£xhvaxy of €he theological ^tminaty 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 The Estate of the 
 Rev^ John B. Wledinger 
 
 ^Y.4253Ts7riioF 
 Stimson, Henry Albert, 1842- 
 
 The new things of God ' 
 
The New Things of 
 
 Sermons 
 
 By/ 
 HENRY A.^TIMSON 
 
 Minister of the Manhattan Congregational 
 Church, New York City 
 
 ' New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 London and Edinburgh 
 
Copyright, 1908, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: \oq Princes Street 
 
To the 
 
 dear memory of 
 
 My Mother 
 
" Our modern world looks as if it were getting ready for a 
 new conception of Christ. There is gathering from all 
 points of the compass of serious religious thought a volume 
 of insight and appreciation of Him that must finally over- 
 whelm the public mind with the sense of His absoluteness 
 for humanity. . . . Everywhere the vision is opening 
 to the reality of His presence in the world. The old Christ 
 conception is becoming new in the current thoughts, insights 
 and appreciations of the time. There is a gathering dis- 
 cernment towards this great centre. . . . The worth of 
 the individual, the reality of social union, the sanctity of 
 home, the infinite meaning of love, the eternal validity of 
 our ideas of righteousness, freedom, and God, all the ulti- 
 mate realities of our human world, are the creation of 
 Christ." 
 
 George A. Gordon, " The Christ of To-day i' pp. 30, 31. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THESE sermons are offered to the pub- 
 lic not as representing a new theology 
 or a new interpretation of the Gospel 
 of Christ. They reveal the character of the 
 regular preaching in a quiet city church of the 
 Congregational order as it is heard from Sab- 
 bath to Sabbath as presented by one in whom 
 it is the expression of a settled faith in Jesus 
 Christ tested by some experience and applied 
 to the needs of to-day, and as it finds welcome 
 reception by a loving, faithful, God-fearing con- 
 gregation. 
 
 Its newness lies in the fact, not only that we 
 are living in an age of new thought, but that 
 growing experience is ever leading Christians 
 to new views of God and His love which are 
 invariably accompanied by something of new- 
 ness in the understanding of God's Word. In 
 this way we are getting our new conception of 
 Christ. 
 
 As the sermons have not been unattended 
 with evidence of blessing to some who heard 
 them, it is my earnest hope that there may be 
 blessing in them also for some who may read. 
 
 5 
 
6 PREFACE 
 
 As I believe that the preaching of the Gospel is 
 God's appointed way of bringing in His king- 
 dom and of saving the world, I have abiding 
 confidence and grateful joy in my calling. I 
 am glad to try to show, so far at least, what is 
 the Gospel that to-day is preached in our 
 churches and to cherish the hope that it may 
 be a message from God to some who would 
 like to know it but never go to hear it. 
 
 Henry A. Stimson. 
 
 Manhattan Congregational Church, 
 New Tork, Sept. ist, igo8. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. The New Things of God . . 9 
 
 II. The New Wine and the Old Bot- 
 
 tles 25 
 
 III. The Saving Faith .... 40 
 
 IV. The Life that Is Life Indeed . 53 
 
 V. The Paradox of Life ... 65 
 
 VI. The Moral Value of Antipa- 
 
 thies 75 
 
 VII. The Famine for God ... 85 
 
 VIII. How TO get Right With God . 98 
 
 IX. The Radiant Life . . . .110 
 
 X. Christ the Restorer . . . 120 
 XL Defeating God . . . .132 
 
 XII. The Beautiful Deed . . .141 
 
 XIII. Achieving the Impossible . . 156 
 
 XIV. Hindrances and Helps . .169 
 
 XV. The Enlightening of the Heart 183 
 
 XVI. The Challenge of Christ . . 196 
 XVn. God's Saints 209 
 
 XVIII. The Reward of Service . . 222 
 
 XIX. Jonah 233 
 
 XX. The Church and the Sick . . 245 
 
 XXI. Jesus and Social Conditions . 267 
 
THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 «' And He that sitteth on the throne said : * Behold I make all 
 things new.' " — Rev. 21 : $. 
 
 WE are indebted to Dr. George Mathe- 
 son, the late distinguished blind 
 preacher of Glasgow, for the saying 
 that the difference between making new things, 
 and making things new, is that one is of the 
 head and the other of the heart. 
 
 We flatter ourselves that we can make things 
 new. Our friend has broken his leg and we 
 watch him come out in his convalescence. The 
 doctor has assured him that his leg is as good 
 as new; but we notice that he carries a cane 
 and walks gingerly. We send our broken par- 
 lour chair to the cabinet-maker, and he returns 
 it with the assurance that it is stronger than it 
 was before ; but we are nervous when our stout 
 visitor turns to sit in it. We bear unconscious 
 testimony to the insufficiency of our work when 
 we speak of the recreation of the summer. 
 Why do we not say re-creation ? It is because 
 we know that the heavy work of the year has 
 left its mark, and that the wearied nerves will 
 never again be exactly what they were before 
 
 9 
 
10 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 the strain. We are glad if we can give them 
 recreation, for we know too well that as the 
 years go by nature's forces in us cannot be re- 
 created 
 
 But when we come to God's work, how differ- 
 ent it all is I Here there is no distinction be- 
 tween the head and the heart. God's work is 
 perfect, and when He makes old things new, 
 the new powers, and the new joys, and the new 
 life will indeed be better than the old. We 
 turn to this vision of the glories of the last day, 
 given to the Beloved Disciple in his solitary 
 exile, and we are able in some degree, to catch 
 with him the meaning of the wonderful sen- 
 tence, " And He that sitteth on the throne said, 
 • Behold I make all things new.' " That is 
 well worthy of being the crowning character- 
 istic of the Divine work, the sufficient glory of 
 God Himself in the day of His recognized tri- 
 umph. Let us give attention then for a little 
 to this thought, — God's joy in making things 
 new. 
 
 God's great work is in the realm of the soul. 
 Creation itself prepared for the Redemption. 
 The earth is the arena in which the tragedy of 
 human sin unfolded and in which, in the fullness 
 of time, God's provision to rescue man from sin 
 and to reveal Himself in the glory of that fin- 
 ished work, was to be accomplished. The work 
 
THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 11 
 
 has a scope that we can feel, but it is hard for 
 us to grasp it in its details. We know some- 
 thing of the degradation of the sin, of the hope- 
 lessness of the destruction which it works in the 
 human heart, and of the apparent impossibility 
 of making the old new. 
 
 Some can remember their own first experi- 
 ence of serious transgression with its startling 
 revelation, its sudden and awful shock, its 
 strange feeling of loneliness, the complete isola- 
 tion in which we felt ourselves cut off from all 
 old associations, even from the friends nearest 
 and dearest, who had held us in their hearts up 
 to that sad hour. How can we ever be the 
 same again ? How can we ever put ourselves 
 back into the old relations or hope ever again 
 to be loved as we once were ? It is true that 
 nobody knows, and the first impulse is to trust 
 in the protection of a profound secret; but 
 alas ! we know that the clamouring voice in 
 one's heart seems to sound not only in the cir- 
 cle of one's friends, but also in the universe, as 
 it sounds indeed before the bar of God. We 
 cry with the prodigal : "I have sinned against 
 heaven and in thy sight : I am no more worthy 
 to be called thy son." And with the Psalmist, 
 " Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and 
 done that which is evil in Thy sight." But 
 we cannot cry with him, " Purge me with hyssop 
 
12 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall 
 be whiter than snow." That is beyond our ut- 
 most imagination. 
 
 It is true that years may have passed since 
 that sad day. We have got used to ourselves 
 and the strange situation. Our sensibilities are 
 dulled. We have adjusted ourselves to the 
 new conditions. We have lowered our hopes 
 to meet the dullness of our feeling. Sin has 
 lost much of its vividness and, therefore, of its 
 guilt. We have come to be ordinary men and 
 women, living the common life and putting God 
 and the judgment far off. We have discovered 
 that, after all, nobody does know, and what is 
 not known may w^ell be forgotten. We put 
 out of our minds all that we can of disagree- 
 able memory ; and we have successfully adopted 
 the cheer that comes with daily activity and in- 
 difference to the consequences of the past. We 
 are not making things new, but we are adjust- 
 ing ourselves to the old, — planing it down to 
 the level of the commonplace, where its pangs 
 disappear, even though its pleasures must nec- 
 essarily be discredited. 
 
 It is to men in this condition that God comes 
 with His work of Redemption. Into this world 
 of sinners, the Lord Jesus Christ came with the 
 proclamation of a Divine Love which at once 
 challenged the sinner to recall his past in all its 
 
THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 13 
 
 vividness, and to face the realities of his per- 
 sonal condition in all their truth, — to lay his 
 heart bare before God, if not before men, and in 
 the full light of that divine inspection and with 
 all the sting of an awakened conscience to con- 
 fess his sins and to seek the forgiveness which 
 is so freely offered and so fully bestowed. 
 Arising from his penitential knees, he is startled 
 with the sense of a new life springing up in the 
 very depths of his soul, a new joy, a new hope, 
 and a new courage, the amazing surprise of new 
 possibilities. The gradual comprehension of 
 the new fact that he is a new man in Christ 
 Jesus comes upon him and he turns humbly and 
 timidly to his old life, prepared for the growing 
 testimony to the amazing truth that God has 
 indeed created a new heart within him and 
 given him a new spirit, that the old man in him 
 is dead and all things have become new. He 
 who was, if not an enemy, at least a stranger to 
 God, has become a child in his Father's house, 
 an heir of the promise of God in Christ Jesus 
 his Lord. Already permitted to be confident of 
 a strength not his own which will help him to 
 do right, and of a pardon so complete that even 
 in the last day when the secrets of all hearts 
 shall be revealed, there shall be no trace of ac- 
 cusation, and even the memories and the records 
 of the past shall be utterly blotted out. 
 
U THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 This is the truth with which, by comparison 
 with our own feeble efforts at renewal, we are 
 so overwhelmed when we come to face God's 
 making old things new. When John Wesley- 
 was dying, in a brief moment of returning con- 
 sciousness he asked : " What was the text that 
 I preached upon last Sunday?" And when 
 one standing beside him repeated, " For ye 
 know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that 
 though He was rich, yet for your sakes He be- 
 came poor that ye through His poverty might 
 become rich," he exclaimed, *'Yes; that is it 
 There is no other." Facing eternity, he gained 
 a new view of the wonder and the perfection of 
 that redemptive work which, finding him a 
 hopeless sinner, had caused him to be born 
 anew into the life of the Son of God. A little 
 before he had said, ** When I get to heaven, I 
 want very much to see King David and to talk 
 with him ; and most of all, I want to talk with 
 St. Paul." The reason was plain. These were 
 the men who knew as few others the meaning 
 of the renewing work of God in a sinful soul. 
 The one had fallen before terrible temptation 
 and had cried out in the agony of his soul for 
 the forgiveness which lifted him up and put a 
 song upon his lips. The other had been the 
 chief of sinners and had become the triumphant 
 witness to the Crucified and Redeeming Christ. 
 
THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 15 
 
 A modest, gentle, kindly business man once 
 stood before me with shining eyes, telling of 
 the joy that had come to him as the result of 
 his giving himself in middle life to the Lord. 
 **To think," he said, ''that for more than 
 twenty years I have tried to do this for myself 
 and could not ; and now in one hour the Lord 
 has done it for me." 
 
 Horace Bushnell late in life was addressing 
 the students in Yale College. Recalling the 
 day when, long years before a tutor in the 
 college, and a stout unbeliever, he had strug- 
 gled with himself, and by the grace of God had 
 surrendered and begun the new life, he said, 
 " There is a story laid up in the little bedroom 
 of one of these old dormitories which I pray 
 God the recording angel may know, allowing 
 it never to be lost." 
 
 Think of our Lord's joy in His disciples, in 
 the thief on the cross, in the woman at the well. 
 How He yearned over them ; how He strove to 
 make the love of God appear to them, and to 
 awaken in their hearts, the glad belief that God 
 can make old things new. And then, at last, 
 the sudden breaking in of the revelation, the 
 vanishing of the doubts and fears, and the 
 dawn of the new life in the faces that were be- 
 fore Him ! What is all this but the suggestion 
 of the joy in God's heart when He does His 
 
16 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 wonderful work of re-creating sin-sick souls and 
 giving the new life where death had come to 
 reign. 
 
 But this is by no means the only indication 
 of the divine joy in making old things new. 
 There is the joy which God has in changing 
 bitterness to blessing. We cannot escape the 
 bitter cup. Sorrow, and failure, and disap- 
 pointment, and pain are the lot of all. 
 Sooner or later, every one must ask, ** Is life 
 worth living ? " and in view of the misery of 
 the passing hour, must feel that the hateful an- 
 swer is forced upon him. The bitter cup has 
 come, and it darkens all our life. We know 
 that it will pass, but its memory is fixed ; and its 
 successor in some form is sure to tread upon 
 its heels. No one is exempt; the experi- 
 ence is so universal, and the occurrence is so 
 frequent, that it is not strange that in many a 
 heart all life settles into a dull endurance, and 
 in many a soul there is an abiding conviction 
 that the game is not worth the candle. 
 
 In our better hours we try to grasp the 
 meaning of it all. We search for evidence that 
 there is a deep underlying good, and that the 
 immediate outcome is a discipline which leads 
 to strength. We think of men like Prescott, 
 the historian, facing in early manhood oncom- 
 ing blindness, and giving himself with unfalter- 
 
THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 17 
 
 ing courage to the laborious task of the student 
 until he made himself the great historian of his 
 country. , 
 
 We see young Henry Fawcett, the Cambridge 
 University graduate, suddenly shot in both eyes 
 in the hunting field by a gun in the hands of 
 his father, — the most pitiful of all conceivable 
 accidents — instantly pulling himself together, 
 trying to comfort the crushed heart of his father, 
 and promptly devoting himself to the plan of 
 life which he had been brooding over, and then 
 proceeding to make himself through long years, 
 the eloquent, courageous, successful tribune of 
 the English people, — uplifting the oppressed, 
 delivering crushed and overworked toilers from 
 their hopeless task, pleading in the Parlia- 
 ment in which he had won his position by his 
 dauntless and persistent courage, always the 
 cause of the neglected and the needy ; dying at 
 last the most loved man in his native land. 
 
 A wonderful sentence comes to us from the 
 Middle Ages. Out of the turmoil, the vice 
 and the bloodshed of the Florence of that day, 
 we hear the voice of the great poet as he says in 
 his immortal words : "In sua voluntade e nostra 
 pace." — (** In the doing of His will lies our 
 peace.") How did Dante know that ? Has any 
 thought risen higher than that through all the 
 centuries ? In the doing of God's will, the sur- 
 
18 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 rendering of ourselves to His appointment, the 
 accepting of the cup because He sent it, is not only 
 the discipline we need, not only the promise of 
 strength and attainment, but, far more than this, 
 the peace, the deep abiding divine peace of the 
 soul. 
 
 I have a friend now in the prime of his great 
 success as a preacher struck with oncoming 
 blindness and bravely keeping at his work. 
 Reading a recent writing of his, I find this sen- 
 tence ; commenting on this theme of the sorrows 
 of life as God's appointment, and the blessed 
 peace that is to be found in giving one's self to 
 doing His will, he says : " When we have 
 learned this one lesson we are ready for heaven.'* 
 Think of the divine joy when the Father can look 
 down upon such a soul transformed already, so 
 far, at least, into His own likeness. His crowning 
 work in all the universe, — a soul rising to respond 
 to His love, and finding its new life in His gift, 
 leaping to devote itself to His service. Is it any 
 wonder that in that last day when such shall come 
 to Him, an unnumbered multitude out of every 
 country and nation and clime. He shall say as 
 the crowning truth of the final triumph : " Be- 
 hold I make all things new.'* 
 
 But once more, — mark the joy that lies in 
 God's work in making the unproductive fruitful. 
 The Old Testament is full of the promise of fruit- 
 
THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 19 
 
 fulness. The land shall blossom and shall laugh 
 with its fertility. The barns shall be full, and 
 the fields under God's blessing shall whiten with 
 the rich harvest. Our Lord's promise is "Ye 
 shall bear much fruit." This is to be the 
 measure and the reward of a true disciple- 
 ship. 
 
 There is that in every heart which responds to 
 this thought. We can all understand some- 
 thing of the feeling of the farmer leaning on his 
 gate and looking at the waving fields of grain 
 about him. He has planted and cultivated and 
 waited for the harvest, and here it is. He has 
 made the waste land fruitful, and his soul is 
 filled with a supreme satisfaction. 
 
 Look at the light in the face of the young 
 father over his new-born child, or the joy of the 
 mother as for the first time she presses her in- 
 fant to her heart. Life has produced life. 
 Fruitfulness has come, the blessed gift of God. 
 We all know its significance ; even the dullest 
 and weariest long for its privileges. 
 
 I sat the other day on a platform looking into 
 the bright faces of the graduating class in a 
 great woman's college, and as they passed in 
 long procession before their president to receive 
 their diplomas, I noticed among those blooming 
 girls, one gray-haired, middle-aged woman. 
 What was the meaning of her presence in that 
 
20 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 senior class ? She was a teacher of many years* 
 experience, but she had long carried the con- 
 sciousness of her own limitations. She had 
 never had the privilege of a college education 
 and the thought had grown with the years that 
 she could not do her best work, could not really 
 rise to her finest possibilities in consequence. 
 So she had laid down her work, and now in 
 middle life had come to college, had suppressed 
 all thought of comparison or of humiliation, and 
 had entered as a freshman, had slowly pushed her- 
 self through the successive years until now, with 
 gentle face, she stood with those young girls to 
 receive the well-earned diploma which gave to 
 her the promise of a new youth, because it 
 brought a sense of new powers. 
 
 Here then is the picture of God's work of 
 making old things new. With a new fruitful- 
 ness giving to men and women, His children, a 
 new courage, a new cheer, a new understand- 
 ing of life and of Him, by which their life is 
 exalted, their labour made productive, their 
 sorrows, and trials, and failures, and discipline 
 wrought into every web and woof of His plan 
 for a finished and glorified creation. And all 
 this not as a work of the head only, but as a 
 work of God Himself in the fullness of His 
 being. Heart and head, divine intelligence 
 and divine love combining to do the work 
 
THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 21 
 
 that is so much needed by men, and which, 
 more than all else, reveals the true character of 
 our God. 
 
 And now to what does all this lead ? What 
 purposes should it awaken in us? What vi- 
 sion of life should dawn upon our thoughtful 
 eyes ? Are we not summoned to do our part 
 along the line that God Himself indicates ? The 
 Church is a power house. To it is given the dy- 
 namic of the spiritual life to use in doing the 
 work of God on earth. Jesus Christ has come 
 to dwell in it and to inspire its life. It is not 
 sufficient for it to go on in old ways. We live 
 in a new day. We have new possibilities. We 
 should reach out for new results. Christianity 
 is something more than a method of saving 
 individuals, infinitely blessed as that work is. 
 It has become the social gospel. No man lives 
 to himself. We can only prove the reality, 
 then, of the new life when we find it going out 
 and laying hold of others. They must share 
 the life of God in us if that life is to be real in 
 our own hearts. 
 
 God has a plan for each several life. We 
 are labourers together with God in striving 
 to work that plan out, but the sole condition 
 on which this can be done is that others 
 share in the work. No man can do it single 
 handed. Therefore, the fruitfulness of the 
 
22 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 Christian must be sought in the success with 
 which he brings others into sharing the bless- 
 ings which mean so much to him, that he 
 and they together may press forward in both the 
 knowledge and the service of God. We must 
 together be apostles, that is, men sent, not sim- 
 ply disciples, that is, men taught. We are 
 witnesses not simply to the word which God 
 has spoken, but to the life and the joy and the 
 purpose which are revealed in God Himself. 
 The joy of making all things new becomes 
 the measure and the test of the work of the 
 Church of Jesus Christ and the follower of 
 Jesus Christ alike. 
 
 So, as individuals, we have a new summons 
 to mutual affection. It becomes our privilege 
 to bind up broken friendships, to help men to 
 comfort, to be careful to guard against speech 
 that wounds, to be, on our part, watchful and 
 constant to make new joy. Love becomes not 
 merely love to God ; but God's very own love 
 glowing in the hearts of men reveals Himself 
 in their love one for another. 
 
 So we eagerly seek new openings for a fruitful 
 service. We find this in every improvement in 
 the circumstances of our life, — better conditions 
 even in material things, — these mean better 
 work, more eagerness, more willingness to 
 help, a prompter readiness to make sacrifices if 
 
THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 23 
 
 need be, in order that the work which reveals 
 God may go forward. 
 
 A minister friend of mine a while ago asked 
 a gentleman coming to New York from the 
 country what had led him with his family to 
 come to unite with his small church instead of 
 going to one of the great ones ; and the prompt 
 and smiling answer came, " Because I thought 
 I could lift a little harder here." Here was a 
 disciple who knew the heart of his Master. 
 
 At last all things shall be new. God's work 
 will be done. We shall see as we are seen and 
 know as we are known. The mystery of life 
 will be opened, and the darkness forever will 
 be gone. The other day a minister, a dear friend, 
 told me that as he closed his service, he saw in 
 the aisle at the door a lady member of his church, 
 whom he knew had lately been stricken with 
 blindness. He paused for a moment before 
 leaving the pulpit to observe her. She was 
 slowly making her way through the crowd, 
 guiding herself down the aisle from pew to pew 
 with her outstretched hand. He went at once 
 to meet her, and as he took her hand, he said, 
 
 " My dear Mrs. , I am so sorry for you, 
 
 but it will all be light up yonder, and then you 
 will know why God has permitted this great 
 affliction." She lifted her shining face towards 
 him and said, ** If I am so happy as to get to 
 
24 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 heaven at last, I shall let bygones be bygones, 
 and not trouble the Lord for explanations." 
 
 " In that day," said our Lord, " ye shall ask 
 Me nothing." Your joy will be full. Then 
 God will indeed, for us, have made all things 
 I ^ new, as only God can. 
 
II 
 
 THE NEW WINE AND THE OLD BOTTLES 
 
 " No man putteth new wine into old wine-skins ; else the new 
 wine will burst the skins, and itself will be spilled, and the skins 
 will perish. But new wine must be put into fresh wine-skins. 
 And no man having drunk old wine desireth new : for he saith: 
 The old is good." — Luke ^ •' 37-39- 
 
 THE great question in religion to-day is 
 how to adjust the old to the new, for 
 the new is dominant. Everywhere we 
 are under the influence of new thought, so that 
 we have new science and new truth pressing 
 for recognition in religion as in everything else. 
 It is sometimes said that there can be no new 
 truth in religion, but only new forms of truth. 
 It is a statement hardly worthy of discussion, 
 as it resolves itself merely into a matter of 
 terms. Our concern always is with truth ap- 
 prehended in definite form, so that the form be- 
 comes of the essence of the thing itself. Dis- 
 embodied truth we do not know, if indeed it 
 exists. Therefore, the question of new truth, 
 by which we mean truth freshly put in its re- 
 lations to the problems and the people of to-day, 
 is just as real a factor in life as is new truth in 
 science, where beyond all question it exists even 
 
 25 
 
26 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 though the material out of which it is shaped is 
 as old as nature itself. 
 
 When we come to religion, we may be sure 
 that Jesus' way of adjusting the new to the old 
 is the right way, if we can only rightly under- 
 stand it. The intelligent man of to-day holds 
 himself ready both to heed and to use new 
 truth from whatever source it may come to him. 
 In this respect whatever his temperament may 
 be, he is a radical, and the old drama which 
 long ago spoke of Jesus as " the first true gen- 
 tleman," if it were deahng with the life about 
 us, could with equal propriety speak of Him as 
 *' the first true Radical." What may be called, 
 therefore, the radicalism of Jesus is a matter of 
 as truly modern, as it is of vital, interest. If 
 we can rightly understand it, we have the pat- 
 tern and the rule for the Christian. 
 
 Men are in the habit of interpreting radical 
 to mean going to the roots of things, and to be 
 content with a definition which lies so close to 
 the etymology of the word. But before we 
 accept this as sufficient, it is well to consider 
 how easily derivations may mislead. 
 
 A skeptic, for example, is supposed to be a 
 man who looks into things. He peers from un- 
 der his shaded eyes. But as a matter of fact, 
 the skeptic is quite as often the man who does 
 not see. '-He is the man who doubts, and the 
 
NEW WINE AND OLD BOTTLES 27 
 
 man who doubts is very near to being the man 
 who does not know, and who is suffering the 
 perils of his ignorance. He is skeptical be- 
 cause he permits himself to remain more or less 
 contented in this attitude of uncertainty ; and 
 uncertainty means hesitancy ; and prolonged 
 hesitancy loses both opportunity and strength. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the radical is very often 
 the man who sees only one side of a question. 
 He is one possessed with some single form of 
 truth, which, because it is new to him, and 
 therefore bulks large in his thought, and pos- 
 sibly in his self-importance, appears to him of 
 prime importance to the world. Or, he grasps 
 one principle, the impulse of which is so master- 
 ful in his own life that it seems sufficient to in- 
 dicate the whole range in which not only his life, 
 but all life, should move. As a consequence, 
 whatever the derivation of the word may indi- 
 cate, experience shows that in very many re- 
 lations, the radical man is the erratic and the 
 one-sided man. It should not be so, of course, 
 but human nature being what it is, it is the 
 common experience. 
 
 Furthermore, the radical man is generally a 
 man who in proportion to his radicalism is im- 
 patient of others. His tendency is to flock by 
 himself. He becomes denunciatory and for- 
 getful of the fact that the best test of truth is its 
 
28 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 application to other minds, and that only as 
 we find others accepting that which we hold, do 
 we really gain a true and available hold upon 
 it ourselves. 
 
 Jesus' characteristics were all the opposite of 
 this. Beyond all dealers with new truth, He 
 was patient and gently considerate even of His 
 enemies. The truth that was revealed to Him 
 of God had gradually to sink into His mind, 
 and apparently for years to dwell there, adjust- 
 ing itself to His thought, until only at last after 
 thirty years was He prepared to proclaim it to 
 the world. 
 
 When His disciples, in the first rush of their 
 early enthusiasm, threw themselves in a truly 
 radical spirit upon the world. His prompt re- 
 buke was : "Ye know not what spirit ye are 
 of." He stands out in contrast with the great 
 leaders of the Old Testament day. Moses 
 would be the better type of our modern con- 
 ception of a radical, as he stood before the rock 
 which he was to smite, saying in his impatience : 
 *' What shall I do unto this people ? '' But in 
 his more instructed time, when he was alone with 
 God on the mount, he approached nearer to the 
 type of Jesus, as he prays that the people may be 
 forgiven and spared, and if God cannot do that, 
 he pleads that he be taken as a vicarious sacri- 
 fice for them. 
 
NEW WINE AND OLD BOTTLES 29 
 
 The fact is, the word radical is not altogether 
 a safe term. Dr. Horace Bushnell long ago 
 said that words have a power of their own, 
 which in many cases is a positive trend. For 
 this reason he deliberately refrained from using 
 certain words, like liberal, for example ; which, 
 as he said, carries one whither he would not 
 go, and comes to have a meaning neither true 
 nor gracious. The same is true with radical. 
 It ought to be a wholly safe word, indicating 
 thoroughness and the command of patience 
 and strength. As a matter of fact, it does 
 neither. Yet, holding in mind its derivation, 
 we can remember that Jesus did go to the roots 
 of things, that He did take up with new 
 thought, that He did press the issues which 
 were before Him and that He was a Radical 
 therefore in this sense, — that He could do this 
 and still maintain that attitude which makes 
 this safe and wise. 
 
 For example, He discarded " old bottles." 
 The ** old bottles " of His day were Judaism, 
 its traditions, its forms, its services, its sacrifices, 
 its all — even its law and its Sabbath. It is 
 hard for us to understand the shock of this. 
 He was by birth and training a Hebrew. His 
 mission was for the time wholly among His 
 own people. He had to reach them by using 
 their shibboleths and starting with them in the 
 
30 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 accepted positions of their own thought and 
 life. The symbols which He was to discard 
 were symbols of the best things which then 
 existed in the world. They had been the 
 means of holding the Israelites a separate race, 
 and maintaining among them the worship of 
 the true God, when all the world lay in the 
 darkness and despair of heathenism. 
 
 It is always difficult to separate symbols from 
 truth, or in this sense, the bottles from the 
 wine ; but whether hard or easy, Jesus did it, 
 and He did it so thoroughly that He aroused 
 the bitter hostility of His neighbours and 
 friends, and in consequence hastened, if He did 
 not make inevitable. His own death. From 
 the standpoint of human history, this might be 
 regarded as an immense loss. In the light of 
 what experience teaches us in similar positions, 
 we say, '' How much would have been gained 
 if He could have done differently ; if He could 
 only have held to the past more firmly and, at 
 least for the time, been content to put the wine 
 into the old bottles, even at the risk of losing 
 some of it ! " Because He did not He lost Israel 
 almost entirely, and from that day to this the 
 Jews have been largely outside of the pale of 
 His Gospel. 
 
 But for all that. His method was unquestion- 
 ably the wise one, and He stands for the Christian 
 
NEW WINE AND OLD BOTTLES 31 
 
 the true Exemplar. We must fear in His name 
 that conservatism which we think strengthens 
 man's hold on the forms of the past. The 
 things to which we have been accustomed be- 
 come to us almost inevitably the embodiment 
 of the truth, if not essential to it. The customs, 
 the ceremonies, the books, the point of view 
 which mark the circle of our life and the range 
 of our thoughts stand to us as landmarks, the 
 removal of which imperils all that we value. 
 We need the help of His example to learn to 
 keep the bottles distinct from the wine, and to 
 hold ourselves not only patient of change but 
 expectant and ready at any time to pass in re- 
 view the bottles, with that honest search for 
 breakage or inutility which will lead us at any 
 time, if there is reason, to cast them aside. 
 
 Another significant fact in our Lord's dealing 
 with the situation was the confidence that He 
 showed in new bottles. He promptly chose 
 new disciples. They were men wholly un- 
 tried, and needing to be taught from the very 
 beginning, but He trusted Himself and His Gos- 
 pel to them, even though in doing so He had to 
 break with the accredited leaders and teachers 
 of His own early life. In the same way, He 
 took up new methods. He not only banished 
 entirely the method of teaching in vogue 
 among His people, but He instituted a new 
 
32 THE NEAV THINGS OF GOD 
 
 evangelism by which He went out Himself 
 among the common people and taught in the 
 market-places, on the hillside and on the shore 
 of the sea, wherever hearers could be found 
 and taught freely whoever came, regardless of 
 whether they were properly scholars or not. 
 Indeed, He quite abandoned the distinctions of 
 the schools and showed Himself as ready to 
 teach an outcast woman, or an ignorant 
 heathen, or a Roman soldier, as He was to 
 teach the chief rabbi of the Jews. 
 
 In the same way, He promptly organized or 
 prepared the material for the organization of a 
 new Church. The conception of an ancient 
 and historic Church which looms up so large to 
 us and seems to many so vital in the develop- 
 ment of Christianity never meant more, or 
 really stood for more, than it did in Israel in 
 His time. The Temple was its embodiment; 
 and the ritual of Israel, in the thought of His 
 people, dated from Moses. It had abundant 
 life, and it knew no competitor, and yet Jesus is 
 seen turning from it and adopting a course and 
 teaching principles which at once discredited, 
 and would inevitably overthrow it. He laid the 
 foundations of the Church of the people, so 
 simple in its form, so unhistorical in its 
 methods, that all it required was two or three 
 gathering together with the desire to worship 
 
NEW WINE AND OLD BOTTLES 33 
 
 God according to the dictates of their own 
 hearts ; and to it He gave the assurance that 
 God would reveal Himself and that His Spirit 
 would dwell in them. 
 
 In the same way He founded the Christian 
 community, an entirely new conception, made 
 up of people of all kinds, taken at random out 
 of every condition of life and every nationality, 
 as they might happen to come, binding them 
 together and making use of them for the unit 
 of the new social organization to which He was 
 to commit His Gospel and so reveal Himself. 
 There never has been an instance in history 
 where a new teacher so completely cast him- 
 self upon the new methods which he introduced 
 or for which he opened the way. 
 
 His Church has been trying new bottles ever 
 since, following His example and, as they be- 
 lieve, obedient to His desire and teaching. His 
 disciples, after His death, are to be seen scatter- 
 ing everywhere, organizing churches, and using 
 in that organization whatever gave promise of 
 usefulness that they found in the community, 
 whether Jew or Greek, that lay about them. 
 Paul stands as the very apostle of this new 
 method, adapting himself in his teaching every- 
 where to his audience, quoting their literature, 
 recognizing their prejudices, availing himself 
 of the machinery of their lives, and proving in 
 
34 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 his work the adaptability of the new religion to 
 the immediate needs of all. Indeed, so far did 
 movement in this direction proceed in the first 
 centuries that scholars have found difficulty 
 ever since in their efforts to disentangle what 
 they would regard as the original teaching 
 from Greek forms of thought and Roman in- 
 fluences of organization and development. 
 
 In modern times we have seen the Church 
 take up with undiminished enthusiasm the 
 modern method of the Sunday-school, of the 
 Young Men's Christian Association, of the 
 Young People's Society of Christian Endeavour, 
 and scores of other forms of organization and 
 work according to the immediate need. Every- 
 where it has held itself ready to use "new 
 bottles," and to commit to them the new wine 
 without hesitancy. 
 
 This leads us to observe the entire confidence 
 which Jesus also put in the new wine. We ex- 
 claim of all this new thought with which we 
 are so overwhelmed, '' How good it is ! " 
 What refreshment it brings to life ; what 
 eagerness it gives to the scholar in every de- 
 partment of research ; for our point of view 
 has changed in regard to almost every depart- 
 ment of knowledge. The world has a new 
 science, and a new hygiene, and a new eco- 
 nomics, and new methods of business and of 
 
NEAV WINE AND OLD BOTTLES 35 
 
 industry, so numerous indeed that they have 
 long since passed beyond enumeration, if not 
 beyond recognition. ReHgion has come in for 
 its share, and we are crowded with new ques- 
 tions of documents and dates and authorship 
 and methods of interpretation. We have still 
 the old Bible, but it is a new book in the light 
 of a new knowledge. 
 
 What is all this to the new thought which 
 opened to the world in the teaching of Jesus 
 Christ and to His own mind when with His 
 growing life He was able to grasp the message 
 which was given to Him, and to understand 
 the length and breadth of its application ? He 
 stood in an old and worn-out world. The 
 light of heaven was in His soul. It grew upon 
 Him with His growth. It illumined His thought 
 in all its widening powers. It possessed Him 
 in every part of His being and by so much it 
 isolated Him from the life about Him. But His 
 message was to the world as it was ; and we 
 see Him committing Himself to His task with- 
 out reservation, bringing to bear upon every 
 one He could reach the truth which filled His 
 own thought. No more striking illustration of 
 this can be seen than His conversation with the 
 woman of Samaria. She stood for what is 
 lowest and dullest and most hopeless in human 
 life. He apparently ignored that, and opened 
 
36 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 to her at once the vision of God as a Spirit, to 
 be worshipped in spirit and in truth, sweeping 
 away the traditions of centuries, — the crutches 
 upon which feeble men have leaned as they 
 have sought to walk in God's service, and 
 striving to bring even that darkened soul at 
 once to the consciousness of her own powers 
 and possibilities as a child of God. 
 
 The method He pursued with her may be 
 taken as characteristic of Him. His confidence 
 in the truth, new as it was in the world, was 
 absolute ; and stands as the abiding lesson for 
 us. The new truth is always for the world's 
 knowing. It has a blessing in it. Whether 
 it comes in the crude religion of young con- 
 verts, or in the eager enthusiasm of sectaries, 
 there is something in the very newness of the 
 impression which it makes in any heart, which 
 gives it power, and which keeps the world alert 
 and fresh in its interest in the truth. 
 
 This is a very old lesson taught by the Lord 
 Himself in every word and act and the whole 
 spirit of His life ; but how often has it needed 
 to be reasserted and how often and how sadly 
 the Church, even in its best days, has forgotten 
 it I Indeed, we are all tempted to think that 
 we have found the measure of knowledge and 
 of truth in ourselves. We glory in settled 
 convictions, and also in clean-cut statement 
 
NEW WINE AND OLD BOTTLES 37 
 
 of them. We forget that the moment truth 
 comes to be defined it begins to be dormant, 
 and that definitions are vaUd only for those 
 who form them and the times in which they 
 live. 
 
 Paul was never truer both to the spirit and 
 the method of the Master than when he said : 
 ** I count not myself yet to have laid hold : but 
 one thing I do, forgetting the things which are 
 behind, and stretching forward to the things 
 which are before, I press on towards the goal, 
 unto the prize of the high calling of God in 
 Christ Jesus." Perhaps never was his exhorta- 
 tion more needed than when he said : ** Let us, 
 therefore, as many as are perfect, be thus 
 minded ; and if in anything ye are otherwise 
 minded, even this shall God reveal unto you ; " if 
 we may interpret this as emphasizing for us the 
 open-mindedness and readiness to receive new 
 light, and confidence in the light when it comes, 
 which was the characteristic of our Lord. 
 
 But when all this has been said, there remains 
 the fact that our Lord emphasizes the precious- 
 ness of the old wine. He was Himself well 
 taught in the religion of His fathers, and, far be- 
 yond the teachers of His day. He recognized the 
 truth that is in Him, and gave Himself to bring- 
 ing that truth in its purest and most precious 
 form to the apprehension of men. The Old 
 
38 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 Testament, the Bible of His fathers, has never 
 been more precious or more truly the means of 
 the message of God to the world than it has 
 been since He took it up and brought its hid- 
 den mysteries to light through His Gospel. 
 
 The world, it is true, is full of new truth to- 
 day, but the old truth remains, the comfort 
 and the strength of the old saints. How much 
 there is to be thankful for in this ! Never was 
 there more reason to appreciate the restfulness 
 of a quiet faith than in this day of upheaval 
 when everywhere the foundations are disturbed 
 and so many are at sea. We may well thank 
 God for those about us who, in the strength of 
 established habits of prayer and worship and 
 walking in the footsteps of Christ, are little dis- 
 turbed by the excitement or the vagaries of the 
 new world. They have long walked with God. 
 They know Him and they have no least doubt 
 that He knows them ; and their abiding hope is 
 not disturbed that in His own good time He 
 will take them unto Himself. 
 
 The old wine, indeed, is good ; even if we drop 
 the word of our older Version, and do not claim 
 that it is " better." In God's kind Providence 
 there is a place and there is need for all ; the 
 old and the new, in all their forms, are of use. Let 
 not the one despise or rebuke the other, but in 
 the spirit of the Master Himself let us learn with 
 
NEW WINE AND OLD BOTTLES 89 
 
 patience to follow the light as God may give it 
 to us, and so dwelling together in love, prove 
 that love is of God, and that where men will to 
 do His will, they shall know of the doctrine. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE SAVING FAITH: 
 
 « And he said : « Sirs, what must I do to be saved ? ' And they 
 said, * Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be 
 saved.* " — Acis i6 : 30-31. 
 
 THE Bible is full of declarations of the 
 power of faith to save men. The Old 
 Testament record is gathered up in the 
 eleventh chapter of Hebrews where the series of 
 patriarchs and prophets from Enoch and Noah 
 on through the long story are described as liv- 
 ing by faith, and being what they were because 
 of their faith. 
 
 The New Testament charges faith with a new 
 light and power. Jesus says : "If ye have 
 faith as a grain of mustard seed ye shall say 
 unto this mountain * Remove hence to yonder 
 place,' and it shall remove ; and nothing shall be 
 impossible unto you." His parting benediction 
 to the woman of the city, a sinner, was ** Go in 
 peace ; thy faith hath saved thee." 
 
 Reginald Campbell in expounding the " New 
 Theology " says, ** No man was ever saved by be- 
 lieving anything." This is either a play upon 
 
 40 
 
THE SAVING FAITH 41 
 
 words, like saying " No man was ever saved by 
 a rope "; or it is a strange perversion of the 
 truth. Salvation is a matter of religion, and 
 Mr. Campbell again says : *' Religion is the re- 
 sponse of the soul to the universe." This is like 
 saying that filial piety is the response of the 
 babe to its mother's milk, as the mother pro- 
 duced both the babe and the milk. God creates 
 both the soul and the universe, and there is a 
 sense of dependence and craving which may be 
 regarded as opening the way for " the response 
 of the soul to the universe." But there is no 
 religion in this, and no possible interpretation 
 of what we mean by being saved. 
 
 The definition of Clement of Alexandria is far 
 better. ** Religion," he says, " is the response 
 of the soul to truth." But while this is better, 
 it still is not adequate. Religion, in fact, is the 
 response of the soul to God. We are God's 
 children and it is unnatural not to respond to 
 Him, — to think His thoughts, to enjoy His love, 
 to obey His will. Therefore, religion, which 
 must be looked upon as the natural property or 
 life, of the soul that is made in the image of 
 God, is that which permits and bears testimony 
 to the steady flow of the life of God in the soul 
 of man, and the growth of man in the knowledge 
 of God, and in the accomplishment of the pur- 
 pose of God in his creation and sonship. 
 
42 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 What the Bible means by faith is just this. 
 It is the voluntary, loving, steadfast response 
 of the soul to God ; and the Christian faith is 
 that faith in God as made known to us through 
 Jesus Christ His Son. When, therefore, to-day 
 as Christians we have any concern with the mat- 
 ter of the saving faith, our thought must be 
 directed to the teaching of Jesus Christ, and 
 to that kind of faith which originates in 
 Him. 
 
 In the story from which the text is taken, we 
 have to deal with the jailor of Philippi, prob- 
 ably a Roman soldier and certainly an idolater, 
 a man who does not know God. He is sud- 
 denly brought to the condition in which he sees 
 his need. The heart which is made for God, 
 and cannot rest apart from God, gains a sud- 
 den conception both of itself and of its deepest 
 want. With that awakening consciousness, the 
 jailor moved in ways that he little understands, 
 but recognizing, either in the events which are 
 transpiring about him or in the character of the 
 men with whom he is dealing, something be- 
 yond his apprehension and yet something that 
 strangely appeals to him, addresses them in the 
 familiar words of the text : ** Sirs, what must I 
 do to be saved ? " Paul's answer is : " Believe 
 on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be 
 saved." What that means to him is simple and 
 
THE SAVING FAITH 43 
 
 indisputable. It means that he give up his 
 heathenism as a rehgion, that he abandon his 
 idols if he have them, that he turn from the life 
 which that heathenism permitted or involved, 
 and that he accept the God of the Christian to 
 whom he addressed himself for guidance and 
 for help. The God to whose service he is thus 
 summoned is a reality, personal and most pow- 
 erful. It means a complete change in the man 
 within and in his life without. In this sense the 
 text stands as a declaration of an abiding truth 
 applicable to all who may ask the same ques- 
 tion. 
 
 That it does not mean what it is often in- 
 terpreted as meaning is clear when one con- 
 siders the circumstances under which it was 
 uttered. Believing in order to be saved is by 
 no means a mere intellectual process by which 
 a man receiving light where he was before in 
 darkness, or being moved to views which be- 
 fore to him were vague or unknown, makes an 
 inward resolve that henceforth he will accept 
 that truth or hold those views. 
 
 Manifestly in relation to certain forms of 
 truth, there is no choice for any man to whom 
 they may be presented. The truths of mathe- 
 matics, for example, or the demonstrations of 
 physical science. A man may wonder at them, 
 may find it difficult to understand or to explain 
 
44 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 them ; but in proportion as they come within 
 the range of his mental apprehension, he must 
 accept them ; and there is no virtue in that 
 necessity. It is said to him, ''You see," or 
 " You hear." And when it is clear that he does 
 see, and does hear, there is no excuse for his 
 not accepting, and there is no virtue if he does 
 accept them. Possibly a ''Brother Jasper" 
 may deny the demonstrated fact; then the 
 world laughs. But on the contrary, in regard 
 to God and the obligations which grow out of 
 our relation to Him, there is always freedom to 
 accept or to reject. And whatever we know or 
 come to possess of moral character lies in the 
 extent to which we do accept or reject. There 
 is a personal responsibility which no man can 
 deny or escape. 
 
 Some men rejoice in the certainty of mathe- 
 matics and the demonstrations of science, and 
 draw comparisons unfavourable to religion ; but 
 as a matter of fact, a much higher value at- 
 taches to faith, looked upon as an act of believ- 
 ing which rests upon the choice of the believer, 
 for it involves a comprehension of truth as seen 
 in its moral relations, of ourselves as departing 
 from that truth, and of the duty of changing 
 our entire attitude towards it. 
 
 We learn that God has a purpose with us. 
 There is an idea presented of what God wants 
 
THE SAVING FAITH 45 
 
 of us. He made us for Himself and He made 
 us so that we are required to use all our 
 faculties in working out His plan in us and 
 with us in His universe. As we come to know 
 what that plan of God is through the prompt- 
 ings of our own hearts or through the presenta- 
 tion to us of the truth of God, we are summoned 
 to accept it. We must make a choice, and that 
 making of the choice is the characteristic act by 
 which we prove our sonship with God, who is 
 Himself the one perfect moral Being ; for we 
 recognize at once that that choice which we are 
 called to make carries with it the determination 
 of our moral character. 
 
 In a recent discussion Professor Royce of 
 Cambridge, asks, '' What is it that constitutes 
 the present moment as distinct from the past 
 and the future? " And he answers, *'The past 
 and the future can be stated in terms of time 
 and space, but not so the present. In the last 
 analysis the present is the point in existence be- 
 tween the past and the future where it is possi- 
 ble for us to exercise the power of choice." We 
 look back upon the past that is gone, and upon 
 the future which is not yet attained ; on the 
 vantage ground of that poised moment between 
 the past and the future which we call the pres- 
 ent, we make whatever of decision life seems to 
 require of us. That is, in fact, all we know of 
 
46 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 the meaning of the conception of the present 
 when we try to present it to our minds. In this 
 present moment we are called to choose God. 
 It is the perpetual choice for every recurring 
 present moment so long as we live, being what 
 we are, the children of God. As a matter of 
 fact, we do so choose or so reject God ; and in 
 so choosing Him or rejecting Him, we are per- 
 petually shaping our life in a course which be- 
 comes more and more definite as we pass on 
 into the ever oncoming future. That summons, 
 therefore, of the present moment to choose God 
 is simply the summons to have faith. It means 
 to give to God the hours that are coming, which 
 belong to Him and which He has entrusted to 
 us that we may use them in His service, for this 
 is the true interpretation of life. 
 
 The sinner, then, is the man who chooses 
 wrong. He turns his life away from God's 
 purpose, and he repeats that choice more or 
 less consciously as it presents itself to him in 
 successive moments of his existence. He 
 creates for himself quickly the habit of deciding 
 that choice adversely. There is the abiding dif- 
 ference between the saint and the sinner, between 
 him who serves God and him who serves Him 
 not, between the regenerate and the unregene- 
 rate man, between the good and the bad, 
 between heaven and hell. That difference 
 
THE SAVING FAITH 47 
 
 turns all upon what we know as faith, which is 
 the predominant choice of God. 
 
 We sometimes think of this distinction 
 which rests upon the choice of God and which 
 is denoted by the word faith, as being wholly 
 artificial, but it is perfectly intelligible to the 
 man on the street. Bernard Shaw says the 
 men and women about us *' are helpless of 
 better things because they have no will to be 
 better." That is, it is not a question of intelli- 
 gence at all ; it is a question of this recurring 
 choice, which is with them the perpetually 
 wrong choice because they have no purpose or 
 desire to make it a different one. Maeterlinck ^ 
 says : " There are on all sides people to 
 whom thousands of events occur which seem 
 charged with germs of heroism (that is, of a 
 better life), and nothing heroic appears when 
 the event has passed. Jesus Christ meets on 
 the road a group of little children, a woman of 
 evil life, or the Samaritan at the well, and 
 humanity arises thrice (that is, in each in- 
 stance), to the height of God." 
 
 There is the significant fact, that we all of us 
 are full of promises. We have in us the germs 
 of better things. But the years go by, and 
 they amount to nothing. Doubt proves to be 
 not only weakness but sin, for in doubt one 
 
 • " La Sagesse," page 25. 
 
4:8 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD ^ 
 
 refuses to follbw his higher nature ; we con- 
 tinue doubters because we find no adequate 
 impulse in us to do differently ; and so we go 
 on in the path which, diverse as it may be in 
 individuals, leads us all away from God and 
 further and further from the possibility of ever 
 attaining the ideal of which we dream. We 
 heed Jesus Christ, we listen to Him, we put 
 ourselves under His guidance, and at once the 
 ideal begins to become the real, and we find 
 God. A new power has awakened within us 
 by which we make the choice which changes 
 our whole being. The interpretation of that 
 choice in its results is the discovery that we 
 now are sons of God. God has come to us, 
 and we have opened our hearts to Him ; the 
 one has answered to the other. This is what 
 the Bible means by the "renewed heart" and 
 the " regenerated soul." It is new in every 
 thought and emotion. It is born again, in 
 that it possesses powers which before seemed 
 not to belong to it. The proof of this lies in 
 the new life which follows. That choice in the 
 present makes life for the future. The harmony 
 at once appears between what is within a man 
 and what is without. The soul in this sense 
 does answer to God's universe, for God is 
 everywhere, and hitherto it was only the soul 
 of the sinner that gave Him no place. When 
 
THE SAVING FAITH 49 
 
 that soul admits Him it comes at once into 
 touch with all else about it in which God 
 dwells. Nature speaks with a new voice. The 
 morning stars begin to sing, and the very 
 earth about us answers to the song of the 
 heavens. Spiritual life is the life of God in the 
 soul of man. It comes through taking Jesus 
 Christ into the heart, for ** God was in Christ, 
 reconciling the world unto Himself." To be a 
 Christian is to see the supreme worth of God 
 as Jesus Christ reveals Him. It is taking the 
 attitude of Jesus towards God, finding joy in 
 God, and in loving, trustworthy obedience to 
 Him, promptly, in every new hour of de- 
 cision, putting God first and everything else 
 second. 
 
 That was the experience of the jailor when in 
 the consciousness of that new choice in his 
 heart, he abandoned his heathenism and cast 
 aside his old life as a garment, and offered 
 himself to be baptized. For with this attitude 
 towards God, there is also the taking, on the 
 part of the believer, of Jesus' attitude towards 
 men. We find him bringing his whole house- 
 hold with him. This compelling sense of the 
 need of having those about us share our new 
 life, and of helping them as we have been 
 helped, to the new choice, is what constitutes a 
 sense of brotherhood such as can be created in 
 
50 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 no other way. The talk of human brotherhood 
 is idle vapouring, in the face of the passions and 
 temptations and selfishness of the common life. 
 In exceptional cases it is true that it does 
 appear with startling power, because every 
 one, in spite of himself, has something of 
 divinity in him, even though in many relations 
 he may not have done all in his power to de- 
 clare it, and in the bitterness of his heart, may 
 even deny its existence. But for all that, it is a 
 permanent possibility in the hearts of men, and 
 a permanent factor in the advance of human 
 society, only so far as the revelation of God in 
 Jesus Christ leads men to take His attitude to- 
 wards their fellow men ; and Jesus becomes at 
 once the pattern and the abiding inspiration to 
 a brotherhood which endures and satisfies, be- 
 cause it brings men nearer to God as an actual 
 experience, and shows them what the real 
 meaning of that love of God is which works 
 out in love one for another. 
 
 So, this faith by which we find salvation 
 means also taking Jesus' attitude towards one's 
 self. It means the recognition on the part of 
 the sinner that he is a man '* called of God," 
 that God looks upon him as a father does upon 
 a son, loving him with an individual love, and 
 giving to him not only His interest, but setting 
 His heart upon him, and having for him a defi- 
 
THE SAYING FAITH 51 
 
 nite and particular plan of life which is full of 
 blessing. Then the penitent believer discovers 
 that he has found his life in losing it, that is, he 
 has found the love of God for which he was 
 made, deep in his own soul, to be something 
 quite distinct from the life which he was living 
 in the world about him. His eyes are opened 
 to see beyond the veil which shuts out that life 
 from this. He sees in this life now the begin- 
 ning of that larger life in which when the 
 things of this life have passed away and per- 
 ished, the things that endure will come to be 
 his forever. He discovers that he will be kept 
 from sin by oneness with God who has made 
 him for Himself and who so loves him that He 
 has given His Son to die for him. 
 
 Thus the answer to the question ** What must 
 I do to be saved?" means to do that thing 
 which will put away from us consciously and 
 deliberately whatever has shut us out from 
 God, and, seeing that Jesus Christ has brought 
 to us a knowledge of God otherwise unattain- 
 able, to trust and follow Him. The love of God 
 for us is made manifest in Jesus as it could be 
 in no one else. We have opened our hearts to 
 it through Him, and accepting His guidance 
 and placing our hand in His, we begin to follow 
 Him in that path which we now are assured 
 will lead us into fullness of life because it will 
 
52 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 lead us into fullness of fellowship with God, 
 and into fullness of fellowship with our fellow 
 men, and into the fullness of all that is best in 
 ourselves. 
 
IV 
 
 THE LIFE THAT IS LIFE INDEED 
 
 «« Charge them that are rich . . . that they lay hold of the 
 life which is life indeed." — / Tim. 6 : ly-ig. 
 
 THE Revised Version gives a new em- 
 phasis to a familiar text. For "eternal 
 life," we have ** the life which is life in- 
 deed." 
 
 There would seem to have been little need 
 for Paul to exhort the rich of his day to lay 
 hold on life. He was writing to Timothy, his 
 representative in the Asiatic cities. They were 
 the centre of a great commercial and highly 
 luxurious civilization. Professor Dill's recent 
 *' History of Rome in the Time of Nero " gives 
 a graphic picture both of the greatness of the 
 wealth and luxury of the day, and of its wide 
 diffusion. The life of the time was so extrava- 
 gantly sensuous as to have become a byword ; 
 so that we have no difficulty as we consider 
 the luxurious life in our great modern capitals 
 in understanding what was the condition of 
 things socially in the first century in the chief 
 centres of the Roman Empire, and largely also 
 
 53 
 
54 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 throughout the adjacent territory. It extended 
 indeed to the distant provinces. Paul was 
 perfectly familiar with it ; and now in his 
 farewell words to the chosen disciple who is 
 to take up and carry on his work, we can 
 hardly conceive of his feeling the necessity of 
 urging Timothy to exhort the rich to make 
 the most of life in the terms in which they 
 understood it. 
 
 Years ago when our own West was new and 
 the struggle for money was intense because it 
 was scarce and hard to come at, as measured 
 by the fact that the legal rate of interest was 
 one per cent, a month, Mr. Beecher, then in 
 the prime of his powers, went through the 
 West delivering a lecture on " Money," in which 
 he exhorted young men to possess themselves 
 of it. It seemed to those of us who lived in 
 the West quite a work of supererogation. 
 True as was all that he said, and keenly inter- 
 esting as was his way of saying it, it did seem 
 as if there were other messages of which the 
 young men of the West at that time had more 
 serious need. But we find the Apostle closing 
 his epistle with this injunction, that, though 
 they are rich in this present world, among other 
 things, they lay hold on " the life which is life 
 indeed." 
 
 There must have been some urgent meaning 
 
THE LIFE THAT IS LIFE INDEED 55 
 
 in the message for the men of that day ; and 
 doubtless it is there also for us. 
 
 There are two words in the New Testament 
 which stand for life. The first " Bios " indicates 
 life in its particular forms ; for example, life as 
 happy, or long, or satisfying ; as when Paul in 
 this same letter speaks of a *' quiet and peaceable 
 life," and when Luke in his Gospel describes 
 the thorns in the parable as indicating the 
 ** riches and the pleasures of life," or, again, 
 speaks of the Prodigal as ** having squandered 
 all his living." 
 
 The other word ** Zoe," means something 
 very different. It is the frequent word in John, 
 writing of Jesus. ** In Him was life, and the 
 life was the light of men." ** I am the Bread 
 of Life." *' The Father hath life in Himself, so 
 hath He given to the Son to have life in Him- 
 self." Paul uses it in many instances, when he 
 speaks of " everlasting life," or *' the life which 
 is hid ^with Christ in God." This is evidently 
 something very different ; and this is the life 
 that he indicates in our text, as that which he 
 would have the rich urged that they do not fail 
 to get. 
 
 To help us to understand what this life is, we 
 will follow the guide of men of widely different 
 thought who have given attention to it. 
 
 From Professor Reuss of Strassburg, for ex- 
 
56 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 ample, we have the suggestion that it means 
 "a life that deserves the name because the per- 
 spective of death does not cast a shadow over 
 it." 
 
 Here is indeed a marked difference between 
 the two kinds of life. The life of the " Bios " 
 in whatever form it presents itself, whether 
 happy or disturbed, whether satisfying or in- 
 complete, is perpetually overshadowed by death. 
 We are all aware that a great change is coming ; 
 and the great change will put an end to exist- 
 ing conditions. A life that is independent of 
 death, above and beyond it, must be something 
 different. Look at Death either in the ghastly 
 form of the horrid skeleton of Italian art, or as 
 the gentle solemn figure of the great English 
 painter, Watts ; the result is the same. It 
 sweeps all " Bios " away. The palace of the 
 king and the hovel of the poor, with impartial 
 foot it enters and carries everywhere desolation 
 and emptiness. The rich millionaire whose fa- 
 miliar figure was for more than half a century 
 present upon our streets, and whose death the 
 other day was the occasion of estimating the prob- 
 able magnitude of the fortune which he has left, 
 has inevitably left that fortune and passed out of 
 the busy activities of the life which had absorbed 
 and apparently satisfied him for so long a time, 
 as completely as the little child who was crushed 
 
THE LIFE THAT IS LIFE INDEED 57 
 
 beneath a heavy vehicle on the crowded street. 
 The beautiful palace on Fifth Avenue of the 
 great promoter, with its marbles and its price- 
 less pictures and the solitary woman sitting there 
 in her beauty and gorgeous apparel, is as com- 
 pletely desolate because its owner will no more 
 return, as is the room in the crowded tenement 
 from which the father has just gone forth to his 
 death under the falling derrick. 
 
 As related to this aspect of life, death is al- 
 ways the same, and has always been the same. 
 Prof. Rhys Davids speaks of the " sorrow of be- 
 ing at the mercy of forces which whirl one re- 
 lendessly upon the wheel of life" as at the heart , 
 of all the great pre-Christian religions. It is \\ 
 testimony to the fact that men always and 
 everywhere have felt themselves under the 
 shadow of death, and even now we find them 
 continually yearning to escape by escaping from 
 life itself. 
 
 It is something very different that Paul pre- 
 sents in his charge to Timothy. It is a life that 
 has no such shadow, and whatever its nature, is 
 gready to be coveted, and must be worthy of 
 any effort or sacrifice. For this reason alone it 
 demands an attention which justifies its being 
 pressed even upon those who, though they 
 are wealthy, and think that they possess all i 
 things desirable, are utterly without it. 
 
58 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 We turn in another direction, to the late 
 Bishop Westcott ; and we find this sentence : 
 ** We beHeve and we strive to spread the behef 
 that life is as the man is, that if the man is sor- 
 did, selfish, narrow, mean, his life, however 
 affluent, will reflect his character." 
 
 Here we have still the *' Bios " — the life about 
 us in its superficial relations, but as presenting 
 even in those relations the picture of a deeper 
 and a truer life, the life which is a counterpart 
 of the man himself and which will endure as he 
 endures. A man's house reflects his culture. 
 It indeed reflects himself so completely that to 
 the observant eye it tells his history. Passing 
 from room to room or from floor to floor, one 
 sees even in the furniture and the pictures the 
 story of his own growth and the refining of his 
 taste, no less than the improvement in his cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 So, a man's ways are always himself. We 
 say : " I did not mean to be rude ; " or, "1 did 
 not intend to be mean ;" but you were, all the 
 same ; therefore, you are. The words that you 
 spoke or the acts that you did were yourself. 
 You did them because you were capable of do- 
 ing them, and therefore disagreeable as they 
 often are to observe, and melancholy as is the 
 revelation that they make of ourselves, they 
 must be accepted as being of ourselves, for we 
 
THE LIFE THAT IS LIFE INDEED 59 
 
 have only done that which we were capable of do- 
 ing, and which, under the circumstances, we did. 
 This is so widely true that thoughtful men 
 everywhere recognize it. A recent French 
 writer, Bersot, speaking of Arcachon and its 
 pleasures, after a long description, says : ** As 
 for happiness, why, there as everywhere else 
 you must yourself bring it with you." Scherer, 
 commenting on the statement, says the same 
 truth applies even to institutions and the forms 
 of civil society. They depend upon what men 
 bring with them. Our Anglo-Saxon history 
 abounds in evidence to the same effect. The 
 respect for law, the dignity of the person, the 
 standards of conduct and of morals, even the 
 conventions of life and the methods of doing 
 business, all are witness to the character which 
 we regard as typical of the Anglo-Saxon every- 
 where. We can adopt Westcott's phrase, there- 
 fore, and believe that ** life is as the man is," and 
 that it is worth while to live so as to preserve 
 and to express in one's self what is best. In do- 
 ing this, we come at Paul's conception of the life 
 which is '' life indeed." It is the perpetuation 
 of what is best in man as a child of God, a man 
 living with a purpose of being true to his inher- 
 itance, and of working out in himself that rep- 
 resentation of God which is worthy of his divine 
 parentage. 
 
60 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 Some one wrote to Mr. Gladstone towards 
 the close of his long life : " You have so lived 
 and wrought that you have kept the soul alive 
 in England." It was great praise. It meant 
 that with all the glamour of life amid which he 
 lived, — its titles, its pleasures, its opportunities 
 of wielding great power and winning great 
 honours, he had had before his mind *' the life 
 that is life indeed," and had so lived as to make 
 England recognize its reality, and to help the 
 people of England attain to something of its 
 possession. Mr. Gladstone was so far obedient 
 to the injunction of the Apostle, and his splendid 
 career is for us a translation of the exhortation 
 of the Apostle into the most compelling terms 
 of modern life. 
 
 Turning to still another of the thinkers of our 
 day who have recently departed, we find another 
 statement in the words of Matthew Arnold, which 
 widens our thought. He says : " The kingdom 
 of God, the grand object of Jesus Christ, the 
 grand object of Christianity, is mankind raised 
 as a whole into harmony with the true and 
 abiding law of man's being, living as we were 
 meant to live." 
 
 Here is the picture of a refined and uplifted 
 society in which all the members recognize that 
 they belong as a whole not only to one another 
 but to God, and that God has a purpose for 
 
THE LIFE THAT IS LIFE INDEED 61 
 
 them individually and collectively, and that He 
 has written that purpose as an abiding law 
 which governs man's being, if he will but recog- 
 nize it and make use of it. There is a plan and 
 there is a law, and we are meant to live accord- 
 ing to the one and by the help of the other. 
 This is exactly PauPs conception which he put 
 into the word ** Zoe " and which he describes as 
 " the life that is life indeed." He speaks of it in 
 his letter to the Romans as "the law of the spirit 
 of life in Christ Jesus." It indicates a life which 
 is both present and eternal. It realizes itself in 
 man as he is ; and, indifferent to death, it reaches 
 into the yet unrevealed life which lies beyond ; 
 and, here and there alike, it reveals God's pur- 
 pose and God's plan of human existence. It 
 makes this life not a probation merely, in antic- 
 ipation of, nor a portal simply to furnish en- 
 trance to, the life beyond, but it makes it a true 
 part of that life. It gives dignity to every 
 moment of earthly existence. It crowds upon 
 us the supreme significance of every choice 
 which we are called to make as having its effect 
 upon our character, and so having its effect 
 with relation to the life that is everlasting. 
 
 The supreme question becomes at once, 
 ** How can I live this life ? " When we ask that 
 question we find in our hearts that we not only 
 are not living that life as it should be lived, but 
 
62 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 in the midst of the pressure of temptation 
 without, and the confusion of temptation 
 within, we do not sufficiently care to live that 
 life, or to make any effort to do so. Indeed, if 
 we will but be honest with ourselves, we find 
 that we are in rebellion against that life and its 
 obligations. We speak of ourselves as sinners, 
 but we discover that sin is largely lawlessness, 
 according to the Old Testament tongue, that is, 
 resistance to this higher law of our being which 
 we not only do not obey, but which we do not 
 care even to regard. 
 
 We need at this time at the very beginning 
 of our thought of ourselves in relation to "the 
 life that is life indeed " an outside help, — help 
 from God Himself to overcome the lawlessness 
 which has won such a firm hold upon our very 
 nature. It dawns upon us how% not for the rich 
 only, but for us all, there is supreme occasion 
 for the Apostle's injunction. He tells Timothy 
 to exhort the rich not to be arrogant and self- 
 confident, to set their hope not on the things of 
 this world but on God, for only as God comes 
 even to their help, with all their wealth, and 
 with all their power, and with all the fullness of 
 the life which they enjoy and seem to possess, 
 have they any hold whatever on " the life that is 
 life indeed ; " and that these things in which they 
 trust and of which they possess themselves are 
 
THE LIFE THAT IS LIFE INDEED 63 
 
 indeed the very things which most hinder their 
 attaining to that Hfe. We all, like them, each 
 to the measure of his opportunity and under the 
 pressure of the temptations which are peculiar 
 to his own experience, are in the same confusion, 
 and are bound by the same fetters. We all, 
 whether rich or poor, need to come, as Nico- 
 demus did, to Christ, and ask Him the same 
 question : what must we do that we may 
 lay hold on this eternal life ? And His answer 
 to the Jewish Rabbi is the answer for us all : 
 " He that believeth hath life, and he that be- 
 lieveth not hath not life." In other words, only 
 as men realize their need and the utter failure 
 of their attempt at finding life in the fullness of 
 an earthly life whose sufficiency is in the things 
 which they possess, do they turn to God seek- * \ 
 ing that help without which the inevitable death 
 will come as the final destruction. The things 
 that perish in the using are not life. They but 
 reflect one's self, and we do not want ourselves 
 perpetuated, if that self is to be the present self, 1 1 
 with its weaknesses, its passions, its tempta- 
 tions, its guilt, its abiding regret of the things 
 we have done that we ought not to have done, 
 and the things we have left undone that we 
 ought to have done. We know that " the 
 wages of sin is death," and that " eternal life is 
 the gift of God." We want, therefore, God to 
 
 ^1 
 
64 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 give us that gift. He offers to do so, and the 
 exhortation that comes to us to-day is that we 
 lay hold of it, and with grateful hearts accept 
 it through Jesus Christ, who brought to us the 
 knowledge of God and the knowledge of life. 
 
THE PARADOX OF LIFE 
 
 " He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life 
 for My sake shall find iV—Mait. lo : sg. 
 
 TO the Christian, life is neither a tragedy 
 nor a farce, for God is in it all. But 
 in many aspects, it is a paradox. 
 
 A paradox is a statement which seems contrary 
 to common sense but which nevertheless is true. 
 The old epitaph, "■ What I spent I have, what I 
 kept I lost, what I gave I kept," and Jesus' 
 word, '' A man's life consisteth not in the abun- 
 dance of the things which he possesseth," and 
 again *' Unto every one that hath shall be given, 
 and he shall have abundance; but from him 
 that hath not, even that which he hath, shall 
 be taken away " are paradoxes. So also is the 
 text : " He that findeth his life shall lose it, 
 and he that loseth his life for My sake shall 
 find it." 
 
 Life itself is a paradox, for men seem to live, 
 when in fact they are dying, they seem to 
 gain, when in fact they are losing, they seem 
 to win, when in fact they are defeated. For 
 
 65 
 
66 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 this reason, as long as men have lived on this 
 globe, life has been interesting, and not easy to 
 understand. Indeed, it is a perpetual challenge 
 even in its simplest forms ; it always presents 
 itself as a mystery and unfolds in forms of para- 
 dox. 
 
 From the Christian standpoint, there is the 
 paradox of sacrifice. ** If any man would come 
 after Me, let him deny himself and take up his 
 cross daily and follow Me " is our Lord's com- 
 mand. He brought life in its fullness, and at 
 once He talks of its abandonment. The charm 
 of life is an abiding inspiration and always an ef- 
 fective one. Here is a summons to turn aside 
 from what is pleasurable. The obvious scheme 
 of life is that of culture, or self-realization. We 
 call it Hellenism, for the Greek in his best days 
 gives us the type. If you have a talent, — 
 music, art, invention, business, whatever it may 
 be — make the most of it. Realize yourself. 
 Recognize that you have an individuality, which 
 means an endowment. Therefore, improve 
 your distinctive possessions. In so doing you 
 make your best contribution to the world about 
 you while you do the most for yourself. Say 
 to every demand which would turn you aside, 
 " Why should I ? " You have both the duty 
 and the privilege of choice. There is a phys- 
 ical " me," a social ** me," and a spiritual " me." 
 
THE PARADOX OF LIFE 67 
 
 These often conflict. The problem always be- 
 fore us is how 
 
 " To move upward working out the beast 
 And let the ape and tiger die." 
 
 This is the question pressing upon us all. 
 Training is necessary for this. Therefore, we 
 seek the training. Discipline is the condition 
 of success. Therefore, we endure discipline. 
 We win self-culture by self-denial. The measure 
 of every act, the test of every value is its rela- 
 tions to the fullness and sufficiency of our own 
 attainments. In other words, from the stand- 
 point of visible life, everything turns on what 
 we may call success, that is, upon the smooth- 
 ness and the efficiency with which we are able 
 to develop our own especial gifts or possessions. 
 
 Now, over against this Jesus says : " Except 
 a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it 
 abideth by itself alone," and He finds here the true 
 law of life in its finest and largest relations. In 
 other words, the obvious is not true. The para- 
 dox stands out with compelling power. There 
 is a finer culture, a nobler victory, a higher de- 
 velopment to be won than along the lines which 
 present themselves so obviously. 
 
 The law of this higher life is that we are to 
 win by losing. We are to do without if we 
 would truly possess. We can only really find 
 
68 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 ourselves by sacrificing ourselves and making 
 self entirely second in the motives by which we 
 are governed. The fine saying of the Japanese 
 Samurai, "To be defeated, therefore to con- 
 quer,'* begins to be intelligible. History seems 
 to declare its absurdity. Victory rides with 
 the heavy battalions and the big guns, and con- 
 tinually perches on their banners. To be weak 
 means to suffer, and the older the race becomes 
 and the more advanced its progress, the more 
 loudly it proclaims its gospel of success. 
 
 But over against this stands the truth every- 
 where illustrated in the individual that the law 
 of sacrifice, that is, the surrender of the present 
 good, the turning aside from the selfish purpose, 
 the exalting of the unseen over the seen, even 
 losing one's life in devotion to a higher good, 
 has been the method of making that higher 
 good real, and also of attaining it ; and indeed 
 is the only method by which the individual, and, 
 in so far as he is an element of it, the race, can 
 attain to that perfection and fullness of character 
 and of life which corresponds to the ideal which 
 is hidden deep in every heart. However great 
 the reputation that may be won or the success 
 that is achieved on selfish lines, we all feel the 
 failure of the life which does not recognize this 
 law of self-sacrifice. 
 
 Towards the close of the story of his life, 
 
THE PARADOX OF LIFE 69 
 
 which he wrote when at the height of his great 
 reputation, Herbert Spencer has a chapter on 
 " A Grievous Mistake." It is the account of the 
 only occasion in his life when he was induced, 
 as he himself says, to give active support to a 
 purely philanthropic movement. In this in- 
 stance it was for the protection of the weaker 
 peoples with whom England comes in contact. 
 He regrets it and thinks it was not only a griev- 
 ous mistake but one to be held notable in all 
 his experience because it was not promotive of 
 his own individual health, and possibly did some 
 harm to it. Whether it was wise or not from 
 the standpoint of health, the way in which he 
 describes it, and his whole attitude towards it, 
 mark a selfish aspect of life which casts a 
 shadow over his otherwise great reputation, and 
 makes one feel how complete is the failure of 
 any life, judged by the higher standard, when it 
 does not recognize the law of sacrifice and the 
 demand for unselfishness, especially if one would 
 really play any large part in the affairs of the 
 world. 
 
 Life presents also to us the paradox of serv- 
 ice. As Jesus put it, " Whosoever would be- 
 come great among you shall be your min- 
 ister, and whosoever would be first among 
 you shall be your servant." Men have a nat- 
 ural and general ambition to serve God and 
 
70 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 men, and to make life large by making it profit- 
 able. When a rich man dies who has been a 
 great merchant or banker, the world points to 
 what it calls his great success. He has contrib- 
 uted to the accumulated capital of the world 
 and to its industries. Many have been depend- 
 ent upon him for daily bread, and because of 
 his labours it is conceivable that many in the 
 years to come will be profited. But for all that, 
 the chief measure of his success is found in what 
 he has done for himself, and in the property he 
 has left to those who are his natural heirs. All 
 feel the limitations of such service, however 
 great, or however extensive the business which 
 has been created. The true measure is found 
 when we compare it with a ministry of teach- 
 ing, or of healing, or of sacrificial leadership, 
 such as that of Lincoln, or of his great secretary, 
 Stanton, both of whom had " the glory of dying 
 poor.'' The world is already profiting beyond 
 measure by the arrest, if not the complete anni- 
 hilation, of certain fearful diseases like yellow 
 fever and the plague, because of the heroic 
 sacrificial service of a few doctors who here and 
 there have gone into the enemy's camp and 
 fought a fight, sometimes at the price of their 
 own lives, by which the secret of the disease has 
 been discovered and the true method established 
 by which it is to be successfully overcome. 
 
THE PARADOX OF LIFE n 
 
 Now and again we see some great teacher who 
 for years has turned aside from the prizes and 
 occupations and even pleasures of the common 
 life to devote himself to the education of the 
 young who came under his instruction, or to re- 
 fine and civilize and make fruitful the methods 
 by which education is secured, — some Froebel, 
 or Pestalozzi, or Thomas Arnold, or Edward 
 Bowen, or President Harper of Chicago Univer- 
 sity, who, stricken with fatal disease, worked on 
 with unrelaxing energy to complete his task 
 until he surrendered to death. After the same 
 fashion. Christian missionaries are to be found 
 in all the darker parts of the earth, forsaking 
 the delights of home and native land, living 
 among savages, everywhere busy in creating 
 languages, literature, civilization, establishing 
 homes, giving life to people otherwise without 
 it, and all with no thought of gain or other in- 
 spiration than that of sacrificial service. 
 
 Before such lives as these, we all recognize 
 the truth of the paradox that the true leader of 
 men is the one who is most completely the 
 servant of others, finding his life by losing it. 
 He is the servant of all, therefore the greatest 
 of all. 
 
 Again we turn to Herbert Spencer and read 
 the story of his talk with Huxley towards the 
 end of his life when he said : ** It seems all 
 
Y2 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 one can do is to make his mark and die," to 
 which Huxley replied : " It is not necessary to 
 make your mark. All one needs to do is to give 
 things a push." Forgetting one's self and doing 
 something for the service of others is the 
 noblest and best contribution that any one can 
 make to life. 
 
 Then there is also in life the strange paradox 
 of the ideal. ** The things that are seen are 
 temporal, but the things which are not seen are 
 eternal." The things seen are houses and 
 money and fame and applause. These are 
 all very real and for the time very absorbing 
 and very satisfying. Can the unseen be more 
 valuable ? Jesus said at the end of His minis- 
 try : '' I have finished the work which Thou 
 gavest Me to do." He had none of these 
 things, and yet there was the note of victory 
 and the sense of an attained ideal. That ideal, 
 we recognize, always dominates the real. It is 
 that element of life without which it ceases to 
 be life in any large true sense. It becomes 
 existence, it is true, but existence that is dull 
 and commonplace and sordid and in no sense 
 satisfactory. This is Jesus' teaching through- 
 out : ** He that findeth his life shall lose it." 
 The vision of better things was always before 
 Him. Life is a growth ; therefore, it involves 
 death. Life is a victory ; therefore, it involves 
 
THE PARADOX OF LIFE n 
 
 sacrifice. Intellectual life is not acquiring, so 
 much as it is giving out, and the power of giv- 
 ing out is in large degree the measure of all 
 possible attainment. Hoarding seems every- 
 where to be wasting. We receive that we may 
 give. We love because we are loved. We 
 give ourselves for men because Jesus Christ 
 gave Himself for us. Character is made by 
 denying one's self, and character is the finest 
 fruitage of life. Suppose Jesus had turned 
 away from life because of the demand for sacri- 
 fice or service or the pressure of what we call 
 the realities ; how complete would have been 
 His failure and how litde the world would have 
 gained 1 
 
 If, therefore, we would find our lives, here 
 is at once the method and the test. Do I 
 appreciate the significance of the paradox? 
 The choice that is presented to me may at any 
 time be of the immediate good, of the personal 
 advantage, of the thing which lies close at 
 hand. But the paradoxical alternative is sure 
 to be opposed to it, in the higher advantage, 
 the more enduring good, the finding of the 
 truer life which lies in turning from the tempt- 
 ing gain and accepting instead the self-sacri- 
 fice, the unselfish service, the choice of what 
 seems often visionary because it is so truly the 
 ideal. 
 
U THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 What are the real marks of failure in life ? 
 Self-seeking, claiming always the best that is 
 at hand, rushing for immediate advantage, sur- 
 rendering to the ways of the street because 
 others do the same, letting the other fellow care 
 for himself because we have enough to do in 
 caring for ourselves. All these are of that 
 finding of life which shall surely lose it. 
 
 And where lies the highest success ? In the 
 
 sense of duty done, of self forgotten, and God 
 
 • and men served, for these have always helped 
 
 If men onward and upward and have secured 
 
 whatever we recognize as enduring good in 
 
 human history. 
 
 There is something in every heart that re- 
 sponds to the song of Teckla in Schiller's 
 
 tragedy : 
 
 I have tasted earthly bliss, 
 I have lived and loved." ^ 
 
 When one has really known the joy of the true 
 life which springs from sacrificial love, one has 
 indeed tasted the highest happiness and learned 
 something of the real meaning of life. 
 
 * /cA habe genossen das erdische Gluck, ich habe gelebt und 
 giliebt. 
 
VI 
 
 THE MORAL VALUE OF ANTIPATHIES 
 
 " O ye that love Jehovah, hate evil." — Psalm gy : jo. 
 
 MANY passages in the Bible express 
 God's abhorrence in terms almost 
 too strong for polite ears. He says 
 in Isaiah : ** Your appointed feasts my soul 
 hateth." In Amos : ** I hate every false way." 
 In Proverbs we have : " Lying lips are an 
 abomination to the Lord," and in the Psalms : 
 *' I hate and abhor lying." These instances 
 might be multiplied indefinitely. 
 
 Over against this may be set Lord Chester- 
 field's description of the moral degeneracy of 
 his times : "In court you may expect to meet 
 connections without principles, enmities without 
 hatred, honour without virtue, appearances 
 saved and realities sacrificed, good manners 
 and bad morals." 
 
 God has evidently given to what we may call 
 moral antipathies a value not always under- 
 stood. The phrase *' righteous indignation " 
 is often used to cover very unrighteous passion. 
 Nevertheless, the strength of one's repugnance 
 
 75 
 
76 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 to certain things and the heat of one's antago- 
 nism to certain doings stand closely related to 
 the strength of one's moral convictions. It is true 
 that that splendid Roman Stoic and gentleman 
 Thraseas, said he feared to hate sin too much 
 lest he should hate the sinner. Nevertheless, 
 there is a wholesome feeling in certain repug- 
 nances and antipathies in which we may be 
 conscious of sharing God's feelings ; so much 
 so that attention can be given to the text with- 
 out fear that in these days we shall be carried 
 over the border line between hating sin and 
 hating the sinner. 
 
 It is an old distinction which has long since 
 been recognized as not only possible, but desir- 
 able, and which lay very close to that early 
 teaching upon which civil society was to be es- 
 tablished. Plato in the Republic points out 
 that it is the function of society by a carefully 
 regulated education, to implant right instincts 
 and antipathies in the growing mind of the 
 child at a time when he cannot know the reason 
 of things, in order that as the mind develops it 
 may recognize the right reason by a certain 
 inner kinship, and may welcome truth as a 
 friend. 
 
 There are many suggestions in nature of the 
 value of repugnances. Pain, for example, to 
 which all living things have repugnance, is in 
 
MORAL VALUE OF ANTIPATHIES 77 
 
 the plan of nature, protective. It is always to 
 warn against oncoming danger, the warning to 
 which repugnance gives prompt response. It 
 is notable that pain diminishes greatly in normal 
 life, or altogether ceases, when it has no further 
 value as warning. The hare will cry when the 
 hound is close, but when actually in the jaws of 
 the hound its cry ceases and it will lie perfectly 
 quiet even though badly maimed. The cry of 
 the horse frightened by the noises and dangers 
 of battle is proverbial for the terror it indicates, 
 but a badly injured horse will hobble about on 
 a broken leg and graze as if its wound was of 
 no moment. The awful fear of possible injury 
 has apparently subsided entirely when the in- 
 jury is actual. In man, pain, for example in a 
 tooth, is not a punishment, but a warning, that 
 the tooth may be cared for for the sake of its 
 preservation. The whole system of pain in 
 natural life seems to correspond to this expla- 
 nation. The same is true of distasteful odours. 
 Their purpose apparently is to give warning 
 against taking into the stomach articles of food 
 that are pernicious. Many caterpillars and in- 
 sects, for example, that are poisonous to birds, | \ 
 possess an odour which warns off the bird and 
 thus guards against the danger. This warning, 
 it is true, is not universal, but it is sufficiently 
 common in nature to show the place which 
 
78 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 repugnances and antipathies are intended to 
 fill. 
 
 When we rise to the moral life, the same is 
 true in a sense perhaps more distinctly marked. 
 God has given us certain repugnances and an- 
 tipathies which growing refinement and culti- 
 1 vation of life and of character greatly strengthen. 
 A certain beauty attaches to goodness. Indeed, 
 no virtue is without its characteristic charm. 
 The world is sensible to the truth that doing 
 well is something more than fulfilling a duty. 
 It clears and strengthens the spirits. It opens 
 higher regions of thought. It establishes confi- 
 dence in one's intellectual qualities. It gives a 
 just sense of elevation. The opposite is equally 
 true, for wrong brings a sense of meanness and 
 inferiority, as has often been pointed out. It 
 depresses the spirits. It represses the thoughts. 
 It awakens distrust of the judgment. As a con- 
 sequence, there springs up in us a moral antip- 
 athy which is certainly a part of that endow- 
 ment with which God has fitted us for the work 
 He has given us to do. It is both natural and 
 normal. It is given to brace and to build char- 
 acter. 
 
 Now the important fact is that we can lose 
 this quality of the soul. Therefore, the need of 
 the summons of the text as a Divine command, 
 and as a warning constantly to be renewed. 
 
MORAL VALUE OF ANTIPATHIES 79 
 
 Just as frequent contact with what is repug- 
 nant to the life of the body de-sensitizes the 
 nerves which receive that contact, so that as the 
 touch loses its power to transmit sensation when 
 it has been frequently brought in contact with 
 overheated surfaces, and as the eye loses its 
 power to perceive delicate visual impressions if 
 it is subjected to too strong a light, the moral 
 touch and the moral vision and the moral hear- , 
 ing may all be impaired and even destroyed by 
 abuse. Here is the great harm of reading bad 
 books, or hearing bad stories, or thinking bad , 
 thoughts, or presenting to the mind through | 
 any channel evil suggestions. We lose the 
 sense of shock. We can grow so strangely ac- 
 customed to even the grosser forms of evil as 
 to become entirely unconscious of their signifi- 
 cance or morally indifferent to their true char- 
 acter. 
 
 This is the explanation of the fact that in so 
 many circles of society unmistakably respectable, 
 stories will be current, language will be used, 
 scenes will be witnessed, books will be read 
 which once would have utterly shocked the 
 same people, and which, to those outside their 
 circle and not accustomed to their ways, make 
 them a continual surprise. There comes to be 
 set up a conventional standard of judgment, 
 which is merely the expression of the habits of 
 
80 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 thought and life into which a given group of 
 people have fallen without ever raising serious 
 question as to the reason of the habits which in 
 their circle have become common, or the judg- 
 ments which have come to be universally ac- 
 cepted. 
 
 An elderly lady recently said of a certain 
 play : ** I am an old woman and not over- 
 particular, but I wondered as I sat there how 
 those young girls could sit chatting with the 
 young men, their attendants, without blushing 
 to the roots of the hair as the play proceeded." 
 The explanation lies in custom. The young 
 girls, like the elderly lady herself, were doing 
 as others did in their circle of society, and the 
 habit of witnessing such plays, which in the 
 older person had required time to gain suffi- 
 cient mastery over early traditions to permit her 
 sitting with something of comfort, had not yet, 
 even in her, advanced to the stage in which she 
 could look without surprise upon young girls 
 who could do the same thing. 
 
 The same is true of conventional judgments. 
 We come to tolerate evil in any form; im- 
 purity, selfishness, gambling, risque speech, 
 untruthfulness, little dishonesties, petty mean- 
 nesses, hardly noticing them and not at all 
 appreciating their real character because they 
 are so common in the life about us. We be- 
 
MORAL VALUE OF ANTIPATHIES 81 
 
 come used to them. We adjust our views of 
 life to accommodate them, and we lose all sensi- 
 tiveness as to their true nature, until we lose 
 entirely the power to hate evil. With the loss 
 of that power, the antipathy to evil becomes a 
 permanent moral degeneracy. This was Lord 
 Chesterfield's grievance, and marks the condi- 
 tion into which the society of London in the 
 eighteenth century had fallen. 
 
 Over against this is the summons of the 
 Bible to those who call themselves Christians 
 to cultivate .that attitude of mind towards every 
 form of evil which will alone make a robust 
 Christian character possible, and without which 
 there can be no abiding foundation for a truly 
 Christian society. A vigorous antipathy, in- 
 deed a positive hatred, which, addressed to the 
 common forms of evil, finds persistent and 
 adequate expression, is a weapon put in the 
 hands of men who love righteousness, with 
 which to fight the battle of the Lord. It is not 
 inconsistent with that life which suffereth all 
 things and is kind, for a love that does not dis- 
 criminate between the evil and the good, and 
 loses sight of moral distinctions in its dealing 
 with others, may become in itself a promoter of 
 immorality. 
 
 Men everywhere need the help which comes 
 from the fact that in the plan of God the 
 
 \ 
 
82 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 way of the transgressor is hard. It is just 
 as much the duty of a civilized and Chris- 
 tianized society to see that evil does not go 
 unpunished, as it is to see that the good is 
 rewarded. Much of the easy-going public 
 opinion as to what is right and what is wrong, 
 and much of the obliquity of current life 
 even with those who esteem themselves better 
 than others and sometimes call themselves 
 Christians, is due to the fact that this distinction 
 is lost sight of, and that to such a degree 
 modern society has lost the power of righteous 
 indignation or has become over-sensitive to its 
 exercise. The consequence is, that evil, and 
 even vice in its grosser forms, practiced by 
 those who are prominent in the community, 
 goes unrebuked and even defiant ; whereas 
 popular indignation and outspoken rebuke are 
 the evidence of a healthier public sentiment 
 and the necessary condition for a more whole- 
 some public life. 
 
 This indignation appears everywhere in the 
 utterances of the great prophets of the Old 
 Testament. It was the first step in the reforms 
 which they were sent to introduce and was not 
 found to be incompatible either with the proc- 
 lamations which they made of the love of a 
 merciful God or the visions which they had of 
 the glories of the new life wherein dwelleth 
 
MORAL VALUE OF ANTIPATHIES 83 
 
 righteousness. When men found themselves 
 stung by their rebuke and lashed by what 
 seemed at times the fierceness of the Divine 
 wrath which spoke through them, the nation 
 was aroused and the way was opened for the re- 
 forms upon which the preservation of the 
 national life and the fulfillment of the promises 
 of God depended. Those prophets have stood 
 from that day to this as the inspirers of all who 
 have set their hearts to fear God and work 
 righteousness in the world, who have been will- 
 ing to face obloquy, and to endure loss even 
 unto death, if only they might save the world 
 from something of its sin. In them has shone 
 the full splendour of that humanity into which 
 God had breathed His own image, and which 
 afterwards was redeemed by the sacrifice of the 
 Son of God who gave Himself for the sins of 
 the world. We walk feebly in their steps and 
 often are found lagging far behind ; but their 
 method and their word abide, and inspire 
 the heart, as well as the psalm, of the man to 
 whom vision is given to-day. We hear it 
 again in the words of one of our most virile 
 modern poets: 
 
 " I think the immortal servants of mankind 
 Who, from their graves, watch by how slow degrees 
 The world soul greatens with the centuries, 
 
84 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 Mourn most man's barren levity of mind ; 
 The ear to no grave harmonies inclined : 
 The witless search for false wit's worthless lees, 
 The laugh mistimed in tragic pleasures ; 
 The eye to all majestic meanings blind. 
 
 " O prophets, martyrs, saviours, ye were great, 
 All truth being great to you. Ye deemed man more 
 Than a dull jest God's ennui to amuse : 
 The world for you held purport. Life ye wore 
 Proudly, as kings their solemn robes of state, 
 And humbly, as the mightiest monarchs use." 
 
 And it is in no way inconsistent with the 
 prayer of Robert Louis Stevenson that God 
 would make us '' temperate in wrath, and down 
 to the gates of death loyal and loving to one 
 another." Where there is no moral indigna- 
 tion there can be no manly self-control, no self- 
 sacrificing loyalty and no self-forgetting love. 
 
 1 William Watson. 
 
VII 
 
 THE FAMINE FOR GOD 
 
 « Behold the days come saith the Lord Jehovah that I will send 
 a famine in the land, not a famine for bread, nor a thirst for water, 
 but of hearing the words of Jehovah." — Amos 8 : ii. 
 
 THERE is an interesting story in con- 
 nection with this text. This is the 
 first written prophecy in the Old Tes- 
 tament, the first in the series of prophecies 
 which are grouped together at the end of that 
 book. The author, Amos by name, gives us 
 his date. He Hved during the reign of Uzziah 
 in Judah, and Jeroboam II, king of Israel. These 
 reigns were long and prosperous, covering the 
 middle of the eighth century before Christ. 
 The astronomers enable us to fix one date defi- 
 nitely as that of the eclipse to which reference 
 is made in the prophecy. It occurred in the 
 year 763 B. C. 
 
 We also learn from the records of the king- 
 dom of Assyria that Assyria was at war with 
 the king of Syria and Damascus for years, 
 beginning with the year 754 B. C. The 
 prophecy itself, therefore, may be applied 
 
 85 
 
86 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 to the last ten years of the reign of Jeroboam 
 from 759 B. C. to 749 B. C.^ 
 
 It was a time of great luxury and wide-spread 
 prosperity in the kingdom of Israel. The 
 country was at peace with the surrounding na- 
 tions. Trade had opened, and with the inevi- 
 table outcome of abundance of wealth for a peo- 
 ple of the temperament of the Jews. 
 
 Amos describes himself as a herdsman or shep- 
 herd of the little desert sheep which are found 
 on the hills of Southern Palestine. He was also 
 a gatherer, or, as it is in the original, a pincher 
 of the small wild figs which are poor and scarce 
 and have to be gathered one by one. We can 
 see him lonely, poorly clad, wandering with his 
 sheep over the hills, gathering as opportunity 
 ofTered his little baskets of fruit for sale as he 
 had a chance, to add to his scanty supplies. 
 He tells us that his home was in the little vil- 
 lage of Tekoa which was situated on a ridge 
 some 2,800 feet above the Mediterranean Sea 
 twelve miles south of Jerusalem. Travellers in- 
 form us that from that ridge one can see the 
 blue waters of the Mediterranean to^ the west, 
 and to the east a glimpse of the Dead Sea lying 
 in its deep basin four thousand feet below, with 
 its ever solemn suggestion of the tragedies 
 
 1 This account of Amos is based on the graphic narrative in Dr. 
 Horton's " The Hidden God." 
 
THE FAMINE FOR GOD 87 
 
 which have been enacted on its waters. It al- 
 ways carried to the minds of the dwellers in 
 the neighbourhood the memory of the awful 
 destruction of the cities of the plain, and its 
 water noxious to all life was in itself an em- 
 blem of judgment and death. 
 
 To the north a glimpse can be had of the 
 Mount of Olives standing watch over the Holy 
 City and Mount Zion close by. To the south 
 was the Arabah and the Desert of the Wander- 
 ing. In the solitude of the hills, this shepherd 
 having always before him a suggestion of the 
 history of his people and able to give place in 
 his heart to the memories of his fathers, can be 
 pictured brooding over the past and wondering 
 what God had in store for Israel in the days to 
 come. The , spirit of prophecy had come down 
 from time to time upon single Israelites ; doubt- 
 less, the stories of Elijah and Elisha and 
 Samuel and many others whose names have 
 since been forgotten, upon whom the spirit of 
 the Lord had rested, and who had been used by 
 Jehovah to call His people back to Himself, were 
 fresh in his heart. He was not an educated 
 man and found time abundant for communion 
 with his own heart and for talking with his God, 
 who was the God of his fathers. 
 
 In these crowded days no one finds time 
 either for knowledge of himself or for much 
 
h 
 
 88 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 thought about God. It is the price we pay for 
 the privileges of our later civilization. The 
 days are so full and there is always so much 
 waiting to be done that, even when we seek oc- 
 casional opportunity for rest and for thought, 
 the things of the outer life so crowd in upon us 
 that it is well for us if we do not lose altogether 
 the power of meditation. 
 
 It was not so in those early years with the 
 shepherd as he walked upon the hills of Pales- 
 tine following his poor little flock and keeping 
 his eye open for the occasional small fruit to 
 add to his store, or as he sat at night with his 
 sheep about him, or in the little fold, and looked 
 up at the stars. God must have seemed very 
 near to him, and the thoughts that rose in his 
 heart, if not always the voice of God, were al- 
 ways welcome material for his own reflections, 
 and found ample space and time for their un- 
 folding. 
 
 It was his business from time to time to go to 
 the nearest market, which would be in Jerusalem 
 or further north at some town in the Northern 
 Kingdom, for distances in Palestine are all short, 
 to dispose of his gathered fruit or his occasional 
 lamb or fleece of wool. We can picture him in 
 the streets of Jerusalem or Samaria, — a quiet 
 stranger unnoticed in his somewhat familiar 
 shepherd garb, wondering at the luxury and 
 
THE FAMINE FOR GOD 89 
 
 the bustle that he saw on all sides, feeling a 
 stranger among his own people and more and 
 more impressed with their absorption in the 
 superficial life of the town and engaged in the ;\ 
 eager occupations of business or pleasure which 
 were so alien to his own thought. 
 
 The Spirit of God was in his heart and he felt 
 himself moved to speak as a prophet. We can 
 imagine how difficult it must have been for 
 him either to get a hearing or to find utterance. 
 
 The man from the country to-day who may 
 have been something of a prophet at home, the 
 Sunday-school teacher, the regular attendant at 
 worship, the well-known leader in prayer, the 
 exhorter at the mid-week service, coming to the 
 great city so readily loses his gift of prophecy. 
 The city overwhelms him. He is held by the 
 glamour of its pleasures or absorbed by its oppor- ^ ^ 
 tunities of business. He is caught in the rush 
 of its incessant occupations, and quickly dis- 
 covers that he has small time and small inclina- 
 tion for the things which were so precious to 
 him in his country home. To-day such prophets 
 are about us on all sides, but they have lost their 
 gift or, at least, have ceased to be conscious of 
 their calling. We have many of them on our 
 streets and not a few as the casual worshippers 
 in our churches who are altogether unprepared 
 even to answer the summons which is extended 
 
90 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 A'- 
 
 f \ to them, to take their place, to do their part in 
 I helping the cause of the Lord in the great city. 
 I They are awed and dazzled by the city. Its very 
 \ greatness oppresses them. They become self- 
 conscious and forgetful of the power which God 
 has promised to those who will do His will. 
 They find occupation for every hour and excuses 
 on all sides for departing from their old habits. 
 But Amos w^as a man from the country held 
 by a high impulse. He is overwhelmed by what 
 he sees, and he becomes aware that the Spirit 
 of God is upon him and that he has a message 
 which must be delivered. 
 
 His little prophecy that has lived from that 
 time to this and found its place in the sacred 
 records of his people consists of three short sec- 
 tions, the first and second chapters, then the 
 third to the sixth, and then the seventh to the 
 ninth, — each with its own separate message all 
 holding together and leading to the single 
 result. He begins with the proclamation of the 
 judgments of God to fall upon the surrounding 
 nations. Israel has entered into sympathetic 
 intimacy wdth her neighbours and is giving way 
 to the temptations of the heathen, while she is 
 satisfying herself with the luxury and wealth 
 which are coming to her from their trade ; but 
 God's wrath on Edom and Tyre and Moab and 
 Gaza is gathering, and is soon to fall. This 
 
THE FAMINE FOR GOD 91 
 
 was not a new thought in Israel, but it comes 
 with a new emphasis and with something of 
 startling surprise in days of peace and great 
 prosperity, when as to-day the distinction 
 between the Christian and the world about him 
 is fading away and men find it easier to believe 
 that after all, there is not much difference be- 
 tween them. 
 
 The second section is of a distinctly different 
 tenor. The judgment of God is in store also for 
 Israel. The message is, *' You only have I 
 known : therefore will I visit upon you your in- 
 iquities." It is a new and a startling declara- 
 tion. Hitherto God has been the Protector of 
 Israel. He has gathered her out from among 
 the nations, has shielded and blessed her, and 
 she has come to believe that she is immune 
 from the consequences before w^hich others are 
 to fall. The prophet emphasizes her peculiar 
 calling. But to the amazement of his hearers 
 he makes that the ground of her judgment. 
 Because she had been so blessed of Jehovah, be- 
 cause she is His chosen people, therefore will 
 He punish her in the day of her transgression. 
 
 A recent German commentator says that 
 Amos is *' one of the most wonderful appearances 
 in the history of the human spirit." And Dr. 
 Horton of London, preaching upon the story of 
 Amos, says, ** Never was there a bolder thing 
 
I 
 
 92 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 than for this simple herdsman of the desert to 
 go into the weahhy and prosperous kingdom of 
 Israel to say, * You are prosperous ; you are 
 luxurious ; you are religious ; you are the people 
 of Jehovah : therefore the Lord will punish your 
 iniquities/ '* 
 
 The prophet proceeds to denounce their relig- 
 ion as a matter of form and ceremony. " Bring 
 your offerings. Keep your fasts. But of what 
 use are they ? God is a God of righteousness 
 and of truth. You simply mock Him." The re- 
 ligion that He requires is a religion of the life, a 
 religion that before all else means character, and 
 you offer external worship instead. Does He 
 care how elaborate your services, how splendid 
 your sanctuaries, how thronged the audience, 
 when the heart and the life are not clean before 
 Him ? *' Because you are His people, because 
 He loves you, therefore judgment shall come for 
 purification and for deliverance." 
 
 Then comes the third section enclosing our 
 text. A change is coming. The days are at 
 hand when " there will be a famine in the land, 
 not a famine for bread nor a thirst for water, 
 but of hearing the words of the Lord. They 
 shall run to and fro and seek the word of the 
 Lord and shall not find it." At last the Lord 
 will bring back the captivity of His people ** and 
 they shall build the waste cities and inhabit 
 
THE FAMINE FOR GOD 93 
 
 them. And they shall plant vineyards and 
 drink the wine thereof. They shall also make 
 gardens and eat the fruit of them. And I will 
 plant them upon their land and they shall no 
 more be plucked up out of their land which I 
 have given them, saith Jehovah, thy God." 
 
 Here then is the burden of the prophecy. In 
 such times, when prosperity abounds and re- 
 ligion degenerates into a matter of ceremony, 
 and the Lord's people fall into the ways of the 
 world, there grows up a scarcity of hearing the 
 words of the Lordo 
 
 The word of God is not a book. There are 
 plenty of Bibles in the world to-day. Indeed, 
 there never was a time when so many were dis- 
 tributed. The printing-presses of Christendom 
 fairly groan with the innumerable volumes. 
 Nor is the word of God preaching. Churches 
 abound and times of prosperity see them built 
 and rebuilt in ever more magnificent form. 
 The greater the wealth of the community and 
 the more easy and abundant its luxury, the 
 more gorgeous become its churches, the more 
 elegant their ritual, and the more eloquent their 
 preaching. 
 
 The word of God is the voice of God in a 
 man's soul. As the Saviour put it: "Man 
 shall not live by bread alone, but by every 
 word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." 
 
 \ 
 
94 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 It is that voice which, through whatever 
 channel it comes and in whatever words it de- 
 clares itself, becomes the compelling voice in a 
 I man's heart, awakening him to a new conscious- 
 
 P ness of his relations to his Maker. That is the 
 
 ' ni voice which grows dull and is not heard in 
 ll times of worldly prosperity. It is in our times 
 the voice of God in the call of Jesus Christ. It 
 sounded loud and clear for all men and for all 
 time in the voice of Him who came from His 
 Father to give His life for the world. The 
 sacrifice was accomplished. The message was 
 delivered. But in times of prosperity, such as 
 we see to-day, Jesus Christ is disregarded. 
 There is no place for Him or for His message 
 
 I in the worldly life. He is crowded out and His 
 voice is silenced in hearts which are stufTed 
 with the things of this world. There may 
 ] be plenty of worship, and yet be a famine of the 
 word of God. The days are full and life is 
 thronged, and there is not much room in the 
 minds of men. When their thoughts are ab- 
 sorbed with other things there is little room for 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 But men cannot always live in this way, and 
 the want of the hearing of the word of God will 
 in time become a famine, for men are made for 
 
 f better things. There is a hunger and thirst in 
 the soul which will declare itself. No matter 
 
THE FAMINE FOR GOD 95 
 
 how great a man's possessions may be in other 
 things, they will not satisfy this deepest of 
 human needs. 
 
 Some time ago, the skeleton of a man and a 
 few fragments of clothing were found in an 
 Arizona desert, together with a small pouch of 
 gold fastened in a belt. The day had come 
 when despite his gold, to get which he had 
 staked his life, the need of food or water had 
 become clamorous, and he had been compelled 
 to make the final effort to satisfy that need, 
 which cost him his life. What remained of him 
 was eloquent of the existence of this need which 
 neither gold nor food and water can satisfy. 
 No matter how much a man may have of the 
 things of the world, this cry of the soul for the 
 hearing of the voice of God will take on an in- 
 sistence which cannot be silenced, and the for- 
 gotten or despised need will become a veritable 
 famine. 
 
 I sat in a beautiful parlour some years ago, 
 while a man past middle life paced up and 
 down wringing his hands and moaning, "I. 
 knew it all the time. I knew it all the time." 
 The hour had come in which the voice so long 
 silenced, insisted upon being heard, and in that 
 hour everything else fell away from his thought 
 under the strain of a necessity which must be 
 heeded. " Tell me where I may find Him," be- 
 
 t\ 
 
1} 
 
 96 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 comes the cry of men such as we are, who, no 
 matter what we have been doing, or how far we 
 j may have wandered from our Father's house, 
 I are still His children, and must recognize our 
 I sonship, and must yield to the inexorable need 
 of our nature. Because God has chosen us and 
 manifested Himself to us and sent His Son to 
 die for us and fill our lives with blessing, there- 
 /ore, will He visit us in our wanderings and 
 make us to know both Him and our necessities. 
 When that famine declares itself, blessing is 
 not far off. God speaks to the soul in order 
 that it may hear ; and hearing, that it may know 
 Him and find life in Him. This is the last word 
 of the prophet : " The day will come when the 
 Lord will bring back the captivity of His peo- 
 ple.'' 
 
 It is said that Amos has no message of the 
 love of God, that we must go to his contem- 
 porary, Hosea, for that. There we have the 
 message in its fullness. But Amos foreshadows 
 it. His cry is a warning one. But it is a warn- 
 ing that opens the way for blessing. The proc- 
 , lamation of the coming famine is also the proc- 
 ^ lamation of the coming supply, and the conse- 
 quent peace. Because Israel is the child of 
 God, she is not to be forsaken. Because we 
 are the lost sheep whom Jesus Christ came to 
 seek and to save, the cry of our soul for the 
 
THE FAMINE FOR GOD 97 
 
 word of God when it is heard, will prove the 
 signal of a blessing that is not far off. The 
 summons, therefore, is ''Why wait? Recog- 
 nize the need to-day. Give voice to the cry of 
 the soul. Ask, and you shall receive. Seek, 
 and you shall find." Or, as a fellow prophet 
 put it: "Ho, every one that thirsteth I come- 
 ye to the waters, yea drink wine and milk with- 
 out money and without price." 
 
 We have to do but the one thing that is 
 necessary, namely : recognize the need and 
 anticipate the famine. The supply is within 
 the reach of every man who will have it. 
 
 J -^ 
 
VIII 
 
 HOW TO GET RIGHT WITH GOD 
 
 « And what doth Jehovah require of thee but to do justly, and 
 to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God." — Micah 6 : 8. 
 
 WE know little of the prophet Micah. 
 He seems to have had small con- 
 cern for himself and has only been 
 careful to tell us that his home was in Moreshah 
 which was a little village on the Philistine plain 
 some twelve miles west of Bethlehem. He is 
 without parent or child, so far as the record 
 goes. However, he gives us an indication of 
 the time in which he lived, — the reigns of 
 Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. 
 
 The burden of the Lord is upon him and he 
 tells what he saw concerning Samaria and 
 Jerusalem. His life must have been a toler- 
 ably long one, and his prophecy, which was 
 spoken evidently towards its close, was de- 
 livered near the very end of the eighth century 
 before Christ. The prophecies of Hosea and 
 Amos had been spoken before this, and the 
 threatened destruction had already come upon 
 the northern kingdom of Israel, in the capture 
 
 98 
 
HOW TO GET RIGHT WITH GOD 99 
 
 of Samaria by Sargon and the army of Assyria 
 after a three-year siege, followed by the de- 
 portation of the people into a captivity from 
 which they were never to return. The great 
 host of the Assyrians had worked along the 
 coast down the highway which led past his 
 home to Egypt, and there the decisive battle 
 of Raphia had been fought in the year 719, 
 and the Egyptians had been defeated. Later 
 the Assyrian forces had attacked the southern 
 borders of Judah, capturing a number of cities, 
 and had threatened Jerusalem itself. In answer 
 to the prayers of the people under the lead of 
 Hezekiah, — a God-fearing king, — a sudden 
 and overwhelming disaster had come for a 
 time upon the forces of the enemy, and the 
 story of their destruction under Sennacherib, 
 their leader, was to become the theme of many 
 a future tale. What the future had in store 
 for the kingdom of Judah was not yet revealed. 
 She was tempted to seek to protect herself by 
 alliance with Egypt and possibly with other 
 neighbours as against the Eastern invasion. 
 Isaiah already had arisen as the great prophet 
 in the city, warning the people of the danger 
 of such an alliance, and striving to turn them 
 back to an abiding faith in Jehovah. 
 
 There had been great prosperity for many 
 years preceding these days of crisis, with the 
 
100 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 inevitable results which the earlier prophets 
 
 had announced. Luxury, and oppression, and 
 
 self-indulgence had taken the place of an earlier 
 
 righteousness. The rich had sought alliance 
 
 I with men of their own kind among the heathen. 
 
 fl They had given their daughters to them in 
 
 I marriage. They had established with them 
 
 f business connections that were profitable and 
 
 I widely extended. They had introduced their 
 
 I manners and their morals into Israel. In a 
 
 If. 
 
 I word, they had made the life of Jerusalem as 
 I much like the life of New York as we can con- 
 I ceive. In their elect circles we can hear them 
 I talking almost in the language of to-day, dis- 
 I cussing foreign *' Counts," frequently visiting 
 \ ** Paris," assured of large incomes with no 
 \ further labour than cutting off coupons, and 
 \ striving hard to find amusement for them- 
 i selves in the Bohemianism of their day. 
 i Drunkenness and gambling, with disregard 
 I for the welfare either of others or of the State, 
 J were prevalent. Men were living as if God 
 were not, and life had no ultimate responsibil- 
 ities. 
 
 Then it was that a country preacher appeared, 
 in the form of a prophet. What his previous 
 training had been, we do not know. Other 
 prophets, like Amos and Jeremiah, were partic- 
 ular to record their own unfitness for their 
 
HOW TO GET RIGHT WITH GOD 101 
 
 new r61e ; but Micah seems to have been ab- 
 sorbed with the situation in which he found 
 himself, and the compulsion of the Spirit of 
 God that had come upon him. His name 
 signifies "Who is like God," and that he is 
 conscious of its meaning is suggested by the 
 play upon names which appears in his open- 
 ing message and that his closing word is a 
 sentence which is but an enlargement of his own 
 name : " Who is a God like unto Thee ? " 
 
 We can picture him talking to people in his 
 little village, stirring their hearts, and gathering 
 there an audience which told the tale of his 
 strange eloquence to their neighbours, until he 
 feels compelled, little prepared as he is, to go 
 down to the city and speak there in its streets. 
 Doubtless, he met Isaiah, the eloquent city 
 preacher, and found himself in accord with him. 
 Perhaps through his influence he found access 
 to court circles. In any case, he is the only 
 prophet directly mentioned by another. Jere- 
 miah (26 : i8) says that Hezekiah heard him, 
 and was moved by him to special prayer, which 
 led the Lord to withhold the judgment with 
 which the city was threatened. False prophets 
 abounded, and were doing exactly what men in 
 public position and even some ministers are 
 found doing to-day, — going to the capitol to 
 speak in the interests of evil doers, and by elo- 
 
102 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 quent sophistries to make it appear that drunken- 
 ness and oppression and legalized gambling are 
 not the evil which they are thought. 
 
 His message differs from that of his prede- 
 cessors. Like them he denounces the evil of 
 his day. " Woe ! '' he cries, " to them that de- 
 vise iniquity and work evil upon their beds I 
 When the morning is light they practice it, be- 
 cause it is in the power of their hand. And they 
 covet fields and seize them ; and houses, and 
 take them away : and they oppress a man and 
 his house." **They hate the good and love 
 the evil, and their prophets make my people to 
 err." '' They cry peace, and they even prepare 
 war against the Lord." ** They build up Zion 
 with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity." 
 ** Their leaders judge for reward, their priests 
 teach for hire, their prophets divine for money." 
 
 To them his message is that the Lord is 
 among them and judgment is at hand. But 
 this is not the burden of his message. He has 
 a vision of the future. God will still do great 
 things for His people. He sees as in a vision 
 the mountain of the house of the Lord estab- 
 lished in the top of the mountain. As one look- 
 ing across a valley buried in the mists, he sees 
 the great mountain peaks beyond, painted in 
 the glories of the rising sun of a new day. 
 Israel is to be exalted, and passing away from 
 
HOW TO GET RIGHT WITH GOD 103 
 
 her sins and her punishment, is to be established 
 in the eyes of all peoples. As a flock that has 
 been scattered, she shall yet have a shepherd. 
 Bethlehem which has given David to Israel and 
 the long line of her kings, shall give still a 
 greater leader who in the days to come shall ap- 
 pear as the vicegerent of God. The nations 
 shall see and wonder, and God shall have com- 
 passion upon His people and turn again and 
 cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. He 
 cries out as he ends : " Who is like unto our 
 God?" 
 
 In the midst of this prophetic vision, occurs 
 the text : ** Will the Lord be pleased with thou- 
 sands of rams or with ten thousands of rivers of 
 oil ? " You rich men seek to compromise with 
 God by great gifts, or by building churches, or 
 by establishing philanthropies, offering money 
 as the price of exemption from criticism, and in 
 the hope of escaping the final condemnation. 
 Will any such service deceive Jehovah, he says, 
 or for a moment be accepted ? What in fact 
 does the Lord require of you ? I will show you 
 what He requires. Nothing but this: "To do 
 justly, and to love mercy,^ and to walk humbly 
 with thy God." 
 
 1 1 retain the familiar word of the Authorized Version, as it seems 
 to me better to express the real sense of the text than the " Kind- 
 ness " of the Revision. 
 
104 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 Here then is the heart of the whole prophecy. 
 What does it mean ? The words are very sim- 
 ple, but let us look at them closely. 
 
 "To do justly"; manifestly, first of all, 
 towards God. Israel's distinction among the 
 nations had been that her God was not as their 
 gods. Their gods were gods of fear, to be pro- 
 pitiated by awful sacrifices, and to be held in 
 perpetual terror. But Jehovah was to Israel a 
 God of righteousness and of truth, a God whose 
 service was a service of blessing and of peace. 
 He had called their ancestor, Abraham, out of a 
 far country and had led him by a way that he 
 knew not, and had talked with him as a friend, 
 and had made for him a new inheritance. He 
 had called Jacob up out of the bondage of 
 Egypt, had led him through the wilderness, and 
 opened a path for him through the sea and 
 through the river, and established him in the 
 Land of Promise. He had called Moses from 
 the desert, and David from his sheepfolds. 
 He had delivered Israel from her enemies 
 and caused her to flow with milk and honey, 
 and established peace in her borders, just so 
 far and so long as she had been faithful 
 to her service and had kept His commandments. 
 Her hope had always been in Him and His 
 promise which had never failed. The future 
 was to be hers because of the past and because 
 
HOW TO GET RIGHT WITH GOD 105 
 
 of the covenant with her God in which lay her 
 life. 
 
 What now does Israel owe to God except 
 gratitude and love, as a heart that has received 
 blessing must answer to the heart that has be- 
 stowed it. Through the long service Israel 
 had been slowly and with difficulty arriving at 
 this conception of God, of His character, and of 
 His service. It all is clear to us, for we know 
 in a still larger and truer sense that God is 
 love, and that He so loves the world that He 
 has given His Son to die for it. It is far clearer 
 to us than it could be to them that what God 
 has a right to require of every man is response 
 to His heart. He is no constraining creditor 
 seeking the payment of a debt. He comes 
 with no threats of arrest for failure in power, or 
 will, to pay. The obligation under which we are 
 is indeed a debt, but it is a debt of gratitude. 
 It is a debt which every heart that would be 
 true to itself must recognize, and in recogniz- 
 ing, find its true joy and its true life. There- 
 fore, the very first thing that God requires of 
 every man is that he shall make this response, 
 long before there is any question of service or 
 of large relations to the world about us. We 
 must first settle this question of what we owe 
 to God Himself. Then comes, however, our 
 duty to our fellow men, for if we do not love 
 
106 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 our brother whom we see, how can we love 
 God whom we do not see ? If we do not deal 
 justly with our neighbour, recognizing all the 
 obligations to him, under which we are in the 
 common life, what truth is there in the declara- 
 tion of our love and of our allegiance to the 
 common Father ? 
 
 So again with the second phrase : "To 
 love mercy," or '' kindness," as the Revision 
 gives it. It is the loving-kindness of God 
 which leads Him to seek and to save that 
 which is lost. That was a new thought in 
 Israel, that God could forgive the sinner, and 
 that His love would not diminish or be with- 
 drawn even in the face of persistent weakness. 
 This had been the great message of Hosea: 
 ** How can I give thee up, O Israel ! " In his 
 own pitiful experience with a sinful wife, that 
 prophet had been taught the meaning of a for- 
 giving love, and in the strength of that had 
 been sent by the Lord with His message to Israel. 
 The Divine messages of earlier days had now 
 gained a new significance. The loving-kind- 
 ness of God had come to mean the revelation 
 of that Divine grace in which God in the 
 Person of His Son was to be " wounded for 
 our transgressions and bruised for our iniqui- 
 ties." There is open to the prophet the vision 
 of the new kingdom of God, in which, not 
 
HOW TO GET RIGHT WITH GOD lOY 
 
 only, righteousness shall dwell, but in which 
 the bond shall be the gratitude of loving hearts 
 whose sins have been forgiven and whose life 
 has been restored, when it had seemed there 
 could be no pardon and there was no hope. 
 His summons, therefore, to the people is not 
 only to open their hearts in loving gratitude to 
 God for all His goodness, thus dealing justly 
 with Him, but to go deeper than that, and to 
 pour out their truest affection in love for One 
 who forgiving their sins, could so take them 
 away and blot them out that they never again 
 would be known, casting them, as He says, 
 into the depths of the sea. His summons, 
 therefore, is that his countrymen shall so turn 
 to God. They are to love one another, they 
 are to build up a God-fearing community ; but 
 before that they are to be sure that they have 
 established this love of God as a possession in 
 their own hearts, that they feel their own sins, 
 and love Him because He first loved us. Doing 
 this, they will be sure to love one another. 
 
 Then, finally, " Walk humbly with thy God." 
 Here we have a word which occurs nowhere 
 else in the Bible. Translators have struggled 
 with it. The earliest of them, the Greek trans- 
 lators of the Septuagint, render it '* Prepare 
 yourselves to walk with God." It seems to 
 point, in the original, to that devotion of one's self 
 
108 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 to the purpose of knowing God which leads 
 one to put everything else aside, to examine 
 his own heart and life, to humble himself into a 
 sense of his own ill desert, which shall, as it 
 were, empty his heart of all else, that God may 
 ' come and dwell in it. It points to a private 
 and personal discipline, and recalls the many 
 other instances in the Bible where a man is 
 spoken of as " dwelling in the secret place of 
 the Most High," or entering into secret inter- 
 course with his Maker. 
 
 This is what the prophet leads up to, A 
 walking with God, which is an intimate and 
 personal matter for which a man is to prepare 
 himself, and which he is to make first in his 
 purpose. It reminds us of that phrase of 
 Cromwell : "A man has so much religion as 
 f he hath between God and himself alone, and no 
 * more." It is an exhortation to make sure of, 
 and then to practice, the presence of God. It 
 is an old form of stating what we term 
 spirituality, that is, the reflection in a man's 
 spirit of this intimacy which he has been per- 
 mitted to establish with God. It is the 
 actuality of the Divine Presence which is to be 
 '^ realized only by those who know its meaning 
 [ and set themselves with all their heart and soul 
 to secure it. It is the very heart and fountain 
 of all true religion, the only source of the life and 
 
HOW TO GET EIGHT WITH GOD 109 
 
 power, in the strength of which the work of Hfe 
 can be done, and true service to God can be 
 rendered. To attempt to Hve without it is the 
 reverse of the nature in which as children of 
 God we are made It is the interpretation of 
 our Lord's prayer in which we are taught first 
 to say '* Our Father which art in heaven " with 
 some true sense of its meaning, before we are 
 permitted to pray with expectancy " Thy king- 
 dom come " ; offering ourselves to do what we 
 can to bring in that kingdom. It is the early 
 form of our Lord's saying that we are to love f\ 
 God with all our heart, and our soul, and mind, 
 before we can love our neighbour as ourselves. 
 Here, then, is the wonderful message of the 
 old prophet. We have never gone beyond it. 
 We never shall. It is the most modern of re- 
 ligious requirements, as it is the most ancient, 
 and the most unchanging. If you and I would 
 know God and be His servants, if we would 
 know life and win peace, if we would do our 
 part in the world about us and so live as to 
 have some hope of heaven, here is the method 
 of it, and the whole of it : *' To do justly, and 
 to love mercy, and to walk in secret with thy 
 God I '' 
 
IX 
 
 THE RADIANT LIFE 
 « They looked unto Him and were radiant." — Psalm 34 : 5. 
 
 WHAT a splendid word the Revised 
 Version of the Bible gives us here 
 in the change from *' lightened " to 
 " radiant." The text that before was of doubt- 
 ful significance, and could be passed without 
 challenging attention, suddenly arrests us. To 
 be radiant means to shine by inner light. It 
 is the quality of the sun, and not of the moon. 
 It marks access to inexhaustible reservoirs, 
 perhaps, like radium, to be joined to some 
 vast storehouse of power in nature and in 
 God. 
 
 Look at the face of a little child radiant 
 with pleasure, with interest, with imagination, 
 or what you will. It suggests fullness of life 
 in its freshness. We remember Wordsworth's 
 line : 
 
 *' Trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 From God who is our home." 
 
 Look at the face of a youth radiant with love, 
 hope, joy. Life has come in larger fullness. 
 
 no 
 
THE RADIANT LIFE 111 
 
 New fountains have been opened, new possi- 
 bilities have come to be realized, and larger 
 ones are at hand. Look at the face of the 
 strong man radiant with the sense of triumph, 
 of work accomplished, of an end attained, — 
 eloquent of new and still deeper satisfaction. 
 Look at the face of the dying saint, radiant in 
 a yet more beautiful sense with the vision of 
 eternity and the unrevealed splendours of the 
 life which is hid with Christ in God. 
 
 Everywhere in them all we see fullness of 
 life, powers from God all called forth, all exer- 
 cised,— interest, enthusiasm, delight, strength, 
 attainment, knowledge, vision. We believe in 
 the infinitude of life. We are prepared to ac- 
 cept the word of revelation that man is a son 
 of God, that " eternity " is '* hid in his heart,'* 
 because we see this radiance in his face. One 
 recalls Gorreggio's great painting of the Nativ- 
 ity, " La Notte," in which the radiance from 
 the countenance of the infant Jesus illumines 
 every face of the onlookers, and repels the 
 darkness of the stable in which all are 
 gathered. It is a suggestion of the fullness 
 of the life that is in man as a child of God. 
 
 This radiance is eloquent also of the satis- 
 faction of the soul. Man was made for this, 
 and here it is at last. No matter what has 
 been the particular experience, or at what 
 
112 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 stage in life it has come, when it is there it 
 indicates attainment. The ideal has been real- 
 ized ; the effort has been crowned ; the fullness 
 of life has brought satisfaction ; and now the 
 whole being seems to shine with the sense of 
 attainment which fills the soul. 
 
 But, also, it is the challenge of the unattained ; 
 the radiance is luminous as indicating some- 
 thing yet to come. There is more to do, more 
 to enjoy, more to achieve, and the radiance 
 that shines in the eyes and in the face marks 
 the eagerness of a soul which has visions of 
 this. The present is not so real as is the 
 future, and the future holds still more than the 
 present has attained. In short, here is the 
 whole man, his possibilities no less than his 
 attainments. His past, his present, his future, 
 gathered together summoning him to be ready 
 for all that is before him. 
 
 In some way, the old Psalmist had met such 
 men. He had looked into such faces. He 
 knew something of their experience, and so he 
 speaks with full confidence. Anybody could 
 see what he sees. It is visible in the lives 
 which are open to all. These men of whom 
 he speaks are radiant, and the light is genuine. 
 It will not fade. They were radiant as he 
 looked at them, and his comment is "Their 
 faces shall never be confounded." The ex- 
 
THE RADIANT LIFE 113 
 
 perience is so real and so deep, the change, 
 in fact, is so abiding and so satisfying, that no 
 matter what happens they can never be put to 
 shame. The Bible has the story of many such 
 men, from Enoch who '* walked with God and 
 was not, for God took him," till we come to the 
 very end of the New Testament and behold the 
 beloved disciple with radiant eyes gazing upon 
 the glories of the New Jerusalem, the city come 
 down from God out of heaven. Above all, the 
 picture of Him in whom men beheld " the light 
 of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face 
 of Jesus Christ." 
 
 The testimony concerning them all is the 
 same. " They looked unto Him, and were 
 radiant." It is the effect of their vision of God, 
 His light, His love. His joy. His life found en- 
 trance to their souls and filled them, and now 
 shines forth. 
 
 We ask : " How did they do this, that such 
 result was obtained?" The answer is, they 
 turned away from everything that hindered. 1 1 
 Open their story anywhere. It is always the ^ 
 same. Abraham left his home and his country 
 and travelled far as a stranger, not knowing 
 whither he went, because he was willing to 
 give up everything, that he might obey God^ , 
 and find Him. Joseph, the captive, a slave t 
 and a stranger, gives up the position and 
 
114 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 turns from the temptations which would have 
 *' brought him the pleasures and the triumphs 
 which beguile other men, in order that he 
 might be faithful to God. Moses, forsaking 
 the pleasures of Egypt, retiring alone on the 
 mountain, offering his life in sacrifice for his 
 people that God may be honoured, comes 
 again to them with the shining face, which is 
 
 f ever after remembered as needing a veil that 
 men might look upon him without distress. 
 Daniel, in his chamber with his windows 
 opened towards Jerusalem, and face upturned 
 to his protecting God, shines through the 
 centuries with a radiance which has lost noth- 
 ing of its glorious strength. Paul, in his blind- 
 ness, turned from the life which was challeng- 
 ing his young strength that he might give him- 
 self to the service of the unseen Christ who 
 spoke to him on the way. John, the son of 
 thunder, with softened countenance and gentle 
 eyes, filled with the love of his Master, now the 
 Beloved Disciple, first to realize in its fullness, 
 the satisfying blessedness of that intimacy with 
 Christ which was to be the comfort and the 
 peace of countless souls in coming ages. 
 
 One and all, they are the types of men who, 
 turning away from everything that hinders, at- 
 
 j tained the sufficiency, the strength, and the 
 peace which lie in finding God and being found 
 
THE KADIANT LIFE 115 
 
 in Him, and their faces shone with a new light. 
 Henceforth there was for them no anxiety and 
 no regret. They had left all so completely that 
 there was no thought of turning again to what 
 lay behind them, and they already had found 
 such supreme contentment in what God had 
 brought into their hearts that they had no con- 
 cern for the future. Come what will, it can only | 
 bring God to them in greater fullness. They \/ 
 had made their choice, and it needed not to be 
 reconsidered. 
 
 Furthermore, these men really sought God. | 
 It was not knowledge, or success, or pleasure, . [ 
 or even happiness that had led them to their 
 choice. Moses perhaps is the best type as he 
 goes alone up Mount Sinai. Men are con- 
 tinually trying to locate Sinai. They have 
 sought it in the Arabian Peninsula and on the 
 borders of the Persian Gulf. They have made 
 pilgrimages and have built monasteries and 
 even given up everything that they might live 
 permanently on the lofty summit. In fact, it 
 never will be known. God has kept it from 
 men's knowledge lest they should set up an al- 
 tar there and turn their thoughts to an experi- 
 ence in the far ancient past, and lose sight of 
 the fact that every man has his own Sinai. 
 The world presses hard, with business and 
 pleasure and strife for success, and one by one, 
 
116 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 when the hour comes, we are all summoned to 
 choose between these things and God. With 
 ; us, as with Moses, the treasures of Egypt are to 
 'i' be left behind. We are not only to forsake 
 them, but deliberately and carefully to seek 
 another treasure more real, more satisfying, but 
 less easily apprehended. God is to be sought 
 in self-denial and in self-discipline, in sacrificial 
 service, and in the set purpose of attainment, 
 cost what it may. As our Lord put it, we are 
 to forsake all and follow Him if we are to be 
 disciples indeed. Only when that search is un- 
 dertaken with sincerity, and when the heart has 
 gathered up all its strength with Divine help to 
 devote itself to God, does the radiance appear 
 ; in the face, which is the witness at once of the 
 realized attainment and of the satisfying joy. 
 When Moses came down from the mountain 
 and his face shone, men knew that he had 
 looked upon God. He had found Him whom 
 his soul sought, and in that finding had come 
 the vision which filled his heart with a light 
 which henceforth would never fail in his eyes. 
 These men of whom the Psalmist speaks as 
 looking upon God and being radiant, were men 
 , who had asked God for help. They sought 
 the vision which did so much for them. They 
 ^''. were men of prayer. How frequently in the 
 I ' story of Jesus do we read that He turned aside 
 
THE RADIANT LIFE 117 
 
 in the desert or on the mountain that He might 
 pray. That prayer was not the ordinary sup- 
 pHcation of men who are merely seeking rehef 
 from present burden or the gratification of some 
 pressing desire. It was not the confession in 
 which the burdened soul pours itself out in 
 prayer for forgiveness, nor the spiritless peti- 
 tion of the heart that is troubled with the cares 
 of life or dulled with the satiety of its pleasures. 
 It was the eager and buoyant up- springing of 
 the soul which knows where to find God and 
 turns to Him in the assurance of His presence jj 
 and of the vision of His satisfying love. That 
 vision reached its completeness on the Mount 
 of Transfiguration, and the radiance that there 
 shone from His face, seemed to the amazed on- 
 lookers to change the very nature of His body 
 and to transform His common garments into 
 robes of unearthly texture and celestial beauty. 
 This vision of God that has been attained by 
 those who have made the sacrifice, or put forth 
 the supreme effort, or paid the unstinted price, 
 the prophet, the apostle, or the martyr, Daniel 
 in the den of the lions, Paul before Agrippa, the 
 aged Polycarp in the arena lifting up his face 
 and saying : ** My Lord has never denied me. 
 How can I deny Him ? " is the true source of 
 the light which '* never was on land or sea," of 
 the radiance of countenances that are at peace 
 
118 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 with God and of souls that have attained to 
 fullness of life. 
 
 They gave themselves to God utterly and 
 this is the testimony. They looked upon 
 Stephen as they stoned him to death and they 
 bear testimony that his face was as " the face of 
 an angel." Striving to depict the Virgin Mary 
 in the presence of the Angel of the Annuncia- 
 tion, painters have concentrated their efforts 
 upon the countenance which in the glory of its 
 entire surrender, shone with the light which has 
 made her face the ideal and the dream ; and 
 with all their efforts, they never have been sat- 
 isfied with the result. 
 
 It is given to us all to know the nature of 
 that radiance, but not to realize its fullness. 
 That is reserved for the day when we shall see 
 Him as He is, and be like Him, the day which 
 will bring the attainment of that perfection of 
 character which, as the outcome of the finished 
 work of Christ, will mark the completed pur- 
 pose of God in the soul of man. 
 
 So it was given to the Psalmist to be stirred 
 by this light in the faces of some men whom he 
 knew, and to recognize it as the supreme good 
 that comes to men when they are obedient to 
 God and surrender themselves to His love and 
 to His service. It is the declaration of the un- 
 changing truth that man is made in the image 
 
THE EADIANT LIFE 119 
 
 of God, that the life that is in us is life from 
 God, and that only as that life is realized in 
 something of its fullness by the turning of the 
 soul to its Maker and the opening of the heart 
 to the inflowing stream of His love, do we at- 
 tain for ourselves the contentment which marks 
 the abiding peace that comes when our every / 
 power has been called to its noblest exercise 
 and we have found our home in God. 
 
CHRIST THE RESTORER 
 
 " And He said unto him : « Verily, I say unto thee, To-day 
 thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.' " — Luke 23 : 4j. 
 
 SOME years ago a New England judge, 
 the most prominent man in his town, ap- 
 peared before the committee of the local 
 church asking to be received into membership 
 on confession of his faith. There was no revi- 
 val, and there had been no previous intimation 
 of the change in liis heart or life. He said, 
 " You will be surprised. I am not influenced 
 by anything that has occurred in the church ; I 
 I have not been converted by any sermon ; but I 
 [ cannot stand the influence of the life of my 
 I neighbour Deacon Blank. For thirty years I 
 have observed that old man, and at last I am 
 convinced that his life is governed by a higher 
 power than any that I have known, and I have 
 sought him to learn how I might have the same 
 influence in my life ; and I have given myself 
 to his Lord." 
 
 A few weeks ago a high class Hindoo, a 
 young Brahmin, drifted into a Bowery mission 
 
 120 
 
CHEIST THE RESTORER 121 
 
 one Sunday night. He remained at the close 
 of the meeting to talk with the leader. He was 
 travelling for purposes of study in foreign lands, 
 had been for some time in England and had 
 come to this country in pursuit of further teach- 
 ing. He had been untouched by anything he 
 had heard of Christianity in India, or had seen 
 either in London or in New York. But what he 
 heard and saw in that mission meeting, in the 
 testimony of the men who told what Jesus 
 Christ had done for them, reached his soul. 
 And before he left the company of that plain 
 leader who remained with him till two o'clock in 
 the morning, he had kneeled by his side and 
 given himself to Christ. 
 
 Here is the key to what happened on the 
 cross. It was the first manifestation of the 
 power of the deathless Christ, the first instance 
 in the long line of men who have been saved by 
 Him, the first witness to the Saviour who lives 
 to-day. We turn to that hour to see exactly 
 what happened. 
 
 Attention has generally been absorbed by 
 Jesus' promise of immortality when He said 
 to the thief : '* To-day thou shalt be with Me 
 in Paradise." Many arguments have been 
 drawn from it as to the immediate transfer 
 of the penitent soul at death from the life of 
 earth to the life of heaven, and the nature of 
 
122 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 that Paradise into which the soul goes in com- 
 panionship with its Lord. But we can pass all 
 that by for the hour. Precious as it is, there is 
 something of greater consequence. 
 
 The story is of a highway robber being exe- 
 cuted for his crimes. He was evidently a hard- 
 ened man, and the hardness of his heart and life 
 is indicated by the expressions of his companion 
 who, in the fierceness of his agony, cursed Jesus, 
 as he cursed himself and everybody within 
 reach. But this man in the hour of his death 
 finds himself crowded up against Jesus. Their 
 experiences for the moment, in the crucifixion, 
 are identical. He turns his face towards Him and 
 in some sudden and unexplained way he is won 
 by Him. It is immaterial just how. Some- 
 times we can tell how confidence and love are 
 born. Often, we cannot. We use a conve- 
 nient word and say there is an instinctive some- 
 thing in us that now and again moves us to 
 another. It is sufficient to know that something 
 in the soul of that dying robber answers the 
 look in the face of the suffering Christ. We 
 have no description of the Saviour's appearance, 
 and the efforts of artists through all the centuries 
 to depict Him for us have resulted only in rep- 
 resentations of tragic pain and a countenance 
 full of repellent agony. There is no record of 
 words that were spoken. 
 
CHRIST THE RESTORER 123 
 
 It must remain sufficient for us that in 
 that supreme hour the long dead inner self 
 of the thief awoke. His soul was discovered 
 by another; and that discovery of his soul 
 carried into his heart the conviction that 
 there was One who believed in its existence. It 
 suddenly was shown to him that that other, at 
 least, believed that goodness was still alive in 
 him. In this way, all unexpectedly to himself, 
 his soul was suddenly brought to his own 
 knowledge. It was made once more to live for 
 him because it lived to another better than him- 
 self. There had suddenly come into hislife One 
 filled with a divine love. That love had em- 
 braced him just as he was ; and in a moment 
 all had changed. Up to that moment he had 
 been living what he had come to believe was 
 the only life possible for him. He once had 
 known a better life. Since then he had often 
 dreamed of it, but it had altogether passed away ; 
 and so completely had it gone that to him it 
 was dead. He had ceased to believe in the very 
 possibility of its existence. Life had become to 
 him what life is to any man given over to the 
 pursuit of reckless evil, — little more than a liv- 
 ing death. Its joys were forced. Its possibili- 
 ties were only of a more hopeless bondage and 
 a deeper discontent. What he knew of himself, 
 he knew that others must know, or coming to 
 
124 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 know, would regard as he regarded it. He saw 
 no door of hope within the range of his own ex- 
 perience, or as possible to him through what 
 might come from without. He was now meet- 
 ing the penalty of transgression which he had 
 long anticipated, — a penalty which he knew to 
 be just, as he had known that it was inevitable. 
 The only end of a career that had not halted at 
 any wickedness was a punitive death. 
 
 In a moment his evil life had changed in its 
 relations. It had become what Maeterlinck 
 calls " a goodness that had got off the track.'' 
 He did not know it so. He never had for a 
 moment so regarded it, nor had that thought been 
 presented to him. But here is One who does 
 so regard it. One so different from himself, so 
 different from all other men he had ever known, 
 that the sudden revelation of His view of him, — 
 the thief, — strikes him with compelling force. 
 It seems to say : " Stop, think I If this is so, 
 and my life is goodness that has got off the 
 track, perhaps it can be put back." Here is 
 One who still believes in him, or the suggestion 
 would not have sprung into his heart. He is a 
 man who has lost his way. It was his own 
 doing, — his reckless disregard of the right way, 
 his headlong rushing into evil. He has known 
 that and he has faced the consequences. He 
 pleads no excuse, and he knows no palliation. 
 
CHRIST THE RESTORER 125 
 
 He is the engineer who has run his train past 
 the danger signals and has smashed it into the 
 station house and killed innocent people. He 
 has sprung from the engine, and fled with the 
 purpose never again to take a throttle in his 
 hands. He has ruined himself as completely as 
 he has destroyed others. He has cherished no 
 lingering thought that the past could be undone 
 or that there was any hope for him of being 
 other than he now is. His life is as evil as his 
 heart has become hard, and he is steadying him- 
 self to face the onrushing death with closed 
 teeth and with tongue that shall not utter a 
 cry. 
 
 But here is a sudden and overcoming thought. 
 Can it be possible that his perversity is a power 
 of devotion somehow inverted, that his bitterness 
 and his hate are a sweet affection soured by misdi- 
 rection ? In ignorance of himself and of God, he 
 has been driving himself to destruction because 
 he did not know that even for him there was 
 still a heaven and One to help him to attain it. 
 Now he awakens. He is not wholly lost. 
 There is One who believes in him. It may be, 
 therefore, that life for him is not forever turned 
 to death. It has not all been wasted and des- 
 troyed. This Saviour who has come to him, 
 though at such a late hour and in such strange 
 conditions, but who sees in him even in the 
 
126 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 agony of death, the possibilities of life, can save 
 him for that life. Because Jesus believes in him 
 he begins to believe in himself. He believes in 
 Christ. Paradise is his because his soul has 
 been awakened, in fact born anew. He has re- 
 ceived life as a gift from One in whom the 
 Divine Life cannot be extinguished for Himself 
 or for His fellow sufferers. He was dying, and 
 from the physical death there was no escape ; 
 but he was dying forever blessed, because in 
 that supreme moment he was made aware of 
 the Divine Love and the Divine Saviour able to 
 save him from himself, because Jesus so believed 
 in him that even in that hour of the consumma- 
 tion of his guilty life, Jesus saw in him a soul 
 made in the image of God, and summoned that 
 soul by the power of a love that could both 
 awaken and forgive, into the life for which it 
 was made and out of which it seemed to have 
 gone so hopelessly astray. 
 
 Men everywhere are discussing Christianity. 
 The whole problem centres in Jesus Christ. 
 Men argue about Revelation, about the Bible, 
 about the fall of man, about miracles and the 
 like. All is unconvincing. Then men turn to 
 Him. When we come to know Him as Paul 
 knew Him when he cried, "Who art Thou, 
 Lord ? " and heard the answer, " I am Jesus 
 whom thou persecutest," in prompt self-sur- 
 
CHRIST THE RESTORER 127 
 
 render we are moved to say, What wilt Thou 
 have me to do ? 
 
 Then we know Jesus Christ for Himself. It 
 is His Presence,— the Light of God that shone 
 in His face, — that awakens us and makes for 
 us a new life possible. We can be born again. 
 We can be set back on the track. The right 
 direction can yet be given to our powers. Life 
 with all that it means and with all that we tried 
 to forget in it once more opens before us. We 
 give ourselves to Him and then everything falls 
 into line. The Resurrection, the miracles, the 
 mystery of the Incarnation all are as they should 
 be. They could not have been otherwise. God 
 has indeed redeemed the world unto Himself, 
 and the glad heart of the penitent sinner cries 
 out, " Because He lives, I shall live also." 
 
 It is this awakening of the dead self, the dis- 
 covery of one who believes that goodness is still 
 possible in us, that awakens in our hearts the 
 conviction that that goodness is still within our 
 reach. No matter who I am, or how low I 
 have sunk, or how weak I have proved my- 
 self before temptation, or how completely 
 others have cast me out, Jesus Christ believes in 
 me. He has come to seek and to save me. 
 He has given Himself for me as truly and as 
 completely as if I were the only sinner in all 
 God's universe, for He came to seek and to 
 
i 
 
 128 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 save the lost, no matter how many or how few, 
 and as a true seeker of the lost, He is in search 
 of the one that is lost, and the joy among the 
 angels of God over the finding is as true over 
 the one as over the million. 
 
 With the finding of the lost and the revela- 
 tion of the redeeming love, comes the gift of 
 the new power. The life that He bestows is a 
 genuine life. It continues. It unfolds from 
 within. It reproduces itself. It bears a fitting 
 fruit. Joy and peace and self-control and 
 strength come with it. One who but now was 
 dead is alive again. The fear of death vanishes. 
 He has confidence in the life beyond because 
 he has the assurance of the life that now is. 
 Paradise is a reality because it has already be- 
 gun in the soul, and all because the revelation 
 of God in Jesus Christ is the revelation of One 
 who believes in us long after we have ceased to 
 believe in ourselves. 
 
 Here then is the commission for every dis- 
 ciple of Jesus Christ. It is to get goodness 
 back on the track, to help men believe in what 
 is still in themselves. They have tried to des- 
 troy it. It is buried under the consciousness 
 of what seems a burned out life ; though it is 
 deep beneath the ashes it is a live coal still. 
 They do not know it. They do not believe in 
 its possibility, only because they do not know 
 
CHRIST THE RESTORER 12» 
 
 Jesus Christ. The business of the follower of 
 Jesus Christ is to be Jesus Christ to them, to 
 show that He believes in them by believing in 
 them first ourselves. As we are able to do this, 
 Christ speaks through His disciples to those 
 who are in need of Him, and the Unseen Christ 
 reveals Himself in the faith and the love of His 
 disciples. 
 
 One day there stood in the doorway of a 
 Fifth Avenue house, a poor outcast girl. The 
 mistress of that house had come across her in 
 some philanthropic work, had taken her to her 
 own home, while she sought in vain to find her 
 a permanent place in order to make a better life 
 possible for her. When finally she failed, with 
 tears in her eyes, she had to tell the poor girl 
 that she could find no place that was open to 
 her ; and with bitter thoughts in her heart, the 
 poor wanderer had turned again into the street. 
 Now she returned and when once more she 
 stood in the presence of her would-be benefac- 
 tress, she said, as explaining her return, "I 
 could not stand your crying." She had not be- 
 lieved in the reality of her desire to help. She 
 had been herself so long an outcast, and had so 
 entirely given up all hope, that she could not 
 believe that any one believed in her. But the 
 manifest strength of the love that had sought 
 to save her, speaking through the tears that 
 
i\ 
 
 130 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 could not be repressed, had touched her 
 heart, and now she came back with a new 
 purpose, because it had aroused within her a 
 new hope. 
 
 " Behold how He loved him ! " was the un- 
 willing confession of the onlookers as Jesus 
 stood by the grave of Lazarus ; and it was that 
 conviction breaking into men's hearts on the 
 left and on the right during the three brief years 
 of the Saviour's ministry which drew about Him 
 the disciples through whom the coming of His 
 kingdom in the hearts of men was to be made 
 possible. 
 
 The other day a rich man who had long 
 neglected his church and was turning away 
 to a life of indifferent carelessness spoke to a 
 minister who chanced to sit by his side ; after 
 talking with him quietly about his life and the 
 needs of his soul, he suddenly said : ** Why has 
 no one ever come to me as you do, all these 
 years?" It was the sudden discovery that 
 there was one, though a comparative stranger, 
 who still believed in the possibilities hidden in 
 his heart, the possibilities of deep and true 
 spiritual feeling, the possibilities of a kindled 
 love for his Saviour, and of the re-awakening 
 of the soul that had allowed itself to be buried 
 under the cares and the pleasures of a crowded 
 life : it was this that reached and touched that 
 
CHRIST THE EESTORER 131 
 
 heart and called it back to the life which it 
 seemed rapidly to be losing forever. 
 
 This, then, is the message of that story of 
 the thief, the witness to the reality of the power 
 that lies in the love of one soul for another, 
 as it bears testimony to God who is Himself 
 love, and who is not willing that any should 
 perish. The love that believes in us is the very 
 love of God Himself using a human love in all 
 its pitiful helplessness to bring us to the knowl- 
 edge of a divine love which even the hardest 
 heart cannot daunt, and by which even the 
 chief of sinners can be saved. 
 
XI 
 
 DEFEATING GOD 
 
 " And He did not many mighty works there because of their un- 
 belief."— il/a//. 13 : s8. 
 
 THEIR unbelief must have seemed a 
 very small matter to the men of Naza- 
 reth. If they gave any thought at all 
 to their manner of receiving Jesus, they must 
 have said, '*We are treating Him a good deal 
 better than when He was here before." 
 
 At His previous visit they had risen in great 
 anger and rushed Him out of the city to kill 
 Him by throwing Him over the cliffo Now 
 they have no such feelings. They do not 
 oppose Him, or even argue against Him. In- 
 deed, they are rather indifferent than otherwise. 
 If they think at all, they may find it rather 
 difBcult to account for their change of attitude, 
 — difficult to explain either why they were so 
 stirred up before or why they are so little con- 
 cerned now. As it is, they are disposed just 
 to let Him alone. 
 
 They talk about Him, they ask perhaps who 
 He really is, what He has done, and what He 
 
 132 
 
DEFEATING GOD 133 
 
 is trying to do ; but they do not care enough 
 even about their own talk to pursue the sub- 
 ject very far, or to trouble themselves to get 
 answers to their questions. They find it easier 
 simply to pay no attention at^ all. They have 
 other concerns that are more interesting, if 
 really not more important. One has his farm, 
 another his merchandise, and a third has 
 married a wife. They are very much like the 
 multitude of men to-day. 
 
 But this was Nazareth, Jesus' early home. 
 At the height of the Galilean's ministry, when 
 men were saying that all the world had gone 
 after Him, for some unexplained reason Jesus 
 leaves the neighbourhood of Capernaum and 
 the shores of the Sea of Tiberius, where He 
 found so many willing hearers, and crosses 
 the country to work among His own people. 
 " Even His brethren believed not Him," is the 
 brief sentence of the Evangelist in another 
 connection. Perhaps it was that He could not 
 bear to think of their persistent separation from 
 Him that led Him in the day of His greatest 
 success to turn aside and go back to them. 
 He hoped that at last they would open their 
 hearts, and that He might have the joy of 
 knowing that they and the neighbours among 
 whom He had grown up, the community which 
 we can imagine He most loved, would change 
 
134 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 their attitude, and give Him the support He 
 so much sought, or perhaps, more exactly, 
 would not be left out from the blessing which 
 it was His privilege to bring to them, as to the 
 world. In any case. He had come to Nazareth 
 for the last time. There may have been some 
 risk about it. Perhaps He thought that they 
 might even again attempt to kill Him. But 
 whatever the thought was, the fact is that He 
 had turned aside from people who were greet- 
 ing Him with demonstrative approval, and 
 from a section of the country where the wave 
 of His popularity was sweeping everything be- 
 fore it and where His career and His message 
 were alike approved, to go once more to Naza- 
 reth. The shadow of the cross was already 
 reaching out towards Him. It was but a little 
 more than a year before the end. His feeling 
 of the imminence of that end must have been 
 intensifying. His anxiety over His mission 
 and for those whom He loved must have been 
 rapidly deepening. What He had to do must 
 be done quickly. He may already have 
 realized that it was His last opportunity of ap- 
 pealing to the people of His early home. In 
 any case, it was their last chance. 
 
 And now He could do nothing. The brief 
 record is, ** He did not many mighty works 
 there because of their unbelief." As we trans- 
 
DEFEATING GOD 135 
 
 late it into the thought of to-day, we read, J\ 
 ** Those men of Nazareth defeated God." ^ 
 
 The record in its simplicity is deeply signifi- 
 cant. Jesus could do something for them. He 
 taught them in their synagogue, in so much that 
 they were astonished. God can always do 
 something, whether men bear or forbear. He 
 causes the sun to shine on the just and on the 
 unjust, and the rain to fall on the evil and on the ^ , 
 good. God's blessings are new every morn- 
 ing to all of us, whether we believe or not. 
 God is true to Himself in that He is very loving 
 and very pitiful ; but there is a limit even to 
 what God can do. 
 
 In this particular instance the record stands 
 that Jesus could do " not many mighty works." 
 The significance of the statement appears when * 
 we ask, ''What were His mighty works?" 
 For the answer is, all that He did to make God 
 real to men. He had come for that purpose. 
 Men have always had a traditional worship. 
 These Jews perhaps always had said their 
 prayers. Many of them were good fathers and 
 mothers, and doubtless reasonably honest men 
 and women. The ordinary life went on quietly 
 and regularly among them. They were easily 
 content with a traditional religion, and with so 
 much quietness of conscience as comes with re- 
 ligious habits that are substantially maintained. 
 
136 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 But God was not real to them. They had 
 no vivid apprehension of His presence or of 
 His love, or of the kind of service which God 
 seeks from us all. Their affections were like 
 the affections of most men everywhere — set on 
 the things which are nearest them, — the daily 
 concerns of the common life. They had no true 
 sense of God's love, of His righteousness, or of 
 His justice, no fear of God as the final Judge, 
 no clear recognition of what God needed to do 
 for them as men whose hearts are weak before 
 temptation and soiled and hardened with many 
 a sin. 
 
 Jesus had come to change all this. He sought 
 to do it by what He said about God, by what 
 He did in God's name, by what He showed 
 Himself to be as He presented Himself in the 
 beauty and the purity and the charm of His 
 own life and character, winning men to a higher 
 x purpose and revealing to them the blessings of a 
 f new life, helping them at once to escape from 
 the bondage of their past and to come out into 
 the new life of the sons of God. His mighty 
 works appeared only when men heeded Him 
 enough to begin to see. Then everything that 
 He did took on something of the supernatural. 
 God drew near to men and made Himself known 
 in His words and in His works, as in Himself. 
 This was the work which no other had ever 
 
DEFEATING GOD 137 
 
 done and which constitutes the miraculous ele- 
 ment in the revelation of God in Christ. 
 
 And now they treated His words lightly and 
 tossed them about as if they were no more than 
 the casuistry of the rabbis. His deeds, so pe- 
 culiar to Himself in their beneficence and in 
 their wonderful power, they swept aside. They 
 even said, *' He has a devil. These exceptional 
 works are witness to Beelzebub." Himself they 
 ignored. " He is only another rabbi, one more 
 of the many talkers." So they did not believe. 
 And because of their unbelief His mighty works 
 in their behalf were not performed. He could 
 do nothing. Therefore He went away and 
 never returned. The record stands as we read 
 it, and Nazareth remains a monument of lost 
 opportunities. It is a little village to which the 
 traveller goes to find that it has no other monu- 
 ment of Jesus than the cliff over which His 
 neighbours would have thrown Him in their hot 
 passion of hate. And all this because they did 
 not believe. The reason is not far to seek. 
 "Mighty Works," are what God alone can do. 
 They are what show God to us, and show us to 
 ourselves. They are whatever makes God real, 
 or makes real to men the heart of religion. 
 " God and the soul, the soul and God," as Har- 
 nack says, " is the substance of Christianity." 
 All else is secondary. 
 
 ii 
 
 I 
 
138 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 Jesus came to reach the souls of men. Not 
 to believe in Him is to close the soul to God, 
 and to shut out God from the soul. If He is 
 prevented, therefore, from doing the one thing 
 for which He has come into our earthly life, God 
 is defeated in what may be called the supreme 
 purpose of the Divine Heart. For as the crea- 
 tive work at the beginning led up to man as 
 the crown of all, so all God's providential deal- 
 ings lead up to the manifestation of Himself and 
 the opening of men's hearts to His indwelling. 
 As the public rejection of Christ by the na- 
 tion of Israel in its delivering Him to Pilate, 
 and their pressing him to execution, so the re- 
 jection of Christ by the refusal of the individual 
 soul to hear His message and heed His sum- 
 mons is that rejection which thwarts, not a pass- 
 ing impulse in the heart of God, but defeats 
 I what may be regarded as the eternal purpose 
 which underlies all God's relation to His chil- 
 dren. He has made us for Himself, and if we 
 are not willing to give to Him His own, if we 
 persist in closing our hearts to Him, if we, in a 
 word, do not believe in Him or in His purpose 
 concerning us, in that we do not receive His 
 message or recognize His presence in the Per- 
 son of His Son, our Saviour, then all that God 
 purposes to accomplish in us is defeated, and 
 we are left to a life, if it may be called a life, 
 
DEFEATING GOD 139 
 
 from which God is excluded, and in which the 
 consequences of our own ignorance and our 
 own willfulness, and our own spirit of rebellion 
 must be faced. Therefore, the rapidity of the 
 change which takes place in the heart that is 
 careless, and the finality of the result ; for indif- 
 ference quickly passes into doubt, and doubt 
 stiffens into denial, and denial hardens itself 
 into persistent antagonism, and the soul that 
 will not believe becomes the soul that at last has 
 been fixed in hostility to its Maker. No wonder, 
 then, that the mightiest of all God's works is 
 the changing of the soul of the sinner. It is a 
 marvellous process in which attention is first ar- 
 rested. Anxiety over one's self quickly follows. 
 Effort begins to appear in our awakened pur- 
 pose to strive for something better ; and faith 
 blossoms, as the gift of God Himself bringing 
 the assurance of forgiveness for the past and 
 strength for the future, and, at present, a sur- 
 prising peace. 
 
 This was what the men of Nazareth rejected. 
 They did not know it. They had little care. 
 We may think that they would have done very 
 differently could they have been aroused. The 
 fact remains that Jesus Christ had come to 
 them, had walked in their streets, had taught in 
 their synagogue, and had appealed to them in 
 all the ways He found open to Him ; but they 
 
140 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 ignored His presence. They would not be- 
 lieve. And because of their unbelief simply, — 
 not their antagonism, not their arguing against 
 Him, not their seeking even to kill Him, — but 
 simply because of their unbelief, He had to go 
 away from them never to return ; and Nazareth 
 is what it is to-day. 
 
 Many are those in this Christian community 
 who are walking in their steps. To many, 
 alas ! it would appear, as to them, Jesus may 
 have come for the last time. That you will your- 
 selves determine. Oh, do not sweep the thought 
 aside. The text and this sermon are one more 
 appeal. Defeat God ! and what remains ? 
 
XII 
 
 THE BEAUTIFUL DEED 
 
 *' But the Lord answered, and said unto her : ' Martha, Martha, 
 thou art anxious and troubled about many things : but one thing is 
 needful : for Mary hath chosen the good part, which shall not be 
 taken away from her. ' " — Lu^e lo : 41-42. 
 
 OUR sympathies join with those of the 
 world which for many centuries have 
 gone out to the much troubled Martha. 
 Her experience pictures the common lot. It 
 is appointed to us all more or less constantly 
 to be anxious and troubled ; at least, we feel 
 that we cannot escape it. Either our own 
 necessities and condition, or the necessities and 
 conditions of those about us, press hard upon 
 our hearts. Even the lightest hearted and the 
 most joyous among us, pausing to look back, 
 are so conscious of the cares that have attended 
 us, the trials through which we have passed, 
 and especially the many failures we have made, 
 the good resolutions broken, the purposes not 
 attained, that when we find ourselves looking 
 into that little home at Bethany, our hearts go 
 out with quick sympathy to the burdened 
 sister. 
 
 141 
 
142 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 But whatever may be the common experi- 
 ence or whatever is the pecuhar contribution 
 which such care-taking souls make to the com- 
 mon Hfe, and however great the obHgation 
 under which we are to the Marthas in our own 
 homes and in the Hfe about us, our Lord on 
 this occasion passed that by in order that He 
 might call to our attention and speak with 
 peculiar solemnity of another aspect of service 
 which Mary's conduct gave Him the opportunity 
 of emphasizing. 
 
 Whatever our first impression may be, we 
 cannot fail to note with what care He expresses 
 His judgment, and with what manifest purpose 
 He put it in a form to make it solemn teaching 
 for His Church and His followers for all the 
 future. 
 
 He was far from depreciating Martha's 
 service or Martha's affection. It is expressly 
 said, ** Now Jesus loved Mary and Martha," as 
 well as their brother Lazarus. 
 
 There is no occasion for making comparison 
 between the sisters or entering into discussion 
 as to the blessing of such careful service as 
 Martha rendered. We are free to turn our 
 minds in the channel of our Lord's thought, 
 and to seek to discover, if we may, just what 
 was the great truth which then filled His 
 thoughts and which He sought to make up- 
 
THE BEAUTIFUL DEED 143 
 
 permost in ours. So we ask ourselves be- 
 fore the open text, " What was it in Mary's act 
 which won for her and for it such distinguished 
 preeminence ?" 
 
 We all know the difference between the gift 
 that is the expression of a grateful heart and 
 the gift the value of which lies in its costliness. 
 The worth of the one is exactly measured by 
 its price in the market, by the immediate use to 
 which it can be put, or in the exchange which 
 it will secure. The other may have no market 
 value. It is but a withered flower, a bit of rib- 
 bon, a leaf sent in a letter, some fragment of 
 handiwork, but it is the expression of a love 
 that is embodied in the gift, a love that tries to 
 find utterance, that does not wait to obtain a 
 gift of value, but that knows its own worth, and 
 rejoices in the opportunity to pour itself out 
 upon the one who has called it forth. 
 
 St. John gives us an account of another inci- 
 dent in this little home in Bethany, where Mary 
 produced a box of costly ointment and poured 
 it out in anointing the Saviour's feet, while 
 Judas challenged the waste and figured the 
 money value of the gift if only it had been sold 
 that it might be given to the poor. 
 
 In what seems to be another account of the 
 same incident, St. Mark couples with it the ex- 
 pression of our Lord, which is illuminative of 
 
144 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 the thought before us. ** Let her alone," He 
 said, " she hath wrought," not ** a good work," 
 as it is in our Enghsh Bible, but in the more 
 expressive Greek, '' a beautiful work," *' upon 
 Me." 
 
 It had in it just that added touch which gives 
 true value. What the beautiful form is to the 
 vase, the delicate fragrance and exquisite colour- 
 ing to the rose, the fineness of finish to a work 
 of art, the charm in personal bearing, that which 
 we feel, but find it difficult to describe, what 
 makes one thing so much more precious than 
 another having apparently equal usefulness, 
 this lay in this act of Mary's. 
 
 It is because love carries this power in itself 
 to make the common deed, the casual word, the 
 passing opportunity, the occasion for its expres- 
 sion. The love-inspired act differs so much 
 from any other ! Mary in some way was doing 
 a beautiful deed, and our Lord recognized it, 
 and seized it, and held it up in perpetual re- 
 membrance as marking that relation to Himself 
 which He often characterized as of superlative 
 preciousness. 
 
 We all know what it means in common life, 
 but we ask ourselves, ** Are we thoughtful of 
 it ? As the days and weeks go by, are we mind- 
 ful to seek occasion for it ? Do we do this beau- 
 tiful deed in our relations to those we love in 
 
i| 
 
 THE BEAUTIFUL DEED 145 
 
 the home, in the circles of friendship, in our 
 daily intercourse ? The caress, the spoken word, 
 the turning aside to sit at the feet, — in some 
 way to give utterance to the affection that fills 
 the heart and carries with it its perpetual delight 
 to ourselves and those whom we love, are we 
 mindful of it ? Or do we allow it to be crowded 
 aside by what we call the pressure of business, 
 or the multitude of our cares, or the justifying 
 excuse that it has been expressed before, and 
 everybody knows it already ? Here at once is 
 the summons of the text for more frequent ex- 
 pression of love that conquers all, of the love 
 that satisfies the heart, the love which is in itself ' | 
 the joy and the supreme content of life. 
 
 But this was by no means all in Mary's act. 
 Love seeks comradeship ; and comradeship is 
 both the fruit and the root of love. Such dear 
 friends walk hand in hand. We find strength 
 in the sharing of a living presence. We utter 
 our casual thought with the sweet consciousness 
 that it is understood, and with eager expectancy 
 of the prompt and sympathetic response. 
 
 How desolate is the life which finds no re- 
 sponse, the lonely life of one who has no com- 
 rades, or who has schooled himself perforce of 
 hard necessity of nature or of experience, to 
 withdraw within himself as the snail within his 
 shell, and to travel in abiding loneliness. 
 
146 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 It is beautiful to think that our Lord, in His 
 complete humanity, longed for that and re- 
 sponded to that which we find sweetest and best 
 in our own life. 
 
 The cherished friend is coming to our house. 
 How often we busy ourselves anxiously with 
 careful preparation, only, when he comes, to find 
 ourselves too tired for the enjoyment of the in- 
 tercourse, the thought of which has filled our 
 heart in anticipation. But when we are wise, 
 how careful we are that there should be no 
 such interruption, and how promptly, when the 
 friend has come, we put all else aside and heart 
 answereth to heart in the loving intercourse 
 which often in its long experience but finds its 
 full fruition in that again we are together. 
 
 Mary greatly welcomed the returning Christ, 
 who now drawing near on His way to the cru- 
 cifixion scene, and soon to leave that shadowed 
 home never to return, sat at Jesus' feet. Is it 
 any wonder that His eyes turned to her, that 
 His heart opened in glad response, that His 
 pulses throbbed with all the feelings with which 
 we look upon those we love for the last time, 
 and are so glad to recognize that the love we 
 have for them answers back in the same love 
 for us. 
 
 This indeed was the blessed possession that 
 was never to be taken away from Mary. In all 
 
li 
 
 THE BEAUTIFUL DEED 1^7 
 
 the years to come, she was to carry as a treas- 
 ure in her soul, the memory of that hour. She 
 had sat at Jesus' feet, she had looked into His 
 loving face, she had seen in the depths of His 
 eyes the preparation for the giving of Himself 
 for her and for the sins of the world. The mem- 
 ory of that hour was to remain so vivid, so 
 satisfying, so compelling, in all her later life, 
 that she entered at once into the knowledge ,}j 
 of that new intimacy with the Risen Lord which || 
 was expressed in His promise: " Lo, I am|" 
 with you alway, even unto the end of the 
 world." 
 
 But we have to go still further. Mary's act 
 bore testimony that she recognized what Jesus 
 is in Himself, and what He demands of every 
 soul that will come to Him finding life. 
 
 When we read the Old Testament, we are 
 always aware that it is the story of the revela- 
 tion of God to men like ourselves, with the 
 same weaknesses, the same needs, the same ex- 
 posures to temptation that we have. The rev- 
 elation of God through this service is given un- ? 
 der limitations which exist in our own lives. 
 God was striving to make Himself known to 
 the world, but He could only do it in so far as 
 the hearts of a common humanity were opened 
 to the knowledge of an Unseen and Holy God. 
 
 When we turn to the New Testament, there 
 
148 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 is a significant change. Here is the story of 
 One who comes with supreme claims. He is 
 separated at once from common men. He 
 bears in Him the fullness of life that is in God. 
 He says, " I am the Way, the Truth, and the 
 Life." He says, ** Come unto Me, and I will 
 give you rest." He says, ** Those whom the 
 Father hath given Me, I have kept." He says, 
 ** No man cometh unto the Father but by Me." 
 His claims do not change or cease from the be- 
 ginning to the end. His efforts always are 
 directed to leading those who gather about 
 Him to a true understanding of Himself. His 
 teaching. His miracles, His companionship, — 
 all have this one purpose. Slowly, with great 
 I difficulty, and always with manifest incomplete- 
 ness, even His most intimate disciples are led to 
 this knowledge. Not until after His death and 
 His resurrection do they even seem to be fully 
 aware of the meaning of His teaching or of His 
 true character. But here in the course of it, as 
 the end draws near, we find in this woman, one 
 of the sisters whom Jesus loved, the expression 
 of a heart which seems to have opened as other 
 hearts about her had not, to a true understand- 
 ing of His Person. Instantly He responds to it. 
 Quickly He exalts it, and emphasizes the one 
 thing needful, which is recognition of Himself, 
 the opening of the heart and the surrendering 
 
THE BEAUTIFUL DEED 149 
 
 of the life with satisfying dehght, in its obedience 
 to Him. He says, " Mary hath chosen the good 
 part, which shall not be taken away from her." 
 So Mary stands as the type and the pattern 
 for those who, in the years to come, shall find 
 Christ, and finding Him shall enter into life. 
 The weary world burdened with its sins, the 
 broken heart conscious of the guilt from which 
 it cannot escape, the eyes that have long been 
 blind to the evidence of a Divine Love, and the 
 ears that have always been stopped to the voice 
 of God calling men to know Him, and, knowing 
 Him, to love and serve Him, — all now find 
 themselves addressed as never before and led in 
 ways hitherto closed to them, to that knowledge 
 of God and that acceptance of Him and His 
 power to save which brings the foregoing things 
 with life and peace. 
 
 This was the message of the disciples after 
 the Resurrection. Around this truth gathered 
 the early Church. Upon it it framed its creeds, 
 which were simple statements of fact, not theo- 
 logical discussions. It bore testimony that the 
 Father Almighty, the Maker of the heaven and 
 the earth, had come in the Person of His Son 
 Jesus Christ to be incarnate in our world, to 
 suffer and to die for our deliverance from sin, 
 to rise again that He might open the Kingdom 
 of Heaven to all believers, and in due time to 
 
150 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 come again to be the Judge of all. It was this 
 testimony to the Person of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ in the world, the revelation of God that 
 was in Him, and to His power to bring men to 
 God and to bring God to men, that constituted 
 the new Gospel, around which and by means 
 of which the Christian Church came into exist- 
 ence and proceeded to cast up the highway for 
 the coming of the Kingdom of God in all the 
 world. 
 
 Mary therefore was apparently the first, of all 
 
 *| ; who heard Jesus Christ, to recognize something 
 of the fullness of the Godhead that was in Him. 
 And in that hour, so near to the hour of His 
 crucifixion, it is easy to see with what 
 solemnity and joy the Lord, passing on to 
 look down upon Jerusalem and weep over her, 
 gazes for a moment into the shining face of the 
 disciple, who was in her newborn faith, the 
 prototype and the picture of the multitude 
 which no man can number, who in the ages to 
 come are to proclaim Him their Risen Lord. 
 
 Finally, Mary's act emphasizes the fact that 
 there are times and seasons in our relations to 
 God. The Lord's ministry was rapidly passing 
 away. The opportunity for the privileges of 
 
 • loving expression and for personal service 
 would be few. Mary seizes this one as it 
 passes ; and the wisdom of her act, not to say 
 
THE BEAUTIFUL DEED 151 
 
 its supreme importance, is what the Lord 
 recognizes and approves. It is not permitted 
 to us to live always on the heights of Christian 
 opportunity or of spiritual privilege. There 
 seem to be often periods, sometimes long, in 
 the average life when the pressure of daily 
 duties is too heavy for us and anxious cares 
 overwhelm even the most spiritually minded 
 Christian, — periods in which it is hard to throw 
 off the oppression of the daily burden or to 
 escape more than imperfectly, from the cloud 
 of depressing care. 
 
 It is well for us if we can, with Martha, busy 
 ourselves about the necessary duties and hold 
 fast enough to our faith to make it a tribute of 
 service to the Master Himself. 
 
 But there are times when the Lord means to 
 give us surcease of care, and to lift our spirits 
 into the light of His countenance, and to create 
 in us the radiant joy of a Divine companionship, 
 — times when our spirit responds to the spirit 
 of God, and when we are permitted to hear 
 the voice of God calling to us as the still small 
 voice spoke to the prophet after the whirlwind 
 and the fire. Then is the golden opportunity 
 for the man who would know God. In such 
 hours, the Master calls us to new duties, or 
 opens to us new doors of opportunity, or seeks 
 to bestow upon us new joys in new revelations 
 
152 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 of Himself. Well for us if, with Mary, we 
 recognize the hour and the privilege. 
 
 Mary was perhaps the first of the followers 
 of our Lord to discover that He wants not so 
 much our work as ourselves. In itself, what is 
 our work in the Kingdom of God anyway? 
 How small, how ignorant, how ineffective, and 
 how insufficient it is compared to the power of 
 God to accomplish all that He desires and to 
 bring in the Kingdom of Christ when He 
 wills ! But He gives us the privilege of work- 
 ing together with Him for our sake, rather than 
 for His. The work is for our development and 
 our discipline. It gives meaning to our daily 
 life. It exalts it to the plane of God's eternal 
 purpose and makes it a part of that very 
 eternity into which at last we are about to go, and 
 of which we learn in time that this life is indeed 
 a part. But the value of this service lies in its 
 being an expression of personal allegiance. 
 " My son, give Me thine heart," was not only 
 the original invitation, but the enduring one. 
 It never has been outgrown or transcended. 
 The expression of the love of the heart, the in- 
 dividual devotion of the soul in its entirety, 
 will ever remain the best response to the 
 Divine call, for we shall never cease to hear the 
 injunction, " If any man will come after Me, let 
 him deny himself and take up his cross daily 
 
THE BEAUTIFUL DEED 153 
 
 and follow Me." It is the surrender that is in- 
 volved in the following, the completeness of 
 the satisfaction that is found in being with 
 Him, that constitutes the exalting reward and 
 the sufficient service. 
 
 Mary, sitting at the feet of Jesus, is the em- 
 blem of this attitude on the part of the true be- 
 liever in every age. She anticipates the dis- 
 ciples themselves in discovering that though we 
 have the privilege of inviting our Lord, He 
 comes as the host rather than the guest. ** If 
 any man hear My voice and will open the door, 
 I will come in to him, and will sup with him, 
 and he with Me." How little even the disciples 
 caught of the true meaning of those most signif- 
 icant last three words, " he with Me " ! 
 
 We welcome the royal guest to our humble 
 home. We busily prepare for Him. It is a 
 great honour in the eyes of all the community 
 that He should come to break bread with us. 
 We have prepared a table and made ready our 
 frugal meal. It is the best that we have, which 
 we are offering. Now He stands at the door. 
 We hasten to open it. He smiles upon us with 
 loving response. When lo ! we discover that 
 His hands are full of gifts. He comes indeed 
 to receive and to do us the honour of entering. 
 In fact, He comes laden with that which will 
 enrich all our life. He partakes of what we 
 
 % 
 
164 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 have to offer, but in the partaking, He bestows 
 upon us gifts beyond price. For He is our 
 Lord, He for whom and by whom and in 
 whom all things exist, He who has access to 
 the treasure house of God, He who being rich, 
 for our sakes became poor, that we through His 
 poverty might be made rich ! 
 
 This is the form in which His invitation comes 
 to us to-day. By the thoughts in our heart, by 
 the words of His Gospel, by the prickings of 
 conscience, and the longings in our own souls 
 for better things, He is calling us to arise and 
 follow Him, without waiting to make ourselves 
 better or to prepare offerings which may be 
 worthy of His acceptance. He invites us to 
 come just as we are, because He loves us for 
 our own sake and for His ; and His invitation is, 
 indeed, that if we will come unto Him, we shall 
 find life, and finding life, shall have all. 
 
 f 
 
XIII 
 
 ACHIEVING THE IMPOSSIBLE 
 
 " Jesus said unto him, ' If thou canst ! All things are possible 
 to -him that believeth.' ''—Mark g : 2j, 
 
 THE Revised Version gives a new force 
 and beauty to this familiar text. In 
 our Lord's interview with the father 
 of the demoniac child, following upon the scene 
 of the Transfiguration, the Authorized Version 
 reads, " Jesus said unto him, ' If thou canst be- 
 lieve, all things are possible to him that be- 
 lieveth.' " The Revision puts it, '* Jesus said unto 
 him, * If thou canst ! ' " — in amazement that any- 
 one should question the sufficiency of God, or 
 the willingness on His own part to be the 
 minister of God in such a work of healing. 
 There is not a word of discussion as to the 
 character or extent of the need. That was 
 plain to every onlooker. There was human 
 misery in its most distressing form, — a father's 
 heart rent and bleeding over the hopeless con- 
 dition of his son lying on the ground foaming 
 and grinding his teeth before them all. He had 
 come to the disciples, and now he says in his 
 155 
 
166 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 despair, '' I spake with Thy disciples that they 
 should cast it out and they were not able." 
 Seeing Jesus approach, with a last despairing 
 hope he had turned to Him, and he cries, " If 
 Thou canst do anything, have compassion on 
 us and help us." To this cry, our Lord answers. 
 He turns at once to the treasure house of God, 
 so vast, so sufficient for every human need, so 
 near at hand, and so available for all. The 
 world had not known it ; and the world would 
 not now believe it. To this end. He Himself 
 had come. He had left the joys of heaven, 
 had taken upon Himself our sicknesses and 
 borne our sorrows, that He might deal with 
 just such suffering as this. Now He says, 
 " Here is help immediate, ample, — waiting for 
 your use, if you only knew it, if you would 
 only open your eyes to see it and your heart to 
 take it in." 
 
 On the doors of the vaults in some banks, 
 you can see time locks. They are so arranged 
 that when the vault is closed, it cannot be 
 opened until the hour of business the next day. 
 Bankers have learned that no vault is safe when 
 the man, who carries the key or possesses the 
 combination, may be attacked in his home by 
 robbers and forced at the point of a revolver or 
 under torture, to go with them and open it. In 
 defense against the weakness of human nature, 
 
ACHIEVING THE IMPOSSIBLE 157 
 
 the time lock has been invented, and now, no 
 matter how great the need, how large or how 
 small the treasure thus protected, it is safe 
 against any one's approach or any one's use 
 until the appointed hour. 
 
 Suppose the treasury of God's love were so 
 guarded. Suppose that it were closed under 
 specified conditions, to be opened, and its 
 treasures made available only at certain hours 
 and seasons to meet certain needs, or at the de- 
 mand of a certain kind of applicant. How 
 strange it would seem I How comparatively 
 useless for our necessities ! As it is, it not only 
 is not so closed, but the door stands forever 
 wide open, and our Saviour as He addresses 
 the suppliant father, seems to turn and wave 
 His hand to show the nearness of the treasure, 
 the openness of the door, the availability of all 
 the resources, not only for him who stands 
 there the suppliant, but for every man in all con- 
 ditions. Over it is written *' Whosoever will 
 may come." All that we have to do is to see 
 this and to believe it, and to believe it so far 
 forth as to take advantage of it. Jesus' aston- 
 ished exclamation, "If thou canst!" is forced 
 out of His heart by the surprise that any one in 
 whatever need should question the abundance 
 of the supply. 
 
 So much for the words themselves. They 
 
158 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 give us occasion to ask, *' What is the meaning 
 and what the place of faith in religion? " The 
 Bible uses the word from the beginning to the 
 end, — from the moment when Abraham be- 
 lieves in God, and it is '' counted unto him for 
 righteousness," to the end where the great 
 multitude that no man can number, is made up 
 of those who have believed and who have fol- 
 lowed the Lamb who now sits upon the throne. 
 We ask, **What is this believing, this having 
 'faith,' upon which so much depends in the 
 Gospel of Salvation ? " 
 
 Let us pass by at once the ordinary illustrations 
 to show what is the place of what we call trust, 
 in the common life. Everybody knows that 
 trust, or confidence, or faith, — whichever term 
 we use, — is necessary in all human affairs. 
 
 Why does not the little child walk ? He has 
 desire and he has muscular strength, but he 
 distrusts himself. He fears that he will fall. 
 The mother puts out her finger and the little 
 hand closes about it, and quickly he gains the 
 confidence which is necessary for the first step. 
 So the growing boy learns to skate, and to 
 leap, and to vault as he acquires confidence in 
 his own ability to do the thing to which he is 
 moved. So in turn the man engages in large 
 affairs. We wonder at the courage with which 
 the business man will invest so much of his cap- 
 
ACHIEVING THE IMPOSSIBLE 159 
 
 ital in the great structure or the new industry, 
 or the costly patent, — the amazing enterprise 
 with which the commerce of the world is 
 carried on and great ventures are taken in far- 
 away lands. It is not the work of the youth, 
 but of the man who has learned through long 
 experience to trust his own judgment ; and that 
 confidence now vindicates itself. So the com- 
 munity creates its institutions and uses them 
 because it has learned to trust in the stability 
 of the social organization. We trust our 
 neighbours, we trust the police, we trust the 
 means of transportation in the city, we trust 
 the Government. We go about our daily 
 afiEairs and w^e return and retire at night in 
 peace because of this which may be called our 
 social trust. Everywhere faith appears. Every- 
 where faith is necessary alike in all situations. 
 We mean by it that conviction which enables a 
 man to summon all his faculties to unite in the 
 purpose, or the act, or the mental state in 
 which all his energy works itself out. Our 
 habits are established, our feelings are grati- 
 fied, our experience is made profitable. In 
 short, the purposes of the hour are accom- 
 plished. 
 
 But passing from all these familiar illustra- 
 tions, let me lead your thought in another 
 direction. Consider the relation of the parent 
 
160 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 and the child. As you look at the little child, 
 you see merely an infant, but the father of that 
 child has a vision far different. He sees all the 
 possibilities of the future, the joy of his own heart 
 through the years of the boy's growing life, the 
 perpetuating of himself in his son, the heir of 
 his business, the inheritor of his purposes, the 
 life that is projecting his life and the work to 
 which he has given himself into the years that 
 shall follow his departure. Therefore, because 
 he has that vision, he devotes himself without 
 restraint to the welfare of his son. His money, 
 his time, his anxious thought, — all go to the 
 education of his child. He lavishes his 
 affection upon him. He gives him his con- 
 stant care. He accumulates for him his prop- 
 erty. He devotes all without restraint. And 
 the reason is manifest. He has faith in that 
 little child. On the strength of the vision that 
 he has of the future, his faith lays hold of the 
 unseen, and makes it so vivid and so real to 
 him that his whole life is governed by it. 
 When he stands with that infant in his arms in 
 the church for consecration in baptism, this is 
 what is before his mind. He sees all the 
 blessed possibilities of a human soul, the gift of 
 God. He treasures the promises of God con- 
 cerning it. He looks for divine help in doing 
 his part for the attaining of those hopes. He 
 
ACHIEVING THE IMPOSSIBLE 161 
 
 recognizes the need of a strength higher than 
 his own. He asks the Church to join with him 
 in their prayers for that help, because he is 
 aware that there are possibiUties in the future 
 of his son greater even than he himself can 
 imagine, and which are measured only by the 
 goodness of God. 
 
 Or, take another illustration. 
 
 Two distinct forces are always to be recog- 
 nized in the development of government and 
 the organization of human society. These 
 forces express themselves in opposing parties 
 variously called the Conservative and the 
 Radical, the Tory and the Liberal, or what you 
 will. They represent those on the one hand 
 whose thought is set upon institutions which 
 they value because of their age or because of 
 the smoothness and efficiency of their work- 
 ing ; and on the other hand, they represent 
 those who exalt principles above institutions. 
 The antagonism is deep and permanent. Ac- 
 cording to the one, principles exist for institu- 
 tions ; according to the other, institutions exist 
 for principles. These forces always clash, and 
 in their struggle, human society moves forward 
 and institutions and governments are de- 
 veloped. We constantly hear it said that men 
 are tired of this perpetual turmoil. They wish 
 we had in America a military despot, or, if not 
 
162 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 that, some form of fixed monarchical rule, that 
 we might be spared the endless disturbance 
 that comes from recurring elections with all the 
 agitation and wrangle they make. They 
 would be glad if the presidential election 
 might occur only once in eight years or in 
 twelve years, or better, — not at all. 
 
 The reply is that what they call disturbance 
 and unrest is in reality education. It is the op- 
 portunity for presenting truth to men, for the 
 restatement of eternal principles, for the awaken- 
 ing of the minds of men to know the meaning 
 of life, of order, and human society ; that, in 
 fact, nothing is more precious, nothing is better 
 for developing and magnifying the human mind 
 than this same disturbance. It shakes men out 
 of their selfishness and their sloth. It forces 
 them to consider the interests of others no less 
 than their own, to look forward and backward 
 over human history, to weigh and measure the 
 elementary forces which are never to be ig- 
 nored. 
 
 In just this lies the preeminent greatness 
 of President Lincoln. More than any other 
 president from the days of the Fathers was he 
 called in the critical hour to choose between 
 institutions on the one hand and principles 
 on the other. The issue was sharp in an 
 unparalleled degree. On the one side, were 
 
ACHIEVING THE IMPOSSIBLE 163 
 
 the institutions of Slavery and State Rights, 
 and the Constitution of the United States, and 
 the decisions of the Supreme Court, and the 
 fixed interpretations and habits of the people 
 based upon tradition and on established 
 custom. On the other side, were the eternal 
 principles of human liberty, — the right of every 
 man, whatever his colour or his condition, to 
 the pursuit of liberty and of happiness, and the 
 abiding conviction that human society can only 
 develop and human welfare can only be 
 attained for any man and any class in propor- 
 tion as liberty is secured for all. He made his 
 choice, and in that choice he showed and 
 secured his own preeminent greatness. He 
 made himself forever the ideal of the party of 
 liberty not only in America but in the world. 
 
 I asked one of the Russian revolutionary 
 leaders who was with us winter before last if 
 he did not believe that the aristocratic party in 
 Russia could be reasoned with, that one by one 
 they might be made to see the truth as he and 
 his compatriots hold it ; and he answered 
 " No." " But," I said, " they are men, and all 
 men are open, whether they know it or not, to 
 the force of argument. Patience and inces- 
 sant presentation of the truth will in time break 
 down unreasoning opposition however stub- 
 born." His answer was, " Not in this case. 
 
164 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 There is nothing to be done but to kill these 
 men." ''Then," I replied, "you do not believe 
 that they are men. You think them beasts, for 
 only beasts cannot be reasoned with, and must 
 be killed to be overcome." ** Yes," he said, 
 " they are wolves and not men." " Very well," 
 I replied, " then God help you, and God help 
 Russia, for from such men as you and from 
 such as you represent, there is absolutely no 
 hope." 
 
 Here, then, is the place of faith. It is the 
 witness to our belief not only in things that are 
 not seen, not only in principles that are endur- 
 ing, but in men, and all that is best in men as 
 children of God, endowed with reason, with a 
 conscience, and with a will to choose between 
 the right and the wrong, between the better and 
 the worse. Everywhere this power of faith is 
 demanded. It is the one essential thing in 
 every form of human life. Is it strange then 
 that faith is the essential in matters of religion, 
 that the saving of the soul, man's crowning 
 possession, turns upon faith ? The vision of 
 the unseen is not an idle dream. It is the 
 awakening of those powers by virtue of which 
 we are children of God. That many times re- 
 peated text of the Scripture is in three words : 
 *'The just;" that is, those who find life, 
 who realize the purpose of God and enter into 
 
ACHIEVING THE IMPOSSIBLE 165 
 
 it, ** shall live ; " that is, shall know that life, 
 and make it their own, " by faith ; " that is, by 
 the use of this power by virtue of which we are 
 men and not beasts, by which we can summon 
 all that is within us and our very selves to that 
 life which God in His loving kindness has 
 opened to us, in which escaping the bondage 
 of sin and of passion, breaking away from our 
 own despairing habits, our enduring helpless- 
 ness, we can by the divine energy planted 
 within us, rise into that better life where we 
 shall know God and have strength to serve 
 Him. ** The just— shall live— by faith ! " for 
 there is no other way in which men can live. 
 
 When God summons us then, to believe, 
 what does He mean ? He means that we shall 
 recognize that we are not made for this world 
 only. We are not like the beasts of the field 
 which to-day are here and to-morrow are gone, 
 not to return. But, as the wise man of the 
 Scripture has put it, ** He hath set eternity in 
 their hearts." God has planted in us that 
 capacity for better things, which, when we 
 come to ourselves, we interpret in Augustine's 
 phrase, ** Thou hast made me for Thyself, and 
 my heart cannot rest until it find itself in Thee." 
 Faith is the summons to recognize this, our high 
 calling of God. It is our committing ourselves 
 to that which is outside and above one's self, 
 
166 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 reaching up and laying hold of God's truths 
 and of God Himself, the awakening of our 
 better self, the summoning of our spiritual 
 energies that we may be what God intended us 
 to be. 
 
 So this summons of faith is a summons to 
 recognize that God is over all, both in this 
 world and in the next. We owe Him love and 
 service. We must give to Him the final ac- 
 count. He has a vast treasury of good to be- 
 stow, joys now, and possibilities beyond. Faith 
 is then the loving response of the soul to God, 
 whom to know aright is life eternal. Faith is 
 the recognition of the fact that remembering 
 God is opening the door for the sweetest and 
 most enduring joy. Earthly pleasures pall and 
 fail ; the keenest of them and the most promis- 
 ing of them in time prove as empty as the most 
 trivial. But when the soul awakens to know 
 God, when it gathers all its powers and gifts for 
 His service, it discovers in itself a new capacity 
 of pleasure, a new fullness of realized joy, which 
 is like manna to the hungry or the opening of 
 the very fountains of life to the thirsty. It is a 
 force recognized by the soul, bringing at once 
 an infinite peace as it tells of the joys that are 
 beyond, and of that life where we are to be hid 
 with Christ in God, — the life where we shall 
 *' see as we are seen and know as we are 
 
ACHIEVING THE IMPOSSIBLE 167 
 
 known." The ancient religions of India have 
 made much of the thought of Nirvafia where 
 human existence shall be lost in the eternal. 
 The faith of Christ makes that yearning a 
 reality and gives us in definite form, the pos- 
 session of that fellowship with God, which the 
 human heart must forever crave. 
 
 Faith tells us that we can never reach this 
 possibility or experience these joys by ourselves. 
 We have not attained to them here, and we 
 know it, and God knows it ; and we cannot at- 
 tain to them and will not without God's help. 
 Therefore, the summons to a faith which lays 
 hold upon God as the helpless upon the strong, 
 and by means of which the very strength of 
 God comes into our life and into our hearts ; 
 which enables us to do what otherwise would 
 be impossible, and to work out by Divine help, 
 the Divine purpose in us. So, the faith becomes 
 the Gospel of Jesus Christ, bearing testimony 
 that God has come to us in the person of His 
 Son. In that way the life of faith becomes a 
 blessed reality. For, Jesus does not rebuke us 
 for our sins or our follies. He does not argue 
 with us over our possibilities or our shortcom- 
 ings. He simply presents Himself. We see in 
 Him what we should be, and also what God is, 
 and through Him the love of the Father lays 
 hold of us, His children. We begin to long to 
 
168 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 be better men and women for His sake. We 
 long to attain to the joy and peace which fill 
 His heart. We long to grow into His likeness 
 and to reach the possibilities which are realities 
 in Him. We long, in short, to know and love 
 the God from whom He comes and whose 
 witness He is. Then we hear His voice and 
 we follow Him. We believe. We choose. 
 We give ourselves to Him ; and then comes the 
 new life. We begin to live by faith. It is not 
 our doing, or our making life for ourselves. It 
 is God's giving His life to us, renewing our 
 hearts, forgiving our sins, cleansing our very 
 souls from what is defiled and would destroy. 
 So, faith, — living by faith — is the one under- 
 lying truth of the whole Bible because the whole 
 Bible is true to life. " Believe, and all things 
 are possible." Stand off, keep away, remain on 
 the other side, hold back, hesitate, argue, doubt, 
 and what follows ? Even God can do nothing, 
 and the gulf between us and Him becomes 
 impassable. 
 
XIV 
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS 
 
 ** Jesus saith unto him, * Have I been so long time with you, 
 and dost thou not know Me, Philip ? ' " — ^oAn 14: g. 
 
 THERE is an infinite pathos in these 
 words uttered as they were by our 
 Lord in His last interview with His 
 disciples. The three years of His patient labour 
 with them, striving to make Himself known to 
 them and fit them to be His disciples in the 
 future, were behind Him, and before Him were 
 Gethsemane and Calvary. It was, therefore, 
 the last hour of their intimate relations and of 
 His eager service. One was immediately to 
 deny Him ; another had already planned His 
 betrayal ; all were to forsake Him and flee. We 
 wonder that after all which had transpired such 
 words could now be spoken. But the experience 
 of the twelve disciples stands in such close con- 
 nection with our own, and touches all life at so 
 many points, that there is reason why we to-day 
 should ask how it was that they did not know 
 Him better. 
 
 One reason was, I imagine, that they had 
 169 
 
170 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 not begun early enough. They were all grown 
 men and probably most of them well on in 
 middle life before they met the Lord. We all 
 know how hard it is for men of that age to 
 change their method of thought or of life, and 
 how still more difficult it is to open the mind 
 so thoroughly and to reconstruct all one's 
 views so completely as is necessary to under- 
 stand Jesus. 
 
 Now and again we hear parents expressing 
 fear of their children being persuaded to be- 
 come Christians or to join the Church too 
 young. They say, ** Wait until they come to 
 years of discretion " : as if in the years of 
 ignorance of their own hearts and of the mean- 
 ing of temptation they did not need all the 
 help that could possibly be given them by the 
 teachings and surroundings of the Church, and 
 by the responsibility of the solemn confession 
 which membership requires, to strengthen them 
 against the perils which lie before their young 
 feet! 
 
 One wonders how any one can raise such 
 questions when he has before his mind the 
 knowledge of his own personal history and of 
 the promptness with which Satan begins his 
 work in the youngest hearts. The fact is that 
 the heart begins very early to lose its sensibility 
 to religious truth. It has its appropriate sea- 
 
HINDRANCES AND HELPS 171 
 
 sons for spiritual impression, just as truly as 
 the mind has for intellectual apprehension, and 
 as the body has for exercising new functions or 
 putting forth new powers. If these years are 
 allowed to pass without taking advantage of 
 the opportunities they present, not only do 
 they not recur, but the heart becomes so truly 
 indurated that truth which once would have 
 made a vivid and permanent impression now 
 receives slight attention, and only with ex- 
 ceptional difficulty gains acceptance. The 
 habit of unbelief readily establishes itself, the 
 jtnind having the quality of fixing for itself the 
 grooves in which it runs and from which after- 
 wards it is growingly difficult to lift it. We get 
 accustomed to live away from God, just as 
 children brought up away from home not only 
 know little or nothing of home, but become ac- 
 customed to their separation from it. 
 
 Add to these the consideration that if open- 
 ing the heart to the love of God is postponed 
 until adult life, by just so much is time for 
 growth in the knowledge of God curtailed. If 
 the great business of life is such growth that 
 we may know God with something of fullness 
 and personal apprehension, that our faculties 
 may enlarge under that knowledge and the 
 truth of God not only be made clear to us, but 
 gain power with us, then by just so much as 
 
172 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 the time is curtailed, is the growth impaired. 
 Men may persuade themselves that by post- 
 poning an answer to the claims of religion until 
 adult life, they gain power of understanding 
 and know better what they then undertake, but 
 the fact is abundantly proved by the history of 
 the Church in all ages and in every condition 
 that by far its largest growth is from those who 
 come in early life, and, what is of still greater 
 significance, that lapses in character are most 
 abundant not among such young people but 
 among those who join in later years. Experi- 
 ence abundantly confirms the impression that 
 the younger the life that is consecrated to God, 
 the surer is likely to be both its growth and its 
 steadiness in that service. 
 
 Philip, it is true, was one of the earliest 
 disciples, finding the Lord with John and 
 James and Peter and Andrew at the time of his 
 baptism, but nevertheless the three years of 
 discipleship, given to men already settled in 
 the life without Christ, had proved all too short 
 for that understanding of the Master, and that 
 complete acceptance of Him, for which He 
 looked, and which laid such a burden on His 
 heart when in His last hours He did not find it 
 in them. 
 
 Another reason why Philip had not better 
 known the Lord was the fact that the great 
 
HINDRANCES AND HELPS 173 
 
 event in the Saviour's ministry, — His sacrificial 
 death — had not yet occurred. We are apt to 
 judge people by some single great event in 
 their relations to us rather than by the con- 
 stantly recurring incidents of daily intercourse. 
 As a matter of fact, these incidental acts are 
 the important ones in the revelation of charac- 
 ter and in the establishing of affection, though 
 we fail to remember it. The love of the hus- 
 band and the wife, ripening and strengthening 
 with the years, becomes what it is at last, so 
 much sweeter and richer and fuller than it was 
 imagined at the outset, not because of certain 
 single great acts which may have been possible 
 in the demonstration of affection, but because 
 of the daily intercourse. In fact, ** the thou- 
 sand unremembered acts of kindness and of 
 love " have bound them together, and made 
 them to so know and love each other that 
 their hearts have melted into each other until 
 the weaknesses and even the faults that pertain 
 to every human soul are either altogether over- 
 looked, or become in themselves a new reason 
 for tenderness and for love. The same is true 
 of the relation of parents to children. The day 
 comes when the son or daughter wakes up to 
 discover what the love of the father and of the 
 mother have been through the long years in 
 which they watched over and provided for 
 
174 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 them, though the years have left perhaps no 
 single event so prominent in marking that care 
 that it stands out notably in its effects. The 
 child discovers that it is not any single thing 
 that has been done or not done which is im- 
 portant as marking the true relation, but rather 
 it is the whole life ; and each year, as it came 
 and went, has given so much opportunity for 
 the manifestation of the parental love, which 
 through all has never wearied or weakened or 
 changed. 
 
 Philip and the other disciples were looking 
 for the great event, the shadow of which had 
 rested upon our Lord's life certainly during the 
 last months of His ministry and, perhaps, more 
 or less through it all. They had been touched 
 deeply and held by their daily intercourse with 
 Jesus, but significant as were its notable 
 features as we look back upon them to-day, it 
 had not yet been so impressive, as to establish 
 in them that knowledge of Him which prepared 
 them for these last critical hours. In fact, it 
 was with them very much as it is with us all, 
 for with us religion has become an ordinary 
 experience, often a commonplace one. When 
 we are aroused by the testimony of others, or 
 driven in some way to sharp self-examination, 
 we find that we are waiting for some great 
 manifestation, some exceptional moving of 
 
HINDRANCES AND HELPS 175 
 
 God's Spirit upon our hearts, some revelation of 
 God in our individual lives or inward experi- 
 ence, that shall lift us into a state of understand- 
 ing or of spiritual fervour that would justify our 
 confession and satisfy our deepest desire. But 
 God's plan is that we shall learn to know Him 
 in the ordinary relations of life, that we shall 
 find room both to know ourselves and to put 
 ourselves to the test of that service which will 
 bring to us the full and satisfying knowledge of 
 God in the common duties and relations of the 
 life which He has assigned to us each. It was 
 to this end that our Lord prayed that His 
 disciples might not be taken out of the world, 
 but kept from the evil. This earthly life, with 
 its humdrum details and daily routine, is the 
 arena upon which we are to win our honours 
 and gain the fitness for our privileges as 
 children of God which shall make that relation- 
 ship a reality. 
 
 It is easy to see how in the exceptional cir- 
 cumstances of the short years of their walking 
 with Jesus, the disciples failed to appreciate the 
 opportunity of knowing Him in this relation- 
 ship rather than in the starding events towards 
 which their anticipations were turned. 
 
 So we come to the question practical to our- 
 selves, " How shall we, the disciples of to-day, 
 know our Lord as it is His desire, and our 
 
176 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 privilege, that we should ? " Several things 
 are to be said in reply. We have not the op- 
 portunity which the early disciples had of hear- 
 ing the voice and looking into the face of the 
 Master, but we can observe the life and the 
 spirit of those about us who love Him. We 
 can know Him in those who live nearest to 
 Him. 
 
 Herein lies the power of the missionary on 
 the foreign field. He comes to a community 
 which has never seen a Christian, with a mes- 
 sage to deliver. The message is new, but he, 
 himself, is newer and stranger than his words. 
 Whether he is aware of it or not, attention is at 
 once fixed upon him, as little by little he comes 
 to be known to the people about him as having 
 no selfish motive, and as animated by a love 
 which is so strange to them as to be difficult to 
 understand. But as it declares itself more and 
 more unmistakably in his daily personal life 
 and in his hourly intercourse with them, they 
 are prepared to receive his message and to 
 learn the character of the Lord who is his Mas- 
 ter and whom he serves. 
 
 Read the story of John Paton in the New 
 Hebrides, or of Livingstone and Coillard in 
 Africa, and it is easy to see how such men were 
 able not only to live many years unarmed and 
 unprotected amid savages and in surroundings 
 
HINDRANCES AND HELPS 177 
 
 that would have been full of imminent danger 
 to any ordinary white man, but to win such a 
 personal influence as to make their names a 
 power long after their death, and to open the 
 hearts of a multitude to the Gospel that they 
 preached and lived. 
 
 Herein lies the worth of the biography of 
 such men, for example, as General Gordon. 
 One cannot read that book or the life of 
 Fenelon, or Madam Guyon, or Frances Haver- 
 gal, and many another of the same class, with- 
 out feeling that the knowledge of Christ is 
 within the reach of men and women in no es- 
 sential respect different from ourselves, and 
 without being moved to test ourselves by that 
 knowledge and to strive to gain the same 
 Christlikeness. General Gordon was a born 
 fighter, but being such by nature and temper- 
 ament the wonder was that everywhere whether 
 in England or China or the Soudan men gave 
 him their hearts. Many men were abler, many 
 more brilliant, many more assured of success, 
 but there was that in him that made men love 
 him and trust him. All felt that here was a man 
 in whose very face shone the love of Christ 
 which filled his heart, and they recognized that 
 there was in him that intimacy with Christ and 
 that fullness of personal knowledge of Christ 
 and perfect allegiance to Christ which made 
 
178 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 him different from other men and gave to him 
 an irresistible charm. 
 
 When the saintly Archbishop Leighton had 
 left the room in the little inn where, as the 
 story goes, he had been storm-bound for a 
 night, a travelling business man who had been 
 detained with him, arose and said : "If only 
 such a saintly man as he is fitted to go to 
 heaven, what will become of me ? " When the 
 next morning the good bishop appeared, that 
 stranger came to him with heart filled with 
 penitence for his sins, and asked how he might 
 find forgiveness and be led to the same knowl- 
 edge of the Lord which so possessed him. 
 
 This is the blessing which saintly lives dif- 
 fuse in their ordinary intercourse, and this is 
 the influence which is open to us all in the 
 fellowship of the Church. 
 
 Jonathan Edwards wrote the ** Life of David 
 Brainerd," his young son-in-law, the saintly mis- 
 sionary to the Indians in New Jersey, in which 
 were sayings like this : *' I long to be as a 
 flame of fire continually glowing in the Divine 
 service and building up Christ's kingdom to 
 my latest dying moment." That little book, 
 filled with the presence of Christ, as disclosed 
 in the life of one wholly given to Him, fell into 
 the hands of the young Englishman, Henry 
 Martyn, and sent him far away to try to do a 
 
HINDRANCES AND HELPS 179 
 
 similar work in India, saying, "Ten thousand 
 times more than ever do I feel devoted to the 
 precious work. O, gladly shall this blood be 
 shed, every drop of it, if India can be benefited 
 in one of her children." Years afterwards 
 travellers in Persia, where Henry Martyn died 
 on his journey through central Asia on his way 
 home, found aged men who remembered him 
 and spoke of " that young Englishman " as 
 **the most beautiful soul" they had ever seen. 
 
 We shall know more of Christ as we acquaint 
 ourselves with the lives of those who have lived 
 near to Him in the past, and put ourselves 
 more and more completely under the influence 
 of those about us who are living nearest to Him 
 to-day. 
 
 Then again we shall gain larger knowledge 
 of Christ as we bring our lives to the daily test 
 of His. A more careful honesty, a more watch- 
 ful governing of the temper and of the tongue, 
 a more tender consideration of those about us, 
 lest we wound, or grieve, or injure, a steadier 
 purpose of purity, the putting up of a stouter 
 fight for every form of Christian manliness and 
 courage and patience, will bring to the inner- 
 most heart a perception of the character of 
 Christ and a sense of nearness to Him which 
 cannot fail to give a sense of knowing Him 
 that will bring blessing and peace. This is the 
 
ISO THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 ultimate reward of such faithful self-discipline. 
 It not only gives access of strength, fitness for 
 larger and more, and more fruitful, service, 
 the sense of personal power and inward peace, 
 but it also makes real the presence of the Lord 
 Himself. It secures His entrance and abiding 
 in the hearts which are thus enlarged and fitted 
 as His abode. 
 
 So also prayer as a habit and as a ripening 
 experience gives knowledge of Christ. 
 
 Phillips Brooks said, *'We cannot think ill 
 of one for whom we habitually pray." Such is 
 the power of prayer to drive evil out of the 
 heart and to open the springs of the sweeter 
 life. This is an immediate blessing that comes 
 as a by-product to the exercise of the God- 
 given power. But a further blessing and an 
 even more assured product is the immediate 
 and constant sense of the presence of God in 
 prayer. The heart that has shut the world out, 
 and gathered in hand its faculties and brought 
 itself in the quiet of its seclusion to the foot of 
 the throne of grace, quickly has such a sense of 
 nearness to God that the knowledge of God, the 
 understanding of His love in Jesus Christ be- 
 comes a distinct and abiding possession. So 
 prayer, whatever may be said of its value as 
 petition or as praise, brings this priceless ac- 
 quisition to the soul of the Christian who appre- 
 
HmDRANCES AND HELPS 181 
 
 ciates his privileges and trains himself in the 
 habit of constant and thoughtful devotion. 
 Herein lies also the great value of public wor- 
 ship and of the sacraments. No Christian can 
 make constant use of them without steadily- 
 growing in the apprehension of the Lord and 
 winning an increasing sense of intimacy with 
 Him. 
 
 If, then, the Lord's words to Philip are ex- 
 pressive, what must be the sorrow in His heart 
 when to-day He finds disciples who are will- 
 ing to live without that knowledge of Himself 
 which He has a right to expect in them ? Here 
 is a method simple and accessible to all where- 
 by that evil can be removed and He can be 
 spared that pain. 
 
 For ourselves we may consider, as we close, 
 the blessing that comes with this fuller knowl- 
 edge of Him. It opens the way for His love 
 for us. He had just said in His intercourse 
 with the disciples : *' Ye are they who have 
 continued with Me in My trials." " And hav- 
 ing loved His own who were in the world," 
 John says, " He loved them unto the end." 
 This is the expression of His desire to dwell 
 in intimacy with His disciples, and the record 
 years afterwards of the blessing that comes 
 from that. It is this indwelling of Christ in 
 our hearts which gives power over ourselves. 
 
182 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 His love drives out all lesser loves. The love 
 of self, so destructive and so humiliating, shrinks 
 into nothingness in the presence of His greater 
 love. The temptation to surrender to trivial 
 things, and to find no time for God, and to give 
 way to petty impulses and unworthy thoughts 
 and passions, is quickly overcome when one is 
 conscious of his relations to Him who loved us 
 and gave Himself for us. Because He longed 
 to see His disciples grow to the full stature of a 
 splendid Christian manhood with mastery over 
 themselves and over the world, He spoke with 
 such eager pathos of His desire that they should 
 know Him. Such would be His words were He 
 with us to-day ; and, speaking to us across the 
 years. His word to Philip is our summons to 
 know Him as is our privilege, and to welcome 
 Him as is His due. 
 
XV 
 
 THE ENLIGHTENING OF THE HEART 
 
 " Having the eyes of your heart enlightened." — Ephesians i : i8. 
 
 THE Revised Version changes the fa- 
 miUar text to read not, *' having the eyes 
 of your understanding enUghtened," 
 but " the eyes of your heart." The Aposde 
 Paul is a bold coiner of speech. When in his 
 first letter to the Corinthians, he had occasion 
 to write of the necessity of self-discipline, he 
 said not, *' I keep under my body," but " I beat 
 my body in the face." The temptations of the 
 flesh are as an enemy in the arena which is to 
 be met with all the fierce vigour of the trained 
 athlete, and subdued both with skill and 
 violence. When he writes to the Romans of 
 the impelling impulse which had long held him 
 to the purpose of crossing the sea to bring the 
 Gospel to them, he says, '^ am a debtor to 
 the world." He owes to them what they never 
 owned and do not value, but the possession of 
 which, in his own mind, is to him a burden as 
 of a debt which must be discharged. 
 
 Again, in his second letter to the Corinthians, 
 183 
 
184 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 he exhorts them to beneficence with a vision of 
 these late days when money is the overwhelming 
 temptation and the greed of gain possesses men 
 as an intoxication until they are, in the frenzy 
 of the Exchange, described as being drunk with 
 money. He speaks of beneficence as a charism, 
 the grace of God, — a virtue to be obtained by 
 no human effort, but only by divine enduement. 
 
 So, finally, in his second letter to Timothy, 
 his beloved disciple, bidding him farewell, he 
 speaks of his death, which was near at hand, in 
 nautical terms, as of a ship putting out to sea ; 
 *' The time of my departure is at hand." He is 
 going out upon that last voyage from which no 
 traveller returns, — to him no uncertain trip, — a 
 journey to the desired haven, the home for 
 which his soul longed. In the same way in our 
 text, he coins a phrase and speaks of the en- 
 lightenment of the heart. 
 
 But Paul is no mere maker of phrases. He 
 knew the temptations of the flesh. He was 
 burdened with the great need of the Gospel for 
 the world. He understood the power of the 
 love of money. He had a vivid anticipation of 
 the joy of heaven. Therefore, the terms which 
 in the successive instances he used. 
 
 Now he has a burning desire for rich bless- 
 ings upon the church in Ephesus to which he is 
 writing. He proceeds eagerly to describe them. 
 
ENLIGHTENING THE HEART 186 
 
 His prayer is that God may give to them a 
 " spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowl- 
 edge of Him," that *' having the eyes of their 
 heart enlightened, they may know what is the 
 hope of His calling." That hope, in his thought, 
 meant the full content of the Christian life as it 
 is hid with Christ in God, the joy of faith, the 
 assurance of growth, the peace of a quiet spirit, 
 the sense of fellowship with God and intimacy 
 with Him the source of all good. *' The riches 
 of the glory of His inheritance in the saints." 
 You recognize the difference between an in- 
 heritance and a mere possession. The new life 
 into which they were called is, in Paul's view, 
 an inheritance, — something not won, not de- 
 served by any right in one's self, but a treasure 
 passed down to the possessor by the benefac- 
 tion and love of one who has possessed it be- 
 forehand. The gift of God through Jesus Christ 
 is in his eyes a possession too rich, too beauti- 
 ful, too precious to be described in words, but 
 something to be entered into and taken posses- 
 sion of and enjoyed by the help of the Divine 
 enlightenment. He seemed to see what we 
 often see, young men entering into inheritances 
 for which they have no fitness, which, instead 
 of being a blessing, prove a curse, as in their 
 inexperience or carelessness, the treasure is 
 squandered, or the great business is destroyed, 
 
186 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 bringing evil to themselves and ruin to others. 
 His earnest prayer is that these dear friends in 
 Ephesus for whom his heart yearned, who were 
 his children in Christ, might know the value of 
 their inheritance, and by the blessing of God, 
 might be prepared to receive it. "And the ex- 
 ceeding greatness of His power to usward who 
 believe." He knew the power of God in his 
 own heart and life. What he could not do for 
 himself, God had done for him. In the strength 
 of this new power he had lived his twenty years 
 of renewed life. He had shaken off the old life 
 with its purposes and passions, with its loves 
 and hates. He had become a new man in 
 Christ Jesus, and through all the years of his 
 great ministry, he had been sustained by that 
 power, conscious to himself, and visible to others 
 wherever he went. The power of God had been 
 manifestly upon him. He had conquered his 
 enemies, because he had been enabled to con- 
 quer himself. 
 
 And now about to speak for the last time, from 
 a far-away prison, to these young Christians, 
 his eager prayer is that they too may know the 
 exceeding greatness of the power of God, that it 
 may do in them all and more than it has done 
 in him, and that, not their understanding sim- 
 ply, but their hearts may be filled with the con- 
 sciousness of it, and that their whole being may 
 
ENLIGHTENING THE HEART 187 
 
 be so possessed with the spirit of God that they 
 shall have no difficulty in living the new life 
 into which they are born. All this, he describes, 
 as wrought for them ** in Christ." He has de- 
 scribed his own life as a Christian, as lived ** in 
 Christ." He loved to use the phrase, he dwelt 
 upon his relation to Christ as life in an atmos- 
 phere which always surrounded him, which fed 
 and sustained his whole being, from which there 
 was no danger of his escaping, and which finally 
 became a part of himself, as it were, of his na- 
 ture, as the sea is to the fish, and the air to the 
 bird. The Christ whom God had raised from 
 the dead had called him, Saul of Tarsus, a per- 
 secutor, and had forgiven his sins, had renewed 
 his life, had accepted him as a disciple and sent 
 him forth as a witness, and was now waiting to 
 receive him as a friend. In His name he had 
 preached, in His power he had fulfilled His 
 mission, and the life that was in him had passed 
 on to these other disciples. He would have 
 them know that power in its fullness, and find 
 their joy, their strength, their peace in this life 
 in Christ, So, when he comes in the narrow 
 compass of a dictated letter to send his farewell 
 message, he compresses his whole thought into 
 this burning prayer, — that God would open the 
 eyes of their hearts, that they may know and 
 feel all that he feels. 
 
188 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 Here then is the something that we want to 
 apprehend. It has been said of our day that 
 ** the age needs not Hght on the understanding 
 but dew upon the heart." We all know what 
 it means to have the intellect enlightened. 
 Everywhere we are encountering new knowl- 
 edge. The sciences are all new, the practical 
 affairs of life are conducted in new methods, 
 with new instruments, and we may almost say, 
 with new purposes. We live not only on a new 
 continent, but in a veritable new world. En- 
 lightenment of the understanding seems at 
 times the single, all-important necessity. All 
 our great system of schools, and colleges, and 
 universities is to the one end of providing this 
 enlightened understanding for the growing 
 generation ; and we summon the young people 
 to every sacrifice to attain to the enlightenment 
 which is so much needed. We are charmed 
 when we come upon any indication of what it 
 holds in store for them. When Professor 
 Agassiz came to America and made his first 
 journey westward from the seacoast, he sat all 
 day in the train looking out of the window, for 
 everywhere he quickly discovered what no one 
 else had seen, — signs of the action of the great 
 glacier of the ice period upon the surface of the 
 continent. Every rounded hill, every pond in 
 Massachusetts, every undulation in the levels 
 
ENLIGHTENING THE HEART 189 
 
 south of Lake Erie was to him the proof of the 
 theory of the Ice Age as he had held it. And 
 these indisputable signs of a great geological 
 epoch had lain openly before the eyes of gene- 
 rations of men who had been blind to see them. 
 The record of geological history was written on 
 the very face of the continent, and up to that hour 
 no one had read it. With what excitement he 
 turned the leaf of the great story ! With what in- 
 terest he told what he saw ! With what open-eyed 
 wonder people responded to the new teaching I 
 We want enlightened intelligence in matters 
 of religion. There are truths as new, as im- 
 portant, and as interesting in regard to reve- 
 lation, and in regard to the Bible. A new the- 
 ology is the demand and the inevitable product 
 of every age. Many men are intellectually too 
 lazy, too blind in their intelligence to deal with 
 these new problems or to grapple with new 
 thought. We may well pray that the Church 
 everywhere, and all believers, may have as a 
 gift of God, enlightenment of their understand- 
 ing. Continually we are tempted to put for- 
 ward what we call our *' ideas " or our " opin- 
 ions," traditional views for which we have only 
 the authority of ancestral teaching, in the place 
 of knowledge which we have gained for our- 
 selves, or to which we have given any labour 
 in the effort to establish it. 
 
190 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 Paul truly was the last of the early believers 
 to disparage the understanding, or to think 
 lightly of its importance. But he knew some- 
 thing far more important than that. Therefore, 
 his prayer is not for the enlightenment of the in- 
 tellect, but for the dew of heaven upon the 
 heart. The heart is the man, and the man 
 must be reached if the work of God is to go for- 
 ward. Sadly, we discover that the enlighten- 
 ment of the intellect goes but a short way in 
 changing the character. Character rests upon 
 decisions of the will, the abiding purposes of 
 life, and these are determined primarily by the 
 feelings. It is therefore the enlightenment of 
 the heart, the stirring up of the feelings, the 
 opening of the deep wells of the soul, and the 
 appeal to the essential nature of the man him- 
 self that alone answers the call of God, and that 
 alone can make men free, in the large sense of 
 the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The mere accu- 
 mulation of knowledge is like the stuffing of the 
 stove with fuel — it remains as cold and dead as 
 the iron itself until the fire is kindled, which 
 alone can transform it, and set free its im- 
 prisoned energies. 
 
 When we meet a man thus transformed, one 
 in whom the eyes of the heart are indeed en- 
 lightened, how all hearts open to him ! 
 
 Some years ago, a young Scotch professor 
 
ENLIGHTENING THE HEART 191 
 
 came to America. He travelled from college 
 to college. Everywhere the young men flocked 
 about him, and he held their hearts in his hand. 
 His tongue was as a tongue of fire, and his face 
 shone with the light that won all hearts. What 
 was it that gave Henry Drummond his power ? 
 He was a traveller, but there were many others 
 more venturesome and with more thrilling tales. 
 He was a scholar, but by no means of the first 
 rank. He was a fluent speaker, but that means 
 little in a land of fluent speakers. His power 
 lay in his personality. Every one who sat be- 
 fore him felt that here was a man with a heart, 
 a man in whom the love of Christ was the 
 supreme passion, and whose whole nature had 
 been surrendered to that love and was now per- 
 meated with that consuming passion. The love 
 of God which had taken possession of him be- 
 came in him love for his fellow men, — a deep, 
 generous abiding love. Hearts everywhere re- 
 sponded to it and multitudes of young men 
 were awakened into a new life and started in 
 new paths because Henry Drummond opened 
 the eyes of their hearts. 
 
 We have only to ask then how this prayer of 
 the Apostle is to be answered? It involves the 
 breaking off of the crust that forms upon us all 
 and the letting in of the light which, coming 
 from God, should, as John says in his Gospel, 
 
192 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 " lighten every man, coming into the world." 
 The answer to this prayer manifestly must come 
 first of all by the gift of the Spirit of God. As 
 the Apostle himself said, ** God, who com- 
 manded the light to shine out of darkness hath 
 shined in our hearts." The light which he and 
 his fellow disciples saw was a light not their 
 own, but from the Spirit of God. They were 
 only too eager to bear testimony to it. " Things 
 which eye saw not and ear heard not, and 
 which entered not into the heart of man, what- 
 soever things God prepared for them that love 
 Him, unto us God revealed them through the 
 Spirit." This was their glad testimony. It 
 was the light of the glory of God as it first 
 shone in the face of Jesus Christ, which had 
 come to shine in their hearts, and which the 
 Apostles so longed to see shining in the hearts 
 of all about them. 
 
 We have a quick, tender sorrow for men 
 who are blind. Every one instinctively helps 
 the blind man lest harm befall him, impelled 
 with a common desire to do something to make 
 up to him for the inexpressible loss. How much 
 tenderer and more compelling sympathy should 
 we feel for those who are blind in the things of 
 the spirit ! This is the measure of the Apostle's 
 desire, the impelling impulse behind his prayer, 
 as he looked to God to do what men cannot do 
 
ENLIGHTENING THE HEART 193 
 
 for themselves, and as we hear him to-day pray- 
 ing for us and appealing to us to look to God 
 also for what we cannot do for ourselves. 
 
 This is the great gift from God which Jesus 
 Christ came into the world to bring. When 
 Paul stood up to bear witness to it, there were 
 few about him who could confirm his word or 
 even understand the meaning of his message. 
 But the world to-day is filled with men and 
 women in whom the light of the glory of God, 
 as it shone in the face of Jesus Christ, is in a 
 measure also revealed. Everywhere something 
 is known of that light. Everywhere men are 
 ready to recognize the enlightening of the heart 
 and the change of the life that comes with the 
 acceptance of His word. So, the answer to 
 Paul's prayer is to be sought in hearing the 
 summons of Christ to follow Him. It begins in 
 confession of need, in the crying out of the 
 heart for forgiveness, in earnest purpose to do 
 the will of God, in the confession of Jesus Christ, 
 and taking up one's cross daily and following 
 Him. The way is straight, and the duty is 
 simple. It requires merely the enlightening of 
 the heart. One need wait for no new knowl- 
 edge. The little child is not forbidden, and the 
 chief of sinners may find the fullness of the new 
 life, as "without money and without price," so 
 without previous preparation and without pro- 
 
194 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 bation of any kind. Every man may, if he will, 
 come at once to Him and get His blessing. 
 But that Paul's prayer may be answered and 
 the blessing may be realized, there must be the 
 beginning at once of the clean life. The foolish 
 heart was darkened by wrong-doing. Men have 
 always erred in their hearts and lost the vision 
 of truth when they have done what they knew 
 to be wrong. Satan has been recognized as 
 filling men's hearts, when they have been led 
 away in falsehood and in shame. Personal im- 
 purity, as Burns has said, *' hardens all within 
 and petrifies the feelings." 
 
 If, then, men would have their hearts softened 
 and the eyes of the heart enlightened, that they 
 may not only know God, but that they may 
 know and attain to their better self, this is the 
 way of it, — interpreting the invitation of Christ 
 to mean turning over a new leaf in beginning 
 to lead a different life, " quitting their mean- 
 ness," as has been said, stopping at once, and 
 praying God for help to stop completely, the 
 old wrong-doing and to give all their strength 
 to the new purpose to do right. 
 
 This is the condition upon which the eyes of 
 the heart shall be enlightened, and the light of 
 God and the peace of God shall take possession 
 of the soul. We are to remember that Chris- 
 tianity is not a duty to be proved. It is a life 
 
ENLIGHTENING THE HEART 195 
 
 to be lived. And it was because Paul knew the 
 reality of that life, the possibility of it, and the 
 attainment of it, that he so earnestly prayed for 
 those Christians in Ephesus. His prayer for 
 them is to-day his prayer for us, and, as it was 
 a trumpet call from God to arouse them to that 
 giving of themselves in which they were to be 
 leaders in the service of God, so it is to us, one 
 and all, the voice of God calling us to enter into 
 our inheritance, and to know for ourselves the 
 exceeding greatness of God's power, and the 
 riches of the glory of our inheritance in Christ 
 Jesus, if we will only have it. 
 
XVI 
 
 THE CHALLENGE OF CHRIST 
 
 " If I do not the works of My Father believe Me not, but if I do 
 them, though you believe not Me, believe the works." — John 
 10:37-38. 
 
 THE great difference between Jesus and 
 other leaders of men lies in the har- 
 mony between His life and His teach- 
 ing. He alone could appeal with unquestioned 
 force to what all men could see of His character 
 and His works. In every instance it was this 
 appeal which silenced his gainsayers. 
 
 Socrates gathered the young men of Athens 
 about him and sharply exposed the follies of 
 their lives ; and then himself turned to their 
 loose pleasures, and justified himself on the 
 ground of his moderation. 
 
 Goethe, the most fertile and brilliant mind of 
 his day and the first great teacher of socialistic 
 principles, laid hands on whatever he saw that 
 he wanted and did not hesitate to take it for 
 himself. He lived a life of pleasure. 
 
 Rousseau, the philosopher of love and the 
 first to make love the dominant motive in the 
 196 
 
THE CHALLENGE OF CHRIST 197 
 
 novel of modem life, was himself so sensual that 
 his very name is an offense in many ears. 
 
 The French philosophers of the eighteenth 
 century proclaimed fine ideals and sought to in- 
 troduce a new era of thought and society ; the 
 immediate outcome was the French Revolution 
 and the weeks of the Terror. 
 
 Even our own Benjamin Franklin, the phi- 
 losopher of common sense, the Poor Richard of 
 the Wise Man's Almanac, when he went to 
 Paris, if rumour can be trusted, found himself 
 dazzled and won by the pleasures of that gay 
 capital. 
 
 The fact is, as recorded by the historian of 
 the England of the eighteenth century, that *' the 
 times when morality has been most preached 
 are the times when it has been least practiced.'' 
 But when we turn to Jesus, all changes. 
 From that day to this. He has held the world 
 by what the Gospel calls His ''works." The 
 beauty, the beneficence, the consistency and 
 the sweetness of His life impressed the men of 
 His day, even in the face of their bitter hostility. 
 The very soldiers turned without executing the 
 order for His arrest, awed by the unmistakable 
 character of the man upon whom they could 
 not venture to lay hands. 
 
 His Gospel was new, and for this reason it 
 gave life, because it was life. It takes a soul to 
 
198 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 win a soul ; and only a life so consistent, so per- 
 fect, can win and inspire, and remake other 
 lives. His speech was the speech of the people ; 
 the lilies of the field, the birds of the air, the 
 shepherd at his humble task, the fisherman on 
 the sea of Galilee drawing his nets, furnished 
 the metaphors and the terms in which His spir- 
 itual message was delivered. And that mes- 
 sage is as charming in those terms to-day as it 
 was in the ears of the men who first heard it. 
 
 But it was not the novelty of the speech that 
 won for Him acceptance or that made His Gos- 
 pel new. He turned to the Old Testament and 
 found no fault with its ancient history and its 
 archaic phraseology, but He interjected into it a 
 new meaning, and He drew out of it that pre- 
 cious content of Divine Truth which had made it 
 a living Gospel to the men of the generations 
 before Him, and which makes it a live book for 
 the men of to-day. He was not troubled as we 
 are about the old doctrines and old forms of 
 speech. The great truths which had possession 
 of Him made all things new and all speech serv- 
 iceable. The revelation of God in the past was 
 gathered up into the new and greater revelation 
 of God that filled His heart, and His life and spirit 
 were what they were because of the power of 
 that truth upon Him. He came from His Father. 
 He did the will of His Father. The life of His 
 
THE CHALLENGE OF CHRIST 199 
 
 Father was manifested in Him, and when the 
 hour came to return to that world out of which 
 He had come, His promise was that as it was 
 expedient for Him to go away, He would send 
 the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, who would 
 abide with His disciples forever. This supreme 
 revelation of the Godhead in which lies all the 
 possibility of the Divine love, and the Divine 
 purpose and plan of the Divine will, and all the 
 perfection of Divine existence, was given to 
 Him, and through Him to the world. It has 
 been the central truth in the possession of His 
 Church from that day. Men had no regard for 
 it for generations. But a God who so loves the 
 world, not sects, not a chosen people, but a 
 world of sinners, as to give His Son to die for 
 the world, was a revelation new and overwhelm- 
 ing. The knowledge of this truth gave Him 
 His message of redemption. It fixed the line 
 of His own immediate work. The love that 
 filled His heart made the redemption which 
 crowned His earthly ministry complete, and con- 
 stitutes that redemption His finished work and 
 the abiding doctrine in man's knowledge of 
 God. So with His teaching of sin and of judg- 
 ment. The burden of sin rested upon His 
 weary heart. His teaching could not arrest its 
 destructive progress. Nothing but a sacrificial 
 death could stop its deadly career. There was 
 
200 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 ever before Him the vision of the open grave. 
 The shadow of the Cross stretched out to meet 
 Him. Months before the end He began to 
 speak of His death that He was to accompHsh 
 in Jerusalem. What wonder then that the vision 
 of the Final Judgment before which all men 
 must appear, every man to give an account of 
 himself, constitutes a vital part of the revelation 
 which was committed to Him ? Indeed, He 
 knew that the Father has given all judgment 
 to His Son, and that in the person of Jesus 
 Christ, men are to find their final Judge. 
 
 These fundamental doctrines of the Christian 
 faith were the inspiration and the controlUng 
 power in His life ; and it was His life which 
 gave its proclamation of these truths their ac- 
 ceptance and their authority. They laid hold 
 of men and possessed them, because the men 
 about Him saw that they had laid hold of and 
 possessed Him. The revelation that was to win 
 the world to God was first made plain in the 
 life of Him who was filled and controlled by 
 them. 
 
 When we turn from Jesus to His disciples, 
 what do we find ? These are among His last 
 words : '* Believe Me that I am in the Father and 
 the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the very 
 works' sake. Verily, verily, I say unto you, he 
 that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall 
 
THE CHALLENGE OF CHRIST 201 
 
 he do also ; and greater works than these shall 
 he do, because I go unto the Father." He came 
 from the Father, He lived the life of the Father, 
 and He returned again to Him, that the power 
 of God might forever abide with His disciples. 
 Therefore, the promise that they shall do 
 greater works than His, for His finished work 
 is to produce its latest results through them. 
 But the method is to be always the same. They 
 are to be believed for their works' sake. Their 
 life is to be the sole sufficient witness and con- 
 firmation of their testimony. Therefore, we 
 find them acting always in His name ; Peter and 
 John are healing the cripple in the beautiful gate 
 of the temple and we hear them saying at once : 
 " Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this man 
 or why fasten ye your eyes upon us as though 
 by our own power or godliness we had made him 
 walk? God has glorified His Son Jesus, and 
 by faith in His name this man has been made 
 strong, whom ye behold and know." They 
 spoke the speech of the people ; they were men 
 out of the ranks of the people ; but they were 
 exalted infinitely above the people because they 
 lived the life and did the works of Jesus. They 
 had taken up His cause and daily they followed 
 Him. Therefore, they could say as Paul said, 
 *' What things ye have seen and heard in me, 
 do." It was this appeal to the witness of their 
 
202 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 lives patterned after Jesus Christ, and, with all 
 their weaknesses and mistakes and failures, still 
 strenuously shaping according to that pattern, 
 that won first the attention of the men of their 
 day, and then the place of authority over them. 
 "Behold how these Christians love one an- 
 other!'' became the universal testimony in 
 the world in which they lived. Pliny, from his 
 position as governor in Bithynia, wrote to the 
 emperor in Rome : " These Christians are a 
 people who may be seen going out daily to 
 their work as vine dressers and plowmen sing- 
 ing the praises of One named Jesus whom they 
 worship." 
 
 It was a new gospel, but not new because of 
 the speech in which it was uttered or the power 
 of eloquence in the men who proclaimed it, but 
 new because of the lives it everywhere pro- 
 duced. 
 
 We Christians face the world to-day with the 
 duty of preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 
 It is a new gospel as much as it ever was, and 
 it must be presented as new ; with new speech, 
 just because the living speech of men is always 
 changing, and always meant to be the expres- 
 sion of the life of the men who at the time are 
 living; with new doctrine, of course, because 
 new knowledge requires new forms of teaching 
 and new adjustment of old truth. Every gen- 
 
THE CHALLENGE OF CHRIST 203 
 
 eration has had a new theology, as men have 
 struggled to grasp truth more firmly, or to put 
 it in larger relations. They have tossed the 
 new forms of thought about until, as the win- 
 nowed grain, the chaff blows away and the 
 good grain is preserved for the generation that 
 is to follow. We need new organizations and 
 methods unquestionably ; for human life with 
 its ever new needs requires more perfect adap- 
 tation, a more efficient application of every 
 truth to its needs. The Church has developed 
 agencies and devised methods without end and 
 will continue to do so. But not in these lies the 
 essential newness of the Gospel. Not in these 
 either as welcoming all new knowledge or as 
 hastening to adopt every new purpose and 
 method that would compete with the advancing 
 life of the Church, is to be found the freshness 
 and the power of the Gospel. As with the 
 prophet on the mountain, the power is not in 
 the wind or in the earthquake. " The still small 
 voice," bringing God nearer and carrying con- 
 victions to men's hearts, is the life of the man 
 who himself is moulded by the spirit of Jesus 
 Christ, to whom he has opened his heart, and 
 whose love possesses his soul. 
 
 On all sides men are asking how the Gospel 
 can be preached to make it more effective. 
 How can it reach the ears and win the attention 
 
204 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 of the thoughtless multitude about us ? Sup- 
 pose we return to the method of Jesus. Sup- 
 pose the Christian business man without wait- 
 ing for others, begins to practice a new honesty, 
 without stopping to consider what are the cus- 
 toms of his particular trade. Suppose each one 
 should begin for himself to do the things which 
 his heart tells him are right as before conscience 
 and before God. Suppose the Christian lawyer 
 at once puts in practice a new code of honour, 
 according to which he does not ask what is 
 likely to be of benefit in his relation to his 
 client, or what he must do in order to win his 
 case or secure the reputation which he seeks, 
 but asks solely what is his duty as a Christian. 
 Suppose the physician begins immediately to 
 practice a more careful truthfulness, setting 
 aside considerations of his profit or reputation. 
 Suppose the teacher of morals or history or 
 what you will, in school or in the university, 
 should begin to hold himself to a careful con- 
 sistency, patterning his own life according to 
 the high ideals which he must necessarily teach. 
 Suppose that women became more careful in 
 their watchful unselfishness ; and that we all 
 practice a new self-control, a new gentleness, a 
 new regard for others, putting ourselves in their 
 places, a new thoughtfulness over little things, 
 a new care not to hurt others' feelings, govern- 
 
THE CHALLENGE OF CHRIST 205 
 
 ing- the tongue and the temper. In short, sup- 
 pose that Christians on all sides, waiting for 
 none, should do as some small banks are doing 
 to-day. While the great banks are standing 
 back and saying they are ready to resume pay- 
 ments over the counter when everybody else 
 will agree to do the same, here and there a 
 bank, without waiting, has already resumed 
 such payments, and is leading the way to a set- 
 tled and healthy condition of public finance. 
 Following this example, suppose that we all 
 should begin to pattern our lives after Jesus* 
 life and to apply in our relations to one another, 
 the teachings of His Gospel carefully and prayer- 
 fully, with a determination at any cost to live 
 lives that will be witnesses to Him. Who can 
 question what would be the result ? If in those 
 first centuries ** Christians flocked to martyr- 
 dom" and ''the world flocked to baptism," who 
 can doubt that if Christians should thus bear 
 witness to Christ, the world promptly would 
 bear glad witness to the truth of His Gospel. 
 " We may not all be saints," says Professor 
 James of Harvard, '* but we should all try to be 
 as saintly as we can." Suppose we take this 
 injunction as an accepted rule of our daily life, 
 and then should connect it all not merely with 
 a good resolution but with the great truths of 
 revelation, with the Christian doctrine as we 
 
206 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 hold it Suppose we make it our witness to 
 Jesus Christ as our Master, and through Him 
 to God and His love, and the redemption that 
 He has provided, and the judgment that He has 
 proclaimed ; then indeed we would have a new 
 Gospel, and in terms so new and so fresh that 
 the world about us could not fail to feel its 
 power. This is "the language of the people" 
 which the Gospel deserves. And this is the 
 newness which will never grow old. As on 
 that first great day, every man would hear the 
 message in the tongue in which he was born, 
 and would understand. 
 
 But can we do this ? Yes, because we need 
 wait for no one. Yes, because we need no 
 preliminary preparation, no new organization, 
 and no teaching of new methods. We can do 
 it, but only as Jesus did, and as John did and 
 as Paul did, — by taking God into our hearts 
 and by surrendering ourselves entirely to His 
 service. We cannot do it in our own strength ; 
 but Jesus promised His spirit to abide in the 
 hearts of those who follow Him. 
 
 A century ago you might have seen in 
 Germany a barren section of hill country oc- 
 cupied by five or six hundred wretched people 
 with no schools and no church, with poverty 
 everywhere, and no hope. They were a pic- 
 ture of human life at its lowest. One day there 
 
THE CHALLENGE OF CHRIST 207 
 
 came to them a young theological student. 
 Turning aside from all other openings for his 
 brilliant gifts, he devoted himself to that poor 
 people. Twenty years or more passed away 
 and before his death, the fame of Eisenach had 
 spread over Europe. Thoughtful men came 
 from all directions to study the miracle which 
 had been wrought, for that population had 
 grown to five thousand self-respecting, indus- 
 trious, intelligent Christian people, created anew 
 and living a new life simply because of the de- 
 votion of one follower of Christ, John Friederich 
 Oberlin, who had come to them in the spirit of 
 the Master and had lived among them His 
 life. 
 
 One day you might have seen a grizzled, 
 much worn elderly man in the heart of Africa 
 advancing with outstretched hands to meet a 
 young stranger. It was David Livingstone 
 greeting Henry Stanley. You all know the 
 story. Why did not that young newspaper 
 reporter, having accomplished the work for 
 which he had come and won fame for himself 
 and wealth for his employer, hasten at once 
 back to the coast and deliver his startling news 
 to the world ? Why, on the contrary, did he 
 surrender himself to the influence of that quiet 
 man, who had lived so many years in the 
 African forest protected only by his character 
 
208 THE NEAV THINGS OF GOD 
 
 and his devotion ? Why did he go with him 
 to his tent and sit at his feet for six months, 
 until the day came when he arose, no longer a 
 scoffer, but himself a devoted follower of Liv- 
 ingstone and of Christ ? Because he found in 
 that disciple of Christ, in the beauty of his 
 life, in the simplicity of his thought, and the 
 sincerity of his service the witness to Christ 
 which could not be gainsaid. 
 
 Here then is the method of the Gospel for 
 to-day. It is the old method that is ever new. 
 It begins in prayer to God for help in trusting 
 in Him and not in one's self, and then leads on 
 in doing right for Christ's sake and in His 
 name, that you may so be witness to Him. 
 
XVII 
 
 GOD'S SAINTS 
 " Called to be saints." — / Corinthians i : 2, 
 
 THIS text is either arrant cant or an 
 amazing truth. In either case, it 
 seems as remote as possible from the 
 concerns of our every-day life. We understand 
 by "saints'' holy men; and they are scarce. 
 "Called of God" seems to indicate men ap- 
 proved of God in some peculiar way ; and they 
 are scarcer. 
 
 But it is only fair, before we pass judgment, 
 that we take time to understand exactly what 
 the sentence means as it appears in the New 
 Testament. It is not a chance phrase; it oc- 
 curs frequently. Indeed, nearly every one of 
 Paul's letters contains it. The identical words 
 open his epistle to the Romans. He speaks 
 in his second letter to the Corinthians of " all 
 the saints in Achaia." He writes of " all the 
 saints in Christ Jesus" in his letter to the 
 Philippians, of "all the saints and the faith- 
 ful " in his letter to the Colossians, and of " all 
 the saints in Ephesus," in his letter to the Ephe- 
 209 
 
210 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 sians ; while in the Apocalyptic letter to the 
 Thessalonians he speaks of God as to be 
 " glorified in His saints," and of the coming 
 of the Lord with His saints. Jude tells us how 
 " Christ cometh with ten thousand of His 
 saints." In the last day described in the Reve- 
 lation, we have the vision of the " King of 
 Saints." 
 
 Here are two distinct meanings given to the 
 word. It is the name for those who confess 
 Christ upon earth ; in other words, for church- 
 members. It is also the name for the redeemed 
 who are found in the presence of God at last. 
 The same word is used for all followers of Christ 
 on earth, and for glorified souls in heaven. 
 
 In the case before us, Paul chooses the name 
 for the members of that little church in Corinth. 
 This is the significant fact. He is not speaking 
 of exceptional men who have come to be saints 
 because of some peculiar endowment at their 
 birth, or because of some exceptional spiritual 
 attainment. We always have such men in our 
 minds when we use the word. We are not like 
 them. They are born spiritually minded, we 
 say, or they have lived such exceptional lives 
 that they have come to be what they are, — men 
 quite distinct from the common run of Chris- 
 tians. 
 
 Paul addresses the men of Corinth just as 
 
GOD'S SAINTS 211 
 
 they come, good, bad and indifferent. Because 
 they are in that little church and bear the name 
 of Christ, he addresses them all as ** called to be 
 saints/' We know very accurately what these 
 men were. Corinth was a great metropolitan 
 city with all the characteristics of a new town, 
 thronged with people from all over the world, 
 jostling one another and crowding in all direc- 
 tions for the opportunities of money-making, — 
 reckless, selfish, dissolute, intent on the business 
 in hand, driven and tossed by every chance 
 temptation, — Jews and Gentiles, Greeks and 
 barbarians. Out of that company, two years 
 before he had gathered a church ; and they 
 were not yet very different from the community 
 about them. 
 
 He had just left them, after two years of hard 
 work, and had crossed the sea to Ephesus to 
 engage in the still more strenuous labours which 
 there awaited him, when news comes to him of 
 the evils that had broken out in the Corinthian 
 church. He is distressed beyond measure. He 
 prays for them and longs to go back to them at 
 once. But this he cannot do. So he writes 
 them this strenuous letter. He pours out his 
 affection for them and his indignation and pain 
 at what he has heard. He describes in the 
 most unqualified terms their doings. They are 
 quarrelsome, loose of life, puffed up with their 
 
212 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 own importance, covetous, revilers, drunkards, 
 even idolaters. He says that such among them 
 are to be disciplined at once. They are to be 
 reasoned with and rebuked and corrected and 
 made over with the greatest earnestness and 
 without delay ; and if any continue in their 
 way, they are to be put out of the fellowship. 
 Nevertheless, being what they are, members of 
 that church, confessors of Jesus Christ, he names 
 them all without exception "saints, called of 
 God." 
 
 He is so distressed over them that after he 
 has sent his letter he cannot wait for a reply. 
 He leaves Ephesus, crosses over to Philippi and 
 starts on the land journey through Berea and 
 Athens to Corinth. On the way messengers 
 meet him, bringing the news of the effect of his 
 letter on the church in Corinth. They have 
 been deeply stirred by it and are hastening to 
 purify themselves. With excited joy he cries 
 out, " What clearing of yourselves ! yea, what 
 zeal ! yea, what longing ! yea, what avenging 
 of yourselves ! " Their hearts are reached. 
 They seem to be doing all in their power to 
 realize his desires for them. 
 
 These are the men " called to be saints." No 
 matter what they have become ; they had con- 
 fessed Christ ; for one brief hour at least their 
 hearts had been touched by the story of the 
 
GOD'S SAINTS 213 
 
 Divine love. They had been moved with some 
 sort of repentance. They had asked of God 
 forgiveness. They had felt the throbbing in 
 their hearts of the new life brought by His 
 Spirit. They had gone so far forward in the 
 Christian path as to be willing to stand up to 
 be baptized and to be known by His name. 
 And now, regardless of how they have fallen or 
 what may be the differences among them, Paul, 
 as he thinks of them, sees their glorious possi- 
 bilities, he addresses them as still "called to be 
 saints," for he would have them become what 
 they should be, and would arouse them to put 
 forth every effort to make real their possibilities. 
 
 Here, then, is no cant phrase, but the power- 
 ful summons to those men of Corinth to be bet- 
 ter men. They could be such. God indeed 
 means them to be, and now he, their teacher 
 and their friend, will not think of them in any 
 other way. Without qualification he uses the 
 title which proclaims their privilege as a trum- 
 pet note summoning them to make real that 
 God-given possibility. 
 
 This is the truth for us to-day. You and I 
 and all of us, in the sight of the Divine love, by 
 so much as we have confessed Christ and are 
 church -members, are expected to be and are 
 called to be saints. No matter how we may dif- 
 fer among ourselves, no matter how we may 
 
214 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 have fallen from what we once were, no matter 
 what are the temptations before which we have 
 shown ourselves weak, God to-day addresses us 
 by this name. We say, "But I am bad. I 
 have a bad nature and a hard heart. I was 
 born so and it overcomes me ; I cannot help it." 
 Or, one says, " I have inherited this. It runs in 
 our family. I am not responsible for it." 
 Another says, '* I have all the marks of weak- 
 ness. I am red-headed, and my chin recedes ; 
 they talk of me as having the features which in- 
 dicate weakness and proneness to wrong-doing ; 
 I am a degenerate." Or, " I am in such circum- 
 stances that I cannot be other than I am. My 
 business prevents it, or my acquaintances. If I 
 were only in different surroundings, it might be 
 pbssible." Or, *' I am weak of will, and I make 
 resolutions only to break them. I would gladly 
 do differently, but I cannot help it ; there is no 
 use for me to try," etc., etc. 
 
 And yet the message stands. We, the church- 
 members of to-day, as truly as those in Corinth, 
 are called to be saints, and this not by virtue of 
 anything that is in ourselves, but by virtue of 
 what Jesus Christ has done for us. When this 
 letter came to Corinth, its force lay in the fact 
 that it was from Paul. He knew of what he 
 wrote, and they knew his life. No Christian of 
 his day had had a deeper experience of what 
 
GOD'S SAINTS 215 
 
 Jesus Christ can do, or had been in deeper need 
 of that work in his own heart. He always stood 
 before them, as before every audience, aware 
 that there were some among them who knew all 
 about him. They would be saying : " He is 
 that man from Tarsus, the rhetorician, the one 
 who was such a bitter persecutor of Christians, 
 who stood by when Stephen was stoned and 
 held the coats of those who stoned him, who 
 was exceeding mad against Christians, and who 
 in himself is little better to-day." He had to 
 speak of himself as *' the chief of sinners," " not 
 worthy to be called an Apostle," weak in ap- 
 pearance and in speech contemptible. He 
 knew, better even than they did, how much 
 there was to be forgiven in him and how much 
 need he had to apologize for himself in all di- 
 rections. But they all knew that Jesus Christ 
 had called him, forgiven him, and planted a 
 new life in him, and now he stood before them 
 as a witness of that new life, in all its reality of 
 joy and strength and peace, no less than in all its 
 wonderful possibilities ; and when he spoke of 
 them as also '' called to be saints," it was be- 
 cause he knew that what God had done for him 
 He could do for them if they would only give 
 Him the opportunity. 
 
 His words turn their thoughts back upon 
 what Jesus Christ had already done for them. 
 
216 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 Two things they could not forget. Jesus Christ 
 had come to break every yoke. Some of them 
 were Jews, and the Jews were the great formal- 
 ists of the day, tied hard and fast by their tradi- 
 tions, Pharisees and hypocrites, many of them 
 at least, and all of them proud of their separa- 
 tion from other men who were to them as dogs, 
 or Gentiles. Others were heathen, under the 
 awful bondage of pagan superstition. It is hard 
 for us who for two thousand years have had 
 no ancestors who were pagan, to understand 
 what this is. But how strong and how endur- 
 ing are such superstitions is witnessed even to- 
 day in the common feeling towards the number 
 thirteen, in the unwillingness to go to sea or to 
 get married on a Friday, or to pass under a lad- 
 der on the street. For, what are these but sur- 
 vivals of old pagan superstitions ? The heathen 
 world about us is still held by the old fears. 
 The woods for them are filled with demons, and 
 life is made so dreadful to many that they do 
 not hesitate to bathe themselves in blood in the 
 awful effort to escape from the terror of the evil 
 beings that surround them. 
 
 To the pagan world of His time our Lord 
 came ; and His first work was to deliver them 
 from their horrid bondage, to make them free 
 men and women in the redemption that He had 
 wrought for them. We see this in the indi- 
 
GOD^S SAINTS 217 
 
 viduals with whom He came in contact, — the 
 poor woman at the well of Jacob, for example. 
 There was no deliverance for her from the 
 bondage into which she had fallen, the degra- 
 dation of her hopeless life, as there is no de- 
 liverance for such a woman to-day, but Jesus 
 Christ at once set her free and opened for her 
 the new life of one called of God. So of the 
 Syrophcenician woman with her little child, — 
 foreigners, alone, helpless, — they came to Jesus 
 Christ under all the limitations of their life, as 
 we can think of it to-day in a poor emigrant 
 landing on our shores, and Jesus Christ made 
 them citizens of His kingdom. John, the Son 
 of Thunder, and Peter, the headstrong, and 
 Thomas, the doubter, each found in Him a de- 
 liverer. 
 
 So everywhere as He came in contact with 
 men it had been His blessed work to break their 
 bonds. And now when temptation fell upon 
 them and old bonds were to be put back again, 
 with what indignation did His disciples in the 
 joy of the new freedom, protest against the at- 
 tempt ! Paul in his letter to the Galatians cried 
 out, " Who hath bewitched you that ye should 
 think again of going back to the old condition? " 
 They are to stand fast in their liberty. They 
 are to be free men henceforth. No matter what 
 their weaknesses or what the limitations of their 
 
218 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 surroundings, no matter before what tempta- 
 tion they had fallen in the past, or in what 
 bonds they may find themselves now, the 
 Saviour who had come to them and called 
 them out into the new Life will sustain them in 
 it and finish His work if they will only follow 
 Him. 
 
 The other thing that Jesus had done was to 
 come as a living Christ to reign in the human 
 soul. He had not died for the world and then 
 left it to itself. He had risen again and come 
 to stay with those whom He had chosen. The 
 kingdom that He set up was to be in their 
 hearts, or rather, the kingdom of God was the 
 renewed heart of the forgiven sinner. That in 
 itself is the kingdom, where God is glorified 
 and where God reigns. All are alike now one 
 in Christ Jesus. There is no difference of rich 
 or poor, of wise or foolish. There can be no 
 caste, no rank, no privilege, no prejudice, as 
 between one and another, as Christ had come 
 to seek and to save that which was lost, and the 
 glory of His accomplished work is that out of 
 weakness men are made strong, and that in 
 proportion to the extent of the need is the com- 
 pleteness and the glory of the transformation. 
 He had set up a splendid humanity in which 
 all the differences between men in earthly life 
 are to disappear, so far, at least, as would make 
 
GOD^S SAINTS 219 
 
 any one less than another a child of God and 
 an heir of salvation. 
 
 Every one is called to be a saint, no matter 
 who he is or what are his circumstances. This 
 is the work which our Lord completed when in 
 His last prayer He said to the Father : *' I have 
 finished the work which Thou gavest Me to 
 do." 
 
 Two conclusions follow from all this. First : 
 No man can be deprived of this privilege. 
 Some are rich and some are poor. Some are 
 strong and some are weak. Some are wise 
 and some are ignorant. Some indeed are 
 Americans, and a multitude about us are 
 foreigners, out of every nation and of all condi- 
 tions — white, black, yellow, red, — what you will. 
 Some have an evil inheritance and some good. 
 Some carry with them a bad past life, and some 
 have a very different one. But because Jesus 
 Christ has died for the world, all are called to 
 the privilege of faith, that is, to strength to do 
 right, to the will to believe, to the joy of the 
 redeemed Christian soul, to the privilege of 
 being better men and women and growing more 
 so. God expects this of you and me and every 
 one of us. No man can shut us out from that 
 call, and no conditions of life or circumstances 
 in which we may find ourselves can deprive us 
 of it. 
 
220 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 I sat the other day by the bedside of an aged 
 woman who has been for more than fifty years 
 confined to her bed, almost all the time in pain. 
 And she is a saint. How do I know ? By her 
 life and her words and her spirit, and the sweet- 
 ness and the beauty and the strength of her 
 character, by the patience and the joy with 
 which she waits upon God and bears testimony 
 to His love and tries to be helpful to those 
 about her, making her life a benediction to 
 many. If such a woman, in spite of what has 
 been appointed to her in trial, may still have 
 the joy of the saint, and attain to the growth 
 that is hers, why may not you? And how 
 many such there are about us on every side; 
 with lives more burdened, with circumstances 
 more confined, with temptations more over- 
 whelming than ours, who yet, by the grace of 
 God, have risen above them, and are living 
 above them, and are witnesses to the redeeming 
 love of God every day. They have not been 
 deprived of their privilege. Why should we 
 be ? The text is the summons of God to enter 
 into our privilege of being what He would have 
 us to be ; nay, what Christ regards us in His 
 love as being already, "saints," called by His 
 love to realize what He has made possible for 
 us, every one. 
 
 And the other conclusion is : we cannot es« 
 
GOD'S SAINTS 221 
 
 cape the responsibility of this privilege. As it 
 cannot be taken from us, so we cannot put it 
 aside. *' But I do not want to be a saint," some 
 one says. You cannot escape the duty of be- 
 ing one. Privilege always means responsibility ; 
 and since Christ has died for you, you must 
 face the necessity of giving account to Him at 
 last. And in that day this is what we shall 
 most have to account for, — not so much for 
 what we did, or did not do, as for what we 
 might have been if we had only accepted what 
 He has done for us. 
 
 If looking down upon the world sunk in 
 darkness and heathenism, God so loved it that 
 He gave His Son to die for it, and the world has 
 ever since been amazed at such a revelation of 
 love, how much more when God has made 
 Himself known to men and opened to them the 
 privilege of sonship should He hold them now 
 accountable for the use they make of that rela- 
 tion, or for their rejection of it, if they delib- 
 erately turn away and harden their hearts 
 against it ! 
 
 " Called to be a saint" is the name He has 
 written upon every one of us. It is our privi- 
 lege. It is a never-to-be-forgotten duty to 
 make the life and the character that name de- 
 scribes a reality. 
 
XVIII 
 
 THE REWARD OF SERVICE 
 
 " If any man serve Me, him will the Father honour." — 
 John 12 : 26. 
 
 IT is remarkable how as His end drew near 
 and the shadow of the cross darkened upon 
 Him, our Lord took more distinctly the 
 attitude of a king. Palm Sunday with its palm 
 branches and hosannas, as we look back upon 
 it, seems such a travesty ! It was, in fact, a 
 spontaneous recognition of this fact in His bear- 
 ing and words. From now on. He walks as 
 one conscious of His dignity. Though His 
 death is at hand. He draws the line between 
 those who are His servants and those who are 
 not, and distributes gifts after the manner of a 
 king. The nearness and the certainty of His 
 execution did not dim His vision of final tri- 
 umph, and the lowliness of His present condi- 
 tion did not interfere with the exaltation which 
 awaited Him, as from that royal height He 
 pronounced blessing upon those about Him 
 who were faithful, and extended to them the 
 assurance of royal favour. ** If any man serve 
 Me," He says, " let him follow Me and where I 
 
 222 
 
THE REWARD OF SERVICE 223 
 
 am there shall also My servant be. If any man 
 serve Me him will the Father honour." He was 
 going to receive that honour at the Father's 
 hand Himself, and in the princeliest way, He 
 shares it with His disciples. He promises them 
 the reward which is to be the recognition and 
 proof of His own final triumph. No reward 
 can be greater than that which God shall give. 
 
 A few years ago. General Roberts, the hero 
 of the war in South Africa, returned to England. 
 The papers were full of his praises, and people 
 vied with one another to do him honour. The 
 distinguished order of the Prussian Black Eagle 
 was tendered to him, as in recognition of the 
 fame which Europe joined in celebrating, and 
 he was great enough in his assured position 
 to decline it, when for national reasons the pro- 
 priety of the honour was questioned. 
 
 Queen Victoria at that time was on her 
 death-bed. She sent for her veteran general, 
 and against the warning of her physicians, in- 
 sisted that he be admitted to her bedchamber. 
 Sitting by her side, she made him rehearse the 
 story of the campaign, and, listening with the 
 greatest eagerness and deepest sympathy to 
 the tale of the sufTerings of her soldiers, she did 
 not permit him to depart until the long tale was 
 ended. When he came from her presence, he 
 stood consciously in the eyes of the world as 
 
224 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 the man most honoured of his sovereign. All 
 other honours sank into relative insignificance. 
 The Queen had in the eyes of the world, hon- 
 oured above all others this servant who served 
 her. She had given him her confidence. He 
 had fulfilled his trust. She set upon his service 
 this seal of her approval. 
 
 It was like the honour which Alexander the 
 Great showed to his friend Cleomenes, when, 
 after a great victory reviewing his troops and 
 distributing rich gifts to his captains, coming to 
 Cleomenes, he simply stepped forward and put- 
 ting his hands on his shoulder in the presence 
 of all, kissed him. 
 
 This was the honour that Jesus had in mind 
 when He gave promise of reward to those who 
 serve Him. All other honours are as nothing. 
 The faithful disciples of Christ are to be re- 
 ceived by His Father. Their reward shall be 
 at His hands, and shall be the expression of His 
 complete approval. No happiness and no glory 
 can transcend this. 
 
 This reward is to be given to those who serve 
 Jesus Christ. There are two words in the New 
 Testament for service. The one is that of the 
 doulos or slave ; but this is that of the diakonosy 
 — the voluntary attendant. At once we picture 
 the Eastern monarch with his personal body- 
 guard, his chosen servants, selected for their 
 
THE REWARD OF SERVICE 225 
 
 loyalty, and because under their guard his life 
 and his interests are safe. This is the one to 
 whom the reward is promised. 
 
 On that great day when the nobility of Eng- 
 land assembled in Westminster Abbey before 
 the open tomb in which the body of David 
 Livingstone was to be laid, all eyes were fixed 
 on the quiet, black man, Jacob Wainwright, 
 who stood at the head of the cofBn. He was 
 the Zanzibar servant who with his companions 
 had brought his master's body back from the 
 swamp in the heart of Africa where he died, and 
 had delivered him to the representative of the 
 Queen at the seacoast, and had asked as his 
 sole recompense the privilege of attending the 
 body until he could deliver it to his friends in 
 the distant home. Now the service was com- 
 pleted ; and as England arose to pay her tribute 
 of honour to the heroic man who had given his 
 life to close the open sore of the world, all eyes 
 were turned to the faithful servant who stood at 
 the head of his grave. 
 
 " If any man serve Me him will the Father 
 honour" is the surest of promises. But the 
 honour is given not to the man who does 
 " about right," or as nearly right as he knows, 
 or in a general way serves God, but to him who 
 is the diakonos^ the body servant, the personal 
 follower, the one who chooses the service volun- 
 
226 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 tarily, and having so chosen, remains true to it 
 to the end. 
 
 Such a servant accepts the service. He sees 
 in it a sufficiency of opportunity as well as a 
 final reward. The service itself satisfies him 
 because he knows to whom he is rendering it 
 and finds his supreme satisfaction in that knowl- 
 edge. Jesus' own service is the type of all such. 
 From the beginning to the end He did the will 
 of His Father, and doing that will gave peace 
 and strength to His heart. 
 
 The scene on the Mount of Transfiguration is 
 the witness to the reality of that joy. He was 
 there given a foretaste of the final reward that, 
 passing through the agony in the garden and 
 the darkness of Calvary, He might be sustained 
 by the assurance of the acceptance which 
 awaited Him. The joy of that hour so shone in 
 Jesus' face that it seemed to irradiate His whole 
 being until His very garments were trans- 
 formed. 
 
 Contrast with this, the appearance of Judas 
 whose heart Satan had filled, and made him the 
 type of the unfaithful servant who is thinking 
 all the time of his own interest and not of his 
 Lord's, who desires to do as little, and never 
 as much, as possible, and who always com- 
 plains of the requirements of the service. 
 
 The contrast between Judas and the other dis- 
 
THE REWARD OF SERVICE 227 
 
 ciples comes out in our Lord's last words to 
 them. Having been with Him from the begin- 
 ning, He '' loved them to the end." He will not 
 leave them friendless. He assures them of the 
 mansions that await them which He shall pre- 
 pare. They shall be with Him where He is ; 
 and their joy at last shall be full. 
 
 The true servant who has chosen the service 
 of his own will and finds his contentment and 
 reward in it is also one who sets himself to be- 
 ing like his Lord. All unconsciously, the per- 
 sonal attendant begins to take on something of 
 the likeness of the king. It is a likeness which 
 though it appears in the whole life, is within, — 
 in the thought and in the purpose, and loyalty 
 and love are its inspiration. We see the method 
 of its working wherever loving service is found on 
 earth. The husband and the wife, as the years 
 go by, grow more and more like each other, 
 until they think the same thoughts and have 
 the same opinions, and the one becomes the 
 counterpart of the other. So, walking together 
 with Christ and having Him dwell in one's 
 heart, must shape the whole life. Anything less 
 than that is not a true service. It is not the 
 forsaking all and following Him. To canton 
 off a section of one's thoughts and call it a Holy 
 of Holies, to hang a thick curtain before it as a 
 place of sacred consecration, and then to sur- 
 
228 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 render the outer court of one's life to the Gen- 
 tiles, is not religion. It may present the form 
 of worship, and be consistent with the observance 
 of certain conventionalities which pass for re- 
 ligion, but it does not apply to that service to 
 which the Lord promises the final reward. On 
 the contrary, if one renders the service of the 
 heart which carries the life with it because all is 
 too little to give to the service of the Lord 
 whom one loves, if any man serve Me in this 
 way. He says, *' him will the Father honour." 
 How many there are about us who are doing it, 
 who are growing more and more into the like- 
 ness of that Father in heaven to whom their 
 service is devoted ! The Christlikeness is seen 
 on all sides of us, wherever there is a follower 
 of Jesus however humble who is patiently walk- 
 ing in His steps, doing His will, and striving to 
 bear witness to Him. 
 
 Some years ago a Swedish cook in the 
 kitchen of a friend of mine, moved by an ap- 
 peal which she had heard in her church, gave 
 herself as a missionary to China, and went off 
 to that distant land. Years passed. The 
 Boxer Rebellion broke out. She returned for 
 a short visit to the town where she had lived 
 in America, and went to see the mistress for 
 whom she had worked as a servant. The lady 
 did not recognize the sweet-faced, dignified 
 
THE REWARD OF SERVICE 229 
 
 woman who had called upon her, until she told 
 her name. Then as she looked into her face, 
 she could hardly believe it was the same person 
 who years before had been her servant. Her 
 face was transformed into a new beauty as she 
 told of her work and of her purpose to return, 
 now that the Rebellion was over. To the 
 lady's suggestion of the imminent danger, she 
 said : " Oh, they are my people. I love them 
 and they need me." And, as with simple and 
 unquestioned sincerity, she told her purpose 
 and showed her heart, my friend said that her 
 face shone with the very image of Christ. Her 
 loving, self-forgetting service had already 
 changed her into His likeness. 
 
 This is the supreme reward of the Christian. 
 It grows directly out of his personal fellowship 
 with Christ. It emphasizes that fellowship and 
 proves how inseparable personal fidelity to 
 Christ and loving appreciation of Him are from 
 the attainment of that for which life is given. 
 The wonder of it is that it is open to all. His 
 promise was not, ** If men of peculiar privilege 
 or attainment, saints, or prophets, or martyrs 
 serve Me," but ** If any man serve Me, him will 
 the Father honour." No life is so humble and 
 no soul is so sinful but that Jesus Christ has 
 come to seek and to save it ; and His redeeming 
 work is so effective that that soul, no matter 
 
230 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 what its limitations of character or of surround- 
 ings, can be made not only fit for the Divine 
 Presence, but capable of attaining that Christ- 
 likeness which is the consummate reward. This 
 is the miracle of redemption. 
 
 Obviously, this is a process which begins 
 with the first acceptance of Christ and His serv- 
 ice. It grows with one's growth and proceeds 
 with a rapidity directly dependent upon the 
 steadiness and completeness of the individual 
 devotion. In the heart filled with the spirit of 
 God and eager for loving service, the transfor- 
 mation begins at once and proceeds at a pace 
 which quickly records itself in the life, and 
 which even in this life attains a perfection that 
 is recognized by all. 
 
 This is one way in which Christ fulfills His 
 promise to dwell in His Church. It is not the 
 only way, for God fulfills Himself in many ways, 
 but it is a way so evident and so frequent that 
 it may be accepted as a proof and witness of 
 the more mysterious presence by which the 
 Spirit of God addresses the spirit of man. 
 
 There is a story of a little German village in 
 which the tradition lived that some Christmas 
 Eve Jesus Christ would appear. One year 
 Christmas came in a snow-storm and the village 
 was wrapped in a heavy mantle of snow. The 
 aged pastor who had spent his life ministering 
 
THE REWARD OF SERVICE 231 
 
 to the little flock, looking out upon the snow- 
 wrapped houses, thought it would be pleasant 
 to walk through the village street, that passing, 
 he might look in at the windows illumined, 
 after the pretty German custom, with the 
 Christmas candles, and see the happiness in 
 the homes of his people as they gathered about 
 their Christmas trees. It so happened that as 
 the village children, from time to time opening 
 the door, peered into the darkness to see if per- 
 chance the Christ should come that night, they 
 discovered the figure moving slowly down the 
 street. The cry went up : ** The Christ is 
 come!" and the eager parents followed the 
 children out into the snow. The figure stopped, 
 and looking into his face, they exclaimed : " It 
 is only the pastor I " Then suddenly some one 
 said: ''Why, the Christ has come. This is 
 what it means." And all saw, as it were, for 
 the first time, the Christ shining in the eyes so 
 full of love for them all, and in the gentle 
 countenance which had dwelt among them 
 through all the years. 
 
 This is the only vision of Christ which is 
 given His people to-day. But by the grace of 
 God it is given everywhere wherever faithful 
 servants of Christ are living His life, and speak- 
 ing His words, and are moved by His spirit. 
 Year by year they have been growing into His 
 
232 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 likeness, and year by year they are witnessing 
 to His presence to the world about them. So 
 the kingdom is coming ; so the will of God 
 is doing ; and so the Lord's promise is prepar- 
 ing for its final fulfillment when we all shall see 
 Him as He is, and be like Him. 
 
XIX 
 JONAH 
 
 MANY people know the Book of Jonah 
 only as a story about a whale. In 
 fact, it is one of the anticipations in 
 the Old Testament of the Gospel of Christ. As 
 with many other books of the Old Testament, 
 its author is not declared. Like the Books of 
 Ruth and Job and perhaps Esther, it may be re- 
 garded as a prophetic tale. It has not the marks 
 of a history, as its references are vague. No 
 name is given of the king of Nineveh, and 
 Nineveh is only described as a great city of fab- 
 ulous size. Nineveh furnishes simply the set- 
 ting of the picture. From various literary fea- 
 tures of the Book, scholars generally agree that 
 it belongs to the period after the return from 
 the Exile. 
 
 It was the time of the revival of Judaism. 
 The remnant of the Jews who were delivered by 
 Cyrus had returned to their native land and 
 found themselves at once beset with difficulties. 
 The land had been peopled with many races, — 
 with the odds and ends of the various countries 
 
 ^33 
 
234 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 which had been conquered by the Babylonians. 
 This Uttle group of exiles was at once an ob- 
 ject of suspicion and hostility to the inhabitants 
 of the land. Any one reading the story in Ezra 
 and Nehemiah will find full details of their hos- 
 tility and of the plight in which the returning 
 captives found themselves and the strenuous- 
 ness of the efforts which, under their vigorous 
 leaders, they put forth to reestablish themselves 
 in the land of their fathers. 
 
 They naturally emphasized everything that 
 pertained to their religion and to their former 
 national life. They began at once to rebuild the 
 temple, and they enriched and amplified and 
 made more rigorous, its ritual. They gave new 
 emphasis to the priesthood, and new dignity to 
 all who were connected with their formal worship. 
 They emphasized the law of the Sabbath, mak- 
 ing it as severe as possible, and enforcing its 
 obligations on their neighbours, as they applied 
 it also to themselves. They enjoined the putting 
 away at once of all the Gentile wives who might 
 be among them, no matter how cruel it might 
 prove to homes and children. The period soon 
 became one of great intellectual activity. The 
 Jews were already beginning to scatter to other 
 lands and inaugurating that system of trade in 
 which they have been since everywhere distin- 
 guished. Only recently the remains of a temple 
 
JONAH 235 
 
 which they built far away on an island in the 
 Nile have been exhumed, and the records have 
 been discovered of the strength of their position 
 and of their worship, and the amplifying and 
 the intensifying of their ritual in that far-away 
 land. Their intellectual life blossomed and be- 
 came fruitful as the result of their contact with 
 the great nations, and the way was opened for 
 their part in the intellectual activity of the cen- 
 turies immediately preceding the coming of 
 Christ. All these are indications of the narrow- 
 ness and exclusiveness of their spirit as they 
 began to find themselves reestablished by the 
 building of the walls of Jerusalem and the favour 
 of the government in far-away Babylon. The 
 Jewish spirit, as it has since been known, and 
 which has everywhere been so marked as char- 
 acteristic of their race, found then, if not its 
 birth, its renascence. Their hostility to other 
 people, who were always henceforth to them as 
 dogs, became confirmed. All that the prophets 
 had been saying of the revelation of God to 
 the world through Israel was now fast being 
 narrowed in the thought that it was to be 
 brought about by the dominion of Israel over 
 all. Great as are the visions of the great proph- 
 ets of the preceding period, of the day when 
 the islands of the sea and the kings of the earth 
 shall bring their tribute to the Messiah of Israel, 
 
236 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 and beneficent as are the prophecies of His com- 
 ing reign, the Jews on their return were Httle 
 prepared to understand them, and were by force 
 of their circumstances intensified, and rapidly 
 becoming more and more intensified, in the 
 narrowness of their national life and of their 
 religious and intellectual comprehension. 
 
 It was under these circumstances that an un- 
 known preacher and poet attained, in some way, 
 to a larger view. There was given to him a 
 revelation of the love of God, and of the scope 
 of the Gospel of God, of which his country- 
 men had little or no comprehension. 
 
 The problem set before him was to present 
 the new truth in a form that would challenge 
 attention and would be preserved in the 
 thought and religious literature of his people. 
 He chose a form which was familiar in their ex- 
 perience. His message was in unison with that 
 of the great prophets of the exile, notably of the 
 second half of Isaiah. His phraseology is sim- 
 ilar to theirs, and he uses something of the 
 same imagery. There was probably some his- 
 toric basis for his tale, as there was for the Book 
 of Ruth, but we are not able to identify it ; and 
 it is unimportant in itself, as his own story is the 
 important thing, and the method by which he 
 presents it is only secondary. 
 
 He tells us then the tale of the Jewish prophet 
 
JONAH 237 
 
 who, knowing himself as a prophet, and having 
 been prepared for such use as God had made 
 of him hitherto, is now summoned to a larger 
 function, and is to prove himself altogether un- 
 ready. A message is given to him so unparal- 
 leled in his experience, so inharmonious at once 
 with the spirit of his people and with his sur- 
 roundings, so opposed to what appears to be 
 the purpose of God with the seed of Jacob, that 
 its reception among them at once awakens 
 doubts as to its validity, if not as to its authen- 
 ticity. He can hardly believe that the God of 
 Israel summons him, His prophet, to be the 
 carrier of such a message to the heathen. His 
 doubts quickly become convictions, and his con- 
 victions drive him to prompt action. He turns 
 at once in the opposite direction, and hastens 
 to the seacoast at Joppa. The God of Israel 
 had never had much to do with the sea. Per- 
 haps it was an instinctive recognition of this 
 fact and the partial surrender to the conceptions 
 of the nations about him that led him to think 
 that if he could get out of his native land and 
 on the sea, Jehovah would not follow him with 
 the same strenuous command. When he found 
 a ship ready to sail to Tarshish, the most remote 
 country, at the very ends of the earth, he was 
 confirmed in his thought. We can hear him 
 exclaim, " How providential ! " as he hastens 
 
238 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 aboard. He illustrates at once what is so often 
 true in the Christian's experience. God opens 
 doors for us to test us, when He intends that we 
 shall by no means enter them. 
 
 The story hastens to tell us how God pre- 
 pared him for the work that he was called to 
 do. A storm arises, the prophet is speedily 
 cast into the sea, and as speedily brought back 
 again by the God whom he worships but dis- 
 obeys, to the place from which he started. The 
 reference to the Leviathan that was the instru- 
 ment of his return is a figure that occurs in 
 Jeremiah, and is wholly incidental to the pur- 
 pose of the tale. It is merely the stage ma- 
 chinery of the drama. The prophet must be got 
 back to land. The prophet gives testimony 
 that all the time his heart was right. He was 
 a real servant and lover of Jehovah, but he had 
 yielded to a passing temptation which had 
 carried him away by its sudden violent onrush, 
 and the goodness of God had now brought him 
 back in spite of himself. So, the tale at this 
 point is interrupted by the insertion of a song of 
 praise to God, made up of snatches of psalmody 
 from the Hymn Book of Israel, — just such bits 
 of song as would be used by any devout Israel- 
 ite brought up in the familiar use of the hymns 
 of his people. 
 
 When the prophet found himself again in his 
 
JONAH 239 
 
 own country, he comes to himself and waits and 
 desires to know what God would have him do. 
 The former command is repeated in identical 
 words. It is God's custom when He gives a 
 servant a command to a definite duty, and the 
 servant disobeys, and, by the goodness of his 
 God after his fall and repentance, is brought 
 back to himself and to readiness to obey, that 
 the old command is invariably repeated. It is 
 the one condition upon which the Christian can 
 hope to make progress in his spiritual life as in 
 his Christian service. It is the crux of his faith. 
 The thing which he refused to do, he must do, 
 if he is to know himself and to win either 
 strength or peace for the future. So we have 
 in the story the command that he arise and go 
 to Nineveh, *' that great city," with the message 
 of warning. This time he obeys. The message 
 put on the prophet's lips is a very short one. 
 Nineveh is to be warned of a coming judgment. 
 In forty days it shall be destroyed. A moment's 
 consideration of the message will show how 
 different it is in form and substance from the 
 words of the prophets of Israel. The message 
 in itself in this instance is of far less importance 
 than the messenger, or than the fact that the 
 God of Israel sends him to the heathen. That 
 was the wonderful truth that was to be taught. 
 His fellow countrymen were to have their eyes 
 
240 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 opened to the character of God and the purpose 
 of God, for which they were Uttle prepared. He 
 is a God of the Gentiles as well as of Israel. 
 He was preparing to save to the uttermost 
 them that would come to Him by the Messiah 
 of Israel. The days were hastening on to the 
 time when that Messiah was to appear, and 
 something must be done to prepare, if possible, 
 both the Lord's people and the world for His 
 message. That message was to be summed up 
 in the single sentence, '' God so loved the world 
 that He gave His only begotten Son that who- 
 soever believeth on Him should not perish but 
 have eternal life." Simple as this message 
 is and familiar as it is to us to-day, it was at the 
 beginning a revelation so new, so strange, so 
 difficult of acceptance that, not the heathen only, 
 but Israel itself would long reject it. We see 
 the preliminary step in introducing it, — the day- 
 star as it might be called, anticipating the ris- 
 ing of the sun. Hence the remarkable char- 
 acter of this little book. The author is not care- 
 ful to give his name or any of the circumstances 
 under which the wonderful truth was revealed 
 to him. He was content to concentrate his 
 strength upon presenting it in such form as will 
 attract attention and will be remembered. So, 
 he tells us of the prophet himself awed and 
 humbled, journeying across the desert to the 
 
JONAH 241 
 
 exceeding great city. Arriving, he enters its 
 gates and delivers at once his message. He 
 has hardly entered than the city begins to re- 
 spond. The people, their leaders, the king 
 himself, gather to meet him. Their hearts are 
 strangely opened to the truth. The God of 
 Israel, whom they have known so imperfectly, 
 but who is the one God in the heart of His am- 
 bassador, has sent His servant to them. They 
 are awed by it and put on sackcloth and ashes, 
 while the king orders a fast. It is a thrilling 
 suggestion of what may be expected in God's 
 good time in the heathen world. It is a vision 
 given to cheer the heart of every foreign mis- 
 sionary, every lover of his kind. 
 
 Here the Judaism of the prophet breaks out 
 and the narrow selfishness more or less in us all. 
 It is just what he feared. Israel is not going to 
 retain her distinction among the nations. The 
 greatest city in the world is seen accepting the 
 God of Israel. What is to become then of the 
 distinction of Israel ? What is the meaning of 
 God's covenant with Abraham and Isaac and 
 Jacob ? How can this prophet return to Jeru- 
 salem with the tale of what he has seen ? He 
 stops his progress ; he backs out of the city and 
 seats himself on an adjoining hill, waiting to 
 see what it all means. Again the message of 
 God comes to him in the picture of the plant 
 
242 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 under whose shadow he finds grateful protec- 
 tion from the beating sun. A worm attacks it 
 and it withers. He cries out in protest, and a 
 voice comes to him : " Shall He have concern 
 for a plant, and God be indifferent to the ex- 
 tremities of men. His children?" 
 
 The tale abruptly stops as if the narrator felt 
 himself incompetent to make a fitting close, or 
 in recognition of the fact that he had no expe- 
 rience of what the effect of such a revelation 
 would be upon a prophet or, indeed, any Israel- 
 ite. It required too great a stretch of the imag- 
 ination. The idea of such a message and such 
 a revelation was too new and too incongruous 
 for him to anticipate its effect. That must be 
 left to be determined by the actual experience. 
 So, with wonderful self-control, he adds no epi- 
 logue, he leaves his story to tell itself and it has 
 stood from that day one of the most wonderful 
 visions found in the Old Testament. Compre- 
 hension of the character and the purpose of 
 God so far in advance of the time, so splendidly 
 anticipatory of the Gospel of Christ that it chal- 
 lenges our wonder and admiration to-day. It 
 is as powerful a summons to us as it was to the 
 Jews. It warns us against the danger of our 
 own narrowness, our sectarianism, our reverence 
 for our traditions and our inherited views. We 
 also, like those Jews, are apt to pride ourselves 
 
JONAH 243 
 
 upon so much of the truth as we apprehend. 
 We, no less than they, are disposed to think 
 that the opinions we hold are important to the 
 world in the measure that they are important to 
 our own reputation. We find it hard to give 
 up our peculiar inheritance or our distinctive 
 doctrines lest in doing so we are merged in the 
 common faith even of our neighbours, though 
 that faith be, as truly as our own faith, in the one 
 Lord. We, as well as they, are tempted con- 
 tinually to prescribe the methods by which God 
 shall do His work with others. We look to see 
 their habits corrected or their errors refuted, or 
 their hearts won, or their lives made new in 
 ways which we would prescribe or with which 
 we may be familiar. We forget as readily as 
 they do that God's ways are not as our ways, 
 nor His thoughts as our thoughts. We need 
 continually to be taught that His mercy never 
 fails, His loving kindnesses are inexhaustible. 
 The drunkard in our street, and the profligate, 
 and the criminal, are no more truly beyond the 
 scope of the redemption purchased for sinful 
 men by the Lord Jesus Christ than are the 
 heathen, or than we were ourselves. It is the 
 old truth that we all are so slow to believe, and 
 the ancient message comes to us with its sharp 
 point as it did to the men of the day of Ezra 
 and Nehemiah — that not only is God able to 
 
244: THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 save to the uttermost, but that all men are 
 brethren, and all are alike in need of the com- 
 mon redemption. The differences among us 
 are so slight, so largely limited to externals, that 
 in view of the universal need of pardon and of 
 help to live the new life, we are alike sinners 
 before God. ** There is none that doeth right- 
 eousness, no, not one." We can hear again 
 on the lips of this old teacher, our Lord's words, 
 ** Suffer the litde children and forbid them not 
 to come unto Me," as we receive anew His last 
 command, '' Go ye into all the world : " and 
 *' Make disciples of all the nations." 
 
 This little book, so wonderfully preserved 
 through the long centuries, so little understood, 
 and so incessantly perverted by the ridicule of 
 the thoughtless, speaks to us with the same 
 voice with which the Saviour speaks, and sum- 
 mons us with the same openness of heart to 
 the message of the Divine love, and the same 
 promptness of obedience in obeying it, and the 
 same recognition of a true brotherhood as that 
 which we are called to manifest as our re- 
 sponse to Him. 
 
XX 
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE SICK 
 
 " Heal the sxokr —Matthew lo : 8. 
 
 THERE is no question but that Jesus 
 healed the sick. There is no question 
 also that His disciples did the same, 
 and that the early Church followed in their 
 steps and, at least for a time, understood them- 
 selves to be endowed with the power of similar 
 healing. But it is also equally true that Jesus 
 raised the dead, and that He gave the power 
 and the command to His disciples to do the 
 same. His words are : ** Heal the sick, raise 
 the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons : 
 freely ye receive, freely give." To what extent 
 the early Church understood this command and 
 power as passing over to them is not clear, but 
 on one occasion, at least, in the matter of the 
 young man Eutychus, who, when Paul was 
 preaching at Troas, as narrated in the twentieth 
 chapter of Acts, fell from a window and was 
 taken up dead, Paul exercised this power, and 
 restored him to life. But this latter power dis- 
 appeared quickly, and was henceforth never 
 claimed. 
 
 245 
 
246 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 Much misunderstanding has arisen as to this 
 whole series of incidents. Many have felt 
 forced to try to explain them away on the 
 ground that in the limited knowledge of the 
 men of that day and of the writers of the New 
 Testament story who were not trained in weigh- 
 ing evidence, much was accepted as miraculous 
 which was not so, but was simply the result of 
 natural though possibly little known forces. As 
 a consequence, they say, the story of Jesus and 
 the early Church would be well freed from the 
 whole series of miraculous recountings. In this 
 way both Christianity and the Gospels would 
 experience an unloading of extraneous matter 
 which not only serves as an insuperable block 
 in the way of the faith of many, but is an en- 
 tirely unnecessary befogging of the simple gos- 
 pel story. 
 
 Much labour has been spent upon this state- 
 ment of the case ; on the one hand striving to 
 prove that miracles are in their nature impos- 
 sible, and that all pretended miracles, whether 
 in modern or in ancient times, are either a mis- 
 interpretation of perfectly natural phenomena, 
 or are the result of more or less deliberate im- 
 posture. 
 
 On the other hand it is argued that while 
 miracles may not be events of a kind to be ex- 
 pected to-day, they are not in their nature im- 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE SICK 247 
 
 possible, and whether or not they occur now or 
 have occurred in the past is purely a matter of 
 testimony and of fact. 
 
 But this, I venture to think, is not the way 
 with which the subject of the New Testament 
 miracles is properly to be dealt. To those who 
 accept the New Testament story, it is the record 
 of a special revelation which at a particular time 
 and under particular circumstances, God con- 
 descended to give to the world. Miracles are 
 presented as a part of the revelation. They are 
 not merely concomitants, or attestations of its 
 reality, but are a part of the revelation itself. 
 If any revelation of God to men is possible, then 
 miracles are possible, that is, we have no such 
 knowledge either of the Divine nature and the 
 conditions of existence in the unseen world on 
 the one hand, or of the Divine method of work- 
 ing in the visible world about us and the real 
 nature and extent of what we know as the 
 forces of nature, on the other hand, as will en- 
 able us to say what is and what is not possible. 
 
 The question of miracles, therefore, crowds us 
 back at once upon the question of revelation, 
 and it takes this form. The men who believe 
 that all things came into existence by the will 
 and as the act of a Supreme Being who is the 
 Maker and Preserver of all and who we know 
 as God, believe that that Divine Being disclosed 
 
248 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 Himself when He called our visible universe 
 into existence and established the lines of its 
 unfolding and development. If He did so 
 much, may He not be expected to do more ? 
 And if the record of the rocks and of the forests 
 and of animal life all tell of Him, of His thoughts 
 and plans and purposes, as also of His abiding 
 presence and of His power as the fountain and 
 source of their existence, may we not expect 
 that in the life of man in his superior realms, 
 there will be such manifestations of God as may 
 prove congenial or necessary ]^in the unfolding 
 of God's purpose with him ? Indeed the long 
 story of the evolution of the planet, and of the 
 forms of existence that are found upon it, gives 
 evidence with no little frequency of the occur- 
 rence of events of the most tremendous signifi- 
 cance both as cataclysms and as the introduc- 
 tion of new forms of existence which may rea- 
 sonably be regarded as such unanticipated but 
 entirely probable manifestations of God. In- 
 deed, going back of this to the question of mat- 
 ter itself, we are discovering to-day that it is no 
 such simple thing as it has been regarded, but 
 in the last analysis, or at least in the form as 
 near to what may be called the last analysis as 
 the present state of science permits, matter itself 
 is perceived as a substance so closely akin to 
 what we have hitherto understood as spirit that 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE SICK 249 
 
 the line of partition or distinction is to the last 
 degree shadowy, and that we are very far from 
 being able to say what is possible even within 
 what we are ready to regard as the laws of 
 Nature, not to say what is possible viewing its 
 relation to that world about us of which we as 
 yet know little or nothing. 
 
 Therefore, when we come to the Incarnation 
 of Jesus Christ and the revelation of God that 
 is found in Him, it becomes at once a matter of 
 the spiritual life and of the Christian faith. The 
 question forced upon every man is, whether or 
 not he will believe that God is a present exist- 
 ence, to whom he owes personal allegiance and 
 who, as the Heavenly Father, has such personal 
 love and care for him that he owes to Him a 
 life and a service as of a son to a Divine Father. 
 
 When a man opens his heart to this truth, 
 Jesus Christ presents Himself as at once the 
 messenger and the revelation of that Heavenly 
 Father. He claims to come from Him, to speak 
 His words and to do His will. He reveals in 
 Himself a character which may well be ac- 
 cepted as divine, so beautiful is it, and so 
 compelling in its sweet perfection. When He 
 proceeds to exercise a power beyond that of 
 men, it is seen at once to be harmonious with 
 His character. It corresponds with both His 
 life and His message in that it works for the 
 
250 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 blessing of men. It is so wholly congruous 
 that the men of His time who gathered close 
 about Him and who observed Him most care- 
 fully, whether with friendly or hostile eyes, 
 could find no fault in Him. They did not go 
 back of His claim to be what He was. 
 
 That claim granted, all was harmonious. 
 The miracles at once fall into place, not simply 
 as what was to be expected, but as that which 
 when it occurred, was recognized of all to be 
 germane to Himself. The accounts of Him 
 which various ones undertook to write narrate 
 their occurrence as simply and ingenuously as 
 they narrated His comings and goings. In- 
 deed, the miracles, as we term them, are, if not 
 of the very woof, woven into the very web of 
 the story so thoroughly that they cannot be 
 taken out without destroying the whole. The 
 narratives may properly be subjected to scrutiny 
 as to their authenticity and genuineness, as to 
 the age in which they were written, and their 
 forms of speech, but when all this has been 
 done, it is still found that the miracles are as 
 truly a part of the narrative as is any other sec- 
 tion, and, in the end, will be accepted or re- 
 jected simply according as men believe that 
 the story is the record of the Divine revelation, 
 or is not. 
 
 This being the case, we are prepared at once 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE SICK 251 
 
 to believe that miracles in any similar sense do 
 not occur to-day, because we have no new reve- 
 lation. God is in men, manifesting Himself to 
 the individual heart, and we make much in 
 these days of what we call the immanence of 
 God in His world. But no acceptance of these 
 terms is to be understood by thoughtful men as 
 implying that either the Incarnation of Jesus 
 Christ, or the revelation which, in Him and at 
 that time, God gave of Himself to men has been 
 repeated, or is being repeated to-day. It was 
 unique and absolutely distinct. To the Chris- 
 tian it stands as in itself sufficient for the Divine 
 purpose in the redemption of the world, and of 
 suffering and sinful men. The Old Testament 
 is the story of a preparation for this that ran 
 through many centuries of faith, — the world's 
 history and Jewish history. The New Testa- 
 ment is that account of it which by the grace of 
 God, the Spirit of God has guided His Church 
 first in making and then in' accepting as final 
 and sufficient. 
 
 The Church, therefore, does not now look for 
 miracles because it does not look for a new 
 revelation. It does not venture to say whether 
 miracles are possible or not, but when any man 
 claims to have discovered a miracle or, still 
 more, to be able to work a miracle, he is put at 
 once to the test of whether or not he has re- 
 
252 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 ceived or found a new revelation. This fact 
 has continually been recognized by all sorts of 
 impostors or founders of a new faith, whether 
 Mohammed, or Joseph Smith, or Mrs. Eddy, 
 who have at the outset set forth their *' revela- 
 tion '^ as their credentials. Because, having the 
 Bible in its hand, the Christian Church does not 
 find any new claimant offering a new message 
 or a pseudo revelation, which, judged by the 
 standard of the New Testament, seems worthy 
 of its claims, it has persistently refused to accept 
 any and all of them. It does not believe either 
 in their revelation or in their asserted miracu- 
 lous or even exceptional powers. 
 
 When, therefore, we come to the question of 
 whether the Church stands in any relation to 
 the condition of the physical health of the indi- 
 vidual, or whether it has any cause to deal with 
 the question of bodily health, the answer is not 
 to be found either in the practices of Jesus or 
 in His specific command to His disciples. That 
 all belongs to a time and to circumstances far 
 removed. The question is to be discussed and 
 settled on entirely different grounds. 
 
 It is to be noted at the outset that there is 
 no essential connection between religion and 
 health. There is a connection, but that it is an 
 essential one, or that the one becomes the 
 measure and test of the other, is not true. 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE SICK 253 
 
 There is no slightest suggestion, for example, 
 that the Lazarus of Bethany whom ** Jesus 
 loved,'' and to raise whom from the dead. He 
 went back into the midst of His enemies, ex- 
 posing Himself to the arrest which resulted in 
 His crucifixion, was a peculiarly spiritual man. 
 Indeed, if his bodily condition is any evidence 
 at all, the fact that he sickened and died would 
 indicate the exact opposite. Jesus loved him, 
 we may be sure, not because of his physical 
 condition, whatever it was, but for something 
 far deeper and more permanent and more truly 
 a part of himself. 
 
 Paul's full statement on this subject is so 
 conclusive that it has long been accepted as 
 the authoritative Christian teaching. He had an 
 affliction so serious that he called it his ** thorn 
 in the flesh," " an emissary of Satan," and he 
 prayed most earnestly, as he says, on three 
 distinct occasions, that he might be delivered 
 from it. But when it was made evident to him 
 that it rested upon him in accordance with the 
 will of God, actually *' given " by God, and that 
 it was therefore to be an instrument of God in 
 revealing both the Divine grace and the Divine 
 power, we find him at once glorying in his 
 sickness and going so far as to say that he 
 "would take pleasure in weaknesses, in in- 
 juries, in necessities, in persecutions, in dis- 
 
254 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 tresses, for Christ's sake," for he had now 
 learned that God's power is ''made perfect" 
 in our weaknesses, and that in fact, '* when we 
 are weak, then," in some large true sense, " we 
 are strong." 
 
 In other words, bodily pain and ill health 
 may be just as truly a special minister of bless- 
 ing to the sufferer as the other ills and haps of 
 our most uncertain and most truly disciplinary 
 earthly life. There is no more reason for think- 
 ing that a man is more saintly because he has 
 exuberant health, than there is because he has 
 abundant riches ; or, on the other hand, that 
 he is rejected of God, or forsaken, or gone 
 astray in his personal religious life because he 
 is below tone physically or experiences some 
 physical ailment, than if he has failed in busi- 
 ness or been betrayed and persecuted by those 
 whom he thought his friends. 
 
 But when this is said, it is to be recognized 
 that while there is no essential connection be- 
 tween religion and health, there is what we 
 may call a generic connection, as between 
 happiness and health. Jesus brought life 
 abundant. It is natural that the body should 
 share it. As Paul says in the eighth of 
 Romans : '* He that raised up Christ Jesus 
 from the dead shall give life also to your 
 mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwelleth 
 
, THE CHURCH AND THE SICK 255 
 
 in you." In the same chapter he speaks also 
 of believers as, notwithstanding the burdens 
 and troubles of life, looking forward for '* the 
 redemption of the body." In the fifth chapter 
 of his first letter to the Thessalonians, he prays 
 that **the spirit and soul and body" of his 
 hearers " may be preserved entirely and with- 
 out blame " ; that is, he recognized that the 
 immediate and inevitable outcome of giving 
 one's self to Christ is not only peace in the 
 heart and joy in believing, but also a certain 
 quickening and refreshing of the body, which 
 will appear in a man's physical condition. It is 
 not a necessary fact and not by any means one 
 that furnishes a measure of spiritual life, but it 
 is a natural and obvious fact, and the result of 
 the generic relationship between the mind and 
 the body. Therefore, when the question of the 
 function or the duty of the Church is raised, 
 we recognize at once that there is a healing 
 and a preserving of the body made possible 
 through faith, and that it is entirely proper 
 that it should be connected with religion. It 
 is so clearly and frequently a statement of the 
 Scriptures, and is so abundantly realized in 
 Christian experience that it is not necessary 
 to labour the question. It may be expected ; 
 and these things at once are to be said about 
 it: 
 
256 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 First: This healing of the body will be 
 found to lie within the range of what may 
 properly be called the laws of health, that is, 
 it will be based on knowledge and not on ig- 
 norance ; it will be secured by the use of ap- 
 propriate means ; and it will be of a kind that 
 can be repeated. Once stripped of all as- 
 sociation with miracles, everybody is ready to 
 recognize the necessity of using our intelligence 
 in securing the best and most accurate infor- 
 mation as to the invalid's real condition, and 
 of then proceeding to use the most effective 
 remedial measures which are within reach. To 
 do anything else is as unworthy of a Chris- 
 tian faith as it would be unworthy of a Chris- 
 tian intelligence and of good sense. 
 
 God's great gift to us as human beings is 
 our reason, and we are in every relation of life 
 bound to use it in acquiring knowledge and 
 in working out what we believe to be God's 
 purpose in us. There is nothing in the nature 
 of the case, or in the Word of God, to imply 
 that the care of our health comes under any 
 other rule, or is fixed by any other conditions. 
 And because this is so, when one has found 
 that remedy or treatment which restores the 
 health, it may be expected to do the same 
 again in similar cases. There is every induce- 
 ment, therefore, for the use of the trained phy- 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE SICK 257 
 
 sician and of every appliance available in ad- 
 vanced medical practice, and for bringing these 
 things within the reach of the suffering, as the 
 Christian Church has from the beginning striven 
 to do. It is working directly in the line of its 
 character as an agency for making Jesus Christ 
 known and establishing His kingdom when it 
 establishes hospitals and gives high honour to 
 the educated physician. 
 
 Second : Among these laws of health are cer- 
 tain ones which may be called laws of the spirit- 
 ual world. The more we know of life in any 
 form, the broader is the realm in which it ex- 
 tends. As has already been said, we know 
 very little of that vast realm which lies be- 
 tween what we know as matter and what 
 we conceive as spirit. Many forces are there 
 as yet little understood and many others 
 doubtless of which we as yet have no intima- 
 tion. That these will make for health, if we 
 can use them, seems beyond dispute. Scien- 
 tific men are talking much of a ** subliminal 
 world," and a '' sub-conscious self " ; by which 
 we understand them to mean this world which 
 lies beyond our conscious knowledge. They 
 talk of "psychic forces" as indicating the 
 powers which are hidden there or emerge from 
 it. No man can deny its existence, and our 
 ignorance of the nature or the extent of those 
 
258 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 forces not only does not disprove their existence, 
 but invites us to investigate them, and as 
 rapidly and, as far as possible, to take advan- 
 tage of them, and to use them in every way 
 within our power, and to the extent of our intel- 
 ligence, in contributing to human welfare as to 
 human health. That the Church has a function 
 in this direction both in discovering these forces 
 and in learning and teaching how to use them 
 would seem to be obvious. It has a charter for 
 just such a function and has long exercised it in 
 the healing of souls. Why should it limit either 
 its attainments or its attempts ? Why should it 
 hesitate to push out into realms not yet trav- 
 ersed, and to do its best to make contributions 
 both to science and to the physical life and 
 possibly to religion itself by such effort. 
 
 Thirdly : Among these forces which either 
 lie beyond, or reach beyond, the laws of the 
 natural world and extend into the larger world 
 where our knowledge as yet is so circumscribed, 
 is the force of prayer. Indeed it represents a 
 world by itself. There are too many promises of 
 God in His Word, and they are far too emphatic 
 and too vitally significant, to be overlooked ; and 
 there are far too many instances in the individual 
 experience of believers to be ignored, or to be 
 gainsaid. It is not only true that there are 
 more things in heaven above than are dreamed 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE SICK 259 
 
 of in our philosophies, but there is a whole 
 world of experience and of the blessed life in 
 which prayer is the chief agency of lifting men 
 to God and of bringing the power of God to 
 avail in man's behalf, and this without raising 
 the question of whether this power works by 
 natural or by spiritual laws, or whether it is of 
 the nature of a miracle or not. It is sufficient 
 that it exists, that it is applicable in every variety 
 of individual need and through the whole 
 range, — body, soul, or spirit, — of the individual 
 life. It is God's gracious gift. It is like the 
 uncounted treasure in the great vault of the 
 bank. Men may come and walk about and ex- 
 ercise all their wisdom and their power ; so 
 they cannot have access to it. The one comes 
 who has the right and the power to throw it 
 open ; then every man may approach in the ap- 
 pointed way and take what now becomes his 
 own. The reserves of prayer belong to God 
 and are given to whom He will. 
 
 That the Church has a blessed function which 
 it has always recognized, and always rejoiced 
 in, and always been sustained by, in using and 
 cultivating the habit of prayer for every form of 
 human need, is known to all. What would be 
 the results, if the Church with one mind should 
 give itself to the practice of prayer, and should 
 use prayer, within the range with which it al- 
 
260 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 ready knows its efficiency in doing the will 
 of God, for the benefit of suffering humanity 
 about us, no man can say ; but that blessing 
 would abound and that human life would take 
 on a new form of joy and strength and courage 
 and hope, no man can question. 
 
 Furthermore, in the fourth place, there is un- 
 doubtedly special need of this to-day. Perhaps 
 as never before in the development of civiliza- 
 tion has nervous exhaustion become so common 
 in connection with the higher forms of civilized 
 life as it is to-day. It is certain that there is 
 far too much disease and suffering which has 
 this as its origin. Moreover, there is much re- 
 ligious unrest from one cause or another, and 
 in consequence a wide-spread tendency to take 
 up with whatever is mystical, if not with what- 
 ever claims to be supernatural. It is the day 
 of the fakir, and poor human nature, suffering 
 under the various forms of nervous disease, is 
 easy game for impostors. There is much profit 
 in the new doctrines and the new practices, 
 so much so indeed that many are ready to take 
 them up as professional healers, and many simple 
 souls are being separated both from their money 
 and their accustomed sanity as a consequence. 
 
 All this leads us to the conclusion that the 
 Church can do more than it has done. It can 
 emphasize an exacter truth and a more careful 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE SICK 261 
 
 honesty. This must be the basis of all success- 
 ful dealing both with health and with religion. 
 If people can be led to practice their religion in 
 their daily lives, in their relations one to another 
 by a scrupulous integrity and careful guarding 
 against the prevalent temptation to make money 
 quickly and to overestimate its value as ex- 
 pressed in luxury and comfort, much will be 
 done to establish a quiet conscience ; and that is 
 a direct path to health. 
 
 Emphasis needs also to be laid upon regular 
 habits of devotion. It is not without signifi- 
 cance that the rapid development of nervous 
 diseases is contemporary with wide-spread aban- 
 doning of private and family devotions. The 
 habit of spending a little time morning and 
 evening alone with God and of gathering the 
 family for united worship and also of being 
 regular in attendance upon church on Sunday, 
 go far to secure that state of mind and that kind 
 of religious faith which gives the soul self-con- 
 trol, steadiness and calm, and in a large degree 
 guarantees it against the ills which come through 
 nervous excitement or nervous depletion. It 
 seems very clear that no single thing will do so 
 much to meet the need of the hour, however 
 extensive it may appear, as a change in the 
 habits of Christians in this respect, and a return 
 to the religious ways of the past, when these 
 
262 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 habits of private devotion were emphasized and 
 widely practiced. 
 
 It is the privilege of the Church also to strive 
 for both the teaching and the possession of a 
 more substantial faith. It is probably inevitable 
 that times of scientific discovery and great in- 
 tellectual unrest must disturb the foundations of 
 faith, and in many minds so far change the 
 character of one's personal convictions as to des- 
 troy their value if not their life-giving quality. 
 There is call for the Church to point out the 
 distinction between scholarly examination of the 
 history and technical character of the Biblical 
 records, and the possession of a settled personal 
 faith in God and in Jesus Christ. The two are 
 quite distinct, but they have been sadly con- 
 fused to the destruction of the peace of not a 
 few. 
 
 If, in view of the present needs, the pulpit 
 should give large place to personal religion, — 
 how it is secured, and how it is to be main- 
 tained — with a setting forth of the solidity of its 
 foundations, and the blessings which it brings 
 as an individual experience, much would be ac- 
 complished in the direction of both mental and 
 physical healing, so far as the one is connected 
 with the other. 
 
 Furthermore, there is certainly occasion for 
 the Church to show greater readiness to help 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE SICK 263 
 
 the sick, particularly those who naturally come 
 within its influence or in whom there is more or 
 less manifest connection between their mental 
 or moral state, and their bodily sufferings. It 
 is not sufficient for the Church merely to be 
 willing to do this. There is a manifest occasion 
 for its reaching out for the opportunity. It, of 
 course, must incur the hostile criticism of those 
 who are exploiting such healing for their own 
 personal gain. But that need not deter the 
 Church from undertaking the task and pressing 
 it into larger relations than it has hitherto done. 
 The work of some ministers and churches who 
 are attracting attention for the extent of their 
 service in this direction might be widely ex- 
 tended, under careful guidance and the watch- 
 ful supervision of friendly physicians, with 
 manifest blessing to the community and 
 strengthening the position of the Church. 
 
 In order to do this effectively, the Church 
 must give a larger place than is customary to 
 individual testimony. The old-fashioned testi- 
 mony meeting has largely been abandoned and 
 Christians have become silent in matters of per- 
 sonal faith and very shy of religious conversa- 
 tion. But there is a power in testimony that is 
 not found elsewhere, and it is a distinct loss not 
 to take advantage of it. The mid-week prayer- 
 meeting which has in many cases fallen into 
 
264 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 neglect would be greatly quickened and its in- 
 fluence vastly increased if it could be made 
 again what it once was, — a meeting for testi- 
 mony as well as for prayer — and if the laymen 
 could be brought to feel that they owe to one 
 another as well as to the Lord, this expression 
 of their gratitude and of their desire that others 
 may share with them the experiences which 
 make their religion real and precious. 
 
 Coupled with this, there might well be much 
 more specific prayer for definite and stated 
 needs than is generally the custom. In times 
 of revival, there is always a flood of requests 
 for prayer. If this habit of making prayer di- 
 rect and specific were maintained and regular 
 meetings for prayer were given this character, 
 it could not fail to do much for the comfort of 
 both troubled souls and suffering bodies, as 
 people would be led to feel that the blessing of 
 prayer was always within their reach and the 
 help of prayer earnest and united was available 
 for them. 
 
 All this would bring about a closer and more 
 immediate dependence of the individual Chris- 
 tian upon God. It is not enough to believe 
 that God is immanent in the world. We need 
 the sense of personal intimacy and friendship ; 
 if that can be developed, there will be both 
 steadiness of faith and an efficiency of immediate 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE SICK 265 
 
 helpfulness in prayer of which many Christians 
 to-day seem to have slight experience. 
 
 Whatever the Apostle Paul meant when he 
 said: "I bear in my body the marks of the 
 Lord Jesus," it certainly would involve a great 
 change in the attitude of many Christians to- 
 wards bodily ailments if they could take his 
 view of what occurs when one accepts the in- 
 evitable as of Divine appointment, and is cheer- 
 fully willing to face it for Christ's sake, and go 
 patiently forward to do His will. When Paul 
 added the saying, **that the life also of Jesus 
 might be made manifest in our body," he sug- 
 gested how Christians, whatever their state of 
 bodily health or disease, may so walk with God 
 as to be themselves conclusive testimony to the 
 reality of the faith of Christ, and to make sure 
 their own growth in joy and peace, whether in 
 sickness or in health. This truly is the supreme 
 good. 
 
 Meanwhile, in the language of Professor 
 Barker, of Johns Hopkins, "to give peace of 
 mind to the disturbed, to cheer the despondent, 
 to relieve the fearful, the anxious, or the appre- 
 hensive, to embolden the timid, to enable the 
 distracted to concentrate and to replace inde- 
 cision by a fixed purpose, is to confer an in- 
 calculable benefit upon the community." 
 
 In the words of the late Dr. James Martineau 
 
266 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 - — *' Whatever may be meant by the two great 
 preternatural endowments entrusted to its earli- 
 est missionaries — the gift of tongues, and the 
 gift of healing — they represent clearly enough 
 the two grand functions of our religion, to bear 
 persuasion to the minds and to bring mercy to 
 the physical ills of men. . . . When the 
 crowd of weary sufferers thronged around the 
 Apostles* steps in the city, the blind supporting 
 the lame, and the lame eyes to the blind, or 
 when the solitary leper saw them in the field 
 and made his gesture of entreaty from afar, and 
 all were healed, how better could be represented 
 the character of that faith which has never set 
 eyes on pain without yielding it a tear, which 
 in proportion as it has been cordially embraced, 
 has lessened age after age the stripes where- 
 with humanity is stricken? ... In the 
 spirit of these acts of Providence we may par- 
 ticipate. While fanatics pretend to repeat their 
 marvellousness we may choose the better part 
 and copy their beneficence." 
 
 For the Christian it is no small thing if, when 
 his time comes, he has grace given to him, 
 without undue distress or running after quacks, 
 to " die like a gentleman." 
 
XXI 
 
 JESUS AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS 
 
 " And as ye go preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at 
 h&nd." —Mati/iew lo: 7. 
 
 MANY people are troubled because 
 Jesus did not declare Himself defi- 
 nitely and with authority upon social 
 and political questions. Human slavery, the 
 relations of capital and labour, the distribution of 
 property, the condition of woman, the injustice 
 of existing forms of taxation, and the problems 
 of civilized government, were all in evidence 
 then, and deserved the attention of any true 
 reformer as much as they do to-day. The re- 
 ligion that bears the name of Christ has seen all 
 these evils persist, and is coexistent to-day 
 with a wide-spread divorce of private from pub- 
 lic and commercial morality. 
 
 Many feel that it would be a great help in the 
 removal of existing evils if a definite declaration 
 of Jesus could be produced, or if His record 
 with regard to any one of the existing forms of 
 wide-spread trouble could be shown to be un- 
 equivocal. In the batde that must be persist- 
 ently waged for human betterment in every 
 
 267 
 
268 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 form, the importance of Christianity as sustain- 
 ing the right and guiding the lines of the con- 
 test is recognized of all, and, naturally, there is 
 a constant attempt to adduce the evidence of 
 Jesus, and always more or less embarrassment 
 in explaining His evident lack, if not of interest 
 in these questions, at least of purpose to make 
 definite statements and take a decisive position. 
 One who was giving His Ufe for the world could 
 not be accused of lack of interest in these sub- 
 jects, and it is difficult to explain His method 
 with them, unless pains be taken to know ex- 
 actly what that method was. 
 
 To determine this we have to go back in 
 thought to Jesus' day. From that standpoint it 
 is easy to see that His first duty was to avoid 
 stirring up the Jews in rebellion against the Ro- 
 man authority. They w^ere completely under 
 the dominion of the new and all-powerful Ro- 
 man empire. They were by temper turbulent 
 and even murderous ; the Galileans especially 
 were under the closest supervision ; and as Jews, 
 all had awakened both the suspicion and the posi- 
 tive hostility of their conquerors. Herod, their 
 king, had played a double game in his ambition 
 to have himself made the ultimate ruler ; and at 
 his death his kingdom had been divided among 
 his sons in order to diminish the danger of suc- 
 cessful rebellion. 
 
JESUS AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS 269 
 
 Any least suggestion at the beginning of His 
 ministry that our Lord had in view political 
 change would have brought down upon Him at 
 once the crushing power of Rome, and His 
 ministry would have been ended. His saying, 
 ''They that take the sword will perish by the 
 sword " was no more truly a maxim for moral 
 reform for all time than it was the announce- 
 ment of an obviously wise and necessary policy 
 for Himself. 
 
 Furthermore, it was necessary for Him, before 
 His ministry could make much progress, to 
 change the Messianic conception of His nation. 
 The Messianic prophecies had gradually come 
 to be interpreted as of a great temporary ruler 
 who, coming with Divine authority, if not with 
 Divine power, was to reestablish Israel among 
 the nations of the earth, and restore Zion as a 
 kingly capital. The Jews were looking for 
 armies and banners. Unless Jesus could change 
 that conception of what was in store for the 
 world, it would be impossible for Him to gain 
 that acceptance for the kingdom of God which 
 it was His business to preach and to introduce. 
 Time was therefore necessary for Him to make 
 plain and to unfold that spiritual kingdom which 
 He came to inaugurate. 
 
 It was, also, of vital importance that He should 
 gain time for training disciples. His own min- 
 
270 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 istry must necessarily be brief. The future of 
 the cause which He represented and the ultimate 
 success of the work which He inaugurated, and 
 to encourage which His life was to be a final 
 sacrifice, turned upon His leaving disciples 
 who were so far enlightened as to Himself 
 and His mission, and so far committed to it, 
 that they could act as His Apostles. There- 
 fore, for three years He gave Himself so com- 
 pletely to this single task, making it appar- 
 ently first in His thought. At last in spite of 
 all, one of them betrayed Him and the others 
 were so imperfectly established that they all for- 
 sook Him and fled. But the thoroughness of 
 His work appeared in their prompt return with 
 the new spirit and the heroic devotion with 
 which they gave themselves to the preaching of 
 His Gospel, and ultimately, if the tradition may 
 be believed, sacrificing their lives, one by one, 
 in His cause. 
 
 The result of His policy was that He suc- 
 ceeded in awakening no political suspicions, 
 and that though at last He was arrested, tried, 
 and condemned for what w^as charged as being 
 political treason, in fact it was recognized even 
 by the Roman authorities as a trumped-up 
 charge. His followers were apparently en- 
 tirely ignored by the civil authorities after His 
 death. 
 
JESUS AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS 271 
 
 "Those eyes elate and clear, 
 Which neither doubt nor fear 
 Nor even love nor glorious wrath could blind," 
 
 saw the constant danger, and with supreme 
 wisdom He did His work in full view of the 
 necessities of the situation. He succeeded in 
 preaching the kingdom of God as at hand in 
 such a fashion as to stir the hearts of men with- 
 out stirring up political or social revolution, lay- 
 ing thus deep and permanent foundations for His 
 cause. Only at last does He boldly proclaim 
 Himself the Messiah, though He always had 
 apparently been conscious of it, and was willing 
 to have it recognized. Then, however, the crisis 
 came. His enemies were forced to act, for they 
 said, not without truth, " The Romans will come 
 and take away both our place and our nation." 
 The danger was sufficiently real to serve their 
 purpose, though the Romans themselves were 
 little disturbed by it. 
 
 In view of this situation, the method that 
 Jesus pursued in His teaching becomes intelli- 
 gible and instructive. He was not content with 
 living a true and beautiful life as the Son of 
 God ; nor was He content with simply opening 
 heaven to individuals. The Father had sent 
 Him to found a new spiritual society, which was 
 to be indeed a new order of humanity. He 
 called it the kingdom of God. It was present 
 
272 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 in Him as a germ ; but it was to develop as a 
 future visible reality, to spread from Him to the 
 hearts of other men, and so in time to be 
 wrought out and built up in human history un- 
 til eventually it shall become all-embracing. 
 The foundation of His mission is His revelation 
 of the Father. He came from the Father. He 
 spoke the words of the Father. He did the will 
 of the Father. At last He returned again to the 
 Father. His whole work was thus a proclama- 
 tion and a revelation of that Father whose wit- 
 ness and representative He was. 
 
 This proclamation constituted a new pres- 
 entation of God to men. The very name was 
 the starting point of the unfolding of a con- 
 ception of God of boundless possibilities. It 
 suggested the oneness of nature between men 
 as the sons of God and their Creator. It 
 opened the way for an appeal to all that is best 
 in the heart of man and disclosed a new side 
 of the relation of God to men in which love, of 
 an essential and enduring kind, becomes pre- 
 eminent. It culminated in our Lord's explana- 
 tion of His mission in His final answer to the 
 Pharisees, when for the third time, as described 
 in the Gospel of St. Luke, they interrogated 
 Him as to His intimacy with publicans and 
 sinners. He tells the story of the lost sheep, 
 and the lost money, and the lost son, as indi- 
 
JESUS AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS 273 
 
 eating God's loss in the destruction or carrying 
 away of His property in the souls of men, and 
 reveals the intensity of the purpose with which 
 God strives by every means to regain His own 
 by winning men one by one back to Himself. 
 
 This prepares the way for His presentation 
 of Himself as the Mediator of the new Life 
 which He reveals as opening for men, in conse- 
 quence of this redeeming love of God. He 
 presents in Himself that union of the human 
 and the Divine which makes that union a 
 reality, and which opens the way for His sacri- 
 ficial service. As His mission closes men see 
 in His death the consummate revelation of a 
 Divine love which has power to bring even the 
 dead to life. In His death and resurrection 
 He gives proof of the victory over death and 
 the grave which opens the kingdom of heaven 
 in its fullest possibilities, to any sinner who will 
 believe. It closes the grave as the final de- 
 struction of a sinful soul and reveals the possi- 
 bility of the wiping out both of sin and its 
 consequences in guilt which makes the new 
 life of the forgiven sinner such a supreme 
 reality that eternal joy and companionship with 
 the Father are within its reach. By a sacrifice 
 which is in the largest possible sense vicarious, 
 and has results far more extensive and com- 
 plete than they are explicable, in giving His 
 
274 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 life for the world, He redeems the world, and 
 reestablishes in the hearts of men the dominion 
 of God. 
 
 In doing this He emphasizes man's freedom 
 and individual responsibility. That knowledge 
 of individual responsibility which had slowly 
 developed by means of the revelations recorded 
 in the Old Testament, in which, in spite of the 
 visiting of the father's sins upon the children, 
 the separate and wholly personal responsibility 
 of every man before the power of God, was 
 proclaimed, becomes in Him a central truth. 
 He not only called men one by one to follow 
 Him and so enter into life, but He showed how 
 only in that way can men find life. Repent- 
 ance and faith and right living, as before God, 
 no man can render for another. In the face 
 of all the possible sundering of the strongest of 
 human bonds, even to the antagonizing of 
 fathers and children, and husbands and wives, 
 men are to hear the voice of God and individ- 
 ually to obey it. Christ's Gospel in its initial 
 stages is distinctly individualistic. The re- 
 demption that it proclaims and the life that it 
 offers are alike the privilege and declare the 
 duty of each separate soul. 
 
 Upon this He based His doctrine of the 
 kingdom. The new movement which He 
 inaugurated was a redemptive process to em- 
 
JESUS AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS 275 
 
 brace humanity and to continue through all 
 time. Its first effect was to uproot paganism 
 in which all God's purpose with men is de- 
 feated. The evil becomes the good. God is 
 dethroned. Love is abandoned and life be- 
 comes the arena for the play of uncontrolled 
 passions, which, destroying all hope for the 
 future, make even the present life a hell. 
 
 Suppose Jesus had done as some reformers 
 to-day would have had Him do, and had begun 
 by attacking the organization of the state. 
 Suppose He had advocated the rule of the best 
 men, as has been suggested by others. Both 
 Athens and Israel had tried it, and it had ended 
 in profligacy and phariseeism. Lord Acton's 
 saying is an abiding truth — ** No class is fit to 
 rule." And history is full of evidence that no 
 class has ever proved itself adequate for such 
 a task. Suppose He had advocated the rule 
 of the people in some form of democracy. We 
 know now that democracy means centraliza- 
 tion, and centralization in the end produces 
 tyranny, at least until regulated by approved 
 checks which even with all the advance which 
 the modern centuries have made in the art of 
 government we have not yet satisfactorily pro- 
 duced. 
 
 Suppose He had yielded to pressure like that 
 under which society is to-day and had ad- 
 
276 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 vocated new schemes in regard to property. 
 If He had advocated the dividing among all 
 according to their several needs, that is extreme 
 Socialism, which would attack the very primal 
 impulses to industry, would have caused pro- 
 duction to fall off, and would have made it 
 necessary to regulate the increase of population 
 in the selfish interest of those who would con- 
 trol its growth, at the beginning of modern 
 history men would have found their liberties 
 curtailed in every direction. 
 
 Suppose He had done what many would-be 
 leaders of thought are doing to-day, and had 
 exalted the value of material good. Suppose 
 He had made the possession of houses and 
 lands and money the ideal. At once tyranny 
 and slavery and selfishness and greed would 
 have been the inevitable result. The struggle 
 of humanity for progress in civilization would 
 have ended in disaster overwhelming and hope- 
 less. Suppose He had advocated the emanci- 
 pation of the slave. Social revolution would 
 have been precipitated and chaos would have 
 reigned. As it was, with all the peculiar gifts 
 for government of the Roman people, a begin- 
 ning was barely made in the development of 
 those forms of institution and life which have 
 been the foundation stones of modern civiliza- 
 tion ; and the disturbance which such a revolu- 
 
JESUS AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS 277 
 
 tionary movement would have inaugurated 
 would have been sufficient to retard the world's 
 progress indefinitely, if not to have arrested it 
 altogether. The world was far from ready for 
 the movement for which history has proved it 
 had to wait another two thousand years. 
 
 Suppose He had advocated woman's rights 
 and universal suffrage. To-day it is manifest 
 that there is no validity in mere external agen- 
 cies or systems of administration of government. 
 These, whether they be better or worse, theo- 
 retically ideal or the opposite, find all their value 
 in the developed character and the trained in- 
 telligence and self-control of those who are to 
 enjoy and to administer them. 
 
 What Jesus did was to suggest no final form 
 for the realization of human ideals. He pro- 
 claimed the principles of life, spiritual, all-em- 
 bracing, perpetual. The foundation truth was 
 that God is Father, and men are brothers. He 
 showed in Himself what this means, and then 
 said : ** Follow Me. Obey My words. Walk 
 in My steps. Open your hearts to receive and 
 cultivate My Spirit. And out of this will come 
 both the happiness of men and the establishing 
 of the kingdom of God." 
 
 The Church which He called into being 
 started to do this. It began by preaching His 
 Gospel and winning men to repentance and to 
 
278 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 the new Life. It put the Scriptures in their 
 hands to declare the message and to guide the 
 life. It is not a final authority or an exclusive 
 guide. It can only be understood as other 
 lights are turned upon it. Much light was to 
 come from without, and the Church proceeded 
 immediately to seek it everywhere. Each 
 man's individual experience of his own heart, 
 each new event in God's Providence with him 
 or in the service which he strove to render to 
 God cast light upon the meaning of what he 
 received as God's word. So, the Bible grew in 
 the understanding and in the hearts of believers, 
 and it became fruitful correspondingly in their 
 lives. In proportion as the Church has thus 
 entered into the spirit of the Bible and taken 
 the Bible into its own life, this life has broad- 
 ened and deepened and become enriched. So 
 the kingdom of God has advanced under all 
 sorts of external conditions. Everywhere it 
 shows creative power. It has proved itself 
 adapted to men in every condition of civiliza- 
 tion, taking them as they are, reaching out to 
 their conscious need, and at once proceeding to 
 elevate them along all lines of human possibility 
 and attainment, so that everywhere the germ 
 of Christian civilization has come to denote both 
 that which is best in human experience and in 
 human ideals. As Principal Drummond of 
 
JESUS AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS 279 
 
 Manchester says in closing his new book, 
 "Studies in Christian Doctrine," "It is the 
 peculiarity of Christian discipleship that it is 
 not obedience to law, however sacred, or the 
 acceptance of a theology, however true," or, we 
 may add, the adoption of any form of human 
 society, however promising, "but the impress 
 of a Spirit and a communion of Love ; and if 
 that blessed image which has dwelt as a re- 
 deeming power in the heart of Christendom 
 were to fade out of memory, no teaching could 
 take its place as an uplifting power, for the 
 kindling touch of sympathy and love would be 
 wanting." 
 
 While humanitarian enthusiasm fails, because 
 it lacks permanent driving power, and because 
 it cannot reach to the low levels of men to 
 whom moral enthusiasm is not possible and 
 spiritual ideals are either unknown or have been 
 utterly destroyed, the Gospel of Christ every- 
 where puts life under the ribs of death and 
 makes all life both glad and better. "Joy," as 
 some one has said, " is," from the Christian 
 standpoint, " love counting up its blessings." 
 And the work of the Gospel of Christ is the es- 
 tablishing of this joy which springs in the hearts 
 of men who know God as their Father and their 
 Friend. The spread of the Gospel has as its im- 
 mediate effect growing unrest as the world re- 
 
280 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD 
 
 spends to the call to a better life. The business 
 of the follower of Jesus Christ is to point out the 
 way to that life as Jesus Christ Himself enacted 
 it. Holding up Christ as the Saviour of the 
 world is something more than holding Him up 
 as a social reformer. His appeal is to men as 
 children of God to whom He has come as the 
 elder brother to lead them to the Father. As 
 the eyes of men are opened to the new relation- 
 ship, their duties one to another spring into 
 controlling place. Will a man defraud or op- 
 press his neighbour ? He is his brother, — with 
 him equally a child of God, however great a 
 distinction may be between them along the line 
 of earthly possessions or privileges. Will he 
 cheat, or lie, or be impure ? He is a child of the 
 Father, and because of that relationship, is im- 
 pelled to be what his Father would have him and 
 to prove his brotherhood with the Jesus who has 
 opened for him the knowledge of his new life. 
 
 So men recognize the need and the meaning 
 of a Christian society as they discover the obli- 
 gations and the meaning of a Christian life. So 
 the prayer " Thy kingdom come " becomes an 
 essential part of the prayer for the forgiveness 
 of one's own sin, and the relations of Jesus 
 Christ to the condition of the world about us 
 become identical with His relation to the world 
 within our own hearts. 
 
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