 
 
 Cardinal Newman once declared that he con- 
 sidered it preferable to undergo ages of the most 
 
40 TRAMPLING THE SERPENT 
 
 inconceivable torment rather than commit one venial 
 sin. Honestly, I do not know what he meant — 
 although I have heard smaller minds talking the 
 same way — unless it were that in the back of his 
 mind was the principle that underlies my text, 
 namely, that a man is either living for the lower 
 or for the higher self, either for the unit or for the 
 whole, either for his own wretched personality or 
 for the eternal God. If the former, the serpent has 
 won without a contest ; if the latter it may still have 
 power to strike its fangs into the heel that tramples 
 it, in which case suffering becomes a mark of the 
 triumph of him who endures. 
 
 Let me appeal in closing to all who hear me this 
 morning to read their own life truly. I want you 
 to realise that a man may fancy himself a good 
 Christian, and yet be no follower of Jesus. You 
 may have a mean soul, and yet be immaculate in 
 the eyes of the world. You may never in all your 
 life have done a deed of truth that really cost you 
 anything. You may say you are depending on the 
 finished work of Jesus, and have no merits of your 
 own. Quite so; but the finished work of Jesus will 
 have no relation whatever to such a soul as yours, 
 unless it produces merits of your own. If you 
 really belong to His side of things, you will be 
 shedding your blood every day of your life instead 
 of keeping your feet out of the range of the ser- 
 pent's fangs. On the other hand, there are some 
 men who have been down in the mud a good many 
 times, and who are anything but immaculate, who 
 stand nearer to the heart of things than negative 
 respectability can ever hope to come. I mean the 
 
TRAMPLING THE SERPENT 41 
 
 men who have taken risks and defied odds in a 
 cause or causes in which petty self-interest has been 
 lost sight of. I mean the men who don't bother 
 their heads as to whether they are going to heaven 
 or not, and do not even stop to remind themselves 
 that they are deserving of credit and admiration for 
 having torn the mask from the face of selfishness 
 enthroned as righteousness. Be you aware, fellow- 
 citizens of London and England, that there is 
 hardly any evil worth fighting which unblushingly 
 owns up to what it is; the worst evils of all, and 
 the hardest to overthrow, are those which masquer- 
 ade as virtues or necessities. The serpent bites 
 hardest when the cause he champions is called 
 good, and the heel that tramples it is called evil. 
 Moreover — and here I am liable to be misunder- 
 stood but must take the risk of it — I do not believe 
 Almighty God cares in the least about what is 
 originally termed sinlessness. I wish the word and 
 all it stands for could be relegated to the limbo of 
 forgotten things. It is a positive nuisance. It 
 throws men off the track of the true meaning of 
 life. You may wash all the colour out of a gar- 
 ment and thus render it useless either for beauty 
 or utility, whereas, even with a few stains on it, 
 it may possess both real value and importance. 
 What God requires is greatness of soul, that in- 
 effable quality of mind and heart which enables a 
 man to rise above mean motives and foul desires, 
 and boldly put his foot upon their neck wherever 
 he finds them. It is not even a question of success 
 but of the nobleness of the effort. There are men 
 in this church this morning, I doubt not, so heavily 
 
42 TRAMPLING THE SERPENT 
 
 weighted in their private life, and even in their 
 inmost soul, that they can hardly dare to hope for 
 victory over the dragon they have been lighting for 
 twenty years. Well, be it so, but how hard have 
 you fought ? How many scars do you carry ? A 
 being with a heart like an iceberg will never under- 
 stand one whose passions are like a volcano, which 
 may break out at any moment and overwhelm 
 everything in disaster and death. Believe me, your 
 real value to the universe does not consist in your 
 immaculateness, but in the grandeur of your 
 struggle. If you have stood up to your enemy, 
 looked it straight in the eyes, struck it down and 
 trampled it underfoot, you count for far more than 
 if you never had an enemy to face. It does not 
 matter so very much that it is still writhing alive 
 beneath your feet and has power to draw your life- 
 blood, for that is not the last word. If I were to 
 tell you that believing something about the fight 
 which Jesus fought will give your enemy its death- 
 blow I should tell you a lie; you will have to deal 
 that blow yourself, but the strength that deals it 
 is the strength of God. But you need never be 
 afraid of the result. If Calvary could not kill Jesus, 
 neither will evil destroy you. " Fear not them 
 which kill the body," and after that have no more 
 that they can do. But take care that nothing shall 
 ever be allowed to kill that in you which is likest 
 God — neither sorrow, calamity, temptation, nor 
 any one of the myriad forces which are the serpent's 
 fangs in the flesh of Christ. 
 
 Not a blow is* wasted, however much it may seemi 
 to be so. The good fight of faith is that in which 
 
TRAMPLING THE SERPENT 43 
 
 every son of God is contending for mastery against 
 his own baser self, and against everything that 
 would stifle the soul of the race. And, in the long 
 run, there can be no more doubt about the issue 
 than about the fact that there is a sun in heaven 
 which will presently turn winter darkness into 
 summer splendour. The conflict is ours; the 
 victory is God's. 
 
 Because of death hold not thy life too cheap ; 
 
 Plan for the years — found broad and strong — aim high; 
 
 Nobly to fail is more than victory 
 
 Over unworthy foes ; mourn not nor weep, 
 
 One span of life thou hast 'twixt deep and deep. 
 
 Be all thy care to fill it gloriously ; 
 
 Live even as if thou knew'st thou could'st not die. 
 
 This day is short — there will be years for sleep. 
 
 Therefore work thou while it is called to-day, 
 And let the night of the night's things take care. 
 By those strong souls who leave our earth more fair 
 With their strenuous service unto all for aye 
 I charge thee work, and let not death dismay, 
 Nor the shadow of death, but greatly hope and dare. 
 
IV 
 
 JACOB'S WRESTLING 
 
 ** And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a 
 man with him until the breaking of the day.'' — Gen. 
 xxxii. 24, 
 
 In approaching the subject indicated in our text 
 1 am conscious of a certain amount of difficulty 
 arising from the fact that this passage has been 
 preached upon so often that it has come to acquire 
 a significance for the Christian mind which no one 
 wishes to have disturbed. Most people are im- 
 patient of anything which sounds like criticism of 
 an accepted view of any subject — religious, literary, 
 social, or political. And yet without such criti- 
 cism we cannot possibly arrive at definite knowledge 
 of the sources of our beliefs or the true strength of 
 our convictions. 
 
 You are all aware, no doubt, of the way in which 
 this story of Jacob's wrestling with the angel has 
 been made use of in Christian thought in the im- 
 mediate past. Take our own hymn book, for 
 instance, and notice the w^ay in which reference is 
 made to the episode in Charles Wesley's well- 
 known hymn. 
 
 Come, O Thou Traveller unknown, 
 Whom still I hold, but cannot see, 
 
 My company before is gone, 
 And I am left alone with Thee; 
 44 
 
JACOB'S WRESTLING 45 
 
 With thee all night I mean to stay, 
 And wrestle till the break of day. 
 
 The very phrase, *' wrestHng with God in prayer," 
 is derived from the language of our text, and im- 
 plies that what Jacob is supposed to have done in 
 the midnight experience described in this chapter 
 we must do if we are in earnest about spiritual 
 blessing. The assumption in most minds appears 
 to be that Jacob's view of the nature of God was 
 the same as ours, and that when he was wrestling 
 he was really praying with all his might. Robert- 
 son, of Brighton, has a great sermon on the subject, 
 in w^hich this interpretation of the story is taken 
 for granted all the way through, and a valuable 
 spiritual lesson deduced therefrom. Only a month 
 ago I heard a sermon myself in which the same 
 thing was not only taken for granted but plainly 
 stated by the preacher, and a very good sermon it 
 was too. In thus pointing out the homiletical use 
 to which this ancient story has been put, I am very 
 far from wishing to suggest that the results have 
 not been good and useful in their place, but what 
 I wish to insist upon is that in the light of modern 
 biblical scholarship no such interpretation is war- 
 ranted. We do not lose anything by knowing this. 
 We never do lose anything by facing the truth, 
 and to do so in this instance will certainly repay us. 
 Observe, then, to begin with, how obscure is the 
 reference to Jacob's adversary. Our text says that 
 ** there wrestled a man with him until the breaking 
 of the day." Was this man God? If so, how 
 anthropomorphic the whole story becomes ! We 
 should not venture to use such language about the 
 
46 JACOB'S WRESTLING 
 
 relations of man and God to-day. In what way 
 did Jacob enter into conflict with this being ? Was 
 it only — as we are so often told — a spiritual con- 
 flict provoked by Jacob's fear of Esau and his 
 sense that the punishment of his former sin seemed 
 now to be descending upon him ? If so, what 
 about the strained thigh upon which the patriarch 
 halted during the remainder of his march ? If 
 this wrestle was really only an agonising prayer 
 for forgiveness and help, why was it that Jacob 
 had to ask the name of his antagonist? Where 
 are the signs of contrition in Jacob's demeanour? 
 Does the narrative say that he was sorry on account 
 of his sins? There is no suggestion of the kind. 
 Then, again, observe the curious form of state- 
 ment : ** And when he saw that he prevailed not 
 against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh." 
 If this were indeed the Divine Being there would 
 be no need for such a discovery. According to 
 the narrative, Jacob's antagonist was unable to 
 overcome him even when he had sprained his limb, 
 and the request : ' ' Let me go, for the day breaketh, ' ' 
 was a confession that they were fairly well matched. 
 How does this fit in with the view that the whole 
 experience was spiritual, and presented in allegori- 
 cal form? You see, therefore, that even as the 
 account stands it presents difficulties which the 
 ordinary explanation does not solve. 
 
 The matter becomes simpler when looked at in 
 the light of what modern biblical scholarship is 
 saying about the true significance of all these 
 patriarchal stories in the book of Genesis. Abra- 
 ham, Isaac, and Jacob are names which stand not 
 
JACOB'S WRESTLING 47 
 
 only for real individuals, but also for tribes. In 
 Old Testament literature the name Jacob is often 
 applied to the whole Israelitish nation, as, for 
 example, in Isaiah xli : '' Thou, Israel, art my 
 servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of 
 Abraham my friend." The farther we get back 
 in Israelitish history the more probable does it 
 appear that in such legends as the one which con- 
 tains our text we have a pictorial account of a crisis 
 in the affairs of the tribe or tribes which formed 
 the nucleus of the nation of after days. In this 
 chapter we have a hint of the age-long struggle 
 between Israelites and Edomites, that is, between 
 Jacob and Esau. Neither of these two ever at- 
 tained to great political importance or occupied a 
 very large territory; but they were rivals, and in 
 the end Israel succeeded in showing herself stronger 
 than Edom, although Edom seems to have been 
 the older people. This is the meaning of the pro- 
 phecy said to have been given to Rebekah : *' The 
 elder shall serve the younger." Here in the thirty- 
 second' chapter we have an account of the passage 
 of the tribe of Jacob through a settled portion of 
 Edomite territory. The nomads are fiercely op- 
 posed by the inhabitants, who make a night attack 
 upon them, and a sharp conflict follows, in which 
 the Jacobites (if you will allow that word) succeed 
 in beating off their assailants, but only with con- 
 siderable loss to themselves. Read the story again 
 from this point of view, and see how plain every- 
 thing becomes. Jacob — for so we may call the 
 patriarchal leader of these Bedouins — finds his 
 following in great danger from an attack in the 
 
48 JACOB'S WRESTLING 
 
 rear. He knows he is in Edomite territory, but he 
 does not even know the name of the tribe which is 
 attacking him. Forthwith he sends his women and 
 children across the ford Jabbok and prepares to 
 defend the passage with his whole force of available 
 fighting men. How fierce the conflict must have 
 been is evidenced by the fact that daylight shone 
 upon a drawn battle, and that the Jacobites were 
 permitted to cross the ford unpursued, carrying 
 their wounded as they went. The rest of the march 
 would have to be a slow one in consequence of the 
 losses which had been sustained. This is what is 
 meant by the straining of the thigh. When Edom, 
 or that portion of Edom which commenced the 
 assault, found that they prevailed not against Israel, 
 they tried to turn his flank, with the result that the 
 Jacobites were severely mauled in the encounter, 
 although they held their own until daybreak. 
 " And the sun rose upon him as he passed over 
 Penuel, and he halted upon his thigh." Jacob had 
 been hard hit, but the danger was not yet over. 
 There were Edomites in front as well as behind, 
 and so the Jacobites found it expedient to send on a 
 valuable present to the head of the Edomite tribes 
 in the hope of gaining his favour, which they 
 succeeded in doing, with the result that in the rest 
 of their passage through the country they were 
 unmolested. 
 
 Where, then, does the Divine Being come in, 
 and what is the meaning of the blessing which 
 Jacob is stated to have obtained ? Well, we have 
 to recognise that at the time to which this account 
 refers, these people believed in many gods. 
 
JACOB'S WRESTLING 49 
 
 Jehovah, the God of Israel, who in process of time 
 came to be thought of as the God of all the nations 
 upon earth, was originally regarded as only the 
 tribal deity ; He was the God of Israel, but not the 
 God of Edom. After the midnight conflict, already 
 described, the Edomites recognised the prowess of 
 the God of Israel, and were willing to make terms 
 w^ith His worshippers. They asked for a truce — 
 '* Let me go, for the day breaketh " — and the 
 result was an understanding which was supposed 
 to be entered into with the sanction of Israel's God, 
 the testimony of the Edomites being : '' Thou hast 
 had power with God " — the word used for God is a 
 very general term : '' Thou hast had power with a 
 Divine One" — "and therefore thou shalt prevail 
 against men." The name of the Edomite deity is 
 not given, but the power of Jacob's God is recog- 
 nised. Both parties apparently thought that, but 
 for Divine help, the Jacobites could not have held 
 their own in the midnight assault. Hence their 
 new name — Israel, that is, God's struggler, God's 
 warrior, God's victor. The next day, when the 
 Edomites gathered in still greater force, the truce 
 was cemented, and amicable feelings took the place 
 of hostile ones for the time being. You thus see 
 that we have here a piece of prehistoric tradition, 
 but it describes an actual event in the early life of 
 the people of Israel, and what took place at that 
 time was deemed so important that it became a 
 part of the religious treasure of Israel ages after. 
 
 This examination of a primitive story is con< 
 firmed by what we know of the habits and customs 
 of nomadic tribes everywhere. It is quite a mistake 
 4 
 
50 JACOB'S WRESTLING 
 
 to read into it the views and feelings of a later 
 time and a widely different civilisation. The story 
 is interesting from many points of view, but it will 
 not bear the construction which is commonly put 
 upon it in our hymns and sermons. 
 
 Well, then, some one will say, of what use is it 
 to us ? What possible help or inspiration can there 
 be in this strangely worded description of the mid- 
 night conflict of two small, half-civilised tribes ages 
 and ages ago? I think I can tell you. In the first 
 place, I want you to recognise that the men who 
 first wrote down this story — long after the event to 
 which it alludes — were deeply religious men who 
 believed with all their hearts in the directing wis- 
 dom of God as manifested in their own national 
 history. Looking back upon special turning 
 points, they were able to discern something of 
 what God's purpose must have been at the time, 
 although it was not evident until perhaps long 
 after the crisis was over. This was the way, there- 
 fore, in which these later writers came to regard 
 the popular tradition concerning the early conflict 
 with Edom. They would say to themselves : 
 " God was really there. Had the result been differ- 
 ent from what it was, had the following of Jacob 
 been overthrown, all subsequent history would have 
 been different too. Prayer to the God of Israel 
 did make a difference; it nerved men's arms and 
 strengthened their hearts in such a way that 
 although their numbers were few they became in- 
 vincible. The issue seemed small, but it was not 
 small; there is nothing small to God." 
 
 This is just where this ancient story with its 
 
JACOB'S WRESTLING 51 
 
 religious flavour touches me. There is indeed 
 nothing small to God, and at once I feel myself to 
 be in close psychological and spiritual sympathy 
 with the little group of Jacobites who called upon 
 their God and fought their fight so bravely for 
 their women and children in the midst of thick 
 darkness in a hostile country in ages long gone 
 by. We are not so very different from them, after 
 all; fundamentally their problems are ours, and 
 our means of solving them are the same as theirs. 
 In every midnight conflict in which faith and 
 courage go hand in hand, I see exactly the same 
 situation as that set forth in this chapter, although 
 the externals may be utterly different. Men have 
 always been praying and fighting, and they will 
 go on praying and fighting to the end of time. 
 The present grows out of the past; the praying 
 and fighting of earlier days have made possible the 
 world of to-day, and the praying and fighting 
 which you and I are now compelled to do are 
 making possible the brighter world of to-morrow, 
 and God is in it all from first to last. It is not 
 my purpose this morning to enter into the question 
 as to why there should have to be conflict at all ; 
 sometimes I think I can see the reason why; but 
 at present my only object is to show that where 
 conflict is God is, and the outcome of the conflict 
 depends upon the clearness with which we recognise 
 that fact and act accordingly. 
 
 Now here is where a further difficulty emerges in 
 connection with our subject : — In actual everyday 
 life it is not always your man of strongly marked 
 religious faith who carries all before him, and it 
 
52 JACOB'S WRESTLING 
 
 would not be a good thing if it were so. In 
 Morocco, for example, at this moment a kind of 
 holy war is being preached against the European 
 invader, but we all know it will be preached in 
 vain; in spite of the splendid courage and self- 
 devotion of the Moors, French artillery will make 
 short work of their hopes. Besides, whose God is 
 to win ? In the conflict to which our text refers 
 Israel had a God and Edom had a god, and one 
 side was just as determined as the other; was God's 
 interest upon one side only ? Prayers were offered 
 on both sides during the Boer war, and yet there 
 are plenty of people still living who would say 
 that the wrong side won, after all; how is this? 
 Then, if we leave bloodshed alone, and come to the 
 equally cruel warfare imposed by the prevailing 
 conditions in modern industrial life, does the 
 principle hold good that the man of strong religious 
 faith always comes out on top ? Does not experi- 
 ence teach us that it is the man with the most 
 capital and the greatest amount of business shrewd-- 
 ness who does that ? Apparently, too, he is all the 
 more likely to succeed if he is not too heavily 
 burdened with conscientious scruples ; the man who 
 pays heed to his conscience often seems to be 
 actually at a disadvantage in comparison with his 
 rivals. Many and many a midnight conflict has 
 had to be gone through, the only outward result 
 of which has been worldly failure and material 
 ruin to the good and upright man. 
 
 I fully realise all this, and I realise, too, the 
 apparent absurdity of attempting to deduce any 
 principle of guidance for modern action from this 
 
JACOB'S WRESTLING 53 
 
 story of the savage conflict of two small bodies of 
 tribesmen in an Eastern country three millenniums 
 ago; one might as well try, on the face of it, to 
 deduce a spiritual principle from an engagement 
 between Soudanese dervishes and Abyssinian rifle- 
 men to-day. 
 
 All the same, I emphatically affirm that all moral 
 advance in the affairs of men is made by the definite 
 recognition of the presence of God in any given 
 crisis, in which case the real victory may rest with 
 him who suffers the apparent defeat. He may do 
 more than halt upon his thigh as he passes over 
 Penuel, he may fall upon the field; but he is the 
 servant of God and the real victor in the age-long 
 conflict of which good is the goal : '* The one far- 
 off divine event to which the whole creation 
 moves." But when I speak of God I mean much 
 more than a name or even a person. When I 
 speak of God I mean the sum of all human excel- 
 lence and the goal of all true human aspiration. I 
 believe that the strongest man on earth is the man 
 who recognises God as the being who includes all 
 that we mean by personal, and infinitely more; as 
 well as all that we mean by the true, the beautiful 
 and the good, and infinitely more. We can only 
 apprehend and express God up to the limit of our 
 present capacity, but this we ought to do, and 
 ought never to rest content with less. Our idea of 
 God to-day, thanks to Jesus, is immeasurably 
 higher than that of the tribesmen whose battle sug- 
 gested our text, but perhaps we are not as true to 
 it. It is possible for a man to name the name of 
 God with the utmost reverence, and at the same 
 
54 JACOB'S WRESTLING 
 
 time to be serving a moral standard which he 
 knows is not the highest. On the other hand, a 
 man may say little about God, but may be possessed 
 by a moral passion which renders it impossible for 
 him to be silent in the presence of a public or 
 private wrong; which of these is nearer to the 
 reality of things ? There can hardly be any doubt 
 about the answer. 
 
 The truth, then, illustrated in our text is this. 
 In the call of duty we must learn to hear the voice 
 of God. 
 
 We have no means for discerning the will of 
 God otherwise than by obeying that which we feel 
 to be highest and truest in ourselves. God is the 
 supreme reality of all being, and that reality can 
 only find expression in the truth and faithfulness 
 of individual men. In any given crisis the truest 
 service we can render to God is to do our best for 
 the cause to which we stand committed, and leave 
 results to Him. There never can be much question 
 as to what the cause is which has the greatest claim 
 upon us at any one time. According to our text, 
 the cause of the followers of Jacob was the safety 
 of the women and children ; they did not see any 
 farther than that; they did not know, and could 
 not know, that they were making history, and that 
 a nation would come into being as a consequence 
 of that one night's work. Neither could they have 
 dreamed that they were preparing the foundations 
 of a world religion, and making a pathway along 
 which would come the world's Redeemer; small 
 events are the hinges upon which great ones turn. 
 What they did then we have to do now, and we 
 
JACOB'S WRESTLING 55 
 
 can see no farther than they. In that midnight 
 battle, humanly speaking, Israel's mighty men 
 were fighting not only for their own wives and little 
 ones, but for the Christ that was to be. In our 
 hours of stress and danger, when all our moral 
 resources are strained to the uttermost, we are 
 doing just the same when we are faithful to the 
 best we can see, and the victory our courage and 
 faith enable us to win is therefore greater than we 
 know — nay, even apparent defeat must mean a 
 realisation of God's purpose, wider and deeper 
 than at present we have eyes to see. 
 
 To some extent there may even seem to be a con- 
 flict of ideals involved, and it may be no easy matter 
 to make our choice. Readers of the Bhaghavad Gita 
 will remember the perplexity in which Prince Arjuna 
 found himself, and the advice which the god Krishna 
 gave him. Arjuna was obliged to take part in a civil 
 war, in which to join either side meant shedding 
 the blood of his kinsmen. While he was in great 
 trouble of mind about this, Krishna came to him 
 disguised as a charioteer, and bade him choose with- 
 out hesitation the side on which he could most 
 freely serve, leaving the outcome in the hands of 
 God. This counsel is similar to that given by the 
 Jesuit in John Inglesant: '' It matters much less 
 what side you choose in a time of storm and con- 
 flict than that you should make the best choice open 
 to you at the moment, and serve as bravely and 
 faithfully as ever you can." Surely there is a great 
 truth in this. None of us can fully understand 
 either the genesis or the issue of the particular crisis 
 in which our fortunes happen to be involved, but 
 
56 JACOB'S WRESTLING 
 
 we can quite well understand that we have no 
 business to trifle with it, and that there is a place 
 marked out for us somewhere in connection with it. 
 To side with Israel in resisting Edom may in the 
 long run be of more service even to Edom than 
 that we should shirk the issue and do nothing at 
 all. In the present education struggle, for instance, 
 it were better to be either Lord Hugh Cecil or Dr. 
 Clifford than to be utterly without interest in the 
 grand result of the controversy in which those two 
 Christian patriots are so sharply opposed. 
 
 Suffer me now to press this truth home upon 
 your individual experience. What man is there 
 among you who has not known his hour of mid- 
 night conflict? And what true man is there who 
 would not acknowledge that the sternest part of that 
 conflict arose from the fact that he was conscious 
 of being the stay of other lives than his own ? Go 
 to the bottom of any trouble, and you will find 
 that it has a social significance ; we suffer individ- 
 ually just because we are bound up together. If 
 any of you business men have ever passed a sleep- 
 less night on account of the danger of possible loss 
 and ruin, it has not been because you feared the 
 future on your own account : that would be a com- 
 paratively small matter. No, what troubled you 
 was just what troubled the men whose midnight 
 conflict made my text possible — the weaker lives on 
 the further side of the ford where you stood at bay, 
 face to face with the foe. Is not the situation strik- 
 ingly similar? After all, you see, the motives of 
 human action, and the spring of human suffering, 
 are much the same now as they were then. I dare 
 
JACOB'S WRESTLING 57 
 
 say some of you spent some anxious hours last 
 night thinking over your worldly prospects, with no 
 one to know your thoughts but God. I dare say 
 there are some of you in the City Temple who are 
 doing so at this very moment. No one knows your 
 anxieties, or sees the inside of your trouble, but 
 yourself and God. As far as you can you have 
 kept it even from those most concerned. Some- 
 times in such circumstances the happy laughter of 
 little children falls sadly upon a burdened father's 
 heart. Those of you who know what it is to sit by 
 the fireside in a loving home, with your solitary 
 load of care pressing heavily upon your thoughts, 
 will know what I mean. 
 
 In all such cases there is but one thing to be 
 done, and that is to play the man. Trust in God 
 and wait for the morning. It cannot be that, if 
 there are right and justice at the heart of things, 
 God has forgotten the children of His own being. 
 Your own little bit of duty means more than you 
 can at present see, not only to yourself, or to that 
 little circle you care for, but to us, to all mankind, 
 and to the heaven you cannot see. Your duty 
 cannot be delegated to anybody else; you are 
 wanted in the field — you, and nobody else will do. 
 You may be hard hit before you have done with 
 it, but history teaches us one glorious lesson. It 
 was because of that lesson that my text was ever 
 written — that is, that faith informed by love never 
 is worsted in the long run. If it could be, there 
 would be no God. Read the witness of saints and 
 seers for a thousand years of Christian history 
 along which we are privileged to look, and you 
 
58 JACOB'S WRESTLING 
 
 will find that testimony. Jesus came to His ford 
 Jabbok when He reached Gethsemane; He w^as 
 alone then and fighting for mankind, not for His 
 own hand. In the immediate result it seemed as 
 though the enemy had crushed him beyond re- 
 covery, but there was God to be reckoned with, 
 and therefore to-day Jesus, to our devotion, is King 
 of kings and Lord of lords. Wherefore, seeing 
 we are compassed about by so great a cloud of 
 witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the 
 selfishness and cowardice that do so easily beset 
 us, and let us run with patience the race that is set 
 before us, looking unto Jesus. 
 
 Hear me, then, you who stand alone at mid- 
 night, guarding your ford Jabbok, with the weaker 
 lives in the rear. The issue is greater than you 
 know, but it could not be simpler. You have to 
 do just what Jesus did, and wait the result without 
 fear. It is not chance that rules the universe, but 
 a divine wisdom that never makes a mistake. It 
 is not selfishness that is really master, even in this 
 w^orld, though it sometimes seems to be so, but a 
 divine love that cannot be hindered or destroyed. 
 Trust in that divine wisdom can never be put to 
 shame, and the service of that divine love will issue 
 in gladness of heart to the worker, and more and 
 more abundant life and blessing to all mankind. 
 
THE INNER VOICE 
 
 " After the fire a still small voiced — i KINGS xix. 12. 
 
 There is one thing upon which all serious- 
 minded people are agreed, whether their theology 
 be old or new, namely, that there is no book to 
 match the Bible in knowledge of the human heart 
 in relation to God. The greater the light thrown 
 upon it by modern scholarship, the more clearly 
 do we perceive this to be the case : criticism and 
 historical research have done nothing to diminish 
 the value of the written w^ord — on the contrary, they 
 have in some cases added enormously to our per- 
 ception of its spiritual worth. The story of Elijah 
 is a very good example of this. The work of a 
 succession of eminent scholars and archaeologists 
 has placed us in possession of a number of facts 
 which throw considerable light upon the life and 
 work of this great man and enable us to realise the 
 inwardness of the legends associated with his name. 
 Amongst these legends perhaps the most beautiful 
 is the one whence our text is taken. Here we see 
 the austere prophet, fleeing for his life, and in great 
 depression of spirit, engaged in solitary com- 
 munion with God and listening to the divine voice 
 bidding him undertake the last act in his striking 
 
 59 
 
6o THE INNER VOICE 
 
 and stormy career. I desire this morning, if I 
 can, to make clear to you something of what was 
 taking place in the great soul of Elijah at this time, 
 and what had led up to it. I hope you will find 
 something in it that will help you in to-day's task, 
 and perhaps in to-day's trouble. At any rate, I 
 think you will see that in essentials human nature 
 and human problems have not changed so very 
 much since Elijah's day. 
 
 What, then, was the matter in the kingdom of 
 Israel at this time? Well, on the face of it, the 
 issue for which Elijah contended so manfully 
 throughout his public life was whether Jehovah or 
 Baal should be the God of Israel. This was not 
 quite the case, however. It was far more than a 
 question of names. The real issue was between 
 Puritanism and Hedonism — between an ideal of 
 national righteousness and the sensual rites of 
 nature worship. Now this was no mere triviality; 
 it was deep and vital. Jehovah was not only the 
 national God of Israel, but the God of purity, 
 justice, and simplicity of life. It was this which 
 distinguished Him most from the deities of sur- 
 rounding nations. You cannot read the Old Testa- 
 ment without seeing that at certain periods Jehovah 
 was thought of as a grim and terrible God, but 
 He never was the God of bestiality and self-indulg- 
 ence. Better The grim and terrible than the God 
 whose service is associated with degrading and 
 filthy exercise of animal passion. Under King 
 Ahab the worship of Jehovah had not been dis- 
 continued, but that of foreign deities had been in- 
 troduced alongside of it — a far more serious mis- 
 
THE INNER VOICE 6i 
 
 chief than if the ancient rehgion had been dis- 
 avowed altogether. Jehovah now became one God 
 among many. The various Baals, as they were 
 called — that is, simply " deities " — were worshipped 
 with riotous, drunken orgies of the most shameful 
 character, while the altars of Jehovah, though not 
 entirely destroyed, were practically neglected. You 
 see, therefore, that here was a moral issue of the 
 first importance. Elijah was not merely fighting 
 for a name, but for an ideal. He stood for sim- 
 plicity of life, cleanness and continence, civic and 
 social justice. All these were in danger, owing to 
 the introduction of foreign cults and customs. The 
 courts and camps were filled with lewd women, 
 who were able to pervert justice and turn society 
 into a brothel. The story of Naboth's vineyard is 
 a sufficient illustration of what was going on. The 
 corruption of all the higher ranks of society at this 
 time led to the spoliation of the poor and weak, and 
 a general deterioration of manners which would in 
 the end have resulted in the break-up of the State. 
 It was to counteract this that Elijah appeared, full 
 of fiery zeal and courage, a man of tremendous 
 moral force. Looking beneath the letter of the few 
 fragmentary accounts we possess concerning him, 
 we can see that he must have been an object of 
 great dread to the reigning house. There is one 
 most illuminating incident told in i Kings xviii, 
 which gives us an insight into the kind of man 
 he was. It appears that Queen Jezebel had mas- 
 sacred some hundreds of the prophets of Jehovah. 
 A few of them, however, had been saved by the 
 action of Obadiah, the steward of the royal house- 
 
62 THE INNER VOICE 
 
 hold, who had hidden them in a cave and fed them 
 with bread and water. A great drought shortly 
 afterwards fell upon the land. Obadiah was sent 
 by King Ahab to try to find some pasture for the 
 perishing horses and cattle, and at the same time 
 to arrest Elijah, if possible. On the way he met 
 the prophet, who bade him go back and tell the 
 king that he was coming to speak to him of his 
 own accord. Poor Obadiah was afraid to tell Ahab 
 this. 
 
 And he said, '' What have I sinned, that thou 
 wouldst deliver thy servant into the hand of Ahab, 
 to slay me? As the Lord thy God liveth, there 
 is no nation or kingdom whither my lord hath not 
 sent to seek thee. . . . And so when I come and 
 tell Ahab, and he cannot find thee, he shall slay 
 me . . ." And Elijah said, " As the Lord of hosts 
 liveth, before whom I stand, I will surely show 
 myself unto him to-day." So Obadiah went to 
 meet Ahab, and told him ; and Ahab went to meet 
 Elijah. And it came to pass, when Ahab saw 
 Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, "Art thou he 
 that troubleth Israel?" And he answered, '' I have 
 not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father's 
 house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments 
 of the Lord, and thou hast followed Baalim." 
 
 Here you have at a glance the character of the 
 man — fearless, indomitable, stern even to ruthless- 
 ness; full of self-forgetful zeal for his country and 
 his God. The weak and wicked monarch quailed 
 in his mighty presence, so that for a moment he 
 actually agreed to his demand for a trial of strength 
 between Baal and Jehovah. Then follows the his- 
 
THE INNER VOICE 63 
 
 toric scene on Carmel, in which the grand, solitary, 
 majestic figure of Elijah was pitted against four 
 hundred and fifty priests of Baal. We cannot be 
 sure of what actually took place, but the immediate 
 result was a reaction in favour of Jehovah and a 
 wholesale massacre of the priests of Baal. Then 
 comes a counter-reaction. Within a few hours 
 this hitherto dauntless prophet and patriot is in full 
 flight before the soldiers of Jezebel, and seeks 
 shelter in the fastnesses of Mount Horeb. His 
 massive soul is in the deepest despondency; his 
 bloody triumph had been short-lived; all his work 
 is failure once more. So he prays for death, not 
 at the hand of his enemies, but at the hand of God. 
 The scene that follows is one of the most remark- 
 able pieces of word-painting in the whole Bible. 
 As the sorrowful prophet repeats over and over 
 again to himself the reason for his presence there — 
 " I have been very jealous for the Lord God of 
 hosts : For the children of Israel have forsaken Thy 
 covenant, thrown down Thine altars, and slain Thy 
 prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am 
 left; and they seek my life, to take it away" — a 
 terrifying storm breaks out, and Elijah takes his 
 stand upon an eminence to watch it. Probably it 
 was night, when the effect would be even more 
 sublime than by day. Rocks were torn from their 
 foundations by the fury of the tempest, aided by a 
 volcanic eruption and succeeded by a conflagration. 
 It was all in keeping with the mood of Elijah's 
 storm-tossed soul, and yet it must have made him 
 feel how puny he was in the presence of such 
 titanic forces. He remembered that in ages long 
 
64 THE INNER VOICE 
 
 before God was said to have appeared to His people 
 on this very mountain veiled in cloud and flame. 
 He remembered that these had been looked upon 
 as tokens of the divine majesty, and had struck 
 dread into the heart of Israel. Yet here was the 
 same spectacle with no one to view it but him- 
 self. Hour after hour passed on ; wind, earth- 
 quake, and fire succeeded each other as the solitary 
 watcher continued to gaze. Then morning dawned ; 
 the violence of the elements died away; the sun 
 rose upon a scene of quietness and peace, and the 
 tumult in Elijah's soul subsided likewise. He 
 began to realise that he had been too self-conscious, 
 too tempestuous, and that his very despair was 
 egotistic. Who was he to champion the King of 
 kings? Could not the mighty Being to whose 
 thunders he had just listened, and whose hand could 
 pluck mountains from their base and shatter them 
 in pieces, watch over and save His people Israel ? 
 Was his own stormy zeal in the service of God any 
 more productive than this tempest of a night ? Did 
 God need one more than the other for the mani- 
 festation of Himself ? Where was God now ? Was 
 He to be looked for in the destructive effects of 
 earthquake, wind, and fire ? Not so. God was 
 speaking in the new quietness that had taken pos- 
 session of the soul of His servant. The still small 
 voice was telling him that, after all, the tempest of 
 Carmel had not been necessary, the massacre of 
 priests had not advanced the cause of righteous- 
 ness a single jot. Even Elijah himself was not 
 necessary. There was a silent Israel that had 
 never bowed the knee to Baal: there were even 
 
THE INNER VOICE 65 
 
 other witnesses and other workers who should carry 
 on and complete what Elijah had begun. It was 
 not in catastrophic events, whether in nature or in 
 human society, that God was most clearly re- 
 vealed, but in the quiet uprising of purer desires 
 and nobler feelings in the hearts of men — '* Not by 
 might nor by power, but by My spirit, saith the 
 Lord of hosts." 
 
 If ever I came across a piece of genuine spiritual 
 history I think I have found it here. This story 
 is a great prose poem, giving me insight into the 
 workings of God in the human soul. It makes 
 Elijah live for me. Here is no dim, titanic figure, 
 half-hidden by the mists of vast antiquity, but a 
 brave, struggling,- suffering brother-man. I can 
 enter into his feelings, sympathise with his dis- 
 tresses, and even understand the peace that came 
 to him after that lonely night's vigil on Horeb. 
 Yes, I love Elijah, for in him I see myself. I see 
 you too. And I see every man who has ever had 
 anything to do for God and lost his true perspect- 
 ive by over-absorption in the immediate and the 
 near outside the soul. 
 
 There is one mistake that servants of truth are 
 always making, and that is judging by appear- 
 ances. We look too much to externals, dwell too 
 much upon the circumference and too little at the 
 centre of things. In proportion to our eagerness 
 and self-devotion is our tendency to exaggerate our 
 own importance to the cause of God and to waste 
 time in looking for visible results of our activity. 
 There is danger, of course, in the other extreme, 
 but it is not so great a danger as the one we are 
 5 
 
66 THE INNER VOICE 
 
 discussing. We belong to a vigorous race and a 
 feverish age. We are always in a turmoil of effort, 
 and are prodigal of life and energy. In fact, we 
 tend to despise the contemplative and to urge men 
 to look for salvation in toilsome and tumultuous 
 effort rather than in quiescence and solemn waiting 
 upon God. I am quite sure I am right in saying 
 that there are some of you busy men before me 
 who would be inclined to discount such spiritual 
 counsels as would tend to draw your mind away 
 even for a moment from the concrete and the prac- 
 tical. What you want, you would tell me, is such 
 teaching as would help to brace your moral ener- 
 gies and render you strong and assured in your 
 service for the Kingdom of God. You are suspi- 
 cious, and rightly suspicious, of all mere religi- 
 osity, all preaching and praying that issues in 
 subjectivity and sentimentality and withdraws the 
 soul from active sympathy with human concerns. 
 You would be quite right in contending that 
 Christianity has suffered from this kind of thing 
 more than from anything else, and that even to- 
 day people contrive to reduce their religious life to 
 a series of agreeable emotions with little or no 
 practical outcome in the betterment of human life. 
 You would tell me that in business the man who 
 is most fervent in his Christian devotion is no more 
 generous and no more trustworthy than any one 
 else— as often as not he is rather less so. Perhaps, 
 therefore, when you come to the City Temple you 
 do so because you feel that here, at least, the moral 
 imperative is kept well to the fore and the con- 
 sciousness of the world's need never lost sight of in 
 
THE INNER VOICE 67 
 
 abstract propositions about the communion of the 
 soul with God apart altogether from the well-being 
 of man. 
 
 I admit all this. But has there never been a 
 time in your experience when you have grown 
 baffled and weary with the greatness of your tasks 
 and the smallness of your success with them ? 
 Have you never felt that you craved something 
 besides the feeling that what you were doing was 
 worth doing and that you would prevail in the 
 end ? Have you never had your hours of deep 
 discouragement — yes, and your seasons of defeat 
 — in which you questioned with yourself whether 
 what you were doing was worth doing after all ? 
 Like Elijah, perhaps, you have played the man 
 and done it well. You have confronted King 
 Ahab in the full consciousness of rectitude and 
 sincerity of purpose. You have even had your 
 Mount Carmel, your dramatic stand for righteous- 
 ness, and your hard-won, stormy triumph. You 
 fixed your eye upon a certain goal and got there. 
 You have gained your point in some fiercely con- 
 tested conflict of interests in which you have man- 
 aged to see justice don6. You have unmasked 
 some piece of cruel humbug or put to silence some 
 clamorous evil. You have put your whole soul 
 into the cause, whatever it may be, which you felt 
 to be yours, and your very intensity and self- 
 forgetful zeal have gained you a temporary victory. 
 Then follows the hour of disillusionment. No 
 sooner have you driven an evil out by one door 
 than it returns by another. The victory you 
 thought was going to do everything turns out to 
 
68 THE INNER VOICE 
 
 have done nothing; things are no better than they 
 were before — worse, perhaps. 
 
 It must oft fall out 
 That one whose labour perfects any work 
 Shall rise from it with eye so worn that he, 
 Of all men, least can measure the extent 
 Of what he has accomplished. 
 
 But can any one else measure it either? Very 
 seldom — if ever. The world's greatest crises usu- 
 ally take place without the actors therein being 
 aware of the fact. Occasionally some outstanding 
 genius flings his defiance in the face of his fellows 
 and appeals to posterity, but as a rule neither the 
 worker nor the onlookers appreciate the true sig- 
 nificance of what is being done. And there is 
 good reason for this. The truth is that nothing 
 which takes place in this world of time and sense 
 really has value in itself; it only has value in rela- 
 tion to eternity. It is not what you do that matters, 
 but what it does in you. Judging by appearances 
 is therefore a false and foolish proceeding in which 
 no man should ever indulge. Success or failure 
 can never be measured in terms of the outward and 
 visible, but only of the inward and spiritual. This 
 is the sense in which we may say every true Chris- 
 tian has to renounce the world. You can do no 
 other if you want to save it or to save your own 
 soul. It is so natural to look for God in the cata- 
 strophic and tremendous, whereas these are no more 
 than the froth blown up on the cliffs from the 
 advancing tide that is gradually but surely wear- 
 ing away their foundations. The Napoleons and 
 Caesars of history bulk very large on the field of 
 
THE INNER VOICE 69 
 
 human interest. How much do they count for in 
 reality? They are not forces in themselves, but 
 only the instruments of forces. They mean no 
 more in the spiritual universe than a falling rock 
 or a blade of grass. What seems great to us may 
 be but trivial when seen from the side of God's 
 purpose for and in humanity. Have we ever had 
 a glimpse as to what that purpose is? Most 
 assuredly. The life of Jesus has not been lived in 
 vain, for it has summed up and brought to a focus 
 all the stumbling endeavours of prophets and saints 
 in ages past in showing us that the ultimate goal 
 of human achievement is to be the realisation of 
 a fellowship of love. Now, measured from this 
 standpoint, what is great and what is small ? That 
 alone is great which means the release of higher 
 motives and purer aims than can find opportunity 
 in the bondage of material limitation. The colos- 
 sal figures on the field of human history are gener- 
 ally only the scavengers of heaven ; God's greatest 
 servants are those who have put the most love into 
 their work, and therefore thrust their own person- 
 ality farthest into the background. What renders 
 an action of value to God is not its dramatic power, 
 but its spiritual quality; the Lord is not in the 
 earthquake, wind, and fire, but in the still small 
 voice. To become discouraged in any good work 
 is not only to forget this, but to be in danger of 
 committing the sacrilege of mixing up our own 
 individual fortunes with the cause of God, and 
 making the latter serve the former. Elijah thought 
 that when he had butchered the priests of Baal he 
 had gained the end for which he had striven. Not 
 
70 THE INNER VOICE 
 
 at all. The people who helped him to do it would 
 have l>utchered him too the very next day ; they 
 were not morally one whit better for the deed of 
 blood. They had not been converted to the austere 
 ideal of the prophet; they had but swung to the 
 stronger side. So it is to-day. A general election 
 takes place in 1906, in which the nation declares — ■ 
 or so many people think — for soberness and righte- 
 ousness. Within a few short months we get a 
 Peckham contest, in which the forces of hell seem 
 to run riot and good men mourn that base motives, 
 cynically avowed, have still such enormous power 
 with the British electorate. Is it, then, really true 
 that a verdict at the polls represents a great moral 
 advance or its contrary, a moral set-back ? Yes, 
 perhaps to some degree it does, but not to the 
 extent that is commonly understood. The real 
 victory won by Elijah at Carmel was not the 
 slaughter of his foes, but the moral intensity and 
 self-devotion which had made the meeting on 
 Carmel possible. No smaller man could have done 
 it; no meaner motive than unselfish zeal for Israel 
 and Israel's God could have impressed the people 
 so far that they were even willing to listen to him. 
 What happened on Carmel was of far less moment 
 than what had impressed the heart of Israel during 
 the years preceding in which Elijah had been utter- 
 ing his apparently fruitless protest against the 
 national vice and shame. It had been the still 
 small voice all the time, the divine voice that spoke 
 in the stirring conscience of the common people. 
 
 And it can never be different. What you actu- 
 ally see as the result of your labour matters little, 
 
THE INNER VOICE 71 
 
 if at all; what does matter is what you have put 
 into the w^ork. It is that which tells, not the human 
 recognition it has won, nor the visible success 
 achieved. In twenty years from now — in fifty at 
 the most — all the outward part of what you are 
 doing now will have perished. There are some 
 kinds of work in which the visible result of your 
 labours may last a little longer, but your part in it 
 will be forgotten as soon as you pass away. You 
 may even be one of the small company whose 
 names are immortalised in the reverence of pos- 
 terity because of their achievements, but what 
 satisfaction will that give you ? No ; all that is 
 worth thinking about in the task which God has 
 put into your hand to-day is the motive with which 
 you do it. That is a spiritual thing, and, being 
 spiritual, its full equivalent will be yours when all 
 its material embodiment has crumbled into dust. 
 We are like the toilers in the stokehole of a ship — 
 we have our eye on the machinery all the time, 
 without feeling or realising that our real work is 
 to carry something beautiful to another shore. We 
 are like the men who work in darkness in the 
 bowels of the earth to send up light and warmth to 
 a world above. I am a convinced and earnest 
 Socialist, but I am not such a fool as to imagine 
 that Socialism can be dumped on human nature 
 from without; it has to be uttered from within. As 
 Mrs. Philip Snowden says, the first and greatest 
 work in this direction is the socialising of men and 
 women, the socialising of thought and feeling; we 
 have to get people to cease thinking in units. Kill- 
 ing the priests of Baal will never save society. I 
 
72 THE INNER VOICE 
 
 do not value service for the poor merely because it 
 may make their life a little happier here. That is 
 worth something, to be sure, and it is a truly spirit- 
 ual work; but there is something farther and 
 greater, and that is that with the removal of the 
 fetters of ignorance and materialism you are doing 
 something to awaken the God within the emanci- 
 pated soul. It is worth something to close public- 
 houses in the streets, but it is worth more to close 
 them in the hearts of men. You may have many a 
 hard fight before you succeed in doing much for 
 the oppressed and downtrodden — it takes such a 
 vast amount of energy to achieve even a small 
 result — but the real effect is the spiritual equiva- 
 lent of the consecration with which you have 
 wrought. You may need the fire — even the earth- 
 quake sometimes — but the real purpose of all 
 worthy effort is to enable men to hear the still 
 small voice that tells of the love that never dies. 
 
 You can hear that voice now if you will, and you 
 can learn to listen for it amid the roar and tumult 
 of every-day human affairs. For that voice is the 
 voice of Christ, the deeper Man, the God-Man who 
 dwells within us all, and whom nothing can ever 
 destroy. When we have crossed to the other side 
 of the gulf that separates seen from unseen we 
 shall find that nothing has ever mattered except 
 faithfulness to that voice. Place does not matter 
 — one might gain all the glory of the world and 
 yet be a stranger to one's own soul; fame and 
 station count for nothing in that mysterious be- 
 yond towards which we are all hastening ; the only 
 possession we can carry there is what we are. Can 
 
THE INNER VOICE 73 
 
 we not live now as though our hearts were set only 
 upon eternal values ? Can we not do with our lives 
 now what we would do if \we knew for certain that 
 nothing shall live but love? Can we not gaze 
 calmly at the destructive effect of earthquake, wind 
 and fire, when we know that the still small voice 
 is whispering, Well done, good and faithful ser- 
 vant ? Above all, we shall not be tempted to think 
 that success or failure depend in the least upon 
 what the world can see. 
 
 Loud mockers in the roaring street 
 
 Say Christ is crucified again : 
 Twice pierced His gospel-bearing feet, 
 Twice broken His great heart in vain. 
 I hear, and to myself I smile. 
 For Christ talks with me all the while. 
 
 No more unto the stubborn heart 
 
 With gentle knocking shall He plead, 
 No more the mystic pity start, 
 
 For Christ twice dead is dead indeed. 
 So in the street I hear men say. 
 Yet Christ is with me all the day. 
 
VI 
 
 THE ROCK AND THE PIT 
 
 " Hearken to me^ ye that follow after righteousness^ 
 ye that seek the Lord: look luito the rock whence ye 
 were hewn, a?td to the hole of the pit whence ye were 
 digged J^—\'S>h.lh.Yi. li. i. 
 
 This vivid piece of imagery belongs to that 
 section of the book of Isaiah which is concerned 
 mainly with the idea of the "suffering servant of 
 God." It is one of the grandest parts of the whole 
 Bible, and yet its exegesis presents not a few diffi- 
 culties. You are all aware that this interesting 
 book falls into two main divisions. The first 
 (chaps, i. to xxxix.) dates from about the last 
 quarter of the eighth century B.C., and represents 
 the work of the great prophet Isaiah, whose name 
 it bears. There are a few isolated passages in it 
 which belong to a later age, and these are com- 
 paratively easy to trace. But when we come to the 
 second half of the book the case is different. 
 Chapter xl. opens with a new note and introduces 
 us to a new author, the second Isaiah, as he is 
 called, the great prophet of the exile, whose work 
 it was to herald the restoration. There is no mis- 
 taking the splendid ring of this man's message 
 beginning with the words, '' Comfort ye, comfort 
 ye my people, saith your God." This utterance 
 
 74 
 
THE ROCK AND THE PIT 75 
 
 can only date from the middle of the sixth century 
 B.C., and deals with the return from Babylon. But 
 when we go on to read the later chapters, the ques- 
 tion sometimes arises whether we are listening to 
 the same speaker dealing with the same set of cir- 
 cumstances, or whether the scene has shifted again. 
 The probability is that we have several voices in 
 the latter part of the book of Isaiah, and that the 
 sections about the suffering servant are all the work 
 of one man. Whether this man was the same as 
 the one who gave us the inspiring fortieth chapter 
 we cannot tell, but it is fairly certain that he now 
 writes in Jerusalem instead of Babylon. There 
 are some passages in which he seems to speak of 
 the exodus from Babylon as yet to take place, 
 whereas in others he describes the returned exiles 
 as being once more at home on Mount Zion. This 
 is what makes the exegesis difficult; we are not 
 always Sure as to whether Babylon or Jerusalem 
 is the scene of the allusion, and to know which 
 is meant would occasionally make the meaning 
 clearer. It is easy to see why, while the Jews w^ere 
 preparing to go forth from their house of bondage 
 in the pagan city, their mood would be one of hope 
 and joy. They would picture the return to their 
 distant highland home in the most gorgeous 
 colours, and would expect to resume their national 
 life and worship as though there were no difficulties 
 in the way. But the reality was far different from 
 this dream. When they returned home it was only 
 to find Jerusalem a waste, and the remnant of her 
 population poor, degraded, and half-paganised. 
 We have to remember that it was the best of the 
 
76 THE ROCK AND THE PIT 
 
 Jewish population which had been carried away 
 into captivity many years before; it was the weaker 
 elements that had been left behind. Picture the 
 disappointment of the emancipated prisoners when 
 they found the homeland a desert and all their 
 sacred places lying in ruins. They were so in- 
 censed by the low morale of their kinsmen who 
 dwelt among these ruinS that they refused to have 
 much to do with them, and vigorously repudiated 
 all those who had contracted foreign alliances or 
 proved untrue to their faith. 
 
 This was their first disillusionment — the moral 
 'deterioration of their countrymen. They had many 
 more to face. Their Persian deliverers had given 
 them no effective protection against their foes, such 
 as the Edomites and other surrounding peoples, 
 who now gathered against them, and strove to 
 prevent the re-erection of the walls of Jerusalem, as 
 w^ell as the Temple. For this interesting chapter 
 of Jewish history read the books of Ezra and Nehe- 
 miah ; these serve to show how the people were 
 feeling at this discouraging time. They had come 
 home full of enthusiasm, believing that all their 
 ancient glories were immediately to be restored. 
 When they saw how things really were they lost 
 heart, and it was not until many years after the 
 restoration that any progress was made with the 
 rebuilding of Jerusalem. Perhaps it is this period 
 of depression to which our text refers. I wish we 
 knew for certain, for, as you can immediately 
 realise, the fact would make some difference to the 
 bearing of the exhortation. If these words were 
 uttered in Babylon, just before the Jews started for 
 
THE ROCK AND THE PIT 77 
 
 home, they would be spoken to men rejoicing in 
 their new-found freedom and cherishing the most 
 glowing anticipations as to the future. If this were 
 so, the meaning of the sentence would be somewhat 
 as follows: "You are now going forth from a 
 pagan city as Abraham went forth ages ago from 
 among the ancestors of these very Chaldeans. He 
 went alone, but God was with him and made him 
 prosperous and strong. He went because he wanted 
 to serve God in a higher way than was possible 
 amid heathen corruption and restriction. Do as he 
 did, and you shall be blessed and increased in the 
 land of your fathers." It has been surmised that 
 if the rock is a figure for Abraham, the pit is a 
 figure for Sarah, the traditional ancestress of Israel. 
 This may be so, but the figure is even more applic- 
 able to the Chaldeans, from w^hom Abraham was 
 supposed to have sprung. This race inherited a 
 low-lying territory around the Persian Gulf — hence, 
 perhaps, the allusion to ** the hole of the pit whence 
 ye were digged." 
 
 But somehow I do not think these words were 
 spoken on the great occasion thus described. You 
 will admit from what I have just said that, even if 
 they were, they would make quite good sense and 
 contain an inspiring message, but I think the mes- 
 sage is greater and more helpful if we regard it as 
 having been uttered to the returned exiles in Jeru- 
 salem during the period of discouragement which 
 followed that home-coming. I think I see some- 
 thing here of most fascinating interest and suggest- 
 iveness. These old prophets of Israel were adepts 
 in the use of what may be termed double imagery ; 
 
78 THE ROCK AND THE PIT 
 
 they would employ a figure in two different senses 
 at one and the same moment. It is obvious, for 
 instance, as I have already pointed out, that the 
 rock here stands for Abraham, as the next sentence 
 proves: "Look unto Abraham your father," etc. 
 But is it not also an allusion to Mount Zion? In 
 the one case, therefore, it is a reminder of the 
 spiritual ancestry of the Jewish people, and, in 
 the other, of their national history. Just look at 
 these two, and look how illuminating they are. 
 According to Jewish tradition, Abraham had been 
 a man of altogether exceptional force of character 
 and religious insight. He had been brought up 
 amid surroundings which were not at all likely to 
 produce a monotheistic faith. The only worship 
 with which he was acquainted was of a degrading 
 and sensual kind, sometimes accompanied by 
 human sacrifices. In order to break away from 
 this he had to break away from his kinsfolk alto- 
 gether. He had courage and strength enough to 
 do this and to trust his destiny to God. Only a 
 quite exceptional man could ever have taken such 
 a course. Remember, I am neither affirming nor 
 denying the truth of the legend; I am only recall- 
 ing later Israelitish belief concerning it. A man 
 like Abraham could fitly be termed a rock; and 
 this, says the prophet, was the rock from which 
 the Jewish people had been hewn. 
 
 This was their stock, their origin, and the reason 
 for their existence. It was a great thing to say. 
 Although they had fallen on evil days, and seemed 
 to have lost their moral vigour, there was no reason 
 to believe that it need be so for ever. The lineage 
 
THE ROCK AND THE PIT 79 
 
 of Abraham could yet do great things in the world 
 under the favour and direction of Abraham's God. 
 Is not this the meaning of the exhortation, more 
 than once repeated in the sections which follow : 
 '' Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion ; put 
 on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the Holy 
 City. . . . Shake thyself from the dust; arise, sit 
 thee down, O Jerusalem ; loose thyself from the 
 bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion " ? 
 Now take the other meaning of the figure. Jeru- 
 salem was built upon a rock, and her poets and 
 prophets loved to sing about their holy mountain 
 where God dwelt. To them this mountain used to 
 be a symbol for the stability and permanence of 
 the nation itself under the blessing of God. " They 
 that trust in the Lord are as Mount Zion, which 
 cannot be removed." Israel had a long history to 
 look back upon, a history full of glorious deliver- 
 ances and splendid achievements. It was thus 
 quite natural for these people of Jehovah to think 
 of their covenant with Him as the rock upon which 
 their national life was built, just as Mount Zion was 
 the seat of their city and their temple. When the 
 hour of disaster came, when city and temple were 
 laid in ruins, and the flow^er of the population 
 massacred or carried away into captivity, it must 
 have seemed at first as though the very foundations 
 of Mount Zion had been shattered. Babylon, the 
 cruel city of the plains, was a very pit of hell to 
 these homesick highlanders. Then came the de- 
 liverance, and now they were home again, sitting 
 disconsolate in the dust and ashes of their former 
 glory. It is at this moment that the prophet re- 
 
8o THE ROCK AND THE PIT 
 
 minds them of their past in such a way as to rouse 
 them to new effort. In substance his appeal is as 
 follows: "Remember, this is Mount Zion, where 
 your fathers used to look upon the face of God. 
 You were hewn away from it by the terrible hand 
 of the Chaldasan invader. God placed you at his 
 mercy because of your sins, but He did not leave 
 you desolate and forsaken. He lifted you out of 
 the horrible pit and the miry clay, and has placed 
 your feet upon this rock once more. Think of it. 
 This is holy ground; while you are here you can 
 reaffirm your ancient covenant with God. If He 
 has delivered you from Babylon surely He can do 
 more. Set to work at once to recover all you have 
 lost. Recall the glorious past, and see to it that 
 you have a still more glorious future in living 
 union with your fathers' God." 
 
 This seems to me almost indisputably to have 
 been the true bearing of the exhortation contained 
 in our text, and I hope you will not think that the 
 time spent in examining it has been wasted; it is 
 always helpful to see just how a great sentence like 
 this came into being, and what it meant to those 
 who first heard it. It could not fail to be an inspir- 
 ing influence to these discouraged Jews who were 
 sitting mourning amid the failure of their hopes 
 and the disappointment of their expectations. It 
 is quite reasonable to suppose that it had something 
 to do with the after success of Nehemiah and his 
 friends, who set to work like heroes and rebuilt the 
 walls of Jerusalem, with trowel in one hand and 
 sword in the other. It was a magnificent task, 
 magnificently accomplished. 
 
THE ROCK AND THE PIT 8i 
 
 How human it all is I and how closely it re- 
 sembles certain situations with which we are more 
 or less familiar every day of our lives ! We are 
 constantly finding ourselves in scenes and emer- 
 gencies wherein we need to be reminded of the 
 rock whence we were hewn and the hole of the pit 
 whence we were digged. We need to think of both 
 in order that we may understand who and what we 
 are and to accomplish anything worth doing in this 
 world. The rock whence we were hewn is God; 
 the pit whence we were digged is animalism. We 
 are here to build the holy city, new Jerusalem, and 
 our hope for the future lies in our knowledge of our 
 past. Ponder what this means, and see whether 
 there is not something in it that will put heart into 
 you this very day and enable you to grasp your 
 sword and trowel with a new courage and a stronger 
 faith. Who and what are you? The materialist 
 would settle the matter by saying that you are of 
 the earth earthy ; you belong to the dust, and unto 
 the dust you must return ; that was the beginning 
 and that will be the end. Your ancestors were 
 monstrous reptiles sporting in primeval slime — 
 your origin, you see, is not exalted. Your forbears 
 may have come over with the Conqueror, but they 
 were also first cousins to the earth-worm and the 
 crocodile ; this reflection ought to humble you when 
 you are inclined to think too much of yourself. 
 When you feel the tide of animal passion surging 
 through your veins, be aware that it is the same 
 force which controls the energies of the ape, the 
 tiger, and the swine. You and they have not only 
 a common heritage but a common instinct; their 
 6 
 
82 THE ROCK AND THE PIT 
 
 blind impulses are much the same as yours, and 
 you can no more escape their dominance than they. 
 The man who talks like that is not necessarily a 
 pessimist, nor is he wide of the truth, but he sees 
 no farther than the hole of the pit whence he was 
 digged ; he has never lifted his gaze to the rock 
 whence he was hewn. And yet even the facts of 
 human nature and the lessons of human history 
 ought to lead him to do so. After all, the worm 
 is not the man ; there is something else to be taken 
 into account, and it is that something else which 
 marks him a son of God. Human history is a sad 
 chapter of crime and folly, but its darkest page has 
 not been without some gleams of a divine splen- 
 dour which tells of a higher origin than the 
 primeval slime. 
 
 Trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 From God who is our home. 
 
 '* Oh, but," some one may remonstrate, '* this is 
 mere gratuitous assumption. How do you know 
 that of which you speak? Why repudiate your 
 humble beginnings, seeing that you cannot demon- 
 strate the actuality of any other kind of beginning ? 
 You must not try any longer to foist upon an in- 
 credulous world some fairy story about a Garden 
 of Eden and an immaculate humanity, facts are 
 facts, however unpalatable, and we have no other 
 facts to go upon than those which science has 
 slowly and laboriously extracted from Nature's 
 records of the past." Well, I know that; but I 
 know something else too, and so do you. I do not 
 deny the hole of the pit, but I believe in the rock 
 
THE ROCK AND THE PIT 83 
 
 whence we were hewn before ever we made acquaint- 
 ance with the pit. Love, truth, the splendour of 
 moral achievement, the glory of self-sacrifice, the 
 sweetness of communion with that which is too 
 high to find adequate expression in this world, the 
 joy and thrill of seeing beyond material good to 
 that ineffable somewhat at whose call the spiritual 
 man will surrender all the desires of the flesh and 
 the satisfactions of earthly existence — these are 
 realities as irrefutable as any with which science 
 has ever been called upon to deal ; and, what is 
 more, you believe it. You reverence these more 
 than you do aught that is merely material, and in 
 so doing you share with all w^hose opinion is worth 
 taking into account. The world knows what is 
 truly great if once it has been made to see it. 
 Whence came these things? Does the hole of the 
 pit account for them ? No, indeed; they must have 
 gone into it before they could be dug out of it. 
 No one denies that they did come out of it, but 
 how did they get there? They are the tokens of 
 your (Jivine lineage. The very fact that you have 
 been lifted out of the horrible pit and the miry 
 clay and made to reach out your hand among the 
 stars is evidence of an origin that preceded the pit 
 and speaks of a world in which your angel doth 
 always behold the face of the Father. 
 
 We are children of splendour and flame, 
 
 Of shuddering also and tears ; 
 Magnificent, out of the dust we came, 
 
 And abject from the spheres. 
 
 No, the hole of the pit does not account for you, 
 and yet it is helpful to look back to it and down 
 
84 THE ROCK AND THE PIT 
 
 into its fearsome depths. We have to ask our- 
 selves what it was that could bring forth from that 
 dark and mysterious womb the humanity of to-day. 
 What infinite pain and struggle it has cost ! And 
 it is not over yet. " The whole creation groaneth 
 and travaileth in pain together until now, waiting 
 for the manifestation of the sons of God." But 
 the hand that has accomplished so much must be 
 able to work greater wonders still. Yes, indeed 
 it is worth while to look to the hole of the pit 
 whence we were digged, for to do so inspires us 
 with hope and courage for the height that is yet 
 to be climbed. To have come as far as we have is 
 assurance that we can go farther; our present halt- 
 ing place is only a stage on the road to a greater 
 glory. But from where we now stand we are able 
 to see something of the meaning and the purpose 
 of it all, and to feel ourselves akin to that eternal 
 mind which conceived it and will carry it to fruition. 
 You cannot see a snow-clad peak from the bottom 
 of a coal mine. You need to get out, and, better 
 still, ascend some further eminence before the full 
 strength and splendour burst upon your vision. 
 That is what we are doing now. God has brought 
 us up out of the pit; we are climbing the hill of the 
 Lord; in the end we shall stand in His holy place 
 and know as we are known. But we know enough 
 even now to be able to recognise the rock whence 
 we were hewn. Christ has shown us God in show- 
 ing us the greatness of man. We see that it was 
 well that there ever had to be a descent of the 
 divine essence into the pit and the clay, that the 
 grandeur of the home-coming of the sons of light 
 
THE ROCK AND THE PIT 85 
 
 might be ours. I think in the great day of revela- 
 tion we shall all say so. I would rather have been 
 God's warrior on the stricken field than enjoy the 
 eternal delights of a heaven that had never known 
 either struggle or pain. We can only understand 
 the rock whence we were hewn by realising the hole 
 of the pit whence we were digged. 
 
 There are a thousand different ways in which this 
 magnificent truth can help us in our daily life. Let 
 me tell you one. At this moment I may be address- 
 ing some man or woman into whose life tragedy 
 has come because the power of the pit is still great. 
 Its effects may be felt in your own character or in 
 that of some one else ; but in either case they have 
 resulted in much shame and sorrow. Do we not 
 all know of cases in which some man of unquestion- 
 able goodness and uprightness is suddenly over- 
 thrown by some temptation to which he is exposed 
 in an hour of weakness ? The strangest inconsist- 
 encies and even contradictions are brought to light 
 in this way. The same man may behave like a 
 hero at one time and a felon at another. The man 
 whom you thought to be strong turns out to be 
 pitiably weak. Some one who was to you an in- 
 spiration and an example in earlier days unaccount- 
 ably deteriorates as years go on and finally becomes 
 a moral wreck. It is a curious and puzzling thing 
 that magnanimity and meanness, frankness and 
 cunning, sweetness and spite, truth and falsehood, 
 generosity and covetousness, lovableness and un- 
 scrupulous selfishness, can co-exist in the same 
 nature. We sometimes ask ourselves in astonish- 
 ment. Can this be the same man ? Is he a hypo- 
 
86 THE ROCK AND THE PIT 
 
 crite ? Which is the true man, for surely both can- 
 not be true ? Probably we are quite wrong in our 
 judgments. Human nature is a strange medley, and, 
 impossible though it may seem, the god and the 
 brute are often not very far apart within the same 
 soul. Is there any man in this congregation at 
 this moment who is not conscious of tendencies 
 and impulses within himself which would work his 
 moral overthrow if they were not kept well in 
 hand? The volcano is always there, even though 
 the fire may never be Seen. Are we not only too 
 familiar with the sad and intractable cases in which 
 an individual seems foredoomed to go wrong? 
 Within the very same family circle one lad will be 
 his parents' joy and pride, while another exhibits 
 from childhood vicious characteristics which lead 
 to disgrace and ruin in maturer life. We may sum 
 up the matter by saying that even the best of men 
 are conscious of the presence of the power of the 
 pit, the qualities which we share with the brute 
 creation. Sometimes these qualities obtain the 
 mastery all in a moment, to the surprise of the 
 w^orld ; in others they seem dominant from the first, 
 and inevitably produce the moral degenerate. 
 What is the gospel for this problem, if there be a 
 gospel ? 
 
 Well, here it is. As I said on Thursday morn- 
 ing, the very same force which, misdirected, will 
 drive a man to the devil will raise him to the 
 stature of a god. You sometimes hear of the 
 sudden conversion of a man of evil life and the 
 thoroughness of the change. The truth is that the 
 old force receives a new direction and is governed 
 
THE ROCK AND THE PIT 87 
 
 by a new spirit. Graft an apple-tree on a thorn- 
 bush, and the old root will supply the sap and 
 savour of the new fruit. The same is true of human 
 nature. There is no quality or tendency of our 
 being which is radically and intrinsically bad; it 
 is good or bad only in its manifestations. If you 
 want to save a man get him to see this. Get him to 
 understand that all the force he possesses is divine. 
 Bid him look to the rock whence he was hewn as 
 well as to the hole of the pit to which he seems to 
 belong. Make him know that although the pit has 
 still some power to hold him, the power that lifts is 
 greater still. Do not permit him to sit down in 
 despair amid the ruins and ashes of his worthier 
 hopes and achievements. Cry to him to shake 
 himself from the dust and put on his beautiful 
 garments. Beneath all moral weakness is a divine 
 strength to be called upon. Within every soul is 
 a latent manhood which is the very life of God, a 
 rock of spiritual strength whose foundations are 
 eternal. Paul says that that rock was with Israel 
 in the wilderness, and he calls it Christ — the God 
 in man. You are not of the pit, but the holy 
 mountain. You may have been in the pit, but 
 nothing can hold you there if once you realise 
 whence you came and what you are. And if you 
 are out of the pit, what folly to believe that your 
 future is only to be one of weeping and discourage- 
 ment amid the waste places of Jerusalem ! " Build 
 ye the walls of Zion," sword in one hand and 
 trowel in the other ! Believe in the highest, not 
 only as above but as within, and it shall be to you 
 a rock of salvation. When you look into the pit, 
 
88 THE ROCK AND THE PIT 
 
 let it be to praise God that you have had something 
 
 to strive for and something to win, and never suffer 
 
 yourself to doubt for a moment that the victory 
 
 of yesterday assures the triumph of to-morrow. A 
 
 Httle while ago Mr. A. G. Hales, the famous war 
 
 correspondent and novelist, sent me a few lines 
 
 written by him (apropos of one of my sermons, I 
 
 think) on the point we are now discussing. I do 
 
 not know that they were ever published, but I 
 
 dare say the author will not mind my quoting one 
 
 stanza from them, as it is an admirable Summing 
 
 up of what I have been trying to enforce this 
 
 morning : 
 
 By the fireside sadly dreaming, tired of work and tired of 
 
 scheming : 
 Life's a coloured bubble filled with air. 
 
 Vain is all the bitter fighting, vain the cruel savage smiting, 
 Vain the triumph and despair. 
 
 Every cradle calls this query till the whirling brain grows 
 
 weary, 
 What was man before his mortal birth? 
 Equal here stand clown and teacher, saint and sage and 
 
 gutter preacher ; 
 Mystery fills the earth. 
 
 Stand them gently side by side, like gaunt grey bridegroom 
 
 by fair young bride, 
 Crowing cradle and silent shell. 
 Then bow the knee in silent trust that human dust is 07ily 
 
 dust — 
 Believing all is well. 
 
 Yes, all is well, not in spite of the pit and the clay, 
 but because of them. Through these we ascend to 
 that from whence we came, having achieved what 
 we are — not dust, but God. 
 
VII 
 THE SOCIAL JUDGMENT 
 
 ^^ Prepare to 7neet thy God, Israel."— Kuo^ iv. 12. 
 
 A FEW days ago I was preaching in a mining 
 centre in the Rhondda Valley in South Wales, a 
 place where the inhabitants take their religion very 
 seriously. As I left the railway station L found a 
 number of people in the streets carrying banners 
 inscribed with texts, and was informed that these 
 were a protest against my presence. When I 
 reached the hall where the service was to be held a 
 zealous lady lowered her banner so that the words 
 upon it should come immediately before my eyes. 
 I could not have avoided reading them even if I 
 had wished to do so. There in large white letters 
 upon a red ground was the minatory exhortation, 
 " Prepare to meet thy God." I suppose the action 
 was intended for my benefit, and the good soul 
 who performed it evidently thought I stood in need 
 of it. But it set me thinking. I recollected that 
 among the tons of religious literature — principally 
 tracts and sermons — which are showered upon me 
 by every post, this text always occupies a promi- 
 nent place. It seems to be a favourite. Evidently 
 the senders are firmly possessed by the conviction 
 that I am a very wicked person, living in open 
 
 89 
 
90 THE SOCIAL JUDGMENT 
 
 defiance of the Almighty, and that things are 
 going to be made unpleasant for me by and by 
 unless I mend my ways. Occasionally in the epistles 
 which accompany the text one detects an element 
 of satisfaction at the prospect. Perhaps it would 
 be too much to say that some of the senders appear 
 to be rejoicing at what they suppose is about to 
 overtake me. It does not seem to enter their heads 
 that this biblical sentence may mean something 
 rather different from the post mortem punishment 
 of an unfaithful preacher. I may be as bad as these 
 well-meaning people imagine me to be, or even 
 worse, but my charter of condemnation is not con- 
 tained in this passage. Here is no suggestion con- 
 cerning a future hell, or a scheme of salvation, or 
 the importance of availing oneself of the merits of 
 a Redeemer, or anything of that kind; in fact, in 
 some respects it is much more interesting and much 
 nearer to what we know of human life. In its bear- 
 ing it is not individualistic at all, but national. It 
 has no reference to the world to come, but solely 
 to this one. It assumes a state of things with 
 which civilisation is only too familiar at the present 
 day, and the warning it presents is just as applic- 
 able to us as to the people who first heard it. 
 
 Will you allow me to show you, as briefly as I 
 can, how this is ? It is my custom to devote more 
 time to the exegesis of a text than most preachers 
 do, but I hope not unprofitably. If you want to 
 understand the present, study the past. It is 
 always helpful to know, as far as it can be ascer- 
 tained, exactly what the author of any biblical say- 
 ing meant by it, and what people were saying and 
 
THE SOCIAL JUDGMENT 91 
 
 thinking about it at the time. It will often be 
 found that the utterance is greater in its implica- 
 tions than the author Himself knew, but it is not 
 right to read into it something essentially different 
 from that which was in his mind. 
 
 Now, who was this man Amos, and what made 
 him use this language? Here is a bit of interest- 
 ing human history for you. This Amos was a 
 herdsman and fruit-grower who took to preaching 
 about the middle of the eighth century B.C. At 
 this time the land of Israel had become two king- 
 doms. Amos probably belonged to the south, but 
 his preaching was mostly concerned with the north, 
 mainly because it was the richer and more powerful 
 of the two. This was a period of unexampled 
 material prosperity for the northern kingdom of 
 Israel. It was not a country of great natural 
 resources in itself, but it lay on the main trading 
 route between Assyria, on the one hand, and Egypt 
 on the other. It was therefore rapidly growing 
 wealthy, and had produced an order of great 
 merchant princes. The descendants of Abraham 
 have always been remarkable for their money- 
 making abilities, and perhaps the geographical 
 situation of their country may have had something 
 to do with fostering their tendencies in this respect. 
 The immediate result of this increase of prosperous 
 intercourse with foreign nations was an outburst 
 of luxury and vice. If you want to read an elo- 
 quent description of this refer to the first Isaiah, 
 the great prophet and statesman who succeeded 
 Amos. It appears that, as usual, the concentra- 
 tion of great wealth in a few hands tended towards 
 
92 THE SOCIAL JUDGMENT 
 
 the oppression of the many. Slavery grew rapidly; 
 there were crowds of foreign slaves in the palaces 
 of the nobles, while the freemen of Israel were 
 being reduced to the position of serfs on the land 
 they had formerly owned. These palaces must have 
 been enormous structures replete with everything 
 that could minister to the senses. They were often 
 built of marble and inlaid with ivory and gold. 
 The women of the wealthier classes seem to have 
 become demoralised and heartless, as we are told 
 some of their modern representatives are to-day. 
 Religion was punctiliously attended to, but was 
 almost completely divorced from morality, as has 
 often been the case. The priests accommodated 
 themselves to the manners of the time, and taught 
 that Jehovah was the God of Israel only, and that 
 the national prosperity was a token of His favour. 
 They said that He was to be served by ritual and 
 sacrifice, which meant, of course, that the priestly 
 order was to be maintained in comfort and con- 
 sideration. It was just like what took place in the 
 history of Catholic Christianity many centuries 
 later, when rascally kings and nobles gave large 
 endowments to the Church in order to keep, as 
 they supposed, in favour with God. 
 
 This, then, was the situation in ancient Israel at 
 the time when my text was written. The service 
 of God had become idolatry. The worshippers 
 believed that God was their God much in the same 
 way as though He were their feudal lord. It was 
 His business to look after them and to secure to 
 them material enjoyment and victory over their 
 enemies; they, on their part, had to endow His 
 
THE SOCIAL JUDGMENT 93 
 
 sanctuaries and be careful to observe His feasts 
 and sacrifices. This was what brought Amos into 
 the open. He had received no training either as 
 prophet or priest, but as no one else would speak 
 he felt he must. There is one vivid interpolation in 
 the seventh chapter which "gives his own account 
 of himself and how he fell foul of the priesthood. 
 ''Then Amaziah, the priest of Beth-el, sent to 
 Jeroboam, king of Israel, saying, Amos hath con- 
 spired against thee in the midst of the house of 
 Israel ; the land is not able to bear all his words. . . . 
 Then answered Amos, and said to Amaziah, I was 
 no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son; but I 
 was an herdman, and a gatherer of sycamore fruit. 
 And the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and 
 the Lord said unto me, Go, prophesy unto My 
 people Israel." The burden of his message was 
 sure to be unpopular, for it was a prophecy of 
 doom and destruction. He declared that no nation 
 could stand which had trampled on justice and 
 right as this nation was doing. It would be over- 
 thrown and blotted out. Listen to the following 
 fragment of his preaching and you will catch the 
 spirit of the whole. " And I will smite the winter 
 house with the summer house; and the houses of 
 ivory shall perish, and the great houses shall have 
 an end, saith the Lord. Hear this word, ye kine 
 of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria, 
 which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, 
 which say to their masters, Bring, and let us drink. 
 (Amos here anticipates Father Bernard Vaughan. 
 These kine of Bashan, as he contemptuously terms 
 them, were the loose and dissolute women of the 
 
94 THE SOCIAL JUDGMENT 
 
 Court and wealthier classes.) ... I hate, I despise 
 your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn 
 assemblies. Though ye offer Me burnt offerings 
 and your meat offerings, I will not accept them : 
 neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat 
 beasts. Take thou away from Me the noise of thy 
 songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. 
 But let judgment run down as waters, and right- 
 eousness as a mighty stream. . . . Hear this, O ye 
 that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor 
 of the land to fail. Saying, When will the new 
 moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the 
 sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the 
 ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying 
 the balances by deceit? That we may buy the 
 poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; 
 yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat? The Lord 
 hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, Surely I will 
 never forget any of their works. Shall not the 
 land tremble for this, and every one mourn that 
 dwelleth therein ? and it shall rise up wholly as a 
 flood; and it shall be cast out and drowned, as by 
 the flood of Egypt." You see that these ancient 
 financiers had already learned the art of cornering 
 the people's food supply. The privileged orders 
 were indignant at this kind of language, but it all 
 came true. Within thirty years from the time 
 when this prophecy was uttered this northern king- 
 dom of Israel fell before the sword of Assyria and 
 has never been restored. 
 
 You can see now the real meaning of my text. It 
 was a declaration of belief in the moral government 
 of the universe and the workins: of God in human 
 
THE SOCIAL JUDGMENT 95 
 
 history. How often the same kind of thing has 
 happened ! Over and over again in the course of 
 human experience reHgion and morality have been 
 divorced from each other, or rather institutional 
 religion has been thrown on the side of a conven- 
 tional morality which ignored or contradicted the 
 deeper sanctions of right and wrong. It is only 
 too fatally easy for an institution to become an end 
 in itself and to adopt a false standard of sanctity. 
 Men are always prepared to call that good which is 
 to their material advantage and makes less demand 
 upon them than some other course of action would 
 involve. How seldom we ever pause to ask our- 
 selves why a thing should be called sacred or pro- 
 fane, good or evil, right or wrong ! It is note- 
 worthy that what the privileged religious orders 
 were doing in the time of Amos they have always 
 been doing more or less. Once get a thing called 
 venerable, and recognised as such, and before long 
 you have all the forces of mammon sheltering be- 
 hind it. Not that its advocates and representatives 
 are conscious hypocrites, but when the stability of 
 the institution becomes identical with their own 
 self-interest it is but natural that they should defend 
 the latter by safeguarding the former. Privilege 
 has always been doing this, and ever and anon the 
 Spirit of God has had to destroy the sham to 
 recover the reality. Thus in the thirteenth century 
 of the Christian era the long struggle of the Empire 
 and the Papacy ended in the triumph of the latter. 
 The Pope sat on the throne of St. Peter wearing 
 his triple diadem and holding aloft the sceptre of 
 universal dominion, saying; " I am Csesar; I am 
 
96 THE SOCIAL JUDGMENT 
 
 emperor." This was done in the name of Christ 
 and with the very loftiest pretensions to sanctity, 
 and yet it was the very opposite of the Spirit of 
 Christ. The arrogance and cupidity of the priestly 
 order were conjoined to a corruption of manners 
 which has never been excelled; and yet — such is 
 the power of names — every simple soul in Christen- 
 dom believed that, although individual Popes 
 might be wicked, the system itself was somehow 
 sacred and the expression of the will of God. It 
 was only here and there that some clear-sighted 
 man dared to question this assumption, but when- 
 ever he did so it was at the peril of his life. No 
 more appalling chapter of human Suffering has ever 
 been written than that of the tortures inflicted upon 
 the Alpine peasants who tried to read a higher 
 meaning into the word "good" than that which 
 was implied in the practice of the Catholic Church 
 as represented by her official heads. Note how rare 
 it is that a reformer ever comes forth from the ranks 
 of privilege in Church or State. Your Amos may 
 come from the plough ; it is but seldom that he 
 comes from a conventional school of the prophets. 
 There is nothing which tends to blunt the moral 
 perceptions so much as to have been trained to 
 regard a set of ideas as good because they are 
 called good, and to believe that an institution is 
 sacred because it has high-sounding and long- 
 standing claims to be considered such. If, in 
 addition, your hopes of comfort and advancement 
 are bound up with the accepted standard, you are 
 not likely to look with favour upon what some 
 rustic preacher has to say about the unreality of it 
 
THE SOCIAL JUDGMENT 97 
 
 all. It sounds so presumptuous on the part of the 
 herdsman to question the divineness of the estab- 
 lished order. And yet whenever Amos speaks, it 
 were well for the world to listen to him rather than 
 to Amaziah or he may be found to be the herald 
 of doom. This sentence which forms my text was 
 not a threat but a warning. Had Israel prepared 
 for tFat new advent of God of which the coming of 
 Amos was but the token she might have been a 
 living nation still. Had the Papacy listened to 
 John Huss, John Wycliffe, and such as they, we 
 might not have been gazing upon a divided 
 Christendom to-day. 
 
 But how is it with us at the present moment? I 
 should be sorry to think that a precise parallel could 
 justly be drawn between the Western civilisation of 
 to-day and that of northern Israel nearly three 
 millenniums ago or that of Catholic Europe in the 
 sixteenth century. But when we look closely at 
 things as they are the same tendencies are observ- 
 able in a large degree. To begin with, we have 
 the same alliance between institutional religion and 
 a false standard of morality. We see privilege 
 claiming the support of religion and religion 
 honouring the claim. Worst of all, we find the 
 representatives of institutional religion apparently 
 unaware of the deepest needs of the time and the 
 urgent call of the Spirit of Christ to meet and 
 satisfy them. Observe how hotly the average man 
 will resent any appeal which makes a drastic 
 demand upon his generosity and self-sacrifice. At 
 once he will invoke religion as a weapon of defence, 
 and tell you that the gospel in which he has been 
 7 
 
98 THE SOCIAL JUDGMENT 
 
 trained is something altogether different from that 
 which you are now proclaiming. Perhaps it is, but 
 his reason for preferring it is that it is probably 
 a good deal easier. 
 
 Let me try by a concrete example to show you 
 a Tittle more clearly what I mean. It is quite likely 
 that in my congregation this morning there is some 
 man of means who has risen from comparatively 
 humble beginnings to wealth and success. I wish 
 to speak directly to that man, as though he and I 
 were alone and face to face. He may be willing 
 to listen to me saying from the pulpit what he 
 would not tolerate for a moment if I were to say it 
 to him in private. 
 
 How did you attain your present position of pro- 
 minence and respectability ? You have done so, 
 I doubt not, by what the world would account fair 
 and honourable means. You have denied yourself 
 indulgence, and laboured early and late, at a time 
 when your fellows were taking life more easily. 
 You would say that every penny you possess you 
 have worked hard for, and that success was slow 
 in coming. Your friends would say you deserve 
 it all because of your industry and integrity. You 
 have never been known to break your word; you 
 are strong and reliable in the ordinary practical 
 affairs of life; you have been staunch and true to 
 those who have trusted and stood by you. In your 
 own way you have tried to do good. Early in life 
 you made a practice of going to church and identi- 
 fying yourself with religious activities as far as 
 your circumstances would permit. As you have 
 got on you have found yourself a person of infiu- 
 
THE SOCIAL JUDGMENT 99 
 
 ence in certain circles. Perhaps you have been 
 what is called a generous giver, with the result that 
 you are looked up to and considered an authority 
 even in matters of doctrine. You have a set of 
 religious opinions which you have never cared to 
 examine too thoroughly, but which suffice to carry 
 you through life. You believe you are what the 
 Church calls a sinner, but your minister must be 
 careful to say so only in the pulpit. You are a 
 sinner in a Pickwickian sense, for, as a matter of 
 fact, you pride yourself on your uprightness and 
 sterling worth. You would feel it to be altogether 
 out of place if at some banquet given in your 
 honour the chairman were to remark that you were 
 a sinner, but that you had a few good qualities as 
 well. Apparently, therefore, you have two stand- 
 ards in reference to your character which you 
 never attempt to reconcile. Being a sinner you 
 think you need salvation, and for this you rely 
 upon the merits of your Redeemer. You are con- 
 vinced that by doing so you will go to heaven when 
 you die. There are a number of other things which 
 you believe about this, but I need not mention 
 them now. Suffice it to say that you feel your 
 religion to be very real. You pray to God and you 
 think you love Jesus; you want all men to be con- 
 verted to Him, and therefore you consider it most 
 important that home and foreign missions should 
 be promoted as a means to this end. You take an 
 interest in public life, and perhaps you go so far as 
 to render valuable service in the encouragement of 
 certain schemes of social reform. You believe in 
 temperance legislation, the better housing of the 
 
100 THE SOCIAL JUDGMENT 
 
 poor, an efficient system of national education, and 
 such like. But you draw the line rigidly, both 
 religiously and socially, at what you call dangerous 
 innovations. You are most indignant with those 
 modern preachers who seem to you to be unsound 
 on the person of Christ, the Atonement, and the 
 sinfulness of sin. You are even more indignant and 
 alarmed at what you call the wild and impracticable 
 proposals of spoliation and confiscation which 
 usually accompany their doctrines and are preached 
 by many people who have no religion at all. These 
 tendencies seem to you so serious that you cannot 
 find terms strong enough wherewith to denounce 
 the perpetrators of the evil. You call them free- 
 thinkers and materialists, false prophets who make 
 the Cross of Christ of non-effect, and so on. You 
 would be glad to see them silenced if it could be 
 done without rousing too much public attention. 
 Probably you are using all the influence at your 
 command to secure that the pulpits of this land 
 shall be filled only with preachers who will pro- 
 claim what you call the grand old gospel. 
 
 Now, will you permit me to come to close 
 quarters with you, my friend? I think you will 
 admit that Ihave not been unfair in my estimate 
 of your character. I not only admit your sincerity, 
 but respect it, and I fully recognise and admire 
 your worth. But I cannot spare you. You stand 
 for the most damnable force in the civilised world 
 to-day, materialism in alliance with religion. It is 
 infinitely worse than materialism, unblushing and 
 avowed, and far more difficult to fight. It is you 
 who are the materialist, not the atheists and free- 
 
THE SOCIAL JUDGMENT loi 
 
 thinkers you denounce. You are calling evil good 
 and good evil. I question all your ideals, and 
 arraign at the bar of God the means by which you 
 have attained your success as well as those by 
 which you are keeping it. Your early desire to 
 get on was not a right desire. Your efforts to rise 
 into a superior social class have all been contempt- 
 ible. You have been trying all the while to do the 
 best you can for yourself, and, although you have 
 a kind heart and are loved at home, you are think- 
 ing so much of yourself to-day that you cannot see 
 with a true moral perspective. Your belief that 
 God has prospered you is a false belief. God never 
 commanded you to get rich; he commanded you 
 to bless mankind. Your heart ought to have been 
 filled with different emotions, and your soul with 
 loftier ideals than those which have governed your 
 career. I question the very root motive of all your 
 industry and perseverance ; you have been playing 
 for your own hand, and therefore, though you 
 would never own it, you have been trying to serve 
 God and mammon at the same time. I question 
 even your integrity. To make a business success 
 you have had to steel your heart sometimes. Your 
 prosperity has meant others' adversity. You have 
 seen men go under as you rose, and, though you 
 did not actually fling them down, you have felt no 
 responsibility for their fall. Your success has 
 meant a long struggle, and there must have been 
 times when you saw that the ethics of that struggle 
 were not those of the Christ in whom you professed 
 to believe. Now comes the hardest part of all. 
 Your belief in that Christ is a lie. You do not 
 
102 THE SOCIAL JUDGMENT 
 
 know what He stood for, and you are dishonouring 
 Him in your ideals every day of your life. Your 
 doctrine of Atonement is a sham. If you really 
 believed in it you could never again be content to 
 occupy your position of privilege and material 
 power while thousands of your fellow-men were 
 lying in poverty and pain. No one ever needed to 
 die in order that God might forgive you and let 
 you into heaven, and no one ever did. But some 
 one had to die — and some are dying now — that the 
 love of God might be revealed by man to man and 
 draw us all together in a spiritual brotherhood. 
 That is the true Atonement — the making one of 
 man with man, and all with God — the everything 
 which tends to keep men apart is the very opposite. 
 You do not believe in the Atonement, for you have 
 hardly begun to realise what it is. Lastly, your 
 thought about sin is radically vicious. There is 
 no sin, my friend, but that of trying to look after 
 yourself at the expense of your brother. And have 
 you not been doing that? Are you not doing it 
 now? Does not your very success in life imply 
 that you are doing it? All your almsgiving and 
 psalm-singing put together will not compensate for 
 the general character and direction of your life in 
 its effect upon mankind. I observe how angry you 
 become when preachers trifle, as you call it, with 
 the grave subject of sin. You are the trifler; you 
 are the hypocrite, though you do not know it. You 
 say you want the simple gospel; here it is. There 
 is no service of God which is not the service of 
 man. I charge you in the name of the Most High 
 to cease from lip-reverence to Jesus Christ until 
 
THE SOCIAL JUDGMENT 103 
 
 you are prepared to follow Him in your life. I 
 bid you ask yourself why you resent anything 
 uttered in the name of Christ which means material 
 loss to you or the order to which you belong. Is 
 it not because you are selfish ? When you protest 
 against an unfamiliar gospel is it because it makes 
 too little demand upon your moral nature or be- 
 cause it makes too much ? 
 
 In thus describing the religious and ethical stand- 
 ards of a very large class in our British community 
 to-day I am well aware of the difficulties surround- 
 ing the subject. We have for so long been accus- 
 tomed to take these standards for granted that it 
 is almost impossible to get people to see that they 
 are false and wrong. The word of the Lord has 
 gone forth against them and they shall perish. The 
 question is whether England will perish along with 
 them, or whether we can save her for a nobler 
 and more glorious day. Listen to the following 
 piece of rugged writing : — 
 
 " Herod stalks abroad this very day, and this very 
 hour in London — the blood of little children upon 
 his hands. Herod lives in great houses. Herod 
 is in Parliament. He is respected and honoured, 
 and his name is in the mouths of men. But he is 
 none the less a murderer. He murders children 
 for money ! He murders the children of men who 
 are in their prime — of men — who he says are too 
 old to work for him because they are forty. He 
 lies, and he knows that he lies, when he says that 
 they are too old. Why, he is over forty himself. 
 He turns them away so that he can sweat more 
 blood out of other men. As an Englishman I speak 
 
104 THE SOCIAL JUDGMENT 
 
 against this hellish and atrocious crime of con- 
 demning men to die of starvation — who have got 
 to their prime — for the sake of making a little gold. 
 My voice may not be heard, but as sure as there 
 is a God in heaven — and mark me there is a God 
 in heaven — England will suffer for allowing this 
 cowardly and mean thing to be done. England 
 will fall through it. England must check these 
 rapacious wolves and blood-suckers of employers 
 or England will be smashed and broken. These 
 employers are traitors to our country. They are 
 selling it as Judas sold Christ, for money." 
 
 This was written by a modern Amos, a man who 
 came from the ranks of the toilers and sufferers of 
 this wealthy country, and from a home where often 
 there was not enough to eat. I bid you note that 
 what he is saying is precisely what the old Israel- 
 itish prophet is saying in my text, and for the 
 same reason. It is God who speaks in words like 
 these, and you must listen. In the colossal struggle 
 which is now upon us for the realisation of the 
 Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven, on 
 which side will you be found? Are you prepared 
 to contend for your own hand against God ? Do 
 you think you can cajole Him by using the lan- 
 guage of piety? You may deceive yourself, but 
 you cannot deceive Him. It is not the shameless 
 profligates, the cynical reprobates, who neither fear 
 God nor regard man, who are the greatest danger 
 to England to-day. It is the people who set up 
 an idol and call it God, who worship themselves in 
 the name of righteousness; and as sure as there is 
 a God in heaven that lie will have to go. Open 
 
THE SOCIAL JUDGMENT 105 
 
 your eyes and you shall see whither the hand of 
 God is pointing. Open your hearts to the love 
 of Christ which passeth knowledge, and ask your- 
 self what it would have you do. "He hath showed 
 thee, O man, what is good, and what doth the 
 Lord require of thee but to deal justly, to love 
 mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" 
 
VIII 
 
 MINISTERING THE BREAD OF LIFE 
 
 " But Jesus said u?tto the7n, They need not depart; 
 give ye them to eatT — Matt. xiv. i6. 
 
 The story of the miraculous feeding of the five 
 thousand by our Lord in the wilderness is remark- 
 able in many ways. For one thing, it happens to 
 be the only miracle recorded in all the four gospels, 
 a fact that is not without significance in helping 
 us to understand the purpose with which it was 
 originally written. The whole subject is extremely 
 interesting, far more so than I shall be able to 
 make clear in a single sermon. To begin with, 
 however, let us put ourselves in possession of the 
 recorded facts, and then make our deductions. 
 According to all the Evangelists the scene of the 
 miracle was a desert place; there was a multitude 
 of five thousand men ; Matthew says there were 
 some women and children also. The disciples of 
 Jesus were about to send these people away, but 
 their Master prevented them from doing so, say- 
 ing : "They need not depart; give ye them to 
 eat." They reply that all the food they possess is 
 but five loaves and two fishes. Jesus commands 
 the disciples to make the multitude sit down ; takes 
 the food in His hand; looks up to heaven; blesses 
 
 io6 
 
MINISTERING THE BREAD OF LIFE 107 
 
 the supply, and distributes it to the twelve who 
 carry it to the waiting host. But as they share it 
 it grows, until the hunger of all is abundantly 
 satisfied. At the end of the feast Jesus bids them 
 gather up the fragments, and when they do so it 
 is found that there are no less than twelve baskets 
 full. 
 
 Let me put a straight question to all the level- 
 headed people in this congregation. Do you really 
 believe this story in the literal sense? I have no 
 doubt there are a few among you who think they 
 do, but these few represent the very class which 
 would most sturdily refuse to believe any such 
 thing if it were told, say, of the Bishop of London 
 in Soho yesterday. That very quality of mind 
 w^hich bids you accept a venerable tradition without 
 question is the quality of mind which would reject 
 it without question if it belonged to your own day 
 and generation. It is your so-called practical man 
 who will believe any mortal thing, no matter how 
 improbable, so long as it is in the Bible; but would 
 never dream of believing anything out of the com- 
 mon in every-day life unless it were supported by 
 incontrovertible evidence. His credulity in the one 
 case and scepticism in the other are both due to a 
 lack of imagination. Permit me to say, then, 
 before going any further, that if you accept this 
 st6ry as literal four-footed fact you will land your- 
 self in an impossible position ; and not only so, 
 but you will miss the very point for which it was 
 ever told at all. The men who wrote this story 
 were Orientals. Neither they nor their immediate 
 circle of readers were in the least deceived by their 
 
io8 MINISTERING THE BREAD OF LIFE 
 
 use of language. They used this great story — for 
 it is a great story — as a parable to illustrate the 
 spiritual value of Jesus to the world. They prac- 
 tically say so — if you care to follow the evidence 
 closely. 
 
 There are many reasons why we ought not to 
 take such a story literally, but I have no time to 
 deal with them this morning. I will content my- 
 self with pointing out only two things which are 
 sufficient to show that the writers never meant us 
 to take it literally. The first is the fact that the 
 same kind of miracle is recorded twice in Matthew 
 and Mark. In the former case five thousand people 
 were fed and in the latter four. Five loaves sufficed 
 in the first instance and seven in the second. In 
 Matthew*s gospel these two miracles, so strikingly 
 alike, are recorded in successive chapters — the four- 
 teenth and fifteenth respectively. It may be that 
 they are both early versions of the same legend, 
 but that does not dispose of the difficulty I am 
 going to state, which is this : The disciples ex- 
 pressed just the same kind of surprise on the second 
 occasion as on the first — " Whence should we have 
 so much bread in the wilderness, as to fill so great 
 a multitude?" If they had already seen five thou- 
 sand fed with five loaves, why should they be in- 
 credulous as to the possibility of feeding four thou- 
 sand with seven ? But a more convincing piece of 
 evidence is given in the sixteenth chapter of the 
 same gospel — that is, the chapter immediately 
 following the double record of this stupendous 
 miracle. We are told that immediately after the 
 feeding of the four thousand Jesus took ship to the 
 
MINISTERING THE BREAD OF LIFE 109 
 
 other side of the lake, and that the disciples forgot 
 to take bread with them. When they arrived at 
 Magdala the Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus 
 demanding a sign from heaven as the credential 
 of His authority to teach. Jesus refused to give 
 any sign other than the self-evidencing nature of 
 the teaching itself, and rebuked them for their 
 materialism, affirming at the same time that the 
 word of truth needed no miracle to commend it. 
 When He had said this He turned to His disciples 
 and added : " Take heed and beware of the leaven 
 of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees." The dis- 
 ciples at once jumped to the conclusion that this 
 remark was made because they had brought no 
 bread with them, and He was unwilling that they 
 should have to beg food from His adversaries. 
 Permit me to quote in full the striking passage 
 which now follows : — 
 
 " And Jesus, perceiving it, said, O ye of little 
 faith, why reason ye among yourselves because ye 
 have no bread? Do ye not yet perceive, neither 
 remember, the five loaves of the five thousand, and 
 how many baskets ye took up ? Neither the seven 
 loaves of the four thousand, and how many baskets 
 ye took up ? How is it that ye do not perceive that 
 I spake not to you concerning bread ? But beware 
 of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Then 
 understood they how that He bade them not beware 
 of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the 
 Pharisees and Sadducees." 
 
 Now observe the following points in regard to 
 this exceedingly interesting and life-like incident. 
 First, if Jesus had just been engaged in feeding 
 
no MINISTERING THE BREAD OF LIFE 
 
 thousands of people in a miraculous manner, what 
 need was there to ask Him for a sign from heaven ? 
 Surely, no more convincing sign could have been 
 given if miracles were required. If I were to under- 
 take to feed five thousand of the unemployed, 
 gratuitously and miraculously, in Trafalgar Square 
 to-morrow morning, it would make me the most 
 famous and popular person in the three kingdoms. 
 If Messrs. Maskelyne and Cook were to challenge 
 me to perform some other kind of miracle as a sign 
 that I really possessed supernatural power, the 
 challenge would seem ridiculous. The papers 
 would say : " He fed five thousand people free of 
 charge, and with no visible means of doing so. 
 What other kind of miracle can you possibly 
 want?" Secondly, why were the disciples con- 
 cerned at having taken no bread ? Surely, if they 
 had just seen thousands of people fed in such a 
 stupendous manner, they would not have been 
 apprehensive that a mere dozen would have to go 
 hungry, or that it would be necessary to carry a 
 supply of food about with them ? Thirdly, and 
 most convincing of all, the whole point of what 
 Jesus has to say about the twelve and the seven 
 baskets full of fragments, is that He was speaking 
 in a spiritual, not a material sense. His question 
 to them : " Do ye not yet understand ?" might with 
 equal propriety be put to us. The feeding of the 
 multitude was not the feeding of the body, but the 
 soul. The whole story is symbolical. It was the 
 bread from heaven, the bread of life, which Jesus 
 distributed to His disciples, and which they, in 
 turn, were authorised to distribute to those who 
 
MINISTERING THE BREAD OF LIFE iii 
 
 were hungering and thirsting after righteousness. 
 The striking story behind our text is, therefore, a 
 picture of what has actually been taking place in 
 the history of the Christian gospel. Jesus came 
 into the world endowed with divine authority and 
 power; took up the meagre spiritual truth which 
 He found already present in the religious experi- 
 ence of those who were humble and sincere; in- 
 creased and multiplied it, and passed it on through 
 appointed messengers to all who were willing and 
 ready to receive it. The indirect effects of that 
 spiritual feeding have been no less striking than 
 the direct. The twelve baskets of fragments repre- 
 sent the overflow into other channels, so to speak, 
 of the glad tidings of great joy which were first 
 preached by twelve simple men in the highways of 
 Galilee and Jerusalem nineteen hundred years ago. 
 It is not only within the Church of Christ that the 
 power of that message has been felt, but in a thou- 
 sand indirect ways in the amelioration of the lot of 
 humankind. Apart from churches altogether, out- 
 side the ordinary usages of religion, the message 
 of Jesus has been at work, and its fragments are 
 being gathered up in everything great and good 
 which is being done for society at large as the result 
 of His life on earth. I am tempted to dwell for a 
 while on the mystic numbers twelve and seven, 
 which used to mean so much to the Jews, but I have 
 not time to do so. All I wish to point out now is 
 that this story of the feedifig of the multitude from 
 small resources was originally intended as a most 
 felicitous and beautiful figure wherewith to describe 
 the spiritual work of Jesus in the world. 
 
112 MINISTERING THE BREAD OF LIFE 
 
 From this examination of the subject-matter of 
 our text I hope you will now agree with me that the 
 only miracle alluded to in all the accounts of the 
 feeding of the five thousand, as well as in the words 
 of our text, w^as the giving of the bread of life in 
 the heart of the seeker after truth. Christ is still 
 feeding the five thousand — and more than the five 
 thousand, a multitude whom no man can number — 
 with this " bread which cometh down from heaven 
 and giveth life unto the world." There is nothing 
 we need so much, and yet we are often tempted to 
 seek sorry substitutes for it. Like the Pharisees, 
 we seek after a sign, or we try to satisfy ourselves 
 wath the leaven of unreality and pretence, but in 
 the end we shall have to know that apart from the 
 bread of life there is nothing upon which to feed 
 our poor starved souls. Moreover, it is a posses- 
 sion which increases by sharing ; it belongs to the 
 pure in heart, the brave, and faithful, and true, in 
 the things of God. The humblest know it best, if 
 so be that their humility implies a confident reliance 
 upon the good-will of the eternal Father. For 
 heights or depths, for weal or woe, for joy or pain, 
 for the hour of rest or the season of toil, there is 
 no lasting sustenance other than that spiritual food 
 which in the hands of Jesus became the greatest 
 and most satisfying force that the world has ever 
 known. 
 
 You all know something of what it is, although 
 perhaps you may think you do not. It is not a 
 doctrine, nor a form of words, nor a sacramental 
 system, nor anything other than what any true 
 man may prove and experience for himself. Do 
 
MINISTERING THE BREAD OF LIFE 113 
 
 not tell me you do not know it. You do; we all 
 do; everybody does, good and bad alike. Pick 
 up a religious newspaper, and you will find that on 
 every page this something is referred to and called 
 God. Pick up a so-called secular journal, and you 
 will find it no less plainly referred to, but it may 
 have any one of a hundred names. Go to the 
 theatre and you will find it on the stage. Visit the 
 Legislature, and you will hear the orators on both 
 sides of the House appealing to it. Mingle with 
 a crowd, or enter any public meeting, and you will 
 soon become conscious that, in the thoughts and 
 sentiments which are finding expression, there is 
 always a unity of objective; all the effort is directed 
 towards something which has not yet been reached 
 and yet is nearer than anything else — that some- 
 thing which is as immediately the cause of all the 
 fructifying activity of the modern world as the law 
 of gravitation is the cause of the flow of rivers and 
 the rise of verdure all over the habitable globe. I 
 will tell you in one sentence what it is; it is that 
 in you which is also the soul of the universe. 
 That is the bread of life. That was what men saw 
 so plainly in Jesus nearly two thousand years ago. 
 That is the basal fact of all experience. If men are 
 not living true to that, they will sooner or later 
 have to find out their blunder; if they are, they 
 need nothing more. 
 
 Let us go forth from this place this morning 
 with this peerless truth dominating our thoughts 
 and affections. Jesus was the bread of life. Yes, 
 and so you ought to be. Let not your reverence 
 for Him blind your vision of this ideal. The world 
 8 
 
114 MINISTERING THE BREAD OF LIFE 
 
 has need of those who are showing us God, not 
 so much by what they say, as by what they are. 
 All the theological libraries that were ever built are 
 not worth one being of the moral stature of Jesus. 
 If I want to know what God is like I do not go to 
 some self-satisfied doctrine-monger, I go to the 
 man whose life is consecrated to great ends and 
 whose selfhood is swallowed up in his passionate 
 devotion to the cause he has chosen to serve. If 
 I cannot see God in that I shall never see Him at 
 all. Somehow, the great heart of the world vibrates 
 and responds to every such manifestation of the 
 truth ; the whole level of the common life is raised 
 and glorified by the impact of one great soul upon 
 it. This is the world's hope. It will never be 
 saved by anything else. All the misery in London 
 to-day is but the cry of soul hunger. " Give ye 
 them to eat." God wants you to be, to your little 
 corner of the vast total, just what Jesus was to the 
 toilers who gathered round Him in the days of 
 long ago. Jesus was poor ; it was but little of this 
 world's goods that He ever had to part with. But 
 He gave Himself, freely, ungrudgingly, untiringly ; 
 and in that man-giving people saw and began to 
 believe in the love of God. There is no other way 
 in which the love of God ever shows itself to a 
 needy world. Try it, and see how it will strengthen 
 and satisfy your own soul. Do not be content to 
 be God's beneficiary; be His messenger. When 
 man in his weakness and evil-doing cries out for 
 God, give him God; He is yours to give. When 
 the weary and heavy-laden seek for divine strength, 
 offer it to them; they will soon find out that they 
 
MINISTERING THE BREAD OF LIFE 115 
 
 have it already from the same source as you. 
 When anguish and heart-break cry out for help 
 and healing, minister both in the name of the Lord. 
 *' Freely ye have received, freely give." Let the 
 sad and lonely see God in you if they cannot see 
 Him anywhere else. Feed them with the bread of 
 life. 
 
 I feel that in dealing with a text like this there 
 is a great danger of talking mere cant. That is 
 always the danger with familiar Scripture sayings, 
 and the more we spiritualise them the more likely 
 are we to miss their practical significance, unless 
 we see that a spiritual principle makes an uncom- 
 promising moral demand. Now here is just where 
 the danger of the spiritual interpretation of this 
 passage comes in. I have show^n you that it does 
 not refer directly to physical but to spiritual food, 
 and some of you may be very glad to hear it. You 
 may be thinking that that makes it rather easier to 
 practise. Well, do not make a mistake about that. 
 The truth is that the spiritual instead of the literal 
 interpretation throws upon you an obligation which 
 cannot be avoided. You might say, and would be 
 quite justified in saying, that it was all very well 
 for Jesus to work a miracle in feeding a hungry 
 multitude, and that under such circumstances you 
 would be quite willing, like His old-time disciples, 
 to take the bread from His hands and pass it on. 
 But this is not what happens. The poor we have 
 always with us, and they are not fed by miracle. 
 We may give of our substance, but w-e do not find 
 it increase by the distribution. How delightful, 
 then, to think that we were never meant to give real 
 
ii6 MINISTERING THE BREAD OF LIFE 
 
 bread, but only spiritual testimony, or loyalty to 
 the faith, or joy in the Holy Ghost, or something 
 equally unsubstantial ! 
 
 Humbug and nonsense ! This is just how the 
 average representative of the Church of Christ has 
 been talking for ages, and a pretty mess he has 
 made of things. If Jesus came amongst us to-day 
 in the flesh, do you think His own church would 
 recognise and receive Him gladly ? No, it would 
 not. It would regard Him as a dangerous revolu- 
 tionary engaged in upsetting the established order 
 both in Church and State. He would see now, as 
 He saw before, that the majority of the professors 
 of religion prefer the easiest way of serving God. 
 Oh, don't be deceived into thinking that because 
 this feeding of the multitude was no physical 
 miracle that you and I are going to be let off more 
 easily. The other day some one sent me a poem,^ 
 the first verse of which ran thus : — 
 
 If Jesus came to London, 
 
 Came to London to-day, 
 He would not go to the West End, 
 
 He would come down our way ; 
 He would talk with the children dancing 
 
 To the organ out in the street, 
 And say He was their big Brother, 
 
 And give them something to eat. 
 
 Well, now, I don't think He would do exactly 
 this. I don't think He would suppose that charity 
 would meet the case, and, if He did. He would not 
 have very much to give away a The East End of 
 London would be too much for Him. He would 
 
 ^ Jesus in Londo7t. By E. Nesbit (A. C. Fifield), 7^. net. 
 
MINISTERING THE BREAD OF LIFE 117 
 
 have to work a fresh miracle every morning if He 
 were to give the poor enough to eat. And, more- 
 over, if He met the case in that way the result 
 would be demoralising at both ends of the social 
 scale. It would be so nice to all of us to see the 
 poor fed without any trouble either on our part or 
 theirs. In a small way this is what we have been 
 doing all along. We have been giving doles out 
 of our abundance, but we shriek with anger and 
 terror whenever we are told that most of what we 
 are giving was not ours to begin with. No, I 
 don't think Jesus would attack things that way. I 
 think He would strike straight and hard at the 
 causes which are making poverty and degradation 
 and keeping rich and poor apart in our modern 
 world : — 
 
 Then He'd say, " What's the good of churches 
 
 When these have nowhere to sleep ; 
 And how can I hear you praying 
 
 When they are cursing so deep ? 
 I gave My blood and My body 
 
 That they might have bread and wine, 
 And you have taken your share and theirs 
 
 Of these good gifts of Mine ! 
 
 " I've got nothing new to tell you ; 
 
 You know what I always said. 
 But you've built their bones into churches 
 
 And stolen their wine and bread. 
 You, with My name on your foreheads, 
 
 Liar, and traitor, and knave. 
 You have lived by the death of your brothers — 
 
 These whom I died to save." 
 
 Yes, this is what Jesus would do. He would 
 expose the hollow sham of giving people good 
 advice while continuing to profit by their material 
 disabilities. He would scorn us for trying to put 
 
ii8 MINISTERING THE BREAD OF LIFE 
 
 sticking plaster on a running sore. He would bid 
 us probe to the bottom of the things which are 
 making want, sorrow, despair, and broken hearts. 
 He would make us ashamed of ourselves that we 
 had never faced the situation more thoroughly and 
 honestly before. He would strike straight at the 
 root of our selfishness, and say: ''Give ye them 
 to eat ! Give, give, give, of your own blood and 
 soul for the righting of the wrong, for the destruc- 
 tion of the evil system by which the thousands 
 suffer that the few may enjoy; give yourself y not 
 merely the cheese-parings of your material sub- 
 stance." And then we should begin to wonder if 
 we ever knew before what the gospel was all about, 
 and every one of us would pray : " God be merciful 
 to me, a sinner." 
 
 A few days ago, as no doubt most of you read in 
 the papers at the time, an artist and his wife were 
 found drowned in the Thames. They had chosen 
 that mode of death because the struggle to live was 
 too much for them. Here were people of refine- 
 ment and culture, brought up in good circum- 
 stances, able to produce beautiful things to gladden 
 the common life, and yet they perished for want of 
 bread. They left a pathetic letter behind them, 
 thanking the two or three people who had been 
 kind to them, but saying they had found the world 
 a hard and cruel place to live in. As they had lived 
 and loved and suffered together, they thought they 
 would die together. I suppose there are some people 
 who would say that these two poor things have gone 
 to hell. Well, if so, it could not be much worse 
 than the hell they have left. Who makes that 
 
MINISTERING THE BREAD OF LIFE 119 
 
 hell ? You and I make it — not willingly, perhaps, 
 but thoughtlessly and selfishly. We let the forces 
 go on unchecked which make such a hell inevit- 
 able for thousands upon thousands of our fellow- 
 creatures. If we had only known in time, there is 
 not a man or woman in this congregation who 
 would not have given his or her last crust to save 
 these victims of our industrial anarchy from the 
 slow torture and pitiful end of which we have been 
 hearing now. But for one of whom you hear in 
 this way there are a thousand of whom you don't 
 and never will. What are we going to do about 
 them? " Give ye them to eat." But we have not 
 the means ; we have barely enough for ourselves ! 
 Just so; and if you gave it all away you would 
 not have solved the problem. But give yourself; 
 give the bread of your own life. Give the spirit of 
 comradeship. Get to know what is wrong, and do 
 not spare yourself in the consecrated endeavour to 
 put it right. You can easily find out what to do if 
 you only want to find out. Why, in this very 
 congregation at this moment there are sad hearts 
 and weary brains caused by this same struggle for 
 the meat which perisheth. Yes, even here. Here 
 are men and women bearing up bravely and sadly 
 against the sordid pressure of conditions which are 
 crushing them down and driving them into the ranks 
 of hopeless failures. I know from experience that 
 when this sermon is over, and I go into my vestry, 
 I shall be met with first one appeal and then another 
 for assistance which I am unable to render. I can- 
 not work a miracle. I sometimes feel as though 
 everybody in England tries me first when help is 
 
I20 MINISTERING THE BREAD OF LIFE 
 
 wanted for this cause or that, or this or yonder 
 suffering individual, and every one that comes 
 seems to think that he or she is the only one who 
 has ever thought of such a thing. But I know 
 quite well what is wanted. What is wanted is that 
 we should rise up together and say : It is not the 
 will of God that men should go under in misery 
 and despair. It is not the will of God that they 
 should continue to struggle against one another, 
 and hamper and hinder one another. It is the will 
 of God that we should get together and help and 
 encourage one another in the march of life. Jesus 
 came to show us how to do it, and the spirit in 
 which He lived His life and died His death is the 
 one hope of the world. This is the reason why 
 men feel Him to be their brother and their Lord. 
 They do not want miracles; they want the bread 
 of life that they may eat and be filled. Oh, children 
 of the living God, rise up in your sovereign 
 strength, and realise the ideal of Jesus, the union 
 of all who love in the service of all who suffer. 
 Strive earnestly to fulfil the prayer of Jesus, ** That 
 they all may be one." 
 
IX 
 
 THE HATE THAT IS LOVE 
 
 " If any jnan cofne to Me, and hate not his father^ and 
 mother^ and wife, a7td children, and brethren, and 
 sisters^ yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My 
 disciple."— lAJYiF. xiv, 26. 
 
 This is one of the hard sayings of Jesus, and 
 if we were now hearing it for the first time, apart 
 from the authority of His great name, we should 
 probably consider it the utterance of a madman. 
 If there be one sentence in the whole Bible which 
 forbids a literal interpretation it is this. On the 
 face of it, it seems to inculcate a fanatical indiffer- 
 ence to the claims of ordinary filial duty and affec- 
 tion, not to speak of the obligations implied in 
 being members of a civilised society. It is because 
 we are used to it that we pass lightly over its diffi- 
 culties, and content ourselves with explanations 
 which are not explanations at all. The truth is, 
 that we have here one of the profoundest and 
 most uncompromising assertions ever made as to 
 the necessity for self-renunciation if we would know 
 the inner meaning of life. It is one of those mag- 
 nificent paradoxes in which the greatest teacher 
 the world has ever known lays bare the secret of 
 His own power over evil. Let us try, following 
 
 121 
 
122 THE HATE THAT IS LOVE 
 
 the guidance of His teaching as a whole, to under- 
 stand what He means by a test so searching and 
 so apparently cruel as this. 
 
 The first thing to notice is that Jesus' own 
 behaviour negatives any possibility of putting a 
 harsh interpretation upon these words. He cer- 
 tainly did not hate any one, least of all His own 
 mother. The Being who took little children up in 
 His arms and blessed them was hardly likely to 
 curse them in the next breath; and the fact that 
 He was able to see the beauty of child life at all 
 is proof positive that he was no inhuman enthusiast 
 carried away by religious zeal to such an extent as 
 to repudiate all earthly ties. The episodes in His 
 ministry when He showed Himself tender and 
 gentle to children and women, in an age when 
 both were treated with scant respect, seem to have 
 greatly impressed His followers. It was not on 
 one occasion only that He showed this side of His 
 character, but on many. His illustrations from 
 child life were frequent. The incident about set- 
 ting a little child in the midst of quarrelling men 
 and telling them that they must become like that 
 child in order to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven 
 was no isolated one; when we compare the gospel 
 narratives the conclusion appears irresistible that 
 He often acted in this way, so often indeed that 
 His disciples ceased to be astonished thereat. 
 " Take heed that ye despise not one of these little 
 ones, for I say unto you that in heaven their angels 
 do always behold the face of My Father." '' If 
 ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts 
 unto your children, how much more shall your 
 
THE HATE THAT IS LOVE 123 
 
 Father which is in heaven give the Holy Spirit 
 unto them that ask Him?" Not much suggestion 
 here about hating your own children — the very 
 opposite; Jesus here declares the sacredness of 
 child life, and illustrates the Fatherhood of God 
 from what His hearers already knew of the father- 
 hood of man. 
 
 On the question of the treatment of women Jesus 
 set the standard for all time. How marvellous was 
 His insight may be judged from the fact that, at 
 a time, and among a people, when female incon- 
 tinence was punished with the most merciless 
 severity, the only recorded words of Jesus in 
 reference to that particular offence are words of 
 compassion. This is really striking, for although 
 nineteen centuries have passed aw^ay. His attitude 
 on this question is still far from being that of the 
 average man ; if Jesus were beginning His ministry 
 now I am afraid we should call Him a trifler with 
 morals; and, even if we wished Him well, we 
 should warn Him to be more careful in His refer- 
 ences to this social evil — the truth being, of course, 
 that on questions of sex morality we are still in the 
 dark ages when man regarded woman as his 
 chattel. Jesus knew, and did not hesitate to say, 
 that there were w^orse offences against the well- 
 being of humanity than that of the poor woman 
 who became the victim of man's cruelty and lust. 
 The story told in the first eleven verses of the 
 eighth of John about the woman taken in adultery 
 is quite likely to be true, although it is a fragment 
 of tradition which does not belong to the gospel 
 wherein it is found. If so, think of all that was 
 
124 THE HATE THAT IS LOVE 
 
 implied in the quietly spoken but scorching words, 
 " Let him that is without sin among you cast the 
 first stone at her" — that particular sin, mind you. 
 If Jesus w^ere here to-day in the flesh and saw a 
 poor, disgraced, heartbroken girl standing alone 
 in a felon's dock to answer to the charge of having 
 taken the life of her illegitimate child, while the 
 man who had ruined her, and whose name was 
 privately known to judge and jury, went scot free, 
 what would He say to us? There is not much 
 doubt about the answer to that question. There 
 was one occasion when He exposed Himself to 
 scorn and false judgment for allowing Himself to 
 be touched by a woman of the streets, and His only 
 word in justification was, " She loved much.** 
 There is more in that short sentence than meets 
 the eye. How much did Jesus know of that poor 
 blighted life? Here was a woman whose destruc- 
 tion, probably, w^as caused by the fact that she 
 loved " not wisely but too wtII." She was outcast 
 now, to all but Jesus. Did His chivalrous defence 
 of her sound like an exhortation to hate? No, 
 indeed; even in the case of one who had wandered 
 very far from the path of purity and truth Jesus 
 had nothing but compassion and even a measure 
 of respect. 
 
 But when we come to womanhood as represented 
 by His own mother the case is clearer. This text 
 of ours springs out of a deep and poignant experi- 
 ence through which Jesus w^as passing at the 
 moment when He uttered it. It has sometimes 
 been stated that Jesus felt deeply the opposition 
 of His own kindred to the work He had under- 
 
THE HATE THAT IS LOVE 125 
 
 taken, and their inability to perceive His fitness 
 for it. Look at the sarcastic counsel, " If Thou 
 do these things show Thyself to the world" — 
 ** For neither did His brethren believe on Him." 
 The time came when they thought He was mad, a 
 disgrace and danger to the family, and went out 
 to bring Him home by force. It was on this occa- 
 sion that Jesus uttered the remarkable saying which 
 is Mark's only equivalent for the one which forms 
 our text, and which certainly sounds like a repudia- 
 tion of His own mother. ''Who is My mother; 
 and who are My brethren?" and turning to His 
 disciples He said, " Behold My mother and My 
 brethren. For whosoever shall do the will of God, 
 the same is My brother, and sister, and mother." 
 Even this is not hating, nor an exhortation to hate, 
 but it sounds very much like a determination to 
 break all bonds of earthly relationship. Think of 
 the poor mother outside the door hearing such 
 words as these ! I have not the slightest doubt 
 that the incident took place, for in varying forms 
 it is recorded in all three of the older gospels. This 
 must have been a trying period for Jesus, a time 
 when He felt that fidelity to His vocation involved 
 utter loneliness and misunderstanding. His family 
 were to be pitied, too, especially His mother. 
 Women are religiously more conservative, perhaps, 
 and more amenable to authority than men. To 
 them a doctrine or an institution is sacred because 
 venerable. To see Jesus tearing away the very 
 foundations of the system of belief and practice 
 in which she had been reared must to her have 
 been painful in the extreme. Her very love for 
 
126 THE HATE THAT IS LOVE 
 
 Him would fill her with alarm at what He was 
 doing. All her life she had been accustomed to 
 respect the synagogue and all it stood for, as well 
 as the authority of scribe and Pharisee. She be- 
 came anxious and frightened when Jesus chal- 
 lenged the whole position, and went and preached 
 to publicans and sinners. He had always been a 
 good son, but who was He to set Himself up 
 against His preceptors? True, they were not all 
 that could be desired ; they were seldom very spirit- 
 ual; sometimes they were cunning and grasping; 
 but then they were powerful ; why attack them ? 
 After all, they had been there for centuries and 
 were of divine institution. This dear child of hers 
 must not fling Himself into antagonism with them. 
 Above all. He must not become disreputable by 
 associating with irreligious people. The neigh- 
 bours were beginning to talk, and to point the 
 finger of scorn at the home out of which He had 
 come. She must save Him ; she must remonstrate ; 
 she knew He was good, but was He wise? We 
 can imagine how the soul of this simple Jewish 
 mother was torn with conflicting emotions at this 
 time, and how Jesus missed her sympathy even 
 when she was trying to give it. We may be quite 
 sure that there was many a sad conversation be- 
 tween the two before He finally had to leave 
 Nazareth and find a refuge among strangers. Tra- 
 dition says Joseph was dead, and probably tradition 
 is right. There could be no home for Jesus in 
 Nazareth after that humiliating hour when His 
 old neighbours tried to take His life. He found 
 more sympathy and help elsewhere. Mark, this 
 
THE HATE THAT IS LOVE 127 
 
 does not mean, and could not mean, that Mary 
 ever consciously failed her Son ; but the indications 
 at this part of the ministry of Jesus all point to the 
 fact that He felt Himself misunderstood and iso- 
 lated from His own kindred. He lived in Caper- 
 naum because He was driven from Nazareth. 
 Hence it was that in bitterness of heart He once 
 replied to the outburst of an enthusiastic would- 
 be follower : *' The foxes have holes, and the birds 
 of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not 
 where to lay His head." This is a very real bit 
 of human history. When we read the gospels 
 now-a-days we are apt to forget that it was pos- 
 sible, or that Jesus had ordinary human feelings. 
 The time came when this temporary estrangement 
 passed, and it says a good deal for the true spiritu- 
 ality of the humble family at Nazareth that, 
 although they were not found among the followers 
 of Jesus when His popularity was greatest, they 
 belonged to the persecuted band of disciples upon 
 whom the Holy Ghost came after His death. His 
 brother James was the head of the church at Jeru- 
 salem, and His mother belonged to that little com- 
 pany too. I am glad the evangelist did not forget 
 to tell us that she was not far away when He hung 
 dying on Calvary. If tradition is to be believed 
 His last thought in that hour of anguish was for 
 His mother. 
 
 You can now see, I hope, something of the 
 immediate circumstances out of which this start- 
 ling saying sprang. Jesus spoke of hating, but 
 He was no hater; He simply used the strongest 
 term he could find to express the greatness of the 
 
128 THE HATE THAT IS LOVE 
 
 sacrifice that was demanded of one who would 
 follow and obey the truth of God without flinching 
 or swerving. Let me illustrate the matter from 
 what most of you know of a Jewish or Roman 
 Catholic family to-day. Let a Jew become a Chris- 
 tian or a Catholic become a Protestant, and it is as 
 though all his roots have been torn up and his soul 
 transplanted to a foreign soil. Is that an easy 
 thing? There are few of us who dare face it; it 
 tears away the whole background of life, and makes 
 the convert feel like a stranger in a strange land. 
 It is not merely a question of change of opinion ; 
 it goes far deeper than that; it is a change of the 
 whole spiritual environment. It requires enor- 
 mous strength of character and depth of conviction 
 to take such a step. If that is so to-day, when 
 Christianity is both venerable and powerful, what 
 must it have been to Jesus when He had none to 
 advise Him but God, and was not going to join a 
 fresh community but to make one. As Dr. 
 Martineau finely says, '* With Him as with us all 
 it was no doubt difficult so long as He was amid 
 the ways of common life to believe in the stirring 
 of a divine call within Him." I am sure that must 
 have been true. I picture the grand, lonely soul 
 of Jesus facing the future as He looked back on the 
 associations He had loved so dearly, and where He 
 had learned the most He knew of God. I can see 
 Him facing the crisis with resolute mien, and yet 
 asking Himself solemnly and sadly whether it was 
 really demanded of Him that He should wound 
 His dearest and break with all that bound Him to 
 the past. But He did it; He did it as bravely and 
 
THE HATE THAT IS LOVE 129 
 
 decidedly as though His mother and His brothers 
 were the very personification of evil instead of the 
 nearest and dearest on earth. This was what He 
 meant when He spoke about hating them and even 
 hating His own life. If they or His own self- 
 interest stood in the way of His divine work they 
 were to be sacrificed as uncompromisingly as 
 though they were the very legions of hell. Do you 
 think that cost Him nothing? Why, this whole 
 section of Scripture springs out of His own living 
 experience. He speaks of sitting down and count- 
 ing the cost; He knew what that meant. He tells 
 us about laying a foundation, and not being able 
 to finish. But He did finish; the being who was 
 willing to give up respect and love, friends and 
 home, in order to carry a spiritual gospel to the 
 lost sheep of the house of Israel, was capable of 
 meeting the last ordeal when it came. Jesus had 
 carried His cross for many a long day before ever 
 He reached Calvary, and this text of ours tells 
 of one of the bitterest and heaviest of them all. 
 
 What was it that led Jesus to this momentous 
 decision ? What was the vital issue between Him 
 and the custodians of the ancient faith in which 
 He Himself had been trained? We ought to try 
 to gain a clear idea of the actual situation in order 
 to appreciate to the full the intensity of the declara- 
 tion which forms our text. I do not hesitate to say 
 therefore that it was precisely the one with which 
 Christendom is confronted to-day. It was the 
 issue between formalism and reality in religion. 
 Jesus saw that the law had become a bondage, 
 although originally it had been the expression of 
 9 
 
130 THE HATE THAT IS LOVE 
 
 living faith; so He deliberately broke through its 
 precepts in order to fulfil its spirit. He did what 
 Luther did fifteen hundred years afterwards. He 
 threw men back upon the immediacy and inward- 
 ness of communion with God. Where others 
 appealed to the authority of the letter He appealed 
 to the authority of conscience. He did not value 
 in the least the externals of worship, but only sim- 
 plicity and purity of heart. It was the age-long 
 duel between the outer and the inner, the formal 
 and the real, the letter and the spirit. Jesus 
 declared His teaching to be self-evident, and so it 
 was, but they killed Him for it. And yet somehow 
 I cannot help thinking that for Him the bitterness 
 of death was passed when He took the bold step 
 of breaking with the traditions of His fathers and 
 the prejudices of His kindred rather than be false 
 to His vision. He saw plainly what the world 
 needed; He knew that God had called Him to say 
 it; and, though it tore His heart asunder, He 
 allowed no personal and private affection to stand 
 in the way of the due fulfilment of His divine com- 
 mission. Well might He say, as He was entitled 
 to say, " He that loveth father or mother more 
 than Me is not worthy of Me, and he that taketh 
 not his cross and followeth after Me cannot be My 
 disciple." He was asking no more from His fol- 
 lowers than He had already done Himself. 
 
 How often in Christian history the same issue 
 has arisen ! There is no harder kind of self-sacri- 
 fice than that which involves to an extent the sac- 
 rifice of others against their own will. It is this 
 which has broken many a strong man down, and 
 
THE HATE THAT IS LOVE 131 
 
 caused many a lover of truth to turn back and walk 
 with it no more. And yet, whenever such a sacri- 
 fice has been made, as Jesus made it, it has been 
 the evidence of a higher love than the most beau- 
 tiful domestic bliss can ever show. It is a love 
 which springs from a nearer vision of the heart of 
 God; it has a flaming grandeur that obscures all 
 meaner delights. You have all read of Bunyan 
 and his poor blind child, and how in his prison cell 
 his keenest torture was the thought of her help- 
 lessness deprived of her natural protector. " Poor 
 child," he wrote, '* how hard it is like to go with 
 thee in this world ! Thou must be beaten, must 
 beg, must suffer cold, and want, and nakedness ; 
 and yet I cannot endure that even the wind should 
 blow upon thee." Yet he remained in prison for 
 Christ's sake, and nothing could induce him to 
 violate his conscience or promise silence where he 
 knew he ought to speak. The little one could not 
 know all that her privation was costing her father. 
 Happily Bunyan had a brave and noble wife, who 
 did understand. But the understanding is not 
 usually so near home. " A man's foes shall be 
 they of his own household," said Jesus, and He 
 spoke out of the bitter depths of His own experi- 
 ence. You all remember the scene in Robert 
 Elsmere, where the clergyman has to face matters 
 out with a wife who is to him as his own soul, but 
 who fails to see the truth that had summoned him 
 with imperious hand. Here are the pathetic words 
 in which he makes his confession: — "You were 
 there beside me, and you could not help me. I 
 dared not tell you about it; I could only struggle 
 
132 THE HATE THAT IS LOVE 
 
 on alone, so terribly alone, sometimes; and now I 
 am beaten, beaten. And I come to ask you to help 
 me in the only thing that remains to me. Help 
 me to be an honest man — to follow conscience — to 
 say and do the truth!" But the poor, stricken 
 wife, as brave and firm in her way as he, could 
 only gasp out that she did not understand. Pres- 
 ently, when she did understand, or thought she 
 understood, she pleaded with him, and then cut 
 herself off from him. She tortured him by using 
 the argument of earthly love, ere, in her own pitiful 
 loyalty to a higher love, she went away and left 
 him to bear his burden alone. The value of such 
 a story as that is to be found in the fact that it 
 presents with dramatic intensity the ever-recurring 
 tragedy of faith. Here were two souls, each 
 glimpsing the highest, and separating from each 
 other in their fidelity to what they severally saw, 
 though only to meet again on the level above all 
 shadows. 
 
 This is one of God's ways of turning love into 
 glory and making truth to be part of ourselves. 
 For no such sacrifice has ever been made that in 
 the long run has meant the loss of anything worth 
 retaining. He who is capable of it draws nearer 
 to what he has renounced, sees it in a new and 
 more sacred light, and clasps it again on the resur- 
 rection morning. 
 
 These reflections now move me to try to speak in 
 the name of this same Christ to the deepest and 
 best in every man and w^oman before me at this 
 moment. You all know well those turning-points 
 in life when w^e have to choose betw^een a higher 
 
THE HATE THAT IS LOVE 133 
 
 and a lower good, a larger and a lesser love. These 
 choices are usually very painful, and it is often 
 difficult to see which way to take. When the final 
 decision has to be made it is sometimes like tear- 
 ing the flesh from one's bones; to do the right 
 thing you have to hurt some one, and this is a 
 very much harder matter than being hurt yourself. 
 Well, here is your rule of action : Jesus bids you 
 see in the light of God what you ought to do, and 
 then do it with the same undaunted front that you 
 would wear if your conflict were wdth the devil 
 himself. Reject the lower good as firmly and un- 
 compromisingly as though it were positive evil ; 
 choose the higher love as strongly as though you 
 hated the lower. However hard it may be to obey 
 God's voice when a moral decision becomes a 
 tragedy, go through with it, and you will find in 
 the end that you have chosen the best even for him 
 or her to whom you have given the most pain. 
 
 This profound spiritual experience may be lived 
 out on a very restricted scale, but may be none the 
 less real for that. Take the case of a man who 
 knows of a wrong committed by his own child, the 
 declaration of which will bring public disgrace both 
 upon that child and his owm good name. What is 
 he to do? There stands the wrong, a black and 
 sinister barrier between him and truth. Some one 
 else is having to bear the consequences of it, per- 
 haps the blame for it. There is but one thing to 
 do : he must sacrifice that child. He must offer 
 him on the altar of the eternal righteousness, even 
 though in so doing he is offering himself a hun- 
 dredfold more. He cannot spare, if he really loves; 
 
134 THE HATE THAT IS LOVE 
 
 the particular must be yielded to the universal, the 
 smaller to the vaster good — and all else be left to 
 God. Or take the fidelity to principle which occa- 
 sionally means in the cruel industrial world of to- 
 day the flinging of wife and children under the 
 Juggernaut car of financial ruin. There are men 
 in this congregation at this moment who are so 
 placed in business that they would expose an 
 infamy to-morrow and walk out of their situation 
 with a clear conscience, but the thing wears a 
 different aspect when it becomes a question of 
 hungry mouths at home. It is all very well to do 
 the heroic thing, but is it well to compel the baby 
 to take the consequences too? You have no fear 
 for yourself ; few men have ; but we are all fettered 
 more or less by the sweet relationships of home and 
 fireside which carry with them such tremendous 
 responsibilities. So you just put up with the foul 
 practice, whatever it is, and go on day after day 
 acting a lie. I know nothing more terrible in the 
 modern world than this moral antinomy. There 
 you sit — straight, clean-living, high-souled men — 
 knowing quite well that every day of your life you 
 are having to jeopardise your self-respect and are 
 tempted to do things which in your heart of hearts 
 you feel to be base and iniquitous. You know 
 better than I know that industrial life is shot 
 through and through with fraud and pretence ; that 
 much of it is sheer dead robbery; that at the best 
 it is cruel and unjust, and bears hardly upon the 
 weak and unfortunate. You have to steel your 
 heart as well as your conscience. You dismiss a 
 man because you cannot afford to keep him, 
 
THE HATE THAT IS LOVE 135 
 
 regardless of the fact that your self-preservation 
 and that of your family means privation and suffer- 
 ing to him and his. Or you step into another 
 man's place when opportunity offers, knowing as 
 you do so that the chances are the man you have 
 supplanted will never regain his footing. It is the 
 fortune of war, and war it is. You do not care to 
 think too much about it, for, if you do, you are 
 weakened for effective action. So you just go on 
 like soldiers on a battlefield, doing your best to 
 destroy your fellow-man against whom you feel no 
 animosity; and then, if you are a victor in the strife, 
 pausing to bind up the wounds of one here and 
 there and carrying them to hospital. Is not the 
 situation intolerable? You know it is. And the 
 worst of it is that it tends to become demoralising. 
 A youngster sets out with high ideals, but soon 
 finds out that if he is to get on he must drop them 
 or only air them now and then. He learns in time 
 when they are in place and when they are not. He 
 is told that business is business, and comes to take 
 it for granted that that means playing for your own 
 hand. Some people can settle down to it comfort- 
 ably and without a qualm, go on fighting all the 
 week, and sing hymns about brotherly love on Sun- 
 day. Others cannot; and that is just where the 
 tragedy of the situation comes in. What can one 
 man do? He may dare everything on his own 
 account, but there are some he loves better than 
 himself. 
 
 Now, my dear fellow-citizens, let me put the 
 issue plainly before you. I feel keenly the diffi- 
 culty, even the seeming cruelty, of speaking from a 
 
136 THE HATE THAT IS LOVE 
 
 sheltered position to those who are under fire; but 
 I am only a tongue; it is not I that speak, it is 
 this Christ of ages long gone by. Had He a right 
 to speak or had He not ? Has He ever asked a man 
 to do anything He did not do Himself? More- 
 over, I wish to make it clear that I would not dare 
 to tell any one of you your duty in detail; I can- 
 not possibly take your place and see with your 
 eyes — no, not if you were to tell me everything you 
 know and feel; I can only declare a principle and 
 leave you to work it out. Sometimes a minister 
 of a Nonconformist church, or an Anglican clergy- 
 man, or even a Roman priest, has written or come 
 to me telling me that he dare not deliver his whole 
 soul for fear of deacons, or bishop, or pope, as the 
 case may be. It is not for himself he fears, but 
 there are those whose lives are intertwined with his 
 in such a way as to complicate his problem and 
 make it infinitely perplexing. He has to think 
 about something else besides the luxury of free 
 speech. What is to be done? Is he to fling all 
 reserve to the winds and speak out, regardless of 
 the pain and loss his decision will inflict upon 
 others ? I invariably answer that I do not know ; 
 that question can only be fought out alone with 
 God, each for himself. But every man knows well 
 enough the difference between compromising with 
 the face to the light and with the back to it. There 
 are men in our pulpits to-day who have forfeited 
 all claim to respect because they say in private 
 what they dare not say in public, and their deceit 
 deserves that name because they seek only to 
 stand well with their particular world. God help 
 
THE HATE THAT IS LOVE 137 
 
 them! "Verily I say unto you they have their 
 reward." 
 
 But how utterly different with you men who are 
 every day being forced to see more and more clearly 
 the irreconcilable antagonism between the ideal of 
 Jesus and the maxims of modern industrialism ! 
 You cannot shut your eyes to it, and no priest can 
 absolve you from the duty of settling your own 
 attitude towards it. You know just what is wrong; 
 you know just what is wanted to put it right. But 
 what can you do alone ? Can a mouse defy a 
 steam hammer? Have you counted the cost of 
 trying to live as though Christ were not only the 
 Master of your life but the life itself ? Have you 
 heard God speak to you as He spoke to Him ? 
 Have you realised what it will mean if you dare to 
 do what your conscience says you ought to do ? It 
 means not only that you may be a failure, as the 
 world counts success, but that your failure will 
 cause suffering and loss to some who are dearer to 
 you than your own soul. Do you know what it is 
 to arouse the anger of those who fail to see what 
 you see or who profit by that which you condemn ? 
 Most of the Pharisees were honest enough in their 
 indignation with Jesus; pretty nearly every success- 
 ful man of business will honestly regard you as a 
 pestilential nuisance if you interfere with things he 
 has taken for granted all through his career. Do 
 you understand that there is no lie so difficult to 
 destroy as the lie which good people have come to 
 regard as truth ? Can you imagine what is in- 
 volved in arousing the sincere hostility of your 
 whole world? Dare you face suspicion, ridicule, 
 
138 THE HATE THAT IS LOVE 
 
 contempt, misrepresentation ? Above all, can you 
 bring yourself to cause pain where your heart feels 
 nothing but respect and love? Can you bring 
 yourself to fight a good man with as much deter- 
 mination and unsparing zeal as though he were a 
 bad man ? Are you prepared to defy the tempta- 
 tion of becoming powerful in order to do good later 
 — that subtle ingenuity which has been the over- 
 throw of so many of God's heroes, and which Jesus 
 rejected at the very outset of His brief earthly 
 ministry ? Do you see where to begin, and are 
 you not afraid ? Has God spoken to you so plainly 
 that your work lies clear before you ? Then go 
 and do it, no matter how much the love you put 
 into it looks like hate. Do not wait to ask what 
 other people are doing or why you should have 
 your little bit of duty thrust upon you : do it, as 
 unto the Lord. 
 
 This is a far truer, nobler gospel than that which 
 bids us owe everything to Jesus without seeking to 
 offer ourselves as He did, for precisely the same 
 end. The discipleship of reverent gratitude to 
 Jesus is a poor thing compared with the disciple- 
 ship that shares His Cross. Most people are pre- 
 pared to be God's beneficiaries, but only a few are 
 willing to be God's pioneers. You know now 
 which of these are really of the fellowship of Jesus. 
 
THE MASTER ON THE SHORE 
 
 " When the morning was Jioiv come Jesus stood on the 
 shore : but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus."— 
 John xxi. 4. 
 
 On Sunday morning last, in dealing with the 
 subject of communion with the living Christ, as 
 illustrated in the experience of the apostle Paul, I 
 made a passing reference to the episode presumed 
 in our text. It has since occurred to me that that 
 episode is itself worthy of careful examination, for 
 it contains much that is both helpful and suggest- 
 ive. It is indeed a remarkable piece of writing 
 from many points of view. Before we proceed to 
 inquire into the meaning of the text itself I wish 
 to be quite sure that we all recognise the true 
 character of the chapter in which it appears. 
 
 It is my custom when preaching from the fourth 
 gospel to point out to my hearers that this is a much 
 greater book than most people realise. We inhabit- 
 ants of the Western world are unaccustomed to this 
 kind of literature, which belongs to a different age 
 and a different mode of thinking from our own. 
 We like things as simple and straightforward 
 as possible, even when the subject is abstruse; we 
 do not care for veiled allusions and mysterious 
 
 139 
 
140 THE MASTER ON THE SHORE 
 
 significations. The Anglo-Saxon mind, generally 
 speaking, does not greatly appreciate even imagin- 
 ative Celtic writings like those of Fiona Macleod. 
 A few may, but the majority do not. We are far 
 too busy, and far too practical, and — may I add ? — 
 far too stolid, to be able to appreciate that kind of 
 thing in any high degree. You business men of 
 London must not be offended if I say that I hardly 
 think most of you are, either by training or tem- 
 perament, likely to understand such a book as this 
 fourth gospel without a good deal of careful in- 
 struction. And yet if you once get the key to it 
 you will find it more helpful and interesting than 
 any of the other three. 
 
 It is not history, and never was intended to be 
 understood as history. It contains historical ele- 
 ments, but these are always used as the picture lan- 
 guage of great ideas; this is the writer's method 
 all through, and was quite in accordance with the 
 whole school in which he had been trained. It is 
 more than probable that there was at one time a 
 large literature in existence of the same general 
 character as this gospel. Understand, then, when 
 you read this book, that every saying it contains, 
 and every incident it relates, has an inner spiritual 
 meaning. The book is a connected whole, but 
 every separate saying is profound and complete. 
 For instance, there are no parables in this gospel, 
 and the miracles recorded are for the most part 
 quite different from those in the other gospels. 
 The very first one, the turning of water into wine, 
 is not alluded to elsewhere; and as for the raising 
 of Lazarus, which we might suppose to have been 
 
THE MASTER ON THE SHORE 141 
 
 the most astounding of all, not a word is said 
 about it in the older gospels. The truth is that in 
 this gospel the miracles are parables, and every 
 one of them is designed to bring out some special 
 aspect of spiritual truth. 
 
 This is certainly the case with the story which 
 contains our text. But here let me remark that, 
 although this twenty-first chapter follows the method 
 of the rest of the book, and is written in the same 
 style, it is probably a later addition. If you look 
 carefully you will see that the gospel ends quite 
 naturally with the closing verse of the twentieth 
 chapter in the words: ''And many other signs 
 truly did Jesus in the presence of His disciples, 
 which are not written in this book : but these are 
 written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the 
 Christ, the Son of God." After this very suitable 
 ending, the twenty-first chapter proceeds to tell of 
 3ome other doings of Jesus, and concludes in its 
 turn : '* And there are also many other things 
 which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written 
 every one, I suppose that even the world itself 
 could not contain the books that should be written." 
 The reason for the addition of this twenty-first 
 chapter is, I think, fairly clear. It did not come 
 into existence until after the Christian Church had 
 settled down into something like unity of organisa- 
 tion, and with a strongly marked apostolic tra- 
 dition. By this time Peter had come to be looked 
 upon as having been the leader of the apostolic 
 band, and the custodian of an authority which prob- 
 ably he did not exercise in his lifetime. We now 
 begin to hear of the power of the keys, the binding 
 
142 THE MASTER ON THE SHORE 
 
 and loosing, and such-like ; and it was only a matter 
 of time before this tendency produced a full-blown 
 hierarchy with Peter as the traditional first bishop 
 of Rome and forerunner of all the Popes. This 
 little fragment of scripture is therefore of much 
 later date than most of the New Testament writ- 
 ings. It follows the general plan of the fourth 
 gospel in its careful use of symbolism. You observe 
 that Peter says to the other disciples, ** I go a- 
 fishing." It is Peter who says it, and the rest who 
 follow. They are fishers of men, and their Ship is 
 the Church. For some time they meet with no 
 success : it is dark, and they toil in vain. Evidently 
 this reference is to a period of persecution when the 
 flow of conversions was temporarily checked. But 
 now comes a beautiful suggestion. The authorised 
 version of our text says : ''When the morning was 
 now come." The revised rendering is better— 
 " When the day was now breaking Jesus stood on 
 the shore; but the disciples knew not that it was 
 Jesus." He tells them to cast their net on the right 
 side of the ship, and they shall find. They do so; 
 and immediately enclose a great multitude of fishes, 
 " and for all there were so many, yet was not the 
 net broken." The suggestion thus beautifully made 
 is that it is Jesus Himself who directs the operations 
 of His servants from that shore which lies beyond 
 the troubled sea of life. They cannot see Him, 
 although they obey the voice that speaks within 
 their own souls, but they are able to recognise Him 
 in the tokens of blessings that follow from obedi- 
 ence. Evidently this passage was written before 
 there was any breach in the formal unity of the 
 
. THE MASTER ON THE SHORE 143 
 
 visible church. It could not be written now, unless 
 the writer were prepared to ignore formal unity 
 and look for something higher. 
 
 Now let me be perfectly frank with you in dis- 
 cussing the message contained in this sentence and 
 its context. I want to discard the outer husk of 
 ecclesiasticism, and get to the inner kernel of 
 spiritual experience. To be honest I suppose we 
 must confess that to most of the Christians, at the 
 time when this passage was written, the Church 
 had come to be looked upon as the ark of salvation 
 into which souls must be gathered in order to be 
 saved from the destruction which was to overtake 
 the world. The symbolism does not hold perfectly 
 good, for of course the fish are being taken out of 
 their natural element and put to death in being 
 caught by the fishermen ; but this is not the only 
 place where the same figure is employed. You will 
 find it in Matthew xiii. in the parable of the drag- 
 net. It appears again in Luke v. in a story which 
 is almost an exact parallel to the one in this chapter 
 except that the multitude of fishes was so great 
 that the net broke. We must just take the 
 figure as it stands. The Church was supposed to 
 be God's appointed means of saving a few out of 
 a wicked world. Jesus was directing the fishing 
 operations from heaven, and His divinely appointed 
 ministers in the ship called the Church rendered 
 willing obedience to the guidance of His Spirit. 
 I do not want to take that point of view, for it has 
 long since ceased to be true in any real sense. I 
 do not wonder that a^ a time when human society 
 seemed to be falling to pieces men should have 
 
144 THE MASTER ON THE SHORE 
 
 despaired of the world and thought of the Christian 
 Church as the only living hope for a remnant of the 
 human race. I am not sure that we ought to be 
 confident in affirming that the Christians from the 
 first ever expected to be able to save the world or 
 even the majority of mankind; I am afraid it must 
 be admitted that they only believed they would be 
 able to save a comparative few. They supposed 
 that these few would inherit the earth. Later on, 
 when it was found that Christ did not come as 
 speedily as had been anticipated, they began to 
 think of these few as inheriting a home in heaven, 
 and of the earth-world as having to be utterly 
 destroyed. If you had lived in that day you would 
 have taken the same view. I see that Mr. Balfour 
 in delivering the Henry Sidgwick memorial lecture 
 the other day drew attention to this point. He 
 remarked that the overthrow of the elaborate civil- 
 isation of Greece and Rome by the influx of 
 barbarism must have seemed to the thoughtful 
 minds of the time the most melancholy thing 
 that had ever happened. It was a long drawn- 
 out agony. Little by little, but inevitably, the old 
 splendour was submerged by brute ignorance and 
 savage vandalism. It must have been hard for 
 persons of refinement to be other than pessimistic 
 as they watched the process of obliteration going 
 on. Nor did the curtain of gloom lift again for 
 more than a thousand years. The Renaissance 
 gave the first sign of a reawakening of the human 
 spirit from the darkness of superstition, but not 
 even the Renaissance could be properly described 
 as a rehabilitation of the intellectual achievements 
 
THE MASTER ON THE SHORE 145 
 
 of the ancient world; the Europe of the sixteenth 
 and seventeenth centuries was the scene of devastat- 
 ing religious wars, bitter intolerance, and fiendish 
 cruelty done in the name of God. That was the 
 period of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew and 
 the fires of Smithfield. We may say with perfect 
 truth that it was not until the middle of the nine- 
 teenth century that a civilisation began to appear 
 which was at all comparable to that of ancient 
 Greece and Rome in their best days. As Alfred 
 Russel Wallace has pointed out in his book, The 
 Wonderful Century, man achieved greater progress 
 in his power over Nature during that fifty years 
 than in the two millenniums preceding. Some 
 people deny that our intellectual and moral pro- 
 gress has kept pace with the material ; but, be that 
 as it may, hardly any one would seriously contend 
 that the world-wide civilisation of to-day is not 
 vastly more complex and full of promise than 
 any that has gone before. It contains richer and 
 more varied elements, and exhibits potentialities 
 undreamed of in the world of Plato and Aristotle. 
 You see then what the world must have looked 
 like to the Christians at the time my text was 
 written. They thought of it as a stormy sea on 
 which rode the ship of the Church of Jesus. And 
 this estimate was not unjust, for, amid the crash of 
 falling institutions, the only fabric which stood firm 
 was the Church. Into this, as to an ark of refuge, 
 thousands upon thousands of people hurried who 
 had come to despair of the world as it then was. 
 And their instinct was quite accurate. The old 
 order was changing and passing away, but no one 
 10 
 
146 THE MASTER ON THE SHORE 
 
 could see the new. Christianity alone held out the 
 hope of a better world to be. Men came to trust 
 and reverence the Church. They admired its unity 
 and strength, its confidence in its God-given mis- 
 sion, its authoritative declaration of the lordship of 
 Christ. New heresies sprang up every day, but 
 their only result seemed to be to render the 
 evangel of the Church stronger and more confident 
 than ever, and her power over the human mind 
 greater than before — " for all there were so many 
 yet was not the net broken." The almost inevitable 
 outcome of these tendencies was the establishment 
 of the great mediaeval Roman Church, which con- 
 tinued unbroken down to the Reformation, and is 
 still powerful in our midst to-day. We may wil- 
 lingly concede that during the ages of barbarism 
 this ecclesiastical discipline did good and necessary 
 work, the work of the school-master and the law^- 
 giver ; the mistake that so many people have made, 
 both within and without the borders of Christianity, 
 has been the identification of ecclesiasticism with the 
 religion of Jesus. We see the beginnings of that 
 tendency in the story which contains my text. We 
 see how those beginnings arose; but, now that the 
 whole order of things which made them possible 
 has passed away, it is time for the world to take a 
 healthier and saner view. The great problem before 
 the civilisation of the immediate future is the atti- 
 tude it must adopt towards the vital truths of 
 religion. Are we to have done with Jesus, now 
 that the curtain is rising upon a fairer world than 
 that of old Rome, or will He still lead the van of 
 human progress? There can be no juggling with 
 
THE MASTER ON THE SHORE 147 
 
 this question, and no avoiding it. We have come 
 to the parting of the Vv^ays. The priest is impos- 
 sible, ecclesiastical systems are crumbling into dust 
 before our eyes ; the main current of human interest 
 is setting away from the Church instead of towards 
 it. Is it setting away from Christ? 
 
 This question appears to me so all-important 
 that I do not see how any thoughtful man can 
 afford to pass it by. The moral^nd social situation 
 in the world of to-day is in some respects the exact 
 reverse of what it was at the time my text came 
 into being. Secular civilisation was dying then, 
 and the only live society was the Church; now it 
 is the Church that is dying, and society is spring- 
 ing into new life. By the Church I mean, for the 
 moment, ecclesiastical Christianity. What are we 
 to say about this? Note how serious-minded men 
 inside the Church are talking to-day almost pre- 
 cisely as serious-minded men outside the Church 
 were talking seventeen or eighteen hundred years 
 ago. Scholars and thinkers were pessimistic then 
 because old philosophies and old faiths were dis- 
 appearing, and the only religion with any force 
 in it was the rude uncultured Christianity which 
 was sweeping the poor and ignorant into its fold. 
 You have only to read the literature of the time 
 to see that I am perfectly faithful to the facts. See 
 how these very facts are repeating themselves now. 
 Now it is the Christians who are talking that way. 
 Men of light and leading are deploring the decay 
 of faith, and the rise of what they call materialism. 
 They cannot ignore the fact that the moral and 
 social aspirations of the people in all the countries 
 
148 THE MASTER ON THE SHORE 
 
 of the civilised world have little or nothing to do 
 with organised Christianity. They fear for the 
 future ; they dread the advent of a democracy with- 
 out soul ; they watch the inevitable decline of 
 Church authority with the gravest concern. 
 
 But are the tendencies precisely what they appear 
 to be? I am quite sure they are not. On the 
 contrary, I hold that the decay of organised religion 
 means the release of the true spirit of Christianity 
 from its swaddling clothes. I do not believe that 
 there ever has been a more hopeful time for true 
 spiritual religion in all the history of mankind than 
 the time in which we are living now. Jesus sowed 
 a seed nineteen hundred years ago which has taken 
 long to germinate in darkness and pain ; now we 
 are beginning to see the ripening unto harvest. If 
 the Church is to survive she must learn to cast the 
 net on the right side of the ship. Unfortunately 
 many of those who exercise power and authority 
 both in Catholic and Protestant Christendom have 
 hitherto failed to see which is the right side of the 
 ship. They toil hard in the darkness, and mourn 
 the coming of the light which means the passing of 
 influence and opportunity. They watch the world 
 slipping out of their grasp, and pathetically fail to 
 understand that it is not slipping out of the grasp 
 of God. And, strangest of all, they do not recog- 
 nise that voice that comes out of the shadows at the 
 breaking day, and tells them where and how to fish 
 for the souls of men. They know not that it is 
 the voice of Jesus, the Jesus who still watches and 
 works from the farther shore. But a still more 
 remarkable thing is the way in which the world is 
 
THE MASTER ON THE SHORE 149 
 
 learning to obey that voice without knowing any 
 more than the Church whose voice it is. One 
 section of Christendom ignorantly liears and dis- 
 obeys, not knowing their Lord; the other Section 
 has never known Him, but it knows the spirit which 
 makes for the deliverance of mankind from the 
 bondage of sorrow and wrong. Surely the day will 
 come when these shall recognise, with a knowledge 
 which neither ecclesiastic nor atheist can obscure, 
 that He to whom the lowly came in ages long gone 
 by is speaking still, and that '* the common people 
 hear Him gladly." 
 
 It is only a question of timfe. There is 'a move- 
 ment of the Spirit going on all over the world to- 
 day, the true significance of which is only dimly 
 apparent. In the Church of Rome it is being de- 
 nounced as Modernism. In Protestant countries it 
 is dreaded as Humanism, Socialism, and what not. 
 But it is always the same movement, and his eyes 
 are dull who cannot see that it is the Spirit of God 
 moving once more upon the face of the waters. 
 Even the so-called materialism and irreligion with 
 which it is frequently associated are in essence 
 spiritual; they are the flame of the new life, the 
 life of moral earnestness allied to human sympathy. 
 It is the gospel of happiness which is being 
 preached with a new assurance by strenuous and 
 self-sacrificing servants of the race. Papal ency- 
 clicals, and the hypocritical warnings of Protestant 
 religious newspapers, can no more stop that move- 
 ment than they can keep back the tides by Act of 
 Parliament. The morning is breaking, the shadows 
 are lifting, and heaven is speaking with accents loud 
 
150 THE MASTER ON THE SHORE 
 
 and clear to those who have ears to listen and a 
 heart to understand. Some of you men who come 
 here on Thursday mornings tell me that you are not 
 so sure of the reality of the unseen world as Chris- 
 tians profess to be, and that you are not convinced 
 that the voice of Jesus has ever spoken to needy 
 suffering men since it was silenced on the cruel 
 cross of Calvary. You may tell me that I have no 
 proof of these things, even though, after a fashion, 
 you may like to hear me talk about them. Well, 
 I will go with you so far as to admit that it really 
 does not matter so much as people think that a man 
 should be sure of the life beyond death, or be able 
 to give a name to the voice of hope and love within 
 his own soul. What is often called faith in these 
 matters is only a mixture of credulity and irrever- 
 ence. The thing of first importance is that you 
 should be true to the best of which you can be sure. 
 But suffer me to declare my own conviction in these 
 matters. I can no more doubt that life shall live 
 for evermore than I can doubt that life is lived 
 at all. 
 
 And though in this lean age forlorn 
 
 Too many a voice may cry, 
 That man shall have no after-morn, 
 
 Not yet of these am I. 
 
 The man survives, and whatsoe'er 
 
 He wrought of good or brave, 
 Will mould him through the cycle year 
 
 That dawns behind the grave. 
 
 There are times when I almost feel as though I 
 can hear the voice of the multitude that no man can 
 number, around the sea of glass mingled with fire. 
 
THE MASTER ON THE SHORE 151 
 
 I feel that the universe is spirit and nothing but 
 spirit, and that infinity and eternity are impHed in 
 the very existence of every individual soul. That 
 being so, the conviction grips and holds me that 
 no voice that has ever spoken a word for God and 
 humanity can have ceased to speak because of the 
 change called death, which is only a change from 
 the lesser to the larger, from the lower to the higher 
 side of life. Moreover, it seems to me unthinkable 
 that the Jesus who suffered and died to awaken men 
 to the true meaning of life, and whose name has 
 lived in human hearts ever since, should have 
 passed out of human ken or be helpless to influence 
 human destiny. If so, the world is indeed topsy- 
 turvy, and God has been sporting with the most 
 sacred feelings of His children. No, no; because 
 life is glorious ; because life at the heart of things 
 is good; because life is the slow unfoldment of 
 God in humanity, this Jesus of long ago is still 
 active and potent in the regeneration of the world. 
 The word which is destroying ecclesiasticism to- 
 day is His word; the w^ord which is kindling the 
 new spirit of brotherhood in the nations is His 
 word; the word of emancipation to the lowly and 
 the sad is His word. Here and there some beloved 
 disciple straining his eyes through the gloom to- 
 wards that dim shore w^hich shall be so bright by 
 and by discerns His sacred form, and whispers to 
 the rest, ''It is the Lord." But not all the brave 
 fishermen who are casting the net have the same 
 clearness of vision. They obey, but they do not 
 see. They know not that it is Jesus. 
 
 Do not mistake me. This is no longer the Jesus 
 
152 THE MASTER ON THE SHORE 
 
 of Galilee who was so foully done to death by re- 
 ligious materialists nineteen hundred years ago; 
 He is the same, yet not the same. He was limited 
 then ; He is unlimited now. It cannot but be that 
 that human Jesus has entered into the full con- 
 sciousness of God and grasped the sceptre of omni- 
 potence. That, and nothing less than that, is the 
 destiny of all humanity too. And yet it helps me 
 to think of God as though He wore the very face of 
 Jesus. Think of all that is most sacred in what you 
 have known of humanity, and see it upon the 
 throne of God. 
 
 Yes, I believe it. Poor struggling humanity is 
 neither being neglected nor led wrong. There is 
 no room for pessimism, much less for despair. All 
 the noble voices of the past are speaking still, and 
 most of all the voice of Him who spake as never 
 man spake. It is He who bids us cast, on the 
 right side of the ship, that true gospel message of 
 love and joy which shall gather all men into the 
 unbroken fellowship of eternal truth at last. 
 
 Let us be sure as to what that message is. It is 
 very simple, so simple that it repels many who seek 
 " for Some great thing to do or secret thing to 
 know." It is the commandment to banish all hate 
 by means of loving-kindness. It is the call to men 
 to trust their own divinity and work out their own 
 salvation, because it i$ God that worketh in them 
 both to will and to do. So many people seem afraid 
 of trusting this because they think it implies lean- 
 ing upon the arm of flesh. It is the very opposite; 
 it is the proclamation that we are the children of 
 that eternal humanity which is God, and must 
 
THE MASTER ON THE SHORE 153 
 
 recognise our lineage in order to stand upon our feet 
 and live. It is the exhortation to develop our indi- 
 viduality by labouring to destroy the hideous mon- 
 ster called Individualism. It is a message of cheer 
 to the oppressed ; it tells us to break one another's 
 bonds and free all the prisoners of materialism. It 
 forbids belief in the power of that which is basest 
 in human nature, and calls forth faith in that which 
 is noblest. It points the road to true happiness by 
 showing men that self-seeking must inevitably end 
 in failure and disappointment. It bids us believe 
 in the dawning of a brighter day for the poor and 
 weak who have hitherto been trampled underfoot 
 by covetousness and pride of place. It is the sum- 
 mons to us all to find our joy in binding up the 
 broken-hearted and wiping tears away. 
 
 Just imagine what would happen if you really 
 believed this message, and acted upon it. It would 
 be casting the net upon the right side of the ship, 
 the side of the world's knowledge of its own need. 
 Think how many people there are in this church 
 at this moment whose hearts are filled with sorrow 
 and corroding care. Think of those who have 
 given up hope of anything better. Think of the 
 thousands, the millions, beyond these walls to 
 whom life is devoid of any meaning whatever, and 
 who never dream of any higher state of existence 
 in this world or the next. Ought this to go on ? Is 
 there any need for it to go on ? The voice of Christ 
 is giving it the lie. We cannot be too practical and 
 definite in our evangel. The real Christianity, in 
 this or any other day, is that which comes as a 
 mesvsage of comfort and hope to burdened hearts 
 
154 THE MASTER ON THE SHORE 
 
 along the line of their real difficulties and troubles. 
 It says to the small tradesman, It is a cruel thing 
 that you should be crushed over the precipice of 
 ruin ; come and help us to get men to live together 
 in a kinder, nobler way. It says to the rich man, 
 You see how little riches can do to make you glad ; 
 come and help us to breathe into all troubled hearts 
 the peace you want in yours. It says to the be- 
 reaved. Look up ; your dead are not gone ; they are 
 more alive than you in the world of eternal reality. 
 It says to all the weary, the discouraged, and the 
 broken in heart, We are one in God; our home is 
 beyond the smiling and the weeping, and we are 
 going there together. We must go together, for 
 none of us is complete without all the rest. Even 
 Jesus would not be perfect without the full ingather- 
 ing of a redeemed humanity to the Father's heart. 
 Undivided and unbroken we must ascend with Him 
 to our eternal home. That is what His voice is 
 saying from that farther shore. Pray God that we 
 who toil upon the deep may ever cast the net upon 
 the right side, as we hear our Master's voice at the 
 breaking of the day. 
 
XI 
 
 SOWING AND REAPING 
 
 " And herein is that saying true^ One soweth^ and 
 another reapeth.^'' — John iv. 37. 
 
 This saying derives its force from the commun- 
 istic quality of all good actions, but it has a further 
 range likewise. It tells us something of the work- 
 ing of the moral law relating both to retribution 
 and redemption. There is no subject on which 
 religious thought is more confused at present than 
 this. The older view of the matter has hopelessly 
 broken down, and we have not yet adjusted our- 
 selves to the new focus required by the testimony 
 of moral experience in the light of modern recogni- 
 tion of the solidarity of the human race. My object 
 this morning is to try to show if I can, with this 
 text to guide us, the relation between the certainty 
 of individual retribution for wrong-doing, and the 
 place for full forgiveness and redemption by vicari- 
 ous suffering. It will be seen at once, therefore, 
 that our theme is a large and important one, and 
 will require the most careful statement. 
 
 To begin with, let us examine the situation im- 
 mediately presumed in the words of our text. The 
 scene is that of the evangelising of the Samaritans 
 through the conversation of Jesus with the woman 
 at the well. I have previously taken occasion to 
 
 155 
 
156 SOWING AND REAPING 
 
 point out that whether this story be historically true 
 or not it is used here, in accordance with the method 
 of the writer of this gospel, to illustrate something 
 far larger. He uses an incident as a parable. Jesus 
 may or may not have talked with a Samaritan 
 woman at Jacob's well, but the real point of the 
 narrative has little or nothing to do with the 
 Samaritans as such. I need not remind you that 
 this gospel was written long after the fall of Jeru- 
 salem, and the permeation of the Grceco-Roman 
 world with the message of Christianity. It was thus 
 impossible for the able man who wrote this gospel 
 to ignore the new situation which had been created, 
 namely, that Christianity had now become a 
 universal religion. Some of you may be surprised 
 to hear that this was not so from the first. You 
 have been accustomed, perhaps, to take for granted, 
 like most of our fellow-Christians, that the religion 
 in which we have been brought up has always been 
 much the same as it is now. You may think of it 
 as having come into the world as a full-blown 
 system of doctrine, so to speak, intended for all 
 mankind, and preached as such by missionaries 
 who w^ent forth from Jerusalem to every part of the 
 known world. If so, you are mistaken. The little 
 group of Christians who first met in Jerusalem did 
 not look upon their gospel in any such way. What 
 they thought they had to do was to preach the 
 Kingdom of God to their own countrymen ; they 
 did not look beyond the borders of their own nation. 
 They worked for, and expected to see, an ideal 
 human society, a regenerated Israel with its capital 
 in Jerusalem, but they did not think of including 
 
SOWING AND REAPING 157 
 
 Gentiles within the scope of its benefits unless they 
 became Jews. Before long, however, circumstances 
 became too much for them. The new religious 
 revival could not be contained within such narrow 
 bounds; it broke through and began to spread 
 everywhere as the glad tidings of a heaven on earth 
 with Jesus as its king. Of course, the great instru- 
 ment in bringing this about was the apostle Paul 
 — and he had to fight hard with the nationalist 
 party in order to carry the point — but, perhaps, the 
 moral force behind the new movement would have 
 done it in any case. Paul and those who sym- 
 pathised with him carried the Christian gospel to 
 the furthest confines of the world-wide Roman 
 Empire in a few short years. This process was 
 accelerated by the destruction of Jerusalem, and 
 the consequent downfall of Jewish-nationalist hopes 
 in A.D. 70. Henceforth it was clearly impossible to 
 think of Judaea as the limit within which Chris- 
 tianity could be established, for the Jews were now 
 a scattered race, and had not accepted Christianity 
 in any great numbers. From this point, therefore, 
 Christianity became far more a Gentile than a 
 Jewish religion ; in fact, it had become practically 
 transplanted to Greek and Roman soil, and had 
 lost its original connection with Judaism. 
 
 Now, please understand that this consummation 
 is what the writer of the fourth gospel really had 
 in mind when he wrote my text. This man was 
 not a Jew at all, and he certainly could not have 
 known much about Samaria. He did not begin to 
 write until Christianity was already a considerable 
 force .in the Roman Empire and growing rapidly 
 
158 SOWING AND REAPING 
 
 stronger every day. All the illustrations he makes 
 use of in his gospel are meant to bear upon this 
 state of things. This Samaritan woman and her 
 friends and neighbours stand for the religions and 
 philosophies of the whole Gentile world. The 
 Christian missionaries had now discovered in these 
 a practically unlimited field of activity, and had set 
 themselves the task of winning them all for Jesus. 
 The ancient pagan civilisation was ripe and ready 
 for the new word of hope and inspiration which the 
 Christians had to offer ; it was far more sympathetic 
 to it than the Jews had been. People were tired 
 of the futilities and insincerities of pagan worship. 
 No one really believed in the old gods, and philo- 
 sophy was a poor substitute for the zeal and en- 
 thusiasm of religious faith. The subjects of the 
 mighty Roman empire found themselves standing 
 between two worlds — one dead, the other powerless 
 to be born. Thoughtful men were pessimistic. 
 There was no whole-hearted zeal and enterprise 
 anywhere, no cause which could arouse self-sacrific- 
 ing devotion. Into this weary and dispirited 
 civilisation Christianity leaped with a vigour and 
 energy that commanded an instant hearing ; it was 
 then pretty much in intensity and belief in the future 
 what Socialism is now, and it spread like a prairie 
 fire. This is what is alluded to in my text, and the 
 words are put into the mouth of Jesus Himself. In 
 this passage the writer describes exactly what was 
 going on under his eyes. 
 
 " Say not ye. There are yet four months, and 
 then Cometh harvest ? Behold, I say unto you, 
 Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields : for they 
 
SOWING AND REAPING 159 
 
 are white already to harvest. And he that reapeth 
 receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life 
 eternal : that both he that soweth and he that 
 reapeth may rejoice together. And herein is that 
 saying true: One soweth and another reapeth. I 
 sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no 
 labour : other men laboured, and ye are entered into 
 their labours." 
 
 What chiefly interests me about this remarkable 
 paragraph is that it is a very vivid and accurate 
 description by an intelligent and earnest man of a 
 situation which was actually in progress at the 
 moment when he wrote. If he were writing for the 
 Daily News or the Daily Chronicle to-day, with the 
 same state of things before him, he might do it in 
 some such terms as the following : Fellow-Chris- 
 tians, you are rather too ready to speak vaguely of 
 a future time when God shall establish His king- 
 dom with power and give us the harvest which 
 Christ has sown. But is there not a harvest which 
 we can begin to reap now ? Look at the teeming 
 population of the vast cities of the world-wide 
 empire to which we belong. All these people are 
 sick and tired of the platitudes and convention- 
 alities of the older faiths. They know there is 
 nothing in them, and that they have no power to 
 stir the human heart to higher things. They con- 
 tain no evangel, no promise for the future, no de- 
 mand upon the best and deepest in their adherents. 
 The people are ready and willing to listen to the 
 true note if you can sound it. Jesus has something 
 to say to the world ; let us say it with all our might 
 and the world will hear. We shall see fruit of our 
 
i6o SOWING AND REAPING 
 
 labours at once, for the fields are white unto har- 
 vest. Great souls of ages past have sown that we 
 may reap. Socrates and Plato, not to speak of 
 many other wise and great leaders of the people, 
 have prepared the way for our Master. Let us take 
 full advantage of it. It must be His will that we 
 should reap for Him what others have sown. In 
 fact, His harvest is their harvest too, and sowers 
 and reapers shall all rejoice together. 
 
 I think this was a most inspiring utterance and 
 quite in keeping with the best that the Alexandrian 
 fathers of the Church were accustomed to say about 
 the relation between the Christian gospel and the 
 noblest Greek thought. Indeed it is unquestion- 
 able that the new religion absorbed and glorified 
 that thought almost without knowing it; in a cer- 
 tain sense Christianity owes as much to Greek and 
 Roman minds as it does to the prophets of ancient 
 Israel ; both streams met and became a mighty 
 flood in the religion of Jesus. The best and most 
 enlightened of the early Christian workers knew 
 this, and considered themselves the inheritors of 
 the pagan moralists as well as of the Jewish 
 preachers. All belonged to Jesus, and was part of 
 the sowing in preparation for His harvest. 
 
 This consideration brings me to the further point 
 already suggested at the beginning of the sermon, 
 namely, the solidarity of mankind in the sowing 
 and reaping of good and evil. How far can we 
 ever benefit or suffer alone ? Can any human being 
 be either rewarded or punished individually ? Is 
 there such a thing as reaping exactly what you 
 have sown without relation to any one else ? If so, 
 
SOWING AND REAPING i6i 
 
 where does redemption come in, and what is it? 
 What does forgiveness involve, and how does it 
 take effect ? To put the matter in a nutshell — how 
 far is individual reward or retribution consistent 
 with vicarious suffering as the means of salvation ? 
 There is no need to deal with these questions in 
 detail. All that is required is that we should make 
 sure of the general principle to which to refer them. 
 In order to clear the ground for the examination of 
 that principle let us remind ourselves of the way in 
 which the subject is familiarly presented in Chris- 
 tian preaching. In stating it I wish you to believe 
 that it is far from my intention to belittle it, for 
 it enshrines a truth whose moral power has been 
 demonstrated without ceasing in the history of the 
 Christian Church. In popular parlance it might not 
 unfairly be presented thus : We are all sinners, 
 and to some extent, even in this world, we must 
 suffer for our sins. But we need not reap exactly 
 what we have sown. We have a representative and 
 substitute with God, Jesus Christ the righteous 
 One, who is the propitiation for our sins provided 
 we accept Him as such. Faith in Jesus secures 
 pardon and justification ; the Redeemer takes upon 
 Himself the responsibility for all that we have done 
 amiss, and His merits are imputed to us. There is 
 thus no necessity for reaping what we have sown, 
 if we only avail ourselves of the plan of redemption. 
 As the old evangelistic hymn has it — 
 
 Nothing either great or small, 
 
 Nothing, sinner, no ; 
 Jesus did it, did it all, 
 
 Long, long ago; 
 
 II 
 
i62 SOWING AND REAPING 
 
 Now to call this belief absolutely false is impossible 
 and wrong. It is not false, but we ought to try 
 and find out in what way it is true. To believe it 
 without seeing why and in what sense it is reason- 
 able is not a very lofty way of believing it. And 
 yet it has thrilled innumerable hearts, awakened in- 
 numerable consciences, and brought men into holy 
 relationship with God as no other doctrine has ever 
 done. I doubt not that there are some people 
 listening to me this morning to whom this way of 
 putting the truth about human salvation is unspeak- 
 ably precious, and if they want to call out and say 
 so I should not object in the least ; in fact, I should 
 feel like joining with them. But you will admit 
 that there are others here to whom such a statement 
 means nothing, or, if it means anything, stands for 
 something unjust and immoral. Such as these 
 would tell you that it does not help them at all to 
 be assured that Jesus bore their sins in His own 
 body on the tree, and that in consequence they will 
 be relieved from some penalty in the world to come 
 for the evil they have wrought here. They cannot 
 understand how God can rightly demand such a 
 substitutionary sacrifice, or in what way it could 
 .effect its object if He did. What conceivable rela- 
 tion is there between a few hours of agony on a 
 Roman gibbet nineteen hundred years ago, and all 
 the punishment of all the wickedness of the human 
 race for thousands of years before and thousands of 
 years yet to come? You can see, therefore, with- 
 out much difficulty that even on moral grounds 
 strong objection can be taken, and is being taken, 
 by robust and healthy minds to the doctrine that in 
 
SOWING AND REAPING 163 
 
 some mysterious way Christ has reaped beforehand 
 the harvest of all the evil which you and I are 
 sowing to-day, and that therefore we need not do 
 so ourselves. 
 
 But there are still further objections to the 
 accepted doctrine as popularly stated, and not the 
 least of these is the fact that in the New Testament 
 itself plain and emphatic assertions are made which 
 are totally inconsistent with it. Take, for example, 
 the well-known passage in Galatians vi. 7 : "Be 
 not deceived ; God is not mocked : for whatsoever 
 a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that 
 soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corrup- 
 tion; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the 
 Spirit reap eternal life." Here is certainly no 
 justification for the belief that a death-bed repent- 
 ance and faith in the merits of a Redeemer will 
 compensate for a wicked life. But in the recorded 
 words of Jesus Himself are warnings equally ex- 
 plicit, as, for example, Matthew v. 25, 26 : 
 *' Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou 
 art in the way with him ; lest at any time the 
 adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge 
 deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into 
 prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no 
 means come out thence, till thou hast paid the 
 uttermost farthing." This paying of the utter- 
 most farthing does not at all consist with the 
 popular presentation of a full and free salvation 
 secured by faith alone. Whatever else it may mean 
 it certainly contradicts the idea thct a wrong-doer 
 can go scot-free by the simple expedient of rolling 
 the burden upon somebody else. How remarkable, 
 
i64 SOWING AND REAPING 
 
 too, is the suggestion that the payment of the utter- 
 most farthing is possible ! According to what we 
 have been usually taught, the sinner cannot pay 
 and cannot come out of his prison house. The 
 retributive justice of God, so we are told, does not 
 provide for the release of any culprit by any pay- 
 ment of his own. And yet here stand the words 
 of Jesus as an explicit declaration to the contrary. 
 It must be admitted, too, that the theory that a bad 
 man can get off, or ought to get off, the conse- 
 quences of his guilty acts by making a sort of deal 
 with providence, who has been kind enough to 
 provide a scape-goat, is repugnant to the better 
 feelings of all right-minded men. That eminent 
 theologian, Mark Twain, has some scathing things 
 to say about it in his book, More Tramps Abroad. 
 I make no apology for introducing that master of 
 the human heart into a sermon ; his moral instincts 
 are those of the ordinary manly, high-minded 
 citizen of to-day. Describing a barbarous murder 
 by highwaymen, he concludes by giving the text 
 of the confession of one of them after receiving 
 sentence of death in a court of law. The confession 
 ended with a pious profession of confidence in the 
 murderer's eternal salvation through the blood of 
 Christ. His victims had not had time to get con- 
 verted and make sure of heaven in the same way. 
 Mark points out this fact, and sarcastically com- 
 ments upon it as follows : " His redemption was 
 a very real thing to him, and he was as jubilantly 
 happy on the gallows as ever was Christian martyr 
 at the stake. We dwellers in this world are 
 strangely made, and mysteriously circumstanced. 
 
SOWING AND REAPING 165 
 
 We have to suppose that the murdered men are 
 lost, and that the murderer is saved; but we cannot 
 suppress our natural regrets !" 
 
 One thing more before I leave this part of my 
 subject. Look out into the world and you will see 
 some men reaping what they have sown without 
 waiting for a future heaven or hell, and no amount 
 of faith in Christ has saved them from it. Repent- 
 ance does not give the drunkard back his wrecked 
 constitution ; it does not restore the corrupt body 
 of the sensualist as the flesh of a little child; it 
 does not screen any man from the slow and deadly 
 working of the effects of the life he has lived in the 
 service of gain — he has become like his pursuits, 
 and cannot be otherwise. " Be sure your sin will 
 find you out." How often the guilty secret comes 
 to light and blasts a promising career ! How re- 
 lentless seems the judgment that occasionally over- 
 takes the man who has wilfully followed a wrong 
 course ! How often a lovable character conjoined 
 to high ability has been utterly wasted so far as this 
 world is concerned by some one foolish step taken 
 in an hour of sinful delirium ? It is not impossible 
 that there are some listening to me at this moment 
 whose chance in life was forfeited long ago by some 
 act of wicked folly performed under the stress of 
 temptation — some woman, perhaps, or some trifling 
 with a trust committed to your charge. Do you 
 want to tell me that the lifelong retribution which 
 follows upon such departures from rectitude is not 
 an awful reality ? It avails nothing to say that it 
 appears to fall spasmodically, and that some of the 
 worst of men go unpunished all their days. If it 
 
i66 SOWING AND REAPING 
 
 falls at all it surely knocks the bottom out of all 
 easy conventional theories about laying our sins on 
 Jesus or anybody else. 
 
 Here, then, we come sharp up against a formidable 
 problem. We have seen that belief in the redeem- 
 ing work of Jesus has been the dynamic of most of 
 the noblest and richest spiritual experience of past 
 and present; we see too that the way it is usually 
 preached is repellent to the moral instincts of the 
 ordinary man of to-day, and does not square with 
 his knowledge of life or his sense of justice. More- 
 over, on the authority of Jesus Himself we are 
 warned that we shall inevitably reap what we sow. 
 How are we to reconcile all this? One's heart 
 sinks at the thought that no saviour can help us, 
 and that individually we shall have to endure here 
 or hereafter, the full and unescapable penalty of all 
 the evil we have wrought. There is not much 
 gospel in such an assurance; it may fill us with 
 fear, but it does not kindle hope and love. Is that 
 the whole truth ? Is there nothing better ? 
 
 Well, I am sure there is, and I will try to state 
 it to you as clearly as I see it myself. It is this : 
 There is no such thing as individual retribution or 
 individual salvation. For good or for evil the 
 human race is a solidarity ; we are all members 
 one of another; we suffer and achieve in common. 
 There is no heaven that does not imply willingness 
 to share the sinner's hell; there is no hell that is 
 not heaven in the making. God has no interest in 
 punishment as such, and no evil-doer can bear his 
 punishment alone. Indeed, there is no such thing 
 as punishment in the sense that so much pain must 
 
SOWING AND REAPING 167 
 
 be endured for so much sin. There is nothing in 
 which popular thinking goes more widely wrong 
 than this. We frequently jump to the conclusion 
 that when a man does an evil deed he ought to be 
 visited with an appropriate penalty after the clumsy 
 fashion of human justice, but that is not God's 
 way at all. Retribution is meaningless except as a 
 method of awakening the soul to its true condition ; 
 as soon as that is done the purpose of retribution is 
 fully served. Is there not a great relief in the 
 thought that in judgment our heavenly Father 
 remembers mercy? Just make sure of that one 
 principle, and you are on the track of the real 
 significance of the redeeming work of Jesus. Let 
 me show you what I mean. God's whole purpose 
 with mankind may be summed up in saying that 
 He seeks to realise a universal fellowship of love. 
 Nothing short of this can satisfy Him or ourselves. 
 Jesus saw this plainly when He went about Galilee 
 long ago preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of 
 God. But how is that fellowship to be achieved? 
 How can it be achieved otherwise than by the will- 
 ingness of those who see it to labour and suffer for 
 those who do not ? Even with a partial and limited 
 vision of the results to be gained this is what a good 
 man would always wish to do. It is no true good- 
 ness that would settle down to enjoy heaven while 
 any kind of hell remained. See then how the 
 matter presented itself to Jesus. He saw, as we 
 see to-day, that most of the suffering of the world 
 was caused by human selfishness and blindness. 
 He saw that, instead of getting together and helping 
 one another with all their might, men were trying 
 
i68 SOWING AND REAPING 
 
 to rob and injure one another, with the result that 
 history was one long series of crimes and miseries, 
 with here and there a gleam of moral splendour 
 derived from the discovery that individual life has 
 no meaning apart from the whole. Jesus saw that 
 earth was hell already because of these things, and 
 that it would never become heaven until men had 
 learned to find their true interest and their true joy 
 in the service of all, which is the service of God. 
 It was as though He said to Himself : There is no 
 human being whose burden I would not take if I 
 could, and so long as selfishness is producing hell 
 I will stay in that hell and labour to turn it into 
 heaven ; I will act as though every evil consequence 
 of human waywardness were my due; I shall will- 
 ingly bear anything and everything that will make 
 the burden of humanity a little less heavy and 
 enable men to see with clear eyes where true 
 blessedness is to be found. Anyhow^ this was 
 what Jesus did, and in doing it He showed the 
 world what true humanity really is. There is only 
 one word that would adequately describe that true 
 humanity wherever you find it, and it is Christ. 
 The Christ spirit in man is that which does what 
 Jesus did, accepts anything and everything in the 
 service of love. The man who is possessed by that 
 spirit does not pause to inquire who deserves what ; 
 he just goes on working as though all the dis- 
 abilities of the race were his very own. In a selfish 
 world this necessarily involves a Calvary some time 
 or other, but the Christ-man cannot shrink from 
 it, and cannot draw any line of distinction between 
 his own lot and that of other people. His part is 
 
SOWING AND REAPING 169 
 
 to act as though the whole burden of the whole race 
 were his own, and as though all the consequences 
 of human wickedness were justly visited upon his 
 head. This is no light matter, but to stop short 
 of it is to miss the highest of which human nature 
 is capable. 
 
 Now, see what follows from this. It is a glorious 
 fact that a man is saved in the true sense as soon 
 as he becomes possessed by that spirit, and he can 
 hardly be said to be saved until he does. And it 
 is that spirit which is saving the world, just as the 
 contrary spirit is the cause of the darkness and pain 
 of the world. All men are capable of showing the 
 Christ spirit at times, but it is only as they begin 
 to see and to enter into the full meaning of the 
 Christ life that they can properly be said to be 
 saviours. Jesus has made more saviours than all 
 the masters of mankind put together, but even He 
 knew that He stood in a grand historic succession. 
 There were those before Him who, though with a 
 more limited vision, had accepted the cross in the 
 service of their fellow-men, and had freely given 
 their lives thereon in willing sacrifice for their 
 generation. Were not the Isaiahs and Jeremiahs 
 of history sin-bearers ? Five centuries and a half 
 before Jesus was born this truth was clearly seen 
 by the man who wrote in words that the world will 
 never let die: ''Surely He hath borne our griefs 
 and carried our sorrows; the chastisement of our 
 peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are 
 healed." The cumulative effect of the witness and 
 suffering of all the seers and servants of the race, 
 from the dawn of history until to-day, is the true 
 
170 SOWING AND REAPING 
 
 work of Christ, and the true salvation of the world. 
 There is no other salvation, and no possibility of 
 any other than the operation of the spirit that turns 
 sinners into saviours by rendering them willing to 
 bear all the evil results of human selfishness in 
 order to hasten the advent of the kingdom of God. 
 There is thus a solidarity of good as well as a 
 solidarity of evil, and I want you to see that there 
 can be no question of separating the one from the 
 other. I desire to put the matter as vividly as ever 
 I can in order that you may appreciate its force and 
 realise what it is that has caused men to love the 
 story of the cross of Christ. It is indeed absolutely 
 true that the Saviour can be substituted for the 
 sinner so far as the consequences of wrong-doing 
 are concerned, and you can see the process going 
 on around you every day. The one thing in which 
 no saviour can ever impute his merits to the sinner 
 is in the character of the individual wrong-doer. 
 That is the sinner's very own, and he cannot jump 
 away from it. In that respect what he has sown 
 he must reap all by himself; he cannot grow a new 
 soul in five minutes. A man's thoughts and aspira- 
 tions make him what he is, and there is no kind of 
 justification before God which can free a coarse 
 and sensual nature from the necessity of pulling 
 down and rebuilding. It is not what the soul 
 suffers that matters; it is what the soul is. Slowly 
 and toilsomely the selfish man must break through 
 the habits and prejudices in which he has imprisoned 
 his own divinity; step by step he must ascend the 
 hill of the Lord. All that love can ever do is to 
 help him along the way; it cannot absolve him 
 
SOWING AND REAPING 171 
 
 from the necessity for making the pilgrimage; it 
 cannot bear him at a bound from lowest hell to 
 highest heaven. But when it becomes a question 
 of sharing the suffering the sinner has caused, or 
 even bearing it for him, saviourhood can never 
 hesitate. It must just enter into it and endure it 
 until the last barrier has been passed and no mor« 
 sorrow remains. There is no question of mine and 
 thine in the matter; true Christhood will seek to 
 bear all without making any terms or claiming any 
 exemption ; in fact, the nearer any soul approaches 
 to the moral stature of Jesus the more eager and 
 willing it will become to endure the worst in the 
 service of the best. And here, perhaps, is the 
 truest road of emancipation for any human being 
 who is struggling out of selfishness into the eternal 
 light and love. No man can ever bear the entire 
 consequences of his own wrong-doing, but he can 
 bear other people's, and the nobler he grows the 
 more he will want to do it. This is the very soul 
 of the Christian evangel and the secret of its power. 
 What Jesus did all men will have to become willing 
 to do before the victory of good over evil can be 
 finally won. Jesus suffered nothing on Calvary 
 which every good man has not also to suffer in his 
 degree. We are individually and collectively the 
 beneficiaries of every self-sacrificing life which has 
 ever been lived, and every noble death which has 
 ever been died, in every age of the world. The 
 crucifixion of Christ is as long as human history, 
 and millions of the sons of God have shed their 
 blood therein. It is going on now, and will go on 
 until divine love has completely triumphed over 
 
172 SOWING AND REAPING 
 
 human sin. Yes, and that will be a day of exulta- 
 tion. For there is a further and deeper sense in 
 which he that soweth and he that reapeth shall 
 rejoice together, and that is that sinner and saviour 
 — the one who sowed the pain and the one who bore 
 it — shall leap to one another in the glad fellowship 
 of eternal love. 
 
 Do we not all know it? Is it not true that we 
 are bearing the consequences of one another's mis- 
 deeds whether we will or no ? Are there not people 
 in this church at this moment who are sufferers 
 because of other people's wrong-doing? And are 
 not some of you conscious that your wrong-doing 
 has caused many a pang in the hearts of those who 
 love you ? There are those here who have been 
 beggared by other people's profligacy; here, too, 
 are the victims of other people's lust and covetous- 
 ness. '' Herein is the saying true, one soweth and 
 another reapeth." You know it to be true; you 
 cannot help knowing it. Well, now, let me tell 
 you how to face it. You can either face it like Jesus, 
 or like the thief who cursed Him as he hung dying 
 beside him; there is no middle way. One conse- 
 quence of the sin of the world was that very cruci- 
 fixion on Calvary. Jesus just accepted it, know- 
 ing well that He did not deserve it, but willing to 
 suffer as though He did. Is it not the same to-day 
 wherever nobleness of heart and the love that 
 passeth knowledge are willing to reap the harvest 
 of pain that others have sown ? It is that willing- 
 ness to suffer that makes all the difference between 
 heaven and hell. The acceptance of injustice, 
 poverty, misfortune, ruin, the very extremity of 
 
SOWING AND REAPING 173 
 
 evil, rather than become a cynic, desert a post, or 
 cease to be a behever in what is right and good, is 
 to put forth the saving power of God. Even if you 
 are a poor faulty soul yourself you belong to Christ 
 the moment you are willing to do that. Make it 
 the keynote of your life, and it will fill it with glory. 
 Throw all your individual interest into the scale of 
 good in its conflict with evil, and you shall know 
 what it is to be saved yourself. For it is the living 
 Christ that does all this in you, as He has done 
 it in millions before you into whose labours and 
 sorrows you have entered now. Be as faithful as 
 you can in your brief hour of service to what the 
 world has seen in Jesus, and by and by you shall 
 enter into the eternal fellowship of those whose 
 greatest gladness it is to have been counted worthy 
 to suffer with Him, that He and they might be 
 glorified together. 
 
 A picket frozen on duty, 
 
 A mother starved for her brood, 
 
 Socrates drinking the hemlock, 
 And Jesus on the rood. 
 
 And the millions who, humble and nameless. 
 The straight, hard pathway trod; 
 
 Some of us call it duty, 
 And others call it God. 
 
XII / 
 
 CHRIST DYING FOR SINNERS 
 
 " For scarcely for a righteous 7nan will 07ie die : yet 
 peradventure for a good inan some would even dare to 
 die. But God commendeth His love toward us., in that, 
 while we were yet sinners^ Christ died for us.^^ — RoM. 
 V. 7-8. 
 
 This great evangelical saying is perfectly clear 
 and intelligible just at it stands, but to realise its 
 true bearing we ought not to consider it apart from 
 its context. There is a vast background of religious 
 ideas here which have to be taken into account in 
 order to appreciate the force of one such utterance 
 as this text of ours. It is hardly possible for us 
 in the time at our disposal this morning to touch 
 upon more than a few of those ideas, but we must 
 not ignore them altogether on the mistaken assump- 
 tion that our text can be sliced away from them, so 
 to speak, and become its own explanation. This 
 whole epistle is a carefully woven piece of reason- 
 ing, starting from certain premises and leading to 
 fixed conclusions. If you want theology you have 
 certainly got it here, for it is doctrinal from begin- 
 ning to end. How remote it seems from everyday 
 life ! I do not believe there are three men in this 
 congregation who ever take the trouble to read this 
 epistle through. You like particular sayings in it, 
 
 174; 
 
CHRIST DYING FOR SINNERS 175 
 
 maybe, but you never sit down to follow up and lay 
 hold of the argument as a whole. Mind, I am not 
 blaming you for the omission ; I only point out the 
 fact. But this fact has one bad result, namely, that 
 people go on quoting the apostle Paul without 
 realising that there are very few Pauline sentences 
 which can be properly understood without a careful 
 examination of the fabric of thought in which they 
 appear. Most interpreters of his meaning do even 
 worse; they come to these writings with their own 
 fabric of thought ready made, and make use of 
 isolated Pauline utterances to confirm it. 
 
 There is no saying in the whole of the New Tes- 
 tament to which this observation can be more fairly 
 applied than the one which forms our text this 
 morning. Very few people are able to read it with- 
 out prejudice or with a clear understanding of the 
 apostle's whole subject. In the background of our 
 minds there is a system of so-called Christian belief 
 in which we have been trained from our youth up, 
 and which we think we find here. Let me remind 
 you of it before I go any farther. You must for- 
 give me for stating it crudely; I want to state it 
 crudely in order that you may think of it in its 
 unlovely nakedness. Here it is : We are all sin- 
 ners. We became sinners before we were born. 
 We could not help it, but it is no good saying so ; 
 we are as guilty as if we could help it. We were 
 born in sin, but are as much to blame as though we 
 had been born innocent. Adam did the mischief 
 ages ago, and we have inherited the consequences. 
 God was angry with Adam for bringing sin into 
 the world, and has been angry with the whole race 
 
176 CHRIST DYING FOR SINNERS 
 
 ever since, although He has alloweH it to go on 
 sinning and suffering for generations without num- 
 ber. He is angry because He is a God of justice. 
 His justice takes the form of leaving individual 
 souls to suffer and struggle here for a while, and 
 then at the moment of death plunging them into a 
 hell of everlasting torment. But this incomprehen- 
 sible Being is also a God of love. How the two are 
 to be reconciled is a mystery. One might fairly 
 question how the Creator who let His creation go 
 wrong so early in its history, and prepared an end- 
 less hell for the victims of His failure, could be at 
 the same time a God of love — but there it is, that is 
 what we have been told about Him. Because He was 
 a God of love He waited a few thousand years, and 
 then sent His beloved Son to make a restoration 
 possible. This beloved Son is a different kind of 
 son from ourselves — in fact we are not sons at all, 
 we are only creatures ; we shall come to be regarded 
 as sons only if we accept the benefits of the redemp- 
 tion which the real Son has come to achieve. Who 
 He is, and how He does the work, are equally in- 
 comprehensible. The theologians have been trying 
 to explain for nineteen hundred years, and are as 
 busy as ever. But the general outline appears to 
 be as follows. The Son of God is born as a little 
 baby in an entirely miraculous way which is sup- 
 posed to be holier than all other births; grows up 
 to manhood ; teaches people for a few months, and 
 then submits to being put to death upon a cross. 
 Only a few people hear about Him Avhile He is 
 alive, and the great majority of them regard Him 
 as an ordinary man ; some call Him good, some 
 
CHRIST DYING FOR SINNERS 177 
 
 call Him bad, and the latter are powerful enough 
 to have him condemned as a criminal. They never 
 dream that that condemnation has anything to do 
 with the salvation of the world. But it has; it turns 
 out afterwards that this was the very thing He came 
 for. He did not come to teach people or even to 
 live an ideal life — at any rate, these were quite sub- 
 ordinate to His main purpose; He came to die a 
 death. Those who put Him to death were quite 
 unaware of this, but their ignorance did not matter 
 in the least. God accepted this death as a full and 
 sufHcient substitute for all that sinful mankind 
 would otherwise have had to suffer. Why He 
 should do so, or why it should be just or reasonable 
 to do so, is not stated. This death, mind you, is 
 the equivalent of all that the millions of sinners who 
 have been born into this world since Adam fell 
 would have to endure to all eternity in hell. Why 
 it should be so nobody can understand, we are bid- 
 den to accept it on faith. But the amnesty is not 
 quite complete, for all that; there is a condition 
 attached to it. We have to "believe." This be- 
 lieving means that we are to claim the benefits of 
 this deliverance before we die, it would be no use 
 claiming it afterwards. As it is probable that only 
 a small minority of the human race have ever 
 availed themselves of this condition, we can only 
 infer that, so far as the majority are concerned, 
 the destiny of the race is just what it would 
 have been if the Redeemer had never come, that is, 
 they have all gone, or are going, to hell. Time 
 was, and not so long ago, when preachers and 
 theologians said so with the greatest clearness; 
 
178 CHRIST DYING FOR SINNERS 
 
 they do not seem to know what to say about it 
 now. 
 
 While I have been giving this rude outhne of 
 popular belief concerning what is presumed in my 
 text, I have no doubt that some of you have been 
 saying mentally that few would put the case so 
 baldly now-a-days. You are quite right, and that 
 is precisely why I have stated it. It is still pre- 
 sumed in Christian thought, and especially in 
 Christian preaching, by men who have really ceased 
 to believe it, if they ever did believe it. They want 
 to believe and disbelieve it at the same time. They 
 will tell you that no one nowadays, of ordinary in- 
 telligence, believes in the fall of Adam as an actual 
 historical event; nevertheless they believe in a 
 similar catastrophe of some kind, though nobody 
 knows where, when, or how it came about. They 
 concede that man's physical beginnings were as 
 lowly as those of the brutes, but assert that at some 
 one point in history brute ignorance made way for 
 sin, and God's plans were frustrated to such an 
 extent that redemption became a necessity. They 
 go on to admit, tacitly if not overtly, that an eternal 
 hell is unthinkable, but they do not seem to see that 
 as soon as they have said this the whole fabric of 
 the doctrine of redemption collapses, for its founda- 
 tion motive is gone. Then, when it comes to a ques- 
 tion of the mode in which that redemption was 
 effected, they take refuge in statements about the 
 mystery of the cross, without ever attempting to 
 give a clear idea of what they mean. It is this kind 
 of hazy and inconsistent presentation of Christian 
 truth which is the curse upon modern Christian 
 
CHRIST DYING FOR SINNERS 179 
 
 activity, and we ought never to rest until we have 
 put an end to it. Men feel, and rightly feel, that 
 there is a great truth underneath the Christian doc- 
 trine of the cross of Christ, and they do not want 
 to let it go. But while all this agglomeration of 
 rubbish, and worse than rubbish, gathers about it, 
 we shall never see the true glory of the simple 
 evangel of Jesus as He saw it Himself. Last year 
 I was present in a great religious assembly which 
 (chiefly as a protest against my presence, I think) 
 rose and sang, '* When I survey the wondrous 
 cross." I sang it myself as hard as any of them, 
 and would sing it to-day. But there must be no 
 half measures with the lie that is strangling the 
 glorious spiritual truth celebrated in those words 
 and enshrined in the heart of my text. 
 
 Now turn to the thought of the writer of the 
 epistle to the Romans, and let us see whether it 
 squares with the conventional belief we have been 
 examining. Here is a surprising and, to me, inex- 
 plicable thing. There are abundance of scholars in 
 our seats of learning and in our Christian pulpits 
 to-day who are quite well aware that no man be- 
 lieves, and no sensible man dare preach, the doc- 
 trine of redemption as held by the apostle Paul — 
 supposing Paul to be the author of this epistle. I 
 suppose som.e of you think that the ideas I have just 
 been outlining are in substance the same as those 
 set forth in this part of the New Testament; if so, 
 you are mightily mistaken. Paul would have re- 
 pudiated every one of you as heretics. To him the 
 fall was real enough, and he knew nothing about 
 Darwin's Descent of Man, But there was this 
 
i8o CHRIST DYING FOR SINNERS 
 
 difference between Paul and your preceptors; he 
 believed that the principal penalty of sin was not 
 hell, but death — physical death. Is not that an 
 enormous difference to start with ? Here it is ; read 
 this epistle for yourself, but take off your coloured 
 glasses while you do it. Like you, he believed that 
 the death of the Son of God was the means of 
 human redemption, and that sinners have individu- 
 ally to believe in it in order to be saved; but see 
 what he meant by salvation. He was not thinking 
 of deliverance from a future hell ; he was thinking 
 of deliverance from death; he wanted things to be 
 made so that human beings would not need to die 
 any more. He was not even thinking of going to 
 heaven. What he wanted was that heaven should 
 come here, and that all believers in Christ should 
 be made immortal by having their physical bodies 
 transformed into something better. Here are the 
 words in the eighth chapter of this epistle, and they 
 mean exactly what they say : *' If the Spirit of Him 
 that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, 
 He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also 
 quicken your mortal bodies, by His Spirit that 
 dwelleth in you." Could anything be plainer ? But 
 honestly, is there a single man among you who 
 believes that? Of course you do not. It belongs 
 to a mode of thinking which is as remote from the 
 mind of the present age as the siege of Troy. You 
 do not believe that death came into this world in 
 any such way, or that salvation consists primarily 
 in being enabled to live on here for ever and ever. 
 And yet this is the notion presumed in my text. 
 We can see now quite plainly what Paul means by 
 
CHRIST DYING FOR SINNERS i8i 
 
 the significance of the death of Christ from his 
 point of view. When Christ died, He died, accord- 
 ing to Paul, because death was the penalty of sin. 
 There was no question of His dying to save you 
 and me from hell ; neither was there any question 
 as to how much He suffered or the manner of the 
 death He died. Paul's idea was that if He died at 
 all He submitted to the death penalty which we, and 
 not He, had justly incurred. But in doing this He 
 broke the power of death, so that henceforth those 
 who were joined to Him by faith need not die as 
 the rest of the world would have to die. This is all, 
 and it does not require much perspicacity to see 
 that there is not a single Church in Christendom 
 which holds that doctrine to-day. 
 
 But, having said all this, I desire to point out 
 that there was something present to Paul's mind 
 which is also present to yours and mine, and which 
 has given to doctrines about the death of Christ all 
 the vitality they have ever possessed. You will 
 soon see what that something was if you look at the 
 structure of this passage, and then compare it with 
 what you know of human life. Paul says that it 
 was a great thing for Christ to be willing to die 
 for sinners, and he appeals to his readers to say out 
 of their own experience whether this was not so. 
 He says that people are not often W'illing to die even 
 for the sake of a righteous man, although some- 
 times a few might dare to do so for a good man or 
 a good cause. We need not suppose that any im- 
 portant distinction is here intended to be drawn be- 
 tween the righteous and the good; all the writer 
 means is that the majority of people will not die 
 
i82 CHRIST DYING FOR SINNERS 
 
 for anybody, but that occasionally some heroic 
 being does give his life for something great and 
 good. The word ** man " is purposely left out in 
 this second clause in order to give the word 
 ** good " a greater scope. Very likely Paul has in 
 mind the devotion of a soldier who dies for his 
 general or his country. The point of the illustra- 
 tion is that Christ was found willing to die for 
 people who were not at all worthy of the sacrifice ; 
 He did not die for the good, but for the bad. Paul 
 leaps right at the heart of the matter when he says 
 that this magnificent seli-devotion on the part of 
 Jesus was a manifestation of the love of God. I am 
 glad he said that. It is his perception of that all- 
 dominating truth that redeems his theologising 
 from mere superstition, and has given it life and 
 power. This is where our experience joins on to 
 his, and helps us to see how, underneath even the 
 most divers forms of statement, men have always 
 been able to see that which was really great and 
 good in the relations of God and man. He has 
 touched the very point. The only thing we know 
 about the love of God, the only proof we have that 
 there is a God of love at all, is the willingness of 
 man to die for man ; and when we begin to talk 
 about that we see that the death of Christ is the 
 expression of the grandest kind of self-oblation that 
 has ever been made in the uplifting of mankind to 
 God. 
 
 Let me be perfectly plain with you. I do not 
 value in the least the intellectual framework in 
 which Paul inserts this great idea. His notions 
 about the fall, the connection between sin and 
 
CHRIST DYING FOR SINNERS 183 
 
 death, the wrath of God, and all such-like were due 
 to his training. They have done untold mischief 
 in Christianity, and it is time we got rid of them. 
 Paul was great, not because of these notions, but 
 in spite of them ; he was great because he saw right 
 to the heart of the meaning of the love of God, but 
 we can see that too, without subjecting ourselves to 
 Paul's theology or any one else's. It is not a matter 
 of theology, but of everyday experience. You can 
 see this truth at work any day you like, and you 
 need not go far to look for it. I wonder what Jesus 
 Himself would have thought if He had been told 
 of the word-spinning that would be indulged in, 
 in order to provide a proper theory of the way in 
 which He came to die, and what that death would 
 effect for the world. You may be quite certain 
 that He would have been astonished and even, per- 
 haps, indignant. He knew well enough why it was 
 that He had to die, and so did His adversaries. He 
 had to die because He stood for a certain ideal in 
 human relations, and in the relations of man and 
 God, which His countrymen refused to accept. 
 There was nothing new in that ideal ; it had been 
 preached before, but never so uncompromisingly 
 and vividly as by Jesus. It was an old truth so 
 plainly stated, and so bravely lived, that it cut at 
 the root of all the shams and hypocrisies of the 
 time. It was simply this : Love God and your 
 neighbour; or rather, love God in your neighbour. 
 That ancient maxim was the sum and substance of 
 all that Jesus had to say ; the rest was simply a com- 
 mentary upon it. He preached love, and then set 
 to work to show them what love was. His Jewish 
 
i84 CHRIST DYING FOR SINNERS 
 
 contemporaries were looking for the Kingdom of 
 God on earth. So was He, but He told them 
 plainly that the Kingdom of God was not what 
 they thought. He came very near what they 
 thought, so far as the externals of the Kingdom 
 were concerned; where Jesus differed from his critics 
 was that He maintained that no kingdom was worth 
 having which did not imply in every man simplicity 
 and humility of heart, and a willingness to find 
 one's true joy in the service of the whole. He 
 wanted individual men to stop thinking of them- 
 selves apart from human society or from God, and 
 to see instead that they had no life worth calling 
 their own until it was given freely and fully in the 
 service of the common good. Even to-day that 
 teaching is ahead of human perceptions, although 
 we are beginning to see that it is true, and that 
 nothing less than that will ever break our chains 
 and set us free from all the ills of life. Jesus man- 
 aged to live it Himself. From first to last His 
 career moved along that line, and when it closed in 
 death it w^as only because those who killed Him 
 could not understand its greatness. They would not 
 kill Him to-day, perhaps; but do not imagine that 
 they would understand Him much better than the 
 Jews and Romans of nineteen hundred years ago. 
 Few would believe, to begin with, that He was 
 really sincere. If He undertook a public ministry, 
 as He did then, we should begin to question His 
 motives; we should pick holes in His character; 
 should laugh at Him, call Him a visionary, a rogue, 
 or a fool. If the force of His personality made it 
 impossible to ignore Him we should begin to get 
 
CHRIST DYING FOR SINNERS 185 
 
 angry. If He pointed out with unerring finger the 
 unrealities and inconsistencies of our ideals and 
 practices, as He did with the Pharisees, we should 
 plot and scheme to get rid of Him or discredit Him 
 in the eyes of the public. Try to imagine a per- 
 fectly unselfish, high-souled man, with a clear 
 vision of the wrongs and sufferings of the time, and 
 the will to right them, and you have Jesus. Thank 
 God we have had a fair number of people who have 
 caught the spirit of Jesus, but never one, so far as 
 we know, who was so utterly lost and absorbed in 
 the good of mankind that he might be said to have 
 no life but the whole. Yet such was Jesus, if we 
 are to believe what tradition says of Him. A life 
 like that, conjoined to the driving force of a tran- 
 scendent personality, was sure to produce an explo- 
 sion. It would do so even now. For, remember, 
 if the ideal of Jesus were carried out there would 
 no longer be any question of ranks and grades in 
 society. " He that would be first among you let 
 him be last of all and servant of all." What a revo- 
 lution ! What would become of money-making ? 
 All getting for yourself would be utterly impos- 
 sible ; no one would want to do such a thing. What 
 about Governments ? Governments in our sense of 
 the word would disappear for ever, for men would 
 not need to be governed. We should have solved 
 the great antinomy between communal restraints 
 and individual freedom ; we should all be socialists, 
 and all anarchists too, and yet we should call our- 
 selves by neither name. No, it is not at all won- 
 derful that Jesus had to die. His career to-day 
 would be a living death if He preached that 
 
i86 CHRIST DYING FOR SINNERS 
 
 doctrine with the same moral intensity behind it, for 
 it would go straight in the teeth of every vested 
 interest on the face of the earth. 
 
 But, just because He lived that life and taught 
 that truth in ages long ago, this world is a sweeter 
 place to live in now, and, '* the best is yet to be." 
 Life may be sad and dark to most of us, but we 
 have seen the shining of a great light, and things 
 can never be again as though that light had never 
 shone. There never has been any moral dynamic 
 comparable to the death of Jesus, measured by its 
 awakening effects in the consciences and hearts of 
 men. But why should we separate it from all self- 
 sacrifice that has ever taken place before or since? 
 That brave love which showed itself so grandly in 
 Jesus was God in humanity, and we have seen the 
 same God a thousand times in lives and deeds 
 morally akin to Jesus. Paul saw that plainly, and 
 so did some of the other New Testament writers. If 
 we want a name for the God in man we cannot do 
 better than use the word Christ. It is a larger word 
 than Jesus, although it includes the latter. I cannot 
 think of Jesus as other than Christ, but neither can 
 I think of Him as any longer limited by the outlook 
 of the carpenter of Nazareth. I think of Jesus now, 
 as Paul thought of Him, enthroned above the limita- 
 tions of time and sense ; I see Him one with God in 
 knowledge and power. But when I ask how He got 
 there I turn my gaze back again to struggling, suf- 
 fering men and women, and I see love giving itself 
 in them as He gave Himself long ago in the days of 
 His flesh. Perhaps there is no one amongst us in 
 whom God shines forth as plainly as He shone in 
 
CHRIST DYING FOR SINNERS 187 
 
 the earthly Jesus, but He shines for all that, and 
 wherever He shines I see a Christ. If you want to 
 see Christ, the God revealed in man, go to your own 
 homes; He is there. Look into the face of that 
 good woman who loves you dearly without asking 
 herself why. Call to mind the things you have 
 known her to do for you and others in which she 
 never counted the cost or spared herself. Think of 
 her patient fidelity in times of trouble or misfortune. 
 Did she ever think of deserting you or leaving you 
 to face the worst alone ? Is not this a beautiful 
 thing, a holy thing, that dwells beside you every 
 day? You are accustomed to take it for granted, 
 perhaps, without thinking of all that it means. In 
 that same wife and mother there may be some other 
 things you do not like to see; a little peevishness, 
 possibly ; now and then a measure of unreasonable- 
 ness, or failure to understand what seems so plain 
 to you ; there are hours, no doubt, when you feel as 
 though there were a grievous lack somewhere. Just 
 so ; this is not Jesus, you see ; there is nobody in 
 the wide world who sees the highest and deepest 
 all the time, and never fails in living it. Jesus was 
 Christ all the time, so we are told. But is there any 
 one who is not Christ sovie of the time ? If there 
 were such a person he would be something less than 
 human. Show me a being, however limited in out- 
 look and defective in character, in w^hom love has 
 ever meant the willing acceptance of a cross, and 
 I will show you something of Christ, and therefore 
 something of the love of God. There may be but 
 little of it, but it is there. It is the one central hope 
 for poor humanity. In all our filthiness, meanness. 
 
i88 CHRIST DYING FOR SINNERS 
 
 brutality, crooked ways, hatred, scheming, distrust 
 of one another, and all that exhibits the mark of the 
 beast in human nature, we need never despair so 
 long as we can discern that divine mystery, the love 
 of God on the cross of human ministry to human 
 need in the midst of anguish and pain. We may 
 say, and say truly, that the tragedy of Calvary has 
 been as long as history ; it has never ceased ; the 
 scourgings, the mockings, and the crown of thorns 
 are ever being inflicted upon the dying Christ, and 
 from that agony humanity rises into newness of 
 life. Do not speak of disbelieving it; it is not in 
 your power to disbelieve it; this is no dogma, it is 
 a process which is going on every day and hour 
 before your very eyes. 
 
 And yet even this is not all. The truth in my 
 text penetrates to a deeper stratum still. We all 
 know a little of the thrill of giving ourselves in the 
 service of some great ideal which has power to call 
 forth the best in us. I do not think it is so rare as 
 Paul thought to find people willing. to die at the call 
 of duty. The Queen of Portugal would have died 
 the other day to save her son, and millions of 
 humble mothers would do the same. There is never 
 any lack of volunteers for a forlorn hope. Of all 
 the hundreds of men here this morning there are 
 few, if any, who would not be willing to give their 
 lives for some one or something outside the circle 
 of their own immediate self-interest. This is not a 
 question for elaborate discussion, nor can it be 
 elucidated in cold blood ; it is in moments of great 
 emotion that men find themselves capable of facing 
 death when something has to be achieved that they 
 
CHRIST DYING FOR SINNERS 189 
 
 hold dearer than life. Yes, there are some things 
 for which true men would dare to die. They have 
 died for liberty, for truth and honour, for a noble 
 leader or a sainted name. They have died for Jesus 
 Himself, and no lives have ever been more cheer- 
 fully given than those which purchased the early 
 victories of the cross. But Paul is quite right, 
 nevertheless. These things are comparatively easy 
 when placed alongside of the call to die for that 
 which seems beyond the saving, and undeserving of 
 the sacrifice. When Jesus died on Calvary, the 
 wretches for whom His life was given were spitting 
 in His face. They did not see what that life had 
 meant, and He from whom they tore it must have 
 felt as though it were a failure. It would not have 
 been wonderful if Jesus had died cursing His mur- 
 derers, but to die believing that they were worth 
 the saving — that was divine. If there had been 
 only one man in the mob who felt the power of that 
 great self-offering it would have made Christianity 
 possible. Such a death could not be died in vain 
 without dethroning God. It was bound to do what 
 it has proved itself able to do ; it has called forth a 
 response in human nature which is showing itself 
 stronger as ages pass. Not a single word that you 
 or I have ever said or sung about the death of Jesus 
 exaggerates in the least the moral significance of 
 that great event, even though neither He nor His 
 murderers knew what it would do for mankind. 
 Jesus never thought of dying to screen His foes 
 from punishment. He was not thinking of their 
 punishment at all. The one great purpose in His 
 mind and heart was that of leading men to see what 
 
igo CHRIST DYING FOR SINNERS 
 
 life might be if lived in the fellowship of the love of 
 God. The price He had to pay was terrible, but 
 the result was worth it. It was His death that 
 taught the lesson ; if He had chosen any other way 
 than the way that finally led Him to Calvary, if He 
 had sought to be a Caesar or a Napoleon, the world 
 would still be sighing for a Saviour. 
 
 This is the greatest truth of all, the truth which 
 men have dimly felt to be most precious in the 
 gospel of Jesus. To die for sinners ! How few can 
 do it I We all draw the line somewhere. There 
 comes a point beyond which you will not lay the 
 life down. You can die for husband, brother, 
 friend. Perhaps you can even die for the prodigal 
 if he does not tax your patience too often. But who 
 will die — that is who will suffer the last extremity, 
 whatever it may be — for the ungrateful and the un- 
 repentant ? Many a mother has died for her boy — 
 died to all that life holds dear — and seen no result 
 of the agony. Like Jesus, her Calvary has ended 
 in a broken heart. But then, he was her boy, bone 
 of her bone and flesh of her flesh. How many 
 people are there in all the w^orld who could live as 
 Jesus lived, and die as Jesus died, for humanity as 
 such, humanity foul, degraded, and brutal ; human- 
 ity scornful in its triumphant evil ? That is a test 
 of divine love which has not yet been equalled. 
 Moreover, it takes heaven into the nethermost pit 
 of hell. It tells me something of which I never 
 wish to lose sight again. It tells me that I can 
 never rise to highest heaven while there is a single 
 burden in the universe that I am unwilling to share. 
 It tells me that no sinner can suffer alone, and that 
 
CHRIST DYING FOR SINNERS 191 
 
 no saviour can stand aloof from what the sinner 
 endures. The highest reach of saviourhood is that 
 which regards the sinner's sentence as its very own 
 and seelis to take the sinner's place. Is there such 
 saviourhood ? Yes, there is, and until you know it 
 you do not know that which is deepest both in man 
 and God. 
 
 A member of this Thursday congregation recently 
 sent me a simple little story of a poor, ignorant 
 woman in whom this truth shone grandly forth. I 
 believe the account was supposed to be authentic; 
 but, whether or no, it can be paralleled a thousand 
 times in God's world to-day. This poor creature 
 had been ill-used by her husband, a worthless 
 wretch. She had had to work hard for a precarious 
 livelihood because he refused to work at all. Life 
 was so hard and dark for her that she might have 
 been excused for hating and scorning the man who 
 had made it so. This was Calvary over again, you 
 see; and this child of God was being crucified. The 
 day came when the husband was sentenced to penai 
 servitude for a crime against society. One day the 
 person who tells the story met this woman helping 
 a broken-down man along the street towards her 
 home. It was the released convict, and he looked 
 the brute he was. Her explanation of her action 
 was, " You see, sir, Jim has no one but me now I" 
 Exactly. This man was reaping what he had sown, 
 and she was voluntarily enduring it along with him. 
 His sin had made her poor, and she accepted the 
 poverty ; it had narrowed and darkened her life, and 
 she was willing to have it so rather than desert him. 
 She was his one hope. She was bearing some of 
 
192 CHRIST DYING FOR SINNERS 
 
 the worst of the consequences of his wrong-doing 
 for him. If ever that man could be brought back 
 to truth and right it would be her suffering love that 
 would do it. It was all unfair, so gloriously unfair ! 
 Can you not see what it was? This was Christ 
 bearing the burden of sin. This is the way in 
 which He is dying for sinners to-day. He is being 
 slain on the altar of human hearts, and there is no 
 other way in which the world is being saved or can 
 be saved. 
 
 When I survey the wondrous Cross 
 On which the Prince of Glory died. 
 
 My richest gain I count but loss, 
 And pour contempt on all my pride. 
 
 Were the whole realm of nature mine. 
 That were an offering far too small ; 
 
 Love so amazing, so divine, 
 Demands my life, my soul, my all ! 
 
XIII 
 
 THE TWO NATURES 
 
 " For I delight in the law of God after the inward 
 
 man : but I see another law in my 7nembers warring 
 against the law of my mind^ a?td bringing me into 
 captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.'' — 
 Rom. vii. 22-23. 
 
 Whether the experience declared in these words 
 and their immediate context be that of the great 
 apostle whose name it Hears is of comparatively- 
 small importance; the impressive thing about it is 
 its intense personal character. It has frequently- 
 been pointed out that the epistle to the Romans is 
 more theological and less human than the other 
 writings ascribed to St. Paul. This is quite true, 
 but the criticism certainly does not apply to the 
 passage which forms our text ; that is human 
 enough. Here is a living man telling us of his 
 own inner life with its unceasing struggle between 
 good and evil. In using this language he speaks 
 for every one of us, for probably there is not a 
 single soul among us who does not know at first 
 hand something of the experience which is here so 
 feelingly described. It is but seldom that men talk 
 of these things, but their reticence does not mean 
 that they think lightly of them. The best of men 
 13 193 
 
194 THE TWO NATURES 
 
 must feel at times as though there were two natures 
 within them struggling for the mastery against 
 each other, and they never can be quite sure that 
 the higher will prove itself permanently stronger 
 than the lower. This presence of the two natures 
 within every soul is one of the perplexing mysteries 
 of our mundane existence. Theology or no the- 
 ology, religion or no religion, the fact has to be 
 faced. We cannot pretend to ignore it. The angel 
 and the devil, the God and the beast, are ever pitted 
 against each other within the human breast. I will 
 make bold to say that there is not a single man 
 before me at this moment, Christian or agnostic, 
 Mohammedan or Jew, who does not know what I 
 mean. We all know it; we have to know it; and 
 there are times when the knowledge is positive 
 pain. Permit me to examine the problem at close 
 quarters for a few moments before passing on to 
 suggest what I believe to be the most helpful way 
 of meeting it. A full and complete solution of it 
 we shall never find on this side of the grave; but 
 we are not without light upon it, and to a large 
 extent the solution lies in our own hands. 
 
 Note, then, to begin with, the intense realism of 
 the way in which this man describes the antagonism 
 between his higher and his lower self. No matter 
 how earnestly he may desire to do the high and 
 noble thing, he finds himself hampered and hin- 
 dered by something within himself which drags 
 him down and makes him the victim of that which 
 he despises and abhors. This latter tendency he 
 calls the '' law of sin " or ''the flesh." He seems 
 to be thinking more particularly of the propensities 
 
THE TWO NATURES 195 
 
 towards sensual indulgence, but the experience 
 holds good of forms of evil which are not the direct 
 result of animal cravings. The presence of these 
 propensities is a humiliation to a high-minded man, 
 but he cannot deceive himself as to what they are. 
 He feels that, much as he would like to do the best 
 and highest, he is always conscious of the presence 
 and power of that which is base and foul. He can- 
 not blame the outside world, and does not try to 
 do so; the evil is innate, how^ever it came there. It 
 is himself and yet not himself. He earnestly longs 
 to get free from it, and has succeeded in convincing 
 himself that it is somehow bound up with life in 
 the body. He regards the pure spirit, the divine 
 essence, in every man as being weighted and tar- 
 nished by being imprisoned in the flesh. Hence 
 his cry, *' O wretched man that I am ! who shall 
 deliver me from this body of death?" In this kind 
 of language we have undoubtedly a suggestion of 
 the doctrine, so extensively preached at the time 
 my text was written, that the flesh is the seat of all 
 evil, and that to free the soul from sin all that has 
 to be done is to free it from the body. I do not 
 mean that the writer really believes this without 
 qualification, but it is plain enough that he is in- 
 fluenced by it. Nor is it wonderful that it should 
 be so. When one considers the amount of wicked- 
 ness which seems to spring from the desires of the 
 flesh overpowering the will, it is quite a natural 
 thing to believe that moral evil has its seat in the 
 body rather than the soul. I cannot stay to labour 
 this point; I can only remark that its importance 
 in contemporary thought has influenced to some 
 
196 THE TWO NATURES 
 
 extent the language of our text. Evidently the 
 writer believes with all his heart that what is 
 wanted, in order to bring his whole being into har- 
 mony with the law of God, is that he should be 
 delivered from the burden of the flesh. And by this 
 he does not mean dying and going to heaven ; he 
 means, as you can see from the very next chapter, 
 that the mortal body is somehow to become a spirit- 
 ual body in which there shall no longer be any dis- 
 cord between duty and desire. '' But if the Spirit 
 of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in 
 you. He that raised up Christ from the dead shall 
 also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that 
 dwelleth in you." This passage means exactly 
 what it says, and represents a mode of thought 
 which has entirely passed away. It is an emphatic 
 statement of the writer's expectation that a day 
 would come when, at the quickening touch of the 
 Spirit of God, the corruptible physical body would 
 become a glorious spiritual body which would never 
 again be subject to death or decay, and which 
 would be a fitting outward expression of the angel- 
 soul within. I repeat that we do not think that 
 now. Nevertheless, the moral problem behind that 
 expectation is ours still. Like Paul and his con- 
 temporaries, we want to know how to be delivered 
 from this body of death, this mass of evil tendency 
 within our nature which so often seems to set the 
 will at nought. 
 
 How terribly real this problem is I Here, let us 
 suppose, is a man in a high position, before the 
 public eye. He is greatly respected and beloved, 
 a man of talent and usefulness, as well as of much 
 
THE TWO NATURES 197 
 
 force of character. He may be greatly looked up 
 to in his particular circle and regarded as a model 
 of probity. Suddenly, one day that man's reputa- 
 tion collapses like a house of cards. Something 
 comes out about him which has been kept secret 
 for a long time, but the publication of which im- 
 mediately damns him with society. Perhaps he is 
 unable to face the storm, and therefore chooses 
 death or flies the country, perhaps he is not so for- 
 tunate as to find this mode of escape possible — his 
 offence may have been one of which the law takes 
 cognisance, and the first intimation which his 
 friends receive of his fall is the news that he is in 
 a prison cell. Picture the consternation among 
 those who have loved and trusted him. Imagine 
 the bewilderment and even agony of mind with 
 which those who have received good from this 
 man's inspiration and example now begin to won- 
 der whether there is truth and honour to be found 
 anywhere on earth. There may be some coarse 
 natures who will be ready with their gibes and 
 jeers and their brutal rejoicing over a fallen idol, 
 but I think these are never numerous in proportion 
 to the community as a whole ; my own observation 
 rather goes to prove that as a rule sorrow and pity 
 predominate in the presence of such a moral 
 tragedy. Perhaps there is a reason for this. It 
 may arise from the fact that every man knows he 
 carries within himself a very demon of hell that in 
 an unguarded moment might fling him beside the 
 ruined and the lost. *' Let him that thinketh he 
 standeth take heed lest he fall." The world's ver- 
 dict is relentless, but not wholly unfeeling. The 
 
198 THE TWO NATURES 
 
 flaming sword of human judgment bars the way- 
 back to the Eden from which the erring soul has 
 been driven, but the angel who holds it has eyes 
 of sadness. In Oscar Wilde's harrowing book, 
 De ProfundiSy there is one touching paragraph in 
 which the author describes his own anguish in 
 the day of exposure, and the way in which one 
 man behaved to him in that season of trial. He 
 says : — 
 
 ** Where there is sorrow there is holy ground. . . . 
 When I w^as brought down from my prison to the 
 Court of Bankruptcy between two policemen, a 
 friend waited in the long, dreary corridor, that, 
 before the whole crowd, whom an action so sweet 
 and simple hushed into silence, he might gravely 
 raise his hat to me, as, handcuffed with bowed 
 head, I passed him by. Men have gone to heaven 
 for smaller things than that. It was in this spirit, 
 and with this mode of love, that the saints knelt down 
 to wash the feet of the poor, or stooped to kiss the 
 leper on the cheek. I have never said one single 
 word to him about what he did. I do not know 
 to the present moment whether he is aware that I 
 was even conscious of his action. It is not a thing 
 for which one can render formal thanks in formal 
 words. I store it in the treasure-house of my heart. 
 I keep it there as a secret debt that I am glad to 
 think I can never possibly repay." 
 
 I have no doubt that this incident actually took 
 place, for I think I know what prompted it. The 
 man who took off his hat to the poor, crushed, 
 broken-hearted prisoner was gifted with moral in- 
 sight. He knew that the sufferer was not wholly 
 
THE TWO NATURES 199 
 
 corrupt, so he bared his head to the diviner self 
 that had never fallen. He knew that what had been 
 worthy of respect in him before was no sham, but 
 a reality, and was worthy of respect still. He 
 knew, too, that no man is so superior to temptation 
 that he can venture to despise his fallen brother; 
 the difference in merit between the victor and the 
 vanquished in such a strife is, perhaps, not so very 
 great. In one man, passion may become a surging 
 torrent, a volcanic eruption blasting and destroy- 
 ing all in a moment the whole moral beauty and 
 fertility of a lifetime; in another, it may be a 
 sinister presence against which God's warrior has 
 continually to be on guard. And whether the issue 
 is victory or defeat, no man who has ever fought 
 the battle with Apollyon in the Valley of Humilia- 
 tion should dare to despise the weaker soul who 
 has been worsted m the same conflict. How 
 fatally easy it is to trifle with the highest and 
 deceive one's self as to what is actually taking 
 place ! How one false step leads to another ! How 
 closely the best in human nature is allied to the 
 worst ! How, almost insensibly, one can become 
 entangled with evil in such a way that one's very 
 moral obligations seem to render it more difficult to 
 escape the sin I You do a wrong, and forthwith 
 you find that to put it right you must inflict some 
 anguish upon the innocent. What a hell for a 
 sensitive soul is involved in the fact that every 
 departure from rectitude creates a fresh set of rela- 
 tions which impose a further barrier in the way of 
 getting back to purity and simplicity of life ! As 
 Lancelot confessed to King Arthur : 
 
200 THE TWO NATURES 
 
 In me lived a sin 
 So strange, of such a kind, that all of pure, 
 Noble, and knightly in me twined and clung 
 Round that one sin, until the wholesome flower 
 And poisonous grew together, each as each, 
 Not to be pluck'd asunder. 
 
 We are all familiar, too, with that intractable 
 type of character commonly called the ne'er-do-well. 
 One member of a family is utterly different from 
 all the rest in that from his childhood up he has 
 seemed to lack ordinary moral perception. He 
 may be lovable in disposition, kind and gentle in 
 ordinary circumstances, but nothing that can be 
 said or done will avail to save him from making a 
 wreck of his career. He has little or no strength of 
 will, unless a fatal obstinacy in the wrong direction 
 can be regarded as strength of will. He breaks his 
 promises without compunction. Again and again 
 his friends provide him with a fresh start, only to 
 find that they have been deceived and all their 
 efforts rendered vain by the inherent viciousness of 
 the abnormal nature with which they have to deal. 
 There are special times, perhaps, when the poor 
 creature loathes himself and sees a little of the 
 sorrow and anguish he is causing, but these do 
 not last long, and no one knows better than himself 
 the reason why. And yet, surely, such cases are 
 unexplainable by any ordinary theory of religion 
 or morals. Why should a child be foredoomed 
 from the cradle, as it were, to be a constant source 
 of misery to himself and others and to baffle the 
 very best that human love can do ? We have no 
 clearer answer to-day than was present to the mind 
 of the writer of the epistle to the Romans ages ago. 
 
THE TWO NATURES 201 
 
 I remember in my student days being asked to go 
 and plead with a young man who had contracted 
 the gambhng habit, and, as is usually the case, 
 had fallen a victim to other vices through the evil 
 associations thus engendered. This man was well 
 connected; heir to a flourishing business; the only 
 son of parents who idolised him. He was happily 
 married and had two beautiful children. One would 
 have thought that there was not the slightest like- 
 lihood of such a man being tempted to give way 
 to the practices which I was assured were ruining 
 him. It was pitiful to watch the grief of those who 
 loved him — and I soon found out that what they 
 told me of his good qualities was the simple truth. 
 But all one could say was useless. How well I 
 remember the self-despair with which the poor 
 fellow flung out his hands in a helpless gesture, 
 saying as he did so : " It is no good your talking 
 to me. I knew what you would say before you 
 came ; I could say it all myself. But I should only 
 lie to you if I were to tell you that I could mend my 
 ways, for I know I can't. There is something in 
 my nature that is driving me straight to hell — in- 
 deed, I am in hell now. I do not enjoy the life I 
 am leading. I do not know why I lead it. I am 
 just carried on in spite of myself, and the sooner 
 the end comes the better." I am afraid the end did 
 come in the w-ay anticipated. I never heard that 
 there was any change for the better; probably this 
 poor wretch went over the precipice of absolute ruin 
 at last. It is easy to pass a hasty condemnation 
 upon the unmanliness and contemptible weakness 
 of such a man as this. We may detect signs of 
 
202 THE TWO NATURES 
 
 defective home training in youth ; may believe that 
 a too indulgent mother may not have been wholly 
 free from blame in sowing the seeds of habits which 
 led to the inevitable catastrophe. But that does 
 not explain everything; in fact, it explains very 
 little. Any one whose work for God lies among 
 the degraded and criminal classes will tell you that 
 nothing is more utterly perplexing, or more bitterly 
 discouraging, than to have to deal with inherent 
 weakness of will and an innate tendency towards 
 some particular form or forms of vice. They 
 represent the problem of my text carried to the 
 extreme. They represent, too, what we all know 
 in some measure about ourselves. We are all weak 
 of will somewhere ; somewhere within us there lurks 
 the enemy who might work our overthrow if we 
 had nothing wherewith to resist him. We can 
 neither expel nor destroy him completely. All our 
 life through, and in all our activities, we have to 
 remain conscious of this inner antagonism between 
 the higher and the lower. 
 
 Now what is this lower? What is this prin- 
 ciple of evil of whose presence we are all so im- 
 mediately aware, and which in our weaker brethren 
 is able to work such havoc and shame in spite 
 of themselves? We can no longer pretend to 
 account for it by saying that it is the result 
 of a primeval fall of the race from purity, and yet 
 it does not seem sufficient to say that it is our 
 natural selfishness coming out. I dare say you 
 all know that in my view an act of sin is an act of 
 selfishness pure and simple. But the thing behind 
 the sin is not necessarily selfishness any more than 
 
THE TWO NATURES 203 
 
 cancer or madness is selfishness. What then is this 
 dreadful thing that urges men downward? What 
 does it spring from ? Is it true, as the apostle 
 says, that if we could get rid of the mass of tend- 
 ency it represents we should be free to obey the 
 law of God without let or hindrance ? Well, I 
 will tell you what I think it is. I believe it is the 
 same divine force which, rightly directed, produces 
 the greatest and worthiest human achievements. 
 There is no tendency of human nature which is 
 radically and essentially bad; as a tendency it is 
 neither good nor bad, it is only an urge. Whether 
 it shall be good or bad depends upon the direction 
 we give to it. The very same electric current which 
 launches a thunderbolt powerful enough to blast a 
 landscape and destroy life and beauty may be 
 harnessed to the service of man, drive hiis engines, 
 grind his corn, and light his dwellings. The very 
 same mountain torrent which uncontrolled will 
 sweep whole villages to destruction and convert a 
 smiling countryside into an inland sea may be used 
 as the means of bringing life instead of death to the 
 land upon which it descends. So it is with human 
 nature. Look beneath every evil deed that was 
 ever committed. Ask why it was what it was, and 
 you will find that the force behind it might have 
 been a means of blessing to the world instead of a 
 curse to those upon whom it fell. There is in every 
 man a Dr. Jekyll and a Mr. Hyde, and yet the 
 two are one; the very same life force produces both. 
 As to which shall appear all depends upon the 
 objection given to that force. The great criminal 
 is a great statesman or a great inventor gone to 
 
204 THE TWO NATURES 
 
 waste. The gambler has the explorer's instinct, 
 and with it all the making of a hero. Even the 
 sensualist is not the victim of a passion in which he 
 shares with the brutes instead of the gods — far 
 from it. Without that passion no man could lift 
 his gaze above the clod; it is present in every 
 activity in which the highest human energies are 
 engaged. No poet, no artist, has ever yet been 
 without it or ever could be. No saint, in the truest 
 sense of the word, but has been the product of it. 
 The theologian may lack it, but the preacher never 
 can ; it is that mysterious, subtle, all-pervading 
 essence of reality which not only draws man and 
 woman together but binds all humanity into an 
 indissoluble whole. It is that in you and me which 
 bids us reach out to one another and join hands in 
 the march towards our heavenly goal. It is a 
 known fact, noted and commented upon by human- 
 ists and psychologists from generation to genera- 
 tion, that some of the finest examples of religious 
 and artistic genius have been peculiarly prone to 
 sins of the flesh. It has been surmised that this 
 may have been the case with Paul himself, and 
 that it is this fact which accounts for the language 
 of this seventh of Romans. Be that as it may, the 
 general fact is indisputable, and it is not impos- 
 sible to see why. It is because those who have 
 been the master spirits of the race on its highest 
 planes of achievement have been those in which 
 this unifying force has had the greatest sway. 
 Once lower its objective, and it will become a 
 death-dealer instead of a life-giver, like a live elec- 
 tric wire which falls from the sky into the muddy 
 
THE TWO NATURES 205 
 
 street and kills the passers by. It is always so. 
 Give a man self-expression along the highest plane 
 of service, and he will cease to desire the lower; 
 bind him to the lower, and you turn a god into a 
 devil, and yet the force in either case is precisely 
 the same. The demoniac energy of Saul the perse- 
 cutor was afterwards seen in the holy zeal of Paul 
 the apostle. It had found a higher objective, and 
 with it a new spirit, that was all. 
 
 You have all heard of the French regiment, com- 
 posed of convicts, which was sent to fight in 
 Algeria. More uncompromising material where- 
 with to do great things could scarcely be imagined, 
 and yet this band of criminals rose to the occasion 
 and outshone most of the regular soldiery on the 
 battlefield. How was it done ? It was done by 
 the faith of the colonel in command. He knew 
 that men whose fearless energy had been exercised 
 in preying upon their country might find an outlet 
 for the same qualities in the service of that country, 
 if only a beginning could be made. He made it 
 by believing in them; treated them with respect; 
 appealed to their higher manhood ; gave them their 
 flag — called it theirs, and bade them carry it to 
 victory. One day an attack had to be made on an 
 all but impregnable Moorish redoubt. First one 
 regiment and then another of the finest soldiers in 
 the French army was rolled back from that fatal 
 eminence with heavy loss. At last came the turn 
 of the scallywags. Their leader pointed first to 
 the battered remnants of the troops that had already 
 tried and failed, then to the grim height where 
 their comrades lay, and said in a voice that all 
 
2o6 THE TWO NATURES 
 
 could hear: ''Soldiers I Your flag must fly up 
 yonder." Not another word was needed. Away 
 marched this company of burglars, forgers, hooli- 
 gans, and pickpockets. Half-way up the hill their 
 brave colonel fell dead. If there had been any 
 doubt as to their behaviour before, there was none 
 now. With cries of grief and anger they swept 
 over the summit like a torrent of flame and planted 
 their colours on the topmost peak of the enemy's 
 fortress. Was there anything so very wonderful 
 in this? Not at all. It was but the effect of the 
 new direction given to an old force under the 
 impulse of a higher spirit. I am told that a 
 similar experiment is being made in the United 
 States with men who have usually been considered 
 a danger to society and to be guarded like wild 
 beasts. The man who has found the more excel- 
 lent way has fnade no effort to get any penal sen- 
 tence remitted. He has simply taken those who 
 have suffered for their sin, and given them a chance 
 to express the very same characteristics which led 
 to their undoing in some new and nobler way. 
 "There is nothing unclean of itself"; whether it 
 shall be clean or unclean is a question of the out- 
 come. 
 
 There is, of course, a profound truth in the 
 apostle's reasoning that the seat of evil is in the 
 flesh, and it is this : the body is at once the ex- 
 pression and the limitation of the soul. It is the 
 banks and bed of the river, the channel through 
 which flows the current of the divine life. Here 
 and there you may find that the banks have given 
 way and the stream becomes a swamp. This is 
 
THE TWO NATURES 207 
 
 what the world calls weakness of will or mortal 
 atrophy. In some other case you will observe that 
 the river has run away and lost itself in the sand 
 instead of mingling its waters with the ocean. 
 This IS what we mean when we say that youthful 
 promise has come to nothing for lack of the quali- 
 ties which command success. And elsewhere we 
 are compelled to watch with pain the flood of 
 divine power flinging itself into some awful abyss 
 or turning aside from the course in which it might 
 have been the artery of a nation's commerce. In 
 every case it is not the water that is to blame, but 
 the bed in which it has been made to flow. Would 
 you save the man who is weak of will and whose 
 life has become a stagnant, ague-breeding pool ? 
 You must drain the swamp. Let the waters of 
 blessing flow somewhere. Find out in what direc- 
 tion the divine urge would take him if the way 
 were open; there is not a human being on earth 
 who could not be made to feel the joy of self- 
 expression in something that is for the good of all 
 mankind. Once set the waters flowing and they 
 will cut their own channel; you will find that the 
 feeble soul has developed a will at last; the will 
 is only the soul in movement, the whole man in 
 action. Take him whose life has run to nothing 
 or plunged with hellish force over the precipice of 
 moral ruin. That river needs a new bed. Every 
 evil deed is helping to cut the present channel a 
 little deeper; better open a new one than try to 
 stem the flood that pours along the old. Some- 
 times this will be a laborious process ; sometimes it 
 can be done at a stroke. But, whether the work is 
 
2oS THE TWO NATURES 
 
 swift or slow, believe that it can be done, and spare 
 no effort to do it. To have faith in God is to have 
 faith in man, the deeper man behind the deed 
 whatever it may be. It is perfectly true that the 
 law of sin is in the members, not in the man. As 
 Juliana of Norwich has it ; " There is in every man 
 a godly will that hath never consented to sin nor 
 ever shall." Appeal to that and the whole nature 
 will respond. 
 
 In conclusion, suffer me to speak one word of 
 help and encouragement, if I can, to those who 
 have come in here only too sadly conscious of the 
 antinomy described in my text. There may be 
 something in your life which is to you a constant 
 source of humiliation and dread — some evil habit, 
 some secret vice, some temptation you cannot 
 always resist, and which if it gains the mastery will 
 compass your utter ruin, body and soul. I can 
 well understand that in such a conflict you must be 
 unable at times to say which is you — the devil with 
 his fingers on your throat or the poor gasping soul 
 that writhes in his cruel embrace. Well, do not 
 question about it any more. The real you is not 
 the fiend of hell, but the child of God. You have 
 got to believe that and live it. Take that very 
 propensity you loathe so much and make it beau- 
 tiful. Baptise it into Christ. Look where its 
 power comes from and link that power to the stars. 
 Turn your weakness into strength. Let there be 
 no doubt in your mind as to what God wants you 
 to do and to be. You can achieve it by the spirit 
 of Christ, and you do not need to look outside to 
 find that. That spirit indwells you now, and is 
 
THE TWO NATURES 209 
 
 stronger than all that would seek your hurt. 
 '' There is therefore now no condemnation to them 
 which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the 
 flesh, but after the spirit. For the law of the spirit 
 of life in Christ Jesus hath rhade me free from the 
 law of sin and of death." 
 
 14 
 
XIV 
 
 SPIRITUAL STRENGTH 
 
 " Strejtgtkened with i7iight by His Spirit in the i7iner 
 man"— Epkes. iii. i6. 
 
 The epistle to the Ephesians might more fitly be 
 called the epistle from the Ephesians, for although 
 it bears the name of St. Paul, and exhibits many 
 traces of his influence, its affinities are rather with 
 the Johannine writings, and the epistle to the 
 Hebrews than with Romans and Corinthians. 
 Knowing as we do that the metropolitan city of 
 Ephesus was the great centre of the type of thought 
 associated with the name of the apostle John, we 
 can see some reason why this Christian writing 
 should be described as addressed to Ephesians. If 
 it did not originate in Ephesus it came from the 
 hand of one who had received his Christian training 
 in the Ephesian atmosphere. 
 
 But this fact has some interesting consequences. 
 For one thing it did much to foster and encourage 
 the great idea of the Catholic Church. Although 
 not expressly stated, this idea permeates and colours 
 all that the writer of this epistle has to say. It has 
 been pointed out that Roman Catholic Christianity 
 has drawn more support from the language of the 
 epistle to the Ephesians than from all the Pauline 
 
SPIRITUAL STRENGTH 211 
 
 writings put together. How is this? Well, prin- 
 cipally because Pauline Christianity begins with 
 the individual, and emphasises continually the indi- 
 vidual relationship of the Christian to his Lord ; on 
 the other hand, this Ephesian writer, while greatly 
 indebted to the mysticism of St. Paul, makes far 
 more of the thought of an ideal humanity in which 
 every individual unit shall be merged and fulfilled 
 in the life of the whole. Of course, it is quite clear 
 that this conception is always present to the mind 
 of St. Paul too, but he does not give it the all- 
 dominating place which it occupies in this epistle. 
 To the man who wrote our text the whole objective 
 of the Christian revelation was the production of a 
 perfect spiritual society rooted and grounded in 
 Christ; in fact, he sometimes seems to lose sight 
 of society in his assertion of something even higher, 
 namely, the mystic unity of a redeemed human 
 race. 
 
 The ideal is a very lofty one, and it is here set 
 forth in a style appropriate to the theme. It is not 
 the glowing, pointed, personal style of the apostle 
 Paul, but it is not without a certain force and magic 
 of its own. To catch the spirit of it w^e ought to 
 realise that the early struggles between Jewish and 
 Gentile Christianity are now over. You know, of 
 course, to what I refer. Read the epistle to the 
 Galatians, for instance, and see how bravely Paul 
 fought for the inclusion of Gentiles within the 
 benefits of the gospel of Christ on equal terms with 
 converts of Jewish birth. We may wonder now 
 that such a conflict was ever necessary, but it was. 
 But by the time my text came to be written Paul's 
 
212 SPIRITUAL STRENGTH 
 
 battle had been won ; there was no longer any dis- 
 tinction between Jew and Gentile in the Christian 
 Church. Their unity had been cemented with 
 blood, for both apparently had had to suffer terrible 
 persecution at the hands of the Roman authorities. 
 The writer of Ephesians refers to these things and 
 urges his readers to rejoice more and more in the 
 idea of a spiritual unity and to endeavour to realise 
 it by every means in their power. Listen to the 
 following sentences, and you will have a fairly 
 accurate idea of the scope and purpose of the whole 
 writing — 
 
 '' That in the dispensation of the fulness of times 
 He might gather together in one all things in 
 Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are 
 on earth; even in Him (i. lo). 
 
 " Now, therefore, ye are no more strangers and 
 foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and 
 of the household of God; and are built upon the 
 foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus 
 Christ Himself being the chief corner stone; in 
 whom all the building fitly framed together groweth 
 unto an holy temple in the Lord : in whom ye also 
 are builded together for an habitation of God 
 through the Spirit " (ii. 19-22). 
 
 It is quite in the fitness of things that the writer 
 should attribute this ideal to the apostle Paul, for 
 the credit of having made it a reality belongs to 
 him more than to any other man. Try to imagine 
 the enormous difference which must have been 
 made to the outlook of primitive Christianity by 
 the burning words of the great apostle: ''There 
 is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond 
 
SPIRITUAL STRENGTH 213 
 
 nor free, there is neither male nor female, for ye 
 are all one in Christ Jesus." We profess to take 
 this for granted now, but it was a new idea then. 
 The writer of Ephesians has become possessed by 
 it and is full of enthusiasm for all that it means. 
 He has no interest in a perfected individual as such ; 
 indeed, he does not believe in any such thing. 
 Individual salvation would to him be meaningless 
 apart from a regenerated humanity. It is upon this 
 consummation that he dwells and insists from first 
 to last. I have purposely drawn your attention to 
 this governing thought in order that you may the 
 better understand the bearing of our text. As it 
 stands this passage might be regarded as a counsel 
 for the individual only, but you can now see that it 
 cannot be anything of the kind ; whatever value it 
 has can only be in its subordination to the general 
 purpose of the whole epistle. If we keep this fact 
 well in mind we shall be in no danger of misappro- 
 priating the meaning of this exhortation. The 
 writer represents the apostle Paul as declaring that 
 his prayer for his converts is that they may be 
 strengthened with might in the inner man by the 
 Spirit of God. We have seen the end he has in 
 view, but what is this inner strengthening by which 
 he hopes to see the end accomplished? That is 
 what I want you to help me to find out. 
 
 You cannot fail to notice that the sentiment of 
 this text closely resembles a good deal that we are 
 hearing at the present time about the inner resources 
 of the individual man. You are all more or less 
 acquainted with what is generically termed the new 
 thought, which in the main is what Professor 
 
214 SPIRITUAL STRENGTH 
 
 William James, of Harvard, would call the gospel of 
 healthy-mindedness. It has a good many varieties, 
 but in principle it is much the same everywhere. 
 It amounts to this : If you want to be happy and 
 prosperous you must call upon your indwelling 
 divine strength. You must realise that all you can 
 possibly want or desire is already within you, and 
 that it rests with you to bring it into manifestation. 
 Thus, if you are poor, you must believe that all 
 the wealth of the universe is within you, waiting to 
 be drawn upon ; if you are sick, you must believe 
 the same in respect to health ; if circumstances seem 
 to be against you, you must understand and act 
 upon the conviction that the spiritual nature of man 
 is subject to no limitations, and can neither be 
 hampered nor imprisoned by material things. We 
 are assured that if we will only live consistently in 
 the power of this truth it will banish all sadness, 
 gloom, depression, and sorrow of heart. Nothing 
 will be able to injure us or cut us ofif from our 
 divine heritage. All the evil and all the pain of 
 the world would be destroyed at a stroke if only 
 every man and woman in it could be persuaded to 
 live upon this level and depend entirely upon the 
 power of the indwelling Spirit of all good. One 
 fully admits the force and the practical value of this 
 principle, notwithstanding its occasional vulgar and 
 materialistic applications. It is a re-emphasis of 
 something which characterised the magnificent 
 optimism of the first Christians, and which the 
 modern world has sadly needed to hear again. Its 
 truth is demonstrable, too. Once get a man to 
 believe in his power to achieve a certain object, and 
 
SPIRITUAL STRENGTH 215 
 
 he has gone a long way towards doing it. There 
 are many diseases which would yield to this kind 
 of treatment, and perhaps the list can be indefinitely 
 extended. Greatest of all the benefits of this 
 method of looking at life is the buoyancy of spirit 
 it engenders. What an enormous boon it is to be 
 able to get rid of depression, discouragement, and 
 fear of the future ! Why, that alone is something 
 to thank God for and rejoice. Most willingly, 
 therefore, do I admit the positive moral value of 
 this modern re-assertion of faith in the indwelling 
 good. 
 
 But there is a point at which the practice of this 
 principle often seems to fall short of the highest, 
 and to become essentially different from Chris- 
 tianity. If some of its exponents are right, then 
 Jesus Himself must have been mistaken when He 
 died on Calvary. He need not have died ; all He 
 had to do was to realise the power of the indwelling 
 good as sufficient to baffle all His foes and render 
 all pain unnecessary. Why should He have shed 
 one drop of blood ? Why faint beneath the cross ? 
 Why utter that cry of dereliction : " My God, My 
 God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" Somehow we 
 feel that, dark and terrible as was our Saviour's 
 experience of the cross, it was grander and higher 
 than the modern insistence upon an indwelling 
 strength which secures immunity from it. Ponder 
 this for a moment. I advance no theory to account 
 for the fact; I simply point out that the power of 
 the Gospel of Christ over the hearts and minds of 
 men is the power of the cross. If Jesus had not 
 died on Calvary ; if He had never suffered a single 
 
2i6 SPIRITUAL STRENGTH 
 
 pang ; if He Had simply come to the world with the 
 revelation of a principle which would secure to His 
 followers exemption from all the ills that flesh is 
 heir to, He would not be what He is to us to-day. 
 He would be a less pathetic, but also a less sublime 
 figure. Rightly or wrongly, mankind has always 
 thought it a higher thing that Jesus should have 
 been willing to die for the world than that He 
 should have taught us how to live without suffering. 
 But there are other points in which some of the 
 developments of the principle we are discussing are 
 out of harmony with the facts of human experience. 
 '* The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in 
 pain together until now . . . waiteth for the mani- 
 festation of the sons of God." The story of sentient 
 life on this planet is truly a terrible one, and human 
 history especially is one long tragedy. It is pos- 
 sible to exaggerate the horrific side of the conditions 
 of our earthly existence, but no one will deny that 
 from the dawn of history until to-day pain and 
 struggle have been the accompaniment of all moral 
 progress. No explanation that has ever yet been 
 given of the presence of these things in God's world 
 can be regarded as entirely satisfactory, but to say 
 that they need not be here or that they can be 
 eliminated by the simple expedient of believing in 
 the power of the indwelling good is to trifle with a 
 solemn subject. The problem is not so easily dis- 
 posed of as all that. If this is all my text means it 
 is a poor satisfaction to our overwhelming sense of 
 need. Just think of it. Recorded human history 
 runs back for nearly ten millenniums, and even that 
 is but a moment in the span of human evolution. 
 Has all the welter of agony and strife been a waste 
 
SPIRITUAL STRENGTH 217 
 
 and a blunder which man might have avoided if 
 only he had known sooner how to summon at com- 
 mand his indwelling divine resources? In face of 
 the colossal evils of organised human society to- 
 day — the hunger and disease, the fierce battle for 
 existence, the throes of anguish with which new 
 ideas are born, the risings and fallings of nations 
 and institutions — is it enough to say that the indi- 
 vidual need only retire within himself in order to 
 be master of it all without passing through the fire ? 
 I do not know how many people there may be here 
 this morning, but I am quite certain that there are 
 not a few heavy hearts, and I am equally certain 
 that the best and most God-like man in this place 
 is not the man who has learned the trick of avoid- 
 ing all pain by relying upon some inward source 
 of strength. Nor do we want to think that that is 
 the aim of the best and noblest manhood of our 
 day or any other day. We have something else to 
 think of in life besides having a good time, and, 
 even if the good time be one of refined happiness 
 rather than sensuous delights, it is still a selfish 
 thing to indulge it while the majority of our fellows 
 remain exposed to storm and horror. We do not 
 admire the man who spends his time in thinking 
 how he may escape the labour and the pain of 
 earthly existence. 
 
 And yet there is something to be said for the 
 undying hope of human beings that it is possible 
 to reach an altitude of greater calm and diviner joy 
 than is the lot of those who never lift their gaze 
 above the earth. There is an exaltation of soul 
 which may know sorrow but forbids despair, a 
 serenity of spirit which life's vicissitudes cannot 
 
2i8 SPIRITUAL STRENGTH 
 
 disturb. I believe Jesus had this, and I believe that 
 every man who tries to live his life in the same 
 spirit and to the same end as Jesus may have it 
 too. This is a real thing, so real that those who 
 have once experienced it can never mistake it for 
 anything else. It is indeed a confident reliance 
 upon that inexhaustible inward strength which is 
 the birthright of every child of God. It is older 
 than Christianity, but new every morning. It was 
 what the Psalmist meant when he wrote: "Thou 
 wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed 
 on Thee." And it is exactly what St. Paul means 
 when he says : " Christ in you the hope of glory." 
 But mark what it does. The man who becomes 
 possessed by that spirit no longer makes it his first 
 aim to secure immunity from the ills of life, but to 
 pour forth his own divine resources for the realisa- 
 tion of the spiritual unity of mankind. He cannot 
 make his own well-being an object at all, and yet 
 he can do nothing else but make war on human 
 sin and sorrow. He cannot spare himself, but he 
 can and does become strong to bear the burdens 
 and heal the wounds of suffering humanity. The 
 spiritual man can never be a weak man, for his 
 strength is the strength of God, but it is only his 
 for the work he has to do and the end he has to 
 achieve. It is a supply which enables him to do 
 without some things that the ordinary man counts 
 a necessity, and to accomplish some things with 
 ease and joy at which the ordinary man faints and 
 fears. For example, there are occasions when he 
 can do without sympathy, greatly as he might desire 
 to have it. There is nothing more pathetically 
 human in the experience of Jesus in Gethsemane 
 
SPIRITUAL STRENGTH 219 
 
 than His longing that His friends should under- 
 stand and bear Him company in His trouble, and 
 there is nothing more sublime than the way in 
 which He showed Himself able to do without them 
 when the crisis came; they were all stupefied and 
 panic stricken, He alone was calm and strong. 
 Where did this come from ? It came from the con- 
 sciousness that He had given to the service of God 
 all He had to give, and had nothing to ask for or 
 expect so far as He Himself was concerned. Grand, 
 lonely soul ! '' Behold, the hour cometh . . . that 
 ye shall be scattered every man to his own and shall 
 leave Me alone, and yet I am not alone because the 
 Father is with Me." This again, you see, is a real 
 thing, a mysterious source of supernatural strength, 
 an inward reality of which nothing can rob him 
 whose life is offered for high impersonal ends — in 
 a word, who has given himself to that spiritual 
 unity in which all men are one. 
 
 I have said that this superhuman strength enables 
 the spiritual man not only to do without ordinary 
 human aids, but to dare and achieve that at which 
 the natural man shrinks and trembles. I am not 
 sure that it is easy to say when and how the natural 
 man passes into the higher experience. It is im- 
 possible for human wisdom to draw fine distinctions 
 on this point. I would prefer to say that in every 
 human being the material and the spiritual are con- 
 trasted every moment, and that you pass from one 
 to the other according to the motive and emotion 
 from which you act. Listen to the following short 
 paragraph from the latest book of Mr. H. G. Wells. 
 The writer is describing with the pen of a master 
 the scenes witnessed by himself and a friend during 
 
220 SPIRITUAL STRENGTH 
 
 a moonlight walk along the Thames Embankment 
 one evening this winter. 
 
 ** Along the Embankment, you see, there are 
 iron seats at regular intervals, seats you cannot lie 
 upon,lDecause iron arm-rests prevent that, and each 
 seat, one saw by the lamplight, was filled with 
 crouching and drooping figures. Not a vacant 
 place remained, not one vacant place. These were 
 the homeless, and they had come to sleep here. 
 Now one noted a poor old woman with a shame- 
 ful battered straw hat awry over her drow^sing 
 face, now a young clerk staring before him at 
 despair; now a filthy tramp, and now a bearded, 
 frock-coated, collarless respectability. I remember 
 particularly one ghastly long white neck and white 
 face that lopped backward, choked in some night- 
 mare, awakened, clutched with a bony hand at 
 the bony throat, and sat up and stared angrily 
 as we passed. The wind had a keen edge that 
 night even for us, who had dined and were well 
 clad. One crumpled figure coughed and went on 
 coughing — damnably 
 
 '''Great God!' cried I. . . . ' But must life 
 always be like this ? I could die — indeed, I would 
 willingly jump into this cold and muddy river now, 
 if by so doing I could stick a stiff dead hand 
 through all these things — into the future; a dead 
 commanding hand insisting with a silent, irresist- 
 ible gesture that this waste and failure of life should 
 cease, and cease for ever.' " 
 
 There is the true ring about that utterance. 
 Knowing Mr. Wells as I do, I know that it is not 
 mere rhetoric; its enthralling force springs from 
 its sincerity. If it is not the spiritual man who 
 
SPIRITUAL STRENGTH 221 
 
 speaks here, then I have never met the spiritual 
 man. The writer of this passage may have dropped 
 down from the level here indicated within the next 
 five minutes after he spoke, but for the moment his 
 word was the word of Christ, and it was his noblest, 
 divinest self that spoke. Here was a man strong 
 enough to die without hope of resurrection for the 
 sake of the suffering world of men and women of 
 which he was a solitary unit. Now that, and 
 nothing less than that, is implied in my text. To 
 be strengthened with might in the inner man is so 
 to live as to lose sight of all personal aims and 
 desires in the one over-mastering emotion of love 
 to God and man. It means dying upon the cross 
 of self-hood to live again in the glorious up-rising 
 of a redeemed humanity to the eternal Father. 
 
 Let me see whether there is not in this some 
 personal word for you who hear me this morning. 
 Ill-used people have come in here just now, sorrow- 
 ful people, people with burdens grievous to be 
 borne. There are some of you whose hearts are 
 filled with bitterness because of what you have lately 
 had to endure in the awful struggle to live, and by 
 that I do not mean necessarily that you are afraid 
 of not having enough to eat. I mean things even 
 more torturing than the prospect of physical dis- 
 comfort. There is the surprise of treachery; the 
 shock of the discovery of the w^eakness or wicked- 
 ness of a loved one; the wretched misunderstand- 
 ing that tears one heart away from another without 
 hope of remedy. There are times in life when all 
 the forces of hell seem to conspire against you at 
 once, and you are almost forced to disbelieve that 
 there can be meaning or purpose or guiding hand 
 
222 SPIRITUAL STRENGTH 
 
 behind the chaos. Men say that prosperity is often 
 disintegrating to the moral nature, whereas ad^ 
 versity braces and energises it; my observation 
 teaches me that, as often as not, a man will prove 
 too weak to endure adversity and preserve his faith 
 in good who could have remained unharmed and 
 lovable in kinder circumstances. Yes, I have seen 
 more than one man's soul expanding under the 
 genial influence of moderate success, and then 
 chilled and blighted by the winter frost of failure 
 and calamity; they have not been strong enough 
 to bear the worst. 
 
 To all here this morning who feel their moral 
 weakness in face of the evil of life, I have but one 
 word to say. You must try not to take the personal 
 view. Break free from it at all costs, for it is fatal 
 to the higher life. Take the view of Jesus that 
 your life is only yours because it belongs to us all. 
 There is always turmoil, always danger and in- 
 security, in the life that is bounded by the thought 
 of self. Let go, and push out into the full ocean 
 of the love of God, and see how grandly it will 
 bear you. Just realise that your life is only yours 
 to give away, and you can safely trust it in the 
 keeping of Him by whom the very hairs of your 
 head are all numbered. You will be omnipotent 
 and invincible in the work of the Lord, and none 
 can rob you of your peace, for you have no selfish 
 end to gain. I need not say, Be strong, for this in 
 itself is strength, this consciousness that God is 
 reaching out through you to strike the fetters from 
 the limbs of His children and open their prison 
 doors. 
 
XV 
 
 FAMINE AND PLENTY 
 
 "-^ measure of wheat for a penny ^ and three ?neasures 
 of barley for a penny j and see thou hurt not the oil and 
 the wine:'' — Rev. vi. 6. 
 
 This is another of those cryptic sayings from 
 the book of Revelation which, so far as external 
 form is concerned, convey so little to the modern 
 mind. I question whether there are very many in the 
 congregation this morning who have ever thought 
 about these words before, and yet they relate to a 
 kind of human experience which has repeated itself 
 a good many times in ages past and still consti- 
 tutes a formidable problem for the world. You will 
 soon see what that experience is if we try to go 
 back a little into history and see with the eyes of 
 the writer of this sentence. There is a message in 
 his* words too — a warning and an appeal. It is 
 my duty to bring out both and set them before you 
 as well as I can. 
 
 From what I have previously said about this 
 book of Revelation you will not be surprised if I 
 ask you to put aside all idea that this passage has 
 any specific reference to events which have yet to 
 take place. An enormous amount of time has been 
 wasted in the past by those who have taken for 
 granted that the symbolism of this strange book is 
 
 223 
 
224 FAMINE AND PLENTY 
 
 a veiled forecast of the history of mankind right 
 on to our own times and even beyond them. It is 
 nothing of the sort. It is a description of what 
 was taking place there and then. The man, or 
 m.en, who wrote this book never anticipated that 
 the world would go on as long as it has or that 
 history would shape itself as has proved to be the 
 case. Perhaps I ought rather to say they never 
 anticipated that the world would go on sinning and 
 suffering as it has ; they certainly thought it would 
 go on, but they were hoping for a speedy advent 
 of Christ and a thorough regeneration of human 
 affairs — a kind of supernatural social revolution, 
 after which things would go on happily and pros- 
 perously for ever. It is difficult for modern readers 
 of the New Testament to grasp this point of view ; 
 I have no doubt that to some of my hearers at this 
 moment it is entirely new, but if you can once get 
 hold of it you will find that it will light up the 
 whole of the New Testament for you in a marvel- 
 lous way. I think you will find that it will help 
 to make some parts of it much more interesting 
 than before. Suppose we occupy a few minutes 
 now in trying to see with the eyes of the man who 
 wrote the part of the book of Revelation which 
 contains my text. We must try to imagine quite 
 a different world from that in which you and I live 
 now. For one thing it was not so large. All 
 civilisation — or nearly all — was comprised in the 
 communities which lay around the shores of the 
 Mediterranean Sea. I suppose you know why 
 this sheet of water was called the Mediterranean; 
 it was because it lay, as the name implies, in the 
 
FAMINE AND PLENTY 225 
 
 middle of the civilised world. Just at the time 
 when Christianity began its career all this vast 
 territory had been brought under the dominion of 
 the Roman C^sars; it was one enormous empire 
 held together by military strength. Many different 
 races lay within its mighty grip; Rome had no 
 rival, and her reigning emperor, whoever he might 
 be, was therefore fittingly called " lord of the 
 world." Political freedom had been crushed out, 
 although in other respects the Roman policy was to 
 be tolerant of local and national customs and 
 religions. 
 
 But there was one religion of which Rome was 
 not tolerant, and that was the new faith which was 
 becoming known as Christianity. Christianity was 
 not respectable then; it was despised and dreaded 
 in much the same way as Socialism is now, and 
 for very similar reasons. If the Christian preachers 
 of that day had only confined themselves to preach- 
 ing the hope of immortality, and telling men to 
 believe in the atoning work of Christ in order that 
 they might go to heaven when they died, you may 
 be quite sure they would have had to suffer no 
 persecution for their opinions; Rome would only 
 have laughed at them as crazy visionaries. But 
 when we find that, instead of laughing, even the 
 strongest of the Roman emperors — such as Domi- 
 tian and Marcus Aurelius — regarded them as a 
 danger, and adopted the most rigorous methods in 
 order to stamp out their teaching, we know at once 
 that the Christian evangel must have been one that 
 assailed the existing political and social order and 
 threatened its overthrow. Now this is exactly 
 15 
 
226 FAMINE AND PLENTY 
 
 what was taking place. Under the enthusiasm of 
 the new spirit which the religion of Jesus had 
 poured forth upon the world, thousands of men 
 and women were proclaiming the overthrow of 
 materialism, tyranny, privilege, pride of place and 
 power, cruelty, and the exploitation of the many 
 for the benefit of the few. The gospel which was 
 preached in the name of Jesus was not merely the 
 promise of plenty to eat and drink, but of human 
 happiness, brotherhood, and exalted spiritual 
 achievement. The followers of Jesus fired the 
 imagination of mankind with the hope, or rather the 
 confident expectation, of an ideal world from which 
 poverty and oppression should disappear for ever 
 They told men plainly that society as it was then 
 organised was contrary to the divine will and alto- 
 gether inconsistent with the ideal of their Master. 
 They maintained that in the new order there would 
 be no Caesar and no sword. Is it any wonder that 
 the Csesars began to dread the spread of such revolu- 
 tionary opinions? If all men accepted them it 
 would mean a speedy end of their dominion. You 
 know, too, I suppose, how the Christians thought 
 the great change was going to come about. They 
 believed that before very long Jesus would appear 
 and dethrone Csesar, as well as all the Herods and 
 Pilates who were his subordinates in the various 
 provinces of this world-wide empire. When this 
 was done Jesus would mount the throne himself, 
 and reign with undisputed sway over a perfectly 
 contented and happy human society, which would 
 be called the Kingdom of God. In one way they 
 were mistaken in expecting this; the Christ has 
 
FAMINE AND PLENTY 227 
 
 never come in that way, and it would not be the 
 best and most desirable thing that He should; it 
 would only be an external deliverance after all if 
 He did, and the world needs something more 
 thorough than that. But in the main they were 
 absolutely right. The one great thing that the 
 world needs is that the spirit of Christ, which is 
 the spirit of brotherhood, should expel the spirit 
 of materialism, selfishness, and hate. That change 
 is coming, and its victory, though slow, will be 
 sure. 
 
 But at the time when my text was written all 
 these Christians believed it to be quite near at hand. 
 They saw that this vast and heterogeneous Roman 
 dominion was seething with discontent. They saw 
 one-third of the total population held in wretched 
 and cruel slavery. They saw how cheaply human 
 life was regarded and how merciless those in power 
 were to those who opposed them. Every day some 
 of their own number were dragged off to prison, 
 torture, or death. Delicate women as well as 
 strong men were flogged in the streets or thrown to 
 the lions in the amphitheatres. A devil incarnate 
 like the Emperor Nero burned them alive as an 
 entertainment for his guests at a garden party. 
 What a garden party ! and what guests ! Well 
 might Anthony Trollope say that bad as men are 
 to-day, we may thank God they are not as men 
 were in the days of the Caesars. All this fierce 
 persecution, and terrible suffering — suffering which 
 they shared with all the enslaved and downtrodden 
 among the subjects of the Roman Empire— was to 
 the Christians the travail which was having to be 
 
228 FAMINE AND PLENTY 
 
 endured before the birth of the new order. So 
 when they met together in their assemblies in one 
 another's houses or in the dark catacombs under- 
 ground, they used to sing with a fervour their 
 descendants have lost : 
 
 Glory be to God in the highest, 
 And on earth peace, 
 Good will amongst men. 
 
 You see they meant it; this is what many of them 
 were dying for ; this was the great ideal that carried 
 them through. They believed in it with all their 
 might, and if their successors had gone on believ- 
 ing it in the same way we should have had it long 
 before now. They believed that all the tribulation 
 which w^as overtaking the empire was the begin- 
 ning of the end. Christ in heaven was opening the 
 seals of judgment, and with the opening of the last 
 He Himself would appear on earth and drive all 
 evil out before Him. The opening of the seals as 
 described in the chapter before us is therefore 
 simply a description of what was actually going on 
 in the world at that moment. It was the break-up 
 of the Roman empire. The rider on the white 
 horse, for instance, wuth the bow in his hand repre- 
 sents the barbarous invaders who were attacking 
 the empire from the east and north-east. They 
 were called the Parthians, and were irregular 
 cavalry like the modern Cossacks. These wild 
 warriors were swift and fearless riders who could 
 use the bow and arrow with deadly precision. The 
 rider on the red horse stands for civil war : every 
 now and then some successful Roman general tried 
 
FAMINE AND PLENTY 229 
 
 to make himself emperor, and occasionally one suc- 
 ceeded. The black horse and his rider represent 
 famine, just as the pale horse meant plague and 
 pestilence. All these things were going on there 
 and then — invasion, civil strife, hunger and want, 
 disease and death. It w^as the break-up of an old 
 order and the beginning of a new. Unfortunately 
 that new order did not produce the ideal of which 
 these first Christians dreamed. The very things 
 against which they inveighed most earnestly were 
 continued under new forms. The old problems 
 are here still, not so terrible perhaps, but terrible 
 enough to any lover of humanity. 
 
 Now that we see what was meant by the sym- 
 bolism of the ride on the black horse let us look a 
 little more closely into the actual language of the 
 text. As this spectre of famine leaps forth upon 
 the earth, holding up the balances in his hand, a 
 voice from heaven seems to say: "A measure of 
 wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for 
 a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the 
 wine." What a curious utterance! Here is a 
 piece of fine irony indeed ! This measure of wheat 
 was one person's allowance for one day. The 
 penny was worth between sixpence and sevenpence 
 of our money, and its purchasing power measured 
 by present-day standards would amount to several 
 shillings ; this was therefore a famine price for food. 
 Barley was the coarse bread of the poor, the plainest 
 and cheapest that could be got; here was the famine 
 price for a family of three. The oil and the wine 
 were the luxury of the rich, and at this time the 
 luxury of the Roman capital had become shameless 
 
230 FAMINE AND PLENTY 
 
 and brutal. Utterly regardless of the sufferings of 
 the lower ranks of society, the privileged orders in 
 the State vied with each other in wallowing in the 
 most senseless extravagance. Thus we read of the 
 emperor having his dish of peacocks' tongues and 
 his baths of wine and milk; or of the senator who 
 caused a slave to be flung to the lampreys in the 
 miniature lake which occupied the centre of his 
 enormous dining hall. The slave's offence was 
 some small breach of etiquette in serving at table. 
 The guests were much annoyed at the sentence, not 
 because of the horrible death of the slave, but be- 
 cause of the noise he made fighting for his life, 
 which they considered a breach of decorum ! His 
 owner ought to have had his throat cut quietly in 
 a back room instead of being guilty of the bad 
 form of allowing his screams of agony to interfere 
 with the comfort of his guests to such an extent as 
 to interrupt their refined conversation ! Not a sug- 
 gestion of pity ! Not the faintest perception, 
 apparently, that all their heartless luxury was drain- 
 ing away the life-blood of groaning millions far 
 beyond the stately walls of the imperial city. This 
 is where the irony of the text comes in. The poor 
 are starving for bread, but the oil and the wine are 
 as plentiful as ever on the table and in the toilet 
 of their cruel masters. How long was this to last ? 
 We know that it did not last. The Christians called 
 it wickedness, and prophesied its doom. The doom 
 came. Rome fell. That corrupt and inhuman state 
 of things was swept away by the raging torrent of 
 barbarism that broke forth upon the empire of the 
 Caesars. The writer of my text was right : Luxury, 
 
FAMINE AND PLENTY 231 
 
 hand in hand with callous cruelty, was the begin- 
 ning of the end. 
 
 We have now reached another turning-point in 
 history, when men are asking themselves whether 
 the ideals they have been used to are morally justi- 
 fiable or communally wise. It seems to me that if 
 the man who wrote the sentence which forms my 
 text could be brought back from the unseen world 
 and placed in our midst in London to-day, he might 
 think his words had still a certain applicability to 
 the condition of society. I have no doubt he would 
 be greatly surprised to find that it was so. He 
 would realise that the Roman empire had gone, but 
 that the Kingdom of God had not come. He would 
 miss the Roman soldier, but would find Europe an 
 armed camp. He would expect to find no poor^ 
 what then would he think as he saw our slums and 
 workhouses ? Above all, he would be surprised and 
 confounded to behold Christianity enthroned and 
 endowed while the very thing against which its 
 evangel was originally directed was still flourishing 
 before our very eyes. He would w^onder what new 
 brand of Christianity this was ; he would be able to 
 recognise in it little except the name. He would 
 see earnest servants of God at work everywhere 
 endeavouring to deal kindly with the sunken and 
 degraded, but he would be astonished beyond mea- 
 sure to find that the average Christian thought of 
 poverty and misery as part of the natural order of 
 things, to go on as long as the world lasted. This 
 would be a new gospel to him, and to call it Christi- 
 anity would puzzle him until he got used to it; I 
 question if he ever would get used to it. If he 
 
232 FAMINE AND PLENTY 
 
 came into church this morning I wonder what he 
 would think. He would see me up here preaching, 
 and you down there listening, but he would want to 
 know why we took the trouble to come and what 
 was to be the outcome of our meeting together. If 
 he picked up an ordinary religious newspaper — sup- 
 posing him able to read English — and read long 
 screeds about the eastward position at communion, 
 the carrying of the gospel — which means a new set 
 of opinions — to the heathen, the deplorable and 
 growing indifference to ''sin,'' and such-like, he 
 would be still more at sea. If he heard that a 
 wealthy peer, whose income was derived from rents 
 for which he never did a stroke of work or from the 
 labour of operatives whom he never saw, was hold- 
 ing forth on a mission platform about the decay of 
 the sense of sin he would want to know what he 
 meant by sin. See here, he would say, the only 
 sin in the world is that of making or keeping people 
 degraded and wretched. What other kind of sin 
 can there be? What are you doing to remove the 
 root causes of suffering and shame ? If you have 
 power why don't you use it? Are you content that 
 thousands upon thousands of your fellow-creatures 
 have to live the life of brutes or fight hard to live 
 at all while you can enjoy the best, and pass from 
 one interest to another at your pleasure ? The rider 
 on the black horse is still holding up his balances, 
 and it is a niggardly dole that he measures out to 
 the poor and unfortunate; he does not touch your 
 oil and wine ; your place in life is secure ; you have 
 no anxiety about the future; hard winters and loss 
 of employment do not affect you. What is it, then, 
 
FAMINE AND PLENTY 233 
 
 that you are preaching about ? Sin against God ? 
 What is sin against God but doing or permitting 
 harm against man ? Put yourself in your brother's 
 place. Suppose that this very day some man or 
 body of men were in a position to take away your 
 oil and wine and reduce you to barley bread, the 
 price of which you would have to slave for from 
 morn till eve, from year to year, and even then 
 were not always sure of it. Suppose your refined 
 surroundings disappeared, your refined friends like- 
 wise, and that your abode were the slum, not of 
 your own will but some one else's ! Do you think 
 it would make any difference to your views about 
 sin and salvation and the service of God? 
 
 I say that if the wrfter of this text could come 
 back among us, and really understood what was 
 going on, this is much the way in which he v/ould 
 speak to us. There would be no mistake about it. 
 Perhaps he w^ould speak more harshly, for he would 
 be shocked and scandalised to find that Christianity 
 had not done more than it has to regenerate the 
 world. He would detect the false note at once in 
 our conventional preaching and praying. He 
 would tell us that it was all nonsense that men 
 needed to be saved from the wrath of God in the 
 next world; he would say that they needed to be 
 saved from o^ne another in this. There is a truth 
 in the doctrine of the wrath of God, but it is not 
 what is commonly preached. If God's judgments 
 descend upon unrighteousness the test will be, 
 " Inasmuch as ye did it or did it not." He would 
 tell us that as Christians what we have to do is to 
 denounce and make war upon everything which is 
 
234 FAMINE AND PLENTY 
 
 contrary to the spirit of Jesus, whether in our 
 public institutions or our private conduct. He 
 would insist that compromise is treason. He 
 would declare that we have no business to call our- 
 selves the followers of Jesus while continuing to 
 accept and profit by conditions which put a barrier 
 between us and our fellows. He would simply 
 point to facts. He would say, Here are the very 
 things for protesting against which the Christians 
 of the first century were persecuted and put to 
 death. Why have you made terms with them? 
 Here are still the power of wealth, the power of 
 high position, the power of the sword. Here on 
 the other hand are poverty, misery, and crime. 
 Why is it not a struggle to the death between you 
 and all these? There ought to have been an end 
 of these things eighteen hundred years ago. Chris- 
 tianity and these things ought not to be able to live 
 together in the same world; one ought to have 
 killed the other long ago. Perhaps one has killed 
 the other. Your respectable Christianity is some- 
 thing more than a failure ; is it Christianity at all ? 
 
 In speaking like this I am conscious that my 
 words are open to a certain misconstruction. They 
 seem like a sweeping indictment of the faith which 
 I myself believe and profess. But it is far indeed 
 from being that. I know only too well how easy it 
 is for an ideal to lose force when it becomes em- 
 bodied in an institution. As soon as it has tasted 
 the oil and wine of worldly power and affluence it 
 loses vigour without being absolutely destroyed. 
 Its vision becomes less clear, and energy becomes 
 dissipated in side issues. This is what has hap- 
 pened to the religion of Jesus. Broadly speaking 
 
FAMINE AND PLENTY 235 
 
 it has ceased to lead the world because it has for- 
 gotten what it set out to do for the world. The 
 famine is here still ; the great mass of toiling, suffer- 
 ing men and women are crying out for more abund- 
 ant life, and most of us have failed even to see the 
 greatness of the need. We do not understand it. 
 The burden-bearers of mankind have only the three 
 measures of barley, while our great anxiety is that 
 they should not interfere with our oil and wine. If 
 they do we call them materialists, and point out 
 that the Kingdom of God is not meat and drink. 
 No more it is, but neither is it the oil and wine. It 
 is brotherhood, not privilege and exclusiveness. 
 Here is an issue before us which there is no possi- 
 bility of avoiding : While there is a single man, 
 woman, or child going hungry or degraded, 
 unable to think of anything but hand-to-mouth 
 existence, in Christendom to-day, the Kingdom of 
 God has not come ; and if, in the presence of such 
 a state of things, professing Christians are content 
 to declare it inevitable, and to organise in defence 
 of their own oil and wine, they have forgotten all 
 about what the original Christianity came to do. 
 
 But this is not the only kind of application which 
 my text ought to receive. It reaches down very 
 deep into the human heart, and into the most inti- 
 mate human relationships. All through our com- 
 mon experience runs this contrast between famine 
 and plenty, the measure of barley and the oil and 
 wine. Observe how often in human affairs one man 
 will not only remain indifferent to the privation of 
 another, but even cause it, and yet never dream of 
 holding himself culpable. Here, for instance, is 
 some glaring wrong which has to be set right. In 
 
236 FAMINE AND PLENTY 
 
 such a world as ours the man who moves in that 
 direction has inevitably to take risks, and one of the 
 greatest of these risks is that he may be deserted at 
 the critical moment by those upon whom he thought 
 he could depend. They may see the matter as 
 plainly as he, but they have no intention of ex- 
 changing their oil and wine for barley bread. It is 
 nice to be thought well of, to be praised for modera- 
 tion, to be looked upon as above all things a 
 ** safe " man, which is only another word for a 
 coward. You may have this agreeable experience 
 if you are only willing to fulfil the conditions. All 
 you have to do is to sell your soul : act a lie without 
 saying it; sacrifice the friend whom you know to be 
 perfectly in the right, but whom you do not find it 
 convenient to acknowledge. It would be still more 
 to your advantage if you could work up a little 
 indignation and denounce him. See what follows : 
 you have made his task harder; you have not only 
 left him to bear the shock of events alone, you have 
 isolated him and intensified the odds against which 
 he has to strive. For him the externals of life are 
 poor and dark; for you they are rich and bright. 
 He has the barley bread; you have the oil and wine. 
 Yet, oh coward soul, he knows more of the king- 
 dom of truth than you. He is a son of the morn- 
 ing, and you a child of the night. Heaven has left 
 you your oil and wine, but they are a poor com- 
 pensation for all that you have missed. 
 
 Ah, yes, life is a strange medley. The rider on 
 the black horse is always passing to and fro amid 
 the busy haunts of men. Happy are those who fear 
 not the famine so long as they may be true to them- 
 selves and God ; most wretched are they who think 
 
FAMINE AND PLENTY 237 
 
 about nothing but the oil and the wine. To hear 
 men talk one would think nothing mattered in 
 comparison with being successful and comfortable 
 in the things of this world. How they scream out 
 when these are threatened ! " Oh, do not ask me 
 for anything that involves trouble, inconvenience, 
 self-sacrifice !" is their general attitude. *' Calvary 
 is very nice to sing about, but we do not want any 
 Calvaries now. Do not seek anything from us that 
 involves privation, loss, loneliness, or meagre joys ; 
 we believe in being God's beneficiaries, not His 
 pioneers." And God takes them at their word. If 
 a man wants that kind of life he can have it. Of 
 all forms of materialism the worst and subtlest are 
 those which masquerade as Christian virtues — your 
 smug respectability, your Smooth hypocrisy, your 
 careful avoidance of everything reprehensible, your 
 silence in the presence of what you know to be 
 mean, base, and wicked ; your unwillingness to face 
 the right or wrong of that from which you happen 
 to benefit ; your tacit support of that which in your 
 heart of hearts you know means the suffering of 
 others that you may enjoy. The sentence of heaven 
 is passed upon you, " See that thou hurt not the oil 
 and the wine." You can keep them until the last 
 enemy of all rides forth, and his name is death. 
 God has given no instructions to death to spare 
 the coward and the time-server. And then — why 
 then I think there will be some surprises in store. 
 The last thing that would be possible in a well- 
 ordered universe would be that those who have 
 chosen the easy road here should find it equally 
 easy in the world to come. And I mean exactly 
 what I say when I add that this category will 
 
238 FAMINE AND PLENTY 
 
 include the great majority of those who are 
 regarded as the leaders of light and order in this 
 world. Most of them would be utterly contempt- 
 ible if they were not so pitiable. To be a real 
 follower of Christ, and yet on good terms with the 
 established order in Church and State, is a sheer 
 impossibility. 
 
 So, as we part company this morning, let me ask 
 you to search your hearts in the light of my text 
 and see where you stand. The rider on the black 
 horse is going by your door this very day. There 
 will be plenty of suffering where he passes — famine 
 of substance, famine of friendship, famine of oppor- 
 tunity and earthly joy. He is in this church at this 
 moment. There are some people here now to whom 
 he is doling out the meagre fare that is the bread 
 of sorrow. Poor children of pain, I am not talking 
 to you : I am talking to the man who spends most 
 of his time in caring for the outside of life. That 
 grim rider may let him alone and leave him to his 
 oil and wine. Yet when the last seal is broken, 
 and the naked soul stands face to face with Christ, 
 the barley bread which has been the portion of the 
 servant of truth and right will be seen to have been 
 infinitely preferable to the oil and wine of selfish- 
 ness and material gain. If we all knew now what 
 we shall all know then, there would be no hesitation 
 about our choice. Better the worst in the service 
 of Christ— the real Christ— than the best without 
 Him. Better the famine and be true, than the oil 
 and wine with the lie. Better all the suffering of life 
 put together than miss the glory of the Kingdom 
 of love. 
 
XVI 
 
 THE SILENCE OF HEAVEN 
 
 " And when he had opened the seventh seal^ there was 
 sile7ice in heaven about the space of half an hour^'' — 
 Rev. viii. i. 
 
 Some of you may be thinking that this is a 
 strange text, and so indeed it is. But it appears 
 in an equally strange setting, and if we can do any- 
 thing towards understanding the one perhaps we 
 may be able to understand the other. I do not 
 remember having taken a text from the Book of 
 Revelation on a Thursday morning before, although 
 I have more than once done so on Sunday. It may 
 be as well, therefore, to state in a few words the 
 general point of view from which to approach this 
 book, and with which my Sunday congregation is 
 already, I hope, fairly familiar. 
 
 To call this book the Book of Revelation is a 
 somewhat curious use of terms; it might more ap- 
 propriately be designated the book of obscuration, 
 for I will defy any one to tell us in detail what it 
 means. It has always possessed a fascination for 
 those who like to peer into the future, and who take 
 for granted that such apocalyptic writings as this 
 and the Book of Daniel were intended as an elabor- 
 ate forecast of events which have yet to take place 
 
 239 
 
240 THE SILENCE OF HEAVEN 
 
 in the history of the world. Unfortunately for the 
 interpretations which have been given, and are still 
 being given, no two of them agree even in funda- 
 mentals. We used to be assured, for instance, that 
 the Scarlet Woman was the Church of Rome; I 
 believe there was a novel written not long ago with 
 this title which professed to expose some of the 
 enormities of that Church. But nothing is more 
 certain than that, whatever else the writer of the 
 Book of Revelation may have foreseen, he never 
 foresaw the Church of Rome as she exists to-day, 
 and never dreamed of associating her with the 
 Scarlet Woman. As for the Anti-Christ referred to 
 in these pages, heaven only knows how many his- 
 torical characters have been cast for the part even 
 in recent years. About the time I was born I think 
 Napoleon HI was the favourite, but he dropped 
 out of the running after the battle of Sedan. I saw 
 on a railway bookstall the other day the current 
 issue of a religious newspaper which still makes a 
 feature of interpreting these supposed prophecies, 
 just as it used to do in my young days, and I could 
 not help wondering what public character the editor 
 had fixed upon as Anti-Christ now ; I should not be 
 in the least surprised if it turned out to be myself. 
 I have more than once had the honour of being 
 told that I was undoubtedly the beast of the Book 
 of Revelation; I humbly hope that you do not 
 believe it. 
 
 But with a congregation of sensible men and 
 women there is surely little need to point out that 
 the writer of this book never looked as far ahead 
 as the times in which we live, and his pictures of 
 
THE SILENCE OF HEAVEN 241 
 
 the future have no relation whatever to what is 
 taking place now or may take place a thousand 
 years hence. He was writing about his own times, 
 not about ours. His outlook was dominated by the 
 belief, which all the early Christians held, that the 
 world would come to an end very speedily — or, 
 rather, that a general judgment would soon take 
 place at which all evildoers would be cast out of the 
 earth and the Kingdom of God established with 
 Christ as the King. It might be a matter of a few 
 months, or even a few years, before this grand con- 
 summation would take place, but no Christian 
 thought of it as being the slow growth of centuries. 
 If you will read the Book of Revelation from this 
 point of view much of its language will become 
 clearer ; you will see, for instance, that the beautiful 
 picture of the New Jerusalem contained in the last 
 two chapters refers to the regeneration of this world, 
 not to a heaven beyond the tomb. *' And I saw the 
 holy city," etc. It was clear to our writer that 
 before this new order could be established all the 
 existing world-powers would have to be overthrown. 
 Of these by far the greatest was the Roman Empire. 
 No doubt this was the Scarlet Woman, and, as the 
 book was evidently written at a time when the 
 Christians were being fiercely persecuted, it is quite 
 probable that the beast was the infamous emperor 
 Nero. The whole scheme of this book is therefore 
 a picture of the times in which it was written, to- 
 gether with a description of the catastrophes which 
 the writer believed to be impending, presented in 
 language with which his readers would be more or 
 less familiar. The elaborate use of symbolism is 
 16 
 
242 THE SILENCE OF HEAVEN 
 
 confusing to us, but it was not so to them. To a 
 considerable part of it we do not possess the key, 
 for our mental dialect is different. This was quite 
 a familiar style of writing in the early Christian 
 centuries, and even before. We cannot expect to 
 understand all this elaborate symbolism, any more 
 than the people for whom it was written would un- 
 derstand the allusions in the Times or the Daily 
 Mail of to-day's issue; the whole situation has 
 changed, and an entirely different set of facts 
 occupies the field of our mental vision. 
 
 But when we come to such a passage as our text 
 we are not without light as to the writer's meaning 
 and the true spiritual significance of what he says. 
 He imagines the purposes of God concerning man- 
 kind as being a sealed book which only the glorified 
 Christ is able to open, that is, he thinks of Christ as 
 the arbiter of human destiny. He sees this book of 
 divine judgment sealed with seven seals, and as 
 the hand of Christ opens them one by one the whole 
 panorama of portentous events unrolls itself before 
 Him, The interesting part of this conception is that 
 it is intended as a survey of what was taking place 
 in the world soon after the beginning of the Chris- 
 tian era. Thus, after the opening of the first seal, 
 there went forth a rider on a white horse. Accord- 
 ing to Professor Ramsay this figure stands for the 
 Parthians, who were at this time a terrible scourge 
 on one of the borders of the unwieldy dominion of 
 the Caesars ; what these invaders were doing at this 
 moment was causing as much vivid interest in this 
 ancient world as, say, the revolutionaries in Russia 
 or the exploits of Dinizulu are causing to us to-day. 
 
THE SILENCE OF HEAVEN 243 
 
 The writer saw in these things the break-up of the 
 estabhshed order ; and he was quite right, they were 
 the beginning of the end of the world-wide Roman 
 Empire. But he maintains, too, that all these great 
 events were shaping themselves in accordance with 
 the will of God and the coming of the Kingdom of 
 Christ. Should we not all agree with him ? Is 
 there anything meaningless or accidental in the 
 affairs of men ? And is it not true that in all the 
 great crises of history since Christianity began the 
 name and influence of Jesus have played an increas- 
 ing part, until to-day we should one and all con- 
 fess that to take Jesus out of Western civilisation 
 would be an impossibility? So far from losing 
 ground, He is gaining it; so far from counting for 
 less, He is counting for more. We are all watching 
 the decline of an old order and the coming of a 
 new, and we all fervently believe that the new order 
 when it comes will mean the triumph of the spirit 
 and teaching of Jesus. Thus, this man saw pretty 
 clearly, notwithstanding his limited outlook upon 
 the future. The principal difTerence between him 
 and ourselves is that he believed the triumph of 
 Jesus would come about quickly and catastrophi- 
 cally, whereas the lessons of history have taught us 
 to regard it as coming slowly, though inevitably, by 
 the quiet operation of the divine spirit of love and 
 brotherhood. Spiritually, the writer of the Book of 
 Revelation foresaw exactly what we see to be 
 coming now, although the events of contemporary 
 history which occupied so much of his attention 
 have long ceased to possess living interest for us. 
 But what does that matter? He believed in the 
 
244 THE SILENCE OF HEAVEN 
 
 victory of all that the name of Jesus stands for — 
 the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven 
 from God — and so do we. 
 
 You observe that the silence of which our text 
 speaks took place after the opening of the last seal. 
 Can you not now see what this means? There is 
 something pathetic and yet beautiful suggested 
 here. This man was so fully persuaded that the 
 end of all the wickedness and suffering of mankind 
 was just at hand that he believed the seal of God's 
 last judgment had already been opened, and that 
 the long-expected reign of righteousness and peace 
 would immediately ensue. But it did not come. 
 There was no descent of Christ on the clouds of 
 heaven ; no sudden flaming of Divine splendour ; 
 no innumerable angel host coming to the rescue of 
 stricken humanity. Instead, the welter of sorrow, 
 and anguish, and oppression went on, and God 
 made no sign — ''there was silence in heaven." 
 But it cannot be long, thought the seer. The last 
 seal is broken, it will only be a little while that we 
 shall have to wait ; there is a pause in the activities 
 of God, a silence during which no sound is heard 
 but the moans of those who are being trampled 
 under foot by shame and wrong; but, compared 
 with the grief and darkness behind, this silence of 
 God is but short — only half-an-hour. It is a climax. 
 God sits with uplifted hand, and all the songs of 
 heaven are hushed to an unbroken stillness while 
 the multitude, which no man can number, listens 
 in solemn sympathy to the sad appeals of their 
 brethren who lie unhelped in the darkness below. 
 The glorified angel host forget their own blessed- 
 
THE SILENCE OF HEAVEN 245 
 
 ness, forget even their paeans of praise to the 
 Almighty ; their gaze is no longer upward upon the 
 eternal glory, but downward upon the struggles 
 and sufferings of men. They cannot hear their 
 own harmonies; they can only hear the sad music 
 of humanity. Their stillness is not the stillness 
 of indifference, but of concentrated compassion. 
 When that half-hour of silence is broken it will not 
 be by a re-striking of the harps of gold, but by the 
 torrential down-rush of heaven to the rescue of im- 
 prisoned souls on earth. That half-hour's pause is 
 the hush before the tornado; it is the cessation of 
 every divine activity except a sympathetic scrutiny 
 of the needs and hopes of the blind world that is 
 calling out for God. 
 
 This, I am sure, is what the writer of my text 
 meant to convey by this impressive and even dra- 
 matic interlude. But how far is it true ? Has it 
 really any significance which we can fairly appro- 
 priate? We all know of the silence of heaven, but 
 it has lasted longer than half-an-hour. Indeed, the 
 last seal has not yet been broken, and there may be 
 more seals to break, but we have not had much 
 indication that heaven is in any hurry to come to 
 our deliverance. On goes the storm of anguish and 
 heart-break, of toil and slavery, of battle and mur- 
 der, of secret sin and open infamy, of plague and 
 pestilence, of robbery and starvation, the ceaseless 
 warfare of evil and good, in which the latter so 
 often seems to be the loser. On, on it goes, and, 
 whether Heaven has paused to listen or not, it 
 makes no sign. From that side of things there is 
 only silence. 
 
246 THE SILENCE OF HEAVEN 
 
 Yet, stay ! Is this all there is to be said on the 
 subject ? By no means. The charges sometimes 
 brought against us preachers are that we speak 
 without discernment, that we treat our hearers to 
 sentimental satisfactions, and that we know no more 
 about the real meaning of life than our forefathers 
 did or the wise and prudent among us know now. 
 The question is being put to us with increasing 
 force, How do you know ? Which of you is right ? 
 What can you really be sure of ? Some of you say 
 one thing and some another, but amid all your 
 religious clamour there is very little that is perma- 
 nently helpful or satisfying. All your theories 
 break down in presence of the hard facts of life. 
 How do you know there is a God ? Have you ever 
 been to the further side of things to see ? How can 
 you tell that your Christ of ages past did not make 
 an end when they laid Him in a bloody grave? 
 What tokens have you that He is still able to affect 
 the destinies of humanity ? If there be a God, or a 
 Christ, or a heaven of glorified beings, what are 
 they all doing while man stumbles along in his 
 blindness eating his own flesh ? 
 
 These are powerful questions, challenges which 
 pessimism has put to faith in all ages, and never 
 more than in our own. Nevertheless, I think there 
 is an answer, and I think, too, that it is something 
 more than theory. It is far older than Christianity, 
 but in Christianity it mounted to its highest expres- 
 sion. I mean the witness of the strong soul to that 
 which is stronger and higher than itself. There is 
 one universal doctrine in which all men profess to 
 believe, and that is the doctrine of the supremacy 
 
THE SILENCE OF HEAVEN 247 
 
 of the cross. We might call this the changeless 
 creed of the human race. It is essentially Christian, 
 but it is not exclusively Christian ; it would be a 
 bad thing if it were. I am sure you all know what 
 I mean. I mean that inner conviction of every soul 
 that has ever come to moral consciousness that the 
 highest thing a man can do with his life is to lay it 
 dow^n for the sake of the universal life. I will make 
 bold to say that there is not a single man in this 
 church this morning who does not believe that, 
 although he might express it differently and hedge 
 it round with all kinds of qualifications. I know 
 for a fact that there are men here every Thursday 
 who would profess themselves agnostics in regard to 
 the meaning of life, but I am certain their agnostic- 
 ism would stop short here. They w^ould tell me 
 they do not know whether there is a God or a life 
 to come, and they might deny my right to affirm 
 either of these from personal knowledge, but they 
 could no more help agreeing with me about the 
 supremacy of the cross than they could help believ- 
 ing in their own manhood ; in fact, to deny the one 
 is to deny the other. 
 
 Now, is not this a marvellous and impressive 
 thing? Go back as far as you like in human his- 
 tory, and you will find it; examine the ideals of the 
 most advanced civilisation — if we can agree as to 
 what is the most advanced civilisation — and you 
 will still find it in the foreground. The savage 
 knows it in spite of his bestiality, and the saint 
 reverences it in his hours of highest insight. It is 
 the one thing that makes progress possible or con- 
 ceivable. Progress is not due to the achievements 
 
248 THE SILENCE OF HEAVEN 
 
 of mind, but to the achievements of soul ; all that 
 mind can ever do is to register these achievements 
 of soul. Behind, beneath, and above all that man- 
 kind has ever attempted or realised that is of per- 
 manent value to the race is this one principle of the 
 supremacy of the cross. As ages pass on we are 
 learning more fully, perhaps, how the individual 
 may most effectually give himself to the universal 
 life, but we are discovering nothing new as to the 
 essential greatness of the giving itself. 
 
 Quintus Curtius leaping into the gulf that threat- 
 ened to swallow up his beloved Rome, and the life- 
 boat man putting out to rescue a shipwrecked crew 
 on the Goodwin Sands are manifestations of exactly 
 the same impulse. And that in you, my agnostic 
 fellow-citizen, which bids you hold your tongue 
 about a business trouble for fear you should worry 
 the wife, or pinch and starve yourself for the sake 
 of your children, is only one more example of it. 
 If ever you see a man take his stand and endure an 
 evil for the sake of a principle or an impersonal 
 ideal you see the same thing. Even when you are 
 not noble enough to do it yourself, or when you 
 think an individual mistaken as to the occasion 
 which calls forth his self-devotion, you are still able 
 to recognise the working of this same consciousness 
 of a higher beyond which has the right to demand 
 the fullest self-immolation and the most ungrudging 
 homage on the part of the individual. You will 
 actually see it in what appears to contradict it. You 
 will see a woman so completely lost in the well- 
 being of her lover that she would willingly die a 
 thousand deaths for him herself, and yet she will 
 
THE SILENCE OF HEAVEN 249 
 
 sacrifice other women's lovers to his interest with- 
 out much compunction ; she is driven by this same 
 cosmic impulse, call it what you will, but she only 
 sees it in one particular form of expression. It is 
 what makes the warrior willing to die for his 
 country, even while he strikes down other patriots 
 who are dying for theirs. It produces martyrs on 
 both sides during the vicissitudes of a great cause. 
 The Roman Catholics who kindle the fires of Smith- 
 field go willingly to the rack and the scaffold them- 
 selves under Elizabeth and James — always the same 
 thing, the expression, maybe partial, or even, as we 
 think, fanatical, but in every one of them there is 
 this kernel of divinity, this homage to the cross. 
 You all know it ; there is not one of you who does 
 not know it; and every man and woman among us 
 bows in reverence before it as the very highest 
 thing of which humanity has any experience. 
 
 Now will you please tell me what this is ? Can 
 you tell me why your heart is touched and thrilled 
 by every splendid example of it that comes under 
 your notice? If you want to fire the imagination 
 and stir the pulses of your fellow-men, all you have 
 to do is to show them some Christ on His Calvary 
 in real life and the thing is done. The completer 
 the oblation the more power it has to move us — 
 provided we really see it for what it is. You may 
 tell me you do not know what it is, but I am not 
 talking like a fool when I say I think I know ; it is 
 the truth about the universe; it is that in man which 
 reveals God. If this is not God then the world has 
 never seen God, and yet has stumbled on some- 
 thing worthy of eternal homage. If you want to 
 
250 THE SILENCE OF HEAVEN 
 
 find God, do not go to the school-men ; you need 
 not concern yourself greatly about what this par- 
 ticular preacher is saying to you this morning; but 
 go out into the street and look for the first mother 
 with a baby at her breast, or range yourself along- 
 side the man who has lost his chance in life rather 
 than stultify his conscience, and you have come 
 upon Him. Better still, ask yourself what it is that 
 rises up in sudden protest within you when you are 
 tempted to do a mean or dirty action, and you will 
 find that the scrub in your wilderness has flamed 
 into unearthly splendour and you are gazing into 
 the eyes of God. 
 
 But if you admit this much you will have to admit 
 something more. You will have to say that if we 
 are ever to see this divine splendour in its fulness 
 we shall have sometime to forego external aids 
 when our noblest choices are made and our greatest 
 deeds are done. These ascents are the hardest to 
 mount because we have to go alone without any 
 support but that of God within, and even that voice 
 may cease to speak with clearness at the darkest 
 moment. Would not the full manifestation of the 
 moral greatness of Socrates have been something 
 short without that cup of hemlock ? but he drank it 
 alone. The garment of flame that wrapped the 
 suffering body of Joan of Arc was a more fitting 
 expression of the grandeur of her spirit than the 
 patents of nobility which the King of France after- 
 wards conferred upon her family. Poor Joan ! She 
 always seemed to hear heavenly voices urging her 
 on while there was something to be done ; but when 
 it came to the last chapter, and she could do nothing 
 
THE SILENCE OF HEAVEN 251 
 
 but suffer, they were silent and she was left without 
 consolation. But the same was true of a greater 
 than Joan of Arc. The cry from Calvary, " My 
 God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" was 
 the cry of the supremest self-oblation that has ever 
 been made in face of the silence of heaven. If it 
 had never been made at all there would have been 
 something in human experience which even Jesus 
 did not know, and a reach of attainment He had 
 never scaled. It seems a terrible thing to say, but 
 somehow I feel glad that that prayer of anguish was 
 ever prayed. Jesus cried, and heaven was silent, 
 lest it should rob Him of His last and highest 
 glory, the glory of having laid everything upon 
 the altar of sacrifice without any consciousness of 
 personal satisfaction or reward. For one awful half- 
 hour, so to speak, heaven watched in silence, and 
 then the soul of Jesus rose into the light in all the 
 majesty of a divinity which knew no more of failure 
 and death. 
 
 Will you not take this truth home to your own 
 hearts ? There must be many of you who need it. 
 In the presence of this truth of life, this innermost 
 of all good, do you not feel that all questions about 
 the limits of human knowledge or differences in 
 doctrine are best answered by being ignored ? Is it 
 not clear that all teachers of truth are trying to say 
 the same thing, and that every noble life has suc- 
 ceeded in saying it? And does it not help you to 
 know this ? What can you possibly do with your 
 life to-day that has not been done a thousand times 
 before ? What pathway can you tread that has not 
 been trodden by all the sons of God in all the ages 
 
252 THE SILENCE OF HEAVEN 
 
 past? And what meaning can there have been in 
 the earthly experience of the greatest of saints and 
 seers, or even of Jesus Himself, which is not in 
 yours? You are sometimes tempted to think that 
 no one has ever had to live just such a life, or face 
 just such a situation, as yours at the present mo- 
 ment. That is quite a natural mistake to make ; 
 every man's career is unique and interesting to him- 
 self. But the truth is that your next-door neigh- 
 bour probably knows as much of the great problem 
 as you do. You are not in the least original. The 
 external details of your career may be such as never 
 took place before, but the use you are called upon 
 to make of your being is precisely that of all the 
 rest of your fellow-men. In everything that comes 
 your way you can do one of two things — you can 
 be Christ or Pilate. You can either be a coward or 
 a hero, a liar or a messenger of truth, a weakling 
 or the master of your fate, a robber of the race or 
 its saviour. Whether at home, or out in the world, 
 or in the secret of your own heart, you are always 
 having to decide between the lesser and the larger 
 self, the particular and the universal, the world and 
 God. It will sometimes seem as though you are so 
 utterly alone in the decision that there comes not 
 one ray of help and comfort out of the unseen to 
 brighten your lot. You may feel as if prayer were 
 a mockery, and everything unreal except the hell of 
 going on living. You may ask yourself whether the 
 game is worth the candle, and why you should 
 strive to preserve ideals and rise above baseness and 
 foulness in your treatment of mankind. You may 
 passionately protest that if you could change places 
 
THE SILENCE OF HEAVEN 253 
 
 with God — supposing that there is a God — you 
 would at least speak the one word that the pilgrim 
 needs most when the night is darkest. Well, so 
 you would; but you would speak it as God speaks 
 it — within and not without the conquering soul. 
 That still small voice does not speak its last and 
 greatest word until all lesser sounds are hushed, 
 and the soul has taken its bravest step alone and 
 apparently unaided. That is the moment when 
 angels hold their breath, as it were, to see if we are 
 equal to the test. The voice of heaven is silent for 
 half-an-hour, only half-an-hour, and then breaks the 
 song of jubilee. 
 
XVII 
 
 THE CRYSTAL SEA 
 
 "And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with 
 fire : and the7n that had gotten the victory over the 
 beast, and over his image, and over his 7nark, and over 
 the nwnber of his name, stand on the sea of glass, 
 having the harps of God." — Rev. xv. 2. 
 
 It is no easy matter to undertake to interpret the 
 symbolism of the book of Revelation, for, to a 
 great extent, it must necessarily be obscure to the 
 modern mind. We are all more or less acquainted 
 with efforts which have been made by imperfectly 
 educated people to explain the prophecies of this 
 strange book as having relation to events which 
 have yet to take place in the history of the world. 
 Some people seem to find a great fascination in 
 this kind of exercise, not only with the book of 
 Revelation, but with the various other books of the 
 Bible, especially the book of Daniel. I can well 
 remember when I was a child reading that the 
 " little horn " of the book of Daniel was, I think, 
 the Prince Imperial, according to the detailed ex- 
 j)lanation given by the editor of a certain religious 
 periodical ; and one was quite interested the other 
 day to find that, now the poor Prince Imperial is 
 dead, the little horn has become somebody else. 
 I should not be greatly surprised to discover that 
 
 254 
 
THE CRYSTAL SEA 255 
 
 there are people present in the congregation this 
 morning who have been instructed that the '' Scarlet 
 Woman " of Revelation is the Church of Rome. 
 Whatever else it was it never was that. But the 
 great majority of my hearers will know quite well 
 that all this kind of theorising is beside the mark 
 and out of place. The man who wrote this book 
 of Revelation — or, rather, the man who put it 
 together, for it is a composite work — was writing 
 for a constituency which well understood the sym- 
 bolism he employed; but w^e do not, except to a 
 comparatively limited degree. This man was writ- 
 ing about his own times, not about ours. He had 
 in mind the coming overthrow of the world-wide 
 Roman Empire, and the establishment of some- 
 thing entirely new in its place. He never foresaw 
 the Europe and America of to-day, and never 
 dreamed that militarism, struggle, and suffering 
 would last so long as they have done. He was 
 looking for a grand dramatic wind-up of the exist- 
 ing order of things and the conquest of earth by 
 the hosts of heaven. This, remember, was the 
 writer's point of view, a point of view from which 
 he never departs for a moment. All the symbol- 
 ism he uses, and which was quite familiar to the 
 people for whom he wrote, is meant to illustrate 
 this point of view. Sometimes we know what the 
 symbolism means and sometimes we do not. If 
 we only knew the everyday conversation of the 
 Jews of the Dispersion for whom this book was 
 written it would contain no obscurities for us; but, 
 unfortunately, we do not. We only know a part 
 of it; and even the most eminent New Testament 
 
256 THE CRYSTAL SEA 
 
 scholars are obliged to confess, therefore, that some 
 of the allusions in this book must for the present 
 remain a mystery. 
 
 But I do not think this observation applies to the 
 remarkable expression which we have chosen as 
 our text this morning — ** a sea of glass (or a glassy 
 sea) mingled with fire." The figure is a striking 
 one, and we are not without guidance as to its 
 spiritual meaning. In a modified form the phrase 
 appears first in the fourth chapter, wherein the 
 writer describes himself as taken up in spirit into 
 Heaven and gazing upon the throne of God. The 
 imagery of this part of the book is mostly borrowed 
 from that of Ezekiel, and is marvellously rich and 
 suggestive, albeit restrained and reverent. The 
 nearest approach he makes to a description of the 
 Almighty Himself is to say: "Behold, a throne 
 was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne. And 
 He that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a 
 sardine stone." In Chapter xxi, we are twice told 
 that the jasper stone was " clear as crystal." The 
 sardine stone was fiery red. He then proceeds to 
 tell us that before the throne there was " a glassy 
 sea like unto crystal." He returns to this figure 
 in our text, and tells us that this glassy sea which 
 spread before the throne of God was shot with 
 flame, and that around it stood a host of those who 
 had come victorious out of the conflicts of earth, 
 singing the song of Moses and the Lamb. 
 
 Now, here is ample material for a lengthy dis- 
 cussion of our theme if we were to enter upon it in 
 all its details. But all I want is to show that this 
 man was thinking of something great and good, 
 
THE CRYSTAL SEA 257 
 
 and that the language he uses is quite in accord- 
 ance with his theme, although we should use differ- 
 ent language now-a-days. You cannot fail to 
 observe that he speaks of God as possessing the 
 same attributes as the glassy sea which surrounds 
 His throne. He speaks of the nature of God as 
 crystal-clear and yet as filled with fire. I think I 
 can see what he means. " God is light, and in 
 Him is no darkness at all." But He is also love, 
 the burning flame that is never quenched and in 
 whose embrace all foulness and corruption are de- 
 stroyed. The sea before the throne is the truth 
 about God, and about all being, made manifest to 
 those who are worthy to behold it with unclouded 
 vision. The sea is the emblem of mystery in most 
 of the apocalyptic writings. Here we are told that 
 the mystery which surrounds the being of God is 
 no longer mystery to those who are worthy to see 
 Him as He is. It is infinite, but there is no part 
 dark. It is crystal-clear with the light of truth, 
 and mingled with the flame of eternal love that 
 streams from the throne itself. The glassy sea is 
 thus a beautiful figure for the perfect revelation of 
 the glory and the grace of God, 
 
 Who, then, are these who stand upon the glassy 
 sea and behold with unveiled face the beatific 
 vision ? The writer tells us that they were the 
 people who had conquered the beast. By the beast 
 I have no doubt he meant the infamous Nero, under 
 whose orders one of the fiercest and cruellest per- 
 secutions of the Christians took place. You will 
 not need to be reminded that at the time of which 
 this chapter treats Nero had illuminated his palace 
 17 
 
258 THE CRYSTAL SEA 
 
 gardens on a festival occasion with the bodies of 
 burning Christians, who had been covered with 
 pitch before they were set on fire. This must have 
 been a terrible time for the followers of Jesus, and 
 would test their fidelity to the uttermost. We are 
 here told that those who had come off victorious in 
 this conflict with the worst that the world could do 
 were privileged to behold the truth as it really is, 
 and to gaze, as it were, upon the very face of Him 
 who is eternal light and love. "Therefore are 
 they before the throne of God, and serve Him day 
 and night in His temple; and He that sitteth on 
 the throne shall spread His tabernacle over them. 
 They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any 
 more; neither shall the sun strike upon them nor 
 any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of 
 the throne shall be their shepherd, and shall guide 
 them unto fountains of waters of life; and God 
 shall wipe away every tear from their eyes." 
 
 Here is the point at which I feel we can legiti- 
 mately begin to think of this remarkable passage as 
 applicable to ourselves. We may put the matter 
 thus : The one great object of all spiritual aspira- 
 tion and achievement is to stand before that crystal 
 sea which is illumined with the fire of God. We 
 may not always put it to ourselves this way, but 
 this is what we want. We want to know; we want 
 to see; we want to be at one with God; we want 
 to worship in the radiant presence of the infinite 
 ocean of love divine. I believe all men are more 
 or less conscious of this longing, but there are 
 some natures in whom it amounts to an all-absorb- 
 ing passion. These are the material out of which 
 
THE CRYSTAL SEA 259 
 
 saints and mystics are made. There are human 
 beings to whom life only seems to spell one word, 
 and that w^ord is God. They see everything in 
 relation to God, and without God life would cease 
 to have meaning. Thus John Henry Newman 
 tells us that even when he was a child there were 
 to him only two luminous self-evident realities over 
 against each other, God and his own soul. The 
 ordinary man does not feel like this, but there are 
 times which come to all of us when we feel an inde- 
 scribable yearning to break through the trammels 
 which surround us, and understand life as it really 
 is. In our best moments we all want to pierce the 
 veil of mystery that hides from us the Great Be- 
 yond, and not only so, but to attain to that ineffable 
 something which is neither near nor far, and to 
 which we really belong. Have you never had this 
 haunting call from the infinite ? I am sure you 
 have. You have had it when you did not know 
 what you wanted, just like the little child who, 
 when asked why she was crying, replied that it 
 was because she wanted something she did not 
 know the name of. We all want that same some- 
 thing to which we cannot give a name. 
 
 Like tides on a desert sea-beach 
 
 When the moon is low and thin, 
 Into our hearts high yearnings 
 
 Come welling and surging in ; 
 Come from the mystic ocean, 
 
 Whose rim no foot hath trod ; 
 Some of us call it longing 
 
 And others call it God. 
 
 It is almost useless to try to describe what I mean, 
 for we all know and yet we don't know. We want 
 
26o THE CRYSTAL SEA 
 
 the life that is death — death to self-interest, self- 
 pity, self-regard. We want to escape from the 
 imprisonment of self into the region where the self 
 becomes all and there is nothing beyond. We 
 want to lose ourselves so completely in that one 
 eternal life that there shall no longer be any ques- 
 tion of me and thee. We want to reach the good 
 beyond the good; the right within the right; the 
 truth of which truth is but the shadow. We want 
 to be lifted out of the tossing sea of human passion 
 into the eternal calm where knowledge and achieve- 
 ment are one. We want that rest and blessedness 
 in which the undertone of joy is sacrifice and sacri- 
 fice is liberty. We want — oh, how much we want ! 
 — to love without fear of losing, and to worship 
 without ceasing that which is the living God re- 
 flected in our own being — our very existence being 
 the homage we render to That which is the source 
 and sustenance of all. 
 
 It is no use saying you do not want this. You 
 do; we all do. It is what the greedy man wants 
 when he goes out to gather gold ; he does not want 
 the gold, but that of which the gold is the symbol, 
 the something for which his soul is craving and 
 will not be denied, even though he is seeking it in 
 a wrong way. It is what the bad man wants when 
 he spreads havoc and ruin in the path of his am- 
 bition or his lust; he is looking for heaven in the 
 vaults of hell. It is what is driving every one of 
 you to hope and fear, to toil and rest, to lonely 
 introspection and the joy of human fellowship and 
 love. It is the pang in sorrow; the loss in grief; 
 the lowest note in failure and the highest in sue- 
 
THE CRYSTAL SEA 261 
 
 cess. If you do not know this you do not know 
 yourselves. You are so constituted that you can 
 never stop seeking until you have found the eternal 
 calm of the perfect vision of God. If you try to 
 rest in anything less you will be spurred on again 
 by your own soul and swept upward from height 
 to height until you enter upon the Great Peace on 
 the shores of the crystal sea. 
 
 But how can we attain this object? What is the 
 nearest way home, so to speak ? There is but one 
 answer, and that has been given by every noble life 
 that was ever lived since the world began. If we 
 would attain to the life eternal we must be content 
 to climb the steep and winding path that leads 
 from the valley of the shadow of death to the ever- 
 lasting heights of that perfect knowledge which is 
 perfect love. We have to become what we seek. 
 We shall never enter upon the realisation of any 
 good which is external to ourselves. Knowing is 
 being, and apart from being there is no knowing 
 in the things of God. But being and knowing 
 both imply doing. Every aspiration of the soul 
 Godward implies a corresponding activity man- 
 ward. Only those can stand before the glassy sea 
 and enter upon the beatific vision who have come 
 off victorious in the conflict with the beast, and 
 that means waging war with all that is foul and 
 degrading in the experience of humanity as a 
 whole. In one of Olive Schreiner's beautiful 
 mystical sketches in the little book called Dreams 
 there is a vivid figurative description of the vision 
 granted to an aspirant who had come to the border- 
 land of heaven, and saw before him a gigantic 
 
262 THE CRYSTAL SEA 
 
 divine figure, the ideal humanity, which was neither 
 male nor female, but the express image or reflection 
 of God Himself. In response to the prayer of the 
 aspirant to be permitted to stay there and gaze 
 upon this ideal spiritual fulfilment of all the hopes 
 and struggles of earth, God's answer was to point 
 down to the world he had left, the world of blind- 
 ness, mourning, and woe. "All you seek is 
 there," He said. And so indeed it is. There is 
 no kind of spiritual aspiration which has not its 
 equivalent in holy desire to free humanity from its 
 burdens and destroy the sense of separateness which 
 is the root cause of cruelty and wrong. No man 
 shall ever behold the glassy sea who does not from 
 that altitude realise all mankind as his very self. 
 The measure of his upward rise is just the measure 
 of his downward plunge to the rescue of imprisoned 
 souls. The clearer his vision of the crystal sea, 
 the brighter glows the fire in the midst of it. There 
 is no truth that is not love. 
 
 Have you never felt that you would give all you 
 possess just to know what is behind the veil and 
 what this bewildering life of ours really means ? I 
 am sure you have. And there are times when the 
 silence seems almost intolerable. It humbles our 
 pride to think that with all our boasted advance in 
 civilisation and power over nature we know no 
 more about what lies on the other side of death 
 than men knew 6,000 years ago. There are many 
 who profess to have received authentic communica- 
 tions from their departed friends, but if so the 
 testimony that filters through in this way is so 
 vague and uncertain, as well as inconsistent, that 
 it cannot command general acceptance. 
 
THE CRYSTAL SEA 263 
 
 Strange, is it not, that of the myriads who 
 
 Before us passed the door of darkness through, 
 
 Not one returns to tell us of the road 
 Which, to discover, we must travel too ? 
 
 No, if we have to rely on this kind of external 
 evidence the universe must remain as great a 
 mystery as ever. But there is one kind of evidence 
 concerning which the highest witness never 
 changes. It is that the way to blessedness is the 
 path of self-renunciation. Let a man determine so 
 to live that his life is one long denial of the lower, 
 one long affirmation of the higher, and in the end 
 he comes to know that there is neither death nor 
 separation, and no life but the knowledge of God. 
 The change from one body to another is a small 
 thing; the ascent from the brute to the god is 
 always by the same pathway, the pathway of self- 
 giving in the service of the common life. " No 
 new commandment write I unto you, but an old 
 commandment which ye heard from the begin- 
 ning." Life is one and indivisible. Act as if it 
 were so, and as though your individuality had no 
 meaning apart from the whole, and you will come 
 to see that this is the truth, the truth which is love 
 — "a sea of glass mingled with fire" spreading 
 around the throne of God. 
 
 So when the heart cries out for God, go and 
 staunch the bleeding wounds of man. When you 
 see a human being wretched and degraded, say to 
 yourself : *' There am L" When you hear the cry 
 of want and misery breaking from the hearts of the 
 children of despair, recognise the cry of your own 
 soul. When your own heart is aching for sym- 
 pathy and understanding, when you feel your lone- 
 
264 THE CRYSTAL SEA 
 
 liness the most, pour forth the balm of divine heal- 
 ing to another's need and you shall find that it has 
 satisfied your own. When you are tempted to 
 think of your own good as apart from that of your 
 fellow, or to snatch at a gain that means his loss, 
 remember that you are being deceived by the lie of 
 the serpent in Eden, the lie that there can be any 
 good which cleaves a gulf between man and man, 
 or man and God. When you find yourself indiffer- 
 ent to the call of the right against the wrong, or 
 the cause of the weak against the strong, lift up 
 your eyes to the throne in the midst of which is 
 the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. 
 Understand that that throne is here now; here is 
 infinity; here is eternity, waiting for you to enter 
 upon your heritage. When you see men in danger 
 of forgetting who and what they are, the offspring 
 of the Most High, take care to remember it for 
 them by living it yourself in their presence. Suffer 
 no deed of hate to pass unchecked the portals of 
 your being. Let no lie pollute your soul. How- 
 ever strong may seem the earthly and devilish 
 forces in humanity as you know it, be not over- 
 come of evil but overcome evil with good. Tell 
 despondency it bears the mark of the beast and that 
 you refuse to wear it. Say the same to moral 
 cowardice and cupidity. Never be content merely 
 with repelling the attacks of evil upon the fragile 
 good you keep locked up within your own heart 
 and conscience ; out upon the enemy. Become the 
 assailant, and drive him from his fastnesses in 
 human hearts and lives. It is never safe for a child 
 of God to be content with maintaining his footing. 
 
THE CRYSTAL SEA 265 
 
 or standing siege in the war between heaven and 
 hell ; he must hurl himself with divine courage and 
 faith upon the ranks of evil, and break and destroy 
 them in the name of the Lord. There is no human 
 need that is not yours, and no spiritual achieve- 
 ment in w^hich you have not an immediate concern. 
 To follow Jesus to the highest of all ; to be privi- 
 leged to gaze upon that infinite crystal sea, the 
 manifested light and love of God, you will have 
 to take upon yourself the whole burden of the sins 
 and suffering of mankind, for they are your very 
 own. You cannot avoid them without choosing 
 the outer darkness ; you cannot assume them with- 
 out rising into the eternal light. This is daring 
 language, but my text justifies it. *' A sea of glass 
 mingled with fire!" Oh, eternal calm, far, far 
 above our feeble range of sight, yet deep within 
 our souls even now ! When shall we behold that 
 glorious expanse in which all being is included and 
 fulfilled ? When ? Only when w^e ourselves be- 
 come the perfectly manifested light and love of 
 God, and eternally at one with Him and with all 
 that is made in His image and likeness. This alone 
 is real ; all else is but seeming. There is nothing 
 beyond the crystal sea. 
 
XVIII 
 
 THE HOLY CITY AND ITS TEMPLE 
 
 " A^id I saw no temple therein; for the Lord God 
 Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of itP — Rev, 
 xxi. 22. 
 
 We have so frequently discussed together the 
 symbolism of the book of Revelation that there will 
 be no need to remind you that every sentence in this 
 marvellous chapter has a figurative significance and 
 stands for some spiritual reality. Still, it is pos- 
 sible there may be some here who have not yet 
 grasped the basal idea upon which the writer raises 
 this beautiful structure of thought and feeling. You 
 are all familiar with the opening sentences : '' And 
 I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first 
 heaven and the first earth were passed away, and 
 there was no more sea. And I saw the Holy City, 
 New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of 
 heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her hus- 
 band." All the rest of the chapter is a description 
 of this glorious city in which God is to dwell with 
 His people, and there is to be no more death, nor 
 sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain. But what 
 does the writer mean by this city? Where is it to 
 be, and who will inherit it ? I dare say there may 
 be some of you who think of it as heaven, the heaven 
 to which we hope to go when we die. We sing 
 
 266 
 
THE HOLY CITY AND ITS TEMPLE 267 
 
 hymns about it in which this view is taken for 
 granted, and the very imagery of this chapter is 
 employed to illustrate the theme. In that section of 
 the Congregational hymn-book headed, " The final 
 glory of heaven," there are quite a number of beauti- 
 ful hymns in which this belief is asserted. Thus : 
 
 Jerusalem, my happy home, 
 
 Name ever dear to me ; 
 When shall my labours have an end 
 
 In joy and peace in thee? 
 
 When shall these eyes thy heaven-built walls 
 
 And pearly gates behold, 
 Thy bulwarks with salvation strong, 
 
 And streets of shining gold? 
 
 Here, you see, is the very language of the twenty- 
 first chapter of Revelation ; and it fully accords with 
 many of our most familiar conceptions. The New 
 Jerusalem is for most of us the glorious home which 
 waits for us beyond the river of death. 
 
 But the moment we begin to look into the subject 
 we see that this could not be precisely what the 
 writer of this chapter was thinking about. He says 
 he saw this city coming down out of heaven. Evi- 
 dently then it was not heaven ; so the walls of jasper 
 and the golden streets must have some other sig- 
 nificance. On the other hand, he says there is to 
 be no more death, and he goes on to declare that 
 there will be no need of the sun to shine in the 
 glorious city, and that there will be no night there. 
 What in the world is he talking about ? This city 
 is quite unlike anything we have ever heard or read 
 about on the face of the earth. No death, so sun, 
 no moon ! If this city is not heaven, neither is it 
 
268 THE HOLY CITY AND ITS TEMPLE 
 
 earth, for its establishment seems to imply a com- 
 plete transformation of the world as we know it now. 
 Well, that is just the explanation. According to 
 this writer everything is going to be transformed. 
 He speaks of a new heaven and a new earth. At 
 present heaven and earth are quite separate states of 
 existence, but in the new city of God of which this 
 man dreams they are no longer to be two but one. I 
 could quite understand it if some of you were to say 
 that you have no patience to listen to such ravings ; 
 but they are not so absurd as they appear to be. Let 
 us try to understand before, we criticise. To tell 
 you the truth, I have a good deal of sympathy with 
 this unknown writer's view of things. I believe that 
 the veil between seen and unseen is a very flimsy 
 one, and that this seemingly solid matter which 
 forms our prison-house is not so very solid after all. 
 Probably it is nothing more than our own thought 
 exercised upon a very limited plane. It is quite 
 conceivable that we might wake up, as it were, from 
 a sleep, and realise that there never has been a 
 material and a spiritual, but that we have all the 
 time been living at the very centre of reality, only 
 we did not know it. This is what the writer is sug- 
 gesting anyhow. He thinks if men were only good 
 enough, and ready for the change, the veil betw^een 
 heaven and earth would be taken away, and the two 
 would be seen to be one. That is what he means 
 by the city coming down ; it is heaven taking posses- 
 sion of earth and absorbing it into itself. In paint- 
 ing this picture he goes a good deal farther than 
 most of his contemporaries were capable of doing. 
 Patriotic Jews had long been looking for the city of 
 
THE HOLY CITY AND ITS TEMPLE 269 
 
 God on earth, but they meant their own beloved 
 Jerusalem, the very Jerusalem which Cook's person- 
 ally conducted tours give so many of us the oppor- 
 tunity of visiting at the present day. From the 
 reports which travellers bring back it must be con- 
 fessed that that squalid-looking mud village is any- 
 thing but a model for the city of God so gorgeously 
 portrayed in this chapter. But its condition was 
 even worse at the moment when this chapter was 
 written. It had just been destroyed by the Romans, 
 and lay a smoking ruin. The Temple of which the 
 Jews had been so proud, with its marble walls and 
 golden domes, had been given to the flames, and all 
 the sacred vessels carried ofif by the Roman army. 
 
 It is difficult for us to realise now what a terrible 
 blow this must have been to Jewish national hopes. 
 For generations they had been looking forward to 
 the coming of an ideal social order, the kingdom 
 of God, in which their Jerusalem should be the 
 capital of the whole earth, and their Temple the 
 centre of the world's worship. Their city was to be 
 at once the political and the spiritual focus of all the 
 interests of mankind. They seem to have believed 
 this with all their hearts, and to have gone on ex- 
 pecting to see it realised as an actual fact. Take, 
 for example, the following from Isaiah Ix. — 
 
 "Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the 
 glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. . . . Therefore 
 thy gates shall be open continually ; they shall not 
 be shut day nor night; that men may bring unto 
 thee the forces of the Gentiles, and that their kings 
 may be brought. . . . The sons also of them that 
 afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee; and all 
 
270 THE HOLY CITY AND ITS TEMPLE 
 
 they that despised thee shall bow themselves down 
 at the soles of thy feet; and they shall call thee 
 the city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of 
 Israel. . . . The sun shall be no more thy light by 
 day; neither for brightness shall the moon give 
 light unto thee; but the Lord shall be unto thee 
 an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory." 
 
 It is plain to be seen that this was intended as 
 foretelling great prosperity for Jerusalem, a kind of 
 universal dominion. The reference to the sun and 
 moon is a figure for the material splendour which 
 is to be hers in the day of her triumph over all the 
 nations of the earth. 
 
 If now you turn to the book of Ezekiel you will 
 find an even more elaborate description of the city 
 of God, including a colossal Temple. Here we 
 have the original of some of the language used in 
 this chapter about the gates and the walls. Ezekiel 
 really means the Temple at Jerusalem which was 
 then waiting to be rebuilt, but his references to the 
 water of life which proceeds out of that Temple show 
 that he thought of it as a centre of blessing for the 
 whole world. He could not think of Jerusalem 
 without the Temple, and he could not think of the 
 Temple without believing that it would be the shrine 
 of a universal religion in which all nations should 
 worship Israel's God. This vision of his seems all 
 the grander when we remember that he elaborated 
 it at a time when he himself was a prisoner in a 
 strange land, and that all the Jewish people were 
 the subjects of mighty Babylon. That was six 
 centuries before Christ w^as born. What had hap- 
 pened in the mean time? The Jews were back in 
 
THE HOLY CITY AND ITS TEMPLE 271 
 
 their own land, but they were still subject to a 
 foreign power. King Herod had built them a more 
 magnificent Temple than had ever stood on Zion's 
 hill before. How they loved to read the words of 
 Ezekiel and the second Isaiah about the all-dominat- 
 ing place which their city and their Temple would 
 come to occupy amidst the kingdoms of the world ! 
 I am afraid they mostly lost sight of the spiritual 
 ideal in their anxiety for the fulfilment of the mate- 
 rial. Then the crash came. The soldiers of the 
 Emperor Titus destroyed both city and Temple, and 
 they have never been rebuilt. That ancient dream 
 was at an end; the Jewish people had no longer a 
 home; henceforth they were wanderers on the face 
 of the earth. To-day one of the most pathetic sights 
 in the world is the Jews' wailing place, as it is called, 
 w^here, behind the gigantic stones which once 
 formed a corner of their old Temple buildings, pil- 
 grim Jews stand to weep and lament over the de- 
 struction of their ancient kingdom, and the shatter- 
 ing of all their hopes. With Jerusalem in ruins and 
 in the hands of the foreigner, with a Mohammedan 
 mosque standing on the site of the Temple itself, 
 what has become of the dream of a city of God ? 
 
 Here is v/here the grandeur of this vision of the 
 writer of Revelation comes in. He sees that even 
 if the earthly Jerusalem cannot rise again, its 
 heavenly counterpart can come down. If there is 
 to be no material splendour there can be a spiritual 
 victory and a reign of truth. This will have no 
 more to do with the Jews than with any other 
 people. He actually takes up the language of Isaiah 
 and Ezekiel and gives it a universal and wholly 
 
272 THE HOLY CITY AND ITS TEMPLE 
 
 spiritual significance. The world is to be won for 
 God ; there is to be an ideal human society on earth ; 
 in the end earth will become heaven. He believed, 
 like all the early Christians, that death would be 
 abolished with the passing of sin and sorrow. 
 When he used the language of Isaiah about the 
 city needing no light of the sun he meant it in an 
 even grander way. Henceforth God in Christ was 
 to be the light of every man's life, all the nations 
 were to walk in that light, and love and brotherhood 
 be all in all. But he makes a bold stroke at this 
 point by departing from Ezekiel's dream of the 
 Jewish Temple. He says that God Himself will be 
 the Temple, and men shall worship Him in spirit 
 and in truth. Looking back, as it were, upon the 
 desecration and destruction which had fallen upon 
 the Temple that was formerly the pride and glory 
 of Israel, he says in effect : Well, let it go. At the 
 best it was only a beautiful symbol for a still more 
 beautiful reality. Nothing is lost by the ruin of that 
 which was built with hands. God Himself is our 
 Temple — God in Christ. We need no other. The 
 whole earth is full of His glory, and in Him we 
 live and move and have our being. This is the real 
 significance of this passage. It is a reassuring refer- 
 ence to Ezekiel's elaborate vision of the place which 
 the Temple was to fill in the reverence of mankind. 
 It was written to comfort and inspire those who felt 
 that the loss of the Temple meant the loss of every- 
 thing great and good. Not so, he declared. The 
 loss of the Temple is no more the loss of religion 
 than the death of the body is the end of the man. 
 On the contrary, by destroying the outward it throws 
 
THE HOLY CITY AND ITS TEMPLE 273 
 
 us back upon the inward; it removes the local and 
 temporary to fix our gaze upon the universal and 
 eternal. This was a wonderful and inspiring con- 
 ception, and must have done a great deal in that 
 time of new beginnings and fierce persecutions to 
 lift men's thoughts above the merely material and 
 mundane. The further we get back into Christian 
 history the more we realise how intense w^as the ex- 
 pectation of the primitive Church that Christ would 
 speedily establish His kingdom upon earth, and 
 that all evil would be at an end. But you know also 
 that as time went on their thoughts on this subject 
 began to change. Christ did not come on the clouds 
 of heaven ; evil was not cast out ; death went on 
 claiming his victims; sorrow and broken hearts 
 w^ere still to be found in abundance. Then came the 
 break-up of the Roman Empire, and the beginnings 
 of a new order. The Christian Church w^as the 
 cradk ,of this hew order, and became the most 
 powerful organisation on earth. The new Europe 
 began to look on the Church much as the old Jews 
 had looked on the Temple. This was the City of 
 God ; this was the ark of salvation ; this was the 
 guarantee of deliverance from wTath in a world to 
 come ; this was the very body of Christ, and all its 
 officers — from the Pope down to the humblest priest 
 — were his appointed representatives. For a thou- 
 sand years this theory went almost unquestioned. 
 Proud, strong, and imposing was the mighty fabric 
 of the Church. It was all that the old Jewish hier- 
 archy had been and vastly more ; it ruled the world, 
 and claimed jurisdiction over men's bodies and 
 souls. It is hard for us now to realise that such 
 18 
 
274 THE HOLY CITY AND ITS TEMPLE 
 
 pretensions ever existed or could be enforced over 
 nations as well as individuals, but so it was ; Pope 
 Pius the Tenth has but a poor status in the world 
 compared with that of his great predecessor Hilde- 
 brand, who could dare to keep the mightiest 
 monarch in Christendom standing for four days, 
 bare-footed in the snow with a rope round his neck, 
 awaiting the sentence of the Vicar of Christ. If you 
 care to go back into the literature of this period you 
 will find that the language of this twenty-first chap- 
 ter of Revelation, as well as that of Isaiah and 
 Ezekiel, was pressed into the service of this seem- 
 ingly invincible Church of Rome. Here was the 
 City of God. What else could men want ? 
 
 But the hour came when this too was challenged, 
 and the blow struck at the Reformation is reverber- 
 ating still. Luther did not see all he was doing 
 when he voiced the rising consciousness of the 
 Europe that Rome had lifted out of Barbarism ; 
 probably he would have shrunk from the task if he 
 had. He was really sounding the death-knell of 
 Church authority in any and every form. Protest- 
 antism was no substitute for Catholicism ; as an 
 ecclesiastical system neither has any more promise 
 of permanence than the other. By a slow but inevit- 
 able process men are turning away from the Church 
 as such towards a new and higher realisation of the 
 City of God. I believe the day is coming rapidly 
 when the Church as we have hitherto known ity 
 whether Protestant or Catholic, will have ceased to 
 be. Many people see this, and some of them 
 tremble for the future, as thoughtful men were trem- 
 bling at the time my text was written. If the Church 
 
THE HOLY CITY ANU ITS TEMPLE 275 
 
 is to go what is to take its place ? Is everything to 
 be materialised? Will there be no place for the 
 heavenly vision, no harbour of refuge for souls 
 weary of the struggle and anguish of life ? Can we 
 spare the Church ? Can we dispense with the holy 
 fellowship of man with man on a plane higher than 
 that of ordinary earthly existence and ordinary 
 human interest? If not, where are we to find it, if 
 the Church is to be no more ? 
 
 These are questions which are agitating many 
 minds at the present time. Some are utterly blind 
 to the necessity for asking them at all, many are 
 indifferent. But to the serious-minded who are de- 
 spondent regarding the decline, the inevitable de- 
 cline, of Church influence and organisation, I can 
 only say : Fear not. God has never yet destroyed 
 but to build bigger. I think I can see what is 
 coming. We are witnessing the emergence of a 
 Christianised social organism from the chaos and 
 materialism of the past. The hour is at hand when 
 we shall no longer speak of the Church and the 
 world over against each other, the one sacred and 
 the other profane ; we shall come to see that human 
 society is itself the sacred thing, and that our work 
 is to fill it fuller and ever fuller of God. We shall 
 have no need to mourn the disappearance of the 
 Church ; its pretensions are unreal even now. Even 
 now the life of the Church is no higher and no 
 happier than that of the world. The average mem- 
 ber of the Church is no nobler and no truer as a 
 friend and helper than those who make no religious 
 profession whatever. When I say this I am very 
 far from wishing to disparage the moral sincerity 
 
276 THE HOLY CITY AND ITS TEMPLE 
 
 of the representatives and adherents of organised 
 Christianity ; I am only pointing out a fact. In one 
 sense that fact is a sign of the victory of Christ. 
 Time was when the moral standard of pagan civilis- 
 ation was far below that of the Christian society 
 which lived in its midst ; to-day it is otherwise, and 
 it is not unfair to say that the principal part of that 
 difference is due to the slow working of the leaven 
 of the Christian evangel. We are still far, far 
 behind what we ought to be, but it is at least an 
 enormous gain that the modern world has come to 
 see that the moral standard of Jesus was the right 
 one and to honour it accordingly. No doubt there 
 is much confusion of thought and difference of 
 opinion as to what that standard really is in detail, 
 but there is practically no difference of opinion as to 
 what it is in spirit. We have come to accept the 
 idea of brotherhood, compassion, the duty of caring 
 for the weak, the necessity for co-operation in order 
 to make life rich and full. We can imagine no 
 higher standard for the individual than that of de- 
 veloping his powers to the uttermost in order to 
 make them as great a gift as possible to the service 
 of society. Even when a man is playing for his own 
 hand he has to pretend that his object is to serve the 
 communal well-being. Almost insensibly we have 
 come to recognise that the service of all should be 
 the consistent aim and endeavour of every indi- 
 vidual. This is nothing new, even in Christianity, 
 but the spirit which informs it is, or should be, the 
 spirit of love. No one disputes this now. We are 
 coming to expect from every man the fullest devo- 
 tion to this principle, and we measure every man's 
 
THE HOLY CITY AND ITS TEMPLE 277 
 
 worth by his response to the demand. In this re- 
 spect the Church goes no further than the world. 
 We have ceased to dispute about the ideal itself; 
 what we dispute about now is the way in which the 
 ideal is being realised or avoided, and the Church 
 has no monopoly of the earnestness and enthusiasm 
 with which the subject is being debated in every 
 rank of life. Is not this plain to be seen ? When 
 the Dreyfus scandal was brought to light who was 
 the indomitable friend of the oppressed who insisted 
 that justice should be done, and dared all risks in 
 order to arouse public opinion on the question ? 
 Not a Christian preacher, but the anti-clerical novel- 
 ist, Emile Zola. The Church, officially speaking, 
 was against him in the matter, and seemed to love 
 darkness rather than light. If you care to read 
 down the roll of present-day benefactors of the 
 human race you will see this kind of thing exempli- 
 fied over and over again. It cannot honestly be said 
 that the Church as such, whether Catholic or Pro- 
 testant, is any more prominent in the advocacy of 
 truth and right than is any other part of the 
 community. 
 
 We are now upon the eve of still further develop- 
 ments in the practical application of the ideal of 
 Jesus to the needs of mankind. The social con- 
 sciousness is awakening as it never has done before, 
 either in Christendom or in the greatest years of 
 pagan Greece and Rome. We have now a sense of 
 social sin such as even the Puritans never had and 
 never dreamed of. We see the maladjustments of 
 our industrial organisation, and we are seeking to 
 remedy them. Here again we are all agreed. There 
 
278 THE HOLY CITY AND ITS TEMPLE 
 
 is no need to convince any one of the necessity for 
 ameliorative action and the moral obligation to 
 undertake it ; what we do not agree upon is the direc- 
 tion in w'hich we ought to proceed. And here is a 
 significant thing : The division of opinion inside 
 the Church is just as pronounced, and parties are 
 divided in exactly the same way, as outside the 
 Church. You will find that the man with something 
 to lose by any drastic economic changes, even if he 
 be a pillar in the Christian society and a generous 
 giver to its funds, will usually resist the proposals 
 of the more earnest social reformers. He will tell 
 you that he does so because he is afraid it will be 
 bad for society ; what he really means is that it will 
 be less comfortable for himself, but perhaps he does 
 not realise that. On the other hand, there are many 
 earnest spirits in the pews and pulpits of our 
 churches who feel the present situation to be intoler- 
 able and are joining hands with avowed atheists 
 and agnostics in the endeavour to replace it by some- 
 thing better. Is it too much to say that they are 
 morally more closely akin to the latter than they are 
 to the former? You will find this cross division 
 running through all ranks and classes, and upset- 
 ting all our preconceived notions of what is right 
 and desirable. Take the rich man. Sometimes he 
 is a Christian who endows missions ; sometimes he 
 is an unscrupulous financier w^ho piles up a fortune 
 by squeezing the last drop of blood out of his fel- 
 lows; sometimes he is a Christian philanthropist or 
 socialist ; sometimes he is these without being pro- 
 fessedly a Christian. Now watch what happens. 
 You will find the rich Christian and the rich man of 
 
THE HOLY CITY AND ITS TEMPLE 279 
 
 the world arrayed on the side of individualism 
 against the rich Christian and the rich man of the 
 world arrayed on the side of social regeneration. 
 While the struggle is proceeding it will be impos- 
 sible for you to say which is the Christian by any 
 external marks whatsoever ; the cleavage takes place 
 on moral grounds which altogether ignore ecclesi- 
 astical considerations. It goes without saying that 
 when you reach the workers the same thing holds 
 equally good, except that the majority of the 
 workers have a keener perception of the urgency of 
 the practical issue. But the division of opinion is 
 moral, not ecclesiastical ; they would smile at you if 
 you were to tell them that it is a question of the 
 Church against the world. They know it is nothing 
 of the sort, although the moral passion which is 
 being put into it is as great as anything that was 
 ever shown by Christian saints and martyrs in the 
 heroic ages of the religion of Jesus. 
 
 So now you see where we are. It is no use trying 
 to ignore the inevitable drift of things. We are 
 facing a new synthesis. Something greater than 
 the Church is rising into view, and the thoughts of 
 men are receiving a new focus. What we are wit- 
 nessing is the building of the City of God, a 
 regenerated human society which needs no Temple, 
 because there is no part of it in which God is not. 
 The new world that is coming is just as sacred, and 
 just as full of the divine life, as the Church has always 
 claimed to be but never was. The great thing we 
 have now to do is to get men to believe this and act 
 upon it. We have to create the same feeling for 
 human society as a whole that Christians used to 
 
28o THE HOLY CITY AND ITS TEMPLE 
 
 have for the ark of God, the holy Jerusalem, as they 
 called the Church. We want them to love it with 
 all the concentrated energies of mind and heart. 
 We want them to learn to see Christ in it, and to 
 enthrone Him in every part of it. We want to 
 imbue them with reverence for human nature just as 
 it is, and to inspire them with a glowing hope and 
 confidence as to what it may become. We want to 
 see the world of toil transformed by the light of 
 heaven. We want to get all the children of the 
 Most High to believe that the truest worship of God 
 is the service of their kind ; we want to expel the 
 foolish and unworthy notion that any man is so bad 
 that he can be excluded from divine favour, and shut 
 outside the privileges of the rest. We want to drive 
 home to every conscience the thought of individual 
 responsibility for the common good and the common 
 ill. We want to get rid of the delusion that society 
 has no duties towards the morally diseased ; we want 
 to insist that social and individual regeneration 
 imply each other. We must urge in season and out 
 of season that the one thing that needs to be done in 
 human relations is to reveal God. We shall glorify 
 God in our politics, and we shall learn to say so 
 openly and gladly. We shall have done with the 
 wicked assumption that statesmen must necessarily 
 be liars and thieves, and that the nations they repre- 
 sent must act like birds of prey swooping down 
 upon the unfortunate and the defenceless to grab 
 and devour. We shall banish cynicism from our 
 international concerns, and therefore we shall have 
 to grow a new race of leaders of the people who will 
 not stand idly by while a whole population is being 
 
THE HOLY CITY AND ITS TEMPLE 281 
 
 enslaved and tortured in order to supply dividends 
 for a shameless ring of financiers who never see 
 their victims and care about nothing but lust and 
 gold. The time is not so far distant when we shall 
 say that to tolerate the existence of private monoply 
 in the necessaries of life, or to give to any one man 
 the power to exploit his fellows for his own advan- 
 tage, is a sin against God in which the whole com- 
 munity is implicated. All this will come about just 
 as soon as we can arouse in the public mind the 
 same passionate devotion to the welfare of society 
 that Christians once felt for the Church. We must 
 compel men to think of it as holy unto the Lord, the 
 living Temple on whose altars His light is ever 
 burning, and His being is ever offered as the bread 
 of life for His children. 
 
 And this can be done; it is the one thing that 
 ought to be set before the young men of this genera- 
 tion, men who feel within themselves the stirring of 
 great emotions, and know not how to interpret them. 
 The Church must no longer claim your allegiance 
 except as a means to an end, and that end the service 
 of a far more sacred thing, the city whose Temple 
 is the living God. After all, the Church is no more 
 than a voluntary association for the attainment of a 
 certain object. She forfeits her right to exist the 
 moment she loses sight of that object. Her out- 
 ward unity was shattered long ago, and a good 
 thing too; God shattered it in order to prepare the 
 way for the higher unity of human brotherhood. 
 But I wish — oh, how earnestly I wish — all members 
 of all Churches and of no Church could come to think 
 of human society as Christians once thought of the 
 
282 THE HOLY CITY AND ITS TEMPLE 
 
 Church universal and undivided. I never go into 
 a CathoHc church without catching something of 
 the spirit of that older day. In the silence of the 
 kneeling worshippers; in the sacred lamps that 
 burn before the high altar; in the pictures that 
 adorn the walls, showing the stages of the Cross on 
 which the life of Christ was sacrificed that He might 
 draw all men unto Himself, I see a symbol of the 
 vaster unity that is yet to be achieved. There is a 
 solemn stillness, a suggestion of heaven and of un- 
 seen helpers, in that earthly temple made with 
 hands. It is impossible for any man with reverence 
 in his soul to stand in that silence without feeling 
 that it is the speech of God. Cannot we come to 
 feel the same about the common life of humanity ? 
 Cannot we worship God there, knowing what we 
 are doing, and rejoicing to do it? Cannot we say 
 as we enter the working-man's home, Here is one 
 shrine in the glorious Temple of our God ; we have 
 to make this beautiful in reverent acknowledgment 
 of the divine presence. Nothing is too good for the 
 God who deigns to dwell here, and nothing should 
 be withheld that can make the place of His feet 
 glorious. Here is the sacred trinity — father, mother, 
 and child. Here is the mystic union of the one with 
 the many ; here is the heaven that is to be. Then, 
 when we go out into the busy world, and hear the 
 voice of the multitudes in our great cities, like the 
 sound of many waters ; or watch the progress of 
 human thought and achievement — the beauty of the 
 heart conjoined to the magic of the hand; when 
 nation calls to nation to bring their glory and 
 honour into the City of God — shall we not say that 
 
THE HOLY CITY AND ITS TEMFLE 283 
 
 the Temple of the King of Heaven has vaster pro- 
 portions than we knew, and that we love its every 
 stone ? As Walt Whitman has it in a poem which 
 consists of a single verse — 
 
 I dream'd in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of 
 
 the whole of the rest of the earth, 
 I dream'd that was the new city of Friends, 
 Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, 
 
 it led the rest. 
 It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city, 
 And in all their looks and words. 
 
 It is the holy city, New Jerusalem, and the Lord 
 God Almighty and the Lamb are the Temple of it. 
 
 We are builders of that City, 
 
 All our joys and all our groans, 
 Help to rear its shining ramparts, 
 
 All our lives are building stones ; 
 But the work that we have builded. 
 
 Oft with bleeding hands and tears, 
 And in error and'in anguish, - j 
 
 Will not perish with our years. 
 
 It will be at last made perfect 
 
 In the universal plan ; 
 It will help to crown the labours 
 
 Of the toiling hosts of man ; 
 It will last and shine transfigured 
 
 In the final reign of right ; 
 It will merge into the splendours 
 
 Of the City of the Light. 
 
XIX 
 
 THE LAMB'S BOOK OF LIFE 
 
 " They which are written i7i the Lamb's book of life. ^^ 
 —Rev. xxi. 27. 
 
 From our infancy we have all been accustomed 
 to hear about the Lamb's Book of Life, but how 
 many of us know where the idea came from, and 
 exactly what it stands for? Is it not possible that 
 some of us have an inadequate and even a per- 
 verted notion as to the proper interpretation of the 
 metaphor ? I feel that there is some danger of 
 belittling a grand and inspiring subject by ignor- 
 ing the original conditions out of w^hich it sprang. 
 I am going to try this morning to show you as 
 briefly as I can what those conditions were. Then 
 let us see whether our use of this scriptural 
 language is worthy of the theme. After that let 
 us reapply its message to our own souls. 
 
 Like many of the sweetest passages in the New 
 Testament, the inspiration of this one is derived 
 from the Old. References to the Book of Life are 
 to be found in various parts of the Jewish scrip- 
 tures, especially after the exile. Those who re- 
 turned from the Babylonian captivity were enrolled 
 by families in a great book kept for that purpose. 
 The names in this roll were supposed to constitute 
 
 284 
 
THE LAMB'S BOOK OF LIFE 285 
 
 the new Israel, the nation which was henceforth a 
 reHgious community, a church and a kingdom in 
 one. To this nation was committed the task of 
 rebuilding the sacred city of Jerusalem, and re- 
 instituting the ancient worship of God on Mount 
 Zion. Babylon, with its heathenism and oppres- 
 sion, had been left behind; the kingdom of liberty 
 and holiness lay before. God had wrought a mighty 
 deliverance for His people. In order to realise the 
 jubilation with which this event was hailed you 
 must imagine yourself to be one of the long pro- 
 cession of Jewish exiles making their way back 
 across the Syrian desert to the little spot they called 
 home. For many weary years they had been 
 afflicted in the cruel city of the plains; they were 
 now free to go back to the land of their fathers and 
 their holy city, Jerusalem. " And the ransomed of 
 the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs 
 and everlasting joy upon their heads : They shall 
 obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing 
 shall flee away." 
 
 But, when they got home, these people were dis- 
 gusted by the paganism and poor moral quality of 
 their kinsmen whom they found already there. 
 This was the reason why they were so particular 
 about the book of names. They refused to wor- 
 ship with or include in their fellowship those who 
 had intermixed with foreign nations, and degraded 
 the service of God by heathen rites. They there- 
 fore became very strict about the qualifications for 
 citizenship in the new Jerusalem which they had 
 now to build. Only those whose names were on 
 the roll as being qualified by character, training, 
 
286 THE LAMB'S BOOK OF LIFE 
 
 and descent for membership in the new kingdom 
 were admitted to the altar, or allowed to dwell 
 within the walls. How far these rigorous regula- 
 tions were actually enforced we do not know, but 
 while the enthusiasm of the restoration lasted, they 
 were no doubt observed to a considerable degree. 
 As time wore on, however, they were relaxed; the 
 level of moral earnestness declined ; there was much 
 disappointment among those who had hoped for 
 great things. Never again was Israel what she 
 had been in her ancient days of independence. 
 
 But this ideal of a City of God and a Book of 
 Life was never forgotten, and, as you see, it sup- 
 plied a good deal of the imagery of primitive 
 Christianity, particularly of the Book of Revela- 
 tion. Henceforth Babylon became a synonym for 
 the Roman Empire, and the Book of Life a meta- 
 phor to signify those who were included in the 
 Church of Jesus. Now here is a rather difficult 
 thing for us to grasp. There is no room for doubt 
 that these first Christians really thought of the 
 earthly Jerusalem as still somehow to be the centre 
 of a regenerated world, but as time went on the 
 ideal was transferred from earth to heaven. When 
 we speak of the New Jerusalem we generally mean 
 heaven, but this was not so at first. Apparently 
 — strange as it may seem — primitive Christianity 
 believed in a state of existence which could be both 
 earth and heaven. This is what to us seems so 
 puzzling. We cannot imagine heaven and earth 
 becoming one, but they could and did. Thus the 
 writer of the chapter which contains our text says : 
 '' I saw tlie holy city. New Jerusalem, coming 
 
THE LAMB'S BOOK OF LIFE 287 
 
 down from God out of heaven." A close examina- 
 tion of all that follows shows clearly that in his 
 view heaven and earth now became merged into 
 each other, and there was no longer to be any talk 
 of a material and a spiritual, a hither and a yonder. 
 To describe his vision he finds himself compelled to 
 use the old familiar language about the Holy City 
 and the Book of Life. We have seen where he got 
 it, but we see also that he idealises it. The Book 
 of Life is no longer the roll of those who came back 
 from Babylon and were found worthy of citizen- 
 ship in the reconstituted kingdom of Judah ; it is 
 the number of those who belong to Jesus in earth 
 and heaven. 
 
 It meant something, too, far beyond what the 
 ordinary Christian nowadays ever dreams of. 
 Those who were written in the Lamb's Book of 
 Life were supposed to be written there not merely 
 because they gave a formal allegiance to the name 
 of Jesus, but because they were fighting the battle 
 for righteousness with all their might. This was a 
 time of fierce persecution, when men and women, 
 and even little children, were shedding their blood 
 for Jesus every day. It was a terrible time, and 
 upon the fidelity of these suffering ones depended 
 the whole future of the world. An old civilisation 
 was dying and a new one was struggling to the 
 birth. It seems a curious thing to us to read that 
 these Christian martyrs were accused of atheism 
 and immorality, but so it was. The fact was that 
 they stood for a purer religion and a higher 
 morality than that from which men's thoughts were 
 now turning away. Now that the dust of battle 
 
288 THE LAMB'S BOOK OF LIFE 
 
 has settled we can see clearly that the Christian 
 ideal of losing the life to find it was one which was 
 fundamentally opposed to the decaying faiths 
 around it. But it was too high for speedy imita- 
 tion. The world laughed at the ancient gods 
 of Rome, and scorned the superstitions and de- 
 grading rites with which some of them were wor- 
 shipped, but it was not prepared for the social 
 upheaval which would follow upon the whole- 
 hearted acceptance of Christian principles. Then, 
 as now, vested interests were strong enough to hold 
 their own against an evangel, and even to repudiate 
 it in the name of something higher. So there was 
 nothing for it but that those who believed in the 
 ideal of Jesus should witness for it by being willing 
 to suffer and die in its service. They did so, with 
 what result you now know. The message of my 
 text is that those who thus died had not really died 
 any more than their Master. Their names were 
 written in His Book of Life. They not only lived 
 in the world unseen, but in the triumph of truth 
 and righteousness in human society as a whole. 
 
 Now what do we think about the Lamb's Book 
 of Life to-day? (The ancient symbols are losing 
 some of their power, partly because people do not 
 understand them, but I am sure they would love 
 and reverence them again if they could only realise 
 what they originally meant.) Well, I will tell you 
 what it is not. It is not a list of those whom God 
 has agreed to admit to heaven because they firmly 
 believe that some one else has done all that was 
 necessary to get them there. It is God's roll of 
 honour. It is the glorious company of those who 
 have suffered for Christ. It includes all whose 
 
THE LAMB'S BOOK OF LIFE 289 
 
 lives have been willingly and cheerfully offered on 
 the altar of love. The very phrase '' the Lamb's 
 Book of Life" is a declaration of this, and dis- 
 tinguishes it from every other list of names that 
 was ever written. 
 
 Those whose names are in the Book of Life are 
 life-givers. They are the servants of Jesus, work- 
 ing in the spirit of Jesus to minister more abundant 
 life to the world. They are believers, it is true; 
 for no w^ork worth doing has ever yet been done 
 apart from the dynamic of faith. But they are not 
 merely believers in the conventional sense; they 
 are living sacrifices, filling up the measure that is 
 behind of the sufferings of Christ in the service of 
 man. When we speak of the Lamb's Book of Life 
 we must never forget this. It is not merely the 
 roll of those who have escaped something; it is 
 the designation of those who have achieved some- 
 thing. No mere pious acceptance of the redeeming 
 work of Christ; no comfortable acquiescence in 
 the belief that He has given everything, and you 
 have only to take, will qualify you for a place in 
 the Book of Life. The Lamb slain from the found- 
 ation of the world is still being slain on the altar 
 of human hearts, and wherever that divine sacrifice 
 is offered new power and hope stream into this dark 
 and sorrowful world. Alas, we have almost taken 
 the soul out of this grand conception by the unreal 
 way in which we too commonly regard it now. At 
 the time my text was written men and women were 
 dying for it, and the thing they most needed to 
 hear was that their anguish meant greater glory for 
 their Lord and His ultimate triumph over all the 
 wickedness and all the pain wherewith the souls 
 19 
 
290 THE LAMB'S BOOK OF LIFE 
 
 of men were being afflicted. There was nothing of 
 which they needed so much to be assured as that 
 the work they were doing was not in vain, and 
 that that which was given unto death would pre- 
 sently arise in glorious eternal life. They may or 
 may not have thought of the wicked as doomed to 
 everlasting woe, but that idea finds no place in my 
 text; the stress is placed elsewhere. The one 
 grand, all-dominating principle of it is that those 
 who are crucified with Christ are sharers in His 
 triumph and partakers of His life. Dying to self 
 they live to God; perishing in the conflict with 
 that which is base and foul they find that the seem- 
 ing death is no death, but the gateway into that 
 higher life which is eternal love and joy. 
 
 Some of you may be feeling at this point that 
 you are missing something to which you have been 
 accustomed, and which you greatly value. You 
 may be feeling that this explanation of the Lamb's 
 Book of Life is not so sweet and beautiful as the 
 one upon which you have been taught to dwell, 
 and which has been such a help to you in your 
 religious life. You may be saying to yourself : 
 ** I do not like this. I want to owe everything to 
 Jesus. Hitherto I have always thought that my 
 name was written in the Lamb's Book of Life be- 
 cause the Atonement of my blessed Redeemer had 
 won for me a place in the blood-washed throng 
 before the throne of God in heaven. I have 
 thought of Jesus as doing that work alone, without 
 any help, and of myself as His humble beneficiary. 
 I do not want to think anything else, nor can I 
 readily believe that my place in that Book of Life 
 has anything to do with my merit or my struggle, 
 
THE LAMB'S BOOK OF LIFE 291 
 
 or my self-sacrifice, or anything else but the love 
 of Jesus." 
 
 Well, I will grant that to all outward seeming 
 there is a great difference between this belief of 
 yours and what I have just been telling you. Per- 
 haps it is not so great as appears, but I shall not 
 attempt to deny it or explain it away. I put it to 
 you — which is the nobler and higher? Which, 
 judging by the circumstances in which this great 
 saying was born, is the nearer to what the first 
 followers of Jesus felt about it? Far be it from 
 me to lessen the worth of Jesus in your regard or 
 even to seem to detract from the value of His aton- 
 ing life and death. But there is something here 
 that you and I have got to face. We have got to 
 see that the Atonement of Jesus is no use unless 
 it makes us like Jesus. It has got to be repeated 
 in us. As Paul has it, we have to become willing 
 to be delivered unto death for Jesus' sake that the 
 life of Jesus may become manifest in us. There is 
 no salvation which is not this, and the gratitude 
 and reverence that we really owe to Jesus are grati- 
 tude and reverence for having made this possible. 
 I put it to you again : which is worthier of Jesus, 
 to believe that He has got us into heaven without 
 any effort of our own — a heaven from which others 
 are shut out — or to rejoice that He has shown us 
 wherein true life consists? I do not care three 
 straws whether I go to heaven or not — using the 
 word for the moment in its conventional sense. 
 But I do rejoice and thank God for that great 
 Master and Redeemer of mankind who has shown 
 me at an unspeakable cost what it is to live the 
 life of love. I wish I could live it, but I am frail 
 
292 THE LAMB'S BOOK OF LIFE 
 
 and earthly, whereas He was divinely strong, and 
 the light of God shone in all He said and did. 
 And yet, no sooner have I realised this than my 
 heart rises in loving gratitude to Him once more 
 for the assurance that human weakness and imper- 
 fection can and shall be transformed into divine 
 strength and holiness by the power of the indwell- 
 ing Spirit of God. To have shown us God in 
 humanity is to have shown us God in all humanity. 
 To have shown us that humanity invincible once, 
 is to have shown us that it shall be invincible 
 again and yet again until divine love has no more 
 earthly victories to win. 
 
 O wisest love ! that flesh and blood, 
 
 Which did in Adam fail, 
 Should strive afresh against the foe, 
 
 Should strive and should prevail ; 
 
 And that a higher gift than grace 
 
 Should flesh and blood refine, 
 God's presence, and His very self, 
 
 And essence all-divine 1 
 
 But, dear fellows-Christians, all of you who really 
 love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and truth, 
 and do not merely make a lip-profession of it — I 
 am well aware that your names are written in the 
 Lamb's Book of Life in the sense that my text 
 really means. Your real creed is often much 
 deeper and truer than your formal one. If you 
 love Jesus you love what Jesus stood for, and your 
 love shows itself in the laying down of your life 
 in His service that you may take it again in the 
 greater good and larger life of all mankind. You 
 cannot be selfish and mean if you belong to Him ; 
 you can no longer hesitate about what to do with 
 
THE LAMB'S BOOK OF LIFE 293 
 
 the opportunity that God has given you ; you can- 
 not shrink from the cross when the cause of truth 
 requires it. You cannot think first and foremost 
 of your own salvation ; as the love of God is shed 
 abroad in your heart you get beyond all that, and 
 seek only to deliver the world from the bondage of 
 all that makes it dark and sad. I say I know this, 
 and you know it too. It is the grand, unifying, 
 spiritual experience which underlies all differences 
 in doctrine and reveals itself in all who are of the 
 fellowship of Christ. " 
 
 I do not hesitate, therefore, to appeal to all 
 sincere and earnest souls in this congregation this 
 morning in the same spirit as the writer of my text. 
 I do not care what church you belong to or whether 
 you belong to none. I do not care whether your 
 theology is broad or narrow, old or new. The 
 gospel I am preaching to you this morning is the 
 gospel of a great deniandj and I believe from my 
 heart that you will respond to it just because it is 
 that. I do not offer you — I dare not offer you — a 
 salvation that will cost you nothing. The salva- 
 tion that is spoken of here will cost you everything 
 that you have to give. To have your name written 
 in the Lamb's Book of Life is no mere form of 
 words ; it is a call to death — death to the world that 
 you may save the world, death to self-interest that 
 you may find your own soul, death to the lesser 
 that you may realise the larger good. I am almost 
 afraid of using these terms, for they are now 
 bandied about in religious circles in a way that 
 often amounts to mere cant and formalism. In 
 what sense can any man be said to have renounced 
 the world or died to self while he holds aloof from 
 
294 THE LAMB'S BOOK OF LIFE 
 
 the world's woe and avoids everything that may 
 jeopardise his security or lower him in the esteem 
 of his fellows ? There is nothing more unreal than 
 the way in which we speak to-day of these high 
 themes and their corresponding obligations. And 
 the world has found it out. When you come to 
 the average man now-a-days with your offer of a 
 full and free salvation which he has nothing to do 
 but accept, and which will secure him entrance into 
 heavenly habitations, he does not listen. But come 
 to him as Jesus came with the sternly loving de- 
 mand that he should make his whole life an offer- 
 ing to the highest God has given him to see, and 
 you have compelled him not only to listen but to 
 choose. He knows well enough whether or no his 
 name is in the Lamb's Book of Life, for he knows 
 whether he is really trying to give himself for the 
 life of the world or whether he is not. He knows 
 what feelings dominate him most. He knows 
 whether he is serving God or Mammon, or even 
 trying to serve both at once. He knows whether 
 the cause of truth and righteousness is stronger for 
 his advocacy, or whether he has left to others the 
 danger and the pain of helping to hasten its ulti- 
 mate triumph. When Jesus came with His evangel 
 to the world of nineteen hundred years ago. He 
 came to such men as this not with an offer but with 
 a demand — or rather an offer contained in a de- 
 mand. So strenuous was that demand that few- 
 were able to see that it in itself was the evangel. 
 It called men away from base desires and selfish 
 aims and bade them give themselves without re- 
 serve to whatever cause needed them the most. 
 To one man His word was, Follow me and be a 
 
THE LAMB'S BOOK OF LIFE 295 
 
 fisher of men. To another : Go and sell all that 
 thou hast and give to the poor. To another : Are 
 ye able to drink of my cup and be baptised with 
 my baptism ? Hardly any two alike, but under- 
 neath every summons was the requirement of a 
 perfect self-devotion to the cause of God, which is 
 only another name for the good of man. 
 
 It is to this that I call you. I respect your man- 
 hood too much to offer you anything less. From 
 you God requires the utmost for the whole, and not 
 until you are willing to give it will you begin to 
 discover what life really means, and what a glorious 
 thing it is to live. I reverence Jesus too much to 
 put you off with the lie that He has done every- 
 thing for you that needs to be done in order to 
 make things pleasant for you in the world to come ; 
 but in His name I summon you to continue His 
 work. To have your name written in His Book 
 is to be of the company of those who have resisted 
 unto blood striving against wrong. The greatest 
 thing He ever did for you or for mankind was to 
 make this a gospel and believe that men would rise 
 to it. For so indeed they have, and ever will when 
 they see it for what it is. 
 
 I read in one of the daily papers the other day 
 of a thrilling incident which took place amid the 
 scene of horror and consternation which followed 
 the collision of the St. Paul and the Gladiator in 
 the Solent. When the huge American liner 
 crashed into the British warship, two or three sea- 
 men on the latter scrambled up the bows of the 
 former into safety. No sooner had one of them 
 done so, however, than he seemed to recollect 
 himself, and called out: " My God, what have I 
 
296 THE LAMB'S BOOK OF LIFE 
 
 done? What will my captain say?" and im- 
 mediately jumped back into the sinking ship. 
 Whether he went down with her I do not know; 
 I do not even know whether the story is true, or 
 whether it is a journalistic invention, but I sincerely 
 hope it is true. The spirit which prompted that 
 simple seaman to leap back to his post in the face 
 of death is the spirit which I seek to awaken in 
 you for all the business of living. What will my 
 Captain say ? What is it He calls for ? What 
 does He expect from me ? Those whose names are 
 in His Book of Life are those who have found their 
 salvation in ceasing to trouble about it, and offering 
 themselves instead in response to His call to serve 
 and heal. On the authority of Jesus Himself we 
 have it that some may be in this Book of Life who 
 do not even know it, the criterion of their worth 
 being, " Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of 
 these My brethren, ye did it unto Me." 
 
 Dear fellow men, this is the real gospel, the 
 gospel in which you will find redemption from 
 self-seeking, and the joy that no man taketh from 
 you. You cannot live it without God, but to try 
 to live it is to find God. It is high as heaven, and 
 deep as hell. It contains all that you will ever 
 need for this world or the next. Sometimes you 
 are sad and weary, no doubt, with the struggle to 
 live, and the repeated disappointments and failures 
 of life. You have been down in the mud time and 
 again, and bruised and crushed your soul. There 
 are some hideous things in your record, things that 
 you wish could be blotted out for ever, things the 
 very memory of which causes you shame and 
 dread. Then there are times when you feel how 
 
THE LAMB'S BOOK OF LIFE 297 
 
 puny you are in face of the sinister forces of the 
 world. You see cruel things done, and you are 
 powerless to stop them. You see the lie triumph- 
 ant and injustice unrebuked. You hear every- 
 where around you the cry of human anguish as- 
 cending towards a silent heaven, and perhaps you 
 sink in bewilderment under the mystery and horror 
 of it all. If you have a sympathetic heart you 
 must sometimes burn to be able to find a remedy 
 for it — a remedy for your own sin and other 
 people's, a remedy for the darkness and the pain. 
 Well, here it is. If God is to come to you He 
 must come through you to the rescue of the world. 
 If you are to escape from sin you must become a 
 sin-bearer — there is no other way. If you would 
 recover hope and confidence that the best is yet to 
 be, you must be willing to die to make it so. Can 
 you do it? Will you do it? Do you even want 
 to be willing to do it? Courage, then, brother of 
 Christ, your name is written in His Book and 
 graven on His hands. 
 
 This is life to come, 
 Which martyr'd men have made more glorious 
 For us who strive to follow. May I reach 
 That purest heaven, be to other souls 
 The cup of strength in some great agony, 
 Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love, 
 Beget the smiles that have no cruelty — 
 Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, 
 And in diffusion ever more intense. 
 So shall I join the choir invisible 
 Whose music is the gladness of the world. 
 
XX 
 
 THE LIFE BEYOND 
 
 "/ am He that livetk, aftd was dead; and^ behold^ I 
 am alive for evermore,^'' — Rev. i. i8. 
 
 Numbers of hearers and readers of my sermons 
 have from time to time asked me to state in public 
 my view as to the experiences which await the in- 
 dividual soul in the life beyond the grave, if there 
 be such a life. The point of the request usually is 
 something like this : — If the orthodox Protestant 
 belief in heaven and hell, conceived of as two 
 entirely separate states of existence, and only two, 
 is no longer admissible to enlightened thought, 
 what are we to put in its place? Have we good 
 grounds for believing in an after-life at all ? If so, 
 what becomes of the soul in that mysterious region ? 
 These are questions upon which an attitude of in- 
 difference is not possible to every one. 
 
 What, then, does our present experience, con- 
 joined to a conviction that the universe is morally 
 governed, warrant us in believing about the destiny 
 of the individual soul ? The subject thus opened 
 up is an enormous one, and I can only hope to touch 
 briefly to-night upon its more salient features. Our 
 text tells us most that we need to know about it. 
 The writer of this strange book is here speaking of 
 Christ, but we are justified in using this language 
 of every one who tries to live his life in fellowship 
 
 298 
 
THE LIFE BEYOND 299 
 
 with Christ. Just as Jesus lived the life of self- 
 sacrifice, even unto death, so are His followers 
 called to do. And just as the life laid down in the 
 case of Jesus meant that He was able to take it 
 again in fuller and more glorious fashion, so the 
 same principle ought to hold good in every life that 
 is animated by the spirit of Jesus. '' I am He that 
 liveth and was dead, and, behold, I am alive for 
 evermore," might be said of every great soul that 
 has ever been given to and for the world. 
 
 You all know the uncertainty which prevails in 
 many minds at the present time in relation to the 
 life to come. There are not a few good people who 
 have given up all hope of arriving at anything like 
 a settled conviction in regard to it. They would 
 tell us that we have no proof, however much we 
 may desire it, that there is such a thing as con- 
 tinued self-conscious existence after death. Many 
 people are constitutionally almost incapable of 
 realising that there can be an existence apart from 
 the body. When they hear the dreadful words 
 spoken at the graveside — ''Earth to earth; ashes 
 to ashes; dust to dust " — it is practically impossible 
 for them to resist the feeling that that is indeed 
 the end, and that nothing more remains of him or 
 her whom they have loved. 
 
 Alas for him who never sees 
 
 The stars shine through his cypress trees ; 
 
 Who hopeless lays his dead away, 
 
 Nor looks to see the breaking day 
 
 Across the mournful marbles play. 
 
 This state of mind is not confined to those who 
 are without what is called religious faith. There 
 are plenty of people who cling to the hope of im- 
 
300 THE LIFE BEYOND 
 
 mortality without finding much consolation in it; 
 when death comes to those they love they feel the 
 separation to be as absolute as though there were 
 no such thing as reunion in some fairer world. I 
 do not mean that they disbelieve in re-union ; on 
 the contrary they try hard, even desperately, to find 
 some comfort in the thought of it, but, often 
 enough, the amount to be derived therefrom is not 
 very great. Is there no one here present who has 
 ever felt like this ? Death has made a terrible gap 
 in your affections; torn some beautiful joy out of 
 your life; do you really feel — can you feel — as 
 though the dear one who has gone is as much alive 
 as ever and thinking of you ? Is there never a 
 moment when you shiver as you think of the cold 
 rain falling in the darkness upon the little mound 
 that hides from sight all that remains of what you 
 once loved, and the memory of which is at once 
 your greatest sadness and your greatest joy ? You 
 will admit, I think, that anything which goes to 
 strengthen our realisation of the life beyond death 
 cannot fail to be other than good. 
 
 But what have we that will do this? These are 
 days in which the mind calls for proof of extra- 
 ordinary assertions, and of all such there is none 
 greater than that of the survival of the soul after 
 death. Some doubt has of late been cast upon the 
 common assumption that most people desire indi- 
 vidual immortality. It has been pointed out that 
 there are many w^ho ask for nothing more than to 
 lie down and rest when the day's work is done. One 
 eminent scientist has declared that in time the 
 normal healthy-minded man or woman will desire 
 death when the time comes just as naturally as we 
 
THE LIFE BEYOND 301 
 
 all desire sleep at the close of day. Certain it is, 
 too, that the great majority of human beings face 
 death complacently and calmly when the end actu- 
 ally arrives, however much they may have feared 
 the change beforehand. But, even suppose we grant 
 the force in these contentions, I still believe it to 
 be overwhelmingly true that the ordinary civilised 
 human being w^ould be glad to be assured of the 
 truth of the immortality of the soul; and I think 
 the chief reason for this desire is not the preserva- 
 tion of the ego so much as a longing for the per- 
 petuation of the higher relationships of human 
 experience. It is love that is at the bottom of the 
 unquenchable interest that most people seem to 
 take in speculation about the unseen world. This 
 is far from being discreditable to human nature. 
 What is there to give in answer to it? In stating 
 my own convictions on the subject to-night I wish 
 to do two things: — First, to say briefly what I 
 hold concerning the fact of immortality; and 
 secondly, what on this basis we may expect the 
 destiny of the soul to be. 
 
 In regard to the first of these points let me assure 
 you that to me the cessation of any form of self- 
 conscious existence seems unthinkable. No argu- 
 ment can convince the man who does not want to 
 be convinced, but surely to a reflective mind belief 
 in the persistence of self-consciousness is bound up 
 with belief in all that is good and true. Such a 
 statement as this may be challenged, but I cannot 
 modify it. Observe how good men have suffered 
 and died in all ages for what they have felt to be 
 worthy of the homage of humanity, and observe 
 with what striking unanimity they have professed 
 
302 THE LIFE BEYOND 
 
 their faith in the ultimate victory of that for 
 which they stood. But why should the good prove 
 victorious any more than the bad ? John Stuart 
 Mill once asked that question without suggesting 
 any answer, and yet the answer is written large 
 on the page of human history. The man 
 must be blind indeed who cannot see that in the 
 long run the true is victorious over the false; 
 good does prevail against evil; right is stronger 
 than wrong. I have more than once argued 
 with a pessimist who maintained the oppo- 
 site, but it was impossible to take him seriously. 
 Let those who are filled with apprehension con- 
 cerning the future of the civilised world acquaint 
 themselves with the past and they will feel re- 
 assured. I cannot stay to elaborate the point : all 
 one need affirm is that the greatest waymakers of 
 the race have been those with the most faith in the 
 future, and their faith has been justified by results. 
 Christ crucified always enters into His glory. And 
 yet what is this faith but an invincible confidence 
 in the moral government of the universe ? Follow 
 that out and see where it takes you. Here, I repeat, 
 is one outstanding fact, namely, that that which is 
 slain on the altar of sacrifice to-day rises in power 
 to-morrow and lives for evermore. Is it then 
 credible that in a universe where this is demon- 
 strably true the victory should be wasted as soon 
 as it is won ? Is it conceivable that Jesus and 
 Pilate should go down into the dust together and 
 be lost in the same eternal silence ? Does not such 
 a supposition seem to cancel at once a great part of 
 the value of what Jesus suffered to bring into mani- 
 festation ? Look at the flagrant contradiction thus 
 
THE LIFE BEYOND 303 
 
 involved. Here is a universe in which the highest 
 is sure to prevail; yet this very universe will fling 
 into nothingness the life by which it has prevailed ! 
 One might as well say the victory had not been 
 gained at all; it is like painting a picture and burn- 
 ing it. True, all the noblest of the sons of God 
 have been quite willing that it should be so, so far 
 as they themselves were concerned, if only they 
 could be sure that their work was done and had 
 achieved its purpose. Dr. Parker once, in one of 
 his moods, declared that the only immortality he 
 desired was to live on in the good he had wrought 
 for mankind — a lofty and honourable sentiment. 
 That great pioneer of modern thought, Theodore 
 Parker, a man who suffered untold hardship and 
 persecution for his faithful witness to truth, put 
 the same feeling into verse : 
 
 The sad sense of human woe is deep 
 Within my heart, and deepens daily there, 
 I see the want, the woe, the wretchedness, 
 Of smarting men, who wear, close pent in towns, 
 The galling load of life. The rich, the poor, 
 The drunkard, criminal, and they that make 
 Him so, and fatten on his tears and blood — 
 I bear their sorrows, and I weep their sins ; 
 Would I could end them ! No : I see before 
 My race an age or so ; and I am sent 
 For the stern work, to hew a path among 
 The thorns — I take them in my flesh — to tread 
 With naked feet, the road, and smooth it o'er 
 With blood. Well, I shall lay my bones 
 In some sharp crevice of the broken way. 
 Men shall in better times stand where I fell, 
 And journey singing on in perfect bands. 
 Where I have trod alone, no arm but God's, 
 No voice but His, Enough ! — His voice. His arm. 
 
 Yes, just so. Great, grand, and good ! But 
 what kind of a moral universe would it be from 
 
304 THE LIFE BEYOND 
 
 which a man like that could be blotted out ? What 
 would his work be worth if he could be spared 
 from it? Why, he himself is its greatest product. 
 
 Now this is the evidence for immortality which 
 best satisfies me. I need no other. I feel it is 
 strong enough to carry the whole case. No Christ 
 has ever died in vain, no saviour but has risen 
 from the cross to the throne. The victory of truth 
 on earth is but the sign and symbol of the reign 
 of Christ in heaven ; the lesser is the demonstration 
 of the larger; to believe in the one is to affirm the 
 other. 
 
 But I am perfectly willing to admit that this 
 would not satisfy everybody. There are those who 
 want to put their finger on the print of the nails, 
 and these are not the least worthy amongst the 
 sons of men. How the heart cries out for the touch 
 of the vanished hand and the sound of the voice 
 that is still ! Well, I am no spiritualist; I have no 
 knowledge of spiritualism except what I have read 
 and heard from others; I have a profound distrust 
 of most of the so-called evidence for spirit return. 
 But when friends of my own, of unimpeachable 
 probity, like Sir Oliver Lodge, speak of the results 
 of long and painstaking investigation into super- 
 normal phenomena as yielding something ap- 
 proaching to demonstration of the persistence of 
 intelligent self-consciousness after the change called 
 death, one cannot but give weight to it. Sir Oliver 
 is a master in the felicitous use of metaphor, and 
 many must have been impressed by one expression 
 which fell from his lips during his address to the 
 Psychical Research Society a week or two ago. He 
 compared the labours of himself and his friends to 
 
THE LIFE BEYOND 305 
 
 that of excavators engaged in boring a tunnel 
 through a mountain mass to establish communica- 
 tion, if possible, between two territories ; and added 
 that operations had now been pushed so far that it 
 seemed as though they could faintly hear the pick- 
 axes of their comrades who were working from the 
 farther side. It may be so; I devoutly hope it is 
 so. Perhaps the day is not so very far distant 
 when it will be as little possible to doubt the con- 
 tinued existence of those whom we have hitherto 
 mourned as dead as it is now impossible to doubt 
 the existence of the planet Mars. 
 
 Permit me to ask you at this point whether you 
 are prepared for the readjustment in the religious 
 point of view which must inevitably follow from 
 such a scientific demonstration of a future life, if 
 it ever comes? Already, the conventional heaven 
 and hell must be relegated to the limbo of super- 
 seded forms of thought. The only reasonable be- 
 lief that can be substituted for them is that the law 
 of cause and effect must hold good in other spheres 
 than this. We cannot expect to escape the con- 
 sequences of our follies, or to reap where we have 
 not sown. This is no individualistic gospel, for it 
 recognises that we may be each other's burden- 
 bearers, and that the nearer we draw to the moral 
 likeness of Christ the more we shall wish to be 
 such. But no man can appropriate the character 
 of a Christ unless he has grown it. Those who 
 love him may suffer with him, may even suffer for 
 him, but they cannot make him a present of a 
 Christ-like soul apart from any effort of their own. 
 We see that to be so in this world; why should it 
 be different anywhere else? You and I are every 
 
3o6 THE LIFE BEYOND 
 
 day of our lives bearing burdens for other people, 
 or having ours borne for us. We may be the better 
 for it in both cases, but we never dream that a 
 noble man can make his character over to a scoun- 
 drel and say : ** I know you are a rascal ; you have 
 been a scheming, selfish tyrant to your fellows; 
 you have been covetous and hypocritical, base and 
 sordid in your aims; but I am willing that you 
 should have as a deed of gift all that I know of 
 God and life, and all that I feel concerning love 
 and truth." One man might be quite willing to 
 make that deed of gift, and another to benefit by it, 
 but it could not be done. We know that it never 
 is done. No man becomes a Christ at a bound. 
 From what we know of life here it is therefore fair 
 to assume that we may go on helping one another 
 and suffering for one another in the life beyond 
 the grave, but we shall have to grow our individual 
 spiritual character exactly as we are doing now 
 under the guidance of the Holy Spirit of God. 
 Where we have failed to do this we shall have to 
 learn the mistake and start afresh. We shall not 
 be left to labour and suffer alone. Our Master and 
 Lord will be with us at every step in the road, and 
 all the love in the universe will be on our side in 
 the effort to reach the highest of all. There is 
 nothing to fear in that dim unknown unless we 
 have been living in the outer darkness of a self- 
 centred life here. If that has been so, we shall have 
 to find out that it was never worth our while. We 
 shall have to renounce the false ideal and turn to the 
 true. All the petty vanities and conceits which are 
 absorbing so much of our energy now will be seen 
 in their true colours then, and we shall despise the 
 
THE LIFE BEYOND 307 
 
 folly that led us to prefer them. We shall see our 
 life just as it is, with no possibility of self-deception 
 about it. We may be slow to acknowledge that we 
 have been wrong, but if so we shall have to wait 
 outside the gates of blessedness until a better spirit 
 awakens within us. There will be no one to fawn 
 upon and flatter us, for the things will be absent 
 that give us any material advantage here. Death 
 will strike away most of the externals which deceive 
 men in their own eyes or give them a fictitious pro- 
 minence and value in the eyes of the world. The 
 miser will have his miser's soul but not his hoarded 
 gold. The sensualist will keep his cravings, but 
 not the means of satisfying them. The coward and 
 the oppressor will find that there never has been 
 any gain worth sacrificing a fellow man for. 
 Eternal love will teach them these things, but the 
 lesson may begin in pain. 
 
 One thing we shall all have to learn, and that is 
 that our heaven is within us before it can find out- 
 ward expression. Even in this world that is true 
 to a greater extent than most people dream. Once 
 get a man at peace with God, free him from all fear 
 for his own self-interest, and you will find that cir- 
 cumstances have very little power either to make 
 or mar his happiness. He may sorrow, but never 
 as those without hope. In the world to come we 
 shall find our heaven on our appropriate moral 
 level ; the soul and its environment will correspond 
 in a fuller degree than here. The richer and fuller 
 the love within us, the grander and wider the ex- 
 pression it will find. And with the ascent of the 
 soul will come a sweeter perception of our essential 
 unity with all mankind and a greater willingness to 
 
3o8 THE LIFE BEYOND 
 
 give all we have and are in order to hasten the 
 perfect realisation of that unity. It will be the 
 consummation spoken of by the apostle Paul : All 
 things are to be summed up in Christ, and the 
 kingdom delivered up to God the Father, that God 
 may be all in all. 
 
 In conclusion let me epitomise the matter in a 
 few sentences. Nothing worthy to live shall ever 
 perish. 
 
 And though, in this lean age forlorn, 
 
 Too many a voice may cry 
 That man shall have no after morn, 
 
 Not yet of these am I. 
 The man survives, and whatso'er 
 
 He wrought of good or brave 
 Will mould him through the cycle year 
 
 That dawns behind the grave. 
 
 Because Christ lives you shall live also. Earthly 
 love shall find its fruition in the world which 
 neither death nor sin can enter. Those we call 
 dead are more alive than ever, and if they ever 
 loved us they have not ceased to think of and 
 pray for us. The meaning of life is clearer to 
 them now, and probably they are able to help us 
 by their prayers on our behalf in a far greater 
 measure than was possible to them in the prison- 
 house of the flesh. The universe of God, visible 
 and invisible, is a garment woven without seam 
 throughout. " In my Father's house are many 
 mansions," but it is still one house, the temple of 
 the living God. 
 
 Richard Clay 6^ Sons^ Limited, London and Bungay. 
 

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