fcibrarp of Che theological gmrimty 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 E. A. Richards 
 
 RX 9178 .H34 P8 1894 
 Hall' Thomas C. "58-1936. 
 The power of an endless lit 
 
THE POWER 
 
 OF 
 
 AN ENDLESS LIFE 
 
MAR 26 1965 
 
 THE POWEI% utt ^ 
 
 y 
 
 £ 
 
 OF 
 
 AN ENDLESS LIFE 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS C. HALL 
 
 PASTOR OF THE FOURTH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 
 CHICAGO 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY 
 
 1894 
 
Copyright 
 
 By A. C. McClurg and Co. 
 
 a. d. 1894 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Only the kind insistence of friends, and 
 more particularly of one friend, whose judg- 
 ment I have learnt more and more to trust, 
 and to whom I desire to dedicate this little 
 volume, leads me to add to the many books 
 that clamor for our time. Without any thought 
 of more than a possible and passing interest 
 in the form of the message, it is the earnest 
 hope that some may find in these pages a word 
 to their deepest life. The form is that of the 
 direct appeal. Repetitions mark the frag- 
 mentary character of the preparation, but the 
 sermons were written 'with the profound con- 
 viction that more deeply than ever must organ- 
 ized Christianity enter into the secrets of our 
 Lord and King, and learn from Christ " The 
 Power of an Endless Life." 
 
 T. C. H. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 I. Forms of Godliness 9 
 
 II. The Power of an Endless Life . . 29 
 
 III. Christ made Perfect 52 
 
 IV. The Impulsive Type of Christianity 71 
 V. The Intellectual Type of Chris- 
 tianity 88 
 
 VI. The Ethical Type of Christianity . 107 
 
 VII. The Mystic Type of Christianity . 128 
 
 VIII. The Three Crosses of Calvary . . 149 
 
 IX. The Temporal Kingdom 167 
 
THE 
 
 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE 
 
 I. 
 
 FORMS OF GODLINESS. 
 
 Holding a form of godliness, but having denied 
 the power thereof : from these also turn away. 
 — 2 Tim. iii. 5. 
 
 HPHIS warning is interesting as an in- 
 dication of what Paul already saw 
 coming into the life of the ancient primi- 
 tive church. Some would persuade us 
 that the church of the first three centuries 
 was a model church in every way, but 
 even during the life of Paul very nearly 
 all the marks of degradation and disinte- 
 gration that are to be seen more clearly 
 working later on were already before his 
 prophetic eye. Indeed, before three cen- 
 
IO POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 turies had passed the church had cor- 
 rupted herself alike in doctrine and in 
 ritual. 
 
 It is also interesting to see that Paul 
 here makes the sharp distinction which 
 later philosophy has emphasized and 
 developed, the distinction between the 
 form and the essential, between expres- 
 sion and power, between accident and 
 that which is real. This distinction has 
 passed into the thinking of the present 
 generation more particularly through the 
 transcendental philosophy of Germany, so 
 that it is a commonplace, familiar thing 
 with us, many of us dwelling upon it with- 
 out knowing very clearly the origin of 
 the idea. 
 
 It is perfectly clear to any one that 
 reflects, that the form and the essence are 
 not the same, that the essence is some- 
 thing so intangible that it is often very 
 difficult to describe. But no matter how 
 imperfect the form, the essential under- 
 
FORMS OF GODLINESS. II 
 
 neath the form is after all the real thing, 
 the other is accidental. The forms in 
 which men hold godliness are of infinite 
 variety. What is godliness ? Godli- 
 ness is just what the word tells you; it 
 is god-li-ness, or the quality of being like 
 God. In Him we live, and move, and 
 have our being. The old Greek poet 
 saw that clearly, and Paul emphasizes 
 his statement and endorses it by quoting 
 him. We feel in our better moments 
 how helpless we are to do right, and in 
 our better moments we attribute all our 
 right doing to the divine impulse that 
 is in our life. This is the real spiritual 
 meaning of the doctrine of total cor- 
 ruption. It is the expression of the 
 sense within us that we are helpless 
 apart from God, that it is only as 
 God lives in us that righteousness is 
 godliness. Wherever, therefore, we find 
 anything that is admirable, it has its 
 source in the divine, God is to have the 
 
12 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 glory. This is the real foundation of 
 the hope that is strong in every one of 
 us, that Christ is much larger than the 
 historic knowledge of Christ; that wher- 
 ever there is self-sacrifice, wherever there 
 is hungering of the soul for God, wher- 
 ever there is the breaking, contrite heart, 
 there is the revelation of the presence of 
 God. The Christ as manifested in the 
 historical form is the incarnation of that 
 complete godliness, the other forms of 
 which, so far as they are human, are 
 always more or less imperfect. 
 
 So you will see also that there are 
 forms of godliness so incomplete that 
 they are masked caricatures of the Christ- 
 like life. Indeed, if you thoughtfully con- 
 sider the familiar forms of godliness, you 
 will find in them all some element of the 
 caricature that men are so apt to trace 
 in the lines of the picture. The pagan 
 forms of q-odliness seem at first siriit 
 warped out of all semblance to religious 
 
FORMS OF GODLINESS. 1 3 
 
 life ; loaded down with iniquity, heart- 
 less selfishness, gross sensuality. Heathen 
 worship, so far as it has value, has it only 
 as an imperfect expression of the craving 
 of the human heart to come to that divine 
 source of which every man at some time 
 in his life feels a longing to drink. But 
 all worship has value as by it we find 
 ourselves in contact with God. This 
 contact is divine life, however much we 
 may caricature it, however poor the 
 expression we may give it, however 
 rude may be our conception of what the 
 reality is. 
 
 In history we see jostling each other 
 forms of godliness, such as the philosophy 
 of heathendom contrasted with primitive 
 Christianity, as paganism was contrasted 
 with Judaism. The forms of godliness 
 as we see them in pagan Greece and 
 pagan Rome, were such as indicate that 
 philosophy represented an advance on 
 the popular forms of Roman and Greek 
 
14 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 godliness. Hence philosophy set to 
 work to destroy these older forms, but 
 its weakness was that it put in their place 
 a form only a little better. 
 
 Then there are the forms of godliness 
 which we see in the splendid basilicas 
 and glorious cathedrals and the mon- 
 asteries of the Middle Ages, — forms of 
 godliness splendid in their outward ap- 
 pearance, high, imposing, majestic to 
 the imaginations of men ; forms under 
 which the deep underlying craving of the 
 human heart for some expression of di- 
 vinity sought to make itself felt in the 
 world's real history. There are the forms 
 of godliness as we find them in the theo- 
 logical scholasticism of the seventeenth 
 century, — the scholasticism which, just 
 as the primitive Christianity undermined 
 the Jewish philosophy, sought in its turn 
 to undermine the forms of godliness under 
 which the religious spirit had expressed 
 itself for fifteen centuries, because it had 
 
FORMS OF GODLINESS. 1 5 
 
 found, and knew in its heart of hearts, 
 that these forms were interfering with 
 the growth of the divine life in its fuller 
 expression. Scholasticism was also only 
 a form, and it had to give way to some- 
 thing better. The Evangelical Emotion- 
 alism was a form under which a better 
 godliness, a new appreciation of the 
 Christ life, a holier conception of what 
 life ought to be, sought to undermine 
 scholastic medievalism that Christ might 
 be still more plainly seen. 
 
 Now can any nineteenth-century com- 
 munity, I might almost say any nine- 
 teenth-century congregation, say that all 
 these forms of godliness are not more or 
 less expressed among us ? There is dog- 
 matism among us, plenty of it, undiluted, 
 most undisguised dogmatism. There is 
 heathenism among us, heathenism that 
 voices itself precisely in the sceptical, 
 cynical, sneering philosophy which was 
 on the lips of Caesar and Cicero. There 
 
1 6 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 is among us the baptized dogmatism that 
 formed the life of the church of the third 
 and tenth centuries, — a baptized dogma- 
 tism whose whole conception is aesthetic, 
 and which is satisfied with the husks of 
 externalism without coming in contact 
 with the reality. There is mediaeval scho- 
 lasticism among us. It is found most 
 largely expressing itself from the pulpit, 
 but there is plenty of it there. There is 
 evangelicalism in all its strength, in all its 
 weakness among us. Sometimes it is not 
 power, sometimes it is a form of godli- 
 ness that is made up of a great many 
 forms ; it is the synthesis, the putting 
 together of many forms ; it is the cor- 
 ruption of the divine idea. We are, to-day 
 as ever, in danger of holding the forms 
 of godliness without the power thereof. 
 You may ask, then, is it a matter of 
 indifference whether we are pagans or 
 heathens ; whether we hold mediaeval 
 scholasticism, or evangelical forms ? 
 
FORMS OF GODLINESS. I J 
 
 Yes, it may be a matter of complete in- 
 difference. If you are denying the power, 
 you might as well deny the power under 
 one form as another. If you are denying 
 the power of God, it is all one to High 
 Heaven under what form you make your 
 denial. In the last days there shall come 
 those who shall hold the forms of godli- 
 ness, but deny the power thereof. 
 
 What is the power of godliness ? The 
 New Testament is so full of it that we 
 have not seen it. It forms so much of 
 Paul's writings that we have almost en- 
 tirely ignored it. It is so important a 
 factor that we have left it out. It is of 
 so real moment in our religious life that 
 we have let it pass us. The power of 
 God is the divine indwelling promised 
 when the Holy Spirit came down at 
 Pentecost, promised to every man who 
 will share with the early disciples the 
 Pentecostal moment. It is God in us. 
 It is the Holy Spirit speaking to and 
 
 2 
 
1 8 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 inspiring us in the inspired book, or in 
 the church, or in the pulpit, — inspiring 
 us to right doing, to right living, to right 
 thinking, to right sacrifice. 
 
 This is the power of godliness ; and 
 our denials of it, however much we may 
 cover them in words, amount always to 
 the same thing. We deny it in a hun- 
 dred ways. We say to ourselves that our 
 form is convenient, that we are satisfied 
 with the present. The power of godli- 
 ness denied in the interests of the form 
 is the real weakness of the individual, 
 the social, the Christian life. Let us see 
 what is the power of this godliness. It 
 is the power of God. What did it do in 
 New Testament times? It shook men 
 so that with blanched faces they saw the 
 coming judgment, so that with trembling 
 voices they declared to their generation 
 what were the penalties of unrighteous- 
 ness. It shook men so that their lives 
 were changed. They forgot the past 
 
FORMS OF GODLINESS. 1 9 
 
 and flung themselves into the future, 
 careless of what it brought forth for them. 
 The power of godliness made them new 
 men in Christ Jesus, sent them to the 
 cross if need were, that men might know 
 that the power of God was righteousness 
 and righteousness altogether, and that 
 denial was death. 
 
 There was seen the power of that god- 
 liness when about the tenth century men 
 began to realize that things could not go 
 on as they were going. The monasteries 
 were heaps of corruption. The priests 
 were blind leaders of the blind. The 
 nobles had added field to field and house 
 to house until there was no place for the 
 starving peasant, who had to accept any- 
 thing the insolent nobles chose to give 
 them. These warred among themselves 
 until blood covered all the hills ; but if the 
 peasant dared lift his hand they would 
 stop their wars among themselves and 
 unite in still further trampling upon the 
 
20 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 neck of the down-trodden serf, grinding 
 him into the dust, mingling his blood 
 with their sacrifices and his flesh with 
 their feasts. Things could not go on as 
 as they were. The power of godliness 
 seized on one or two men, and they went 
 forth with voices shaken with the thun- 
 ders of Sinai and melting with the mercy 
 of the Mount, telling men that the King 
 would come, and that their judgment 
 was of heaven. Men did repent for a 
 little. God did lift for a little the clouds 
 that hung over them. Yet they again 
 forgot him. Then he baptized Europe 
 in blood. Europe deserved it: and 
 out of her ruins he fenced a new vine- 
 yard, and built a new wine-press, and he 
 looks for grapes : it is for you and me to 
 say what he will find. Will he find 
 grapes, or only wild grapes ? 
 
 The power of godliness was displayed 
 in a very startling way in two countries 
 very near to each other; and we have a 
 
FORMS OF GODLINESS. 21 
 
 prophetic voice telling us in accents that 
 ought to ring down the ages what came 
 of the power of godliness denied in 
 France. Read Carlyle's History of the 
 French Revolution, and learn what the 
 power of godliness denied brought forth. 
 Over England hung precisely the same 
 prophetic clouds. The conditions in 
 England, if we are to trust the historian, 
 were not very much better than the con- 
 ditions in France ; but the power of god- 
 liness became manifest, and changed the 
 lives of two Oxford students, who gath- 
 ered a few more students around them. 
 The power of godliness shook them, and 
 they went down to the Cornish miners. 
 They gathered these miners about them ; 
 the tears rolled down their faces, these 
 poor, despised, outcast members of so- 
 ciety ! There were Pentecostal waves 
 which shook England from centre to 
 centre, rolled over into this country where 
 conditions were becoming very bad in- 
 
2 2 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 deed, and they stopped for a little the 
 processes that were going on here with 
 such frightful rapidity. The pov/er of 
 godliness saved England for a little. 
 
 Now the power of godliness is a very 
 strange thing. All power is. You can- 
 not put your finger upon it. If I were 
 to speak to you about the power of 
 gravitation, you might know its laws, you 
 might know its results. You might say 
 that it shows itself so and so, and in- 
 creases in such and such a ratio ; that it 
 holds the world together in such and 
 such a way. But what is gravitation ? 
 You do not know, nor does any one. The 
 best explanation that is given of it en- 
 counters so many insuperable mathemati- 
 cal objections that there is practically no 
 adequate explanation of what gravitation 
 is. The power that makes our spring 
 creep slowly upon us, — the power of the 
 sun's heat, — we know not either what it 
 is. We can change the heat into light, 
 
FORMS OF GODLINESS. 23 
 
 and the motion into electricity; we can 
 change the electricity into lifting power; 
 we can even take the electricity and in 
 some mysterious way change it into vital 
 power, and putting it through the roots 
 of trees and plants greatly increase their 
 vital activity. There is some strange 
 correlation of all the physical powers 
 round about us ; but if you were to ask 
 scientific men what is the power, they 
 would say they do not know; they only 
 know its results, and that is all science 
 deals with. 
 
 Now we know the pow r er of godliness 
 only as we see it exemplified in results. 
 You see the little bud in its hard case. 
 If the hail were to come it would only 
 jump off the hard enclosed bud ; but 
 the power of the sun is going to break 
 through that hard case, and the little 
 bud will fling itself out into God's sun- 
 shine with all the laughter of new green 
 leaves to hail the joy of the coming 
 
24 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 summer. The denial of the power of 
 godliness is the denial of that which can 
 change the forms of life as they are about 
 us. If you say, " I do not believe in the 
 power of the spring : I do not believe in 
 this power of the sun ; I do not believe 
 what you tell me of the strange alchemy 
 of the chemists ; " I can only take you 
 out and show you the bud bursting into 
 the fulness of its joy, and say, " Some- 
 thing did that; some power there was that 
 did that. I cannot analyze it for you, but 
 it is there." The form is nothing; if the 
 power is there it will make its own form, 
 it will find its own expression. The 
 denial of the power of godliness is the 
 denial that there is in this world a di- 
 vine life capable of changing the human 
 heart, breaking its hardness, changing 
 the stony heart into a heart of flesh, 
 making us sympathetic, tender, and true. 
 The denial of the power of godliness is 
 the denial of the power to do this thing. 
 
FORMS OF GODLINESS. 25 
 
 That denial is written large in the lives 
 of some of us, though we hold the forms 
 of godliness. You say, " I am sound in 
 in my orthodoxy, I accept the Shorter 
 Catechism and the Confession of Faith ; 
 I believe everything." And what does it 
 amount to ? It may amount to this, that 
 you are holding the forms of godliness; 
 and the servant in your household, the 
 employee in your office, the tenant in 
 your dwelling, and the dependent upon 
 you or the employer who is over you, 
 looks for the true power, and sees rather 
 the awful denial of the power of god- 
 liness, making you selfish, making you 
 unlovable, making you a lover of pleas- 
 ure and not a lover of God, denying in 
 your lives the things you profess in the 
 church ; so that men and women who 
 know religion only as you have taught 
 it to them, say that it is hard and cold, 
 a dreary, barren intellectual belief, a 
 dogma, and they cannot accept it, and say, 
 
26 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 " Away with it ! " They learn from you 
 to deny, not the power, that they never 
 see, but the form of godliness, and then 
 you weep over their scepticism. You 
 have friends, you have wives, you have 
 husbands, you have dependents, you have 
 employers ; how is it ? Are the forms of 
 godliness that you practise so full of 
 power that they are the natural expres- 
 sion of the divine life written on your 
 very brow? as when Stephen stood up 
 before those who denied the power of 
 godliness, and as he looked his face 
 became as the face of an angel, telling 
 them to their faces of their sin, rehears- 
 ing all the ills, all the vices, all the ini- 
 quity of the past history of the children 
 of Israel till at last they could stand it 
 no longer, and they gnashed their teeth 
 at him and took him and stoned him. 
 "Jerusalem! Jerusalem! thou that ston- 
 est the prophets and slayest those that 
 are sent unto thee, how often would I 
 
FORMS OF GODLINESS. 2 J 
 
 have gathered thy children together, even 
 as a hen gathereth her chickens under 
 her wings, and ye would not." 
 
 We come out from morning to morn- 
 ing to God's house. We sing hosannas 
 to Jesus Christ. We claim him as Mas- 
 ter. We entreat him to be with us. 
 We hold the forms of godliness; but, 
 let us ask ourselves, are we holding the 
 forms of godliness and denying the power 
 thereof ? If it is so, that is the only in- 
 fidelity that will really wreck the world. 
 The infidelity that points out the mis- 
 takes of Moses from the public platform 
 will do no harm if only, being faithful 
 and not denying the power of godliness, 
 you do not give wings to every shaft of 
 infidelity. If only you lift up the cross 
 in a life of self-denial and self-sacrifice, if 
 only you live so that the world will take 
 knowledge of you that you have been 
 with Jesus, if only Christ is in your life, 
 you need have no fear of infidelity, no 
 
28 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 fear for the world. It is Gods world, and 
 he will reign in it, even if he turn and 
 overturn until our present industrial sit- 
 uation, our organized Christianity, our 
 political institutions are broken if need 
 be into the trodden dust of the ages, and 
 there come a new heaven and a new 
 earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, 
 and Christ is King forever and ever. 
 
II. 
 
 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 And what we say is yet 7nore abundantly evident, 
 if after the likeness of Melchizedek there ariseth 
 another priest, who hath been made, not after the 
 law of a carnal commandment, but after the power 
 of an endless life. — Heb. vii. 15-16. 
 
 ' I "HIS chapter is not strictly an ar- 
 gument in the sense in which we 
 shall find that word used in our books of 
 formal logic. It is rather a forcible illus- 
 tration. It is from the story of Melchi- 
 zedek, with which the Jewish imagina- 
 tion had dealt rather liberally. As all 
 easily recall the details of that story, it is 
 unnecessary to dwell upon the various 
 conceptions that grew up in the later 
 Jewish history around this symbolic 
 figure. Melchizedek greets Abraham. 
 Abraham acknowledges him as priest 
 
3<D POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 and king, and pays him tithes for some 
 reason that is unknown to us. That he 
 was a worshipper of the same God that 
 Abraham acknowledged, that Abraham 
 in some way or other was desirous of 
 acknowledging either his moral or reli- 
 gious supremacy, is undoubted. Beyond 
 that it is not useful for us to go. As an 
 illustration this story has great weight, 
 for the writer to the Hebrews has ex- 
 plained at considerable length to those 
 to whom he was writing that the Jewish 
 religion had not passed away, that they 
 did not of necessity break with the na- 
 tional Judaism when they accepted Chris- 
 tianity. All that had passed away was 
 the form, and that had absolutely passed 
 away. Now there was a better revela- 
 tion, — not a new revelation, but a better 
 and higher revelation of that very thing 
 toward which Judaism had been only 
 pointing. The argument of the book 
 centres around that one thought. The 
 
POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 3 1 
 
 writer also points out that the real priest- 
 hood was not bound up with lineal 
 descent ; that the priesthood existed inde- 
 pendently of the forms of Judaism ; that 
 such a priesthood, whatever its change 
 in character, was ever the same in its 
 essential religious meaning, — that it 
 was in fact the priesthood established in 
 Christ, who, he says, is a priest after the 
 order of Melchizedek. 
 
 Now what distinguishes this non- 
 Judaic priesthood ? It was the isolated 
 character of Melchizedek in bold anti- 
 thesis to the Jewish priestly family ; and 
 it is to this antithesis between the real 
 and the symbolic, between the temporal 
 and the eternal, that the author directs 
 our attention. Christ is claimed as priest, 
 not of law, but of power; not of carnal 
 commandment, but after the power of an 
 endless life. Here there are contrasts, 
 — law as over against power, law being 
 only the expression, in many cases indeed 
 
32 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 only the temporary expression of power. 
 Power must be behind law. The law 
 may change. Indeed, because power 
 only can last, therefore the law must 
 change. This is a fact familiar to every 
 historical jurist. 
 
 And not after a carnal commandment 
 is Christ a priest, — a carnal command- 
 ment having to do simply with circumstan- 
 ces which are temporal and changing, — 
 but after the power of an indissoluble life. 
 This is the uniqueness that is claimed for 
 Christ, that he is the power that passe th 
 not away, — " Jesus Christ, the same yes- 
 terday, to-day and forever," a priest not 
 after a carnal commandment, not after 
 law, but after the power of an endless 
 life. I believe if we could only fix that 
 contrast in our minds it would give us 
 light upon some of the things that puzzle 
 and perplex us. We should sometimes 
 fail indeed to separate between the tem- 
 poral and eternal elements, but we should 
 
POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 33 
 
 not be discouraged because we thus 
 failed. There are some marked phenom- 
 ena of life that might be more easily 
 explained to us if we would remember 
 this contrast between power and the ex- 
 pression of it. Take for instance the 
 religions, even those which are beyond 
 the pale of the immediate revelation 
 granted to us in Christ. Surely there 
 we may see something of this power 
 which cannot be identified with the forms 
 which we have come to recognize as weak, 
 imperfect, and temporary. Of course, 
 I cannot speak of the natural religions 
 from the standpoint of one that knows 
 them thoroughly ; I can only take the 
 testimony of those who are competent to 
 judge, as I am not. Take, for instance, 
 the testimony concerning Buddhism. It 
 is useless for us to deny the power that 
 Buddhism has had over men's lives. It 
 started very much as Protestantism 
 
 started, as a reaction against the formal- 
 3 
 
34 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 ity and corruption of the older Brah- 
 manism. Buddhism started as a reform, 
 with no intention of breaking away from 
 Brahmanism, with no intention of doing 
 more than instilling into the older reli- 
 gion a force and vitality which it was 
 only too evident it had lost. Now, the 
 forms in which Buddhism comes to us 
 are most evidently immaterial. Its phi- 
 losophy has changed so completely that 
 the schools of Buddhism are as numerous 
 as the schools of Protestantism. All that 
 is outward finds the greatest variety 
 exhibited in its development. It is, of 
 course, an easy explanation of its power 
 to say that it was born of the devil ; that 
 was the older Christian explanation, but 
 the ideas and spirit of the New Testa- 
 ment teach us to understand more prop- 
 erly the influence it has had over mens 
 lives. Certainly its power was not in 
 that it was a popular proclamation. It 
 was not a mystic dream. Its power was 
 
POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 35 
 
 not in pandering to men's appetites. It 
 preached sternly at all times upon a very 
 high and noble level the doctrine of self- 
 sacrifice and self-abnegation. Nor did it 
 hold out certain popular dreams, certain 
 hopes that men would readily grasp after. 
 It did nothing of the kind. It never 
 tempted men with dreams of a paradise 
 in exchange for the life here. Its insist- 
 ence was upon a life of righteousness here 
 and now, and it held out as almost the 
 only hope for the future an escape from 
 the evils incident to the life that is now. 
 
 Take, on the other hand, the religion 
 of Mohammed. Again we see that there 
 is something that must be deeper than 
 the forms of Mohammedanism, for these 
 forms we have come to recognize as 
 weak and imperfect. Now it is a very 
 easy explanation of Mohammedanism to 
 say that it was advanced by the power of 
 the sword. But did you ever know of 
 another instance where a nation of drunk- 
 
36 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 ards and gamblers was made moral by 
 any temporal power? If so, I wish very 
 much that Mohammed's sword could be 
 unsheathed in America. It is a very easy 
 explanation of the power of Mohammed- 
 anism to say that it was the genius of 
 one man. If that is true, how is it to be 
 explained that the genius of Mohammed 
 gave birth to a long succession of men of 
 genius, on the very lines of Mohammed's 
 power, that, for instance, it should pro- 
 duce a Saladin, who showed himself a 
 nobler man than most of his Christian 
 opponents? It is a comparatively easy 
 explanation to say that the wild hopes 
 of a temporal paradise tempted men to 
 be moral. The experience of human life 
 is that men are not tempted to morality 
 by any such means. We must recognize, 
 if we are honest, that behind all that is 
 temporary and weak and imperfect in 
 Judaism, in Mohammedanism, in Bud- 
 dhism, in any of the religions whose 
 
POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 37 
 
 forms we have come to recognize as in- 
 efficient, there is something that needs to 
 be revealed more perfectly, to be known 
 and grasped at fully, if we would have 
 the explanation of the religious life, and 
 the power of that religious life over the 
 characters and hopes of men. 
 
 We see in church history something 
 of the dangers of forgetting the human 
 character of Christ Jesus our Lord. We 
 see some of the perils that come from a 
 too sharp separation of his humanity from 
 our humanity. Nothing could be more 
 profitable for us than to dwell from time 
 to time, with anxious thought for God's 
 blessing as we do so, upon what is the 
 real power of Christ's life as he presents 
 himself to us as the explanation, not of 
 Judaism only, but as the explanation of 
 all religion wherever found, as the full 
 revelation and incarnation of that after 
 which we have been feeling, the full 
 revelation of the power of an endless 
 
38 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE, 
 
 life over men's fallen ambitions and fallen 
 hopes, the power that raises men from 
 the dead and brings life again to the sick 
 and weary. And the power is not after 
 a carnal commandment, not after the 
 laws of the past, but it is the power of 
 an endless life revealed in the person of 
 our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 
 
 This power of an endless life has not 
 always been understood, and men have 
 often sought to explain it in such a way 
 that they have succeeded in explaining 
 it away. Men have tried to reduce Chris- 
 tianity to a very high code of morals. 
 Well, it is that. As soon as we are liv- 
 ing upon the level of the sermon on the 
 mount the Kingdom of God will be very 
 nigh unto us. But it is not that only. 
 The Stoic philosophy gave us a code of 
 morals in many ways to be compared 
 with the code in the New Testament. 
 The code of Confucius does not fall very 
 far short in the formal directions of life 
 
POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 39 
 
 from those of Christ. If Christianity 
 were only a code of morals, if it were 
 only the direction of what you and I 
 should do and should leave undone, 
 Christianity would not have had the 
 power over men's hearts and lives that 
 it has had ; it would not have led to 
 right doing in the way it has done when- 
 ever faithfully proclaimed and accepted. 
 There must be some deeper and more 
 abiding explanation of the power of the 
 Christian religion over men's hearts and 
 lives than the explanation that would re- 
 duce it simply to a series of " Thou shalt 
 not," and " Thou shalt do this." It is not 
 and never has been a mere code of morals. 
 Some have sought to find this power 
 in its wonderful reviving of philosophy. 
 But as a matter of fact Christianity did 
 not revive philosophy. It only revived 
 certain phases of Greek philosophy, and 
 then often to Christianity's own great 
 disadvantage. Again and again Chris- 
 
40 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 tianity has been explained away with a 
 certain deliberateness of purpose by seek- 
 ing to identify it in its essence with that 
 which any one may see to have been but 
 passing phases of a decadent Greek spirit. 
 Its power is not there. Its power has 
 been felt there. Its power has been felt 
 even in these decadent phases of Greek 
 thought, but it is not to be identified 
 with them in any sense ; for Christianity 
 is more than a philosophy, it is more 
 than a system, it is more than a tradition, 
 it is more than an organization, it is more 
 than law, it is the power of an endless 
 life. 
 
 The great mistake of some of the early 
 centuries was to identify the Church 
 with an organization, to make its power 
 felt only through an organization ; and 
 some, particularly one historian, who has 
 exercised great influence over the think- 
 ing of the English people, have sought 
 to show how by just coming at the right 
 
POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 41 
 
 time the religion of Jesus Christ was able 
 to subsidize the forms of an organization 
 already existing, and use it for its own 
 purposes. If this explanation of the 
 power of Christianity is true, it is a very 
 strange circumstance that it was able 
 thus to appropriate to itself so powerful 
 an organization ; some explanation is due 
 us as to how the lesser thus swallowed 
 up the greater. But a little careful study, 
 I think, will show you that though this 
 organization was used by Christianity to 
 a large degree, Christianity used it to her 
 great and permanent disadvantage ; and 
 far from identifying Christianity with the 
 Roman power which it subsidized, far 
 from seeking its explanation in the power 
 of that empire which it overthrew, we are 
 to find in the very fact that it did too 
 closely identify itself with this falling 
 civilization the weakness which overtook 
 it and wellnigh led to its absorption in 
 the Middle Ages. 
 
42 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 Christianity is more than the visible 
 church. It is greater than the Roman 
 Empire ; for the church had influence 
 over men's hearts that the Roman Em- 
 pire could not exercise. Christianity is 
 centred in the divinity of its founder; it 
 is centred in the fact that the Divine 
 Life became incarnate. It has as its real 
 secret the fact that there has arisen an- 
 other priest, who hath been made, not 
 after a carnal commandment, but after 
 the power of an endless life. It is this 
 incarnation as a common meeting ground 
 between humanity and God that gives 
 Christianity its uniqueness. This un- 
 iqueness does not consist in certain 
 transcendental abstractions or metaphy- 
 sical distinctions. The uniqueness of 
 Christianity consists first in the insepar- 
 ableness of Christ from humanity, and, 
 second, in the inseparableness of Christ 
 from Divinity ; and on this common 
 ground between God and man the divine 
 
POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 43 
 
 within us finds its expression in Jesus 
 Christ, the power of an endless life. 
 
 If you have followed the argument, I 
 wonder if you will be prepared to pass 
 with me to some of the more particular 
 applications of that truth to the life that 
 is about us. One of the difficulties of 
 all statement is that it may be made so 
 abstract that having made it and written 
 it down we close it up and put it away 
 upon our library shelves. But if it is 
 really true, if there is really a power of 
 an endless life, then it is for you and me 
 to come under its influence, — to feel it 
 ourselves, and make it a power felt in all 
 life. 
 
 Because there are so many substitutes 
 for this power of an endless life, it is 
 difficult for weak faith to grasp it and to 
 translate it into life. There is a substi- 
 tute found in a certain intellectual de- 
 structiveness. We are soaked with the 
 critical spirit, we revel in pulling things 
 
44 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 to pieces to see what is inside ; and in 
 the process of our analysis we feel keenly 
 that triumphant sense that the little child 
 feels when she has torn her doll to pieces 
 and finds the saw-dust running out. We 
 find ourselves exulting over the things 
 we are analyzing. No man can take a 
 life,- or a character, or a history, or a 
 church, or a doctrine, or a creed, and 
 analyze it, without putting himself in a 
 certain position of judge as over against 
 it ; and in that exalted position, even 
 though it is assumed by himself, he is apt 
 to find a certain satisfaction and pride, 
 which may lead him far astray. In our 
 present age there is this air of critical 
 analysis, of intellectual destructiveness, 
 of refined culture, and we are apt to 
 boast ourselves that we have found at 
 last some kind of substitute for this 
 power of which we hear so much down 
 the ages, and which the Nineteenth 
 Century would like exceedingly to do 
 
POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 45 
 
 without Well, we can do without it 
 possibly for a little while, but not very 
 long. No age can do without it and do 
 its work. It is the one thing worth hav- 
 ing, all else fades in significance in rela- 
 tion to it. The power of an endless life 
 alone brings all things into their proper 
 proportions. It shows the weakness of 
 mere critical analysis that, after we have 
 pulled our doll to pieces, we find our- 
 selves sobbing over the ruins, face to face 
 still with the problems of death and dis- 
 solution, face to face still with shame and 
 unrighteousness and iniquity and op- 
 pression, our hearts still unsatisfied; 
 and we wonder if life is only this, — only 
 the satisfaction of pulling to pieces the 
 things that have pleased us for a moment, 
 and then leaving them, and going out 
 forever and forever without hope and 
 without God in the world. There is 
 nothing that we need so much as to get 
 away from our abstractions, our meta- 
 
46 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 physics, our analysis and our culture, 
 and come face to face with the realities 
 of things ; and in our heart of hearts we 
 know, from the fact that it has had real 
 influence in our lives, that there is a 
 power of the Holy Ghost, that there is a 
 power of an endless life, that unless we 
 feel it and know it, unless it throbs in 
 our life, life is a failure. 
 
 There is another substitute which I 
 think is not less a real temptation. It is 
 found less in the cogitations than in the 
 active lives of men round about us. It 
 comes, I think, more vividly into the 
 foreground on the Fourth of July and 
 Washington's birthday, and other great 
 occasions for parading the wonderful 
 prosperity and material advancement of 
 the Nineteenth Century, and more par- 
 ticularly our portion of it. Let me call 
 it the commercial antichrist, — the sense 
 in men's hearts, that religion is a very 
 good thing in its way, but that there 
 
POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 47 
 
 are primary ends first to be reached ; 
 that there is after all a real power in the 
 world, and that is the power of material 
 prosperity, which has to be attended to 
 first. Then again, this heresy tells us 
 that men cannot conduct their business 
 unless they do this or that, and the prin- 
 cipal thing is to conduct our business. 
 We have great confidence in ourselves 
 that once having attained our end, then 
 we can open the doors of heaven with 
 our gold and bribe the Almighty with 
 our successes ; we will give him churches 
 and asylums and colleges, and leave him 
 large legacies in our wills. There is 
 nothing that we need to come face to 
 face with more than this, — that the wor- 
 ship of the commercial antichrist is eat- 
 ing the hearts and lives out of men, and 
 that that worship must pass away, and 
 that only when it has passed away shall 
 we know in its fulness what is the power 
 of an endless life. For all things pass 
 
48 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 away. We are in the midst of the cos- 
 mic stream of prosperity only to find 
 that our imperishable gold slips away. 
 You treasure it up, and those who are 
 most dear to you are corrupted and 
 damned by it. You have worshipped it, 
 and the image you have worshipped has 
 fallen upon and crushed you. You have 
 bowed to men for its sake, and they have 
 turned upon you and accused you of the 
 things they are doing themselves every 
 day, because they dread the exposure 
 which has come to you ; and so shame 
 and cursing: have ever come because men 
 know not the power of an endless life. 
 
 This is what we need to know ; and if 
 anything can teach it to us it would be a 
 short review of the history we have been 
 sketching. " All things pass away," says 
 the writer to the Hebrews ; nothing can 
 be trusted, all things pass away. Only 
 one thing remains, " Jesus Christ, the 
 same yesterday, to-day, and forever." 
 
POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 49 
 
 Over against Jerusalem he stood, and 
 Jerusalem condemned him, and stretched 
 him on the cross, and said, " Ha ! ha ! we 
 have done once and for all with this de- 
 ceiver, we have nailed him upon a cross 
 of shame." Jerusalem passed into his- 
 tory, and Christ into history to make but 
 more manifest the power of an endless 
 life. The Romans took his followers and 
 made torches of them to light their gar- 
 dens. The power of Rome passed away, 
 but the torches that lit their gardens sent 
 their light into the farthest North, re- 
 claiming men to righteousness, and even 
 barbarianism in all its brutality and igno- 
 rance felt the power of this endless life. 
 The Middle Ages said to themselves, 
 " We have found the last analysis ! " 
 They too failed of their high aims ; and 
 when brave monks spoke up they cast 
 them from their synagogues, and haughty 
 Rome sat a queen in her power and 
 laughed at the troublesome monks quar- 
 
50 TOWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 relling in their cells. But the power of 
 an endless life made itself manifest not 
 only in the Protestant North, it shook 
 even Catholic Rome, and called her 
 to face the bitter fact that if she would 
 not be destroyed she must hearken 
 to the voice of God. She hearkened, 
 and God spared her. He is speaking 
 yet, and Protestantism and Catholicism 
 have both to hear his voice in sorrowing 
 rebuke that they do not realize that the 
 power of all the past is this same power, 
 " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, 
 and forever ; " a priest not after a carnal 
 commandment, not after the intellectual 
 destructiveness of the Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury, not in accordance with our phi- 
 losophies, not in accordance with the 
 traditions of our ecclesiasticism, not in 
 accordance with our refinements in the 
 religious life, not in accordance with our 
 industrial wrongs, but after the real 
 power that is within every man that sub- 
 
POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 5 1 
 
 mits himself, crying aloud to his God to 
 make known the righteousness that is in 
 Christ Jesus, that our lives with all their 
 emptiness and poorness may be hidden 
 in the life that is in Jesus Christ. As 
 we look into his face sometimes it seems 
 to us there must be on that marred vis- 
 age a look of bitterness and despair that 
 we should have denied him thrice as we 
 have done ; but he still pleads with us if 
 we only will hear his voice, saying to us, 
 " Come unto me, and find rest for your 
 souls," and know that through his cross, 
 his self-sacrifice, his self-denial, his right- 
 eousness is the full and free forgiveness 
 of our God, and that forgiving love is the 
 power of an endless life. 
 
III. 
 
 CHRIST MADE PERFECT. 
 
 Who, . . . though he was a Son, yet learned obe- 
 dience by the things which he suffered ; and hav- 
 ing been made perfect, he became unto all them that 
 obey him the author of eternal salvation. — Heb. v. 
 8,9. 
 
 r FHE fulness of God's revelation is 
 such, and our capacity is so limited, 
 that every age and every generation, cer- 
 tainly every epoch, has new light from 
 heaven upon the path that man has made 
 dark. We ought ever to be learning 
 more of the way of God. We should be 
 ever seeking: the revelation that God is 
 ever willing to grant in his Church, in 
 history, in our reasoning faculties, in the 
 study of his Scripture. There is, indeed, 
 the danger that, on the one hand, all that 
 
CHRIST MADE PERFECT. 53 
 
 is old may have such attraction for us 
 that we shall refuse to enter into the new, 
 and thus miss much of the revelation of 
 our God ; and on the other hand, that we 
 may be so charmed with the novelties 
 that we shall forget the continuity of 
 God's revelation, and in seeking these 
 new things have only one-sided views of 
 truth. 
 
 We must therefore seek constantly the 
 truth in that which is old, and holding 
 fast the profession of our faith, press 
 forward into that which is new indeed 
 to our thinking, but old to the eternal 
 wisdom of our God. The process is the 
 same as spiritual process is everywhere. 
 Truth is borne in upon us ; then we begin 
 to think about it, then we try to express 
 ourselves. When truth is borne in upon 
 us in the first instance, we are very likely 
 to be overwhelmed and confused ; there 
 is more light than we can walk in. There 
 falls on us that same darkness and con- 
 
54 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 fusion in the very midst of the glare of 
 the light that seems to have fallen upon 
 the disciples, and for a little while they 
 needed to draw aside that they might 
 rightly consider this new thought which 
 had been unfolded to them. The process, 
 then, of analysis finds our spirits often 
 in the critical mood. The moment we 
 begin to express the things that God has 
 been seeking to reveal to us, we find our 
 words quite inadequate for the purpose. 
 So it is rather the expression of the truth 
 that is progressive than the revelation 
 itself ; rather that our capacity for seiz- 
 ing upon it develops gradually than that 
 God is giving us more and more light, 
 though that may also be said to be true. 
 
 The same thing is true in all art ex- 
 pression. You no doubt have had feel- 
 ings that you would fain have expressed, 
 it may be of deep depression, of melan- 
 choly. You find your words inadequate ; 
 but some one brings to your notice a 
 
CHRIST MADE PERFECT. 55 
 
 poem by some masterhand, and he not 
 only expresses the feeling in your heart 
 that was seeking a voice, but he reveals 
 to you a higher self, and deeper feelings, 
 of which you had only been either dimly 
 conscious or wholly unconscious until 
 the artist revealed them to you. 
 
 But even words have their limits. 
 And so it may be that a picture grasps 
 at your thought and expresses it as even 
 words cannot. Take, for instance, such 
 a poem as that of Edgar Allan Poe's 
 " The Raven ; " place it alongside the 
 marvellous print from the hand of Diirer 
 of " Melancholia," and see how the pic- 
 ture and poem answer one to the other, 
 expressing tones and feelings of your 
 thought that neither is able wholly to 
 articulate. Even here there seems to be 
 a limit; but you chance to come where 
 music is being played. Here words and 
 picture are supplemented with the tones 
 of the instruments. Your spirit is caught 
 
56 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 up, and the minor chord that sings 
 through the refrain answers back to 
 your spirit, and you rejoice that not 
 only your emotions find expression, but 
 that there has been revealed to you per- 
 chance the meaning and secret that is 
 behind all emotion, so that your better 
 and nobler self finds itself in the artistic 
 expression of the moment. 
 
 So also on a higher plane is it true of 
 God's revelation of himself in the person 
 of Jesus Christ. There was very little 
 danger that the disciples would forget 
 the divinity of Jesus Christ ; there was 
 great danger that the world would do 
 that. The danger was rather that the 
 disciples would forget his humanity, and 
 that danger Christ seems to have fore- 
 seen all through his ministry. It is his 
 Sonship, it is his manhood, it is his limi- 
 tations that he emphasizes in the midst 
 of his devoted followers. How far he 
 saw ipto history, church history tells you. 
 
CHRIST MADE PERFECT. 57 
 
 It was not his divinity, but his human- 
 ity that the Church forgot, and having 
 forgotten and laid it aside, the painted 
 image of the child, the Virgin Mary, or 
 the saints had to take the place that was 
 thus vacated, as revelations to man of 
 that link between him and the divinity 
 which he sought, but could truly find only 
 in the person of our Saviour Jesus Christ. 
 And so through many ages of church 
 history there was steadily lacking the 
 due emphasis upon this, the real human- 
 ity of our Saviour Jesus Christ. Christ 
 is the revelation not only of God to man, 
 but of man to his better self. Jesus 
 Christ is not only the fulness of the 
 Fatherhood revealed, he is also equally 
 emphatically a revelation of manhood as 
 it ought to be, the ideal of those things 
 for which in our better moments, when 
 the Spirit of God is moving upon our 
 spirits, we long to know and search after, 
 feeling that these things are eternal life. 
 
58 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 Christ's humanity is emphasized all 
 through the New Testament. It is 
 not simply in his own words. We find 
 throughout the writings of Paul and of 
 John, throughout this letter to the He- 
 brews by an unknown author, through- 
 out the whole literature of the New 
 Testament, a constant emphasis upon 
 the absolute humanity of our blessed 
 Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He 
 grew in wisdom ; he knew not the times 
 and seasons ; he did his miracles by the 
 authority of his Father ; he thanked his 
 Father that he had been heard when he 
 cried to him before the tomb of Lazarus ; 
 he knew his Father was able to save him 
 from death, and cried out in the bitter- 
 ness of his agony, " If it be possible, let 
 this cup pass from me ! " and he yielded 
 his will to the will of his Father, " Not as 
 I will, but as thou wilt." And so we 
 have Paul emphasizing the fact that he 
 took upon himself the form of a servant, 
 
CHRIST MADE PERFECT. 59 
 
 that he emptied himself and became 
 man that he might enter into our hopes 
 and fears ; that he might enter into the 
 very temptations, into your sorrows and 
 my sorrows, and bleed with our bleeding 
 hearts, and weep with our tears ; that 
 he might reveal unto us that better 
 nature, that higher and diviner life, which 
 has been clouded by our sinfulness, and 
 can only be recovered by faith. 
 
 We find no stronger assertion of this 
 absolute humanity than we do here in 
 this letter to the Hebrews, and it is to 
 this particular clause that I shall ask 
 your more especial attention. " Who . . . 
 though he was a son, yet learned obedi- 
 ence by the things which he suffered ; 
 and having been made perfect, he became 
 unto all them that obey him the author 
 of eternal salvation." 
 
 If any one were to ask you what 
 the value of your life was, I have no 
 doubt at all there would be many 
 
60 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 responses of a different nature by those 
 who frankly answered. Some would say, 
 " Well, to be honest and frank, the whole 
 concern of my life just at present is my 
 business. These are times of depres- 
 sion, and there are many things I have to 
 neglect, and this is one thing I dare not 
 neglect. For my own sake, and for the 
 sake of my family, my business is at 
 present my chief concern." Ah ! then, 
 my friend, you are not prospering in 
 business, no matter how much money 
 you may be making. If that is your 
 chief concern in life, then life, indeed, 
 has its solemn question to you, Is that 
 life worth living ? Possibly you will say, 
 " Well, it is not so much my business as 
 my family. I live for my family ; they 
 must be supported and cared for. This 
 is surely my chief duty ; I should be worse 
 than infidel according to the sacred 
 writer if I did not care for those imme- 
 diately depending upon me." That is 
 
CHRIST MADE PERFECT. 6 1 
 
 very true ; but if this is your chief con- 
 cern, you are not caring for them in the 
 best possible way : " He that loveth not 
 me more than father or mother, or sister 
 or brother, is not worthy of me." You 
 can care best for your family by not 
 making it the chief concern of your life. 
 You can care best for those whom you 
 love by not making them the real thing 
 for which you are living. Some of you 
 perhaps would be tempted to say, " It is 
 my country." I suppose, even in Chicago, 
 there would be some found loyal enough 
 to feel that the time of peace is more 
 dangerous for these United States than 
 the time of war. You say in your heart 
 of hearts, " It is my country which is my 
 chief concern." O patriot! you cannot 
 care for your country as you might if 
 it is the one thing for which you are liv- 
 ing. There is a higher secret of life than 
 country or family or business, and that 
 higher secret can be learned only in the 
 
62 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 study of the life and sufferings of our 
 Saviour Jesus Christ. 
 
 Let us turn to see what was the secret 
 of his life. He learned in it ! That was 
 the thing ! You live that you may learn. 
 You are here, not to live for yourself, not 
 to die for yourself, but to learn, — to learn 
 the things that you cannot learn from busi- 
 ness or in the home circle or from your 
 country. You are here to learn to enter 
 into secrets and to find out mysteries, to 
 enter into the secret places of the Most 
 High ; you are here to make something of 
 your life ; you are here to be robed in a 
 robe of righteousness ; you are here to find 
 out secrets, not for yourself only, but for 
 others, — the high secrets of eternal wis- 
 dom ; you are here to learn, and unless 
 you are learning, though all these other 
 things may have their places in the 
 school of Christ, may be schoolmasters 
 to bring us to Christ, may have even 
 eternal value as they come into your 
 
CHRIST MADE PERFECT. 6$ 
 
 life, yet unless they are ministers of 
 righteousness, your life is so far forth a 
 failure. 
 
 Is life worth living? It depends upon 
 what description of life it is. The Christ 
 life was worth living ; and just so far as 
 your life is the Christ life it is of value, 
 and just so far as it is not the Christ life 
 it is of no value whatsoever : " If the salt 
 have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be 
 salted?" 
 
 What things did Christ learn ? He 
 learned obedience, the basis of noble char- 
 acter. Let me venture a criticism upon 
 our American life and say that obedience 
 is one of the things lacking in our life, 
 that we are lawless as a people. We are 
 lawless in the home ; we are lawless on 
 the street, and we need as a people to 
 learn obedience before we shall be fit 
 to command as we ought. Some of you 
 know what are the exercises on the fen- 
 cing floor or in the boxing-place. Possi- 
 
64 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 bly some of you have seen the weariness 
 with which the pupil constantly obeys the 
 master's commands. Blow after blow, de- 
 fence after defence, in barren, arbitrary 
 sequence : " Oh ! let me alone ; I can do 
 these things now by myself." But that 
 is not the point. He must do the thing 
 at once and in the exact moment of com- 
 mand. He must do it in obedience to 
 the master's ruling, because the master 
 knows that the pupil is soon to stand 
 before one whose every movement is a 
 command, whose every thrust must be 
 met at once and sharply with the proper 
 defence. He knows that the strife is 
 one constant obedience to demands made 
 upon him from the outside, and the pupil 
 is not fit to control himself, is not fit 
 to command his muscles, until he has 
 learned by absolute obedience what will 
 enable him in the conflict to answer with 
 the proper defence every attack. 
 
 So at the basis of all worthy character 
 
CHRIST MADE PERFECT. 65 
 
 there is this absolute obedience ; and it 
 is the only freedom. Lawlessness is not 
 freedom, license is not freedom ; license 
 is slavery, lawlessness is worse than slav- 
 ery. The only true freedom is obedience 
 to the highest, the search after the noblest, 
 the surrender of all to that which is in- 
 finite and eternal and unchangeable. 
 
 Christ came to teach us obedience. 
 And he taught it to us by learning obe- 
 dience himself by the things which he 
 suffered. We are a little squeamish now 
 about some things. The doctors bear 
 some of the blame of that. The pain 
 that they relieve us of leads us to dread 
 any pain they cannot assuage, so that 
 the things we bore once with perfect 
 ease now seem to us large bugbears. I 
 do not know that on the whole this is 
 for evil ; but, oh, friends, there is nothing 
 we need more than to be willing to bear 
 pain for others ; than the power of sym- 
 pathy to enter into the woes and pains of 
 5 
 
66 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 those who are about us. There is noth- 
 ing that you and I need more than to be 
 able to enter into the world's agony ; and 
 in entering into it ours may seem a very 
 hopeless task ; but even in the going with 
 others into the vale of darkness, the 
 touch of God through us may help them 
 to Christ. The kind word means more 
 than he who speaks it can know, to the 
 heart that is bowed down. There is an 
 immense amount of pain in this world 
 because from sheer, culpable ignorance 
 and sheer selfishness we cannot enter 
 into the woes of those about us. We 
 need to throw ourselves into the battle 
 of the world's tears and sorrows ; we 
 need to know something of these bruised 
 hearts in their agony ; we need to weep 
 with those who weep, that at last we may 
 rejoice with those who rejoice ; we need 
 to learn obedience through the things 
 that we suffer ourselves, that we may be 
 able as Christ did to enter into the woes 
 
CHRIST MADE PERFECT. 6j 
 
 of those who suffer. And so suffering 
 and pain have their sacred ministry ; and 
 Christ came, not to be ministered unto, 
 but to minister. He took upon himself 
 the burden of the world's wild woe ; he 
 entered into the trials and sorrows of 
 this life and was ground in the mad 
 machinery of man's devilish selfishness, 
 bigotry, and ignorance. In entire obedi- 
 ence to the mandates from above, he 
 learned obedience by the things which 
 he suffered, and has revealed to us a 
 higher manhood, a nobler ideal. He has 
 taught us that life is best worth living 
 when we too learn obedience through 
 the things which we suffer. He has 
 taught us that it is not in seeking our 
 own, nor in seeking to escape the world's 
 misery, nor in throwing off the burden of 
 its woes and pains, but in seeking the 
 extrication of the whole world from its 
 woe, that we shall find our highest life 
 and enter into the joy unspeakable of our 
 Lord. 
 
68 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 So it was that Christ learned obedi' 
 ence through the things which he suf- 
 fered, and has become the author of an 
 eternal salvation. Oh, surely there is no 
 nobler epitaph to be written over the 
 tomb of any one than that he served his 
 country and his God! There is no higher 
 ideal of manhood than that we enter into 
 the fulness of the salvation of which Jesus 
 Christ has become the author ! It would 
 be glorious simply to enter into it ; it 
 would be more glorious to take part in 
 the redemption. Who are we to be 
 counted worthy of this? And yet Christ 
 has called us to it, and we are to fill 
 up in our bodies that which is lacking of 
 the sufferings of Christ for his body's 
 sake, which is the Church. We with 
 Christ are to become the redemption of 
 the world. Suffering as he has taught us 
 to suffer ; dying as he has taught us to 
 die ; living as he lived ; walking with him ; 
 knowing what true manhood is because 
 
CHRIST MADE PERFECT. 69 
 
 he has revealed it unto us ; learning 
 obedience by the things which we suffer, 
 we shall enter with him as his brethren, 
 called no more his servants but his 
 brethren ; taking part with those whom 
 his blood has washed from their stains. 
 This, dear friends, is the meaning of 
 life. This is the bringing in of the eter- 
 nal salvation. This is the one secret 
 of the establishment of Gods kingdom. 
 I know not the hearts of those before 
 me : who can enter into the secret places 
 of another's life ? But I know enough of 
 life to know that there is no one heart 
 before me, even the youngest, which has 
 not had its woe. I know there is no one 
 before me to whom life has not from time 
 to time become a weary entanglement and 
 a maze that seems hopelessly ensnarled. 
 Dear friends, if life were perfectly plain 
 we should never learn ; we should never 
 know. It is because of this entangle- 
 ment that we feel the awful burden of 
 
70 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 our helplessness, and groan within our- 
 selves waiting for the redemption. To 
 you that redemption is proclaimed. 
 " Freely ye have received, freely give." 
 God has forgiven you: walk in the for- 
 given life ; know him ; choose him ; learn 
 from these very sufferings, from these 
 very mistakes and tangled mysteries, the 
 obedience that is freedom, the life that is 
 eternal salvation. May God help us, and 
 grant us his grace and his peace. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE IMPULSIVE TYPE OF CHRIS- 
 TIANITY. 
 
 Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you, that 
 he ?night sift you as wheat : but I niade supplica- 
 tion for thee, that thy faith fail not : and do thou, 
 when once thou hast turned again, stablish thy 
 brethren. — Luke xxii. 31, 32. 
 
 T7ROM the very fact that Christianity is 
 a life, we see that it expresses itself 
 in a variety of ways. From the very first 
 Christianity has been the synthesis, the 
 gathering and putting together, of a great 
 many tendencies and forces animated by 
 one impulse. From the very first, differ- 
 ent elements have entered into it ; some 
 to aid, some to hamper its development. 
 The infinite wisdom of God provided so 
 that every variety of character, and the 
 impulses of affection, of law, of intellect, 
 
72 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 might all be used for the building up 
 and strengthening of his kingdom on 
 earth. We shall expect, therefore, to find 
 throughout Christian history, both in 
 its beginning and in its progress, very 
 great differences in types of character. 
 No one man gathers into himself all the 
 fulness of the revealed truth. We shall 
 find as we study the biography of the 
 New Testament that in a wonderful way 
 the various types of character are bap- 
 tized and redeemed, and, at the same 
 time, they preserve marvellously their in- 
 dividual peculiar characteristics, bringing 
 these with them into the service to which 
 God has called them. 
 
 We do not know so much about the 
 work that Peter did in the early Church 
 as we do concerning the work of Paul, 
 because the second part of the Acts and 
 the Epistles of Paul are the material upon 
 which we rely mainly for our account of 
 the early Church, and these of course 
 
IMPULSIVE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 73 
 
 dwell largely upon the subject of Paul's 
 labors and activities. But, at the same 
 time, there is enough left us to show that 
 Peter was a very strong, a very dominant 
 element in that part of the Church which 
 centred around Jerusalem, and which 
 influenced Bithynia and the more eastern 
 parts of Asia Minor. 
 
 The traditions about Peter's life are not 
 very trustworthy. We do not find very 
 many traditions at all concerning him 
 until about one hundred years after his 
 death ; and then, although the traditions 
 are many, they can be nearly all traced 
 back to one source, so that we have not 
 the advantage of a great many witnesses. 
 These traditions are moreover often so 
 evidently foolish and untrustworthy that 
 it is very difficult to build up any scheme 
 of his Christian activity upon the basis of 
 them. 
 
 But we do not need to go to any tradi- 
 tional story of Peter's life to get a definite 
 
74 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 impression of the man. His is one of the 
 marked characters of the New Testa- 
 ment's wonderful series of portraits, tak- 
 ing them merely as literature. It is 
 marvellous with what distinctness charac- 
 ter is etched throughout the Old and New 
 Testaments ! How many masterpieces 
 we have of character sketches, a few 
 words giving a whole character! This 
 is true, for instance, of the patriarchs. It 
 is true also throughout the Old Testa- 
 ment history, sometimes the whole life 
 and activities of a king being gathered 
 together in two or three verses in a per- 
 fectly marvellous way. 
 
 With a few touches we have Peter's 
 character painted before us with a dis- 
 tinctness that it is hard to find the equal 
 of anywhere in literature. Peter is a 
 man essentially of impulses. Energetic, 
 marvellously useful along these lines, 
 but, like a good many impulsive people, 
 not very trustworthy, not to be always 
 
IMPULSIVE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 75 
 
 counted upon. Peter is the first to come 
 to Jesus walking upon the water, but 
 very soon sinks because his faith gives 
 way. Peter is the very first to draw his 
 sword in defence of the Master, — is the 
 only one to spring to his defence, but 
 denies him to the maid at the door. 
 Peter is the first to speak, but not always 
 the wisest when he speaks. Peter is 
 very ready to answer the question as to 
 who Jesus is, — " Thou art the Messias," 
 but he is also very apt to take Christ 
 aside and rebuke him, when the Messias 
 tells about the suffering which lies before 
 him. Peter in his impulsiveness will 
 not have Christ wash his feet, and in 
 equal impulsiveness would have him 
 wash his hands and his head that he 
 might be all consecrated to the Master's 
 service. 
 
 This is characteristic of Peter not 
 simply before Christ's death ; but even 
 after his death, in his epistles, we find 
 
j6 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 the same characteristics. Peter is one 
 of the very first to try to bridge the gulf 
 between the Gentile and Jewish Christian 
 churches, but one of the very first to 
 retreat ignominiously from the position 
 he had taken, when he is in Antioch sur- 
 rounded by those who say to him, " Thou 
 being a Jew, eatest with those who have 
 not been circumcised." And Paul with- 
 stood him to the face because he was, in 
 his very impulsiveness, in his very super- 
 ficiality, in danger of permitting that to 
 be done which would have left the Chris- 
 tian Church in chains, and would have 
 hampered irretrievably its progress. 
 
 We find that Peter is impulsive ; and 
 yet we need impulsiveness, and we have 
 to take it with its weakness and with its 
 strength. There is an impulsive Chris- 
 tianity which is one of the largest and 
 most needed factors in the building up 
 of the healthy Christian life. Impulsive 
 Christianity has indeed weakness, with 
 
IMPULSIVE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. JJ 
 
 which we have to reckon. The man of 
 impulses is a little like the kindling with 
 which you kindle your fire. You might 
 use a whole box of matches in trying to 
 set fire to the coals, and you could not do 
 it. Take a little kindling, strike your 
 match, and you soon have a steady glow. 
 It is true you could not very easily warm 
 your house with kindling, but at the same 
 time you could not very easily warm your 
 house without it. Impulsive Christian- 
 ity is very needful to set fire to the forces 
 that are in God's providence regenerating 
 the world. Impulsive Christianity will 
 have indeed its weakness in that like 
 Peter it is very much in danger of deny- 
 ing the Master. The man of impulses is 
 very apt to find himself stranded by 
 waves of a strength he has not taken 
 accurate reckoning of ; but, at the same 
 time, every great religious movement has 
 commenced with the fiery, impulsive ele- 
 ments of the community. It was the 
 
78 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 impulsive Cornish miners who gave the 
 key-note to the evangelical revival whose 
 blessed force is not ended yet. It was 
 the impulsive classes in North Germany 
 that caught fire first when a lonely monk 
 defied the Romish power and proclaimed 
 liberty to the captive. It was the impul- 
 sive classes in this country who heard the 
 preaching of Finney, who accepted him 
 with all his extravagance, with all his 
 weaknesses, with all his want of accurate 
 thought. They accepted him because 
 they felt his was a message from on high, 
 that touched men's hearts with some- 
 thing better than the old dogmatism on 
 which the Church was starving herself to 
 death, a message that set this country on 
 fire ; and after it was set on fire, there 
 were steadier forces to complete and 
 carry on the movement to a better and 
 higher issue, out of which has come so 
 much that has meaning for our national 
 and individual life. 
 
IMPULSIVE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 79 
 
 We shall have to take the impulsive 
 man and impulsive Christianity into ac- 
 count because they form a large element 
 even of the most reflective life. We 
 would not give anything for a man who 
 did not have impulses, even though they 
 were not always wise. We would not care 
 to have even a wise man as our dearest 
 friend, if a cold, calculating intellect was 
 all you had to deal with. Impulses, even 
 if sometimes they are wrong, if some- 
 times they do disturb our judgment, so 
 that our emotions get the better of our 
 calculations, are divine factors in char- 
 acter building. Our calculations are not 
 infallible any more than our impulses, 
 and sometimes it is a good thing to give 
 our emotions free scope, and learn from 
 mistakes to guide them better, but not to 
 suppress them. 
 
 We have to take into account impulses 
 because they are a force for good or for 
 evil. There is an impulsive class that 
 
80 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 will make itself felt, and it will make itself 
 felt for the kingdom of evil unless it is 
 baptized and captured for Christ. There 
 were some men of impulse no doubt in 
 the throng that cried: "Allelujah! Ho- 
 sanna to the Son of David ! " and then, 
 " Crucify him ! crucify him ! " but Peter, 
 even if he did deny his Lord, did not cry, 
 " Crucify him ! " One man of impulse 
 at least had been captured for Christ, 
 for the future kingdom, for the glory of 
 the cross ! We need to see to it that 
 our Christianity is not purely reflective, 
 is not purely intellectual ; is not pure cal- 
 culation, is not pure thought. We need 
 impulses ; we need holy impulses. We 
 need to feel their throbs in our life ; we 
 need, indeed, sometimes to know the bene- 
 fits of impulsive repentance. It is good 
 for us sometimes to go out with Peter into 
 the lonely quiet at cock-crowing and yield 
 to the impulsive bitterness of our emo- 
 tions, pouring out our soul in the agony 
 
IMPULSIVE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 8 1 
 
 of repentance because our lives have so 
 often been a betrayal of the consecrated 
 trust God has committed to every one 
 of us to keep against that day. And I 
 should not wonder, if we knew Peter's 
 influence better we should find out that 
 he was a strength to all the brethren 
 because of his very sympathy with them. 
 I think that underlies Christ's remarks to 
 Peter. He says : " Lovest thou me more 
 than these ! " He did not simply rebuke 
 him. Peter had been professing his loy- 
 alty so very pronouncedly, possibly those 
 who sometimes were his rivals, his former 
 partners in his fishing concerns, may 
 have felt he was a little too forward. 
 " Now," says Christ, " when thou art con- 
 verted, strengthen thy brethren." It is 
 for the most part the man of emotions, 
 the man whose heart is largest, that is 
 felt in the time of trouble to come closest 
 to us and to strengthen us most in our 
 hour of need. What warm sympathy 
 
82 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 Peter must have had with those who 
 touched him, who, like himself, were apt 
 to betray the Master in the stress of 
 their temptation! Peter, I have no 
 doubt, was many a time able to take 
 some weaker Christian than himself 
 and help him up, saying to him, " You 
 know very well the story of my betrayal, 
 but Christ has not given me up. No, 
 he said to me, ' Feed my lambs ; feed my 
 little sheep.' He looked me straight in 
 the eye, he took me by the hand, he 
 helped me up, and he will help you up." 
 Peter, I have no doubt, was able to 
 strengthen the brethren as some of those 
 who had sinned less were not able to 
 strengthen them, because of his sym- 
 pathy, because he was able to enter into 
 their lives and weaknesses and to take 
 account of the yielding of our whole 
 nature under the stress of temptation. 
 When so tempted we are able almost to 
 cry out with Paul, " It was not I that did 
 
IMPULSIVE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 83 
 
 it, but the flesh : therefore, the thing I 
 would, that I do not; and the thing I 
 would not, that I do." 
 
 We need emotional Christianity, with 
 all its errors of judgment, that we may 
 come closer to one another and feel with 
 one another. With kindled emotions 
 and kindly impulses we need to go to 
 one another and help one another up, 
 even though the cooler, calculating judg- 
 ment will often speak about the hopeless- 
 ness and helplessness of it. 
 
 Christ on his cross felt also what it was 
 to surrender his spirit, and the dear loved 
 ones round about him with all their weak- 
 ness, into the keeping of his Father. 
 God needs us, even in our weakness. 
 He needs all that there is of us. He 
 needs the weakness ; if it is committed to 
 him, if it is crucified with Christ, if it is 
 baptized unto his death, God can use it, 
 and will use it in or od time. 
 
 And when we are converted, let us 
 
84 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 strengthen our brethren. We need that 
 sympathetic, impulsive Christianity, be- 
 cause it comes first, and will often go fur- 
 ther than the more calculating kind. John 
 got first to the sepulchre, but it was Peter 
 that entered in. John first recognized 
 Christ, but it was Peter who jumped into 
 the water to go to him. Impulsive, emo- 
 tional Christianity is needed because it 
 has power to carry us on, sometimes even 
 to victory that seems wellnigh hopeless. 
 God can cleanse and baptize our emo- 
 tions, and send them further and faster 
 than our poor weak judgments may deem 
 safe in the beginning. We need to bap- 
 tize our best and noblest impulses ; we 
 need to baptize our emotions; we need to 
 commit them to God, to have them lifted 
 up, sanctified and made a burning fire. 
 
 This age prides itself upon being re- 
 flective, analytical, critical. So it is. 
 That has all its place. Sometimes we are 
 a little fond of staying back rather than 
 
IMPULSIVE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 85 
 
 setting ourselves against the wrong : 
 " Dear me ! we ought to do so and so. 
 We ou^ht to do this and that. Some- 
 body ought to go in and purify our poli- 
 tics ! " A crying need of the world to- 
 day is a baptized indignation at wrong- 
 doing. We need to feel that God can 
 use us when we are set on fire for him. 
 He will take care of the judgment, quick- 
 ening and sharpening it in the fires of 
 enthusiasm, by which we will set fire to 
 the world. Our impulses for righteous- 
 ness need obedience. 
 
 We need to have our emotions touched. 
 There is something very wonderful to me 
 in the way in which the cross of Christ 
 seems to have affected the northern bar- 
 barism. One might hardly think that 
 those wild, ferocious, blood-stained North- 
 men, accustomed to every sort of cruelty, 
 to every sort of iniquity, could be reached 
 on the side of their emotions. Yet it 
 was not those skilled in ecclesiastical 
 
86 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 orthodoxy that reached the North. It 
 was not an elaborately reasoned system 
 that touched these men. What really 
 touched the north of Europe was a band 
 of brave but ill-trained monks, who went 
 holding up simply the cross on which was 
 nailed the suffering, bleeding body of 
 Christ. They were touched by that story 
 of atoning love as you would hardly have 
 thought these great brawny, blood-stained 
 Northmen could have been touched ; and 
 once touched, they became the ethical 
 power that broke the chains from off the 
 Church and set Europe free. We need 
 to have Christ lifted up, not only that our 
 intellects may be true, but that our hearts 
 may be touched with the message of 
 God's everlasting and infinite love, show- 
 ing itself forth in the suffering and pa- 
 tience of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
 Christ. We need again and again to 
 be converted by looking at the cross and 
 seeing there all the love of the incarnate 
 
IMPULSIVE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 8j 
 
 God, that we may be ready to crucify 
 with him our impulses, our passions, our 
 affections, our lives; that we may look 
 into his face and be able to answer truly, 
 " Lord, thou knowest all things. I have 
 been wicked and sinful and untrue to 
 thee. My heart is wellnigh hardened 
 with selfishness and self-deceit; but I 
 would have thee touch me, I would have 
 thee draw me closer to thyself. Thou 
 knowest all things ; thou knowest that 
 I love thee." May God help us to con- 
 secrate our emotions to the service of 
 Christ. May God help us to hear the 
 word that has come to many a weak and 
 wavering Peter : " Simon, Simon, Satan 
 hath desired to have thee, that he may 
 sift thee as wheat : but I have prayed for 
 thee, and when thou art converted, 
 strengthen thy brethren." 
 
V. 
 
 THE INTELLECTUAL TYPE OF CHRIS- 
 TIANITY. 
 
 With freedom did Christ set us free : stand fast 
 therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke 
 of bondage. — Gal. v. i. 
 
 TDAUL swept into himself in a very 
 remarkable way the three world 
 influences, — the Greek, the Roman, and 
 the Jewish. One of the great historians 
 of Germany has pointed out that in 
 these three world influences we have the 
 practical explanation of all that we value 
 as civilization. He was a Roman citi- 
 zen. There are, I think, decided traces 
 throughout both Romans and Galatians 
 that he was fairly well acquainted with at 
 least the principles of Roman law. His 
 knowledge of Greek poetry we are possi- 
 bly inclined to exaggerate because of such 
 
INTELLECTUAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 89 
 
 chance quotations from it as we find 
 in his writings ; but, at the same time, it 
 is not at all unlikely that he was fami- 
 liar with the literature of Greece, for in 
 his own native city of Tarsus Greek 
 influences were the predominant ones. 
 Tarsus was a city that had had a great 
 deal of influence, and its influence was 
 very largely intellectual. It had been 
 greatly attracted by Greek thought; so, 
 for instance, the games of Tarsus were 
 in all likelihood prevalently Greek rather 
 than Roman, which would indicate a 
 predominance of Greek rather than 
 Roman thought. 
 
 Of course, Paul was Jewish, and thor- 
 oughly Jewish; a Pharisee brought up 
 in the Pharisaic schools, thoroughly ac- 
 quainted with the history of his people, 
 thoroughly imbued with the best spirit 
 of his own time. Thus we have a very 
 remarkable figure, combining in one cen- 
 tre the synthesis of the great influences 
 
90 TOWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 that were to mould the destiny of the na- 
 tions of the earth. It was natural, there- 
 fore, that Paul should make for himself 
 an intellectual atmosphere in which the 
 Church's thinking was to develop. He 
 did for the Church what neither James, 
 nor John, nor Peter could have done so 
 far as we know them. It was quite im- 
 possible for even the wonderful Fourth 
 Gospel and the writings of John to 
 have quite the effect upon the Roman 
 mind that Paul's writings were able to 
 exercise, in part through the limitations 
 of the Roman mind, and also, indeed, 
 owing to the limitations of the intuitive 
 and perceptive character of John's mind. 
 We take Paul, therefore, very natur- 
 ally as the type of what we may call in- 
 tellectual Christianity. Christianity must 
 be intellectual if it is to command the 
 respect of men whom God would save. 
 Christ will have the whole of man ; he 
 will have his mind, and his heart, and 
 
INTELLECTUAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 9 1 
 
 his life. Christ's kingdom is not a one- 
 sided kingdom. It is to be social, it is to 
 be intellectual, it is to be moral, it is to 
 be spiritual, it is to be rounded out. The 
 intellect must be fired from above ; and 
 once fired from above, it enters forthwith 
 into the Christian life as a very large and 
 very important factor. 
 
 But the intellectual type of Christi- 
 anity has of course its dangers. The in- 
 tellectual life has a certain tendency to 
 arrogance that is born and bred of the 
 constant comparison of its own self with 
 the grosser stupidity which it finds round 
 about it. A man does not need to be 
 very far on in the intellectual life before 
 he begins to compare himself with others, 
 greatly to his own advantage, however, 
 and to the disadvantage of those whom 
 he has left behind. The danger of 
 intellectual arrogance is especially per- 
 ceptible in the mind that is clear and 
 logical. The mind that having started 
 
92 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 with certain terms must carry its reason- 
 ing on to the end has no patience with 
 the mind that insists on breaking in with 
 other lines of thought before the solution 
 is given. 
 
 Intellectual Christianity has also its 
 dangers in the fact that the intellectual 
 life is very apt to exclude us from some 
 other phases of life. The man who is a 
 mere intellectual machine cannot enter 
 into many of the hopes and fears and 
 wishes of the multitude about him, for the 
 multitude is not governed in the first 
 instance by the intellect. If we were 
 quite shrewd enough we should realize 
 that the intellect must come after a great 
 deal else, for the intellect is analytical, and 
 if there is not something to analyze it has 
 no place at all. But this is too often for- 
 gotten, and the danger to thinking men is 
 a certain dogmatic narrowness, a certain 
 hardness, and conventional type even, so 
 that we find that intellectual Christianity 
 
INTELLECTUAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 93 
 
 as it has come down the ages has often 
 repelled instead of attracting even those 
 to whom intellectual Christianity ought to 
 have had power and value. 
 
 I think you will notice in Romans and 
 Galatians a tone somewhat different from 
 that which you will find in Philippians 
 and Ephesians, and different also from the 
 personal tone of the pastoral letters. No 
 thoughtful mind can fail to see that there 
 was progress, decided progress, in the 
 spiritual life of Paul. When we leave 
 the first and second centuries and turn 
 to such men as Tertullian and Augus- 
 tine, and in the seventeenth century to 
 such men as the scholastics and the in- 
 tellectual leaders of the Reformation, we 
 are thoroughly and powerfully impressed 
 with a certain intellectual narrowness of 
 dogmatism, and a harsh and arrogant 
 tone, which shows us that on the intellec- 
 tual side of Christianity there are dangers 
 which it is scarcely possible to avoid, no 
 
94 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 matter on which side of the controversy 
 we stand, unless we are fully baptized 
 with the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 and have made intellectual surrender to 
 him as well as surrender of the heart. 
 
 Intellectual Christianity from the very 
 nature of the thing is analytical, and ana- 
 lysis is the pulling apart. From the very 
 nature of it intellectual Christianity has 
 in it a certain destructive element. It 
 must criticise, it must look behind, it is 
 never satisfied with the forms as they are 
 round about. It could not be, it would 
 cease to be, intellectual Christianity if it 
 did not thus insist, and sternly insist, 
 upon satisfying the conditions of God- 
 given reason. But there is the danger 
 that it may confine itself to the destruc- 
 tive, and that the constructive work be 
 left out of account, — to the pulling to 
 pieces of Sadduceeism with nothing as 
 yet to put in its place. But for all that, 
 we must take it as it is. We enter the 
 
INTELLECTUAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 95 
 
 Christian life with our reason, and we 
 must take our reason along with us. 
 The forms of reason we cannot leave be- 
 hind any more than we can leave other 
 forms behind. When you first took 
 Christ into your life, you took him with 
 your many defects, which Christ in your 
 heart is going to cure daily if you will 
 surrender yourself daily unto him. There 
 are faces about us that you have perhaps 
 seen grow beautiful because of the life of 
 suffering and sacrifice that has changed 
 the plain features into a heavenly beauty. 
 But we cannot start with our faces shin- 
 ing. We cannot start with anything but 
 reason as God has given it to us. Paul 
 had to start in his Christian course as a 
 Pharisee. He had to leave much behind ; 
 but it was because he surrendered his 
 reason, surrendered it wholly to Christ, 
 that it was changed and transformed into 
 one of the mightiest and most potent 
 weapons for the winning of the victory 
 
96 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 of the Church and for the building up of 
 the temple whose strengthening God had 
 entrusted to his servant. 
 
 And so I think we can not go far 
 astray in taking Paul as a splendid type 
 of the proper use of the intellect, and as 
 the proper intellectual type of Christi- 
 anity. This is evident, because Paul 
 brought to the service of Christ every- 
 thing he had, — his learning, his Phari- 
 saic training, his knowledge of Greek 
 thought, his knowledge of the Hebrew 
 language ; and he laid it all as a sacri- 
 fice on the altar to his Master. His 
 intellect, his intellectual powers, these 
 were his Master's, because everything 
 he had was his; and what splendid 
 use he made of them ! Take, for in- 
 stance, that scene upon Mars Hill. 
 This little Jewish man, probably rather 
 unsightly, if tradition is correct, who 
 comes to Athens, where every one is 
 so graphically described as seeking only 
 
INTELLECTUAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 97 
 
 to hear some new thing. He met these 
 Athenians with their scientific dogma- 
 tism, with their philosophical problems ; 
 they amused themselves with these things 
 and believed that they were living, pre- 
 cisely as a great many of us to-day amuse 
 ourselves by haunting the lecture-rooms 
 and discussing questions, without any 
 real intention of making them bear upon 
 our lives or, through us, upon other 
 people's lives. They were at Athens, 
 as we should find them in New York 
 and Boston and Chicago to-day, and to 
 this intellectual centre the despised Jew 
 comes. They will hear what this bab- 
 bler says. And could anything have 
 been more calculated to win their atten- 
 tion than the tact with which he com- 
 mences to speak of the things they believe 
 in common, leading them up to the things 
 he had come to proclaim as the one mes- 
 sage worth telling ? It is a study for 
 every Christian apologist, for every Chris- 
 
98 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 tian missionary, for every Christian min- 
 ister. I suppose that some of those who 
 have objected to the Parliament of Re- 
 ligions would have found great fault with 
 Paul for quoting heathen philosophers, 
 and setting the seal of his approval to 
 what they said. How could any one ever 
 have complimented these empty-hearted, 
 though overburdened Athenians upon 
 their being too religious ! But Paul is 
 all things to all men, and he catches 
 them ; he gets their attention at least long 
 enough to tell them that the things he 
 had come to proclaim were what they 
 were hungering for, the things of the 
 risen life, and he tells them of the resur- 
 rection from the dead. He is a splendid 
 type of what intellectual Christianity 
 ought to be, because, bringing as he did 
 all things to Christ, and laying all things 
 upon that altar, his intellectual life is a 
 means to an end, and that only. There 
 is a tendency in us to grade all things. 
 
INTELLECTUAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 99 
 
 We say, " How much higher is the ar- 
 tistic than the purely intellectual ; how 
 much higher the intellectual than the 
 practical ! How nice it is to see men 
 who have been absorbed in business give 
 now their time to intellectual work ! " 
 As though intellectual work were any 
 better than business ! There would be 
 no intellectual work if there were no 
 business. And so we set ourselves up in 
 little exclusive ranks, — the agricultural, 
 the poor farmer, he is one class by himself, 
 — and lose sympathy entirely in our arbi- 
 trary, exclusive distinctions, which ought 
 to be lost in the feeling that humanity 
 is one, that there is no man mean in 
 the sight of God. Intellectual work may 
 be as exclusive, as selfish, as ignoble, as 
 material, as debased, as any other work 
 in the world if it is not brought to the 
 altar of Christ ; if it is not sanctified by 
 the presence of God's Holy Spirit; if it is 
 not unselfish, and wholly unselfish, as a 
 
IOO POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 means to some greater end for the great 
 throbbing life of which we are a part, 
 and from which to cut ourselves off is 
 spiritual suicide. God is in life, and if 
 we would come in contact with God we 
 must be in contact with that life which 
 is his, and is all around us. 
 
 So then, whatever may be our intel- 
 lectual attainments, we have only to 
 compare ourselves with Omnipotence 
 to realize how pitiable and painfully 
 stupid the wisest among men have been 
 in all the ages. How puerile seems the 
 reason we have counted fine! how mis- 
 taken the dogmas men have said would 
 last forever! how utterly wrong the gen- 
 eralizations men have thought they had 
 established ! Let us prostrate ourselves 
 before God, and find that the intellect is 
 of use only as God takes it and enlight- 
 ens it and makes it the means, as he 
 made Paul's splendid intellect the means, 
 for making known the message of salva- 
 
INTELLECTUAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. IOI 
 
 tion through a risen Lord to a world 
 lying in wickedness. 
 
 And this also is to be learned from 
 Paul, that throughout his life he not only 
 seemed to use his intellectual life as a 
 means to an end, but he never misused 
 it. It is never thrust upon us, it is kept 
 ever as a means to an end, and he is con- 
 stantly and forever surrendering it to 
 the one thing, — to the voice within him 
 that speaks to men, and tells them that 
 right is right and wrong is wrong to 
 all eternity. 
 
 So Paul used his intellect, and I be- 
 lieve that in the using of it for the 
 purposes of Christ it received not only 
 baptism but training; that even for the 
 purposes of the intellect, to surrender 
 it to God is the best thing we can do. 
 I believe this is true along the whole 
 range of life. It was when art began to 
 be practised merely for art's sake that it 
 not only became decadent, but the na- 
 
102 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 tional life became decadent. Mr. Ruskin 
 points out, but to me seems to offer no 
 adequate explanation of the fact, that at 
 the time art has reached its highest ex- 
 pression, the national life has seemed 
 generally to be most decadent, as in the 
 Augustan era, the Renaissance in Italy, 
 the period of Queen Anne in England. 
 This, however, seems to me to be one of 
 the solutions of it, that the age was deca- 
 dent because art was practised simply for 
 art's sake, and intellectualism was prac- 
 tised merely for the intellect's sake. As 
 soon as a man attends to his body merely 
 for his own sensuous bodily purposes, 
 just so soon not only is there decadence 
 of the best that is in him, but there will 
 be decadence of the body, decadence of 
 the mind, decadence of all that is essen- 
 tial to real life ; and if art must express 
 life, that life must be divine to be worth 
 expressing, and until we learn to trea- 
 sure what is divine, we shall find our- 
 
INTELLECTUAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. IO3 
 
 selves again and again upon the weary- 
 slope up which men have crawled with so 
 much difficulty only to find the burden 
 dragging them down when they believed 
 they saw eternity from the top. 
 
 God needs our intellects, and never 
 more so than to-day. We need to sur- 
 render our intellects to God that the 
 pressing problems of the Church may be 
 solved. We stand divided. We have 
 been hair-splitting and fighting among 
 ourselves, and the great world outside 
 neither fears nor hates us. There is no 
 task more precious in the sight of God 
 to-day than the task the men of intellect 
 have before them in the solving of prob- 
 lems whose solution will unite us once 
 more in the face of the enemy, and thrust 
 us, even if we be cut in pieces, in the 
 face of the foe with the banner of Christ 
 and his Cross over us. Young men, some 
 of you with educational advantages of 
 which to your dying day you will have 
 
104 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 to render an account unto the Father, 
 take these advantages, take your minds, 
 and make them a sacrifice upon the altar 
 of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no 
 more splendid use of the consecrated, 
 surrendered intellect than the solving 
 of the weary social problems that lie 
 before us. Christ saw how it would be 
 with us. He said, " The poor ye have 
 always with you, but me ye have not 
 always." It is just because Christ is 
 not always with us that the poor are 
 always with us. We have problems 
 that need more than mere goodness, 
 that need more than impulsive Christi- 
 anity, that need more than simply the 
 heart that goes out in pity and sym- 
 pathy; we need surrendered intellects; 
 we need consecrated brains ; we need 
 directing minds baptized from on high ; 
 we need you business men to take and 
 reform our accursed social and industrial 
 conditions. Must man be ever groaning 
 
INTELLECTUAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. IO5 
 
 in the weary tread-mill of life, finding 
 those who are on the top corrupted by 
 the eminence, and those below ground 
 to death by the weight? The world 
 needs your intellects set on fire from on 
 high, and never more than to-day. We 
 need to surrender them to God. What 
 the world needs is not surrender to a 
 church, nor to a priest, nor to a theologi- 
 cal school, nor to a general assembly, but 
 to God only. " Stand fast in the liberty 
 wherewith Christ hath made us free, and 
 be not entangled again in the yoke of 
 bondage." That surrender must be ab- 
 solute. Who are we that we should 
 strive with the Almighty ? Who are we 
 to think that we are sufficient in our- 
 selves? Our only use, our only dignity, 
 our only worth, will come from our lives 
 being the expression of the divine life 
 which breathes into our human minds the 
 message of God's love for his fallen crea- 
 tion. For God can redeem it, if it will 
 
106 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 only suffer itself to be redeemed. God 
 over all — even though he is crucified 
 — preached to all nations. God over all, 
 and Christ at the right hand of the 
 Father, who will come again to receive 
 a redeemed universe gathered into his 
 Church that we may be his sons and 
 daughters. 
 
 Dear friends ! Young men ! Young 
 women ! what are you doing with your 
 minds? What are you doing with your 
 culture ? What are you doing with the 
 life God has given you? What are you 
 doing with your advantages? These 
 things are responsibilities which will 
 weigh you down before the judgment- 
 seat unless you share them with Christ, 
 unless you are working his law in the 
 world. May God help you to do it ! 
 
VI. 
 
 THE ETHICAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Take, brethren, for an example of suffering and of 
 patience, the prophets who spake in the name of 
 the Lord. — Jas. v. io. 
 
 I have taken this text because the type 
 of Christian life represented by James is 
 as it were, the connecting link between 
 the Old Testament and the New. The 
 logic of the life of Christ, of his teachings 
 and sufferings, was a glorious manifes- 
 tation of that liberty which is in Christ 
 Jesus, and of which we see Paul to be so 
 splendid a type. But Christ himself left 
 those who were to come after him, under 
 the guidance of the Spirit promised, to 
 find their way to the logic of that posi- 
 tion. He himself attended the syna- 
 gogue ; he proclaimed himself as the 
 
IOS POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 fulfilment and not the destruction of 
 the Old Testament; and it is very easy 
 for us to leave the light of the New Tes- 
 tament and greatly exaggerate the gap 
 that separates the Old and New Testa- 
 ments from each other. We might very 
 easily altogether misunderstand the New 
 Testament or misinterpret the Old by 
 taking either of them separately, not re- 
 membering that in the revelation of 
 himself God has used the Old Testa- 
 ment as a preparation, and that the full 
 importance of this revelation is only 
 to be realized when we view it as de- 
 veloped in Jesus Christ in the New 
 Testament. 
 
 There was a section of the Christian 
 Church that was not in accord with the 
 complete logic of the Christian position 
 as set forth by Paul. It was very nat- 
 ural that the Jewish Christian church 
 should resent many things, find fault 
 with many things, and fail to understand 
 
ETHICAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. IO9 
 
 many things that came quite naturally to 
 the Christian Church that had broken 
 loose more completely from the old life 
 that still centred in Jerusalem. There 
 was antagonism; which antagonism was 
 bridged over by the wisdom and patience 
 of the principal apostles ; but the antag- 
 onism made itself felt, of which we have 
 evident sioms in the New Testament 
 history itself. 
 
 It is James that represents a type of 
 thought that is the intermediate link be- 
 tween the old dispensation and the new, 
 as represented by the Jewish Christian 
 wing of the Church. It was only after 
 the destruction of Jerusalem that the 
 Church, as it were, broke into the ful- 
 ness of the life, the fulness of the lib- 
 erty, the glory of the revealed form of 
 Christ's gospel. James, however, repre- 
 sents a type of Christian life that, with 
 all its limitations, with all its necessary 
 defects, has had a very glorious history 
 
IIO POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 in God's Church, a history that is not 
 yet completed. The type represented by 
 James will, I believe, always have its 
 message and its mission to the Christian 
 world. James represents what we might 
 know as the Puritan type of the Christian 
 life, — a type of Christian character whose 
 praises have been sung and whose limita- 
 tions have been pointed out so frequently, 
 that it has become to us usually either 
 a bugbear on the one hand, or an idol 
 on the other. The truth is between the 
 two. The Puritan type of Christian char- 
 acter had its invaluable message to the 
 Christian world ; it had a heroic work ; 
 and with all its limitations, its work may 
 have to be done over and over again by its 
 resurrection in the Church of God, speak- 
 ing, warning, and living the life which 
 has proved in the crises of the Church's 
 history of such momentous importance. 
 
 The limitations of the Puritan type of 
 Christian life lie somewhat on the sur- 
 
ETHICAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. I I I 
 
 face. There is an attachment to the for- 
 mal elements that has its cause in the his- 
 tory of the rise of the Puritan type. It 
 rose as a protest. The Jewish Christian 
 church was also a protest. This church 
 did not seek to separate itself from the 
 synagogue, nor from the sacrifices and 
 the temple. To the very end it wor- 
 shipped at the temple. Paul goes up at 
 the demand of the Jewish Christian 
 church to fulfil his vows, taking part in 
 the temple services. They were the re- 
 form party in the Jewish church, — a party 
 that did not care to break loose from the 
 old, but sought to rehabilitate it, sought 
 to breathe into it a newer spirit, protest- 
 ing against its weakness and rottenness ; 
 and in that protest there are the ele- 
 ments of some of the limitations which 
 have marked them. They became the 
 protesting or Protestant church, missing 
 some of the tenderness, and much of the 
 formative spirit, and in the very vigor of 
 
112 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 their assaults becoming critical and de- 
 structive, rather than formative, in their 
 character. 
 
 This weakness may be seen, I think, 
 in what the Puritan type has done for 
 England, where it has appeared more fre- 
 quently and in greater purity than in any 
 other Christian civilization. The Puritan 
 type there has attached itself to certain 
 individual and distinct reforms. It has 
 begun in protesting against particular 
 lines of thought ; it has had its force and 
 strength from its pointed, direct, and un- 
 compromising attack upon particular and 
 visible evils. In doing this, whether it 
 gained its point or lost it, it has been in 
 danger from this undue emphasis upon 
 its purely protesting character, and in the 
 second and third and fourth generations 
 of Puritanism the danger has been that 
 each generation lived more and more 
 upon the protest and the traditions of 
 the past, and so failed to comprehend the 
 
ETHICAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 113 
 
 new duty which was to take the place of 
 the things which had been destroyed. 
 Hence it has been that Puritanism too 
 often in the life of the second or third 
 generation has been marked by a vacuum 
 which has not always been filled with 
 those things which were most useful to 
 the Christian Church as a whole. 
 
 Then, also, this ever protesting charac- 
 acter of the Puritan type has always 
 brought with it the danger of a certain 
 sternness in its righteousness, that some- 
 times has produced a sense of self-right- 
 eousness and censoriousness extremely 
 detrimental to the entirety of character. 
 In the protesting, there has been a con- 
 stant tendency to self-assertion, first, in- 
 deed as against the world and evil, a 
 self-assertion that is justified by facts ; 
 but then, as a consequence of that, a self- 
 assertion as against any one that differs 
 with it, — a self-assertion too apt to regard 
 
 anything that opposes it as necessarily 
 
 8 
 
114 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 an evil. Hence, there has always been 
 in the literature of Puritanism in its later 
 manifestations a certain narrowness that 
 has been one of the marked weaknesses 
 often pointed out. There has also been 
 a certain lack of tenderness, a certain 
 lack of the fine flavor that characterizes 
 Paul, for instance, and still more John in 
 his writings ; a tenderness one feels to 
 be indeed out of place upon some battle- 
 fields; a tenderness that it is only natural 
 that men should lay aside when they enter 
 into the sterner contests that Puritanism 
 has so often waged. At the same time a 
 lack of this tenderness has left Puritan- 
 ism often out of touch with the newer 
 life, has isolated it, has made it often the 
 embodiment of a religious type that with- 
 draws itself from the world in a way in 
 which Christ did not withdraw himself 
 from the world. This has exposed it to 
 the charges of bigotry and straight-laced- 
 ness, and even of hypocrisy, because in 
 
ETHICAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. I I 5 
 
 its isolation being out of touch with the 
 world, not in sympathy with the move- 
 ments round about it, it has often yielded 
 unconsciously to other evils than those 
 against which it was called into being to 
 protest against. And so it has exposed 
 itself to the ready charge of deep incon- 
 sistency ; and, as we see in the repre- 
 sentative Puritanism of England, two or 
 three times these charges have been so 
 successfully emphasized that Puritanism 
 seemed for the time to have lost all its 
 moral and religious value. 
 
 After we have pointed out these limi- 
 tations, it will be proper also to remind 
 you that the type of Christianity which 
 we have called Puritanism, and which I 
 think is here represented in James, has 
 its mission and its message. This very 
 righteousness is the glory of such a letter 
 as this, and the Puritan theocracy at the 
 time of Cromwell has as its glory and its 
 strength, that it emphasized certain ele- 
 
Il6 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 ments in our Christian life that have too 
 often failed of emphasis when the Church 
 has been either prosperous, or swinging 
 along in an easy rut. Often have men 
 failed to see, what the Puritan type 
 sees clearly, the danger and the ruts 
 that lie so much in front of us all along 
 the way. James has a message, first, to 
 those who are tempted and tried ; and 
 there is in his message a little of that 
 stern impatience with the weakness of 
 the unstable man. There is something 
 of the rigor and vigor of the Puritan 
 spirit which feels that manhood means 
 courage and strength, and that Christian 
 manhood is to be undaunted courage and 
 undaunted strength. What do you lack ? 
 Why do you whine? Why do you com- 
 plain ? Let a man rather count himself 
 as in the way of grace when he is in the 
 way of trials and temptations. If he lack 
 wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth 
 freely to every man ; but be brave, cour- 
 
ETHICAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. I I J 
 
 ageous and undaunted ; know this, that 
 our God is a consuming fire, and in his 
 strength we may have hope and grace for 
 ever and for evermore. There is some 
 fibre, there is some muscle, there is some 
 strength, there is some vigor, in the very 
 type of doctrine that is represented by 
 James, and which has been emphasized 
 with such care by the Puritan type 
 throughout Christian history. There is 
 need of that message. Constantly ought 
 we to emphasize this need for vigor; for 
 an undaunted and unflinching courage 
 of our convictions, a courage to do right, 
 a righteousness that trusts forever, that 
 does not waver, a conception of Jehovah 
 as King of kings and Lord of lords, 
 with whom to fight, for whom to struggle 
 is blessedness and courage itself. Let 
 not that man who doubteth think he 
 shall receive anything : he is like the 
 surge of the sea, driven by the wind and 
 tossed. It was not characteristic of the 
 
Il8 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 Puritan to be tossed around like the 
 wave of the sea. Over and over again 
 he has unsheathed his sword and stood 
 for that which he considered right and 
 against wrong and iniquity even in high 
 places. There is a message of Puritan- 
 ism that rings down English history 
 which has given strength to the demo- 
 cracy, which has not feared king or 
 priest, which has not feared traditions, 
 which has feared nothing but Jehovah ; a 
 note that we need here from time to time 
 amidst our notes of triumphs and rejoi- 
 cings. Our victory over sin is not com- 
 pleted ; we have still to see struggles; 
 righteousness is not yet crowned; the 
 cross is yet to be borne. Protestantism 
 has its struggles yet before it. I verily 
 believe that in this country the time will 
 come when there will be need again for 
 the Puritan spirit. It will be a blessing 
 to this country when men stand up for 
 righteousness, seeking one another, and 
 
ETHICAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. I 19 
 
 standing united for the justice of God, 
 and when they feel that this letter of 
 James is an epistle of inspiration upon 
 which they can base their claims for a 
 higher life, a higher purity, a higher free- 
 dom from the subtle corruptions and 
 temptations which so often sap the Chris- 
 tian manhood, which so often weaken the 
 Christian character. 
 
 And again, Puritanism has some special 
 messages. I think it is rather character- 
 istic of the Puritan spirit that it does pick 
 out and specially emphasize special evils. 
 James has a message to the different 
 classes, — to the wealthy in danger of 
 abusing their wealth, to the intelligent 
 in danger of relying upon their intellects, 
 to those in high places in danger of 
 counting these things more than the 
 honor of Christ, — a message to the mere 
 will worker, to the mere talker, a message 
 to the man whose tongue is unbridled, 
 whose character is loose. These things 
 
120 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 need emphasis. These things need some- 
 times the scourge of just such a holy 
 indignation as we see in the message of 
 James. There is a time in our own indi- 
 vidual life when it would be well for us 
 to take this message of the old Puritan 
 spirit as interpreted to us by James, and 
 read it page by page, line by line, and say 
 to ourselves, " Does that cut me ? Does 
 that touch my life ? Is that a message to 
 my spirit which I need to give heed to, 
 that the man of God may be approved, 
 1 thoroughly furnished unto all good 
 works ' ? " James has a message, as the 
 Puritan party has always had a message, 
 to the Church. The Puritan party has 
 risen in all the various denominations of 
 Christendom. There is a Puritan party 
 that rose in the Lutheran church, a 
 Puritan party that rose in the church 
 of England, and a Puritan party in the 
 Presbyterian church. In England, the 
 Independents and the Brownists have 
 
ETHICAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 12 1 
 
 been the evangelical life which has 
 moulded the Church that largely repre- 
 sents the Puritan spirit. It is in the 
 English democracy to-day you see it ; 
 you read it in its literature, you feel it in 
 the democracy of England, which has as 
 its best foundation stone the old Puritan 
 spirit. This type, broadened, I hope 
 softened, more purely sanctified, more 
 rounded by contact with other types of 
 Christian life, but preserving throughout 
 something of the manhood and vigor that 
 marks the type, has yet a great message 
 to the world. The message to the Church 
 is very distinct, very pointed. Sometimes 
 there is criticism. The Church is subject 
 often to criticism that is captious, that is 
 a mere excuse for not taking up the 
 duties of the Church. The Church is 
 criticised by many who have no inten- 
 tion whatsoever of making any sacrifices 
 to bring her back to that perfection and 
 idealism whose lack they complain about. 
 
122 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 Such criticism is unreal, unnecessary, and 
 imperfect. But there is also a criticism 
 of ourselves and of the Church which has 
 in it healing, if it comes in the same way 
 as the criticism of James ; in other words, 
 if it comes from a heart that represents 
 the hope of the Church, from a love 
 that is intertwined with the life of the 
 Church, and if it comes out of the very 
 yearning for that which is living, and 
 pure, and better than the past. Such 
 criticism is a saving element in the life 
 of the Church ; and such critics, far 
 from being cast out of the synagogue, 
 far from having their message or them- 
 selves despised, should be hailed as an 
 evidence of the real vitality of the Church, 
 — evidence that God's spirit is still speak- 
 ing in the conscience of the Church, re- 
 calling it to lost duty, pleading with it to 
 take up more fully the duties God would 
 have us do. Such, then, are the criti- 
 cisms of James. It would be well for us 
 
ETHICAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 23 
 
 to weigh at our leisure in detail such 
 criticisms as we find in the very bold, 
 very pointed, very startling language of 
 Puritanism, reproduced all through his- 
 tory, and finding its warrant in this letter 
 of James. For it has been the spirit of 
 Puritanism, and one of the notes that 
 have marked its life, that it has ever been 
 lifting up and advocating the establish- 
 ing here on earth of a New Testament 
 theocracy, to complete the vision, to pre- 
 pare the way for the coming of our Lord. 
 Now, we do not share the hopes in every 
 particular of the Puritans who desired 
 a theocracy at the time of Cromwell, 
 because the theocracy that they desired 
 had very marked limitations, and be- 
 cause we have an instinctive feeling that 
 any such theocracy would sooner or later, 
 like the religious society of that time, 
 prove a failure. In some way the Jewish 
 Christian church however, has never lost 
 hope that it exists to found a theocracy. 
 
124 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 The Jewish Christian church fondly- 
 believed that Christ was to come to 
 Jerusalem, appearing in person to estab- 
 lish his kingdom ; that all nations would 
 come up to Jerusalem ; that under the 
 banner of the Messias come again in 
 power, the Christian Church might know 
 itself redeemed through Judah ; that, the 
 regenerated tribes once more restored, the 
 mission of the Christ would be completed. 
 I am not sure that Paul did not share 
 that hope in his early ministry, but, as 
 you can see from the second letter to the 
 Corinthians, and from his later writings, 
 especially the pastoral epistles, that hope 
 had taken a spiritualized form, just as 
 the hope of the Church to-day has taken 
 a spiritualized form, and we no longer 
 desire to see church and state identified, 
 doing one for the other the offices of that 
 theocracy we may have once desired. 
 But we have lost something indeed ; we 
 have lost much ; and our position, I 
 
ETHICAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 25 
 
 think, will have to be taken upon higher 
 ground than we have stood on yet. We 
 should still cherish the hope of the the- 
 ocracy ; we should still hope for such a 
 union of Church and State that the lines 
 will run so parallel that there will be no 
 fear of friction, no fear of hypocrisy, no 
 fear of mere formalism. So long as the 
 State has secular power outside the in- 
 fluences of Christianity, so long we have 
 not as a church done our full duty. We 
 must seek to permeate the State with 
 Christian principles; we must seek to 
 secure the State for Christ ; we must 
 make these United States the re-incarna- 
 tion of the divine spirit. However glori- 
 ous the stars and stripes may be, how- 
 ever right that we sacrifice our life for 
 our country, we must see to it that the 
 cross of Jesus Christ is still supreme ; 
 and the best offering that we can bring 
 will be the stars and stripes baptized 
 from on high, washed from the stains of 
 
126 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 past history, that these United States 
 may be a splendid offering brought to 
 Jehovah, the seal of the triumph of the 
 suffering and patience of our Lord, — 
 such a theocracy as the kingdom that 
 passed before the vision, not of the old 
 Puritan of Cromwell's time, but such as 
 passed before the vision of the inspired 
 James. He too has a message to the 
 nations concerning the kingdom ; he too 
 has somewhat to say of a national right- 
 eousness, and of the kingdom that God 
 is building, to those of you who long for 
 the righteousness which is of Christ. 
 Let us feel that that righteousness is to 
 be a purifying fire; that in our hearts it 
 is to burn and burn until our lives are 
 moulded into the form of the life of Jesus 
 Christ, as the melted iron is moulded. 
 Let us feel that love for righteousness, a 
 burning desire to hold to the cross of our 
 Saviour, is to be a purifying passion, in- 
 spiring us and speaking to us as the voice 
 
ETHICAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 27 
 
 of God in conscience, making it impossi- 
 ble for us to swerve from the path of duty, 
 because Jehovah, our God, is ever present 
 with us in all our temptations, strengthen- 
 ing us in the hour of struggle. Is there 
 any one reading this who has not made 
 that surrender? Oh! I beseech you to 
 make surrender of your life to this Christ, 
 unto this passion for righteousness and 
 purity, that you may feel your muscles 
 braced and your hearts stirred within you 
 to seek the higher, the new, the diviner 
 life, the breathings and whisperings of 
 which are now moving amongst the na- 
 tions. Oh ! may God grant that when 
 the time comes for struggles and con- 
 flicts, when the time comes for the estab- 
 lishing of the completed theocracy, the 
 inspiration of James may be the inspi- 
 ration of the Church, that we may lift 
 the cross as the banner of the victory of 
 our God. 
 
VII. 
 
 THE MYSTIC TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 No man hath beheld God at any time : if we love 
 one another, God abideth in us, and his love is 
 perfected in us : hereby know we that we abide in 
 him, and he in us, because he hath given us 
 of his spirit. — i John iv. 12. 
 
 TN the formation of primitive Christian- 
 ity Paul has only one possible rival, 
 and that is John. So far as the intel- 
 lectual side of Christianity is concerned, 
 Paul stands unrivalled as a formative 
 element and factor. Probably Peter had 
 a more active part in the formation of 
 the external organization of Christianity 
 than the record shows. He probably did 
 much to forward the formation of many 
 churches, without leaving large records 
 of his activity ; for it is scarcely credible 
 that Peter should have maintained in 
 
MYSTIC TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 29 
 
 the Church's tradition and history the 
 place he has upon so slender a founda- 
 tion as that which we find recorded in 
 the New Testament. It must have been 
 very largely as an executive, practical 
 man, that he left his mark and imprint 
 upon the Church, which circumstance 
 would explain perchance that it was 
 mainly upon the Roman church that he 
 left this mark. The Roman mind, being 
 practical and executive, would naturally 
 fall readily under the influence of that 
 particular apostle, to whom in God's 
 providence possibly had been committed 
 something of the formation of the gov- 
 ernment by which the Church was to be 
 strengthened and consolidated. How- 
 ever that may be, Peter is preserved 
 rather in tradition than in record, but 
 John and Paul go down in the records 
 as the two main formative agents in or- 
 ganized Christianity. They were men, 
 however, of very different types. John's 
 9 
 
I30 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 limitations were rather on the side of 
 that logical, philosophical, and intellec- 
 tual character which was so pronounced 
 in Paul. I presume that John, for in- 
 stance, would have had comparatively 
 little influence over some of the elements 
 in the Church's life that Paul has moulded. 
 Indeed, it appears that in the third and 
 fourth centuries of the Roman branch of 
 the Church, John was an almost forgotten 
 factor. In the Greek church, however, 
 John takes the place that in the Latin 
 church has been so largely taken by Paul. 
 John is to a very large degree the domi- 
 nant element throughout the Greek the- 
 ology, which has been so neglected by 
 Protestant theologians. A great deal of 
 the disturbance in the theological atmos- 
 phere around us now comes from the fact 
 that there has been a revival of Greek 
 theology and of the Greek spirit in 
 Protestantism. We are feeling on all 
 sides the power and influence of this 
 
MYSTIC TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 131 
 
 Greek revival. Once before the Church 
 felt the influence of a pagan renaissance 
 of Greek thought almost absolutely un- 
 touched by Christian ideas. To-day we 
 are feeling the influence of the Greek- 
 Christian thought that has been so deeply 
 and permanently affected by the spirit of 
 John. The conception of the Johannean 
 gospel has opened our eyes to large 
 realms of truth entirely neglected in the 
 history of nineteen centuries of Chris- 
 tianity. Once Dr. Hitchcock said, to 
 the class he was instructing in history, 
 that the Church had seen Petrine theology 
 in her organization, and Pauline theology 
 in her creeds, and now he felt, though he 
 felt it only dimly, that we were entering 
 upon a third period of theological strug- 
 gle, marked by the ascendant influence 
 of John. He thought the Johannean type 
 would be dominant only when the treas- 
 ures buried now in the Johannean writ- 
 ings had become the treasures of the 
 
132 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 Church. I think we may look further, 
 beyond that prophecy even, and hope for 
 a time when we shall see the Church 
 doing what the New Testament does, 
 placing the elements all together, find- 
 ing for them all their proper provinces, 
 giving to every type of thought that 
 has its source in the divine mind its 
 proper place as a formative element in 
 the Church's life and organization, and 
 making the Church the expression of a 
 national longing for righteousness. If 
 only we do that, we shall find that we 
 are united as one spirit existing under 
 wide diversity. As we have limitations 
 or capacity, we shall enter more or less 
 fully into the thought of the entire New 
 Testament, and James and Peter, and 
 John and Paul will widen and instruct 
 us, giving us more glorious conceptions 
 of the fulness of the revelation which is 
 in Christ Jesus than has been possible 
 for us to achieve in our very narrow 
 
MYSTIC TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 33 
 
 conceptions touching the New Testa- 
 ment revelation of God as it is in Christ. 
 We shall see the need of room for wide 
 differences of opinion and statement. 
 
 Were we to depend upon John simply, 
 there would be something lacking of the 
 practical Christianity which we saw so 
 pronouncedly in James, and the state- 
 ments of James are open to serious criti- 
 cism taken alone. John lays down the 
 law of love. He emphasizes it as it had 
 not been emphasized before in New Tes- 
 tament literature. But if you will read 
 John through, the fourth gospel, and 
 the three letters assuming the Johannean 
 authorship, you will be struck with the 
 thought that there is a class of minds 
 who would find his teaching extremely 
 unpractical. These persons would say 
 to themselves, I have no doubt, " I feel 
 it is true I ought to love my brother, but 
 how am I to love my brother ? How am 
 I to show my love ? " Were we to rely 
 
134 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 upon John alone, we should have very 
 little light upon that question. We shall 
 have then to turn to James, and find that 
 he translates into very strong language 
 the rules and spiritual considerations of 
 John, and gives voice to the practical 
 every-day application of the truth which 
 John saw in such fulness and with such 
 spiritual clearness. So it is very well for 
 us that we are not left simply to John for 
 a conception of that revelation of God in 
 Jesus Christ. It is a great blessing that 
 we have John to give us such a spiritual 
 interpretation of the historic man Christ 
 Jesus as we cannot find even in Paul, 
 because Paul knew only the risen Christ, 
 and such as we cannot find even in the 
 synoptic gospels, because the writers of 
 the synoptic gospels were men of limited 
 horizons in many directions, and of little 
 comprehension along some lines of what 
 the real teaching of Jesus was ; which we 
 cannot get in James either, because of 
 
MYSTIC TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 35 
 
 the Judaistic limitations which prevented 
 James from entering into the fulness of 
 the spiritual truth which we find to be 
 in John. John was the beloved disciple. 
 I do not believe that was because of his 
 marked gentleness of character, as some 
 have thought, for we find that John is 
 characterized as the Son of Thunder. 
 He is one also of the impulsive disciples. 
 He it was who would have called down 
 fire from heaven to avenge an insult. 
 He was the beloved disciple surely be- 
 cause he leaned upon Jesus' bosom, 
 because he was able to enter into the 
 thought of Christ and comprehend his 
 mystic sayings. He did not need to 
 have the proverbs unfolded to him as the 
 rather weaker intelligence of the other 
 disciples required they should be. He 
 was one of that inner circle into which 
 Peter was taken, James and John and 
 Peter going with their Master into the 
 presence of the Transfiguration ! going 
 
I36 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 with their Master into the death cham- 
 ber ! sharing the secret counsels of the 
 Master, who could not unfold his whole 
 teachings to the dull and somewhat com- 
 monplace minds of the other disciples 
 round about him. 
 
 John knew Christ, he felt Christ, he 
 intuitively leaped to the conclusion even 
 before Christ finished all his teaching. 
 He alone was able to give us such con- 
 versations as that between Nicodemus 
 and Christ. Mark could hardly have faith- 
 fully portrayed that scene. It is doubt- 
 ful whether Matthew would have under- 
 stood it much better than Nicodemus, 
 where we find Christ opening to the 
 mind of Nicodemus the mysteries of that 
 spiritual contact between the spirit of 
 God and the spirit of man which is the 
 contact of history, of which history is but 
 the unfolding. It was John that was 
 able best to enter into the mysteries of 
 that new birth, which means the regene- 
 
MYSTIC TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 37 
 
 ration and changing of the whole thought 
 of man about God, and the formation of 
 that character which is the Divine intent 
 from the beginning. Who else could 
 have riven us the scene of the woman of 
 Samaria ? And there are often touches 
 which we should be surprised, I think, to 
 find in Luke or in Mark or in Matthew, 
 — touches of spiritual insight, of the 
 comprehension of the fulness of the gos- 
 pel of our Lord and Saviour which strikes 
 us as being unique, and these touches 
 mark at once the teaching of that apostle 
 who had entered more than any other 
 into the spiritual character of our Lord 
 and Saviour. 
 
 And so it is that the picture we have 
 of Christ from the hand of John deals 
 mainly with his Jerusalem ministry, be- 
 cause in his Jerusalem ministry Christ un- 
 folded more than at any other time the 
 real spiritual Messianic kingdom which 
 he had come to found. It was the Jeru- 
 
138 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 salem ministry that most revealed to John 
 the spiritual thought he unfolds to us. 
 Christ is for him the divine Messias who 
 had come to his own and his own re- 
 ceived him not; who poured out his soul 
 in the death agony of the wondrous 
 prayer which John has given to us as a 
 priceless treasure in the seventeenth 
 chapter of his gospel. I think we should 
 be surprised to find in Mark or in Mat- 
 thew or in James such a chapter as the 
 fourteenth of John ; and yet surely with- 
 out the fourteenth of John there would 
 be lacking much of the revelation of the 
 depth of the love of Jesus Christ, and the 
 assurance that was in him of union with 
 the Father, which was from the begin- 
 ning and unto eternity. " I am in the 
 Father and the Father in me. If ye have 
 seen me, ye have seen the Father. Why 
 sayest thou then, Show us the Father ? " 
 
 Any one who has attentively studied 
 the language of the fourth gospel will 
 
MYSTIC TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 39 
 
 see at once that there can. be little 
 question as to the genuine character of 
 the three letters, whatever he may think 
 of the Apocalypse. They are in the 
 spirit, nay, they are in the very language 
 of the fourth gospel. Whoever wrote 
 the one, wrote the others. In the first 
 letter of John, we have the emphasis laid 
 again and again upon that which formed 
 for John the basis of his religious life, the 
 enthusiasm of love. What is Christian- 
 ity? It is impossible for us to define it 
 in a word. We have to define it as the 
 contact in and through Christ with God. 
 We might also define it in its outward 
 aspect as the new enthusiasm for good 
 that was brought into the world by the 
 divine manifestation of the Christ. It is 
 enthusiasm, the divine enthusiasm of love, 
 which John makes the basis of his mes- 
 sage to all time. 
 
 We cannot live for the most part upon 
 what is known as doctrine, useful as doc- 
 
I40 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 trine is in its place ; we cannot live upon 
 forms and ceremonies, useful as forms and 
 ceremonies may be. We cannot live 
 upon law, although law has its place. If 
 we are to be loving Christians, if we are 
 really to do the work of God, our souls 
 must be stamped with something of the 
 same divine enthusiasm which will burn 
 away within us the dross, which will make 
 us the children of the loving Father, 
 which will send us seeking over the wide 
 world for the service of the Master, that 
 we may be united with him in this divine 
 love, and feel that in love alone can we 
 find union with the Father, that only 
 through love can we know what God is, 
 for God is love. 
 
 This is, I think, the real meaning of 
 John's message. His message was an em- 
 phasis upon love, — the law of love is the 
 law of life. In one of the Buddhist writ- 
 ings, the Suttas, that especially sets forth 
 the message of Buddha to the learned 
 
MYSTIC TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 141 
 
 Brahmins, there is a wonderful chapter 
 upon what is known as Universal Love, 
 and Buddha describes universal love as 
 being a factor in life which the learning 
 of the Brahmins had left out. Confucius 
 dwells upon love as one of the factors of 
 life. We have in Confucius the Golden 
 Rule on its negative sides. The Avesta 
 teaches love as one of the elements out 
 of which the perfect world is formed and 
 the absence of which marks the lower 
 world, which forms the dualism of the 
 Zend-Avesta system. But nowhere that 
 I have been able to discover, in Buddhist 
 literature, or in the writings of Confu- 
 cius, or in Plato, or anywhere else, is love 
 laid down as John lays it down, not only 
 as a law and element in life, but as the 
 law of life, the very essence of life, the 
 very being of God, the very evidence of 
 God to the hearts of men that He really 
 exists. There is an infidelity which is 
 the infidelity of a half-truth, an infidelity 
 
142 TOWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 that would try to make us believe that 
 God is something else, that he is sov- 
 ereignty, or decrees, or law, or judgment, 
 with love thrown in to temper all these 
 things. This is the pagan conception, 
 resulting always in some form of either 
 intellectual or practical dualism. We 
 have had many a caricature of God. Ac- 
 cording to the picture that John has 
 drawn of him, God is not decree, he is 
 not sovereignty, he is not law primarily, 
 he is love, and his very decrees are the 
 outcome of his love. He is sovereignty 
 because he has proclaimed the sover- 
 eignty of love, and this law of love is 
 the law of life. This is the message that 
 is revealed to the Church, the law of love, 
 the emphasis upon which comes to us 
 with tremendous and distinct power as 
 we open the pages of John and find that 
 he emphasizes only more distinctly and 
 exclusively that which Paul too recog- 
 nized as central in his system, which James 
 
MYSTIC TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. I43 
 
 too recognized as central for him, which 
 unites the writings of the New Testa- 
 ment into one splendid chorus of praise 
 to Jehovah who sitteth on high, — which 
 is light ! which is love ! which is God ! 
 Walk ye in it. 
 
 The second characteristic of John's 
 teaching is the emphasis he places upon 
 what we describe as the intuitive type of 
 Christian character. Paul is reasoning 
 with the Romans and the Jews. He sought 
 to lead the intellects of the Romans and 
 Jews to enter into the secrets of the 
 Most High. For Paul there were many 
 entrances into the mysteries of God's 
 reigning. There was the historical. His- 
 tory was to Paul the steady unfolding of 
 the life of God. Philosophy had mean- 
 ing for Paul as an entrance into the 
 secrets of the Most Hi^h under the £uid- 
 ance of God's spirit. Law had for Paul 
 special meaning as an entrance into the 
 method of the Divine Life. For John 
 
144 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 these things may have had theoretically 
 their place, but for him and for his peculiar 
 temperament there was practically one 
 access only. He knew God, — " For I 
 have beheld him; I have seen him." 
 He does not need to dwell upon history 
 or philosophy or law. That might help 
 others, that was necessary to others, no 
 doubt ; but John had seen Christ ; he 
 needed no other testimony. He had 
 beheld him. He knew him, not as Paul, 
 who had a vision, who knew best the 
 risen Christ, and then had been strength- 
 ened throughout the years of his pilgrim- 
 age, but because he had sat with him: 
 " The things which our eyes have be- 
 held, that which we teach, that which we 
 know and declare unto you to be the 
 manifestation of God." So he entered at 
 once without process into the secrets of 
 the Most High. There must be that 
 element in all Christian life. I do not 
 suppose it is equally developed in all of 
 
MYSTIC TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 45 
 
 us. Some of us are sceptical by nature ; 
 if we find God at all it must be through 
 weary reasoning, walking with tired feet 
 along the beaten road of controversy. 
 But those more blessed, those sometimes 
 whom the world has despised, the mys- 
 tics, the women in their solitude and in 
 their suffering, tender children in their 
 ignorance, and sufferers on beds of pain, 
 to whom such weary wandering would 
 be impossible, these have known the 
 blessedness of entering at once, as John 
 did, into the life and love of him whom 
 to see was to know and believe, because 
 God had given him of his Spirit. God 
 is love. His love is perfected in us. 
 " Hereby know we that we abide in him, 
 and he in us, because he hath given us of 
 his Spirit." Shall we not sometimes in 
 the heavenly world, if we are permitted 
 to reflect upon our past, wonder at some 
 of the processes that we were pleased to 
 
 call intellectual by which we tried to 
 10 
 
I46 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 understand the workings of the divine 
 mind ? All around us, was God and we 
 knew it not; all around us were oppor- 
 tunities of love that we never entered into. 
 All around was the life of God, and be- 
 cause, forsooth, it walked and talked and 
 spoke as we did, we never knew it ! 
 
 The early Church had as its spirit that 
 which the Church in the moments of her 
 forgetfulness and infidelity has some- 
 times not fully realized, that Christianity 
 is a divine inspiration, a divine contact, 
 — not an inspiration for the apostles only, 
 not in the New Testament only, not only 
 in the first three centuries of the Church, 
 but a divine contact now and always. " I 
 am with you always, even unto the end of 
 the world." The question for our consid- 
 eration is, What is the character of your 
 inspiration ? rather than, What is the 
 character of the inspiration of the canon- 
 ical books? We are far more likely to 
 be unsound and infidel on the question 
 
MYSTIC TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 47 
 
 of the possibility of God's inspiring you 
 and me to do his work in the world, 
 than on the question of the possibility 
 of his having inspired those who have 
 passed to their rest, and have left the 
 record of their inspiration as a heritage 
 to God's children. We need to feel the 
 power that John felt, the baptism of the 
 Holy Spirit bringing us into contact 
 with God the Father of spirits, that we 
 be no dead memories of the past, but be 
 living channels of the present, telling 
 men of the judgment that is round about 
 us, speaking to men's hearts of the awful 
 and fearful neglects and dangers of the 
 present, and the consequences of such 
 neglects in the past. 
 
 John knew him because he had seen 
 him. We, too, shall be able to make men 
 see Christ when we too have beheld him, 
 and have entered into the secret places 
 of the Most High God through contact 
 of our spirit with Jesus Christ. We 
 
I48 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 must be the incarnation of God's living 
 love. We must know God as Love, be- 
 cause he has revealed himself in our 
 spirits, and daily we take up our cross 
 and follow him, becoming like him, see- 
 ing him as he is, knowing him, having 
 him dwell in us, and his Spirit to direct 
 us forever and ever more. 
 
 This is the message of John ; and it is 
 not a past message ; it is a message to 
 our hearts to-day. Would you know 
 God ? Know him as Love. Would you 
 feel him? Have him in you. Would 
 you live the life that God would have 
 you live, — the life of love ? " If any man 
 say, I love God, and hateth his brother, 
 he is a liar. For he that loveth not his 
 brother whom he hath seen, how can he 
 love God, whom he hath not seen ? " 
 May God help us to feel the inspiration, 
 to know the baptism, to walk in the love 
 and light that is reflected from the face 
 of Jesus Christ our Master. 
 
VIII. 
 
 THE THREE CROSSES ON CALVARY. 
 
 And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed 
 on him, saying, Art ?iot thou the Christ 7 save thy- 
 self and us. But the other answered, a?id rebuking 
 him said, Dost thou not even fear God, seeing thou 
 art in the same condemnation ? And we indeed 
 justly ; for we receive the due reward of our deeds : 
 but this man hath done nothing amiss. — Luv\ 
 xxiii. 39-43- 
 
 It was a strange circumstance that 
 thus linked the life and death of those 
 two unknown robbers with the life of 
 one who was to form the centre of his- 
 tory. We do not even know their 
 names. The traditions about them are 
 somewhat confused ; but we find them 
 here the victims with Christ of the 
 cruelty and barbarism of the age in 
 which they lived. They are called rob- 
 
I5O POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 bers, and no doubt belonged to that class 
 for which Barrabas stood, half robber, 
 half rebel against the existing condition 
 of things, a product of their time, much 
 as Robin Hood was a product of his 
 time, much as the bandits of Sicily to- 
 day are a product of the misgovernment 
 in that part of the world. For, after all, 
 character is a strange synthesis of vari- 
 ous factors, and it is quite impossible for 
 us to analyze a character exactly and deal 
 out to each factor its particular share of 
 importance. There is heredity of which 
 we have heard so much, and there is also 
 a personality of which we are, I have no 
 doubt, soon to hear quite as much as 
 once we heard of heredity, as one of the 
 foremost evolutionists of Germany has 
 already pointed out that there could be 
 no progress unless there were new factors 
 in some way evolved out of the old, for 
 unless there are some new factors, there 
 can be no advance over heredity and 
 
THREE CROSSES ON CALVARY. 151 
 
 environment. You cannot take out 
 more than you find in. 
 
 We shall be glad to call that creative 
 factor, personality or will, the element 
 that gives responsibility, the element 
 that should sit enthroned, that should 
 use all circumstances but as a means 
 to work out the highest in human life. 
 There are social conditions, environ- 
 ment, and education. These, too, are 
 important factors, but if we permit the 
 will to be enslaved by lust, selfishness, 
 and other passions, these things become 
 dominant, and we become slaves to those 
 that should be but our servants in the 
 progress of righteousness. 
 
 So, no doubt, it would only be the al- 
 mighty wisdom of God that could separ- 
 ate, in the life of this poor thief hanging 
 in his misery, the victim of the cruelty of 
 the time, between the factors that went 
 to make him the character that he was. 
 Social suffering and environment had 
 something to do with it. No doubt in- 
 
152 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 herent tendencies had something to do 
 with it. No doubt the surrender of his 
 will had much to do with the melancholy 
 state in which he finds himself. What 
 interests us most, however, is to find 
 what is the effect of this his treatment, 
 what is the result upon the man of the 
 measures that society took to prevent 
 him from being any more a menace to 
 the safety of the community. We find 
 that the poor fellow is but the more hard- 
 ened and injured by the course that is 
 taken, and the presence of Christ but 
 seems to stir the ill feelings within him 
 all the more, and he delights in railing 
 at his fellow-victim upon the cross. In 
 the gospel there is no hint of the reason 
 for the state of mind in which he finds 
 himself. It must have been some bitter 
 thought, or some very strange uncon- 
 scious feeling in him which suggested 
 his railing cries. He might perhaps say 
 to himself : " Had I only possessed the 
 
THREE CROSSES ON CALVARY. 1 53 
 
 personal magnetism of that leader; had 
 I only been able to work the miracles 
 that he claimed to do ; if I only had 
 obtained the ear of the multitude as he 
 did ; had a party in North Galilee been 
 at my call, — do you think that I would 
 have submitted to the Roman power as 
 he has cravenly submitted to it? Do 
 you think that I would have permitted 
 myself to fall into the hands of those 
 who hate me and my people ? I at least 
 bared my sword ! I at least haunted the 
 highways, and so long as my weakness 
 would let me, I fought the tyranny that 
 is crushing the Jewish people. I did my 
 little best to make known that there was 
 still manhood in Judaism. But this poor 
 teacher, he claims to be the Christ, the 
 Saviour, the Messias ! If he is the Mes- 
 sias, let him come down from the cross 
 and save himself and us! But how can 
 I follow any such craven leadership ? I 
 am glad that the multitudes cried, ■ Away 
 with him ! ' " 
 
154 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 Such a process of thought would no 
 doubt do much not only to harden the 
 man's heart, but to blind him to the 
 high meaning of Christ's death ; and 
 physical agony and defeat and humilia- 
 tion and shame only deepened and em- 
 phasized all that was bad in the man. 
 His conflicts with society, his outlawry, 
 his wildly obeyed impulses to disobedi- 
 ence, these things crowded in upon his 
 life, and all the worst elements of the 
 man's character were but intensified by 
 his suffering. 
 
 That cross of Calvary is an example of 
 unsanctified suffering such as the world 
 has very often seen since. There are 
 those who to-day are suffering, as there 
 have been those who have suffered all 
 down history, from the injustice, wrongs, 
 and barbarism of the time. This suffer- 
 ing has sometimes been but dimly under- 
 stood. Sometimes it has found a voice 
 in a leadership saying very much the 
 
THREE CROSSES ON CALVARY. 1 55 
 
 same things as were on the lips of those 
 poor sufferers on Calvary. This unsanc- 
 tified suffering does but harden men's 
 hearts. There are many to-day just as 
 bitter as these thieves who rebelled 
 against Rome! And in all a^es there 
 have been poor criminals who in their 
 wild despair have wreaked savage ven- 
 geance upon those who have thus ignor- 
 antly and harshly entreated them. We 
 know very well how easy it is for men to 
 emphasize all that is wrong in the social 
 condition round about, how easy and 
 how natural it is for us to lay upon the 
 social condition and environment, upon 
 the things that are external, the blame of 
 what they and we are. When we are 
 prosperous and successful in our business 
 and things go well with us, when every- 
 thing is very much as we should plan it, 
 then we pat ourselves upon the back and 
 say, " See how shrewd and clever a busi- 
 ness man I am ! What wonderful pro- 
 
156 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 fessional success I have ! How well I 
 have dealt with the circumstances of my 
 life ! " But when the adversary overtakes 
 us, when adversity enters into our soul, 
 then we look outside ourselves for the 
 explanation of our misfortunes, because 
 we cannot bear to divide the responsibil- 
 ity as it ought to be divided between the 
 things outside and the things within. 
 And to-day all the factors that have dis- 
 turbed human history and soaked it in 
 blood and selfishness are at work in our 
 land. There is danger of our adopting 
 to-day merely that which Rome sought 
 to adopt as a cure for all the evils. To-day 
 there is danger of lack, or even of entire 
 absence, of sympathy with those who suf- 
 fer, with those who are wronged, with 
 those who feel with fearful bitterness and 
 passion all their wrongs ; and it is an 
 awful condition of things when these 
 wrongs are driven home on the one side, 
 and those who are more or less con- 
 
THREE CROSSES ON CALVARY. 1 57 
 
 sciously oppressing the weak are out of 
 touch with them, and hardening their 
 hearts have sought to array themselves 
 against them. 
 
 I remember once a passionate, nervous 
 boy, in ill health, being tormented in 
 mere play by two or three stronger than 
 he. I remember the passionate fury and 
 hate that burnt in that boys face, a sense 
 of helplessness and wrong no doubt that 
 changed everything in him. There was 
 murder in his heart. It was only weak- 
 ness that prevented him doing anything 
 to wreak savage vengeance. At last, 
 springing at one of those who were his 
 tormentors, he half drew and half flung 
 him over the stairs with himself, and they 
 fell down together. I remember, I shall 
 never forget it, the white, drawn face of 
 my comrade as I saw one limb was 
 doubled under him and he could not 
 move, and I thought how easily that fall 
 might have killed him. Then, alas! 
 
I58 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 when it was too late, remorse came. 
 Oh ! the passions that are roused in 
 hearts that burn and cry and curse all 
 the more as their wrong is seen. And 
 when force meets force, when the conflict 
 is over and the French Revolution has 
 done its worst, then superior shrewdness 
 and force has but to stretch on crueller 
 crosses the weaker elements they have 
 wronged. 
 
 So history has still the cross of Cal- 
 vary, still hears the cry of the poor thief 
 railing in his misery at the helpless vic- 
 tim whom he would at one time gladly, 
 no doubt, have summoned to his aid if 
 that aid had been the sword and revenge. 
 And then there is the other cross, with 
 the other victim of the same passions and 
 selfishness of his time. He, too, railed 
 at first at the Christ in their midst, but 
 some word of Christ's went to his heart, 
 or some look of Christ's won his soul, 
 and he ceased his railing, and even re- 
 
THREE CROSSES ON CALVARY. 1 59 
 
 buked his fellow sufferer : " He indeed 
 without sin, but we justly." He takes 
 it all to himself, all the bitterness that 
 might have had some legitimate place as 
 over against the wrongs he was suffering. 
 For no crime gives any man a right to 
 torture his fellow beings as the cross 
 tortured them. But he has forgotten 
 that. He feels his own sin. The justice 
 of the sentence seems to him absolute in 
 the presence of that which rose over his 
 soul. " We indeed justly." No doubt 
 he contrasted in some half-conscious 
 way the wild scenes of violence upon 
 the highroads, and the willing submission 
 of this victim in the midst, and he sur- 
 renders his soul to the Christ. There 
 was no one there to instruct him in the 
 mysteries of Nicene orthodoxy. There 
 was no one there to tell him what the 
 meaning of the words he had just heard 
 was. There was no one there to explain 
 to him the philosophy of salvation. He 
 
l6o POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 only knew that here was one to whom 
 he could surrender his soul : " Lord, 
 remember me when thou comest into thy 
 kingdom." 
 
 Oh ! what must it have been thus to 
 share the sufferings of Christ, — thus 
 to be a help in the last agonies of the 
 one perfect hero of the world's his- 
 tory ; thus to strengthen the Christ 
 even by a word when all others mocked 
 him ; to give the word of cheer and 
 comfort that this poor robber must have 
 given him ; thus to give, even in the 
 midst of his death agony, the last al- 
 legiance ! Splendid was it, indeed, thus 
 to share the sufferings of Christ, and 
 to enter with him at once through the 
 opened door ! " To-day thou shalt be 
 with me in Paradise ! " Thus he heard 
 the Saviour's voice speaking, throwing 
 open the door of heaven and letting him 
 in. Oh, what a difference in the sanctified 
 suffering of this other cross of Calvary! 
 
THREE CROSSES ON CALVARY. l6l 
 
 For any suffering either hardens or 
 
 softens. It is one or the other. Either 
 
 the rain steals into the earth, watering 
 
 the roots and making them glad, or it 
 
 beats it harder and harder as it falls ; it 
 
 is always one or the other. The world's 
 
 suffering will do for the masses and for 
 
 you one of two things; either it will 
 
 harden and drive you away from the real 
 
 life, or with broken and contrite hearts 
 
 you will find, in the sorrow of the world 
 
 and in the tears which you shed, the 
 
 entrance into the real life, the life that is 
 
 hid in Christ. 
 
 Which would you sooner be, Pilate, or 
 
 that thief? Now, with all history behind 
 
 you, which would you rather be, the proud 
 
 Jewish hierarchy, or that robber whose 
 
 very name is unknown ? No justice was 
 
 done to him ; no doubt the crowd reviled 
 
 him as before. Even religious tradition 
 
 does not do justice to the poor fellow, for 
 
 this is the only gospel that marks the fact 
 ii 
 
1 62 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 that he turned to Christ. But he had 
 Christ in his heart, and in the touch of 
 that unseen hand he had found the 
 real life that passeth not away, — a peace 
 which the world could not give, which 
 the world could not take away even by its 
 cruellest cross, but which is from ever- 
 lasting to everlasting. 
 
 Then there was the cross that formed 
 the centre of this picture, with the Christ 
 praying not for himself only, but for all 
 of us in the loneliness and bitterness of 
 apparent defeat. It w 7 ere something to 
 defy those who are greater and stronger, 
 and to die fighting ; but to be hurried 
 away in the midst of the night, to be 
 stealthily dealt with, to be crucified before 
 men could know of it, ah, that was hard ! 
 In the solitude of the cross there was the 
 shame and agony of defeat, of broken 
 plans, of purposes thrown aside ; it was 
 the trial of Christ's faith. " My God ! my 
 God ! why hast thou forsaken me ? " 
 
THREE CROSSES ON CALVARY. 1 63 
 
 We cannot suffer as Christ did in all 
 points, for he was without sin, and we 
 never to all eternity shall forget the sin 
 that we have done. We shall never want 
 to. Some of you have listened to the 
 strains of the Ninth Symphony. The 
 music opens with an impatient struggle 
 with fate, then in calmer melancholy the 
 music grows very simple, very rhythmic, 
 but extremely delicate. Then you notice 
 deeper tones and gradual earnestness, 
 until at last all is caught up and swept 
 together in one last glorious outburst of 
 song. But even then, if you have listened 
 closely, you can still hear the refrain of 
 the minor note that sings to the very last, 
 giving to the whole the earnestness and 
 tenderness that makes it the most perfect 
 of all music. 
 
 We shall enter into Paradise with God. 
 We shall know ourselves forgiven, freely 
 forgiven, without condition and without 
 price, — not on the basis of any belief, 
 not on the basis of any opinion, not on 
 
164 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 the basis of any surrender. We are for- 
 given freely ; all he asks is that we walk 
 in the forgiven life, that we feel the 
 heart of love going out, loving men even 
 as we have been loved. But even when 
 we join, as we may join, in the Paradise 
 of our God, there still will be given to 
 our song a note of earnestness. We 
 have been forgiven freely indeed, but our 
 hearts must go out over the world's 
 suffering, incarnate in the sign of the 
 cross. This suffering is our doing, its 
 cross we must take up daily, but with 
 the joy of deliverance. It is to this cross 
 that you and I are to be consecrated. 
 There is suffering about us. There is 
 wild despair in the world. There are 
 awful wrongs. There are fearful iniqui- 
 ties. How shall we go forward ? With 
 the bayonet ? With the sword ? With 
 the cross on which we have drawn and 
 tortured those that rebel against the 
 authority which taunts them with weak- 
 ness, knowing that at last in the ever- 
 
THREE CROSSES ON CALVARY. 1 65 
 
 lasting strife superior intelligence and 
 superior force must ever in the end 
 crucify the forces of those who seek in 
 their weakness to throw off the yoke? 
 Or shall we go with the look of Christ, 
 with conquering love, even though it 
 costs pain and toil ? For that love 
 means life, and sanctifying every tear, 
 every sorrow, brings back to human 
 hearts the peace that passeth not away, the 
 joy that comes from suffering if only the 
 sufferer knows that sympathy is there. 
 That love lifts men up, adding grace to 
 grace, and a sweet entrance into the ful- 
 ness of the everlasting life. The greatest 
 wrong is not the cross, the greatest wrong 
 is the hate and bitterness that made that 
 poor thief rail at Christ. The greatest 
 wrong is not oppression, the greatest 
 wrong is the hate and bitterness that op- 
 pression calls forth. The only remedy, 
 the only thing that will stand between 
 the two is the cross of self-sacrifice. 
 
1 66 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 This will sanctify your sufferings. To this 
 bring your experience, to this bring your 
 powers, to this consecrate your life, that 
 the Christ in you may look with infinite 
 tenderness even on those who revile the 
 divine, if perchance one among the multi- 
 tude may turn to him and say, " Lord, 
 remember me when thou comest into thy 
 kingdom," finding in the very prayer a 
 solace, and in the very agony its escape. 
 Or you may crucify the Christ pleading 
 to-day. The historic Christ is beyond 
 our reach, but Christ is with us alway, 
 and you may still crucify and taunt the 
 real indwelling Christ and put him to an 
 open shame ; but he cannot be holden of 
 death. He will rise in power and come 
 in judgment to the life, whether personal 
 or national, and who shall abide in the 
 day of his coming ? Lift up your eyes to 
 Christ, share his death, live his right- 
 eousness, bear the world's sorrows, and 
 share with Christ the everlasting life ! 
 
IX. 
 
 THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM. 
 
 The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make ye 
 ready the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. 
 Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain 
 and hill shall be brought low ; and the crooked 
 shall become straight, and the rough ways smooth ; 
 a?id all flesh shall see the salvation of God. — 
 Luke iii. 4, 5, 6. 
 
 All have heard, no doubt, from pulpit 
 and press unfair criticism of the Jewish 
 people and the Jewish hope on the 
 ground that they expected a temporal 
 kingdom. They had every reason to 
 expect a temporal kingdom. It was 
 promised to them. The whole religious 
 life of the Old Testament was centred 
 in the State. The prophecies echoed 
 and re-echoed the hope that Zion should 
 be the dwelling-place of Jehovah, that 
 
1 68 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 the scattered children of Israel should be 
 gathered on the mountains of Judea, that 
 all nations should come up with their 
 offerings to Jerusalem, that Jehovah 
 should reign in Zion and the kings of 
 the earth should see his glory. The 
 Christian Church would lose much if it 
 were to brand such a hope as Judaistic 
 or wrong. We all ought to feel that 
 there is a glorious hope of a new heaven 
 and a new earth wherein dwelleth right- 
 eousness ; we ought all to expect, and 
 expect with more faith, the consumma- 
 tion of these prophecies of the Old Tes- 
 tament in the establishing of God's 
 kingdom on earth, and work with more 
 energy of faith for it. But I am afraid 
 that we are just as likely as were the Jews 
 to fall into the real mistakes that under- 
 lay their interpretation of the prophecies. 
 These they interpreted to mean, in the 
 first place, that the kingdom should be 
 set up quite apart, and independent of 
 
THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM. 1 69 
 
 the ethical demands that Jehovah made 
 upon the Jewish people. They expected 
 that kingdom because they were the 
 chosen people, apart from their responsi- 
 bility toward Jehovah, apart from his 
 ethical standard. So even some of those 
 who had penetrated most into the secrets 
 of the Old Testament and the thought 
 of Jehovah interpreted his demands too 
 much as a form of ritual. They thought 
 that as long as they worshipped in the 
 temple, and obeyed the demands of the 
 ritual and the letter of the law, they were 
 fulfilling all duty; the temple worship 
 would indeed be established on the basis 
 of ritual observance, where the law would 
 be read daily and interpreted by the 
 authority of the scribes. They assumed 
 that a kingdom might be built on things 
 external. 
 
 And they further fell into the mistake 
 of believing that the kingdom would be 
 national and exclusive. It would be a 
 
170 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 Jewish kingdom as over against the 
 world. The nations indeed might share 
 some of the droppings from the sanctu- 
 ary ; some nations might be chosen out 
 to become Jews and so enter into the 
 privileges of the Jews; indeed, it might 
 happen that all nations would at last be 
 conquered, and in the conquest share the 
 privileges of this divine kingdom. The 
 Assyrians, whom the rod of God's anger 
 broke, and Egypt with her people might 
 at last worship Jehovah, but the kingdom 
 would be to the Jews first, and to the 
 nations afterwards. 
 
 Such a kingdom was never contem- 
 plated in the message of the more spirit- 
 ual of the Old Testament prophets, nor 
 would such a kingdom be anything but a 
 wrong interpretation of Jehovah's law. 
 The divine kingdom must be, in the first 
 place, ever bound up in every fibre with 
 the kingdom of his righteousness. It is, 
 in fact, to be a kingdom of righteousness, 
 
THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM. 171 
 
 not of ritual nor of law. Some of the 
 prophets saw that. " Jehovah is weary 
 of your sacrifices, your blood offerings ; 
 these things are an offence to him, this 
 is not what he wants," said they; "the 
 temple service may be kept in its glory 
 and beauty, but that will not satisfy the 
 demands of the heart of Jehovah. He 
 seeks righteousness. These things are 
 but a means to righteousness ; and as 
 soon as they cease to be a means toward 
 righteousness they have no meaning, 
 nay, they are an offence." 
 
 The kingdom of the Jews is only, there- 
 fore, for a purpose. The election of the 
 Jew is only an election to responsibility. 
 It is a privilege, — all responsibility 
 ought to be a privilege, — but it is a re- 
 sponsibility that is bound up with the 
 privileges, and we cannot have the privi- 
 leges unless we manfully bear the respon- 
 sibility. Thus as soon as the Jewish 
 people ceased to be a missionary people, 
 
172 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 the Jewish people ceased to be an inter- 
 pretation of God to the world. They 
 lost their election, which was to national 
 responsibility. They themselves knew 
 that the spirit of prophecy had died 
 among them. They felt they had no 
 open vision, and so had no message. 
 From the older prophets of action to the 
 later prophets of deed and word there 
 had been a constant interpretation of 
 God's word to the world around, but so 
 soon as prophecy had died, the Jewish 
 people ceased to have meaning. Now, 
 unless the spirit of prophecy can be 
 awakened, unless they recognize that 
 they were only the mouthpiece of Jeho- 
 vah, they are to be no longer a people. 
 When they rejected that which was 
 offered them, and stoned those that 
 were sent unto them, then Jehovah 
 said, " Away with them ! " and Jerusalem 
 perished from the earth ; a prophetic 
 people without a message was absurd. 
 
THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM. I 73 
 
 But the idea of the divine kingdom 
 did not perish with the Jewish nation. 
 The idea of a divine kingdom, a God- 
 kingdom, is the promise of God to all 
 the nations of the earth, and it is not 
 lost in the ruins of Jerusalem. It was 
 revived in the resurrection of Christ; 
 and we all as Christians are to look for- 
 ward to the time when all flesh shall see 
 the salvation of God. 
 
 " Seeing is believing," the old proverb 
 says. But Christ says, " Blessed are 
 they who have not seen, but yet have 
 believed." There was very gross mate- 
 rialism in the make-up of Thomas when 
 he needed to put his hands actually upon 
 the wounds to be convinced that Christ 
 was risen from the dead. A fine spirit- 
 ual insight, such as that of Paul in 
 his later career, would have needed 
 no such handling of evidence. Christ 
 resurrected was ever with him ; Christ 
 was in his life. Henceforth he did 
 
174 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 not even want to know Christ " after the 
 flesh " if only spiritual vision remained. 
 
 " Blessed are they that have not seen, 
 but yet have believed." We look for- 
 ward to a kingdom. We may never see 
 it, but there is no reason why it should 
 not be real for all that, so real to our life, 
 so real to our hope and to our wish, so 
 real to our feelings and to our hearts, 
 that it becomes a reality in the great 
 life about us. The things of time may 
 pass away, but that kingdom we have 
 seen, and no man can rob us of it. You 
 might go to the poet and tell him there 
 was no beauty, that you had examined all 
 the images he produced in his poetry, 
 you had analyzed them, and had found 
 that they were a strange mixture of the 
 commonplace things round about us; 
 they were not beauty, the beauty was 
 but the imagination, and that it was 
 often in the way of real life. The poet 
 knows better. The artist knows better. 
 
THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM. I 75 
 
 Every man that is touched with the 
 artist's life, every man to whom the poet 
 speaks, knows that beauty is a real thing; 
 that not chemistry nor mathematics has 
 truths more powerful or lasting than 
 these realities that give temper to life, 
 and beauty and glory to the thought 
 of man. 
 
 " All flesh shall see the salvation of 
 God." For this prophet I suppose that 
 refers to the terrible time when men shall 
 be compelled to acknowledge the power 
 of God against their wills. But we ou^ht 
 not to be waiting for that time. Should we 
 wait for the time when we shall be com- 
 pelled to acknowledge against our wills 
 that God is not only omnipotent, but that 
 his kingdom is to be the kingdom of his 
 Christ ? We ought to be so filled with 
 the faith of the salvation of our God, 
 so very confident in our hearts that his 
 kingdom is a reality, and that we are 
 his children and subjects, that we can 
 
I76 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 enter now into that kingdom in joy and 
 peace. 
 
 What is salvation ? What do you 
 mean when you speak of God's salva- 
 tion ? What does the pulpit mean when 
 it comes to you and asks if you will ac- 
 cept salvation? Is it conduct? Some 
 have so defined it. A very thoughtful 
 school of Unitarians in New England, in 
 natural and wholesome reaction against 
 the metaphysical subtilties of a certain 
 doctrinal teaching, said, "Salvation has 
 nothing to do with opinion whatsover. 
 It consists in conduct." But the general- 
 ization is as faulty as the one attacked. 
 Salvation is not conduct. Salvation is 
 not character. Salvation results in con- 
 duct, results in character. Salvation is 
 no more conduct or character than it is 
 belief. Salvation is not opinion, it is not 
 belief. // is divine life. The salvation 
 of God is the touch of the divine spirit 
 with his world that brings into it light 
 
THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM. I 77 
 
 and life, that changes conduct, that 
 changes habit, that changes opinion, that 
 changes social organization, that produces 
 revolution and evolution out of which is 
 to come the glory and beauty of the sec- 
 ond incarnation of Jehovah here on earth. 
 Salvation is this touch, this precious con- 
 tact of the soul with Christ, that contact 
 which sooner or later produces the ef- 
 fects which that life needs. Look at those 
 who came in contact with Christ, — 
 for instance, Nicodemus, the hair-split- 
 ting, intelligent, refined Pharisee, won- 
 dering what this new teaching was that 
 stirred his heart in some way that the old 
 teaching had not done. He was hungry, 
 as many to-day are hungry, for some- 
 thing more than opinions. He went 
 there to find out what was this new 
 teaching, and Christ did not give him a 
 new theology, he did not change his be- 
 lief, he did not say to him that he must 
 leave all his old traditions and accept 
 
 12 
 
I78 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 him as teacher. What he did was to 
 infuse into the old teaching new life. He 
 said : " All these old traditions must be 
 born again in heaven. Into this past 
 must be breathed the word of God. Into 
 your life must come new life." How 
 does it come ? I do not know that Christ 
 ever answered that question, because it 
 was already answered. Nicodemus had 
 come to Christ, and in that personal con- 
 tact and submission to Christ as teacher 
 had found a salvation which I have no 
 doubt at last changed his conduct and 
 belief. But it did not begin with that, it 
 only ended with that. Take the woman 
 who came to Christ as he sat weary and 
 worn by the well in Samaria. The poor 
 woman seems to have been densely igno- 
 rant, to have had her mind filled with 
 the crudest of teaching, the vulgar super- 
 stitions which had found their greatest 
 strength, as always, in the sectarian ani- 
 mosities between them and the Jews. 
 
THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM. I 79 
 
 Christ does not speak to her as he spoke 
 to the Pharisee. He puts his finger upon 
 the weak spot in her life, which had been 
 on a plane she herself knew to be poor 
 and mean and unholy. Christ gave her 
 no new ethical code, but contact with 
 purity, holiness, and peace brings out in 
 the woman's darkened mind the question 
 which Christ ever asks and which seems 
 scarcely answered, because in the per- 
 sonal contact with Christ she found the 
 answer. " He told me all things whatso- 
 ever I did." Here was somebody she 
 could submit to, here was a healer of her 
 ethical wounds, here was a purifier; the 
 woman was saved by contact. 
 
 There was Zaccheus, whose life seems 
 to have been fairly right as to conduct, 
 but it lacked something. He climbed 
 into a tree out of mere curiosity, the 
 world thought, to see Christ. But Christ 
 knew there was something deeper in his 
 heart, and he says, " I shall sup with 
 
l8o POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 you," and in that personal contact, Zac- 
 cheus finds the thing he needs; a relation- 
 ship is established between himself and a 
 spiritual righteousness, and out of this 
 relationship springs a new conduct, a 
 changed belief. And out of this rela- 
 tionship and this contact, shall spring a 
 changed social organization, a changed 
 life, a new kingdom of God, when all 
 flesh shall see the salvation of God. 
 
 No one of us surely has been without 
 in his life some personal contact which 
 has helped and elevated and lifted him 
 up. We have felt the power of men with 
 whom we did not agree, men whose in- 
 tellectual life possibly we felt was far 
 below our own, men whom in many ways 
 we could not always admire, but they 
 had something that we had not, and per- 
 sonal contact with them helped us, gave 
 us nobler views of life, stirred us to new 
 thoughts, made us more ambitious for 
 the future both of ourselves and those 
 
THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM. l8l 
 
 about us. We have felt the power of 
 personal contact, because we have come 
 face to face with men whom we admired ; 
 but how with Christ? We cannot come 
 in contact surely with Christ, for he has 
 passed away. If only we could walk 
 with him, if only we could see him, if 
 only our hands could touch him, that 
 personal contact would mean for us per- 
 chance what it meant to many of the 
 disciples ; but he has passed away, and 
 with him there has passed a glory from 
 this earth and forever ! No, dear friends, 
 that contact is possible now and to-day 
 and forever. It is that personal contact, 
 that personal relationship, which is the 
 real spiritual life of the community to- 
 day. Under all the passing forms of 
 doctrine and creed the real power is this 
 personal indwelling life. 
 
 Where is Christ? "I am with you 
 always." Where ? " Everywhere." There 
 is no reason why your life may not come 
 
1 82 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 in contact with Christ if only you will 
 seek him. He seeks you, if only you will 
 be sought. Christ is ever willing to make 
 you see his salvation that you may so 
 walk and never miss it again, never wan- 
 der ao-ain in the mists and darkness which 
 have sometimes come over your life. I 
 do not know what you think your life 
 needs, but it needs everything if you 
 have not found Christ. It is sometimes 
 in moments of business depression, some- 
 times in moments of darkest sorrow that 
 Christ makes himself most felt, because 
 Christ came to the lost, he came to the 
 suffering, he came to the sorry of heart. 
 It was not to the contented, the self- 
 righteous, he came, but to those who 
 needed him. And it is in the moments 
 when our hearts are bowed down that we 
 most feel the need of Christ and our 
 hearts go out to him. When your life is 
 restless and discontented, when you feel 
 that your life needs something, some 
 
THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM. 1 83 
 
 purpose, some direction, some guidance, 
 it is in such a moment that Christ is 
 nearest to you, reaching out his hand to 
 you and telling you that he will be your 
 teacher, your helper, your guide, he will 
 be to you what you need him to be to 
 you. It may be that your opinions do 
 not need changing. You may have been 
 well brought up. Your opinions may be 
 so far different from your way of life 
 that to change your opinions would not 
 change your life. Then it will not be 
 your opinions that Christ will change 
 first. It may not be your conduct. Your 
 conduct may be outwardly what the 
 world will call moral, what you yourself 
 regard as fairly satisfactory. You may 
 have been able to keep your life fairly 
 clean, fairly pure, but what does it need ? 
 If your conduct needs life Christ will give 
 it. On one of the great estates of Eng- 
 land the passing traveller is shown an 
 artificial tree, wonderfully painted to imi- 
 
184 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 tate the natural branches, but made of 
 unyielding iron. At a little distance the 
 eye may be deceived, but only for a little, 
 and the second impression is one of dis- 
 appointment and ugliness, for there is no 
 life there. Far more beautiful are the 
 little shrubs that grow about the grounds, 
 that will never reach the stateliness of 
 the imitation tree, but which have within 
 them the life that forms anew each 
 spring the glowing freshness of their 
 green. What is your morality ? Come 
 to Christ that he may breathe into it the 
 life that will grow into his *beauty, slough- 
 ing off the old branches that there may 
 be new life, new glory, new beauty, that 
 there may be life born of God and quick- 
 ened by his Spirit. 
 
 Where shall you come to him that you 
 may see him ? You do not require to go 
 to seek him, he is everywhere. Some 
 have told me where they found Christ. 
 One in the bow of an ocean steamer, 
 
THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM. 1 85 
 
 where he had crawled one stormy night, 
 having coaxed the sailor to let him stay- 
 there. There, as he looked out into the 
 darkness of the storm, he found Christ. 
 It was not in the hush, it was not in the 
 storm, nor in the still small voice, it was 
 simply in the touch of that spirit with 
 spirit. He went back tempted to believe 
 it was his imagination playing upon him, 
 but felt as the day went by and night fol- 
 lowed day, that Christ had really been 
 with him in the midst of the stormy 
 wave. He found Christ, and in con- 
 tact and touch his life was made new. 
 Amidst the business of Wall Street, 
 amidst the tramp of many feet, amidst 
 the plunging rush after gold and success, 
 a man walked down that street burdened 
 with the cares of the world and of life. 
 Just as he reached the door of the shop 
 the bell of Trinity struck one, and to his 
 soul it was the voice of Christ calling 
 him from shame into a new life, into a 
 
1 86 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 new happiness and a new hope. It may 
 be in the hush of sacrifice, when we wor- 
 ship together at the feet of Christ, that 
 you have come in scarcely knowing if 
 you believe or if you believe not. Christ 
 was there, loving, pleading, lifting up, 
 ever saying, " My peace I give unto you. 
 Not as the world gives, give I unto you. 
 Let not your hearts be troubled," and in 
 that touch you have felt the salvation of 
 our God. And then, if you are true, you 
 will go out and let that salvation be 
 seen. Men may not possibly be inter- 
 ested in your opinions, they will look at 
 your conduct, they will look at your life. 
 Your conduct may not bear marked pro- 
 gress at first, but in the spirit in which 
 you hold your opinions, the spirit in 
 which you go about your daily duties, in 
 the new inspiration for righteousness, 
 holiness, and truth, you will show to the 
 world around the salvation of our God, — 
 that Christ is a reality, that he still speaks 
 
THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM. 1 87 
 
 to men, that his touch is still felt ; and 
 men will know, even if they do not con- 
 fess it, that you have something of good, 
 that life is more than they have made it, 
 that God is still in his world, is still 
 teaching men, and " all flesh shall see the 
 salvation of our God." 
 
 Let us avoid one mistake as we try to 
 make that salvation seen, — the mistake 
 of the exclusive spirit of infidelity. This 
 infidelity thinks Jehovah is going to take 
 out one here and one there from a great 
 number, and transfer them into his king- 
 dom. That is not election. Election is 
 not the arbitrary, sovereign act of Jeho- 
 vah, going here and there and taking out 
 one to transfer into his kingdom. Elec- 
 tion is the choosing in God's sovereign 
 grace of you and of me to be his instru- 
 ments in making his salvation seen. 
 And if we will make our calling and 
 election sure, then we are to make that 
 salvation show, — show in business, show 
 
1 88 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 in politics, show in our life, show in our 
 national life. We are chosen to respon- 
 sibilities, to contact with Christ, that he 
 may have contact with the world through 
 us, — Christ in us speaking to men, tell- 
 ing men that there is a judgment seat, 
 and a righteousness, that there is an in- 
 finite and tender forgiveness, and the 
 yearning of the All Father for the hearts 
 of his wandering children. " All we like 
 sheep have gone astray; we have turned 
 every one to his own way ; and the Lord 
 hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." 
 
 The kingdom of God is coming 
 through us if we are faithful ; a pro- 
 phetic, sacrificial, and kingly Church is 
 yet to rule this world's destiny. The 
 voice is now crying in the wilderness. 
 Christ is coming in power, the power of 
 divine indwelling love. He is to make 
 all things new. Now, organized Christi- 
 anity actually obscures for some the 
 vision of the Christ. Doctrinal discus- 
 
THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM. 1 89 
 
 sion, sectarian strife, unholy zeal, are the 
 mountains to be moved, as well as athe- 
 ism, materialism, and agnosticism. And 
 the reign of Christ is to be a personal 
 reign, for no other kind of reign would 
 be of any use, just as no other kind of 
 contact than personal contact is salva- 
 tion. The Church is to be the Temple 
 of the living God; its message the voice 
 of the indwelling Christ. 
 
 " All flesh shall see the salvation of 
 God." Are you trusting in that salva- 
 tion ? Are you making it seen ? Do 
 men feel it in the touch of your hand- 
 clasp, in the way in which you do your 
 business, in the way in which you draw 
 up your contracts, in the way in which 
 you argue your cases in court, in the way 
 in which you live in society, in the way in 
 which you do the little deeds of kindness 
 that come naturally to your heart ? Are 
 men seeing the salvation of our God, and 
 attributing it to Christ? Are men seeing 
 
I9O POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 that salvation because they see your life 
 sweet, lifted up, ennobled, purified, right- 
 eous ? Then we do not need to wait for 
 the coming of Christ ; he has come. He 
 has come in our hearts, he has come in 
 his Church. And when all Christian 
 men so live, the Church will be a real 
 incarnation, — the glory and beauty of 
 his countenance, and " all flesh shall see 
 the salvation of our God." God's salva- 
 tion and the needs of the world are one. 
 All flesh shall bow at the name of Jesus, 
 and we shall have no need any more to 
 say one to another, " Know Jehovah," 
 for all shall know him from the least 
 even unto the greatest. We shall joy in 
 our salvation, for " all flesh shall see the 
 salvation of God," and shall feel forever 
 and forever the touch of Gods infinite 
 love. May he grant it ! 
 
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