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 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 BX 6333 .A25055 
 Aked, Charles F. 1864-1926 
 Old events and modern 
 meani ngs 
 
OLD EVENTS AND MODERN 
 MEANINGS 
 
By Charles F.Aked,D.D. 
 
 Old Events and 
 Modern Meanings 
 
 A Volume of Sermons. 12mo,cloth, 
 net, ^1.25. 
 
 The first volume of Dr. Aked's American 
 Addresses. As the New York Mail 
 said: "His sermons prove that a really 
 big man has come to town. They are 
 singularly well adapted to the needs of 
 the present day. They are short, practi- 
 cal, abounding in humor." 
 
 The Courage of 
 the Coward 
 
 2d Editio7i. 12mo, cloth, gilt top, 
 net, ;^1.25. 
 
 "Dr. Aked has a freshness as of bracing 
 morning wind, and a brightness and 
 color and picturesqueness in style. His 
 diction is fine, his thoughts flow easily, a 
 bit of humor bubbles over now and then, 
 but through all there runs the seriousness 
 of a man in earnest, with a message to 
 deliver. It will do anyone good to read 
 this. It is the manly out-thinking of a 
 real man." — The Examifier. 
 
 Realities 
 
 A series of booklets. Each, paper, 
 net, 15c. Boards, net, 25c. A Min- 
 istry of Reconciliation. New Every 
 Mornins:. Christocentric. 
 
w 
 
 
 OLD EVENTS AND 
 MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 / 
 CHARLES F. AKED, D.D. 
 
 Minister of the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church, 
 New York City 
 
 Old events have modern meanings ; only that survives 
 Of past history which finds kindred in all hearts and lives. 
 
 —James Russell Lowell 
 
 New Yoek Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. ReveU Company 
 
 London" and Edinburgh 
 
Copyright, 1908, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York : 1 58 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago : 80 Wabash Avenue 
 Toronto : 2=; Richmond St., W. 
 London : 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh : 100 Princes Street 
 
To 
 EDGAR LEWIS MARSTON, 
 
 THE 
 
 Columbus of my America, 
 This Volume is Offered 
 
 IN 
 
 Faith, Hope, and Love. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Old Events and Modern Meanings 9 
 
 II. Lot's Wife 27 
 
 III. A Glimpse of Old-World Chivalry 45 
 
 IV. The Creed of a Universalist . 61 
 
 V. The Gate Called Beautiful . 83 
 
 VI. All Saints 101 
 
 VII. Idols of the Tribe . . . 119 
 
 VIII. Idols of the Cave . . . 135 
 
 IX. Idols of the Market-Place . . 151 
 
 X. Idols of the Theatre . . . 167 
 XL The Day of Small Things . . 181 
 
 XII. A Patchwork Character . . 197 
 
 XIII. Moral Miracles, from St. Augus- 
 
 tine to Samuel Hadley . .217 
 
 XIV. The First and the Last . . 235 
 
I 
 
 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
I 
 
 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 " Faint, yet pursuing."— Judges vni. 4. 
 
 Those of you who attend the general Convention 
 of your denomination, whatever that denomination 
 may be, or read the report of its proceedings, will 
 hear in this text a familiar ring. To the seasoned 
 delegate of any Church it is a dear old friend. 
 It is the sigh of a discouraged soul who admits 
 failure, but will not confess defeat. When con- 
 gregations have been poor, conversions few, 
 finances depressed, and temper execrable, when 
 minister and people are all but reduced to despair, 
 trying to put the best face they can upon their 
 failure without undue wear and tear of conscience, 
 they add to their doleful story, in the spirit of 
 him who whistles to keep his courage up, the in- 
 formation that they are faint, yet pursuing. The 
 facts are too serious for laughter. The phrase 
 is too comical for tears. For never, surely, was 
 a quotation more grotesquely misused! We re- 
 member that Mrs. Malaprop, thinking of an alli- 
 gator, once said that something was " as head- 
 strong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile " — 
 and this allegory has taken the bit between its 
 teeth and run away with the context. 
 
 9 
 
10 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 Look at the story and you will find that it 
 is no confession of failure. It is the war-shout 
 of victorious men. It is not the sigh of valorous 
 souls well-nigh defeated in the battle of life, yet 
 rallying their despairing energies for one struggle 
 more. It is the exultant song of conquerors seek- 
 ing more worlds to conquer. These men were 
 flushed with success. They were weary ; but it was 
 through piling triumph on triumph. They had 
 driven their enemies before them. They had scat- 
 tered them as the dust of the highway. Yet still 
 they pursued, and, determined that nothing should 
 block their onward march, pressed forward to 
 greater deeds. They were faint, it is true, faint 
 with the strenuous effort which had brought vic- 
 tory to their banners, yet pursuing greater glories 
 than the glory they had won. 
 
 This is the true reading of the text. So read 
 it is prolific in suggestion. It stands for a heroic 
 ideal. These faint yet pursuing warriors, do you 
 not know them well, and do you not admire them.'' 
 The poor woman who had lived a starved and 
 narrow life, when for the first time she saw the 
 sea, thanked God that at last she had seen some- 
 thing of which there was enough. These men look 
 upon their accomplishments and never see enough 
 of them. Are they preachers ? They never see the 
 crowd that is big enough, nor conversions that 
 are sufficiently numerous to satisfy. Are they 
 Church workers? Heaven be praised! nothing is 
 good enough for their Church. Theirs is the divine 
 discontent. They always want something better. 
 
OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 11 
 
 Are they Christians indeed? They have not so 
 much as touched the fringes of His garment. 
 " More love, O Christ, to Thee ; more love to Thee ! " 
 You know these men in the life of the world, in 
 art, literature, science, commerce, in the world's 
 work. I ask again, is there not much to admire 
 about them.f* Their crown is not possession. 
 Their joy is in the striving. Their glory is in 
 going on. Achievement to them is immortality. 
 
 But you know very well that success has its 
 dangers ; and one of the great dangers of success 
 is — success. We all of us find it difficult to dupli- 
 cate a triumph ; while the stories of men and women 
 who have come within reach of greatness in any 
 one of a dozen walks of life and have by a hair's 
 breadth failed to gain it are innumerable. They 
 have just come within sight of the tremendous 
 prize and lost it. Success is dangerous to success. 
 There is danger of resting on our oars. There 
 is danger of that sin which Browning imputes 
 to each frustrate ghost : " the unlit lamp 
 and the ungirt loin." There is always danger 
 of this slackening off in effort. The strain of 
 necessity eased, the spirit begins to flag. What 
 lies at the root of the old conception about the 
 necessity of sacrificing to jealous gods? When a 
 man was prosperous he was taught to throw away 
 something that he valued most, lest spiteful and 
 envious deities pounced down upon him and robbed 
 him of all. Why are you bidden to touch wood 
 when you boast that you have never been ill for a 
 year? On the platform once with two veteran 
 
12 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 workers in the moral movements of the old coun- 
 try, one said to the other and to me, " I have 
 been speaking now for forty years and haven't 
 missed an engagement." I congratulated him. 
 The other grizzled warrior said : " Don't say any- 
 thing about it; you may miss the next." I was 
 planned to speak with him in another city a 
 fortnight later, and, sure enough, the man was 
 ill and could not come. The next I heard of him 
 he was dead. Nothing in the world but a coin- 
 cidence; but what lies at the root of the common 
 superstition that there is some danger in a boast 
 of this kind.'' Without a doubt it rests on the 
 solid ground of experience. That is to say, when 
 life has been flowing in such peaceful currents we 
 have begun to take things easily; we have grown 
 careless ; we have not kept our eyes open to pos- 
 sible dangers ; we have somehow got into the way 
 of supposing that we are invulnerable. We have 
 not known it, but unconsciously we have glided 
 into an easy, unregardful, non-strenuous way of 
 thinking and acting and living. And so our very 
 recklessness has laid us open to attack, and the 
 breakdown comes. Life is not a matter of course, 
 and life must not be regarded as a matter of 
 course. There can be no discharge from the war- 
 fare in which we are engaged. We, at least, do 
 not live in a world where it is always afternoon. 
 
 And this is not all. There is the constant diffi- 
 culty of competing with oneself. You may find it 
 trying enough at times to compete with your 
 rivals; but the really successful man is his own 
 
OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 13 
 
 liveliest competitor. He has always to break his 
 own record. He has always to do better than his 
 best. And as the years pass on and the dash and 
 versatility and inexhaustible energy of other days 
 are no longer his, he may grow morbid in the 
 struggle to keep up with himself. Ibsen's " Mas- 
 ter Builder " lived in terror of the young genera- 
 tion that would come knocking at his doors, and 
 died when, under the goading of Hilda's belief in 
 him, he climbed to heights which he had loved to 
 climb in days gone by. My strong conviction 
 is that amid the numerous breakdowns of the life 
 that we are living, nervous breakdowns of which 
 I seem to hear in the proportion of twenty to one 
 compared with the slower life to which I was 
 accustomed, the struggle to out-pace oneself has 
 proved more dangerous than the effort to keep up 
 with the procession. There comes a time when 
 we doubt ourselves and when we fear; when we 
 make comparison between to-day and yesterday, 
 and dread lest other eyes than ours will see and 
 make it, too. 
 
 It is interesting to see how teachers who suppose 
 themselves to be so modern, and whose common- 
 places are in some mysterious way regarded by 
 unthoughtful souls as a revelation, accept these 
 world-old truisms, deck them out in the pseudo- 
 scientific jargon of their day and sect, and launch 
 them upon a bewildered generation as oracles of 
 Deity. They lecture learnedly in the popular 
 magazines upon what they call auto-suggestion. 
 It may be Christianity or it may be science, or 
 
14 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 it may be Christian Science or scientific Chris- 
 tianity; I do not know. It sounds to me like the 
 A-B-C of common-sense which every generation 
 through uncounted ages has known, and known 
 to be common-sense, and known also to be A-B-C. 
 We are informed with much show of wisdom that 
 when I am ready to think, " Oh, how I dread this 
 effort which is required of me," all I have to do 
 is to say instead : " That is a mistake. I do not 
 dread it, and, though I do not know it, I am really 
 looking forward to it with pleasure." I am told 
 to " saturate myself with that thought ; to hold 
 my head up as if I were a king ; to breathe deeply ; 
 to go ahead with confidence, and " — then there 
 comes a drop in the phraseology and descent into 
 the vernacular — I am assured that I shall " win 
 out." All very wonderful; but so our grand- 
 mothers knew, and we never taught them to 
 suck eggs ! Not less resolutely did the Apos- 
 tle Paul brace himself to heroic endeavors and 
 achievements by crying out to all his world, " I 
 can do all things through Christ that strength- 
 eneth me." And this at least is Christianity. For 
 though we grow faint, faint with effort, with 
 achievement, with victory, we may keep on pursu- 
 ing greater victories still. We need not fear to 
 compete with ourselves. We ought not to cringe 
 in terror lest the good red blood should flow less 
 richly in our veins and leave us weaker, slower 
 souls. Why should we not, on the contrary, expect 
 to grow stronger.? Yes; I mean that. The un- 
 known author of the eighty-fourth Psalm declared 
 
OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 15 
 
 of certain elect spirits that they should go from 
 strength to strength. Our fear is that we shall 
 go from strength to weakness, from weakness to 
 infirmity, from infirmity to decrepitude, disease, 
 death, and the darkness beyond. The condition 
 of the inspiring progress our Psalmist pictured is, 
 according to him, that we should have God in the 
 heart. So possessing, why should we not move 
 from height to height until the clouds turn to 
 solid rock beneath our feet, and our conquering 
 spirits storm the very battlements of heaven? 
 Though the outward man fail, why should not the 
 inward man be renewed from day to day? Let us 
 boldly look for ampler powers along with maturer 
 judgment, stronger grasp along with more radiant 
 vision, and here and now strength to perfect what 
 we have only dreamed in the turbulent years that 
 have fled. God is not the God of the dead, but 
 of the living. We are living! — living to abide in 
 His gracious promises ; living to claim the heritage 
 of men and women who are born of His breath. 
 " It is never," said Goethe, " any man's business 
 to despair " ; and least of all can it be the business 
 of that man who has accomplished much and by 
 the grace of God may accomplish more. Where- 
 fore, men and women who have done things worth 
 doing, whose names are not written in water, be- 
 lieve that these are merely the promise of the 
 day which is to come. Even though the sands 
 of your life are running out and the shadows 
 lengthening toward night, for you has it been 
 written in the smiling heavens, " At eventide it 
 
16 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 shall be light " ; and the sunset hours shall out- 
 shine the golden glory of the dawn. 
 
 Success is dangerous to success — in the religious 
 life. I do not mean that material success is dan- 
 gerous to spiritual beliefs. That may be true ; but 
 it is just as often true that failure depresses, misery 
 enervates, and poverty brutalises. If biography 
 will justify the line of Pope that 
 
 Satan now is wiser than of yore, 
 
 And tempts by making rich, not making poor ; 
 
 just as certainly will observation prove the truth 
 of Ibsen's word that " it Is stupidity, ignorance, 
 poverty, that do the devil's work." No; I mean 
 that just as material success Is, for the reasons 
 I have given, dangerous to the continuance of ma- 
 terial success, so is spiritual achievement danger- 
 ous to the continuance and progress of the spirit- 
 ual life. After great emotional effort there comes 
 rebound, reaction. We canot always be singing 
 hymns and shouting "hallelujah!" We cannot 
 remain indefinitely on the Mount of Transfigura- 
 tion, though the Rock-Apostle himself should offer 
 to build tabernacles for our comfort. We have 
 to descend to the plain, where the gaping crowds 
 and the mocking critics and even the turbulent 
 devils are. And the raptures have not only ex- 
 hausted themselves ; they have exhausted us. We 
 are not quite the same men and women — at least, 
 we are the same, but with the fires gone out. Then 
 temptation finds us an easier prey, easier — 
 startling and sad paradox of religious experience 
 
OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 17 
 
 — than if we had never carried our heads so near 
 the stars of God. The spiritual part of us has 
 reigned within us, subduing the physical to her 
 glorified will. But she has spent herself in exulta- 
 tions, rhapsodies, conquests, and now is very- 
 weary. While fatigue is on the spirit so that she 
 relaxes watch and ward, the animal part of us 
 seeks to come by his own again. We fall — and 
 great is the fall of some. These are the sins of 
 saints, may be, at which the world wonders. Per- 
 haps I ought not to probe the question further. 
 You will find it discussed both delicately and 
 forcibly in the letters of Robertson of Brighton. 
 But if you know your own nature, you know that 
 even in your moods of highest spiritual vision 
 and in your hours of grandest spiritual attain- 
 ment, you must not rest content. The price of 
 continuous achievement is ceaseless effort. Faint 
 you are permitted to be by reason of your vic- 
 tory. But the crown is to him who is ever pursu- 
 ing other victories still. 
 
 This is not the only reason. One seldom sees it 
 discussed; perhaps we do not like to admit it 
 to ourselves, and so seek to close our eyes to it ; 
 but it is none the less a fact that sometimes the 
 victory we have won fails to bring the satisfac- 
 tion we thought we had a right to expect. We 
 have been assailed, let us say, by a great tempta- 
 tion. We have faced it, fought it, flung it down, 
 and trampled it beneath our feet. And, mind you, 
 it was a real temptation. It was no repelling 
 spectre, hideous and mocking. There was some- 
 
18 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 thing we really wanted, something we wanted to 
 do. And it was hard to go without, very hard. 
 It was hard not to do it. Oh, how hard it is to 
 be a Christian ! But we watched and prayed. 
 We resisted and won. Then what.? Exultation? 
 Not always. Ineffable peace? Not invariably. 
 A sound of something singing at the heart and 
 sense of reconciliation made with God? Some- 
 times only. And sometimes a blank, a blank dis- 
 appointment, no blaze of crimson in the opening 
 east — a sober gray or depressing drab — and al- 
 most a censure of ourselves that we did not go 
 with the lotus-eaters when they called! Did you 
 ever hear of the disappointed saint at the gates 
 of Paradise? He looked, and looked, and looked 
 again, then sighed. 
 
 No train of angels at the gate ! 
 
 No glories on my vision fall ! 
 No blaze of pomp, no great estate ! 
 
 And is this Heaven ? And is this all ? 
 
 We have felt like that. We have escaped so as by 
 fire from temptations that have looked like angels 
 fair, and after the excitement, the thrill, and 
 the victory, our mood is like a stagnant back- 
 wash from a mighty rushing stream. We have 
 often repented the sins we have committed. Some- 
 times we have repented that we did not commit 
 them. 
 
 I know what some of you are thinking. You 
 are thinking that this is dangerous doctrine, es- 
 pecially dangerous to the young convert. And I 
 
OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 19 
 
 am telling you that the really dangerous thing is 
 for us to ignore it. Let us recognise it for what 
 it is, a fresh temptation of the sin which doth so 
 easily beset us. Let us teach our young converts 
 — let us first learn ourselves — that the devil never 
 dies ; that if ever he was chained up for a thou- 
 sand years it has not been in our time ! And that 
 there is no circumstance of unselfishness, of zeal, 
 of victory over illicit desires and forbidden things, 
 which warrants us in taking our armour off, in 
 laying aside the helmet of salvation, unbuckling 
 the breastplate of righteousness, or sheathing the 
 sword of the Spirit. We may be faint — faint with 
 conquest, — but we must still pursue. 
 
 Now here, to move rapidly, even violently, into 
 broader fields, is the justification of aggressive 
 Christian effort, and of the attempt to build Chris- 
 tian ethics into the fabric of organised society. 
 We must not throw away the fruits of victory. 
 We must not lose for posterity the ground won 
 by us or by those who have gone before us. By 
 great effort we stand where we stand, through much 
 toil and expenditure of treasure and of blood. 
 Let us tent upon the field wrested from the flying 
 foe, and see to it that where the vanguard halts 
 to-day the rear shall camp to-morrow. This is 
 the real purpose of restrictive legislation sneered 
 at as " sumptuary " or " paternal " or " grand- 
 motherly " or something of that kind ; and, 
 whether its advocates have made it clear or not, 
 this is its ethical justification. 
 
 Loose thinking is the bane of all discussion of 
 
20 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 these subjects — loose thinking, slap-dash writing, 
 and cheap journalism. Let us try to understand 
 the phrases we employ. Afterward we may see 
 what we are doing. 
 
 We are told that we cannot legislate people into 
 morality. Then let us see to it that we do not 
 legislate them into immorality. If we cannot 
 make them good by law, let us by law remove 
 facilities for making them bad. If it be true 
 that the highest kind of virtue cannot be evoked 
 by law, it is certain that by legislation we can limit 
 the activities of those who make their profit out of 
 the lowest kinds of vice. If we cannot by legis- 
 lation never so cunningly devised wholly prevent 
 any person going to the devil when he is deter- 
 mined to go, we can make it a very risky business 
 for the man who is helping him along. Vice is 
 everywhere to be met by Christian effort; crime 
 everywhere to be put down by the strong hand of 
 the law; and the encouragement of vice for the 
 sake of gain is the blackest crime in the registry 
 of hell. If there is no way by which Albany or 
 Washington or the sovereign people whom these 
 represent can secure the reign of the saints, there 
 are ways for preventing the rule of the scoundrels. 
 And law has failed of its purpose when it has 
 not approximated to what Gladstone defined as the 
 ultimate object of all law, to make it easy for 
 people to do right and difficult for them to do 
 wrong. I have never understood the temper of 
 the Christian man who prays " Lead us not into 
 temptation," yet never votes and never works to 
 
OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 21 
 
 take temptation out of the way of his boy or 
 girl or boys and girls less happily placed than his. 
 We ought not to insult the Deity in our prayers. 
 
 You know what the stock answer to this is: 
 " Morality is not morality when it has been safe- 
 guarded from temptation. Untempted virtue is 
 nothing worth. Character gains by conflict." 
 Therefore, I suppose, let every theatre tempt with 
 indecent plays, every saloon work at full blast day 
 and night, seven days a week, and every race- 
 track harbour such crowds of pestilent thieves 
 that a sight of them would make you think that 
 " hell's tatterdemalions are taking holiday." Oh, 
 certainly! The fireman's heroism is developed by 
 fighting the flames. Let us set New York ablaze 
 and canonise the firebugs ! The physician's vir- 
 tues shine resplendent in the city when plague 
 rages, or typhus or smallpox is epidemic. Let us 
 petition the Health Department for open cess- 
 pools and untrapped drains, try the bacteriologist 
 by court-martial for the murder of souls, and have 
 him shot in the nearest field ! And the legislator's 
 honour — when he has any — grows brighter when 
 he manfully resists every corrupting threat or 
 promise. Therefore, let us raise statues in our 
 public places to the bribers, perjurers, and thieves 
 who have made American municipal politics a by- 
 word amongst the nations! Why not.'' For, you 
 know, temptation is such a desirable thing that 
 it is wrong to attempt to remove it by legislation, 
 and flat blasphemy to vote as we pray ! 
 , The objection to restrictive or prohibitory legis- 
 
22 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 lation leaves out of account two important con- 
 siderations. 
 
 The first is the injury which the wrong-doer 
 inflicts upon those who do not share his wrong- 
 doing. The right of the community to prevent his 
 wrong-doing is the elementary right of self- 
 protection. The object of the philanthropist in ap- 
 pealing to the legislature is the protection of those 
 who else would fall victims, innocent partners 
 along with the sinner in the penal consequences 
 of his sin. Thus, while the ground of total ab- 
 stinence from intoxicating liquors is found in the 
 injury which those liquors do to the people who 
 drink them, the ground of prohibition is in the 
 injury which they inflict upon the people who do 
 not. If it can be shown that the drink traffic 
 wastes our wealth, cripples our trade, and sullies 
 our reputation ; if it can be shown that the saloon 
 breeds thieves and murderers, corrupts govern- 
 ment, and poisons the Hfe-blood of the State; 
 if it can be shown that the race-track is what 
 Benjamin Disraeli declared it to be, a gigantic 
 engine of national demoralization — then the 
 ground of prohibition is laid in the basal con- 
 ception of government, the protection of property, 
 liberty, and life. 
 
 The second point so often lost sight of is the 
 educational value of law. Paul said that the Jew- 
 ish ceremonial law was a schoolmaster to bring the 
 nation to Christ. The law is always a school- 
 master — to bring us to Christ or elsewhere! To 
 legalise vice is to encourage it. To penalise vice 
 
OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 23 
 
 is to discourage it. To license the sale of drink 
 and to legalise gambling is to give status, pres- 
 tige, leverage to these evils. To place them under 
 ban and proscription and to outlaw them is to 
 reduce their influence over the young life of the 
 community. And the man who objects to such 
 rational and beneficial education might logically 
 use his influence to close every kindergarten and 
 every university in the land. But the wise man 
 will be only too thankful when law becomes dis- 
 creetly and beneficently pedagogic. 
 
 In this way, then, and in other ways, the Chris- 
 tian citizen will labour to conserve victories al- 
 ready gained over the anarchic passions of greed, 
 appetite, and hate. He knows that he cannot 
 legislate beyond public sentiment. He knows that 
 legislation which does not commend itself to the 
 mind and conscience of the people for whom it is 
 designed is doomed. But he knows, what his op- 
 ponents would like to ignore, that legislation which 
 is well abreast of righteous sentiment, as far as 
 it has up to the moment reached, is securing, mak- 
 ing fast and safe the moral gains of past strug- 
 gle, and educating sentiment for further victories 
 in the days to come. Moral sentiment, the good 
 sense, good feeling, and good purpose of the com- 
 munity, must not grow loose and flabby, must not 
 relax its hold on good attained. Faint with eff^ort, 
 it must yet pursue ideal victories. 
 
 For the last few years of my life In England 
 I had a little house by the sea a few miles outside 
 Liverpool, situated on what is called the Wirral 
 
24 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 Peninsula, a tongue of land between the estuary 
 of the Mersey and the river Dee. Much of those 
 low-lying meadows had been reclaimed from the 
 sea. To protect them from the re-encroaching, 
 urgent waves of the Irish Sea, huge sand hills, 
 like the dunes of Holland, had been raised, on 
 which we cultivated the star-grass to bind the 
 sand together and hold it down when Atlantic 
 gales were blowing. And beyond that had been 
 built a gigantic breakwater of granite. So we 
 kept the land we had won from the ocean. And 
 these things are a parable of human life. For as 
 with sweat of the brow and toil of the brain and 
 great heart agony we win each painful inch of 
 goodness from the sea of devouring passions, we 
 must build our philanthropy into the massive ma- 
 sonry of Christian legislation, and hold this large 
 estate of virtue for our children's children and 
 for ages yet unborn. From the vantage ground 
 which we bequeath them after-generations shall 
 reach out to health and wealth beyond our dreams. 
 Our children shall rise up to call us blessed because 
 though faint we were still pursuing, and in our 
 pursuit wrested from the enemy of souls the land 
 on which a redeemed humanity will erect its new 
 Acropolis, on its pinnacle the sublime image of 
 far-shining and wingless Victory. 
 
II 
 
 LOT'S WIFE 
 
II 
 
 LOT'S WIFE 
 
 "Remember Lot's wife." — Luke xvn. 33. 
 
 But what is there to remember about her? We 
 know the story well enough. It is told in the nine- 
 teenth chapter of Genesis. There it is related 
 that when the wickedness of the Cities of the Plain 
 cried to heaven for judgment, brimstone and fire 
 fell upon them. The word of the Lord had come 
 to Lot, bidding him make his escape while he could 
 from the doomed cities : " Arise, take thy wife and 
 thy two daughters that are here, lest thou be 
 consumed in the iniquity of the city." And the 
 word came again : " Escape for thy life ; look 
 not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the Plain ; 
 escape to the mountain lest thou be consumed." 
 So the favoured of Jehovah fled; but as they fled 
 and the avenging horror fell from the skies, it is 
 said that his wife looked back from behind him, 
 and she became a pillar of salt. 
 
 Told in this way, it is not easy to see what it 
 is our Lord wishes us to remember. But try to 
 read the story with some little sympathy. There 
 is no need to think of miracle here. When the 
 fiery destruction fell, while yet the first elementary 
 instincts of self-preservation urged unresting 
 
 27 
 
28 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 haste, she hngered by the way. The word which 
 is translated " looked back " involves much more 
 than a mere passing glance. Her look was 
 " charged with steadfast regard and strong de- 
 sire." Her heart was in the city she was leaving. 
 For her it spelled the sacred name of Home. 
 Round it had gathered happy memories and lovely 
 hopes. Her own safety called for swift escape. 
 Delays were not merely dangerous ; they were 
 fatal. Yet would she not have been more or less 
 than human had her woman's heart known no 
 regret, and no fond, pathetic glances delayed her 
 flight? We are bound to read the story with this 
 understanding. She hesitated, delayed her de- 
 parture, still hoped against hope that she need 
 not go ; and so she died in the way, as Pliny died 
 in the destruction of Pompeii, suffocated in the 
 fiery and sulphurous vapour of the volcano flames. 
 The body of the dead woman remained, and, ac- 
 cording to the legend, became encrusted over by 
 the saline particles with which the air in the neigh- 
 bourhood of the Dead Sea is charged ; and in the 
 vivid words of the Bible narrative, " she became 
 a pillar of salt." 
 
 Lot's wife illustrates the perils of a divided 
 heart, of backward-looking glances charged with 
 passionate if secret longings, warring against 
 all the instincts of the soul that bid us look for- 
 ward to higher levels and purer air. She is the 
 eternal prototype of every one of us cursed by 
 the burden of a granted prayer. 
 
 Not less picturesque, and not less calling for 
 
LOT'S WIFE 29 
 
 rational understanding, are our Lord's words from 
 which my text is quoted. " In the day," said our 
 Lord, " that Lot went out from Sodom it rained 
 fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them 
 alh After the same manner shall it be in the day 
 that the Son of Man is revealed. In that day he 
 that shall be on the house-top and his goods in 
 the house, let him not go down to take them away ; 
 and let him that is in the field likewise not return 
 back." I understand this, the revelation of the 
 Son of Man, to refer to the moral and spiritual 
 crises in which divine truth is made manifest to 
 the individual soul. Then comes the need of swift 
 decision for the right and persistence in following 
 it. Then, truly, delays are dangerous. Vacilla- 
 tion is failure, futility, ruin. We cannot afford 
 to play with great questions of human destiny. 
 In those moments when Christ comes to us, comes 
 to compel our choice, the divided heart, the soul 
 that cannot choose, the will that is shaken by 
 antagonistic desires, the mind that quivers like 
 an aspen-leaf in every breeze of hope or fear, 
 presages doom. Heroic choice is called for. The 
 heroic course alone is the safe course. " Remem- 
 ber Lot's wife." 
 
 Very wonderful are the stories of the captains 
 of industry, the kings of commerce, the inventors, 
 the discoverers, and the children of genius who 
 have given themselves to the conquest of material 
 things. Imagination has not been denied them. 
 They have seen in the distance the far-off, im- 
 possible thing, and they have changed impossi- 
 
80 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 bility into reality. But the transformation was 
 not effected while they slept, nor had they time 
 to tread the primrose path of dalliance. While 
 still following the great idea they showed a power 
 of concentration phenomenal and intense. Ever 
 before them shone the great purpose, and to the 
 task of achieving it they brought every faculty, 
 every ounce of energy they possessed, all the 
 strength of brain and will which the universe itself 
 seemed to be pouring into their own rich life. 
 A capacity for self-limitation is one of the com- 
 monplaces of the biographies of all successful men. 
 It is necessary, says the French proverb, to know 
 how to limit oneself. And these men have known 
 how to eliminate the superfluous from human life. 
 Whatsoever things were merely ornamental, what- 
 soever things were merely an excrescence they had 
 the strength to fling aside. It may be perfectly 
 true that such self-limitation has frequently 
 brought its Nemesis — they have gained what they 
 sought and paid a price for it which it was never 
 worth, — but these considerations are not to the 
 point: something they sought, something they 
 meant to have, or to be, or to do, and they have 
 that, they are that, they have done that. Verily, 
 I say unto you, they have their reward. Con- 
 trast it with one who merely drifts, who lives 
 from hand to mouth and from day to day; 
 who has never made up his mind what he wished 
 to be or to accomplish on this God's earth. You 
 know the type of the unsuccessful man, whose 
 unsuccess follows upon his unthrift, upon his in- 
 
LOT'S WIFE 31 
 
 decision, upon his carelessness, and his self-indul- 
 gent habits. I do not speak, of course, of the 
 victim of misfortune, of ill health, of unavoidable 
 loss, of the man who has struggled manfully, whose 
 failure derogates not one whit from the strength 
 and splendour of his manhood. That is not the 
 man I have in mind at all; but I think of the 
 feeble creature who drifts '' as idle as a painted 
 ship upon a painted ocean." There is a romance 
 of industry; there is a heroism of commerce, even 
 In these material days ; and the characteristic 
 of heroism is its persistence. 
 
 Now you know very well also that this Is a 
 condition of achievement In moral things. One 
 Is tempted, when one finds opinions becoming 
 flabby, to enter a plea for bigotry and fanaticism. 
 Etymologically it might have justification; his- 
 torically it certainly would have. What is the 
 word " bigot ".? It Is a corruption of " by God," 
 the oath of determination. What is the word 
 "fanatic".? It points back to the fane, the 
 temple ; and the fanatic was one who was possessed 
 of an enthusiasm for the temple or for the god 
 whose chosen home was there. And these men 
 who in their souls have sworn the oath of per- 
 sistence, these men who are possessed by an en- 
 thusiasm for a sacred cause, are the men who 
 have made history and who to-day sit on thrones, 
 promulgating still their laws to an obedient 
 mankind. 
 
 Have you sufficiently considered the inner and 
 essential meaning of the phenomenon of Prohibi- 
 
32 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 tion assuming such gigantic proportions in our 
 day? The dimensions of this outstanding fact 
 are colossal. Thirty-six millions of the popula- 
 tion of this country in this very hour are living 
 under prohibitory laws. In two-thirds of all the 
 territory of the United States the saloon has been 
 abolished. I do not discuss the perennial ques- 
 tion as to how far Prohibition prohibits. That 
 is another story. But no candid and thoughtful 
 person can deny that immense facts and forces, 
 immense developments and potentiahties, are 
 amongst the contents of this great popular pur- 
 pose, sweeping like a prairie fire over two-thirds 
 of our country. Think what this tells of the 
 pioneers of the Prohibition movement ! And 
 broaden out your view to the pioneers of every 
 heroic moral movement. Think how the word that 
 was spoken first almost with bated breath and 
 whispering humbleness, if not exactly in a bond- 
 man's key, — spoken amid ridicule, contempt, and 
 open hostihty, — has shaken the purpose of a noble 
 people and moulded a mighty State's decrees ! Is 
 it not true that it is the bigot and the fanatic — 
 the words being used in admiration and gratitude 
 — the bigot and the fanatic who still fling fire on 
 the earth? Their ways may be a little rough at 
 times — the world's rough work calls for rugged 
 workmen. Their manners have not that repose 
 which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere; but they 
 are the men who, having found the world down- 
 side up, have proceeded to turn it up-side-down — 
 and of such is the reign of the saints. 
 
LOT'S WIFE 33 
 
 So it is not surprising that the centuries set 
 the same seal of highest spiritual value on fidelity 
 to Jesus Christ. It is not for nothing that in one 
 of the stateliest of liturgies Christian people link 
 themselves on in devout imagination " with the 
 goodly fellowship of the prophets, the glorious 
 company of the apostles, and the noble army of 
 martyrs." We are one with them if our purpose 
 is the same as theirs and our spirit of their fine 
 quality. There is a tremendous passage in one 
 of Henry Ward Beecher's sermons which possi- 
 bly some of you were fortunate enough to hear. 
 I feel almost as though I would give years of my 
 hfe to have been present. It has been described by 
 a personal friend of my own, a friend of Beecher. 
 He says that " the very walls seemed to quiver 
 under the impact of the man's divine passion." 
 He says that in the crowded church " men's eyes 
 were blazing and their chests were heaving, and 
 tears were falling on the pale cheeks of women. 
 It was one of those exalted moments that do not 
 often visit us on the face of this earth." It was 
 in the heroic days of this country's history. 
 Beecher was speaking of the re-capture of escaped 
 slaves. As you know, he had himself hidden slaves 
 on the premises of Plymouth Church; and in this 
 inspired hour he flashed out : 
 
 " I would die mj'^self , cheerfully and easily, be- 
 fore a man should be taken out of my hands 
 when I had the power to give him liberty and the 
 hound was after him for his blood. I would stand 
 as an altar of expiation between slavery and 
 
34 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 liberty, knowing that through my death a milHon 
 men would live. A heroic deed in which one yields 
 up his life for others is his Calvary. It was the 
 hanging of Christ on that hill-top that made it 
 the highest mountain on the globe. Let a man 
 do a right thing with such earnestness that he 
 counts his life of little value, and his example be- 
 comes omnipotent. Therefore it is said that the 
 blood of the martyr is the seed of the Church. 
 There is no such seed planted in this world as 
 good blood ! " 
 
 I will not add one syllable of my own to that 
 lest I spoil it. I will only remind you, in Bible 
 language, of the race of hero-spirits who through 
 faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, 
 obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 
 quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of 
 the sword, from weakness were made strong, waxed 
 mighty in war, turned to flight armies of aliens; 
 of whom the world was not worthy, but who made 
 the world worthier through their living faith. 
 
 These things lie on the surface. Let us go 
 Into the matter a little more deeply. 
 
 The underlying fact — not yet stated in words, 
 but implicit in every sentence spoken thus far in 
 the sermon — is that desire is destiny. In one of 
 the criminal courts of this city there is upon the 
 wall a painting of the Fates, strangely out of 
 place in a Christian land, out of place, indeed, 
 in any Court of Justice in the world. The three 
 weird sisters are enthroned above the earth, arbi- 
 trarily controlling the birth, life, and death of 
 
LOT'S WIFE 35 
 
 every human being. Clotho holds the distaff, 
 Lachesis spins the thread of Hfe, and Atropos, with 
 what Milton calls her " abhorred shears," sits ready 
 to cut the thread when life is ended. The Greek 
 representation errs as every such must forever err 
 by representing our Fates as outside us. 
 
 Man is his own star, and the soul that can 
 Render an honest and a perfect man, 
 Commands all light, all influence, all fate. 
 Nothing to him falls early or too late. 
 Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, 
 Our fatal shadows that walk by us still. 
 
 " Desire breeds action ; action breeds habit ; and 
 habit is destiny." This is the real Clotho, or 
 Lachesis, or Atropos of human life. As a man 
 purposes in his heart so is he, and so is his des- 
 tiny. For there comes a time, inevitably it comes, 
 inevitably it must come, a time when the secret 
 desire reaches out and grips us and dominates us 
 and coerces us, and makes us what all the time we 
 have longed to be. There is a mistranslated and 
 misunderstood passage in the Cain and Abel story 
 full of old-world imagery and of new-world mean- 
 ing. It is when Jehovah is speaking to the man 
 with murder in his heart, and He asks : " Why art 
 thou wroth and why is thy countenance fallen.? If 
 thou doest well shall it not be lifted up.'' And if 
 thou doest not well, behold, sin croucheth at the 
 door and unto thee shall be its desire! But thou 
 shouldst rule over it." Sin, beastlike, pantherlike, 
 crouches, ready to make its spring. Its desire is 
 there ; but the divine Word stands : " Thou 
 
86 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 shouldst rule over it." God knows that sin still 
 crouches at the door of the human heart, ready 
 to spring! Therefore, let a man be very careful 
 what secret desire finds lodgment in his soul, for 
 of such stuff our lives are made. 
 
 We know how physical danger tries us and sifts 
 us out and shows what manner of persons we may 
 be. There is in John Ruskin more than one curi- 
 ous survival of the instinct which lies behind an 
 ancient method of ascertaining guilt or innocence 
 by the ordeal of battle. You will find it working 
 freely in the chapter on " War," in " The Crown 
 of Wild Olive," with its conclusion that " quali- 
 ties of high breeding, self-denial, fearlessness, cool- 
 ness of nerve, swiftness of eye and hand are su- 
 premely tested when there is a clear possibility 
 of the struggle's ending in death, and that there- 
 fore whatever is rotten and evil in a man will 
 weaken his hand more in handHng a sword hilt 
 than in balancing, say, a billiard cue; and that 
 on the whole the habit of living light-hearted in 
 daily presence of death always has had and must 
 have power both in the making and testing of 
 honest men." And every wreck at sea, every rail- 
 way disaster, every San Francisco earthquake an^ 
 fire, every one of the appalling calamities of all 
 time, affords fresh illustration of this test of moral 
 or immoral qualities which have been hidden from 
 every human eye. The coward stands revealed 
 and the brave man, the selfish man and the un- 
 selfish, the man who has nerve and the man who 
 has merely nerves, the man who is no man at all 
 
LOT'S WIFE 87 
 
 and the man whose moral manhood enshrines divin- 
 ity. These are the testing times which bring secret 
 things to hght. 
 
 And in precisely the same way there are moral 
 crises which call these dormant heroisms or treach- 
 eries or vilenesses into activity and set them be- 
 fore the gaze of men. In the Parliamentary his- 
 tory of Great Britain are two stories separated by 
 the life of a generation, affecting two vastly dif- 
 ferent personalities, together preaching a tre- 
 mendous lesson. One story relates to the leader 
 of a political party. He was defending himself in 
 the House of Commons against charges of hav- 
 ing used language calculated to incite to crime, 
 or rather, he was attempting to extenuate the 
 admitted fault. He pleaded that the speech in 
 question was made under tremendous and tragic 
 circumstances. Those circumstances were well 
 known to the House, had indeed thrilled the heart 
 of Europe. As he spoke, his defence seemed to 
 be winning the sympathy even of his opponents. 
 One of his followers slipped out to the library, 
 looked up the Incriminating speech and the date 
 of the events which were said to have occasioned it 
 and to excuse it. The speech had been made long 
 before the incident occurred. He came back and 
 glided Into the speaker's hand a bit of paper with 
 the two dates written on. The man realised what 
 he was doing, and he had to choose in that mo- 
 ment. He might attempt to gloss over the matter ; 
 he might frankly apologise. He did neither. He 
 took chances of nobody else discovering the sig- 
 
38 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 nificance of those dates. He chose to lie. He 
 lied deliberately, coldly, firmly — and he failed. 
 Other men found that the speech was made before 
 the alleged provocation. He left the House amid 
 the jeers of his opponents and the consternation 
 of his followers. The story was remembered long 
 afterwards when the man died, a ruined man, died 
 in infamy. 
 
 Now contrast that with the story of John 
 Stuart Mill. The great philosopher was a candi- 
 date for Parliament for the Borough of West- 
 minster. In the process of questioning a candi- 
 date known in England as heckling, somebody 
 asked whether Mr. Mill had not said in one of 
 his books that the workingmen of England were 
 mainly liars. I need scarcely assure you that Mill 
 had not said precisely that in precisely those 
 words, and it would have been easy enough for 
 him to use phrases and escape amid a cloud 
 of verbiage. He rose, looked his interlocutor 
 straight in the face, said " I have," and sat down. 
 The audience cheered him to the echo. They re- 
 turned him to Parliament by a big majority. 
 They knew that here at least was a man who would 
 dare to tell them the truth. 
 
 Depend upon it, men and women, that in such 
 a busy life as yours, so crowded with its activi- 
 ties of pleasures and of society, of competition, of 
 struggle, of attainment, times of moral crisis must 
 again and again confront you. Then you will 
 have to choose. You will choose on the spur of 
 the moment. You will not have time to consider 
 
LOT'S WIFE 39 
 
 all the implications of your choice. You will not 
 choose by considerations of politic prudence. You 
 will not have time to refer the decision to some 
 standard of morality which you have elaborated 
 and established. You will choose because of the 
 sort of man or woman you are; because of the 
 life you have lived ; because of the soul you have 
 been growing; because your heart and the desires 
 of your heart are what they are; and because, 
 while men and women are men and women and 
 God is God, just so long will it be true that out 
 of the heart are the issues of life and death. So, 
 then, consider once more the perils of a divided 
 allegiance. " Remember Lot's wife ! " 
 
 You will in all probability have admitted the 
 justice of all that I have said, but the real ques- 
 tion is, to vary a phrase of the vernacular, What 
 does Religion propose to do about it? What can 
 Christianity do? If it offers only copy-book 
 maxims of morality; if it enjoins wisdom and self- 
 restraint and all the rest of it, why, then, we who 
 claim that we are more than conquerors through 
 Him that loved us are of all men most pitiable. 
 The Greek philosophers could do as much for us. 
 But it is here that the true glory of Christianity 
 is revealed. It is here that Christ's method and 
 His spirit show themselves all different and differ- 
 ent altogether from the method and spirit of any 
 moral teacher the world has ever known. It can 
 be expressed in a word. Every school of morals, 
 every school of philosophy which has dealt with 
 morals, would place the control of the passions 
 
40 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 under the dominion of Reason. Jesus Christ would 
 place them under the control of a new and more 
 powerful passion, an enthusiastic love of Himself. 
 Mosaisra may deal with prohibitions. Morality 
 may deal with prohibitions and with prudences. 
 Christ breathes a new spirit. The command from 
 Sinai is, " Thou shalt not do ! " The promise from 
 Olivet is, " Thou shalt not want to do it." This 
 is Christ's method, the swamping of all base de- 
 sires by the flowing in of a noble one. It is the 
 fighting of fire by fire. It is the absorption of 
 all lower things in the consuming energy of love. 
 And this is why we are very sure that " the heart 
 that is not passionate is not pure; the soul that 
 is not enthusiastic is not safe." 
 
 We are rejoicing to-day in the decision of so 
 many of our young people for a Christian life. 
 This evening youths and girls from the Sunday 
 School and from the families of our own congre- 
 gation are to put on Christ in His own appointed 
 way by baptism into His death. Many of them 
 are very young. It is the experience of our 
 churches that the vast majority of the men and 
 women who glorify God in a Christian life and 
 serve His world through the medium of the Baptist 
 Church have taken the decisive step in early life. 
 Nothing could be better, better for the individual, 
 better for the Church, better for the world. Would 
 to God that more of you young men and young 
 women could reach the same conclusion, and com- 
 mit yourselves in the same public way to the side 
 of the Redeemer ! 
 
LOT'S WIFE 41 
 
 Your difficulty too often is that you wait to be 
 Christians before you call yourself by Christ's 
 name. Then you will wait until the day of your 
 death ! You have had the Ordinance of Baptism 
 wrongly interpreted to you if you have been 
 taught that it is for Christians alone. It is for 
 those who are trying to be Christians. It is for 
 those who would like to be Christians. The es- 
 sential question is not whether you are, here and 
 now, in every thought and word and act as one 
 of the saints of God. The question is whether 
 in your heart of hearts you desire to make 
 an " honest try." Christ looks not to the ac- 
 complishment but to the purpose. It is im- 
 possible that the Church should ask you for a 
 nature sweet as that of John in his old age, or 
 for consecration such as that of Paul in his sub- 
 limest hours. The Church asks in Christ's name 
 only for this desire after goodness, this reach- 
 ing out toward consecration, this aspiration to 
 a dedicated life. In one word Christ asks. Would 
 you like to be on My side if you could.'' And will 
 you in My name and for My sake try to take My 
 side in all the circumstances and the chances and 
 the crises of your life? 
 
 I urge upon you this hour of decision. I see 
 no gain in delay. I see no reason for supposing 
 that the moral conflict will grow easier. I can- 
 not understand why choice should be more simple 
 next week or next year or fifty years hence than 
 to-day. I cannot learn that the world's work has 
 been done, or the world's prizes gained, by leav-' 
 
42 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 ing until to-morrow the moral choice which should 
 be made to-day. 
 
 To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, 
 Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, 
 To tlie last syllable of recorded time ; 
 And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
 The way to dusty death. 
 
 Behold, now is the accepted time, the glorious 
 time, the heroic time, the time of chivalry, of de- 
 cision and of high resolve! Now is the day of 
 salvation from doubt, from vacillation and drift- 
 ing and hesitation and fear. Now it is the brave 
 man chooses and the coward stands aside ; that the 
 earnest soul lays hold on God, and the half-hearted 
 drifts rudderless out to sea on a stormy night! 
 " Remember Lot's wife.'* 
 
ni 
 
 A GLIMPSE OF OLD-WORLD CHIVALRY 
 
Ill 
 
 A GLIMPSE OF OLD-WORLD CHIVALRY 
 
 '* And David longed and said, Oh, that one would give me 
 water to drink of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate ! 
 And the three mighty men brake through the host of the 
 Philistines, and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem, 
 which was by the gate, and took it and brought it to David : 
 but he would not drink thereof but poured it out unto the 
 Lord. And he said, Be it far from me, O Lord, that I should 
 do this : shall I drink the blood of the men that went in jeop- 
 ardy of their lives ? Therefore he would not drink it." 
 
 — II. Samuel xxiii. 15-17. 
 
 If you have never been home-sick you cannot 
 understand this story. If in your strong man- 
 hood you have not felt that for five minutes you 
 would like to be a child again, and wander, free 
 from manhood's cares, where once your childish 
 footsteps strayed, this Hebrew story will remain 
 Hebrew to you. It has been my happy fortune to 
 look upon some of the fairest scenes on earth, in 
 the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Alleghanies, the 
 Rockies, by Rhine, Danube, Meuse, and Mississ- 
 ippi, in the great Canons of Colorado, and on the 
 placid lakes which sleep eternally beneath the 
 fathomless blue of Italian skies. And sometimes, 
 amid the boundless prodigality of Nature's loveli- 
 ness, I have found myself hungering for the fields 
 
 45 
 
46 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 and lanes of childhood and the days of long ago. 
 On the Gorner Grat, in the Cirque de Gavarnie, 
 on Lake Como, I could close my eyes and see the 
 castle on the Rock which Lucy Hutchinson held for 
 Cromwell against Charles, the Forest where Robin 
 Hood and Little John sported with Maid Marian 
 in the shade, the grove and churchyard where 
 Kirke White aspired and dreamed, the hills, bleak 
 and barren, where Byron's storm-tossed youth was 
 passed — and I have wanted to gather crocuses 
 again by the banks of the peaceful Trent ! I have 
 little doubt that if I went I should find the Forest 
 destitute of trees, cut up into neat plots described 
 as " this eligible building land," the bleak hills 
 slightly more barren because dotted with coal-pits 
 and loaded with slag, and the meadows where the 
 crocus grew a wilderness of bricks and mortar. 
 There is no well of water beside what once were 
 the gates and walls of my native town, from which 
 I long to drink. The farm-house where I used to 
 buy — or generally beg — a drink of milk, is now 
 a goods station or a railway siding. But all the 
 same, oh, just the same! I know exactly how David 
 felt when he longed for a drink of water from 
 the well of Bethlehem. I know — but I cannot tell 
 you. And if I could, you would not be any wiser, 
 for all of you who have once been home-sick know 
 perfectly already. 
 
 These men were bandits. They were outside the 
 law. The rough rule of David was over them. 
 Their sword was their strength. Discontented and 
 broken men, men in debt and in difficulty, violent, 
 
A GLIMPSE OF OLD-WORLD CHIVALRY 47 
 
 adventurous, criminal, had rallied at David's call. 
 They levied blackmail on the countryside. They 
 were cattle-lifters, bushrangers, — what you will. 
 They had gone back to Nature — they had not far 
 to go. They lived by elemental passions. Some 
 food; more drink; a little sleep — spiced by fre- 
 quent fightings and blood-lettings — were their 
 chief concern. They sang the Song of the Sword. 
 
 When David spoke the longing which was in 
 his heart, three of these brigands understood him. 
 It was one night, when they lay round the camp- 
 fire, and each man saw in the dancing flames de- 
 serted, distant home, bent old father, mother thin 
 and grey, and children with eyes like theirs. And 
 David said, " Oh, that one would give me water 
 to drink of the well which is by the gate of Beth- 
 lehem." These three took their lives in their hands, 
 fought their way through the enemy's lines, drew 
 water at the well, and returned with it in triumph 
 to their chief. 
 
 This glimpse of old-world chivalry, hghting up 
 the dark and blood-stained ages of the past, is 
 bright with human interest. There was a touch 
 of poetry in these rugged natures. These men 
 had souls. What possible difference could it make 
 to David whether he drank water from the well 
 by the gate of Bethlehem or from the spring by 
 the cave where he lay ? Thirst is thirst, and water 
 is water. If you drink the water you slake your 
 thirst — and that is all there is in it. What differ- 
 ence is there? None whatever, if you have no soul. 
 What are places, associations, memories.'* Noth- 
 
48 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 ing, absolutely nothing, if you have no soul. But 
 the spots which great men have loved are haunted 
 by a sacred presence. The associations of home 
 and childhood and our beloved dead are holy. 
 The memories of the sainted past are at times 
 pleading, gentle, pathetic, at times inspiring, com- 
 manding, strong — for those of us who have souls ! 
 If you have no soul, be sorry and try to get one. 
 Do not boast of your mediocrity and scoff at the 
 infinite. 
 
 It is well with us when we can perceive chivalry, 
 recognise it for what it is, and value it. Happy 
 is the man or woman whose untrained faculties 
 instinctively pierce to the heart of a chivalrous 
 deed or to the soul of a chivalrous life; who sees 
 through the trappings of things, tinsel gilt or 
 hodden grey, to reality! But if this prophetic 
 gift is denied us, then let us train ourselves, by 
 honest reading and sincere thinking, to separate 
 the true from the false, the pinchbeck from the 
 gold, and to appreciate the heroic in any coarse 
 disguise. 
 
 But our reading, as Emerson says, is mendicant 
 and sycophantic. Our imagination plays strange 
 tricks with us. We were brought up under the 
 spell of bad poetry and false romance. And the 
 more fatally we were obsessed by the circus- 
 chivalry of knights and spears and tossing plumes, 
 the less clearly did we perceive the human chivalry 
 of every age and condition, the prophet-hero of 
 Old Testament story or the policeman-hero of our 
 streets. If you have the intellectual sincerity 
 
A GLIMPSE OF OLD-WORLD CHIVALRY 49 
 
 which would really know what was the " chivalry " 
 of an ancient day which flung glamour over our 
 pseudo-historical reading, ponder this passage 
 from Mr. Richard Whiteing. It is from " No. 5, 
 John Street." He has wandered down White- 
 chapel and chanced to see a slaughterman from 
 the abattoir, red and reeking from his trade. 
 And he says: 
 
 " I was haunted with the idea that I had seen 
 him before. But where? Why, there, of course, 
 in the Temple Church, lying cross-legged on the 
 pavement, in effigy, or wherever else brass or mar- 
 ble preserves a memorial of the warlike dead. His 
 smock had the exact cut of a coat of chain mail. 
 He was belted like a knight, for the carriage of 
 his swinging steel. His cap was but the old fight- 
 ing headpiece in a softer stuff. His sewer boots 
 were a trifle heavy for the stricken field, but they 
 were justified by the fact that he had no resistance 
 to expect. Exactly so must the smartest founder 
 of a line have looked in working hours, when he 
 toiled in the press at Hastings, and before he 
 was cleaned up for history by his serving men — 
 the painters and the poets. . . . War is this, I 
 felt; and this is war, and ever shall be, in spite 
 of the serving man with the pen, and of the other 
 lackey with the brush ! " 
 
 The judgment of the historian Hallam is not 
 essentially diff'erent from that of Mr. Whiteing, 
 allowing for Hallam's careful and precise methods 
 of stating the judgment at which he has arrived. 
 He shows that " chivalry " loved fighting for 
 
50 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 fighting's sake, was unconcerned with the Tight- 
 ness or wrongness of the quarrel, and bred turbu- 
 lence for no reason in the world but the brutal 
 love of war. He attributes to " chivalry " a 
 widening separation of class from class, and the 
 degradation of the great mass of the people at 
 the hands of a privileged few. And he has to show 
 how, in the songs of the Troubadours, " the viola- 
 tion of the marriage vow was the incontestable 
 privilege of the brave and the fair." The words 
 of John Richard Green, as you would expect, are 
 more emphatic. But they state the same thing. 
 He speaks of 
 
 " Chivalry, with its picturesque mimicry of high 
 sentiment, of heroism, love, and courtesy — a mim- 
 icry before which all depth and reality of noble- 
 ness disappeared to make room for the coarsest 
 profligacy, the narrowest caste-spirit, and a brutal 
 indifference to human sufferings." 
 
 And yet in this unchivalrous age of chivalry the 
 grandeur of our human nature would assert itself 
 in undying splendour. People who, as I have said, 
 delight to sun themselves in the glamour of bad 
 poetry and false romance, have held up their hands 
 in pious horror at mention of Mark Twain's 
 " Yankee at the Court of King Arthur." A man 
 once told me, a good, sweet-natured man, that the 
 book ought to be burnt by the common hangman. 
 And others are ready to add " and the author put 
 in the pillory." It is " shocking." It is " out- 
 rageous." It is worse than wicked ; it is vulgar ! 
 And yet I tell you that it is a great book and a 
 
A GLIMPSE OF OLD-WORLD CHIVALRY 51 
 
 true book, a beautiful book, with pity and tears 
 and human love and the passion of liberty and 
 honest mirth — and reverence for everything which 
 is worthy of reverence, and contempt only for un- 
 realities, shoddy, and sin. There is one wonderful 
 scene where the Yankee is represented as stopping 
 the torture of a poor man accused of killing a 
 deer. He has suffered terribly on the rack. His 
 wife is by his side, tortured herself by the agony 
 which is tearing him asunder, praying him to con- 
 fess, and, confessing, receive sentence of death. 
 The stranger puts an end to these devilries, and 
 tells them both that they may speak freely for 
 the man's life is safe. The woman admits that 
 she wanted him to confess so that he might be 
 spared further torture and find a merciful, swift 
 death. The man admits that he would have loved 
 the sweet release from pain which death would 
 bring, but demands, " Would I rob my wife and 
 chick to save myself a little pain ? " And then 
 the Yankee says, or Mark Twain for him : 
 
 " Oh, heart of gold, now I see it ! The bitter 
 law takes the convicted man's estate and beggars 
 his widow and his orphans. They could torture 
 you to death, but without conviction or confession 
 they could not rob your wife and baby. You stood 
 by them like a man ; and you — true wife and 
 woman that you are — you would have bought him 
 release from torture at cost to yourself of slow 
 starvation and death ! " 
 
 Oh, heart of gold! How true that sentence 
 rings ! We know these hearts of gold. We know 
 
52 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 the men and women of the chivalrous soul. We 
 pass them in the street every day, we sit next 
 them in the cars. And these men whom we dis- 
 dain as loafers and " common " men, while we 
 fawn upon those whom Mr. Whiteing would call 
 the cleaned-up killers of their fellows, roystering 
 generals and prancing pro-consuls, these on whom 
 we look down are the men who man life-boats, fling 
 themselves into the fast-flowing tide, leap into a 
 raging hell of flame, stand the foot-plate of their 
 engine and rush to mutilation and death, or assert 
 without a word and yet in a thousand voices the 
 divinity of human nature and the immortality of 
 love. God help us — it is a fervent prayer — ^to 
 perceive chivalry wherever it may be found ! 
 
 We are all familiar with the glittering falsity 
 of Burke : " The age of chivalry is past." The 
 age of chivalry is the hour which now is. The 
 place of chivalry is the place where you live and 
 work. The occasion of chivalry is injustice and 
 need. And the true chivalry of the true hero will 
 endure as long as there is weakness to be pro- 
 tested, wrong to be set right, and fallen hu- 
 manity to be restored to the image of God. 
 
 There is another prayer which we may off^er. 
 " God help us to perceive chivalry wherever it may 
 be found ! " That is good. But not less fervent, 
 not less good, is this also : " God help us to pre- 
 serve whatever touch of chivalry has been granted 
 to us ! " 
 
 The experiences of life tend to make all of us 
 hard and some of us bitter. Disillusionment comes 
 
A GLIMPSE OF OLD-WORLD CHIVALRY 53 
 
 to us, and unless we watch and pray it will be fatal 
 to us. Advancing years bring their dangers. We 
 have been disappointed. We have seen failures. 
 We thought that if we went through life trusting, 
 hoping, believing, giving, we should be met in the 
 same spirit. It seemed to us that this was 
 what Jesus taught. We thought that we ought 
 to be ready to go out as sheep amongst wolves, 
 and we understood that in time the wolves would 
 cease to be wolfish. And so we went with open 
 hand and open heart, hoping all things, bearing 
 all things, believing all things. And then experi- 
 ences come to us which tempt us to say : " I should 
 have been wiser to be — ^wiser ! It would have been 
 more prudent to be more prudent ! I believed in 
 God and men, but I should have done better to 
 look after myself. I ought to have taken a dis- 
 count off all these heroic, ideal notions by which 
 I tried to live ! " God help you, my brother, if 
 that is your mood. Fight it, for the love of God. 
 Fight it, for your own soul's sake. Fight it, for 
 madness and death are less evils than this. Better 
 go through life a thousand times deceived, a thou- 
 sand times betrayed, a thousand times disappointed 
 and flung back upon your own heart, still craving 
 for life and love, than darken the light which is 
 within you and plunge into the perdition of the 
 man who keeps himself safe. He is the hero who 
 comes through life, looking upon its disappoint- 
 ments, its failures, its mortifications, and preserves 
 the splendour of his faith in God. Believe in hu- 
 man nature, spite of all its aberrations and its 
 
54 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 degradation. Believe in your brother-men. Be- 
 lieve in God. Believe in the Christ who slumbers 
 in the soul of every human being and is ready 
 to wake at the sound of the right word and the 
 touch of the right spirit. Still pour out your 
 life in service and in sacrifice. For the joy that 
 was set before Him, He endured the Cross. And 
 the joy of the Lord is your strength. 
 
 David refused to drink the water. To him 
 it was a sacred thing. He could not drink it. 
 It seemed like drinking the blood of the men who 
 had put their lives to the touch to win this draught 
 for him. He poured it out as a libation, an offer- 
 ing to God. He associated the brave three with 
 him in the act of adoration, for he esteemed it 
 a fit offering to Jehovah. There was an answer- 
 ing nobility in David's heart, when the nobility of 
 these men was felt. There are fashions in criti- 
 cism, as in all else; and fashion of late years 
 has decreed the dethronement of many ancient 
 " heroes," David amongst them. The best we are 
 inclined to say about him now is that he was no 
 better than he should be ! In Sir John Robinson's 
 memoirs, lately published, there is a curious story 
 of Queen Victoria. One of the ladies attached to 
 her court was maundering about the joys of 
 heaven, when we should meet Abraham and Isaac 
 and Jacob and David and But Victoria in- 
 terrupted her. " Not David," she asserted vigor- 
 ously ; " nothing will ever induce me to know 
 David ! " Poor man, at times he was hardly re- 
 spectable ! Yet this story shows him at his noblest. 
 
A GLIMPSE OF OLD-WORLD CHIVALRY 55 
 
 It is an incident which brings before us the hand- 
 some hero of whom the old sober-sides who com- 
 piled the Book of Samuel has to say that he had 
 " beautiful eyes," and that he charmed the women 
 and captivated the men ! Chivalry answered back 
 to chivalry between the brigands and their chief. 
 
 But suppose that David had accepted the drink 
 without so much as the Hebrew equivalent of 
 *' Thank you ! " Suppose that he had accepted it 
 as merely his right, the service and the splendour 
 nothing but that which he was entitled to expect ! 
 Suppose that he had treated it as a matter of 
 course, a mere nothing at all! 
 
 That is our life. 
 
 There are men who expect to be as gods in the 
 home. The most comfortable chair in the house 
 must be reserved for them, and all the machinery 
 of domestic life must be run smoothly for their 
 pleasure. If it does, they do not dream of tossing 
 a word of comment, gratitude, or praise. But if 
 a grain of sand gets in it and they feel the in- 
 finitesimal friction — you might think the world is 
 coming to an end. And there are women, too, 
 upon whom you can lavish the inexhaustible 
 kindness of the most loving heart that beats 
 in human breast, until you think you have 
 met in the flesh, and searched into what serves 
 for soul, the vampire-woman of Burne-Jones' 
 picture and Kipling's terrible verse. Think of 
 the love which is poured out by fathers and 
 mothers upon their own — and how their own ac- 
 cept and repay it ! Did we ourselves need the cor- 
 
56 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 rection of suffering before we could understand 
 and realise the cruelty of unthinking irresponsive- 
 ness? If we did, God forbid that we should ever 
 again rebel against suffering which has made and 
 kept our hearts tender! I do not speak to many 
 boys and girls, and perhaps I cannot speak so that 
 they could understand me. But if I could, I should 
 want to say to them: Go home to the love which 
 surrounds you and keeps you and watches over 
 you, and learn to repay it. Learn to repay it by 
 learning to be good men and women. Resist temp- 
 tation. Live sweetly and bravely. Come back to 
 your home from school or work with no lie in your 
 heart, no bad thought in your mind. Let there be 
 no fear for you. They have had their disappoint- 
 ments, your father and mother. You can make up 
 to them for these. Bring such joy and pride into 
 their lives, as they see you grow strong, brave, and 
 honest, that their last days shall be their brightest 
 days, their old age lovely in your goodness and 
 your love. 
 
 This is our life, we must say again, in its un- 
 thankfulness to God and to His Christ. " What 
 evil has He done? " was the question of puzzled 
 Pilate about our Lord. Yes ; ask the pale Prisoner 
 there: What hast Thou done,'' Deeds of love and 
 mercy without end. He has fed the hungry and 
 healed the sick. Eyes was He to the blind and feet 
 to the lame. He stayed the fires of fever and made 
 the leper clean. He gave for alms of His own 
 heart's blood. When Society crushed its victim 
 and flung him under the feet of the trampling 
 
A GLIMPSE OF OLD-WORLD CHIVALRY 57 
 
 town, He held out a hand of pity to set him on 
 his feet, breathed self-respect into the shrinking 
 spirit, and poured His conquering life into de- 
 feated souls. Fain would He have gathered the 
 stricken children of earth as a hen gathers her 
 brood under her wings; and instead He gathered 
 into His breast the spear-points of human hate. 
 What hast Thou done? He sought and saved the 
 lost. He went about doing good. And the answer 
 of men's grateful hearts is the scarlet robe and 
 reed-sceptre of bitter mockery, the perjured wit- 
 nesses, the infamous spitting, the blows, the 
 scourging, the crown of thorns, the agony, and 
 the Cross! 
 
 Will you not make another answer.? He, if He 
 be lifted up, will draw all men unto Himself. He 
 can draw no man except as He draws you. And 
 as He draws you, so through you He will draw 
 others to His side. Yield yourself to His gracious 
 influence. He will save you from your worst ene- 
 mies, your own selfish thoughts and the evil imag- 
 inations of your heart. Accept Him as Master, 
 Lord, Redeemer. His spirit shall cooperate with 
 your spirit. You shall reinforce and glorify the 
 hosts of Christian chivalry. He shall baptise you 
 with the heroism which abides for ever and ever. 
 Did we drink of the well of Bethlehem which is 
 by the gate, we should thirst again. But the water 
 which He gives becomes in us a well of water 
 springing up into eternal Hfe. 
 
IV 
 THE CREED OF A UNIVERSALIST 
 
IV 
 THE CREED OF A UNIVERSALIST 
 
 "For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down 
 of the same my name is great among the Gentiles ; and in 
 every place incense is offered unto my name, and a pure offer- 
 ing : for ray name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord 
 of hosts." — Malachi I. 11. 
 
 The date of this great utterance is important. 
 Fortunately, we are able to place it with more 
 than ordinary precision, and that without going 
 far outside the three chapters of Malachi. The 
 scene is laid in Jerusalem. The people of Israel 
 have returned from the land of exile. The Temple 
 has been rebuilt and its ritual restored. The 
 social, economic, and moral condition of the people 
 is in every respect that which Ezra first and Nehe- 
 miah afterward set themselves to correct. Be- 
 tween the completion of the Temple, therefore, 
 and the beginning of the reforms of Ezra, this 
 prophecy was issued, in the dark days immediately 
 preceding Ezra's return, which took place in the 
 year 458 — let us say, toward the middle of the 
 fifth century B.C., or more specifically, from cer- 
 tain indications, the year 464 B.C. 
 
 Dark years they were indeed. The heaven which 
 lay about the infancy of the restoration of the 
 
 61 
 
62 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 Jews to their country and to the Holy City had 
 faded into the hght of a very common day ; had, 
 indeed, died down into a miserable and squalid 
 prospect. High hopes that had shone like stars 
 through all the night of exile, and cheered the 
 journey of the pilgrims homeward with a soldier's 
 song, had ended in disappointment and utter 
 bathos. The picture of the restoration is for all 
 the world like that of a tall and stately sailing 
 ship of the old time, with canvas spread to favour- 
 ing gales, while the waves of summer seas bear 
 her on and out with murmur and song — and then, 
 that self-same bark, with bare poles, high and dry 
 on a mud bank, under grey and sullen skies, and 
 only not a wreck. All the Old Testament accounts 
 agree in depicting the sordid, irreligious life into 
 which the people fell. Times of disappointment, 
 even of despair, Israel had known before. But 
 this mood is different and, one is glad to know, 
 solitary in their history. It is one of bitterness 
 and of contempt for the religion of their fathers. 
 The holiness and the love of God were alike de- 
 spised. With open and cynical effrontery they 
 kept up the pretence of offerings and sacrifice; 
 but they brought to the altar of the Living God 
 polluted bread and blemished beasts which they 
 would not have dared to offer to their Persian 
 governor. Scepticism for the first time in the life 
 of the nation was common. The morals of the 
 people were corrupted. Vice, extortion, the op- 
 pression of the poor were widespread. Especially 
 does our prophet take up his indignant testimony 
 
THE CREED OF A UNIVERSALIST 63 
 
 against a new form of wrong-doing, marriage 
 with the half-heathen women of the neighbouring 
 tribes for the sake of procuring rich and pro- 
 tecting alHances and, as the necessary prehminary, 
 compulsory divorce, inflicting gross cruelty upon 
 their wives, who are represented as covering the 
 altar with their tears. In a word, this wretched 
 remnant of what had once been Israel was in 
 danger of absorption into the heathen tribes over 
 whom they had for ages exercised lordship and to 
 whose low level they had sunk. 
 
 Wonderful, now, is the contrast which our 
 prophet finds between this demoralising, disin- 
 tegrating, hypocritical lip-service insultingly of- 
 fered to the Most High, and the pure, acceptable 
 worship which throughout the world, in every 
 place, from all lands, from amidst every nation, 
 rose to the saving Lord of all. Malachi's percep- 
 tion of this is one of the most remarkable things 
 in the religious history of mankind. The phrases 
 in which he sets it forth are amongst the most 
 notable in the entire record of revelation. The 
 words of my text stand absolutely unique in Old 
 Testament literature. There is nothing like them. 
 They represent the high-water mark of prophetic 
 universalism. There has been that which might 
 have prepared our minds for something approxi- 
 mating to them in the way of an ultimate develop- 
 ment. Yet all our reading of the best in Psalm 
 and Prophet has failed to lead us to expect this 
 full-orbed splendour of universalism, any more 
 than moon-beam or star-light would prophesy the 
 
64 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 unimaginable glory of mid-day to a person who 
 had never seen the dawn. What are the words 
 again ? " For from the rising of the sun even 
 unto the going down of the same my name is great 
 among the Gentiles ; and in every place incense 
 is offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for 
 my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the 
 Lord of hosts." 
 
 It is to the Revised Version that we are indebted 
 for our knowledge of this amazing text. The 
 translators of King James' time, when they came 
 to these words, could by no means believe the evi- 
 dence of their senses nor the testimony of their 
 combined scholarship. They could not believe that 
 any Hebrew prophet ever ascribed reality to what 
 we have come to call the great ethnic faiths, but 
 which they would regard as systems of idolatry 
 forever hateful to God. What then were they to 
 do with the text? Its words were plain. What 
 could they mean? The translators chose to in- 
 terpret them as prophetic futures, and for " is " — 
 " my name is great " — they substituted *' shall 
 be," and made it predictive, " my name shall be 
 great amongst the nations, incense shall be offered 
 unto my name," etc., though it should be added 
 that they were sufficiently impressed by their own 
 temerity in doing this to place the words " shall 
 be " in itahcs, the conventional intimation that the 
 words were not in the original text. The English 
 Revised Version restores the meaning of the words, 
 and without italics, though the margin contains 
 the alternative reading " shall be." One is sorry 
 
THE CREED OF A UNIVERSALIST 65 
 
 to find that the American Revised Version, in so 
 many respects superior to the English, boggles at 
 this large and liberal view. The breadth of the 
 conception is too much for American scholarship ; 
 the version of King James is brought back, and 
 the astounding text is robbed of pith and point, 
 left a commonplace of prediction, without rational 
 connection with its context or reason for its ap- 
 pearance at all. When Paul walked through the 
 streets of Athens and beheld the objects of the 
 people's devotion, his heart was stirred within him, 
 and when he stood before the committee of the 
 Areopagus, on soil the most sacred and sublime 
 in Europe, he told of the altar which he had seen, 
 bearing this inscription, " To an unknown God." 
 And to the most brilliant company that could be 
 in that hour assembled on the face of the earth 
 he said, " Him, therefore, whom ye worship, 
 though ye know it not. Him declare I unto you." 
 But five hundred years before, Malachi had said 
 with fascinating boldness the same thing, and said 
 it not merely of judges, poets, philosophers, and 
 the university men of Athens, but of all races of 
 mankind and of all lands beneath the sun. Yet 
 to this day men who read Hebrew with facility 
 and are competent to write commentaries on the 
 text, start back from the far-reaching implica- 
 tions contained in this creed of an old-world uni- 
 versalist and fit a narrower meaning to the words. 
 But it is no use having a Bible and re-writing its 
 greatest passages for ourselves when they are 
 too great for the notions of our day and sect, 
 
66 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 crude, partial, and confined. The words stand for 
 the views of this prophet, whatever weight attaches 
 to them : " From the rising of the sun even unto 
 the going down of the same my name is great 
 among the Gentiles; and in every place incense 
 is ofi^ered unto my name, and a pure offering: for 
 my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the 
 Lord of hosts." 
 
 This universalism did not spring full grown 
 from the heart of the prophet we call Malachi, 
 as did Minerva from the head of Jove. Prophets 
 known and unknown, and poets with their death- 
 less singing, had prepared the way for it. There 
 are times, as we read the earlier records of Hebrew 
 history, when we are impressed by the narrowness, 
 the intolerance, the exclusiveness, the racial hate 
 which found shelter within the Jewish faith. But 
 against this spirit a new and nobler one is found 
 contending. In one of the grandest passages in 
 the Bible, whose sublime thought is wedded to per- 
 fect diction, like lofty poetry to immortal music, 
 Isaiah of Babylon declares on the part of Jehovah : 
 *' Behold my servant, whom I uphold. He shall 
 bring forth justice to the nations. A bruised reed 
 he shall not break, and the dimly-burning wick 
 he shall not quench: he shall not burn dimly, nor 
 be bruised till he have set justice in the earth; 
 and the isles shall wait for his law." In the age 
 of Malachi, perhaps a little earlier, perhaps a 
 little later, but in the same period of Hebrew his- 
 tory, the author of the sixty-fifth Psalm with 
 clear vision pierces the darkness of his time. 
 
THE CREED OF A UNIVERSALIST 67 
 
 projects himself by faith into a larger day, and 
 cries to God: 
 
 O Thou that hearest prayer, 
 Unto Thee shall all flesh come ! 
 
 While a gifted contemporary of like faith and 
 spirit cries: 
 
 Let the peoples praise Thee, O God ; 
 
 Let all the peoples praise Thee. 
 
 O let the nations be glad and sing for joy: 
 
 For Thou shalt judge the peoples with equity, 
 
 And govern the nations upon earth. 
 
 Let the peoples praise Thee, O God ; 
 
 Let all the peoples praise Thee. 
 
 And one hundred years later there appeared the 
 superlatively valuable Book of Jonah, one of the 
 deepest, truest, most inspired and inspiring utter- 
 ances of the Spirit of God to human hearts. Its 
 unknown author is another Malachi, but of imag- 
 ination and poetry denied to him ; a child of genius, 
 in truth. He is an earlier Paul — logic on fire — 
 bravest amongst the brave — iconoclast of tradi- 
 tion, use, and wont — light-bringer and banner- 
 bearer of the soul's liberty and the love of God. 
 He stands forth an incarnate protest against the 
 narrow thoughts, the partial views, the limited 
 hopes of his countrymen, a living assertion that 
 the love of God is broader than the measure of 
 their mind ; a breathing, pulsating, articulate 
 pledge of the grace of God, reaching out beyond 
 the Jewish pale, freely shed abroad upon the na- 
 tions of the earth. 
 
68 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 These mighty hopes wliich were blowing wide 
 more than two thousand years ago rebuke the lin- 
 gering narrowness of our day. Repeatedly we 
 find Christian people who are afraid that in some 
 mysterious way God will save too many souls. 
 Their hearts are troubled for the ark of God, when 
 there is no trouble near about, nor in the air, 
 nor in the earth beneath, nor in the waters under 
 the earth, but only in their own unf aith and fear. 
 They are morbidly concerned for the sover- 
 eignty of God, for the integrity of the Scriptures, 
 for the constitution of the Church, or for some 
 other august idea. And, though they know it 
 not, and do not mean it, the effect of their word 
 and work is to defame the character of the God 
 they worship, to set mete and bound to His 
 illimitable love, and with their little shibboleths 
 bank up the large beneficence which flows in fer- 
 tilising streams from the All Father's heart. They 
 are good and faithful according to their light; 
 but Faber has sung truly: 
 
 We make His love too narrow, 
 
 By false limits of our own ; 
 And we magnify His strictness 
 
 With a zeal He will not own. 
 
 And as we listen to them, though we praise them 
 for their loyalty to what they conceive to be the 
 faith once delivered to the saints, we understand 
 the hot anger that burns in Charles Wesley's 
 protest : 
 
 For fear of robbing Tiiee, 
 
 They rob Thee of Thy grace ; 
 
THE CREED OF A UNIVERSALIST 69 
 
 And 0, good God ! to prove it free. 
 Damn almost all the race. 
 
 Oh, men and women of this Church and of other 
 Churches! — If I speak to one who has ever stood 
 in dread of the broader Gospel of our day, or if 
 my voice may carry to those upon whose soul 
 fear sits by night, mine is to you a daybreak call, 
 a call to come out where the hving breezes blow, 
 where God walks with favoured spirits on the 
 mountain slopes at dawn, where He proclaims Him- 
 self Israel's God and ours, speaks to us as a man 
 with his friend, tells us as once He told the Hebrew 
 prophet, " All souls are mine," and bids us be- 
 lieve that from the rising of the sun, even unto 
 the going down of the same. His name is great 
 among the nations, and in every place incense and 
 a pure offering are offered unto Him. 
 
 But this is moving along too fast. Let us go 
 more slowly and ask what possible or conceivable 
 justification the prophet called Malachi could have 
 for his universalistic faith. 
 
 He lived under Persian rule. He was familiar 
 with Persian life. He had been touched by the 
 loftiness of the Persian spirit. Amongst that 
 people a prophet had risen, Zoroaster by name, 
 who had conceived of two powers dividing the 
 visible and invisible universe between them, dis- 
 puting with each other every corner of earth, sea, 
 and sky, every thought of every creature born of 
 woman, every emotion, every impulse, every act. 
 The good was not omnipotent; the evil was not 
 omnipotent ; and the evil forever fought against 
 
70 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 the good. But Zoroaster called upon all brave 
 and loyal hearts, all souls that could aspire and 
 dare, to follow light and do the right, to raise 
 the banner of righteousness over every life and 
 every home, and give battle to the forces of dark- 
 ness and wrong. It was an animating and en- 
 nobling call. And where the faith of Zoroaster 
 was truly held men's lives were cleaner, juster, 
 stronger for his words. This had our prophet 
 seen, seeing with other, larger eyes than his coun- 
 trymen possessed, and recognised it as a pure 
 offering to the name of God. 
 
 Stranger things he might have seen had travel 
 not been denied to him and such as he. They 
 were there to be seen — in India, in China, and in 
 Greece. 
 
 In the hour when Malachi penned these enduring 
 sentences Siddhartha Gautama, a prince of the 
 shining Indian land, had gone forth from the city 
 of Benares a mendicant, a preacher, a protestant 
 against the distressing creeds of his country and 
 his day, a friend of the friendless and help of 
 those who had no other, a gentle, loving, gracious 
 soul, a prophet of pity and peace. Some hundreds 
 of millions of men and women to-day name them- 
 selves by his official name, " Buddhists," followers 
 of the " Buddha." The pure faith he taught has 
 been corrupted. Legend has done its work. To 
 separate what is valuable in his original teach- 
 ing, as now preserved, from the mass of subsequent 
 deposit still existing, scholars find an endless task. 
 And the Light of Asia pales his ineffectual fires 
 
THE CREED OF A UNIVERSALIST 71 
 
 when the Light of the World casts His morning 
 beams abroad. Yet does not simple justice require 
 us to believe that Malachi's words cover Buddha's 
 pious meditations, and that the words of the 
 Hebrew prophet stand true of the Indian sage 
 and those who sincerely learned of him, " From the 
 rising of the sun, even unto the going down of the 
 same, the name of God is great even amongst 
 the nations." 
 
 We have fixed the date of this prophecy ap- 
 proximately in the year 464 B.C. In the year 478, 
 only fourteen years earlier, Confucius died, full 
 of years and honour, having stamped upon the 
 life of his nation his own personality with such 
 impressiveness that for two thousand years arid 
 to this very day he has reigned the supreme and 
 undisputed teacher of China. In manners, dress, 
 and customs the China of to-day is moulded by 
 Confucius. All that modern research brings to 
 our knowledge concerning him proclaims him 
 entitled to place amongst the greatest teachers 
 of mankind. Once, perhaps, and only once, and 
 even then obscurely, does the existence of the 
 Chinese nation rise upon the Jewish horizon. The 
 Old Testament reference is doubtful, and I do 
 not quote it. But I for one cannot doubt that 
 whatever is good and true in the moral maxims of 
 Confucius is embraced by our prophet's words, 
 " In every nation a pure offering is offered unto 
 my name." 
 
 There is an inspiring poem by Arthur Henry 
 Clough, which you must have heard quoted a hun- 
 
72 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 dred times. I give myself the pleasure of repeat- 
 ing it for the sake of the last verse: 
 
 Say not, " The struggle naught availeth ; 
 
 The labour and the wounds are vain ; 
 The enemy faints not nor faileth, 
 
 And as things have been they remain." 
 
 If hopes are dupes, fears may be liars : 
 It may be, by yon smoke concealed, 
 
 Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers, 
 And but for you possess the field. 
 
 For while the tired waves vainly breaking 
 
 Seem here no painful inch to gain, 
 Far back, through creek and inlet making, 
 
 Comes silent, flooding in, the main! 
 
 And not through eastern windows only 
 When daylight comes, comes in the light ; 
 
 In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly ! 
 But westward, look ! the land is bright. 
 
 We have seen how the light has poured in from 
 Eastern windows — how Malachi has recognised 
 it, when it has streamed in upon his soul from 
 that of the Persian prophet, as part of the true 
 light which lighteth the nations stumbling on their 
 way, and taught us, if we had not learned before, 
 to accord it the same welcome and the same rever- 
 ence when it shines upon us from the burning 
 skies of India and from the mysterious Chinese 
 land. " But westward look, the land is bright ! " 
 Turn to Greece. Look at Athens. Some half- 
 dozen years before Malachi's prophecy was given 
 to his nation, Socrates was born ; and contem- 
 
THE CREED OF A UNIVERSALIST 73 
 
 porary with Malachi and Socrates rose upon the 
 world such a galaxy of genius as has never together 
 illumined the minds of men upon this earth before 
 or since. The names which occur to us are those 
 of men who in poetry, history, sculpture, and 
 architecture sit on thrones and give their laws 
 to the nations yet. ^schylus, Sophocles, Eu- 
 ripides, gave to the world the immortal tragedies 
 which pierce to the bone and marrow of our deepest 
 thinking and shake us like a tempest. Pheidias, su- 
 preme in sculpture ; Pericles, supreme in states- 
 manship ; Thucydides, supreme in history, did the 
 work which stands to us to-day as the embodiment 
 of human glory. And the greatest name of all 
 is the first which I have cited, Socrates, the cross- 
 examining missionary, the preacher of truth, the 
 prophet of reality — Socrates, with his belief that 
 man only lives to obey the commands of God; 
 and his conviction, strong in the presence of death, 
 that no greater service had been done the state 
 than by his loyalty to God. What new worlds are 
 these to us ! And how our hearts burn within us 
 when we turn to our Malachi again, and he opens 
 to us the mysteries of Providence and Revelation, 
 and bids us believe that from the rising of the 
 sun, to the going down of the same, a pure offer- 
 ing is offered to the name of God ! And once more 
 we feel it true : 
 
 Slowly the Bible of the race is writ, 
 And not on paper leaves nor leaves of stone ; 
 Each age, each kindred, adds a verse to it. 
 Texts of despair or hope, or joy or moan. 
 
74 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud. 
 While thunder's surges burst on cliffs of cloud, 
 Still at the prophets' feet the nations sit. 
 
 The greatness of this conception all but takes 
 one's breath away. We are bewildered by its very 
 daring. We decline to be coerced by great names. 
 Though our prophet may be a " messenger " of 
 God, and though his words are in our Bible, we 
 take our courage in our hands and demand: Will 
 this that he says bear examination in the light of 
 New Testament teaching? Can we justify it at 
 the hands of Christ or His Apostles ? Listen, then, 
 " There was the true light which Hghteth every 
 man coming into the world." Where do you find 
 those words.? In the imperishable Prologue to 
 the Gospel according to John. In their fulness, 
 their length and breadth and height and depth, 
 we have never understood them — may never under- 
 stand them. At the least they teach us this — 
 these two things lie on the surface : 
 
 What Whittier has said, and we have said 
 after him, is true. He is but quoting the 
 author of this Prologue. Truth is one. The 
 source of truth is the God of truth. God is 
 light and the source of light. His is the light 
 which Zoroaster saw and which Buddha followed 
 from afar. What is true and beautiful and help- 
 ful as between man and man in the moral teaching 
 of Confucius is from above — from the Father 
 of lights with whom is no variableness, not so much 
 as the shadow cast by turning. And what is piti- 
 less with the sterner preaching of the Hebrew 
 
THE CREED OF A UNIVERSALIST 75 
 
 prophets in ^schylus, or Euripides, or radiant 
 with a ChristKke conception of the deathless hu- 
 man soul in Plato and Socrates, is born of that 
 true light which the fourth Gospel affirms lighteth 
 every man that cometh into the world. This is the 
 first thing. 
 
 And the second is this: There is no human 
 life to which this light is denied. We are over- 
 whelmed by such a world-wide view. The crude 
 beliefs of other days rock and reel beneath our 
 feet. We stand amid the moving ruins of a hun- 
 dred systems of theology, whose cramping walls 
 have gone down in heaps before the breath of this 
 mighty truth. For truth it is, if Bible words are 
 worth the paper they are written on. This is the 
 true light that lighteth every man coming into 
 the world. And the author of the Prologue 
 clasps hands across the centuries with the last 
 of the Hebrew prophets, " From the rising of 
 the sun even unto the going down of the same 
 my name is great among the Gentiles : and in every 
 place incense is offered unto my name, and a pure 
 offering : for my name is great among the Gentiles, 
 saith the Lord of hosts." 
 
 Let us gather up some of the helpful lessons of 
 this study before the wonder of it all passes from 
 our minds. 
 
 First. Here is hope, as we take the Gospel 
 message to the heathen and the nations beyond. 
 Imperfect religions abound — religions which have 
 grown corrupt — religions in which it is impossible 
 to separate the superstitious from the real. But 
 
76 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 has there ever been a false religion? I doubt it. 
 That of which their sages have dreamed, that 
 which they have seen as through a glass darkly, 
 that which has come to them in shadow shape or 
 spectral mist or driving cloud, which has spoken 
 to them by thunder voice and lightning flash or, 
 on a loftier plane, by the mouth of the prophetic 
 spirits of their own race — that in its fulness, re- 
 vealed by Christ, illumined by the Holy Spirit, 
 we declare unto them. We do not go to denounce 
 the false; we go to teach the true. We have done 
 with the blatant spirit which shouts, " Down with 
 everything that is up ! " Ours is the mood of Him 
 of whom it was said that " the bruised reed He will 
 not break, the dimly-burning wick He will not 
 quench." And ours is the stimulating word, " Up 
 with everything that is down ! " These people have 
 not been without the light that lighteth every man 
 that cometh into the world. But as in the history 
 of our spiritual ancestors, the Hebrew race whose 
 teachers are our own, the lesser lights of patriarch 
 and prophet were eclipsed by the rising of the 
 Sun of Righteousness, so have we to tell them that 
 once in the history of mankind the Light in which 
 is no darkness at all has shone upon the hearts of 
 men ; that as the nations have walked in its bright- 
 ness they have had to say — in no other way could 
 they account for it — " The Word has taken flesh 
 and dwelt amongst us : He is the way and the truth 
 and the light." 
 
 Second. Here is hope, inexhaustible hope, in- 
 destructible hope, as we take the Gospel to poor 
 
THE CREED OF A UNIVERSALIST 77 
 
 and dwarfed and stunted lives ; to hard hearts, 
 wicked, cruel, depraved — to outward sight and 
 sense all evil. Deep down in that low nature — 
 perverted, ruined, buried if you will — is some spark 
 of goodness which has not been extinguished, some 
 faint glimmer of divinity, all that remains of the 
 trailing clouds of glory with which the life came 
 into this world, but still attesting that it is God 
 who is our home. I speak to you who have come 
 to close quarters with the incarnate wickedness 
 of the world. You have seen men and women 
 de-humanised by self-indulgence and sin ; seen hu- 
 man nature debauched and degraded until it seemed 
 that humanity had fled and what remained was 
 bestial. This is a word which comes to you winged 
 with eternal hope. The early Quakers taught 
 that in every human being is a seed of Christ 
 which, under fit cultivation, will blossom and bear 
 fruit. Believe it for your comfort and for your 
 inspiration ! The Christ who slept in the boat 
 while the storm raged, slumbers in the heart of 
 every one of us while tempests of passion heave 
 all the billows of sin's angriest seas. But this 
 Christ sleeping within us will wake at the touch of 
 the Christ without, and the Lord will have His own 
 again. I refuse to believe that one true word 
 spoken in love falls fruitless to the ground. I 
 refuse to believe that a headache or a heartache 
 or anguish of the soul endured for love of God 
 in service of man fails of its redemptive purpose. 
 Emerson's word stands true, " No accent of the 
 Holy Ghost a heedless world has ever lost." 
 
78 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 And, once more, here is hope for ourselves ! 
 Here is rebuke of all despair concerning our own 
 spiritual life. We faint and fall and from the 
 depths can scarcely raise a cry for pity and for 
 help. 
 
 Alas ! — the evil which we fain would shun 
 We do, and leave the wished-for good undone: 
 
 Our strength to-day 
 Is but to-morrow's weakness, prone to fall. 
 Poor, blind, unprofitable servants all 
 
 Are we alway. 
 
 Yet goodness is natural to us. We ought to be 
 good. It is our nature to, as grass ought to be 
 green and flowers beautiful ; as birds ought to 
 sing, and men and women and little children love 
 one another, and this old world spin forever down 
 the ringing grooves of change, urged by Love's 
 propulsive force. You may do as you like about 
 believing in original sin. " We all sin sometimes, 
 and some of us sin in original ways." But you 
 must believe in original goodness. Believe when 
 the clouds are thickest that there is sunshine in 
 the sky. 
 
 So far have these words carried us. They will 
 carry us further. They will bring us to the 
 Saviour's feet as we go out to seek and save the 
 lost. There we shall hear His voice saying, " Fear 
 not, little flock, it is your Father's good pleasure 
 to give you the Kingdom." And as the dark 
 betrayal night draws near, and He stands in the 
 shadow of the Cross, we, though we have feared 
 as we entered the cloud, are manifested with Him 
 
THE CREED OF A UNIVERSALIST 79 
 
 in glory. The darkness rolls away in heavenly 
 light, and His triumphant voice breaks forth, " I, 
 if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." 
 The poet of a half faith, who fought his doubts 
 and gathered strength, could but feebly 
 
 Call 
 To what he felt was Lord of all, 
 And faintly trust the larger hope. 
 
 But this morning ours is no half faith, nor faint 
 trust, nor feeble call, nor technically larger hope. 
 Our transfigured faith in the crucified and risen 
 Christ warrants the largest hopes for the future 
 of our race. 
 
V 
 
 THE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL 
 
V 
 
 THE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL 
 
 " He who sat for alms at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple." 
 
 — Acts ni. 10. 
 
 Happy the one who only sits and waits for alms 
 at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple ! So it be a 
 temple, and the gate be beautiful, he will not sit 
 and wait in vain. Happier he who through the 
 gate that is called Beautiful enters into the temple 
 of the Living God. Happiest of all he who, enter- 
 ing by the beautiful gate, finds that it leads to the 
 inner sanctuary of deity, and brings to the Holy 
 of Holies his ardent spirit ! 
 
 This has not always been the mood of religious 
 minds. There have been times in the Church's 
 history when she has loved ugliness and feared 
 beauty, when self -repression was the highest virtue, 
 and gratification of the aesthetic sense akin to low- 
 est sins of the flesh. So far did the revolt against 
 Pagan adoration of merely physical beauties in 
 the human form carry the early Fathers of the 
 Church that they invented stories concerning the 
 personal appearance of our Lord which in this 
 day appal us. " Base of aspect," says Clement of 
 Alexandria ; " His body devoid even of human 
 nobleness," says the fierce Tertullian, with other 
 
 83 
 
84 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 foolish utterances which, for very shame's sake, 
 if not from utter reverence, I will not quote. In a 
 later age our Protestant and Puritan ancestors 
 delighted — if such a word be permitted in such a 
 connection — in seeing that nothing was delightful. 
 Whatsoever things were without colour, form, or 
 beauty ; whatsoever things were dull and drab and 
 dreary; whatsoever was barren and stunted and 
 ugly — these were the fitting approach of the soul 
 to God. There was reason for their fear. They 
 started back in horror from the excesses of Catho- 
 lic worship. They had seen a corrupt art drive 
 God out of churches built for His glory. They 
 fell back on the great saying of the Apostle Paul, 
 as he stood on the Areopagus in Athens, with the 
 temple of Minerva above him and the sanctuary 
 of the Eumenides below, that " in temples made 
 with hands God does not dwell " ; and they dared 
 to come " spirit to spirit, ghost to ghost " with 
 God. 
 
 Only within the recollection of living men and 
 women have we come to think of the Gate Beauti- 
 ful as one thrown open to our spirits by the loving 
 hand of God. We are not afraid of Art. If for 
 our church buildings we erect places other than 
 the best, it is our poverty and not our will con- 
 sents, the feeling that, with the world's work wait- 
 ing to be done and with our resources limited, 
 first things come first. But our pride would be 
 the pride of David, even though, like him, we may 
 not gratify it : " Shall we raise houses of cedar 
 for ourselves while the ark of the Lord abides 
 
THE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL 85 
 
 within curtains?" And we should agree with 
 Martineau : " It is ever a fatal sign — of Art de- 
 caying into luxury and Religion into contempt — 
 when men permit the House of God to be meaner 
 than their own." We would glory in the noblest 
 forms of architecture which human genius could 
 raise on high. We would welcome the grandest 
 music with all its pathos, its passion, its rapture, 
 and its tears. To-day we would make our forms 
 of worship stately, rich, harmonious, the highest 
 that is in us seeking the Most High. The Gate 
 by which we enter His temple should be called 
 Beautiful. 
 
 This changed mood of the Christian Church is 
 not accidental, unthoughtful, the outcome of 
 freak, caprice, or fashion. It corresponds to deep 
 and radical changes in our outlook upon the soul 
 and God. 
 
 God is now more beautiful to us. We have 
 entered into the heart of the psalmist's prayer, 
 "Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon 
 us." God is not vengeful, implacable, terrible. 
 We do not fear Him as men have feared a wolf. 
 In the conceptions that men have formed of Him, 
 He has loomed out of a mist of blood and tears, 
 the nightmare of the world's bad sleep. He was 
 jealous of human love. He exacted to the utter- 
 most farthing. He could only be appeased, in 
 His fierce wrath, by blood. Men fashioned a God 
 out of the stormy elements imprisoned in their own 
 breasts. Jesus has taught us to call Him Father. 
 The only begotten Son who was in the bosom of 
 
86 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 the Father, He has revealed Him. He has re- 
 vealed Him as the eternal Love. God so loved 
 the world that He gave! Gave! There is no 
 love that does not love to give. God so loved! 
 
 Nature is now more beautiful to us. Our mod- 
 ern feeling about mountain and forest, field and 
 stream, moorland and meadow, is really modern, 
 something new in the history of the race. Byron 
 said, " To me high mountains are a feeling, but 
 the hum of human cities torture." That was not 
 affectation, nor was it mere poetical exaggeration. 
 It was one of the earliest notes of the great nature- 
 song which all our world has since learned to sing. 
 Mr. Augustine Birrell takes Gibbon to task for 
 sneering at Bernard of Clairvaux because of his 
 alleged apathy in the presence of natural beauty. 
 " To admire or despise St. Bernard as he ought," 
 says the author of " The Decline and Fall " in his 
 own pompous way, " the reader should have as I 
 have before the windows of his library the beau- 
 ties of this incomparable landscape " — the lake 
 of Geneva with its background of Alps, at which 
 the saint refused to look. We may admit that 
 the author of " Jesus, the very thought of Thee 
 with sweetness fills my breast," and of " Jesus, 
 Thou joy of loving hearts," had more poetry in 
 his little finger than Gibbon had in his whole 
 being ; but all the same our modern sympathy with 
 nature and communion with her heart was far 
 from him. It has been developed from the clos- 
 ing years of the eighteenth century and the open- 
 ing of the nineteenth, developed through the whole 
 
THE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL 87 
 
 of the last century and showing no sign of hav- 
 ing spent its force in the dawn of this, a some- 
 thing new, added on to the faculty and the pos- 
 session of the race. 
 
 In this new sense of natural beauty we have 
 found a new revelation of God. The words are 
 easily spoken; but what infinite meanings are 
 there! In a sermon preached some months ago 
 I declared my belief that the revelation which 
 God has given of Himself in beauty is as real as 
 any which God has given and man received.* Let 
 me tell you something of what I mean by that. 
 Wordsworth's lines in " Tintern Abbery " will 
 readily occur to you all: 
 
 I have felt 
 A presence that disturbs me witli the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 "Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man. 
 
 Less often quoted, but none the less a classical 
 passage in this connection, are the famous lines 
 in the " Excursion " in which it is recorded of the 
 Wanderer : 
 
 The clouds were touched 
 And in their silent faces did he read 
 Unutterable love 1 
 
 * See " The Ethics of Holidays " in " The Courage of the 
 Coward." 
 
88 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 And then 
 
 Rapt into still communion that transcends 
 The imperfect offices of prayer and praise 
 His mind was a thanksgiving to the power 
 That made him. 
 
 Here he re-interpreted the record of revelation, 
 found new light falling upon the ancient promises, 
 and saw through nature's loveliness the meaning 
 of the written word of God : 
 
 Oh, then how beautiful, how bright appeared 
 The written promise ! Early had he learned 
 To reverence the volume that displays 
 The mystery, the life which cannot die; 
 But in the mountains did he feel his faith. 
 Responsive to the writings, all things there 
 Breathed immortality. 
 
 And at last : 
 
 Nor did he believe, — he saw 1 
 
 What words are these .^^ He read, felt, saw! He 
 read unutterable love. Rapt into still communion, 
 his mind was a thanksgiving. The written prom- 
 ise became brighter and more beautiful. Early 
 he had learned to reverence the volume; but in 
 the mountains he felt his faith ; and responsive 
 to the Scripture, all things breathed immortality! 
 This, if I am able to explain my meaning clearly, 
 is different from the awe of God in the presence 
 of His mighty handiwork displayed in " Job " 
 and in some of the greatest of the Hebrew psalms. 
 The majesty of God, His power so wonderful, the 
 
THE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL 89 
 
 creative glory of Almlghtiness, these are celebrated 
 in strains of poetry so noble that in the world's 
 literature is nothing to be compared to them. But 
 that is not quite the same as the feeling which 
 I am so awkwardly trying to define. This is a 
 feeling of nearness, approachableness, intimacy, 
 a certain undefined, perhaps indefinable, yet defi- 
 nite consciousness that God is near. You know 
 how it is with you when, without hearing or see- 
 ing somebody come in, you feel that a person has 
 entered the room. You feel his presence. You 
 turn your head, and he is there. You are not 
 surprised; you knew he was. It is something 
 like that. The loveliness of the scene has brought 
 to you a strange, deep feeling. It has prepared 
 your soul. And the prepared soul feels God near. 
 
 To different temperaments Nature makes her 
 appeal robed in different apparel. For this one, 
 the rugged grandeur of the bare mountain peaks 
 is sufficient ; to another they seem of aspect more 
 sublime when curved and rounded and shrouded in 
 eternal snow. For another, the interminable for- 
 ests, vast, mysterious, impenetrable, have their 
 fascination. While the gentler moods of nature, 
 incarnate in green fields and peaceful streams, 
 possess for other souls the sense of an infinite 
 calm. 
 
 It has been my lot to watch the whole year 
 round, from May to May again, amid Alpine 
 snows and splendours. I have watched the snow 
 disappear from the valley beneath me and then 
 from the encircling pine-woods. Verdure showed 
 
90 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 on the banks of the turbulent mountain torrent, 
 and the brave old fir trees waved grim and grand 
 around. Slowly the summer won upon the snows, 
 until only the cloud-cleaving crests above defied 
 its heat. Soon Autumn's hand was heavy on the 
 woods again ; the green of the meadows and blue 
 of the forests yielded to the tints of the Fall, 
 until from the grass burnt yellow in the valley, 
 through blaze of crimson on the mountain side 
 and purple patches higher still, the eye followed 
 from glory unto glory, and rested at length upon 
 the changeless purity of virgin snow. Then came 
 winter down upon us. From our rocky fastness 
 we looked out upon a world of ice, and the hoar- 
 frost upon the snow fields flashed in the morning 
 with such intolerable brilliance that the eye could 
 not bear its blinding light, nor the brain count 
 the myriad diamond points within a single inch 
 of it. I have seen the Alpine storm, faced its 
 fury, heard the roaring of the wind, loud as loud- 
 est thunders roll. I have followed the track of 
 the avalanche, chmbed to its heights when it had 
 done its best and worst, and tunnelled to its depths 
 as the days passed on. And I have seen the sweet- 
 ness of the spring once more, when through the 
 drifted snow, the forget-me-not, the anemone, the 
 snowdrop, and even the blush of the rose, have 
 insinuated the suggestion of their loveliness into 
 sunny air. And so to the summer days again! 
 And I speak some of the deepest feelings of my 
 life when I say to you that there have been times 
 amid the brilliance, or the solemnity, or the sweet- 
 
THE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL 91 
 
 ness, or amid the unutterable and sublime, when 
 the hand of the Infinite has drawn my spirit out 
 from its dwelling amongst finite things, thrust it 
 forth into the invisible to live in eternity, not in 
 the past nor the present nor the future, but to 
 live in and realise eternity, and I have walked with 
 deepening faith the shining hills of God. I knew it 
 before. I learned it in the meadow paths, even as 
 afterward I felt it on the mountain stairs. But 
 that year brought to a focus the conviction of my 
 life: the revelation of Himself which God makes 
 in beauty is a new and progressive knowledge 
 which it is the Father's good pleasure to give to 
 His children. 
 
 Well, now, I find abundant confirmation of aU 
 this in the works of the acknowledged leaders of 
 scientific thought in our day, in the works of the 
 nature-searchers, the botanists, the zoologists, the 
 biologists of every kind. I find confirmation of it 
 — ^not in the dogmatic assertion of the man of 
 science that God is speaking to man: that you 
 would not expect — but in his utter failure to ac- 
 count for beauty along any lines of Evolution 
 which leaves God out of account. 
 
 You know how the Evolutionist started to ex- 
 plain the presence of beauty in flower and tree and 
 bird and beast. And if you have followed the worlc 
 of the biologist with any interest in these later 
 years, you know how dissatisfied he is with his own 
 explanations. Nature's method, he held, was that 
 of the purest utilitarianism. Beauty paid. There- 
 fore — Beauty is ! Certain colours which in blend 
 
92 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 or In contrast appeal to us as beautiful had been 
 found vitally successful to plant or animal in the 
 struggle for existence; therefore, they had per- 
 sisted, and through natural selection grown richer 
 and stronger, while they multiplied after their 
 kind. The principle of protective colouring ex- 
 plained the appearance of many animals, white 
 in arctic beasts ; yellow or brown in desert species ; 
 green in tropical, evergreen forests. This style 
 of colouration, in Mr. Wallace's words, " serves 
 to conceal the herbivorous species from their ene- 
 mies, and enables carnivorous animals to approach 
 their prey un-perceived." The brilliant plumage 
 of birds is the accumulated result of long, long 
 generations of display by the male bird to attract 
 the female. The bird most gorgeously attired was 
 selected as mate, and handed down his gorgeous- 
 ness with intensifying and accumulating potency 
 to his descendants. And so on through the ages. 
 And Dr. Newman Smyth expresses our feelings 
 quite admirably when he says of such theories : 
 
 " We are not unwilling to listen to a science 
 which introduces us to courtsliips and loves of 
 the birds so seemingly human in their methods, as 
 well as in their crosses and difficulties ; — methods 
 of bird-mating, at least, which involve parties 
 on the lawn, dances and antics, and meetings at 
 times in quiet secluded spots, during which all the 
 arts of attraction are practised, and in the course 
 of which some birds will become so absorbed that 
 they will appear almost blind and deaf, and others 
 will grow quite frantic, while rivalries not infre- 
 
THE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL 93 
 
 quently end in battles ;" but before all is said and 
 done, we confess ourselves very sceptical as to 
 the results obtained ! 
 
 For the same theory comes in to explain in part 
 the infinite beauty of the flowers. Depending for 
 fertilisation upon the services of insects as com- 
 mon carriers, flowers, in Darwin's own words, 
 " have been rendered conspicuous in contrast with 
 the green leaves, and in consequence at the same 
 time beautiful, so that they may be easily ob- 
 served by insects." But for the insects, we should 
 have had *' no better flowers than those which 
 we see on fir, oak, and ash trees, on grasses, docks, 
 and nettles, which are all fertihsed through the 
 agency of the winds." A very satisfactory ac- 
 count of the existence of insects, — the problem that 
 troubled Martin Luther, — and a great comfort to 
 you the next time you are bitten by a mosquito ! 
 
 But I am only echoing the criticism of nature- 
 searchers themselves when I say that these theories 
 are much too complete. They prove too much. 
 And they do it by failing to take account of many 
 facts. Critically examined by many observers 
 since Darwin, the facts seem to warrant the state- 
 ment that some of the colour in the universe can 
 be thus explained, but not all. Such observers ask 
 us to ponder the exquisite loveliness of a sea shell. 
 Whence its curves, its tints, its amazing delicacy 
 and purity? They off^er for our inspection a 
 piece of coral from ocean depths, bid us follow 
 with seeing eye the inimitable tracery which has 
 lain a thousand fathoms deep for uncounted thou- 
 
94 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 sands of years, and say what sexual selection, pro- 
 tective colouring, or submarine transportation 
 scheme will account for it. They bid us stroll 
 through the broad walks of Central Park in the 
 Fall, or lose ourselves for a single day in the 
 tangled depths of the Adirondack woods. What 
 theory now will explain the autumn tints.? Saw 
 you ever such russet and gold, such yellow, brown, 
 and olive.'' And what conceivable use is it to the 
 trees? So the men of science themselves point 
 our doubts of these theories too complete ; then 
 add, with crushing, accumulated scepticism, first, 
 that conspicuousness would have done just as well, 
 without harmony, blend, or beauty; second, that, 
 as a matter of fact, there are many most beauti- 
 ful flowers which do not depend on insects for 
 fertilisation ; and finally, which seems to make all 
 argument before and after superfluous, that in- 
 sects are not attracted by colour at all. 
 
 There is an object in this study. Let us try 
 to think clearly, informingly, about this world 
 of beauty. A blind man knows it is beautiful. 
 Year by year we are learning better how beauti- 
 ful, for the eye is being trained to see and the 
 heart to enjoy. Whence does this beauty come.'' 
 The argument I am trying to put before you is 
 summed up in Browning's cry : " O world as God 
 made it! All is beauty." And God made it to 
 reveal Himself. Let us linger, then, amid some 
 scenes of glory in which we find what I may be 
 permitted to call a superabundance of beauty, a 
 prodigality of loveliness for which there is no 
 
THE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL 95 
 
 reason in nature and no use save the gladness of 
 God's children. Nature strives after beauty, so 
 it seems to me, struggles for it, and is not con- 
 tent until she has scattered a glory which is all 
 her own over all her works, from the field of 
 waving corn when the wind whispers in the wheat 
 to the wondrous landscapes which the frost spreads 
 out upon the window pane. What is the use of 
 a sunset? What cosmic purpose can it serve.'' 
 Some years ago I had in England a little house 
 by the sea. Its windows opened to the west. 
 It stood on a spot which Turner had made his 
 resort for months and years. There he studied 
 the effect of sunset on golden sand and reced- 
 ing wave. The results of his untiring observa- 
 tions are hung on the walls of the National 
 Gallery in London. And when people say, " But 
 I never saw such sunsets as those," I answer, " Yet 
 I have lived in the light of such setting suns." 
 And I have believed that no such sunsets were to 
 be found elsewhere in all the world- But a week 
 or two ago, in a favoured corner of what Mrs. 
 Hemans has taught us to call " the wild New 
 England shore," not wild, but wondrous calm and 
 fair, I looked out upon a golden glory which 
 transfigured earth and sea and sky with a splen- 
 dour like to that of the imagined rainbow round 
 the throne. Black bars turning to molten gold; 
 from its height to the far horizon the sky all 
 colour and fire ; the slumbering sea, here a shadow- 
 less crimson and there, under the arch of sunless 
 blue, a vivid green melting into a transcendent 
 
96 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 opal, with colours for which there is no name — 
 and we stood in the presence of God. 
 
 It is a religious question, a deeply religious 
 question: What use is all this beauty? John 
 Ruskin answers : " It is quite certain it is all done 
 for us, and for our perpetual pleasure." Do you 
 challenge the conclusion of the great prophet of 
 nature.'' But science has failed to account for 
 beauty, for its abundance and its super-abundance. 
 Why should we not trust the instinct of the soul.'' 
 " It is quite certain it is all done for us and for 
 our perpetual pleasure " — that through the Gate 
 that is called Beautiful we may enter the temple 
 of God. 
 
 And this is the conclusion of the whole matter: 
 There is no use in beauty except the joy it gives 
 — in many forms of beauty. No theory of utility 
 will account for all, the teachers of science them- 
 selves being witnesses. May it not be a provision 
 of an all-loving Intelligence for us.f" And is it 
 not His way, or, rather, one of His ways, of re- 
 vealing Himself to the seeing eye and speaking 
 to the waiting heart.'' It is no argument against 
 the suggestion that it may have been designed by 
 God to reveal Him that its meaning and message 
 has dawned upon our souls at this late hour of 
 human thought. Christ Himself could not tell all 
 that was in His heart to tell. He had many things 
 to say to His disciples, but they could not bear 
 them then. The Spirit of Truth was promised, 
 who should lead God's children into truth. Divine 
 omnipotence never slumbers: divine tenderness is 
 
THE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL 97 
 
 inexhaustible. A new argument is added to our 
 apologetic ; a new reason appears for the faith 
 that is in us ; a new word from the Father-heart 
 has spoken to our own. Man is no child of chaos 
 and of storm. We are not orphans in a cosmos 
 whose first, last names are molecules, atoms, and 
 ether. From before the day when this old earth 
 was young and whirled potential in swathes of fire 
 mist, when the immortal spirit of Adam's race 
 slept in protoplasmic germ, you were present to 
 the Father's thought, and He stored His measure- 
 less universe with beauty for the joy of your heart, 
 and that through it He might reveal Himself 
 to you. 
 
VI 
 
 ALL SAINTS 
 
VI 
 
 ALL SAINTS 
 
 " Called to be Saints."— Romans i. 7. 
 
 Thikteen hundred years ago the Church gathered 
 from their burial place in the Catacombs of Rome 
 the remains of nameless Christians who, in the days 
 of persecution, had endured as seeing Him who is 
 invisible, and, dying, had won the martyr's crown. 
 The Pantheon, that noble monument of Pagan 
 greatness, opened to receive dust and ashes once 
 animated by fiery spirits who had planted the Cross 
 above the highest citadels of the Pagan world. 
 In honour of these unknown heroes, as great as 
 the greatest heroes known. Pope Boniface IV. in- 
 stituted the festival of All Saints. As time passed 
 on, the pious thought came to generous souls that 
 in this feast might be commemorated not only all 
 those who had died in the arena and been buried in 
 the Catacombs, but all true, valiant saints of God 
 who, in any age and country, had lived and died 
 for Christ. Our Saxon forefathers loved the feast. 
 We call it All Hallows, after their haltgan, to 
 make holy ; and the innocent sports which a thou- 
 sand years ago seemed almost worship linger still 
 amongst both simple and cultured souls who, in 
 101 
 
102 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 the pitiless rush of the twentieth century, delight 
 to call back the past again. Yet neither Roman 
 martyrdom, Saxon sports, nor rustic superstition 
 is uppermost in my mind as to-day I invite you 
 to join me in the celebration of All Saints' Day. 
 
 To me the very phrase is holy. All Saints! 
 Our hearts thrill with the boldness of the concep- 
 tion. There is in it the virtue which the Hebrew 
 reckoned highest — magnanimity : large-minded- 
 ness. There is in it the grace which Christianity 
 holds dearest — philanthropy : large-heartedness. 
 It rings with a sound of bigness and bravery. It 
 glows with our broadest hopes. It kindles with 
 our universal love. The wideness of God's mercy 
 is in it, like the wideness of the sea. It softens 
 our souls with a sweet sense of human goodness, 
 underlying all creeds, leaping every barrier of 
 clime and race and colour, uniting pope and 
 peasant, levelling all ranks, and comprehending 
 all good men and women everywhere in one divine, 
 eternal benediction. This is what Lowell — who is 
 peculiarly our poet, because he has felt everything 
 which in our large humanity we have felt, and 
 spoken it when we could not — this is what Lowell 
 means Avhen he says: 
 
 One feast, of holy days the crest, 
 
 I, though no Churchman, love to keep, 
 All-Saints — the unknown good that rest 
 
 In God's still memory folded deep. 
 The bravely dumb who did their deed. 
 
 And scorned to blot it with a name. 
 Men of the plain heroic breed, 
 
 That loved Heaven's silence more than fame. 
 
ALL SAINTS 103 
 
 With joy we keep the feast to-day, and with 
 profound thanksgiving. We praise the good God 
 for all good people everywhere. 
 
 There are times when we are impressed, not by 
 the goodness of life, but by its wickedness. Per- 
 haps we have been called upon to pass through 
 a bitter experience in which the sun has been 
 blotted out of the heavens and our souls have 
 been steeped in fog. It has been a time of 
 disappointment, disillusionment, when we have 
 learned the hollowness of what we took for friend- 
 ship, and have found more bitterness than quaint- 
 ness in the Old Testament proverb, " As a broken 
 tooth or a foot out of joint, so is the unfaithful 
 friend in the day of trouble." Perhaps we have 
 come to close quarters with the incarnate selfish- 
 ness of the world, have seen the crushed, maimed, 
 broken victims of our social system, and cried out 
 in our agony of pity against man's inhumanity 
 to man which makes countless thousands mourn. 
 Perhaps we have had to live through a short but 
 heartbreaking period of popular fury, when the 
 fountains of the great deep have been broken up 
 in man's lower nature, and floods of evil pas- 
 sion have swept over the face of the earth. And 
 it cannot be denied that there are times in the 
 experience of every nation when short and nar- 
 row views may be taken which lead to the judg- 
 ment that the mass of mankind is either bad or 
 mad. 
 
 If you are driven to the horns of any such 
 dilemma, elect to believe that that it is a mad 
 
104 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 world, my masters. Hold that the population of 
 the world is so many milhons, mostly fools. Say 
 that the majority of people are ineffective. De- 
 clare that we are generally incompetent. Assert 
 that we are all blockheads together, slow to learn, 
 without imagination, dull-witted, too short-sighted 
 to see where our folly strikes a friend, too stupid 
 to perceive how it wounds him. We are ignorant, 
 easily misled by small, corrupt minorities, bearing 
 no sort of numerical proportion to the kind-hearted 
 credulous crowds whom they deceive. Believe that, 
 and say that, and more than that, if you will. It 
 is nearer to fact and less dishonouring to man 
 and his Maker than a postulate of universal de- 
 pravity. That, I bid you deny. Deny that in- 
 gratitude, treachery, cruelty, exercise an over- 
 lordship over human hearts. Great, let us admit, 
 is the mystery of iniquity. But how much greater 
 is the mystery of saintship ! In the world as we 
 know it, the world as it is, the sordid, brutal 
 world as it seems to us in our hours of gloom, the 
 wonder is not why people should be so bad; the 
 wonder is how they come to be so good! There 
 is more loyalty than perfidy. There is more kind- 
 ness than cruelty. There is more comradeship 
 than enmity. There is more blessing than cursing. 
 There is more love than hate. The majority of 
 people would rather help a friend than hinder a 
 foe. They would sooner bring smiles of gladness 
 to your lips than tears of sadness to your eyes. 
 They would rather do good than evil any day. 
 And the good that men do, that men daily do, not 
 
ALL SAINTS 105 
 
 knowing what they do, rises in ceaseless streams 
 of praise to the throne of God. 
 
 Think of the commonplace goodness of our own 
 little lives: the joys of home, parental care, the 
 fond deep love of husband and of wife, tried as 
 by furnace fires through twenty, thirty, forty 
 years of joy and sorrow, success and bafflement, 
 and by God's grace stronger for the trial; the 
 daily sacrifice of ease and pleasure by hearts so 
 charged with love that " sacrifice " is the last 
 word of mortal speech which they would dream of 
 using. This day a million homes are warmed and 
 lit by the unthinking goodness of men and women 
 whose goodness is as natural and spontaneous as 
 the shining of the stars. 
 
 Think of the hallowed drudgery of the sick- 
 room. Think how men sometimes and women al- 
 ways pour out their souls in exhausting, menial, 
 glorious service, never pausing to think that it 
 is not the most every-day thing in the world. 
 Think how this drudgery, through the darkness, 
 blazes heaven-high with divinity. I knew a woman 
 whose husband was suffering from concussion of 
 the brain. As she knelt beside his bed, with her 
 arm beneath his neck, he fell asleep. She thought 
 that if he could but pass into a natural sleep, his 
 reason and his life might be saved. She would not 
 move, lest she should wake him. And the hours 
 passed. When others came into the room, she 
 motioned them away. When doctors came, she 
 would but suffer them to write their message and 
 go. She knelt there, defying the calls of her 
 
106 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 physical being for food, drink, rest, sleep, for 
 twenty-six hours, and he died in her arms. 
 
 Think of the comradeship of the poor, their 
 laughing recklessness of the consequences of their 
 helpfulness, the silent, divine heroism of the 
 slums. 
 
 Think of the devotion, enthusiasm, passion of 
 humanity, represented in this congregation and 
 in ten thousand congregations, and in all the moral 
 movements of the land. 
 
 Think of the sublimities to which our human na- 
 ture soars in the hour of catastrophe and sudden 
 death. There is no wreck at sea, no railway acci- 
 dent, no colliery explosion, no fire where people are, 
 when the God within us does not break through 
 every wrapping of our frail earth, and show Him- 
 self for what He is — eternal love. One Saturday 
 afternoon a great liner was being towed up the 
 Mersey past the Liverpool landing-stage. The 
 river was crowded with traffic. The ferry steamers 
 were packed with people. The sun was shining. 
 It was a delightful scene. And suddenly the rope 
 fouled, the rope between tug and liner. The 
 stately vessel, with the *' way " on her, held her 
 course while the tug slowed down. The big 
 steamer quietly pushed the tug over, and she dis- 
 appeared. Men who saw it tell me the rapidity 
 with which men from surrounding craft were in 
 the boats or in the river was one of the incredible, 
 unforgettable things of a lifetime. Never squirrel 
 climbed a tree faster than these men rushed to 
 their post, — live or die, what mattered it when life 
 
ALL SAINTS 107 
 
 was to be loyally given or life to be lovingly saved ? 
 Pleasure may pall. Luxury may cloy. Fame may 
 nauseate. But the call to sacrifice, hardship, devo- 
 tion, chivalry, never fails. And to that call, age 
 by age, the brave heart answers, Lord, here 
 am I! 
 
 The essential thing is that we should recognise 
 each other as saints. If we could do that, if we 
 could all do it, if by some stroke of divine wizardry 
 the veil which is upon our hearts could be torn 
 away, the winter of our discontent would be glori- 
 ous summer, and the dreary deserts of senseless 
 rivalries would flourish as the Paradise of God. 
 But we mis-know one another. We misunderstand. 
 We see each other all wrong, and inside out, and 
 upside down. There are some who always put 
 their worst side outward, and we are not to blame 
 because we do not see the best that is in them. 
 And sometimes we fail to see the man because of 
 the label which he wears. I am asserting the good- 
 ness of mankind, not its ability ! A little elemen- 
 tary wisdom would satisfy the ordinary person 
 that a man is larger than a baggage tag. But 
 a man labels himself Ritualist, or Romanist, or 
 Methodist, or Baptist — or some other ist — and 
 straightway we look so hard at the label that we 
 never see the man. So with sects, parties, denomi- 
 nations, and the like. They dwarf the man until 
 we lose him in the crowd. It is difficult for us all to 
 appreciate a form of goodness which is greatly dif- 
 ferent from our own. Evangelicals fail to appre- 
 ciate goodness which is fed by sacraments, fostered 
 
108 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 by mechanical prayers, and directed by a priest 
 in absolution. Men of liberal theology fail to 
 appreciate the goodness which is developed by 
 hysterical contemplation of the physical agonies 
 of Jesus. And, in the same way, the Catholic and 
 the Evangelical fail to appreciate in us the good- 
 ness which is born of the touch of God upon the 
 naked soul of man. 
 
 Yet this is the essential thing — that the saints 
 should know one another. 
 
 Perhaps we shall be helped if we spare a mo- 
 ment to recollect the original idea of saintship. 
 The first idea of " holy " was that of something 
 set apart, set apart for the service or the sacrifice 
 of God. Necessarily, that which was set apart 
 for God was without spot or blemish. So that 
 the " holy " thing was that which was free from 
 taint or defect. So the word " holy " comes to 
 mean what we now mean by it. The " saint " is 
 the " holy " person, and the definition should be 
 wide enough to include us all. How sane are all 
 the Bible conceptions, when you get to the heart 
 of them! All who are setting themselves to the 
 service of God ; all, thus set to service, whose lives 
 are sweet, true, and brave — these are the saints. 
 And this universality of consecration recalls an- 
 other of the great sayings of Lowell, as great as 
 the one I have already quoted : 
 
 And all the way from Calvary down 
 
 The carven pavement shows 
 Their graves who won the martyr's crown 
 
 And safe in God repose ; 
 
ALL SAINTS 109 
 
 The saints of many a warring creed 
 Who now in heaven have learned 
 
 That all paths to the Father lead 
 Where self the feet have spurned. 
 
 But now let me make a larger demand upon your 
 magnanimity, upon your catholicity, and upon my 
 own. Let us consider some of those aspects of 
 saintship which are furthest removed from our own 
 methods of thought and from our views of duty 
 and righteousness. Let us look at some of those 
 manifestations of saintship which seem to us not 
 merely abnormal, but even repugnant. Let us try 
 to find the essential and abiding goodness there. 
 
 And suppose we take the worst first: the asceti- 
 cism and mortification of the saints. If I have 
 been so fortunate as to induce any great and genial 
 thoughts, I am in danger of dissipating them 
 when I proceed to discuss these aberrations of 
 piety. Few of us are able to think of them with 
 tolerance. We cannot control the physical im- 
 pulse of horror. We feel sick when we read the 
 lives of the saints. When we consider what ten 
 thousand women bore — when we look at the St. 
 Elizabeths of Hungary and of a hundred lands — 
 we are ready to fly at the throat of all the Con- 
 rads in the world. We read, until we rage with 
 indignation and shudder with disgust. I do not 
 care to repeat the stories. They can be read in 
 the books. Laceration, scourging, torture, starva- 
 tion, fire, blood — these things will bear thinking 
 about. But the other stories of filth and name- 
 less foulness in which the saints indulged are too 
 
110 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 hideous and too indecent even for reading in silence 
 and alone. 
 
 But what is behind and beneath it all? Volun- 
 tary humiliation. Yes; but what beneath that.f* 
 The crushing of all pride, the subjugation of the 
 flesh, the suppression of personal will, the attain- 
 ment of absolute selflessness in obedience to the 
 Will of God. And that is not to be despised. The 
 typical crime of the universe, the essential sin out 
 of which spring all sins, trivial and colossal, is 
 the determination to pursue your own interest or 
 pleasure without regard to the consequences en- 
 tailed upon other people. Whether in driving an 
 automobile furiously along a busy street, regard- 
 less of the feelings of the crowd, or in drinking 
 a bottle of beer or a glass of wine, heedless of the 
 influence of your act upon the sinning, suff^ering 
 mass of human life, the essential sin is the pursuit 
 of your own ends without care for the eff'ect upon 
 others than yourself. And, on the other hand, 
 the essential virtue, the protoplasmic germ of all 
 far-shining, god-like heroism, is in the acceptance 
 of the Will of God as the one unalterable rule of 
 personal life. And these loathsome forms of saint- 
 ship are the assertion of a soul to whom no other 
 assertion is possible that at all costs, by every 
 sacrifice, self-will must give place to the Will of 
 the Eternal. 
 
 And you are called to be saints. 
 
 Another aspect of saintship, not repugnant, but 
 yet removed from our ways of regarding life, is 
 covered by the phrase, " I believe in the Com- 
 
ALL SAINTS 111 
 
 munion of Saints." I do not know what Is meant 
 now when this phrase in the Apostles' Creed Is 
 recited. I know what It meant on the hps of the 
 old creed-builders. It asserted the communion of 
 the living with the dead. We know to what lengths 
 that doctrine was carried In ages that are past. 
 We are not likely, we Protestants, to speak re- 
 spectfully of the practices which grew up round 
 the Invocation of the saints. But In our day, 
 amongst some refined persons, there Is a realisa- 
 tion of this communion which I find very beau- 
 tiful. It is seen, so far as I know, at Its very 
 best amongst French Catholics, for It is amongst 
 the French that a reverence for death, unknown 
 amongst us, has been preserved. On the " Day 
 of all the Dead " men and women visit the graves 
 of their loved ones, then pay visits to the homes 
 of scattered members of the family, and think 
 about those whom they have lost. One of the 
 greatest of French writers — perhaps the greatest 
 of the psychological novelists — opens a powerful 
 story with a scene which affords a glimpse at the 
 whole purpose of the book. A young girl, return- 
 ing with her father from the cemetery on the 
 " Day of all the Dead," speaking of the man who 
 loves her, who Is an unbeliever, demands, in hope- 
 less bewilderment that life can be lived on such 
 terms, " But if one lives not with his dead, how 
 can family life he possible? " * 
 
 We are not here on solid standing ground. I 
 
 * Paul Bourget : L'etappe. I do not know whether it has 
 yet been published in English. 
 
112 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 do not know what is reality and what is lovely 
 imagination. Nay, I do not know whether the 
 Imagination is not more real than the Reality. 
 But, whatever the facts may be, would not life 
 become more beautiful, more full of meaning and 
 power, and would not death become more bearable, 
 less fraught with bitterness and madness, if, like 
 the girl in Paul Bourget's story, we could " live 
 with our dead " ? Would you not like to think 
 that they with you form an unbroken family circle, 
 though round your family altar the lights burn 
 low, and some dear ones sit out of sight.'' Would 
 it not be a joy to feel that though they have gone 
 into a far country, they are still very near? How 
 inspiring it would be to carry with you the blessed 
 assurance that at midnight in the silence of the 
 sleep time when you set your fancies free, and at 
 noonday in the bustle of man's worktime, unseen 
 hands which once you loved caress you, and to 
 them who have been the angels of your fireside God 
 has now given charge concerning you ? Christ has 
 brought life and immortality to light in His Gos- 
 pel. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord ! I 
 believe in the Communion of Saints. 
 
 There is one other view of saintship from which 
 we, who are called to be saints, may learn some- 
 thing. And again we are in the presence of a 
 form of piety which has seemed to us highly 
 reprehensible. 
 
 The habit of retiring from the world has 
 merited and received our sternest censures. The 
 philanthropist condemns it as a cowardly shrink- 
 
ALL SAINTS 113 
 
 ing from human duties. The sociologist condemns 
 it as an offence against the race, alleging that 
 while the Church burned the most daring, it shut 
 up in monasteries and nunneries the most refined, 
 leaving the task of replenishing the earth to the 
 most unfit. The psychologist ridicules it as a 
 plain invitation to the world, the flesh, and the 
 devil to make their home in the prepared and 
 morbid mind. The historian declares that what 
 the psychologist said was bound to happen, did 
 happen ; that the one devil from whom the saint 
 had fled in the city, took to himself seven devils 
 more in the cell and the secret place. And I have 
 read a Catholic plea on behalf of these " clois- 
 tered " or " contemplative " orders which seems to 
 me, considering that it has been issued within the 
 last few years by a living man — and a Parisian, — 
 one of the strangest things which ever fell from 
 the brain of man. The author was converted to 
 Roman Catholicism in middle life, after writing, 
 among other books, a frightful study of unknown 
 forms of wickedness, a study of Satanism, a cult 
 whose devotees from the middle ages onward to 
 our own time in the heart of Paris worship the 
 Devil for the purpose of outraging Christ. This 
 book * shows the workings of a mind of ripest 
 culture, soiled by indulgence in horrible sins, in 
 contact with the solemnest offices of the Catholic 
 faith. Among the developments of Catholicism 
 which repel him are these establishments of " idle " 
 monks and nuns. And an abbe is represented as 
 * En Route : Huysmans. 
 
114 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 offering to this man of letters an explanation 
 which he is able to accept. I must read it to 
 you : — " They are the lightning conductors of 
 society. They draw on themselves the demoniacal 
 fluid, they absorb temptations to vice, preserve by 
 their prayers those who live, like ourselves, in sin ; 
 they appease, in fact, the wrath of the Most High, 
 that He may not place the earth under an inter- 
 dict. Ah ! while the sisters who devote themselves 
 to nursing the sick and infirm are indeed ad- 
 mirable, their task is easy in comparison with that 
 undertaken by the Cloistered Orders, the Orders 
 where penance never ceases, and the very nights 
 spent in bed are broken by sobs." What do you 
 think of that.f* Are we dreaming? Or are we 
 living in the dark ages? Is there in Paris or 
 upon the face of the earth a cultivated mind which 
 can gravely submit such a suggestion to people 
 who can read and think? Nay, rather, is there 
 any reality beneath this, also? 
 
 In the thing itself, surely there is no reality 
 which is real to us. But the spirit is that of all 
 vicarious sufferers who have lived and died for 
 God. It is the spirit of the fifty-third chapter of 
 Isaiah. It is the spirit of all prophets who have 
 spoken for God, all evangelists who have preached 
 for Him, all martyrs who have died for Him. It is 
 the spirit of the reformer who takes the sins of 
 the world upon his heart, the spirit of the Saviour 
 who nails them to His cross, making a show of 
 them openly, and loosing us from their power 
 by His blood. Still are we called upon to bear 
 
ALL SAINTS 115 
 
 burdens not our own, endure griefs which are 
 not ours, shed tears for the pain of those who 
 are less than kin and more than kind, sweat as 
 it were in our agony great drops of blood for 
 the redemption of ages yet unborn. Life grows 
 from more to more through death. Only upon 
 some cross of pain or woe God's Son may lie. As 
 you go back to do again your simple deeds of 
 love and mercy, in the home, in the sick-room, in 
 the hospital ward, in the mean street amid ugly, 
 broken lives, as you go back to lowly service of 
 the outcast and the poor for whom Jesus died, you 
 draw upon yourselves, as lightning conductors, the 
 demoniacal fluid of current Satanism, and share 
 the eternal vicariousness of the Christ of God. 
 You are called to be saints. And of such as you 
 is the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
vn 
 
 IDOLS OF THE TRIBE 
 
VII 
 IDOLS OF THE TRIBE 
 
 "Little children, guard yourselves from idols." 
 
 —I. John v. 21. 
 
 ** This comprehensive warning is probably the lat- 
 est voice of Scripture " — according to the judg- 
 ment of the most famous Englishman who has writ- 
 ten upon the works of the Apostle John. We are in 
 the habit of saying that the heathen in his blind- 
 ness bows down to wood and stone. It is far 
 from certain that he does anything of the kind; 
 but, however that may be, you are not to suppose 
 that by " idols " John meant that sort of an 
 image. One of the best of the popular dictionaries 
 defines the word in terms which marvellously ex- 
 pound John's idea. An idol, in this meaning, is 
 " any phantom of the brain, or any false ap- 
 pearance by which men are led into error or 
 prejudice which prevents impartial observation." 
 It would be difficult to add to this without spoil- 
 ing it. And the writer whom I have just quoted 
 shows the place of John's warning at the end of 
 his great epistle. " From the thought of Him 
 that is true, John turns almost of necessity to the 
 thought of the vain shadows which usurp His place. 
 In them the world asserted its power. They forced 
 
 119 
 
120 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 themselves into notice on every side in innumerable 
 shapes, and tempted believers to fall away from 
 the perfect simplicity of faith. One sharp warn- 
 ing, therefore, closes the epistle of which the main 
 scope has been to deepen the fellowship of man 
 with God, and through God with man." 
 
 There is no age and no set of circumstances, 
 there is no life so illuminated and cultured, in 
 which that " sharp warning " is without point. 
 To take false for true and true for false is the 
 fatality which pursues the footsteps of us all, in- 
 quire we never so wisely in a perfect way. We 
 are human, but we drop the substance for the 
 shadow more readily and with less persuasion than 
 the dog in ^sop's fable. Because we are human 
 we lose reality through exceeding devotion to ap- 
 pearance. We always need, as little children, to 
 guard ourselves from idols. And the man who 
 can do it, who can look through the show of things 
 to things, whose piercing glance sees through form 
 to the heart that beats within, and to the living 
 great reality, has indeed become a man and put 
 away childish things. He is a seer, and you ought 
 to trust that man. For him the veil that divides 
 the visible from the invisible is wearing thin in 
 places, and the hidden things of time and of eter- 
 nity are about to be revealed. We might make 
 an effort this morning — though, indeed, it is the 
 effort of a lifetime — to guard ourselves from idols. 
 
 In that great book which revolutionised all 
 science for all nations and all time. Bacon begins 
 by recognising the prevalence and potency of idols, 
 
IDOLS OF THE TRIBE 121 
 
 by discussing their nature, and by uttering a 
 warning against them only less Inspired than this 
 " latest voice of Scripture." There are four 
 classes of idols, he says, which beset men's minds. 
 To these for the sake of distinctions he assigns 
 names. He calls the first, " idols of the tribe " ; 
 the second, " Idols of the cave " ; the third, *' idols 
 of the market-place " ; and the last, " Idols of the 
 theatre." By the " Idols of the tribe " he means 
 those errors which beset us as members of the human 
 race or " tribe " ; which have their foundation in 
 human nature Itself ; not the deception to which the 
 individual Is peculiarly liable through some personal 
 quality of weakness or strength, but those to which 
 human nature in general is prone. These are the 
 idols of the tribe. The " idols of the cave " are 
 the tendencies to error of the Individual man. For 
 every one, says Bacon, has a cave or den of his 
 own which refracts and discolours the light of 
 nature. In our day we speak freely of the " per- 
 sonal equation." We say easily, " you must take 
 into account the personal equation." That equa- 
 tion inclines the individual to the idols of the cave. 
 Then there are the " idols of the market-place," 
 delusions and deceptions formed by the Intercourse 
 of man with man, false opinions generated In the 
 crowd and kept alive by the power of words which 
 we believe to be our servants, but which are really 
 despots of the soul. And lastly he speaks of the 
 *' idols of the theatre," by which he means false 
 and foolish philosophies and theories ; and he calls 
 them Idols of the theatre because, to his mind. 
 
122 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 they seem mere stage-plays, representing unreal 
 worlds In unreal ways. And against all these 
 Bacon takes up the Apostolic warning, " Guard 
 yourselves from idols." 
 
 I have long had the desire to preach on this 
 great theme. I have been restrained by the abid- 
 ing fear of incompleteness. A man might lecture 
 to a class of students morning by morning for a 
 year, and fill a volume with his moralising. But 
 any attempt to treat a subject so vast and so 
 suggestive as this in the ordinary routine of pulpit 
 work seems assured of failure from the first. One 
 fears the scorn of thoughtful persons for a dis- 
 cussion necessarily so inadequate. Yet one is grate- 
 ful for Mr. Chesterton's view that, " if a thing 
 is worth doing at all, it is worth doing badly,'* 
 and so takes courage to make the attempt. On 
 future Sunday mornings we may study the idols 
 of the cave and the idols of the market-place; 
 perhaps, also, the idols of the theatre. To-day, 
 Guard yourselves against the idols of the tribe ! 
 
 The simplest way will be to put the teaching in 
 the form of direct exhortation, and to choose illus- 
 trations showing its necessity and wisdom. First, 
 then, guard yourselves against the tendency of 
 human nature to believe that a thing is right be- 
 cause you would like it to be right. 
 
 No error of human nature is more widespread 
 or deep-seated than this. None is more fruitful 
 of misconduct and sorrow. Every man who thinks 
 at all knows that this is true. Every prophet 
 has wept over it. " The heart is deceitful above 
 
IDOLS OF THE TRIBE 123 
 
 all things, and it is desperately sick," said Jere- 
 miah ; and in no sphere of activity does it prove 
 its quality of deceitfulness more conspicuously 
 than in self-deception. And a modern prophet, 
 in sheer weight of intellect the equal of Jeremiah 
 and in spirit scarcely his inferior, has commented : 
 " Worse than being fooled of others is to fool 
 oneself," while he exclaims in anger and pity 
 blended : 
 
 Oh, purblind race of miserable men, 
 How many among us at this very hour 
 Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves. 
 By taking true for false, and false for true ! 
 
 The heart is deceitful above all things — when in- 
 terests clash with ideals and prejudice with prin- 
 ciples. What we want to think right we can think 
 right. Carlyle used to say that the population 
 of the British Islands was so many millions — 
 mostly fools. The proportion here, of course, 
 would be slightly different. But I have never yet 
 met a man who was such a fool that he could not 
 find arguments of some kind or other in favour of 
 any course, however stupid or foolish or base, which 
 he wished to take. And, on the other hand, I have 
 never yet met the man who was clever enough 
 to sit down and succinctly explain to himself or 
 me how some other man had succeeded in persuad- 
 ing himself that his amazing and bewildering 
 crookedness or unscrupulousness could be justified 
 in his own eyes. Yet men do persuade themselves 
 that a course of conduct is right which, for other 
 men, in dry light, in cold reason, they would de- 
 
IM OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 nounce with all the rhetoric of righteous passion. 
 " That is an amazing sermon," we said to each 
 other, one day; and we proceeded to characterise 
 it not unkindly, but in a pointed sentence. And 
 an old man, kind, sweet-natured, who was with us, 
 said gravely : " I am sure it never presented itself 
 to his mind in that way." No ; I am quite sure 
 it never did. And that illustration only touches 
 the sphere of the intellectual. You may say it as 
 truly in the world of morals. A man involves 
 himself in tortuous diplomacy, in stealthy intrigue, 
 in shady finance, in ways of abominable dishonour. 
 But you may be sure that " it never presented itself 
 to his mind in that way." He has found a hun- 
 dred reasons for every downward step that he has 
 taken, every one valid in his own eyes, yet every 
 one such as, urged on behalf of somebody else, 
 he would find contemptible. Little children, — for 
 here we may all sincerely say, " I am a cliild in 
 these things," — guard yourselves from the idols 
 of the tribe. 
 
 Let us see: Richard Arkwright invented a ma- 
 chine for spinning cotton. James Watt brought 
 out his steam engine. England, says the historian, 
 was now ready to begin her great work of weaving 
 cotton for the world. But where was the cotton 
 to come from? As it grew, the seeds clung too 
 tenaciously to the fibre, and the work of separating 
 them was slow and costly. In a log-hut in Georgia, 
 Ell Whitney produced his machine for doing this 
 work with a hundred hands all flying together and 
 obeying the single mind. Napoleon sold Louisiana 
 
IDOLS OF THE TRIBE 125 
 
 to the United States. The soil was there to grow 
 cotton, the machinery was ready to utihse it when 
 grown, labour was needed to cultivate it. Where 
 was the labour to be found? Slavery, at that time, 
 in the view of the Southern States, was an evil 
 thing. It was a wrong thrust upon them by 
 England. It was difficult, under the circum- 
 stances, to get rid of it, but it was not to be 
 defended. Slave-owners were content to discuss 
 plans for its cessation. The clergy preached 
 against it. Hopeful souls looked forward to the 
 glad day of the release of captives and open ways 
 to them that were bound. But they reckoned with- 
 out Arkwright, Whitney, and the Napoleonic 
 wars ! Abundant labour now would bring streams 
 of gold, a Mississippi of wealth, to those broad 
 southern lands. Ease, wealth, luxury, the for- 
 tunes of millions, were dangled before the eyes of 
 the Southern States, and the price was the negro's 
 blood and sweat, the price was chains and slavery. 
 The false prophet of the new and hateful order 
 rose to the occasion. Calhoun taught the people 
 of the South that slavery was good for the slave. 
 It was a benign, civilising agency. The African 
 attained to a measure of intelligence in slavery 
 impossible to him in freedom. To him, visibly, 
 it was a blessing to be enslaved. Heaven had ap- 
 pointed slavery for the advantage of both races. 
 Opposition to a labour ordinance made in heaven 
 was flat blasphemy. Abolition was infidelity. 
 Then the pulpit took up the wondrous tale. 
 Slavery was divinely commended in the Old Testa- 
 
126 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 ment. Ham was to be the servant of his brethren ; 
 therefore, the children of Ham forever were to be 
 the property of white men. The slave who escaped 
 from slavery was guilty of the vilest form of theft. 
 He had not run away with himself, he had stolen 
 property which God gave to his master.* It waited 
 for Emerson to thunder forth : 
 
 Pay ransom to the owner, 
 
 And fill up the bag to the brim ! 
 Who is the owner ? The slave is owner, 
 
 And always was— pay him ! 
 
 But meanwhile, belief in the righteousness of sla- 
 very became a fanaticism and a madness. And even 
 to-day, forty years after the close of the war 
 in the course of which the fetters fell from the 
 negro's limbs, I have talked in Southern States 
 with some of the sweetest and most beautiful- 
 minded men and women on earth, who believe with 
 all their hearts that God had truly appointed 
 the slave unto slavery for a certain time, but that 
 they impiously insisted upon the continuance of a 
 Divine institution long after, in the Providence of 
 God, they should have permitted it to come to 
 an end. Slavery was not wrong. Their wrong 
 was that they did not recognise that it had served 
 God's purpose, and must now pass away ! 
 
 Did the South find out first that God meant the 
 negro to be a slave " with no rights that a white 
 man was bound to respect," and that it was lawful, 
 
 * Abridged from the admirable chapters in Mackenzie's 
 "America." 
 
IDOLS OF THE TRIBE 127 
 
 if a slave would not stand still to be flogged, to 
 shoot him as he ran, and later on, discover that, 
 greatly to their surprise, his labour was profitable 
 to the white man? By no means. Slavery was 
 profitable ; therefore slavery was right ! You do 
 not believe that men, honest men, good men, could 
 so deceive themselves? Then you know simply 
 nothing at all of the workings of the human heart. 
 You know nothing of the possibilities of your own 
 nature and nothing of the human nature round 
 you. And you, more than all other, stand in need 
 of the warning. Guard yourself against the idols 
 of the tribe, against the common tendency of our 
 human nature to believe that a thing is right be- 
 cause we should like it to be right. Guard your- 
 selves from idols, notably from this awful and de- 
 basing tendency of our common human nature to 
 believe that a thing is right because it pays us in 
 money or ease or the gratification of passion to 
 believe it. In a word, refuse to believe that you 
 can change the everlasting laws of God and of His 
 righteousness by word-juggling, however acute; 
 refuse to believe that omnipotence will obliterate 
 the eternal difference between right and wrong be- 
 cause you succeed in impressing sophistry to rein- 
 force your sin. 
 
 Now we must turn to a different set of consid- 
 erations, still putting it all, for the sake of clear- 
 ness, in the form of definite exhortation. Guard 
 yourselves against the tendency of human nature 
 to accept the easy because it is easy and to reject 
 the difficult because it is difficult. Bacon's phras- 
 
128 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 ing is admirable, though difficult to follow when 
 you hear it only once. " By far the greatest 
 hindrance and aberration of the human under- 
 standing proceeds from the dulness, incompetence, 
 and deceptions of the senses ; in that things which 
 strike the sense outweigh things which do not 
 immediately strike it, though they be more im- 
 portant. Hence it is that speculation commonly 
 ceases where sight ceases ; insomuch that of things 
 invisible there is little or no observation. Hence 
 all the working of the spirits enclosed in tangible 
 bodies lies hid and unobserved in men." 
 
 I wish it was in my power to bring out all the 
 meaning of this subtle passage, with illustrations 
 and proofs from the world around us. Intellectual 
 thoroughness is difficult to us all. Not because we 
 are more foolish than our neighbours, but because 
 we are like our neighbours, because we are what 
 we are, because we are men and not gods, by the 
 very course and constitution of the mind that we 
 possess, except for the rare souls whom we call 
 men of genius, resolute thinking is an effort, and a 
 great and toilsome effort. To sit quite still and 
 think out an abstract problem ; to bend all the 
 faculties of the mind upon it; to forbid the 
 thought to stray from the straight course of the 
 deduction ; from start to finish to keep right on ; 
 to see invisible things by the mind's eye as though 
 they had form and body, and to trace a clear line 
 of progress through them — this is a very great 
 undertaking indeed, which calls for strength, calm, 
 courage, and a high degree of training. What 
 
IDOLS OF THE TRIBE 129 
 
 then? Why, we accept the easy explanation of 
 things because it is easy, the superficial because it 
 is superficial. Yet the spirit never does lie upon the 
 surface. The real things are the inner things and 
 the deep things ; and for these we must dig and toil. 
 This is the explanation of much cheap Agnosti- 
 cism in our day — I do not say of all the doubts 
 which beset the souls of men. There is earnest 
 doubt, tragic doubt, loss of faith bringing grief 
 and bitterness. Of that let no man speak disre- 
 spectfully. But you know very well that there 
 is a very cheap and very foolish kind of Agnosti- 
 cism which thinks it quite smart to be able to say, 
 *' I don't know." But anybody can say " I don't 
 know." There is nothing clever in it. The char- 
 acteristic of a fool is that he does not know. And 
 no really capable man satisfies himself, in the com- 
 mon things of life, with the " I don't know " atti- 
 tude which so many people think the hallmark of 
 culture in things of the soul. Your boy comes 
 from college to the university, and begins to realise 
 how little he knows, though he stands within sight 
 of new continents, new worlds, of knowledge. If 
 he has thdn to say, " I don't know," he sets his 
 teeth as he goes on to add, " but I will know." He 
 enters upon his work as, let us say, a medical 
 student. Within the first few months he sees as he 
 never saw before how fearfully and wonderfully 
 this human frame of ours is built. Is he going to 
 remain forever under the imputation of ignorance, 
 accept without demur the old-time scoff at the 
 medical profession, that the art of medicine con- 
 
ISO OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 sists of pouring drugs of which he knows Httle into 
 a body of which he knows less ? Not he ! He may 
 say, " I don't know " ; but he is quick with his 
 assertion, " but I am going to know " ! It is only 
 when it comes to the religion of heroes, the faith 
 that has made and kept men great, that he thinks 
 it clever to dismiss it with a sniggering " I don't 
 know." 
 
 I have had sufficient proofs of this. Young 
 men and women have read cheap trash, and have 
 taken up my challenge to read any one or two 
 of the really valuable books which have shown it 
 up for the drivel that it is. And they have quickly 
 informed me that they really could not master 
 such " abstruse " reasoning, or could not " digest 
 such unpalatable food " ! Books which seem to 
 me as pellucid as sunshine, as fascinating as a 
 novel ! Poor things, I am sorry for them. What 
 seems to be demanded is that the deepest specula- 
 tions which can occupy the human mind, questions 
 higher than heaven and deeper than hell, problems 
 of human sin and suffering, of the mind of the 
 Creator and the meaning of the Cross, of God's 
 love and the destiny of the race, should be capable 
 of expression in a few sentences of current speech, 
 or at most in a few pages of slap-dash journalese. 
 It is not possible. It is not reasonable to expect 
 it. But average human nature demands it, and 
 turns away from substance to shadow, from real- 
 ity to appearance, because substance and reality 
 are deep and difficult to come at, while shadow 
 and appearance are to everybody's hand. Dr. 
 
IDOLS OF THE TRIBE 131 
 
 John Watson's word is true : " Inability on occa- 
 sion to cope with the grandeur of the Gospel is 
 not an unredeemed calamity, nor is it always a 
 pledge of a preacher's power that he can handle 
 a high theme easily." No ; but it is an unre- 
 deemed calamity that men and women should not 
 guard themselves against the idols of the tribe, 
 should not bear in mind that the easy, because it 
 is easy, may be only vain shadow, the truth of 
 God lie very deep. 
 
 And yet I would not have you go away with 
 the idea that religious truth is a thing occult, 
 mysterious, past the understanding of plain men. 
 To say that would be to deny the best teaching 
 of Holy Writ. The wise may still lose it through 
 excess of wisdom, while God speaks to simple souls. 
 It is not culture which is in question, but conse- 
 cration. Jesus stood up in the midst of the feast 
 and taught ; and the people marvelled, saying, 
 " How knoweth this man letters, having never 
 learned?" Jesus, therefore, answered them, and 
 said : " My teaching is not mine, but His that sent 
 me. If any man willeth to do His will he shall know 
 of the teaching, whether it be of God." Intellec- 
 tual sincerity is the point. Moral fervour is the 
 point. It is thoroughness of mind and soul which 
 is in question, and that is much. You can express 
 this is simple words, the beginning of it in simple 
 words; but its height and depth and length and 
 breadth call for the eloquence of men and angels. 
 The way to know what is right is to do what is 
 right. Opinions follow life, not life opinions. 
 
132 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 Begin to do the elementary Tightness which is 
 nearest to you, and which nobody ever doubted, or 
 could doubt, was right. Before you are master 
 in that art the next step in rightness will be clear 
 to you. And so through the long day until your 
 shadow lengthens toward the night. 
 
 But this, as you perceive, is a vastly different 
 thing from accepting superficial solutions of 
 things, and turning away from truths which lie 
 in the heart of God. That breeds intellectual 
 ineptitude and spiritual death. 
 
 Will you, then, carry home with you these two 
 applications of Bacon's aphorisms as lit up by 
 " the latest voice of Scripture " : Guard yourselves 
 from believing that a thing is right because you 
 would like it to be right. Guard yourselves from 
 accepting easy falsity because it is easy, and re- 
 jecting profound truth because it is profound. As 
 little children, guard yourselves from the idols of 
 the tribe. 
 
VIII 
 
 IDOLS OF THE CAVE 
 
vin 
 
 IDOLS OF THE CAVE 
 
 "Little children, guard yourselves from idols." 
 
 —I. John v. 21. 
 
 How is a man to be resolute for the truth as he 
 conceives it, earnest in contending for the faith 
 he holds, and utterly loyal to principle, yet at the 
 same time generous in his thought of those who 
 differ from him, not tolerant, for tolerance is often 
 an intolerable thing, but charitable and catholic- 
 hearted? This is an acute question in every-day 
 morality. It is a problem for us all. We are 
 between Scylla and Charybdis. Few of us escape. 
 If we steer clear of one we are wrecked upon the 
 other. With tremendous earnestness of purpose 
 we have usually to accept a narrow outlook, a 
 harsh disregard of other m.en's claims, and an 
 overbearing manner, while we have come to think 
 it certain that a person of kind and genial spirit, 
 gracious manners and fine tact can never manifest 
 great robustness of opinions and character. 
 
 The acceptance of this working theory of per- 
 sonalities has become almost a law with us. We 
 say, " Everybody has the defects of his qualities." 
 We admit that a persecuting spirit is the defect 
 135 
 
136 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 of moral fervour, and spineless acquiescence in 
 conventional ill-doing the defect of universal sym- 
 pathies. And we leave it there, thankful for the 
 qualities and not making too much of the defects. 
 Perhaps this is all right. It serves indifferently 
 well to carry us through life. It is not ideal. It 
 is second best. It is an easy adaptation of action 
 to possibility. We let it pass for the best attain- 
 able in such a world as this. 
 
 Yet it is a fair question whether we ought to 
 admit to ourselves the immortality of mediocrity. 
 It is a fair question whether we ought to admit 
 that superb fidelity to principle without intoler- 
 ance, and generous catholicity without flabbiness 
 and latitudinarian indifference, are forever and 
 forever impossible to men. According to Matthew 
 Arnold, no mean judge of such matters, the 
 Apostle Paul was an unforgettable proof to the 
 contrary. " Never, surely," says Arnold of the 
 Apostle, " did such a controversialist, such a mas- 
 ter of sarcasm and invective, commend with such 
 manifest sincerity and such persuasive emotion the 
 qualities of meekness and gentleness. Never, 
 surely, did a worker who took with such energy 
 his own line, and who was so born to preponderate 
 and predominate in whatever line he took, insist 
 so often and so admirably that the lines of other 
 workers were just as good as his own." And if it 
 has to be admitted that Paul himself did not attain 
 to flawless perfection in the practice of these 
 heroic virtues, that is only to say that he was 
 human. The ideal remains, and it is nobler than 
 
IDOLS OF THE CAVE 137 
 
 surrender to the " inevitable " defects of one's 
 qualities. 
 
 But the question " how " remains. How shall 
 we strive after inflexible fidelity to principle bal- 
 anced and sweetened by apostolic charity.'' One 
 cannot say all in a sermon ; one cannot say much 
 in many sermons. And this morning I suggest 
 to you one single point of departure. As little 
 children, guard yourselves from idols, and notably 
 from the Idols of the Cave ! 
 
 We saw last Sunday morning that it was useless 
 for us to suppose that images of wood and stone 
 were meant by the word " idol " in our text. We 
 found that a dictionary meaning of idol curiously 
 expounded John's warning : " Any phantom of the 
 brain, or any false appearance by which men are 
 led into error or prejudice which prevents impar- 
 tial observation." We quoted Bacon's account of 
 the four classes of idols : namely, " Idols of the 
 Tribe," " Idols of the Cave," " Idols of the Mar- 
 ket-place," and " Idols of the Theatre." To-day 
 we are concerned with the second class of these. 
 
 The origin and nature of the idols of the cave 
 are marked off by Bacon in a few happy phrases. 
 " For every one has a cave or den of his own 
 which refracts and discolours the light of nature ; 
 owing either to his own individual and peculiar 
 characteristics, or to his education and conversa- 
 tion with others ; or to the reading of books, and 
 the authority of those whom he esteems and ad- 
 mires ; or to the differences of impressions, accord- 
 ingly as they take place in a mind preoccupied 
 
138 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 and disposed, or in a mind indifferent and open, 
 or the like. So that the spirit of man (according 
 as it is meted out to different individuals) is, in 
 fact, a thing variable and full of perturbation, 
 and governed as it were by chance." 
 
 That is to say, for our present purpose, you 
 are to guard yourselves from supposing that these 
 idols of your cave are the lords of the whole earth. 
 You are not to suppose that your views, merely 
 because they seem clear to you, are the measure 
 of light for all mankind. You are to bear in mind 
 that truth, principle, duty, and the facts of things 
 present themselves to you in a certain light, in a 
 light refracted and discoloured by your own cave, 
 and that truth, principle, duty, and the facts of 
 things are seen by your neighbour in a light quite 
 different because the light of nature has been re- 
 fracted and discoloured for him by the strange 
 cave in which he lives. The lesson is an old one; 
 the task of learning it is new every day. We may 
 go over some of Bacon's divisions for the sake 
 of elucidation and emphasis. If we are to guard 
 ourselves from the idols of the cave we must re- 
 member how the light of nature is refracted and 
 discoloured by a man's own individual and peculiar 
 characteristics. 
 
 It may be that there are many things absolute 
 in this universe. It may be. It is certain that 
 we do not possess the faculties to appreciate them 
 with absolute justness and nicety. For us, being 
 what we are, few things are absolute and most 
 things are relative. Early in life we think all 
 
IDOLS OF THE CAVE 139 
 
 great things and many minor things absolute. We 
 learn better. People who have suffered great 
 physical pain through much of their life know 
 that pain is a relative tiling. It is relative to 
 circumstance and condition. What is torture at 
 one time is merely inconvenience at another. Mod- 
 esty is a relative thing. It is relative to the race, 
 to the age, to the climate, to the country, as well 
 as to the individual and to all the circumstances 
 which may vary for each individual within this 
 immeasurably wide generalisation. An argument is 
 always a relative thing. It is relative to the per- 
 son to whom it is addressed. If a man wants you 
 to supply him with an argument in favour of any- 
 thing, from flat-earthism to the Christian reli- 
 gion, you must consider what sort of an argument 
 he wants and what sort of argument would be any 
 good to him if he had it! Truth itself, however 
 absolute and regal in its own proper essence, as it 
 comes to us and as we are able to accept it, loses 
 somewhat of its stainless, awful purity, refracted 
 and discoloured amid the shadows of our cave. I 
 know that all these are commonplaces, worn thread- 
 bare with age. But have you learnt them yet.'' 
 
 We are only just beginning to learn the very 
 alphabet of them. Few of us can spell words of 
 two syllables. Wherever questions of churches, 
 creeds, denominations arise we have yet to learn 
 the value of Carlyle's advice: pass a Reform Bill 
 in our own breasts, and cut down the prejudices 
 and passions of our own hearts. We have con- 
 tended for Church government and the forms of it, 
 
140 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 believing or professing to believe that there was 
 one type of New Testament Church, and that that 
 type must be observed through all ages as the un- 
 changing model for all nations. People used to 
 believe that. The arguments for episcopacy talked 
 about its " divine origin." The arguments for 
 Congregationalism talked about its " Scriptural 
 authority." And all the while it was plain to any- 
 body who would come out of his little cave and 
 read the New Testament under the broad blue of 
 the smiling heavens, that the Church of the New 
 Testament was Presbyterian in Jerusalem, Episco- 
 palian in Crete, and Congregational in Corinth. 
 A form of government is relative to the persons to 
 be governed. A form of Church government is 
 relative to the persons who compose the Church. 
 
 Denominations stand for temperamental tend- 
 encies. Not one man in a thousand through all 
 the centuries first argues out the points of differ- 
 ence that separate Church from Church, and then 
 joins the one to which the balance of argument 
 points. He may begin the argument after he is 
 in and wants to defend his position with reason. 
 For the vast majority of us, the sort of person 
 we are, the kind of emotion, aspiration, tempera- 
 ment, training which make me " Me " and you 
 " You," inclines us to one Church or another. 
 We are Baptists ; but we are not what we are, 
 persons professing certain principles and profess- 
 ing them in a certain way, because we are Baptists. 
 On the contrary, we are Baptists because of the 
 sort of people we are. And so were our fathers 
 
IDOLS OF THE CAVE 141 
 
 before us. Historically, from before a time when 
 this continent saw us, we are a determined, turbu- 
 lent, unsubduable people. We are a stiff-necked 
 lot, disinclined to bow our heads to kings and 
 bishops until those stiff necks are stretched by 
 ropes and those proud heads laid low upon the 
 scaffold. We have made so much of the inner 
 authority of the Spirit that we have had only 
 laughter to spare for outer authority, for its 
 crowns tinsel-gilt and its many legions. Axe and 
 dungeon have invariably left us unconvinced. 
 Whether we reasoned it out or whether we only 
 felt it, scarcely knowing that we felt it, the one 
 undying passion of our souls has been Liberty; 
 and we have known, though we could not tell 
 how we came by the knowledge, that God Himself 
 could not tear the love of liberty from our souls 
 while we were men and He was God. And such as 
 our forefathers were, mutatis mutandis, we are 
 still. And that is why we are Baptists. That is 
 our cave. And I do not for a moment doubt that 
 my neighbour on my right, who believes more than 
 I do, and my neighbour on my left, who believes 
 less, could both of them make out for themselves 
 and for their ancestry a case as honourable in their 
 eyes. That is their cave. We need not ask them 
 both to come into our cave. We want no such 
 poor and stunted view of Church unity. Neither 
 need we demand that all caves be broken up in 
 order that we may all live beneath the arching 
 heavens. Trees of the forest, grass of the fields, 
 and flowers on the mountain side flourish so; but 
 
142 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 we are men and we need our caves. The essential 
 thing is for us to remember that we do Hve in 
 caves ; refuse to suppose that the Hght re- 
 fracted and discoloured there is the pure, uncon- 
 taminated light of nature, and doom the rest of 
 the race to perdition because the light which they 
 enjoy is discoloured differently for them. Little 
 children, do not make relativities into finalities 
 and absolutes. Guard yourselves from idols. 
 
 Bacon distinguishes between education and con- 
 versation with others, on the one hand, and, on the 
 other, the reading of books and the authority of 
 those whom we admire and esteem. We may in- 
 clude them in one view and repeat the warning 
 to ourselves. Next after temperament itself, these 
 make our cave. These make our world. 
 
 No thoughtful person has failed to make the 
 observation times without number in the course of 
 a busy life as new situations have brought him 
 into changed relations with his fellows, " But this 
 is another world ! " To be sure it is. A decorous, 
 orderly, conventional circle represents a new planet 
 to the man who, in robust independence of spirit, 
 has lived, without vice or actual wrong-doing, in 
 Bohemia. A young man who has ringed his soul 
 round with fire and steel, with the steel, let us say, 
 of Emerson, and the fires of Byron, Shelley, Burns, 
 Lowell, finds himself amongst pious people who 
 discover a special reverence in pronouncing God 
 " Gawd," or amongst those who shrink from the 
 discussion of realities by persons not styled " rev- 
 erend " and think Scripture out of church indeli- 
 
IDOLS OF THE CAVE 143 
 
 cate, or amongst people in the old world to whom 
 the name of the monarch is sacrosanct and " God 
 save the King " the divinest note of mortal song — 
 and these different caves are to him new worlds ; 
 their idols are more wonderful and less respectable 
 than Mumbo-Jumbo ; while he to them is as start- 
 ling as a savage beast from its lair or the wild man 
 of Borneo himself. The same sort of thing hap- 
 pens over and over again, and each one of us, 
 living his life over a wide circumference, comes into 
 fresh world after world and sees daily more clearly 
 how numerous and how powerful are the idols of 
 the cave. 
 
 Bacon's next point is that of the difference of 
 impressions made on different minds according as 
 they come to an occupied or an unoccupied one, 
 whether they come upon one open to receive or to 
 a mind already possessed by preconceptions and 
 dispositions. For if the mind is already pos- 
 sessed by settled beliefs and convictions before the 
 new light strikes it, obviously it will be refracted 
 and discoloured. But this is very difficult. What 
 civilised or uncivilised person is in possession of a 
 blank mind.'' How can a mind be blank and yet 
 be a mind at all.? That which makes it a mind 
 gives it predispositions and prejudices. And who 
 is there strong enough, possessed of such self- 
 control and power of detachment, that he can 
 brush aside all these preoccupations with a wave of 
 the hand and bring to bear a wholly emancipated 
 mind.'' Only the very greatest souls can attain 
 to any large measure of such self-mastery. 
 
144 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 The fuller your life, the more reason there is 
 for you to be on your guard. Tepid people may 
 not be so amenable to idols of the cave. Laodi- 
 ceans are not likely to entertain strong prejudices 
 for or against anything or anybody. But you 
 have opinions and a will. You have a mind. You 
 have principles, convictions, purposes. The blood 
 runs red in your veins. Not for you the insipidi- 
 ties and insincerities of people who are just as 
 sympathetic with Judas Iscariot as with the 
 Apostle John, and are indifferent to the claims of 
 heaven or hell because they have friends in both 
 places. For you, then, prejudice is easy. And a 
 person or a principle, an idea or an idealist, com- 
 ing to you fresh, has first a dead weight to move. 
 To do away with your settled convictions so as 
 to make room for new impressions would be impos- 
 sible, and very wrong if it were not impossible. 
 But to recognise what I have called the relativities 
 of life, as against a belief in finalities and abso- 
 lutes, is not impossible. To lay strong hands upon 
 yourself and compel yourself to give heed to the 
 light as it enters another man's cave, admitting 
 that it may be refracted and discoloured as it 
 comes to your own, is an exercise in grace and a 
 training in wisdom and charity. 
 
 Some time ago I found myself involved in a 
 violent altercation as to whether " cave " or 
 " den " were the better word to express Bacon's 
 meaning. Bacon wrote in Latin. I had con- 
 sistently used the word " cave " to represent his 
 purpose. It was contended against me that 
 
IDOLS OF THE CAVE 145 
 
 " den " only was meant. I demanded in surprise 
 the difference between a cave and a den. My 
 ignorance was enlightened. A cave is a place 
 where a man may live. A den is a hole or corner 
 into which he retires and shuts himself up with 
 his thoughts, his tempers, and his prejudices. The 
 distinction never occurred to Bacon. But it is 
 admirably to the point. We do need to guard, 
 even the kindest and nicest amongst us, against 
 the practice of deliberately shutting ourselves up 
 within ourselves and closing the door with a bang. 
 If Diogenes lives in a tub, and can ask nothing 
 more of his fellow-man than to stand out of his 
 sunshine, at night he will go about the city with 
 a lantern looking for an honest man — and he will 
 not find him ! Diogenes could not find an honest 
 man with a lantern, nor with the strongest electric 
 searchlight that ever swept land or sea. Diogenes 
 would not know an honest man when he saw one. 
 In your den, if you lurk there by yourself, in its 
 gloomy recesses, you will find uncharity ; you will 
 find spite; you will find jealousy — oh, always you 
 will find jealousy; envy, hatred, malice, and all 
 bitterness of the soul you will find there. Not idols 
 only will be there. Grinning apes and tempting 
 devils you will find there. And as you look into 
 the concave and convex mirrors which you have 
 hung round your den, the apes and demons will 
 seem to bear a weird resemblance to yourself. 
 Oh, beware, not merely of the idols ; beware of 
 the den ! 
 
 We have not time to discuss the idols of the 
 
146 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 cave further. It remains to ask, If it is true to 
 experience and fact that the Hght of nature is 
 discoloured for us in these ways and in so many 
 other ways, what becomes of the doctrine of con- 
 science? What is conscience? Is it not the voice 
 of God in the soul of man? Is it not an infallible 
 guide? And if not, are we not adrift upon a 
 shoreless sea, with rotting sails, without rudder 
 or compass, and have not the very stars of heaven 
 gone out in the blackness of the night? We have 
 only to understand the meaning of the words we 
 use. Distinguish between conscience itself, moral 
 judgments, and moral sentiments, and the fears 
 will vanish. By conscience we mean that instinct 
 of nature and of God within us which asserts the 
 eternal difference between right and wrong; de- 
 clares that this difference is not accidental, nor 
 temporary, nor relative, but is the one final and 
 absolute which humanity can know; and insists 
 that there is an imperious, inexpugnable ought — 
 •we ought to do the right and avoid the wrong. 
 But conscience does not tell us and cannot tell us 
 what is right and what is wrong in given circum- 
 stances. This is a judgment, a moral judgment, 
 which must be formed by the individual and which 
 may be correct or incorrect. This can be trained, 
 educated, directed. This it is which differs with 
 each member of the race, which varies from age 
 to age, and which builds the walls of the cave where 
 the idols are. In popular language we talk about 
 our conscience telling us that such and such a 
 thing is wrong. The meaning is clear, but the 
 
IDOLS OF THE CAVE 147 
 
 language is misleading. Conscience tells you that 
 the wrong must not be done; it is your judg- 
 ment which has decided that this particular thing 
 is wrong. Then moral sentiments gather around 
 these judgments, pleasure or pain, approbation or 
 remorse. If a man says, " I have lived in all 
 good conscience unto this day," he means that he 
 has sincerely followed the right and true accord- 
 ing to his moral judgments. If he goes on to 
 add that " he has a conscience void of offence to 
 God and man," he means that the moral sentiments 
 of peace and self -approval have followed upon the 
 sincerity with which he has acted upon his judg- 
 ments. You must labour, not to educate your 
 conscience, which is impossible, but to educate your 
 whole self, intellect, emotion, desire, so that when 
 conscience speaks to you of the eternal obligations 
 of right your judgments may be sound as to what 
 is the right you have to do. 
 
 And in this process of self-education we shall 
 find the answer to the question with which we 
 started out: How shall a man be resolute for the 
 truth as he conceives it, yet generous in his appre- 
 ciation of those who conceive truth in a vastly 
 different way.? I do not ask you to be less reso- 
 lute. I do not want you to hold convictions with 
 a looser grip. I do not want you to speak in a 
 lower key, cool the fires of your blood, and spend 
 yourself less defiantly in defence of what you hold 
 for true. No; fight on ever braver and stronger. 
 But — know better what you are fighting for! 
 Study it more carefully. Master more completely 
 
148 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 the meaning of it, the basis of it, the implications of 
 it, the issues of it. And then what ? Why, as you 
 study more, read more, think more, see more, you 
 will come to know how many-sided life is, what 
 large worlds there are of which you never dreamed, 
 how big our Father's house is, and how many man- 
 sions there are in it! If you take short views of 
 life and superficial views, you will be pretty confi- 
 dent that if the Pope of Rome is not infallible it 
 is a mercy for the world that you are ! But if you 
 read, think, look round you and above you, and 
 learn to look at life whole so as to have right 
 reason on your side when you battle for the good 
 and true, you will come to see how much there is 
 to be said on the other side, and how likely it is 
 that men from other caves are following the light 
 as well as you. You will not be less true to the 
 light you have, because, refracted and discoloured 
 by other dens, other men perceive the light and 
 whence it flows, and see it in their joy. You will 
 exult because they, like you, have followed as much 
 as they have received of that true Light which 
 lighteth every man that cometh into the world. 
 Wherefore, guard yourselves from the idols of the 
 cave. 
 
IX 
 IDOLS OF THE MARKET-PLACE 
 
IX 
 IDOLS OF THE MARKET-PLACE 
 
 "Little children, guard yourselves from idols." 
 
 — I. John v. 21. 
 
 Bacon says that the idols of the market-place are 
 the most troublesome of all ! We have learned that 
 by " idols " the Apostle John did not mean images 
 of wood and stone. His view is expounded in the 
 dictionary meaning of " idol " — " any phantom of 
 the brain, or any false appearance by which men 
 are led into error or prejudice which prevents im- 
 partial observation." These phantoms of the 
 brain, these false appearances, are divided by 
 Bacon into four classes — Idols of the tribe, by 
 which he means the errors to which we are liable 
 as members of the human race or tribe; idols of 
 the cave, those to which the individual character- 
 istics of each person expose him; idols of the 
 market-place, so called because they owe their 
 existence to the intercourse of man with man, and 
 are generated by the crowd; and idols of the 
 theatre, false and foolish theories and philosophies 
 which correspond to no actual fact in the universe, 
 but describe unreal worlds in false and scenic 
 fashion. 
 
 Of the idols of the market-place Bacon says that 
 151 
 
152 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 men believe their reason governs words when all 
 the time words govern their reason. He says: 
 " Words are imposed according to the apprehen- 
 sion of the vulgar, and, therefore, the ill and unfit 
 choice of words wonderfully obstructs the under- 
 standing. Definitions, wherewith in some things 
 learned men are wont to guard and defend them- 
 selves, by no means set the matter right. But 
 words plainly force and overrule the understand- 
 ing, and throw all into confusion, and lead men 
 away into numberless empty controversies and idle 
 fancies." 
 
 Each sentence is full of suggestion. Here is a 
 comprehensive indictment, and we may follow it 
 point by point. 
 
 You are to guard against the idols of the 
 market-place by accustoming yourselves to the 
 thought that words suffer a depreciation of value 
 by meanings imposed in popular use. 
 
 This is repeating Bacon's first division. But you 
 have observed that I have left out his word " vul- 
 gar," and quietly slipped in the word " popular," 
 And you know why. " Vulgar " originally meant 
 " general," " universal." As a verb, the idea is 
 to " divulge," " spread abroad," " publish." The 
 vulgus were the crowd, the multitude, the mass 
 of the people. So we used to speak of " the Scrip- 
 tures in the vulgar tongue," meaning the native 
 language of the people. You know what we mean 
 by " vulgar " now — ill-mannered, objectionable, 
 rude, low in thought, and base in spirit. Now 
 observe the history of men and centuries hidden 
 
IDOLS OF THE MARKET-PLACE 153 
 
 away in that word " vulgar." How much of the 
 meaning which the word bears to-day comes from 
 the disdain of the rich and the educated for the 
 poor? How much of it is true to the facts of 
 life? How far is it true that the vulgus are the 
 vulgar, that the masses have been loutish, unre- 
 fined, without ideals and visions? This word is 
 red-veined with human nature. It is impossible 
 for us always, perhaps it is impossible for us at 
 any time entirely, to get back the depreciated cur- 
 rency of popular speech to its face value. And if 
 we can do no other than accept the word " vulgar " 
 in its modern meaning, at least let us remember 
 that vulgarity is not of the social position but of 
 the soul; not of the income, but of the instincts 
 which rule our life. Let us remember, with my 
 favourite hero. Dr. Stockmann, that " the sort 
 of vulgar people we are concerned with are not 
 found in the lower orders only. They crawl and 
 swarm all round us, right up to the very sum- 
 mits of society. A man is vulgar, and ignorant, 
 and undeveloped when he thinks the thoughts and 
 speaks the opinions of his official superiors. Men 
 who do that belong always to the mob." 
 
 And though I have used the word " popular," 
 that, too, is at the present moment undergoing a 
 change. For it used to mean " pertaining to the 
 people " ; now it of tener means " favourite with 
 the people." Suppose a preacher were to say, 
 ** the great business of my life is to be a popular 
 preacher." You would probably understand him 
 to mean that his great object was to be a favourite 
 
154 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 with the crowd, and you would very properly con- 
 demn him as a sycophant, a time-server, a hireling, 
 and a vain one at that. But he might mean that 
 his work in the world was not to preach to the 
 academy and the university. His work was not 
 to discuss the Gospel with men of light and lead- 
 ing in the nation. His work was to appropriate 
 the results of research, scholarship, criticism ac- 
 cumulated by the learning and toil of others, 
 master their meaning, and translate the best into 
 language *' understanded of the people," ex- 
 pounding the highest thought of his time in direct 
 and lucid speech for the benefit of the masses 
 of the people. That would not be the work of a 
 hireling. It would be for a man to sacrifice social 
 position and professional distinction in order to 
 bring the Gospel to those of whom it was said that 
 they heard the Saviour " gladly." 
 
 " Criticism," a word which I have just used, 
 may be such another " idol." The meaning im- 
 posed by the apprehension of the vulgar, as Bacon 
 would say, the meaning it bears in popular use, 
 we should put it, is that of " fault-finding," be- 
 cause when people get together to " criticise " a 
 person they generally find fault — and plenty of it ! 
 But to the educated person who uses words cor- 
 rectly the meaning is vastly different. " Criti- 
 cism " is appraisement, is judgment. An art 
 critic is not a man whose business it is to find 
 fault with pictures, nor a literary critic a man 
 who is paid to find fault with books. These men 
 are experts, forming an opinion, pronouncing a 
 
IDOLS OF THE MARKET-PLACE 155 
 
 judgment. Had this been understood we should 
 have been spared many an ineffably silly discus- 
 sion such as " Ought clergymen to criticise the 
 Bible? " People discuss whether it is in good taste 
 for preachers to find fault with the Scriptures. 
 They do not see that the work of ascertaining 
 the age, the authorship, the genuineness of docu- 
 ments is unrelated to the spirit of fault-finding, 
 and may be undertaken from the deepest motives 
 of religion. 
 
 Words which have a religious significance are, 
 to be sure, more within the scope of a Sunday 
 morning sermon than all other. Only, get this 
 law of the depreciation of intellectual currency 
 clearly before you, and it will save you from many 
 errors for the remainder of your days. Words 
 which we commonly use have taken on a later and 
 a lower meaning in the course of such common use. 
 *' Knave," which now means " rascal," originally 
 meant " boy." Afterwards it was used for a serv- 
 ing man. And the degradation of the word attests 
 the fact that the serving man was commonly re- 
 garded by his aristocratic master as a rascal. A 
 villain is worse than a knave ; but " villa " is 
 *' farm " ; a " villain " is a person employed about 
 a farm, a peasant. Our word " boor," a clumsy, 
 underbred person, is the word " Boer " with which 
 South African affairs have made you famihar, 
 and means farmer. Was it everywhere understood 
 that pro-Boers were people who took the side of a 
 handful of farmers against an Empire.'' 
 
 Guard yourselves from the idols of the market- 
 
156 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 place in the sphere of religion. What is religion? 
 Here we are actually redeeming the word from 
 lower uses. We are witnessing, for once, the eman- 
 cipation of a word. There was a time when a re- 
 ligious person was one bound under monastic vows ; 
 when a religious house meant a convent or a mon- 
 astery ; when to enter into religion was not to yield 
 the heart to the Purifier of hearts and the will to 
 the Will that governs the universe, but was to 
 enter some monkish or cloistered order. Re-ligo is 
 to bind. Religion is that which binds man to God, 
 and binding man to Him binds man to man the 
 wide world over in bonds of everlasting brother- 
 hood. Never let it mean less than that to you. 
 
 What is " the Word of God "? People use the 
 phrase to describe the Bible. The Bible is not 
 the Word of God. If you will use the word Bible 
 in place of the " Word " or the " Word of the 
 Lord," you will see what confusion of thought is 
 here. Open the first chapter of Jeremiah : " Now 
 the Bible came unto me, saying, Jeremiah, what 
 seest thou.'^ " Absurd; the Bible was not in exist- 
 ence. Open the first chapter of John's Gospel: 
 " In the beginning was the Bible, and the Bible was 
 with God and the Bible was God " ! It makes non- 
 sense. The " Word " is the living thought and 
 eternal purpose of our God. The Bible is a col- 
 lection of Books, a literature, indeed, growing out 
 of the revelation of the Word of God to inspired 
 men. It contains not the record, but a record of 
 revelation, the most priceless, the most immortal. 
 
 " Inspired men " — ^but what is Inspiration ? In 
 
IDOLS OF THE MARKET-PLACE 157 
 
 " the meaning Imposed according to the apprehen- 
 sion of the vulgar " it is a process whereby God 
 secures miraculous freedom from mistakes to those 
 to whom the Word Is revealed. " Do you believe 
 in the inspiration of the Bible writers?" Yes; 
 with all my heart and with all my head I do ! 
 " Then you believe that all they said and did was 
 infallibly safeguarded from error ? " I should be 
 ashamed to believe anything so foolish. Inspira- 
 tion is breathing in. In religious use, it is the 
 breathing In of God's Spirit. In actual experience 
 it is the excitement, the reinforcement, and the sus- 
 tenance of our spirits by the flowing in of the 
 Spirit of God. 
 
 All this is very simple. Yet it is not difficult 
 to see how, in Bacon's further division, words 
 " plainly force and overrule the understanding." 
 We could express it in stralghter, stronger words. 
 We allow ourselves to be bullied by words. We go 
 through life almost frightened out of our own 
 seven senses by words. " I am ashamed to think 
 how we capitulate to names and badges," says 
 Emerson; but the way In which we capitulate to 
 high-sounding words constitutes a more shameful 
 surrender of our self-respect. Have you forgot- 
 ten a once popular novel in which figures 
 a pious and pompous old gentleman who can 
 find a Greek or Latin word five syllables long to 
 label off every original thought In its proper cate- 
 gory of ancient heresies.? No suggestion can be 
 made touching upon the sphere of religion with- 
 out this prolix defender of the faith denouncing 
 
158 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 it as Neo-pelagianism or anthropomorphism or 
 something as interesting, greatly to the encour- 
 agement of free discussion, as you can well be- 
 lieve. In common life we have allowed ourselves to 
 be bullied in just that way. 
 
 How many of you used to turn white at the word 
 " evolution "? Not so many years have passed 
 since an ex-president of the Baptist Union of 
 Great Britain told from the Baptist Union plat- 
 form a story about a godly old woman who com- 
 plained that her minister was always talking about 
 some evil lotion, and she didn't want any lotion at 
 all ; she wanted to hear about Jesus ! Did the 
 members of the Union Assembly, who laughed and 
 cheered and piously assented to the superior claims 
 of Jesus over an " evil lotion," know that evolution 
 is unfolding, the unfolding of the complex from 
 the simple, the ascent through orderly, successive 
 stages? Of course they knew. And you know, if 
 you will but use your knowledge, that never a 
 mother amongst you has watched the slow awaken- 
 ing of baby's intelligence, as the child has learned 
 the use of " I " and " me," without finding her 
 heart grow more tender still in its thankfulness 
 over this process of evolution. Why should you 
 allow yourself to be bullied by a word.^* 
 
 We have allowed the word " rationalist " to be- 
 come the exclusive property of men who doubt or 
 deny. It may be too late to get our own back 
 again. We have been bullied out of our pos- 
 sessions. But we are rationalists ! I would have 
 you throw scorn on the notion that our religion 
 
IDOLS OF THE MARKET-PLACE 159 
 
 has no reasonable foundation ; that it will not 
 abide the questioning of our intellect; that it can 
 afford no satisfaction to the aroused and trained 
 minds of men. Reason is not infallible. Reason 
 is not all. But the Autocrat of the Breakfast 
 Table is right, and we ought to rejoice in it, not 
 deplore it : " The active mind of the century is 
 tending more and more to two poles, Rome and 
 Reason, the sovereign Church or the free soul, 
 authority or personality, God in us or God in 
 our masters." And he is right when he adds that, 
 " though a man may, by accident, stand half-way 
 between these two points, he must look one way 
 or the other." There let us take our manly stand 
 — ^by the side of reason, and refuse to be bullied by 
 a word ! 
 
 These idols of the market-place, according to 
 Bacon, throw all into confusion, and lead men 
 into " numberless empty controversies and idle 
 fancies." I should think so ! When Laban and 
 Jacob were reconciled, after a hot pursuit and a 
 stormy meeting, they set up a heap of stones as 
 a memorial of the compact of peace they made and 
 the oath of friendship which they swore. Laban 
 called that mute witness Jegar-sahadutha ; but 
 Jacob called it Galeed. This is one of the historic 
 facts which have helped to preserve my faith in 
 the essential sanity of human nature, — the fact 
 that they did not immediately fall to sword-play, 
 they and all that were with them ! The two words 
 mean the same thing: one is Hebrew, the other 
 Aramaic. But I am sure that we could have 
 
160 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 fought like Kilkenny cats over such a profound 
 and solemn distinction. Christians have burnt 
 each other, fully persuaded that all the apostles 
 would have done as they did, for less. That a 
 man should describe a fact, a truth, an aspiration, 
 or an experience, in his o^vn language, and an- 
 other man describe a fact he has seen, a truth he 
 has reahsed, an aspiration which his soul has ut- 
 tered, or an experience which God has given him, 
 in his language, is as good a reason for persecu- 
 tion and for long and bloody wars as almost any 
 other in human history. And we still hate one 
 another for the love of God, and all for differences 
 like those between Jegar-sahadutha and Galeed. 
 According to the Athanasian Creed, which Atha- 
 nasius never wrote, not perhaps according to the 
 creed as it was originally compiled, but accord- 
 ing to the creed as it is repeated in the English 
 tongue, a man will without doubt perish everlast- 
 ingly unless he thinks things which are ever- 
 lastingly unthinkable. Yet I have heard that 
 creed discussed between a reasonable-minded 
 clergyman, who repeated the creed whenever his 
 Church commanded, and a Baptist to whom, as it 
 stands in English, it is merely silly, and for my 
 life I could not tell the difference between them! 
 Dr. Martineau wrote : " A way out of the Trini- 
 tarian Controversy" ; and contended that Trini- 
 tarians and Unitarians have been confused by 
 words ; that they have failed to understand that 
 the object of faith is the same with both; that the 
 Unitarians worship the Father and the Trini- 
 
IDOLS OF THE MARKET-PLACE 161 
 
 tarians the Son, but the Trinitarians mean by the 
 Son precisely what the Unitarians mean by the 
 Father, and, in Martineau's own words, " He who 
 is the Son in one creed is the Father in the 
 other." 
 
 We are warned to begin our controversies al- 
 ways with definitions, and told that if we define 
 before we argue the argument will be short. But 
 our definitions so often need defining. Our lan- 
 guage being what it is, the product of many 
 languages, we often define a word of one origin 
 by words of another meaning just the same thing, 
 without in the least explaining what the thing 
 is. So we think we are thinking when we are only 
 using words. 
 
 This is important from the point of practical 
 morality. It is more important on the ground of 
 Christian charity. We ought to be very sure that 
 we have the exact meaning of one who differs from 
 us when we start to controvert his view. A man 
 writhes under a sense of injustice when something 
 he never meant is ascribed to him because the words 
 he used will cover that meaning. Whenever in 
 controversy two or three meanings are possible 
 in an opponent's words we instinctively fasten 
 upon the one which makes him ridiculous. We do 
 not mean to do it. It is our nature to. Whereas 
 we ought to do exactly the opposite. We ought 
 to assume that he will have used language in a 
 way which is best for his case, not worst. Per- 
 haps this is too much to expect from controver- 
 sialists. Is it too much to expect from Christians? 
 
162 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 If it Is, let us fall back upon a still more ele- 
 mentary precept. 
 
 We ought to refuse to make a man an offender 
 for a word. We ought not to erect words into 
 barriers, if in our hearts we know that the spirit 
 is right. " Peace on earth amongst men of good 
 will " was the message of the angels when Christ 
 was born. Amongst all men of good will, men 
 who see visions and dream dreams of a golden 
 age, who look forward to humanity restored, 
 righteousness established over all the earth, and 
 God glorified, there should be peace. I should like 
 to see a spiritual Freemasonry established amongst 
 men of every creed, clime, and colour who are 
 simply trying to make the world better than they 
 found it. Let that be the test of membership, and 
 that alone. Is this man, according to his light, 
 making an honest try to leave some little corner 
 of the world cleaner and sweeter for those who 
 shall come after him? Then he belongs to our 
 Order, and he is sacred in our eyes. He is a 
 brother to be helped on the way, entitled to the 
 hospitality of our souls, received at night with 
 the salutation of peace, dismissed with a blessing 
 in the morning. Pass, brother, all is well; thou, 
 too, hast the watchword of eternal life ! 
 
 Give me patience while I make one other direct 
 and kindly plea. Cease to build yourself on words. 
 Get at things. Latitudinarians and Platitudi- 
 narians may be agreeable companions for an hour, 
 but they are useless for long journeys and bad 
 weather. Fine words butter no parsnips, says the 
 
IDOLS OF THE MARKET-PLACE 163 
 
 old adage. Get at facts. Is your religion real 
 for the office, the shop, the exchange, the street, 
 and the cafe where you eat your lunch, where 
 nine times out of ten materialism and mammonism 
 hold the field against all comers? How good a 
 man dare you be? Dare you live as Christ's man 
 amongst men who despise His word? And you, 
 in a smug society, whose decorous phrases do not 
 half conceal its deep vulgarity of soul — dare you, 
 my sister, be true to your own gracious woman- 
 hood, coming as an original spirit, bringing with 
 you the breezes that blew on Olivet? Have you, 
 men and women, drawn near to God in speechless, 
 hopeful prayer and consecration? Then your re- 
 ligion shall abide, through all chances and changes 
 shall abide. On a lee shore and in the teeth of 
 the desperate winter gale you shall hold your rud- 
 der true, ride out the storm bravely, and anchor 
 at last in the haven where you would be. Pro- 
 fessions are good ; but the best profession is a self- 
 denying love. Let your prayer be in your deed, 
 and before the long day's work is ended you shall 
 nestle as a tired child in the Father's arms, and 
 be safe from fear of evil. " Not every one that 
 saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the 
 kingdom; but he that doeth the will of My 
 Father." 
 
X 
 
 IDOLS OF THE THEATRE 
 
IDOLS OF THE THEATRE 
 
 " Little children, guard yourselves from idols." 
 
 — I. John v. 21. 
 
 We have come to the last of Bacon's four classes 
 of idols, and to the last sermon of the series. 
 You remember the dictionary definition of " idol " : 
 " any phantom of the brain, or any false appear- 
 ance by which men are led into error or prejudice 
 which prevents impartial observation." In previ- 
 ous sermons we have discussed " Idols of the 
 Tribe," "Idols of the Cave, and "Idols of the 
 Market-place." " Lastly," says Bacon, " there 
 are idols which have immigrated into men's minds 
 from the various dogmas of philosophies, and also 
 from the wrong laws of demonstration. These I 
 call idols of the theatre, because, in my judgment, 
 all the received systems are but so many stage- 
 plays, representing worlds of their own creation 
 after an unreal and scenic fashion." 
 
 It would be absurd for us to attempt to follow 
 Bacon's exposure of the play-acting philosophies 
 which occupied the stage of European thought 
 from the time of Aristotle to his own. Dead 
 Egyptians, drowned on the seashore, would have 
 more life in them to-day than these systems for us. 
 
 167 
 
168 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 But his wholesome scorn for dream-spun worlds, 
 for theories of life which represent no life that 
 ever was lived, does convey a suggestion to us. A 
 touch of healthy contempt for cobwebs would do 
 none of us harm. Cobwebs are unsightly things. 
 The Mrs. Poysers of this world do well to be 
 angry with them. It is of the grace of God if they 
 retain sufficient self-control not to bang the brush 
 about the ears of the slatternly creature who is 
 responsible for them. There is a kind of intoler- 
 ance which Froude finds not intolerable. " What," 
 he demands, " does an ascertained imposture de- 
 serve except to be trampled on and danced on until 
 the very geese take courage and dare to hiss their 
 derision ? " To be sure, the man who sets out to 
 break idols must prepare for consequences. The 
 keepers of the temple will begin to gather stones. 
 The iconoclast must take it as part of the day's 
 work. He must look and laugh at all that. He 
 will have his reward. If the iron enters into his 
 soul it will make him strong. 
 
 A novel of our day, dealing with the religious 
 life of a remote Scottish community, admirably 
 written, with a mastery of local colour, has for its 
 theme the world-old problem of suffering through 
 voluntary renunciation. The minister is made the 
 victim of a false charge. The real wrong-doer is 
 the father of the woman he loves. It is not a 
 criminal charge. No penalty would fall on the 
 father if the blame were affixed to him. There 
 would be scandal, but no more. For the minister 
 such scandal means ruin. He accepts responsi- 
 
IDOLS OF THE THEATRE 169 
 
 bility for an offence which is utterly ahen from his 
 nature, which he is morally incapable of commit- 
 ing. He does this to save the father of the 
 woman who is dear to him. He has to give up 
 his Church. He has to leave the ministry. He 
 quits the country. His life is blasted. In an- 
 other land he tries teaching, for which he is un- 
 fitted, and finally drifts into a poor little book- 
 shop. There he drags out a miserable existence; 
 in his poverty reflecting that they once called him, 
 " the star of the north " ! He dies broken-hearted, 
 the shadow never lifted from his name. The 
 woman lives her life, loveless and alone, dies, pos- 
 sessing nothing but the pathetic memory of a 
 blighted aff'ection for a man who left the country 
 in disgrace. Great harm is done to the cause of 
 religion in that little place. What is gained by 
 any human being? Nothing, absolutely nothing. 
 And surely nothing in this world can make it right 
 for these two lives to be wrecked and the cause 
 of religion shamed in order that a comparatively 
 minor scandal may not befall an old sinner who 
 richly deserves much more ! Neither can anything 
 make it credible that the woman herself would wish 
 the man to renounce her, face obloquy, ruin, and 
 death In exile, to save her father the trivial conse- 
 quences of his wrong-doing. Yet in the story it 
 is clearly intended that we should admire the heroic 
 spirit of self-renunciation by which the man is 
 impelled to his mighty sacrifice. 
 
 Against that admiration I protest as a gross 
 perversion of the ethical sense. Such admiration 
 
170 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 is only possible to people who live in one of these 
 unreal worlds, who have spun cobwebs round their 
 heads and hearts, and have prostrated themselves 
 before an idol of the theatre. Resolved into its 
 constituent elements the theory goes back to the 
 notion that suffering is good in itself and for its 
 own sake, and that there is something virtuous in 
 taking the painful of two possible courses simply 
 because it is painful. Do not believe it. It is not 
 a reality. God does not grudge you your happi- 
 ness. If you can be good without suffering, with- 
 out mortification and renunciation, so much the 
 better. God does not want you to find pain for 
 pain's sake. Pain is to be bravely borne when it 
 cannot be avoided. Suffering is to be accepted 
 heroically when it comes in the way of duty. A 
 spiked cross and a hair shirt, and a " whip of five 
 cords, each with five knots," that number chosen, 
 says Pusey, " because of its sacred character, re- 
 minding me of the five wounds of our Lord," may 
 or may not be useful for the wretched people who 
 have brooded so long over mechanical purity that 
 their minds are a viper's nest of unclean thoughts. 
 And for some of us, longing to be saints yet 
 agonising with temptation, it well may be that the 
 sacrifice of a darling sin is like cutting off the 
 right hand or plucking out the right eye. But 
 there is no virtue in the suffering itself, and no 
 bliss added to the joy of the Eternal. When 
 the Indian fakir sticks a hook through the flesh 
 of his back, has himself suspended from the ceil- 
 ing, and swings round like an old-fashioned roast 
 
IDOLS OF THE THEATRE 171 
 
 before the kitchen fire, he knows no better. And 
 when the pillar saint spends thirty-three years on 
 a column sixty-six feet high, bowing his head, and 
 muttering incantations he calls prayers, it is be- 
 cause he has never known God. 
 
 Behind and beneath these aberrations of piety 
 I have admitted * that a noble instinct may some- 
 times be found, that of the suppression of self in 
 longing for full obedience to the will of God. If 
 that is the point, then it is lovely and of good 
 report. But you know that such is not always 
 the case. Suffering is esteemed good in itself. 
 Tears are supposed to be the outward and visible 
 sign of indwelling piety ; smiles may betoken a 
 worldly frame of mind. I prefer the subtler psy- 
 chology of a novelist whose day is done : " Hypo- 
 crites weep, and you cannot tell their tears from 
 the tears of saints ; but no really bad man ever 
 smiled sweetly yet." Suffering is not good in 
 itself: keep on writing that down in the tablets 
 of your memory. It is only good when it pro- 
 duces good fruit. Do not be afraid of your hap- 
 piness. Laugh and sing and make music. Take 
 up the joy of life with both hands, and fill your 
 heart with it. Guard yourselves from the idols of 
 the theatre, from the morbid belief that misery 
 sanctifies better than joy. Who is it that tells 
 of " The glorious gospel of the blissful God " .'' 
 
 Some phrases of current controversy will bring 
 before us the next idols of the theatre : " Religion 
 is only properly taught when it is taught by au- 
 * See sermon on " All Saints," page 110. 
 
172 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 thorlty." " The only authority which can prop- 
 erly teach religion is the Church." " Reading of 
 Scripture may be actually harmful when the au- 
 thority of the Church is not invoked to expound 
 it." And there are many more of the same sort. 
 You know to what they point. These phrases 
 point to the existence of a mysterious body of men 
 possessed of supernatural powers, like witches 
 and wizards in the old days. They have re- 
 ceived these magical powers in a rite of super- 
 natural significance as witches and wizards re- 
 ceived theirs when they signed the compact 
 with Satan in their blood. This magical power, 
 now taking the form of ability to understand 
 what common men cannot understand, now giv- 
 ing the right to call the kings of earth to heel 
 like a pack of hounds, and now to tinkle a 
 little bell and summon God to appear on what 
 they call an altar, now conferring the right to 
 fumble amongst the heart-strings of delicate girl 
 or wedded wife, and now to dragoon the consciences 
 of men, hanging, drowning, roasting them when 
 they prove recalcitrant — these magical powers 
 have distilled into the souls of sacred persons and 
 are indestructible. Age by age this close cor- 
 poration of wonder-workers has preserved its 
 ranks inviolate. No gross sin affects the magic. 
 A man may be foul with moral corruption, odious, 
 leprous with sin, a brute, an adulterer, a murderer ; 
 but that makes no difference to the magic. He can 
 still " create his Creator," and forgive the sins 
 of better men than himself. This is not a carica- 
 
IDOLS OF THE THEATRE 173 
 
 ture. There is not a line which has not been 
 justified from the works either of Anglo-Catholics 
 or Roman Catholics. And on the whole view I am 
 inclined to regard this doctrine, which, expressed 
 in technical terms, is that of a visible Church, a 
 sacrificing priesthood, and an apostolical suc- 
 cession, as the most colossal idol of the theatre 
 which has ever dominated and abused the minds 
 of men. 
 
 If the notion of apostolical succession were still 
 worth arguing amongst healthy-minded people, if 
 the possibility or impossibility of the magic were 
 waived for a moment, and the question discussed 
 as one of fact : " Have these ill-tempered and 
 arrogant persons in our day inherited such pow- 
 ers by direct and unbroken succession from the 
 Apostles ? " it is difficult to see how anything 
 better could be said than some of the things 
 Macaulay has said. For instance : " We read of 
 sees of the highest dignity openly sold, transferred 
 backwards and forwards by popular tumult, be- 
 stowed sometimes by a profligate woman on her 
 paramour, sometimes by a warlike baron on a kins- 
 man still a stripling. We read of bishops of ten 
 years old, bishops of five years old, of many popes 
 who were mere boys, and who rivalled the frantic 
 dissoluteness of Caligula." And again : " We 
 are at a loss to conceive how any clergyman 
 can feel confident that his orders have come 
 down correctly. Whether he be really a suc- 
 cessor of the Apostles depends on an immense 
 number of such contingencies as these: whether, 
 
174 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 under King Ethelwolf , a stupid priest might not, 
 while baptising several scores of Danish prisoners 
 who had just made their option between the font 
 and the gallows, inadvertently omit to perform the 
 rite on one of these graceless proselytes ; whether in 
 the seventh century, an impostor, who had never 
 received consecration, might not have passed him- 
 self off as a bishop on a rude tribe of Scots; 
 whether a lad of twelve did really, by a ceremony 
 huddled over when he was too drunk to know what 
 he was about, convey the episcopal character to 
 a lad of ten." 
 
 But the average person In the twentieth century 
 will not waste his time upon these historical conun- 
 drums, which only become vital when the possi- 
 bility of the magic is granted. On the contrary, 
 he will declare with the historian that " a priest 
 is no better conjurer than a layman," and all 
 Protestantism is in that protest. This world of 
 visible Church, miraculous sacraments, and super- 
 natural conveyance of esoteric powers is an unreal 
 world, a dream world, a world of cobwebs, a world 
 of fairy-tales less convincing than those of " Peter 
 Pan " ; these doctrines, in Bacon's words, are no 
 more than stage-plays representing worlds of their 
 own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion. 
 And when a mediaeval monk steps out of the four- 
 teenth century into the twentieth, or stalks sol- 
 emnly into the arena of current controversy, and 
 produces the rags and bones with which, five hun- 
 dred years ago, he used to perform conjuring 
 tricks before the astonished gaze of peasants by 
 
IDOLS OF THE THEATRE 175 
 
 the market cross or in a village inn, it should be 
 enough to answer him, " Little children, guard 
 yourselves from idols ! " 
 
 I wish it were possible to leave it there, finding 
 no parallel absurdity for common-sense to brush 
 away within the life of Protestantism. But that 
 is not the case. We have enough idolatry of our 
 own. I will not single out specific doctrines. 
 Rather I would have you see that this great world 
 of ours in which we make theology of such account, 
 the whole round of our life which concerns itself 
 so terribly with beliefs and creeds, is an unreal 
 world, a cobweb, like the rest. 
 
 Think of the tiny volume in which all the say- 
 ings and doings, all the life story of Jesus, could 
 be written. What a volume it would be! In- 
 finitely precious — but how small! Think of the 
 ten thousand times ten thousand ponderous tomes 
 of theology supposed to be evolved from it — moun- 
 tains of divinity, the Matterhorn piled on Mount 
 Blanc, until you sigh for Vesuvius ! Think of the 
 simplicity of the method of Jesus. Contrast it 
 with the over-elaboration of the creeds. I have 
 heard a zealous preacher expound the " Prodigal 
 Son " from a text in " The Song of Songs," but 
 that is elementary compared with the evolution of 
 the Athanasian Creed from the Sermon on the 
 Mount! What was it Jesus came to do.? How 
 did He hope to do it.^* 
 
 He came to make us good. To make a few 
 more good men and good women, in the assurance 
 that each one would make more, and so goodness 
 
176 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 would grow and spread as long as the world en- 
 dured — that was His purpose. And His method? 
 He called God " Father " ; He never called Him 
 by any other name. He thought that if men and 
 women could be brought to see and feel that they 
 were the children of God, could be brought into 
 filial, loving relations with their Father, no more 
 was needed. They would then live as good chil- 
 dren should, doing the things which were well- 
 pleasing to such a Father, in harmony with them- 
 selves and with one another. That is all. Do you 
 think Jesus would have valued the armour-plated 
 creeds with which His followers afterwards at- 
 tempted to define Father, Son, and Spirit.? Nay, 
 I ask you another question ; I ask it in all rever- 
 ence and beg you to think about it: do you think 
 Jesus would have understood those creeds .f* I do 
 not. I think that they would have been so en- 
 tirely alien from His world, a world where lilies 
 in the field are more splendid than kings in their 
 glory, where httle children are of the kingdom 
 of heaven, and love is the sole test of discipleship, 
 that He would have felt them as something hard, 
 mechanical, distressful, something that jars upon 
 the simplicity and loveliness of a child's relation 
 with the Father-God. Jesus was not a theologian. 
 But that is not a condemnation of Jesus. And 
 when men tell us, as they tell us now, that we 
 must not hope to find the fully-developed doctrines 
 of the Incarnation, the Atonement, and justifica- 
 tion by faith in the teaching of Jesus, we answer: 
 " That may be so much the worse for the doc- 
 
IDOLS OF THE THEATRE 177 
 
 trines in question, but we certainly have not yet 
 wandered so far in a world of dreams that we can 
 be persuaded Jesus did not preach the Gospel, or 
 that it has waited for theology to repair omissions 
 in the Christianity of Christ." 
 
 Let us understand where we are. Definitions 
 and deductions, the subtleties of moral philosophy, 
 and the cast-iron logic of creeds, are supremely 
 interesting. I agree with Mr. Chesterton that the 
 farther removed the debate is from practical life 
 the more wildly exciting it becomes. For mag- 
 nificent, vital joy of conflict, when mind strikes 
 fire from clashing mind, and the spirit is stirred 
 by divine passion, give us a grand, fierce argu- 
 ment about something that does not matter two 
 straws to anybody. Such discussions are immense. 
 The question as to how many angels can dance on 
 the point of a needle is absorbing. Jaded persons 
 in search of a new thrill may turn to it again and 
 again, and find it an inexhaustible resource. 
 These things are magnificent. But they are not 
 religion. 
 
 Unless I forgive my brother his trespasses 
 against me, God cannot forgive my trespasses: 
 that is religion. Unless I attain to purity of 
 heart I cannot see God: that is religion. Unless 
 I approach the kingdom of heaven with the mod- 
 esty, the teachableness, the sensitiveness of ideal 
 childhood I cannot enter in: that is religion. 
 Unless I am a peace-maker I cannot be recog- 
 nised as a child of God: that is religion. Unless 
 I am merciful I do not see how I can hope for 
 
178 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 mercy : that is religion, too. Have you the fruits 
 of the Spirit? The fruits of the Spirit are love, 
 joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, 
 faithfulness, meekness, self-control. This is reli- 
 gion; all the rest is mere idolatry. Oh, men and 
 women, what shadows we are and what shadows 
 we pursue! As little children, guard yourselves 
 from idols. For where men and women are saved 
 from materialism, selfishness, and vice; where the 
 man of unclean lips sings the songs of the re- 
 deemed, and he of corrupt imaginings enters into 
 the joy of our Lord; where the peace of God which 
 passeth all understanding keeps the tremulous 
 heart stayed on Him in quiet trust, and the chil- 
 dren of this world are visibly living in the strength 
 and love of God, there Christ is, and there is His 
 kingdom, and His power, and His glory, forever 
 and forever. 
 
XI 
 
 THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS 
 
 (A sermon for Thanksgiving Day) 
 
XI 
 
 THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS 
 
 (A sermon for Thanks g'w'mg Day) 
 
 " Who hath despised the day of small things ?" 
 
 — Zechariah rv. 10. 
 
 Who hath despised the day of small things? The 
 question is old. The answer is easy. The man 
 who has eyes to see, yet remains blind; who has 
 ears to hear, yet is deaf; the man who has neither 
 brains to ponder, heart to feel, nor soul to project 
 itself into the invisible, — he has despised the day 
 of small things. In one word, the man who goes 
 through life praying — by his actions, of course; 
 man's best prayers are in his deeds — ^who goes 
 through life praying in good Shakespearian 
 phrases that the world will write him down an 
 ass — he has despised the day of small things. But 
 no thinker ever did. Carlyle defined genius as an 
 infinite capacity for taking pains. All things 
 taken into account, it is difficult to believe that 
 a worse definition of genius has ever been given. 
 Herbert Spencer is right when he says that pre- 
 cisely the contrary is true, and that a characteris- 
 tic of genius is that it does easily and without 
 much effort what the man without genius can 
 181 
 
182 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 scarcely do at all. Yet genius does often betray 
 itself by infinite capacity for taking pains over 
 the unspeakably minute; and the reverent deter- 
 mination of the man of science to know " the 
 secret of the weed's poor heart " stands as an 
 eternal rebuke to the flippant idleness which de- 
 spises the day of small things. 
 
 Since the dawn of thinking life upon this earth 
 the starlit spaces of the night have moved the 
 wonder and the worship of mankind. When primi- 
 tive man considered the heavens which were the 
 work of God's hand, the moon and the stars which 
 He had made, his soul melted within him. To-day 
 the brain reels in contemplation of the vast forces 
 and fires, suns and stellar systems, which sweep 
 into the ken of modern astronomy. And yet it 
 is literally true to say that the climax of marvel 
 in this marvellous hour is reached when we con- 
 sider the world on world, the stars and systems, 
 which move with a velocity equal to that of the 
 stars in their courses and with an order like their 
 own, in the grain of dust that floats in the sun- 
 beam or molecule of water that nestles in the bosom 
 of a dew-drop. *' Canst thou bind the sweet in- 
 fluence of the Pleiades or loosen the bands of 
 Orion.?" was the question of the ancient poet; 
 and man confessed his impotence. Now he has 
 turned from the glories above, despairing of com- 
 passing their remoteness even by his imagination; 
 and, lo, the infinitesimally small, the infinitely tiny, 
 the atom which for hundreds of years has defied 
 analysis or further division, has been broken up, 
 
THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS 183 
 
 and there he has found, not merely a microcosm, 
 a world in little, but a universe which, in its inex- 
 pressible minuteness, is more astounding still. 
 There — in the speck which eye cannot see, which 
 only the most powerful microscope can discern, in 
 the atom so tiny that it can only be expressed 
 by the symbols of mathematics, not less than in 
 the blue vault of heaven above us, we have watched 
 " the Pleiades rising through the mellow shade," 
 or looked on " great Orion sloping slowly to the 
 west." 
 
 Some years ago a writer of our own time de- 
 scribed in popular and picturesque phrases the 
 changes brought about in every department of 
 human life by what he calls the manufacture of 
 power, and he discussed with great vivacity in his 
 book, " The New Epoch," developments possible 
 in the future. He knew nothing of radium. Yet 
 he saw that the new epoch created by man's power 
 to control and utilise some of the energies of the 
 universe had barely begun. Now the man of 
 science who undertakes to explain to us as much 
 of the mysteries of radium as he himself compre- 
 hends allows himself to dream dreams of a future 
 whose achievements shall make the conquests of the 
 past seem slight and poor. He conceives of the 
 Kberation of such power, now imprisoned in mat- 
 ter, as, when it is yoked to the service of man, 
 shall effect more and greater changes in the whole 
 round of life than those brought about by steam 
 and electricity. He tells us that " the greatest 
 quantity of heat energy obtainable by chemical 
 
184 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 means is that obtained from the combustion of 
 hydrogen in oxygen. The total heat spontane- 
 ously given off by a definite weight of radium would 
 amount, before it was used up, to thirty thousand 
 times as much as that obtainable by burning an 
 equal amount of hydrogen." And as hydrogen 
 is four times as productive as coal, it follows that 
 radium is one hundred and twenty thousand times 
 as productive, or, to be definite, that a pound of 
 radium would do the work of fifty tons of coal. 
 Last year it was stated that the total quantity 
 of radium prepared and in the hands of experi- 
 menters did not amount to more than sixty grains. 
 So that while there is little hope of the material 
 becoming cheap and accessible, yet our man of 
 science, seeing visions and dreaming dreams not 
 less remarkable than those of ancient prophets, 
 does conceive of the possibility of learning from 
 a study of radium how to set at liberty the enor- 
 mous stores of energy which the atoms of common 
 substances now keep locked up within themselves. 
 And he adds : " When this is accomplished, the 
 human race will be able to obtain, from some per- 
 haps common and economical material, many thou- 
 sands of times the power we get at present out 
 of a corresponding weight of coal." 
 
 Such fresh use of apparently illimitable power 
 would, as you can see, introduce fresh changes, 
 correspondingly important, vast, age-long, into 
 the operations and potentialities of capital, the 
 distribution of population, the meaning and 
 purpose of democracy, the nature of education, 
 
THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS 185 
 
 the functions of government, and all the rela- 
 tions of man to man the wide world over. Yet 
 when you consider, not only the small quantity 
 of radium in the hands of the men of science, 
 but remember also that the value of it is not 
 in itself but in the knowledge it brings, the 
 suggestions it makes, the discoveries to which it 
 leads, when you consider that within the micro- 
 scopic atom of radium two hundred thousand cor- 
 puscles are moving in orbits like the stars, at a 
 speed thirty thousand times greater than that of 
 a flying bullet, with a striking energy, weight for 
 weight, nine hundred million times greater, and 
 when you suffer yourself once more to dream of 
 the possibilities of world-conquest hidden here, you 
 ask once again with an awe the Hebrew prophet 
 never knew, " Who hath despised the day of small 
 things ? " And the answer we know ! 
 
 Nearer to hand, and within the knowledge of 
 everybody who reads anything at all, is the story 
 of man's conflict with the ills to which his flesh 
 is heir. In Dr. E. Ray Lankester's brilliant little 
 book, " The Kingdom of Man," there is a passage 
 very suggestive in any consideration of this text. 
 He says: 
 
 " The knowledge of the causation of disease by 
 bacterial and protozoic parasites is a thing which 
 has come into existence, under our very eyes and 
 hands, within the last fifty years. The parasite, 
 and much of its nature and history, has been dis- 
 covered in the case of splenic fever, leprosy, phthi- 
 sis, diphtheria, typhoid fever, glanders, cholera, 
 
186 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 plague, lockjaw, gangrene, septic poisoning (of 
 wounds), malaria, sleeping sickness, and some other 
 diseases which are fatal to. man. In some cases 
 the knowledge obtained has led to a control of 
 the attack or of the poisonous action of the para- 
 site. Antiseptic surgery, by defeating the poison- 
 ous parasite, has saved not only thousands upon 
 thousands of lives, but has removed an incalculable 
 amount of pain." Once again, therefore, we are 
 asked, " Who shall despise the day of small 
 things?" But Dr. Ray Lankester has another 
 question to ask : " Why should we be contented 
 to wait long years, even centuries, for this control, 
 when we can have it in a few years.'' " And he 
 goes so far as to assert: 
 
 " Within the past few years the knowledge of 
 the causes of disease has become so far advanced 
 that It is a matter of practical certainty that, 
 by the unstinted application of known methods of 
 investigation and consequent controlling action, 
 all epidemic disease could be abolished within a 
 period so short as fifty years. It is merely a ques- 
 tion of the employment of the means at our com- 
 mand. Where there is one man of first-rate intel- 
 ligence employed in detecting the disease-produc- 
 ing parasites, their special conditions of life, and 
 the way to bring them to an end, there should 
 be a thousand. It should be as much the purpose 
 of civilised governments to protect their citizens in 
 this respect as It Is to provide defence against 
 human aggression. Yet it is a fact that this 
 immensely important control of a great and con- 
 
THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS 187 
 
 stant danger and injury to mankind is left to 
 the unorganised inquiries of a few enthusiasts. So 
 little is the matter understood or appreciated that 
 those who are responsible for the welfare of States, 
 with the rarest exceptions, do not even know that 
 such protection is possible, and others again are 
 so far from an intelligent view as to its im- 
 portance that they actually entertain the opinion 
 that it would be a good thing were there more 
 disease in order to get rid of the weakly surplus 
 population ! " 
 
 For myself, I cannot but rejoice that this coun- 
 try is leading the nations of the world in such 
 redemptive enterprise. On this Thanksgiving 
 Sunday I give thanks, as with a personal joy and 
 personal pride, in the munificence which equips for 
 the service of humanity the best thought and 
 knowledge of our time. And I call upon you all 
 to praise God for the knowledge He opens to our 
 gaze, the spirit which dominates our research, and 
 the consecration alike of wealth and of genius to 
 the well-being of our fellows. Mazzini was right, 
 and we must go on repeating his words : " We wor- 
 ship God by serving man." And when I contem- 
 plate all that may be involved for the service of 
 universal man by worship such as this, though 
 there may be some dark spots upon the world's 
 horizon, yet I am very sure that the light that 
 I perceive, it is the rosy dawn of day. 
 
 We must not grow weary of repeating that 
 every kingdom which Science makes her own, 
 Christianity has to claim for Him who is Lord of 
 
188 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 all. The Gospel has nothing to lose and every- 
 thing to gain from the advances of Science. The 
 higher our knowledge mounts the deeper will be 
 our faith in God. So, having gone so far this 
 morning, let us go one step further, and give 
 thanks for every indication that the new knowledge 
 tends widely to become less hostile and in many 
 ways to become designedly and deliberately ser- 
 viceable to the old faith. Dr. E. Ray Lankester, 
 to quote that fine book once more, has said : " It 
 should, I think, be recognised that there is no 
 essential antagonism between the scientific spirit 
 and what is called the religious sentiment. ' Re- 
 ligion,' said Bishop Creighton, ' means the knowl- 
 edge of our destiny and of the means of fulfilling 
 it.' We can say no more and no less of Science. 
 Men of Science seek, in all reverence, to discover 
 the Almighty, the Everlasting. They claim sym- 
 pathy and friendship with those who, like them- 
 selves, have turned away from the more material 
 struggles of human life, and have set their hearts 
 and minds on the knowledge of the Eternal." Not 
 less emphatically does Sir Oliver Lodge rebuke the 
 assumptions of those who believe or profess to be- 
 lieve that Science can make away with the free 
 play of the human soul or banish God from His 
 own universe. " If a man of Science seeks to 
 dogmatise concerning the Emotions and the Will, 
 and asserts that he can reduce them to atomic 
 forces and motions, he is exhibiting the smallness 
 of his conceptions, and gibbeting himself as a 
 laughing-stock to future generations." While 
 
THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS 189 
 
 Lord Kelvin, going further than his colleagues, 
 has pronounced the attempt to be " utterly ab- 
 surd." " Scientific thought," he says, " is com- 
 pelled to accept the idea of Creative Power. Forty 
 years ago I asked Liebig, walking somewhere in 
 the country, if he believed that the grass and 
 flowers which we saw around us grew by mere 
 chemical forces. He answered, ' No ; no more than 
 I could believe that a book of botany describing 
 them could grow by mere chemical forces.' " And 
 the conclusion of the whole matter seems to lie 
 in the story of Kepler and the salad : " Yester- 
 day," he says, " when weary with writing, and my 
 mind quite dusty with considering these atoms, 
 I was called to supper, and a salad I had asked 
 for was set before me. ' It seems, then,' said I 
 aloud, ' that if pewter dishes, leaves of lettuce, 
 grains of salt, drops of vinegar and oil, and slices 
 of eggs, had been floating about in the air from 
 all eternity, it might at last happen by chance that 
 there would come a salad.' ' Yes,' says my wife, 
 ' but not so nice and well-dressed as this of mine 
 is ! ' " If it requires intelligence to make so nice 
 a salad, may we not rest fairly confident that the 
 universe has not been produced without it ? 
 
 The stuffs out of which the stars are made is 
 the matter of our earth and atmosphere. The 
 order which is heaven's first law is operative in a 
 myriad of stars whirling inside the speck of dust 
 you brush off your coat, and the God who is 
 transcendent in the universe is immanent in the 
 roseleaf or the snowflake. If in the world of 
 
190 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 politics the eighteenth century called a new world 
 into existence to redress the balance of the old, 
 the twentieth will call yet further upon the micro- 
 scope to restore the balance of sanity which the 
 telescope disturbed; the infinitely small will set at 
 rest doubts raised by the infinitely great, and we 
 shall have our answer ready to the seer's question, 
 *' Who hath despised the day of small things ? " 
 
 Shall we call upon this metropolis to answer 
 the old question? This week has seen a celebra- 
 tion peculiar to the city of New York. Last Mon- 
 day flags were flying in our streets and at night 
 patriotic speeches were made ; at banquets in great 
 hotels, to the sound of rolling drums, men in the 
 uniform of the Continental Army evoked mem- 
 ories of the heroic dead. You were celebrating the 
 evacuation of the city by the British one hundred 
 and twenty-four years ago. At that time the 
 eff'ective population of New York City had been 
 reduced to ten thousand. Ruin had stared the 
 community in the face, as indeed, destruction had 
 seemed to unseeing eyes to hover round the head 
 of the new-born nation. But George Washington 
 had spoken his deathless word, which, like the shot 
 which the embattled farmers fired, was to be heard 
 right round the world : " We will erect a standard 
 to which the wise and good may repair ; the event 
 is in the hands of God." Here is the event to-day, 
 the United States of America, with territories 
 comprised within a single one of its all but half 
 a hundred States greater than all over which the 
 Roman eagles ever flew, with its eighty millions of 
 
THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS 191 
 
 freemen, its wealth, its education, its religion, and 
 wherever its flag is flying the home of liberty. The 
 event was in the hands of God. To His name the 
 praise and the honour and the glory forever ! 
 
 Who hath despised the day of small thing's.'' 
 When William Bradford, Governor of the Plym- 
 outh settlement, issued his proclamation for the 
 first Thanksgiving Day, the men and women who 
 had landed from the Mayflower were reduced to 
 fifty. Through the first terrible winter, cold, 
 hunger, hardship, and disease had done their cruel 
 work. Every other day a grave was digged, and 
 the survivors dared fix no stone nor raise a mound, 
 lest the Indians should see the graves increase and 
 be emboldened to attack those who remained. 
 Death by slow starvation or by lingering disease 
 or by the arrows of the savages had seemed the 
 fate which waited the pioneers of civil and reli- 
 gious liberty. But they believed in the Living 
 God. They knew that although clouds and dark- 
 ness are round about Him, righteousness and jus- 
 tice are the foundation of His throne. They knew 
 that this universe is bottomed on everlasting right- 
 eousness. They knew that men must do right in 
 scorn of consequence for no reason on this God's 
 earth except that it is God's earth and that right 
 is right. They knew that God is forever and 
 forever on the side of righteousness, and they de- 
 sired above all things beside to put themselves 
 on the side of God. There is a rope manufactory 
 in Plymouth which recalls a phrase in the old 
 chronicle about a rope-walk established very early 
 
192 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 in the history of the settlement. The historian 
 says of the men of that day : " They twisted their 
 consciences into the ropes, knowing that upon 
 those strands many a heroic life depended." There 
 stands the secret of heroic living self-confessed. 
 You are to twist your consciences into your busi- 
 ness, into your finance — not frenzied, but faithful, 
 — into your commerce — not cruel and corrupt, but 
 sustaining, life-giving, fruitful, — into your citi- 
 zenship, into your politics, into the simple duties 
 which man from man demands, — you are to twist 
 your consciences into such binding ties as these, 
 for upon them the life of the nation depends. It 
 is thus that the little one becomes a thousand and 
 the small world-great, while the invisible forces 
 of pity, love, and gentleness show themselves 
 charged with the omnipotence of God. 
 
 We stride the river daily at its spring, 
 Nor in our childish thoughtlessness foresee 
 
 What myriad vassal streams shall tribute bring, 
 How like an equal it shall greet the sea. 
 
 O small beginnings, ye are great and strong, 
 Based on a faithful heart and weariless brain ! 
 
 Ye build the future fair, ye conquer wrong, 
 Ye earn the crown, and wear it not in vain. 
 
 This were no true Thanksgiving Day if we did 
 not consecrate ourselves once more to the service of 
 our country in the name of the Lord of Hosts. 
 That which has been gained, do you guard. There 
 must be no yielding of the foundation truths of 
 Christianity. On those foundations the great- 
 
THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS 193 
 
 ness of this land reposes. There must be no sur- 
 render of the spirituality of our faith. Through 
 spirituality and faith you hold those liberties of 
 your country with which Christ has made you 
 free. Empires may fall, thrones totter to the 
 dust, vast territory become no more valuable than 
 so much howling desert, and cities become a wilder- 
 ness of brick and stone — if a nation forgets God, 
 and guarding with battleship and statecraft calls 
 not Him to guard who neither slumbers nor sleeps. 
 In God we trust. And you, men and women who 
 love your country, to whom a blade of grass from 
 her ample prairies speaks a poem of her great- 
 ness, to whom her welfare is a matter of eternal 
 consequence and her liberty the divinest gift of 
 God, you who are Americans and patriots indeed, 
 I pray you, — Seek in communion with the Christ 
 of Gethsemane, of Calvary, and of the Resurrec- 
 tion morning a fresh baptism of consecration, so 
 that in this day of material achievement and ma- 
 terial ambition you may rise to the height of the 
 splendid privilege to which the God of your fathers 
 has called you, the privilege of safeguarding and 
 fostering a greatness which is not mere bigness, 
 and of keeping the soul of the nation alive. 
 
XII 
 A PATCHWORK CHARACTER 
 
XII 
 
 A PATCHWORK CHARACTER 
 
 " Let not then your good be evil spoken of." 
 
 — Romans xiv. 16. 
 
 The most charitable thing that any charitable 
 person can do is — avoid all appearance of charity. 
 The most loving thing that any loving soul can do 
 is — manifest love on every possible occasion. 
 What, then, is the essential and permanent dis- 
 tinction between " charity " and " love " which 
 makes it charity to conceal your " charity," but 
 love to show your " love " ? 
 
 A sad story is revealed when this question is 
 answered, for the word " charity " has been for 
 many centuries the English translation of the New 
 Testament word which is now always rendered 
 " love." All that you mean by " love," all that 
 the New Testament means by it, the word 
 *' charity " was intended to convey. Yet to-day 
 " charity " is all but hateful — is, in pious circles, 
 a sanctimonious thing which one must be very 
 charitable indeed to tolerate, and elsewhere repre- 
 sents often the last humiliation of failure and pov- 
 erty. The acceptance of charity by the toiling 
 poor is a landmark in their lives. It is the end 
 197 
 
198 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 of struggle, the exhaustion of hope, the surrender 
 of manhood and womanhood and self-respect. The 
 systematic doling out of charity, continued 
 through long generations, has sapped the moral 
 vigour of a thousand village communities in any 
 country of the Old World. Charity, unlike mercy, 
 is twice baneful ; it chills the heart of him that 
 gives and him that takes. It has ministered to 
 the insolent pride and self-sufficiency of the rich; 
 it has fostered a degrading servility on the part 
 of the poor. 
 
 And yet this word " charity," let us say again, 
 was, until the Revised Version appeared, the Eng- 
 lish equivalent of the great New Testament word 
 " love " ! The original of it, in Trench's well- 
 known phrase, was " born in the bosom of revealed 
 religion." It was unknown in classic usage. The 
 recognised words for *' love " seemed all too poor 
 to describe the state of soul which Christianity 
 creates and maintains. Jerome, in making his 
 translation of the Greek Scriptures into Latin, 
 was puzzled as to the word which he should use 
 for it. When he chose, his inadequate words en- 
 tirely missed the point of the New Testament 
 meaning. One of them, " caritas," coming into 
 English through the French, was adopted by our 
 translators as " charity." In the course of the 
 ages it came to denote mainly the giving of alms ; 
 and the giving of alms passed into the formal, 
 unloving thing which has made the saying, " as 
 cold as charity," the supreme illustration in our 
 language of the hopeless ruin and beggary of a 
 
A PATCHWORK CHARACTER 199 
 
 word. Think what charity must have been, how 
 uncharitable, how callous, how inhuman, before 
 this great divine passion of love could have won 
 for itself the eternal obloquy, " as cold as 
 charity " ! 
 
 Here is one single illustration of the wisdom 
 of the Apostle's exhortation, " Let not your good 
 be evil spoken of." It is not the one he had in 
 mind. He thought of the difficulties which might 
 arise out of the new grand freedom of the Christian 
 from the hampering limitations of the Jewish cere- 
 monial law. He begged the men who were rejoic- 
 ing in their new-found liberty not to use it in 
 such a way as to bring scandal on the Christian 
 name, not to let the priceless boon be evil spoken 
 of. But the words are wide — as wide as they are 
 wise. It is seldom enough for us to be good and 
 to do good. We must be good in a good way. We 
 must do a nice thing nicely, and a gracious thing 
 graciously. We must make virtue beautiful and 
 lovable. 
 
 The unfortunate thing is that we do not always 
 find goodness beautiful. We often find it take 
 unpleasant forms. Sometimes it becomes objec- 
 tionable in its obtrusiveness. It is censorious and 
 cantankerous. It gets itself evil spoken of by 
 those who are most indebted to it. Some time ago 
 the English Spectator reproduced from The 
 Ladies' Home Journal an amazing epitaph said 
 to be yet legible in a Cumberland churchyard. 
 Let me read it to you: 
 
200 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 Here lie the bodies of 
 
 Thomas Bond and Mary his wife. 
 
 She was temperate, chaste and charitable, 
 
 But 
 She was proud, peevish and passionate. 
 
 She was an affectionate wife and a tender mother, 
 
 But 
 
 Her husband and child, whom she loved, 
 
 Seldom saw her countenance without a disgusting frown ; 
 
 Whilst she received visitors whom she despised with an 
 
 endearing smile. 
 
 Her behaviour was discreet towards strangers 
 
 But 
 
 Imprudent in her family. 
 
 Abroad her conduct was influenced by good breeding, 
 
 But 
 
 At home by ill-temper. 
 
 She was a professed enemy of flattery, and was seldom known 
 
 to praise or commend ; 
 
 But 
 
 The talents in which she principally excelled 
 
 "Were difference of opinion and discovering flaws and 
 
 imperfections. 
 
 She was an admirable economist, 
 
 And, without prodigality, 
 
 Dispensed plenty to every person in her family, 
 
 But 
 Would sacrifice their eyes to a farthing candle. 
 
 She sometimes made her husband happy with her good 
 
 qualities, 
 
 But 
 
 Much more frequently miserable with her many failings. 
 
A PATCHWORK CHARACTER 201 
 
 Insomuch that in thirty years' cohabitation 
 
 He often lamented that, maugre all her virtues, 
 
 He had not on the whole enjoyed two years of matrimonial 
 
 comfort. 
 
 At length, 
 
 Finding she had lost the affection of her husband, as well as 
 
 the regard of her neighbours, family disputes having 
 
 been divulged by servants, 
 
 She died of vexation, July 20, 1768, 
 
 Aged 48 years. 
 
 Her worn-out husband survived her four months and two days, 
 
 and departed this life November 23, 1768, 
 
 In the 54th year of his age. 
 
 William Bond, brother to the deceased, 
 
 Erected this stone as a 
 
 "Weekly monitor to the wives of this parish. 
 
 That they may avoid the infamy of having 
 
 Their memories handed down to posterity with a patchwork 
 
 character. 
 
 It must be admitted that there is little good- 
 ness or grace in the inscription. This brother-in- 
 law seems by no means to have been an ideal per- 
 son. We are under no misapprehension as to his 
 view of Mrs. Bond. All that is needed to complete 
 our happiness is that we should know Mrs. Bond's 
 opinion of him. And if the dead husband was at 
 all like his interesting brother, the poor lady had 
 not too easy a time of it herself. But her type 
 is not unknown. George Eliot knew her well, so 
 did Elizabeth Barrett Browning — and so do most 
 of us. It would not be proper to say that she 
 
202 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 brings to mind a certain New England type — and 
 so it shall not be said. I call you to witness that 
 I have not quoted any one of the charming books 
 by Mary Wilkins or Kate Douglas Wiggin, nor 
 referred in the most distant way to the elder of 
 the two aunts in " Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm." 
 Yet Mrs. Bond is not simply feminine! There is 
 no sex in sin. Even in the unhappy accomplish- 
 ments which are supposed to be all womanish, 
 gossip, for instance, and nagging, men are far 
 and away the greatest offenders. Men gossip 
 more, gossip worse, and about worse subjects than 
 women ever do. While, when it comes to nagging, 
 women simply have not got it in them to compete 
 with the persistence and thoroughness of men. So 
 we will not, we men and women, throw stones at 
 each other gathered round the grave of poor Mrs. 
 Bond. Rather, as The Spectator writer suggests, 
 in a fine phrase borrowed from Robert Louis 
 Stevenson, we will consider this character as a 
 beacon lighted on a perilous seaboard to warn us 
 off the rocks. For look at these anomalies again: 
 She was a faithful wife, a good mother, an ad- 
 mirable housekeeper; she was courteous with her 
 neighbours, and charitable to the poor. Yet she 
 was hated by her husband, disliked by her neigh- 
 bours, by the servants, by her relatives, and she 
 wore herself out in strife and vexation of spirit. 
 Possessed of the essentials of goodness, can you 
 call her anything but good.^^ Peevish, passionate, 
 censorious, do you wonder that her good was evil 
 spoken of, even by those, probably, who were not 
 
A PATCHWORK CHARACTER 203 
 
 any better than she was, and certainly not any 
 better than they should be? 
 
 We know how this type repelled one of the great 
 women whom I have just named, a woman with 
 eyes to see, brains to comprehend, and heart to 
 appreciate human goodness. We know how Mrs. 
 Browning sketched her " Mrs. Bond " in " Aurora 
 Leigh." The description of the aunt who is re- 
 ceiving her orphan niece into her home, the woman 
 with the " close mild mouth, a little soured about 
 the ends through speaking niggardly half- 
 truths," with the " eyes of no colour, that once 
 might have smiled but never have forgot them- 
 selves in smiling," is true to life. So is the gen- 
 eralisation, " She thanked God and sighed — some 
 people always sigh in thanking God " ! But Mrs. 
 Browning does not mean to represent her as a 
 bad woman. She is, in her way, a good woman, 
 only her way is not a very good way, and so her 
 good is evil spoken of. 
 
 Now, this is not hypocrisy, as the word " hypoc- 
 risy " is universally understood. You will never 
 understand human nature until you dismiss from 
 your minds that hypothesis. It explains nothing. 
 It is the cheap sneer of the irreligious person at 
 the man or woman actively identified with the work 
 of the Christian Church — cheap and silly. If 
 we are to call one another " hypocrites," we can 
 find as much to assail outside the Church as in. 
 Men who fall below their own standard of upright- 
 ness, men of loud profession and of little deeds, 
 men who prate of humanity and are unfihal sons, 
 
204 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 unloving husbands, careless fathers, are not found 
 in the Churches only. Carlyle was not a Chris- 
 tian. One touch of Christ upon his heart would 
 have made a better man of him. And to many 
 of us it becomes growingly difficult, to the verge 
 of impossibility, to read his superb preaching of 
 heroic endurance without remembering his own 
 miserable petulance, his trumpetings like those of 
 a wounded elephant when a pin pricked him, his 
 raging and blaspheming against the whole hu- 
 man race when the bookseller's boy was five min- 
 utes late with a parcel, or when some other un- 
 bearable misfortune came between the wind and 
 his nobility. I, for one, cannot read his glowing 
 rhetoric about the greatness of our simple man- 
 hood without calling to mind his snobbish ac- 
 ceptance of a great lady's patronage, flung to 
 him like a bone to a dog, and picked up by him 
 until his wife rebelled against the paltriness of 
 it, while at the same time he could not speak of 
 servants without calling the men flunkeys and the 
 women sluts. No, we need not talk about hypo- 
 crites. Such talk will not lead us anywhere. We 
 had better keep alight for a little while this 
 beacon of unlovely goodness to warn us off^ a 
 rocky coast. Learn the lesson — it is better than 
 throwing stones. 
 
 The Spectator adds some rules of living. They 
 do not go very deep, but they are worth thinking 
 about. 
 
 The first is, not to live so as to Inspire fear 
 in your immediate surroundings. We ought al- 
 
A PATCHWORK CHARACTER 205 
 
 ways to be ready, the writer says, " in a social 
 sense, to let people off." There is a sermon in 
 that. I knew a man whose praise was in all the 
 Churches. He was a philosopher, a historian, a 
 poet. Intellectually, and by reason of many com- 
 manding qualities, he was a great man. But he 
 was a recluse, a hermit. He was as blind as a 
 bat to the promise of young life. He had as 
 much sympathetic appreciation of character, of 
 its needs and its possibilities, as a fish. And he 
 was the president of a college! Nobody could 
 approach him. Everybody was afraid of him. 
 If he had picked pockets, it would have been 
 just as honest as drawing a salary and with- 
 holding himself from the life of his men. But 
 he, also, was a good man — only such men have 
 only themselves to thank if their goodness is evil 
 spoken of. 
 
 We can find illustrations as good outside the 
 Churches. Zola once complained of the gross in- 
 justice of his contemporaries towards him, of the 
 personal bitterness with which they assailed him 
 when they were supposed to be criticising his work. 
 In his soreness and bewilderment he asked one 
 of the greatest of French men of letters what 
 the explanation could possibly be. And it is Zola 
 himself who records the answer which the great 
 man made : — " You have one immense defect which 
 will close every door against you. You cannot chat 
 for two minutes with an imbecile without making 
 him feel that he is an imbecile." * Very well ; if you 
 * Therhe Baquin; preface to French edition. 
 
206 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 are such a superior person that you must needs 
 go through hfe making every poor fellow whom 
 you talk with for two minutes feel that he is an 
 imbecile, you must expect your good to be evil 
 spoken of. Stupid people are, to be sure, very 
 trying. And we are never stupid. It is always 
 the other people. Yet stupid people cannot all 
 be pole-axed. We have to live with them. And 
 it seems wiser — in default of the pole-axe — to bear 
 with them than go swaggering on, asserting our 
 superiority and their abysmal stupidity. There 
 were four of us walking together once ; three were 
 in step and one was out. That one insisted that 
 he was in step ; it was we three who were out. You 
 will find your journey through life easier if the 
 one wise man who is always in step will not so 
 " particularly damn " the three others who are 
 out. 
 
 Another rule is: Do not contradict about noth- 
 ing, and do not make a good principle any more 
 objectionable than it is bound to be. A man of 
 principle is bound to be more or less offensive to 
 those who have no principle at all. But try to 
 make it " less " and not " more." Some of you 
 already scent danger in tliis advice; but there is 
 danger in everything. The great mountaineer 
 who had scaled inaccessible peaks, who was the 
 first up the Matterhorn, and who had been hurled 
 hundreds of feet down precipices, broke his leg in 
 getting on to the platform — or off it — when he 
 went to lecture at Birkenhead. Of course there 
 is danger in this advice. And if you ask which 
 
A PATCHWORK CHARACTER 207 
 
 is worse, the compromise of principle through 
 undue complaisance, or an objectionable asser- 
 tion of it, I decline to answer. There is no need 
 for you to be guilty of the one or of the other. 
 Of two evils choose — neither ! 
 
 Readers of Emerson are familiar with a crude 
 illustration of obtrusive and objectionable virtue. 
 Emerson called on Coleridge, and in a few minutes 
 the old man was tearing along In denunciation of 
 the folly and ignorance of Unitarlanism. Emer- 
 son Interposed that while he highly valued all Mr. 
 Coleridge's explanations, he felt constrained to tell 
 him that he himself had been born and bred a Uni- 
 tarian. Coleridge replied that he had supposed 
 so, and started off on another tirade ; he knew all 
 about Unitarlanism; he had once been a Uni- 
 tarian ; he knew what quackery It was ; he had been 
 called the rising star of Unitarlanism — and so 
 forth, and so forth, with a rudeness which was 
 absolutely brutal. And he wound up with a re- 
 cital of his own lines, " God's child in Christ 
 adopted, Christ my all " ; but there had been little 
 of the Spirit of Christ In the way he had chosen 
 to advance His cause. 
 
 Contrast that with the action of a man who, 
 you may think, went to the other extreme. He 
 is one of the greatest of living advocates of Tem- 
 perance. His name is known all over the Eng- 
 lish-speaking world. We were the guests, he and 
 I, of some young doctors who were not abstainers. 
 We were Investigating the darker side of city life. 
 We stayed in their slum hospital from nine or ten 
 
208 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 o'clock on Saturday night until two or three 
 o'clock on Sunday morning. As the hours wore 
 on, my friend turned to these doctors and said: 
 " Now, if we were not here you would probably be 
 having a glass of whisky. Do not let us inter- 
 fere with you. Get your whisky if you want it, 
 just as if we were not here." And they did. I 
 offer no opinion as to the wisdom or the morality 
 of a teetotaler urging men to drink whisky, be- 
 yond saying that, without judging my friend, I 
 could not do it myself. But I set this story over 
 against the Coleridge story for the purpose of 
 asking you to make two observations. They are 
 these : 
 
 Pharisaism is a vice, equally as drunkenness is. 
 Pharisaism, indeed, is the one vice for which Jesus 
 Christ showed no quarter. And, further: If we 
 are heroically faithful to principle in our own life, 
 we shall not be afraid of seeming to compromise 
 on occasion our testimony to the right and the 
 true. 
 
 This is the deep thing which The Spectator 
 writer has not seen, in the nature of the case could 
 not see. What is necessary is the surrender of 
 the whole nature to Christ. The missing element 
 in the goodness which is evil spoken of is Christ- 
 likeness. Such and such a person is a good man — 
 but he is not like Christ ! Heaven's gift with him 
 has taken earth's abatement. His best contribu- 
 tion to the sum-total of human happiness is sub- 
 ject to a heavy discount because it lacks a gra- 
 cious somewhat. We do the right thing, but dese- 
 
A PATCHWORK CHARACTER 209 
 
 crate it in the doing. We keep back part of the 
 price, and the part kept back is ourself. It is 
 the lingering egoism, it is the unslain self, which 
 comes into our goodness to weaken and spoil it 
 all. We do not get all the credit of our good- 
 ness. Loss of credit is loss of power. We do not 
 effect all the good with our goodness that we ought 
 to. It is a rule of universal applicability and of 
 universal f ruitf ulness ; if you are going to do a 
 thing, do it! Either come in or go out. God 
 Almighty cannot make a door to be both open 
 and shut at the same time. If you are going to 
 do a good thing, do it properly. Sit down and 
 consider the cost if you must, though it is better 
 to do the right in scorn of cost, not so much as 
 considering whether there be such a thing as cost. 
 But when you have decided to do the right thing, 
 do it finely, nobly, greatly. Have you decided to 
 give.'' Then give graciously, spontaneously, with 
 an open-handed, whole-hearted kindness which 
 doubles all the value of your giving. Consider: 
 Why are you helping this man at all.'' Why, to 
 help him ! Out of the goodness of your heart and 
 out of a wish to be of service to him. Then how 
 foolish to do it in such a way as to spoil his hap- 
 piness in receiving! How foolish to defeat your 
 own object by a way of doing things which brings 
 you no gain and involves him in loss ! There are 
 men who have tried to do us a kindness, and they 
 have set about it in such a fashion that we have 
 not forgiven them yet! Give or do not give; one 
 or other. But if you are to be generous, be gen- 
 
210 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 , erous generously, and get all the credit, all the 
 benefit, all the happiness, and all the influence for 
 good out of it. 
 
 So with all life, not merely with the giving 
 of money, time, or service. Have you to make a 
 concession, or accept an unpleasant position, or 
 submit to an awkward fact, or put yourself in 
 the position of one who acknowledges error and 
 offers frank apology,? Then do it heartily. Let 
 not your good be evil spoken of. Forgive the man 
 who has wronged you, or do not forgive him. Sub- 
 mit to the inevitable, or rebel. Concede the point, 
 or refuse it; fight, and die in your last ditch, if 
 you think this is Christian duty. These are rea- 
 sonable, consistent courses. But it is neither 
 reasonable nor consistent, it is neither Christianity 
 nor common-sense, to yield grudgingly and with a 
 bad grace, to submit to the humiliation of defeat 
 without securing the self-approbation which ac- 
 companies whole-heartedness, to say that you 
 forgive while muttering under your breath that 
 you will not forget, or to offer an apology which 
 neither satisfies your conscience nor clears the 
 offence. Wisdom is in this advice, the common- 
 sense of daily life. But deeper things are in it. 
 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is in the 
 spirit which gives itself freely, pouring out its 
 own life in saving and redeeming men, in making 
 life beautiful and sweet. 
 
 There is a great historic incident which seems 
 to show that this gracious spirit can carry a man 
 too far ; which, on the face of it, seems to suggest 
 
A PATCHWORK CHARACTER 211 
 
 the advice that we should not be generous to 
 excess. During his Midlothian campaign of more 
 than a quarter of a century ago, Gladstone de- 
 noimced the foreign policy of Austria in language 
 almost furious. I remember the emphasis with 
 which he declared, " You cannot put your finger 
 on a spot on the map of Europe and say, * There 
 Austria did well.' " He became Prime Minister 
 and the Austrian Ambassador formally protested 
 against this language. It was in his apology that 
 Gladstone used the famous phrase about the words 
 having been spoken when " in a position of greater 
 freedom and less responsibility." The apology 
 angered his friends more than the original assault 
 had angered Austria. It seemed exaggerated, 
 fulsome, almost servile. It seemed to go a long 
 way beyond the requirements of the case and, if 
 the original speech was true, to be itself untrue. 
 But he is a poor psychologist and a worse Chris- 
 tian who cannot explain it altogether. Gladstone 
 had been stung by what he believed to be the inso- 
 lent interference of the Emperor of Austria in 
 British domestic politics and the insult to him- 
 self. Nothing of the sort had happened; the 
 newspaper report which Gladstone took for true 
 was false. But he believed it, and while his de- 
 nunciation of Austria was true enough, he knew, 
 in cold blood, that it had been drawn from him 
 not by a consideration of the justice of the case, 
 but by personal resentment. He knew that he 
 had fallen below his own standard of ideal great- 
 ness; he had acted in temper, not in sublime dis- 
 
212 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 regard of personal things. And the apology 
 which seemed actually grovelling to many of his 
 friends was not addressed to the Emperor of 
 Austria; it was addressed to his offended better 
 self. We can admit now that wise men are not 
 always wise, and that there was little worldly wis- 
 dom either in the original attack or in the apology. 
 But what depth and nobility of character are 
 here! How supremely great is the nature which 
 can give itself away with such prodigal and ex- 
 travagant wastefulness ! 
 
 Brethren, if we are to be good, let us not 
 be satisfied to have our good evil spoken of. 
 Be not satisfied, even, to have your good well 
 spoken of. Let your goodness be like God's. 
 Shall we not take a fresh grip upon ourselves, 
 seek a larger service, a fuller consecration, 
 and a closer walk with God? The Holy Spirit 
 is the spirit of holiness. Holiness is not merely 
 goodness, but enthusiastic goodness, goodness sub- 
 limed to ecstasy, cleansed from all taint of selfish- 
 ness, and finding its satisfaction in the eternal 
 sacrifices of love. Spirit of Holiness, Power of the 
 living God, touch these cold hearts of ours, fill 
 us with Thy fulness, raise us to sit in heavenly 
 places, possess us altogether, help us to present 
 our bodies, our faculties, the living whole of us, 
 an offering, holy, acceptable to God, which is our 
 reasonable service! 
 
 Jesus, Victim, comprehending 
 Love's divine self-abnegation, 
 
A PATCHWORK CHARACTER 213 
 
 Cleanse my love in its self-spending 
 
 And absorb the poor libation ! 
 Wind my thread of life up higher, 
 Up, through angels' hands of fire 1 
 I aspire while I expire ! 
 
XIII 
 
 MORAL MIRACLES, FROM ST. AUGUS- 
 TINE TO SAMUEL HADLEY 
 
XIII 
 
 MORAL MIRACLES, FROM ST. AUGUS- 
 TINE TO SAMUEL HADLEY 
 
 "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the 
 sound thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh and whither 
 it goeth : so is every one that is born of the Spirit." 
 
 — John in. 8. 
 
 It is easy to picture the scene. The guest- 
 chamber on the roof: the one lamp burning: the 
 Sohtary Student with the roll of Scripture, or 
 absorbed in silent prayer, until the closely muffled 
 figure of Nicodemus mounted by the stairs outside 
 the house, and stood in the presence of our Lord. 
 It was Passover week, and the streets were de- 
 serted. It was early Spring, and through those 
 deserted streets the wind was howling. The old 
 man was puzzled, as the Young Prophet spoke 
 to him of the operations of the Spirit of God upon 
 the soul of man. And, borrowing an illustration 
 from the gusty night, Jesus said to him : " The 
 wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the 
 sound thereof. But thou knowest not whence it 
 comes nor whither it goes. So is every one that 
 is born of the Spirit." 
 
 For us the simile fails. The eternal fact re- 
 mains. We have measured the movements of the 
 217 
 
218 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 wind. We can tell whence it comes and say 
 whither it is going, calculate its velocity, predict 
 its course, and name the hour of its arrival. But 
 the movements of the Spirit are as much beyond 
 our divination as the movements of the wind are 
 beyond our control. 
 
 When the Lancashire proverb says that 
 " There's nowt so queer as f owk," and the Ameri- 
 can humourist asserts " Human nature is a strange 
 thing — and there's a lot of it," they do but pro- 
 claim in homely speech the bafflement with which 
 philosophers and simple men alike resign the at- 
 tempt to deliver the spirit of man into the custody 
 of a logical proposition. But when to this un- 
 known quantity of human nature is added the 
 effort of the Spirit of God, problems are pre- 
 sented which are not merely insoluble at the pres- 
 ent time, but which, it seems to me, must remain 
 forever beyond our ken. We have no clearer, more 
 satisfying account of these phenomena than had 
 the author of the Book of Job or the writer of the 
 seventy-third Psalm. We can do no more than 
 cover our ignorance with this phrase, so rever- 
 ently repeated, " The wind bloweth where it list- 
 eth; so is the man who is born of the Spirit of 
 God." 
 
 To build up an argument upon our admitted 
 ignorance would be folly. To build an argu- 
 ment upon the knowledge of our ignorance is 
 justifiable. Ignorance is neither ornamental nor 
 useful that we should desire it. But if we do 
 not know, and know that we do not know, we have 
 
MORAL MIRACLES 219 
 
 so far prepared us to be wise. This is the method 
 of Bishop Butler with regard to the denial of the 
 Future Life. You do not know what Life is ; no 
 one has been able to tell us ! You do not know 
 what Death is: no one has been able to tell us 
 that ! You are not, therefore, in a position to say 
 that Death will put an end to Life. You have no 
 grounds for any such assertion. Huxley recog- 
 nised the validity of such a position, and he went 
 to his grave refusing to commit himself to a state- 
 ment that Death is the end of Life. My text as- 
 serts the mysteriousness of the working of the 
 Spirit of God upon the Spirit of Man. We can- 
 not fathom its mystery, explain its processes, 
 account for its wonders. And the lessons which 
 this baffling mystery can teach us are fruitful, 
 comforting, and inspiring. 
 
 We must, however, confine ourselves to one 
 single class of phenomena in which the Unknown 
 Forces outside ourselves are working upon the 
 Unknown Forces within us. We must limit 
 our view to those deep experiences known as 
 Conversion. And, first, we will look at some 
 typical cases of intellectual and moral regen- 
 eration. 
 
 The utter irrelevance of Conversion is one of the 
 strangest things in life. The result is so appar- 
 ently unrelated to the cause. There is no rational 
 connection, no connection which can be rationally 
 conceived, between the force exerted and the result 
 obtained. There is no logic in the thing. That 
 this man has wholly changed his mind and his 
 
220 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 morals, that he has disowned his old views of God 
 and Man or repudiated his former way of living — 
 that he was an atheist and is a believer — was cold, 
 selfish, cruel, is warm, generous, loving — that he 
 was a drunkard and a debauchee, but is now living 
 with clean hands and pure heart — that he was a 
 scoundrel and is a saint: all this is indisputable, 
 elementary, common. But the explanation of the 
 intellectual and emotional processes, the explana- 
 tion of the causes of the change and the working 
 of those causes, is as hopelessly outside the grasp 
 of our reason as the wild winds of March are out- 
 side the grasp of our hands. 
 
 Consider the deep mysteries of intellectual re- 
 generation. The type case is that of Job. You 
 remember the progress of the drama? Job has 
 been bred in a certain theory of the divine gov- 
 ernment. He has been taught to believe in im- 
 mediate material rewards of righteousness, imme- 
 diate material retribution following wrong-doing. 
 The man who does right is prosperous. The man 
 who does wrong is overtaken by adversity. So he 
 has been taught; but so he does not find. On 
 the contrary, he finds that the righteous man is 
 overwhelmed by merciless disaster, while the sinner 
 sins on in prosperous security. Job has been 
 given a formula to cover the facts of life. The 
 facts grow and accumulate. He stretches the 
 formula to cover them. And the formula snaps in 
 his hands. He challenges the divine government, 
 denies its righteousness, claims a hearing before 
 the divine tribunal, and protests against the in- 
 
MORAL MIRACLES 221 
 
 justice incarnate in the universe. Then God 
 appears, and answers Job out of the whirlwind. 
 And what does He say? Nothing! Absolutely 
 nothing which is to the point. Nothing which 
 touches a single one of Job's complaints, nothing 
 which answers his protests. He asserts what has 
 never been denied and proves what has not been 
 questioned. Yet Job is satisfied! The storm has 
 passed. His soul is at peace with itself. He rages 
 no more and no longer hurls himself against the 
 divine decrees. He confesses that he has spoken 
 without knowledge. He abhors himself. He re- 
 pents in dust and ashes. 
 
 Is not this a weakness in what we have been 
 asked to consider a flawless work of genius.? It 
 is the truest thing in " Job." It is forever and 
 forever impossible to catch up with the precise 
 argument which has been weighty enough to effect 
 such a radical transformation in the thinking of 
 an earnest man, and to explain how the change was 
 brought about. The doubts — you can understand 
 them. The difficulties — you feel them. The rage 
 against what seems the reasonless injustice of the 
 government of the world — you can sympathise 
 with it. But when it comes to analysing and 
 defining the arguments which have met all these 
 difficulties and laid all these doubts to rest and 
 breathed peace upon the storm-tossed soul — you 
 are beaten, and you yield the task in irritation 
 or in despair. 
 
 There are few books which I have read oftener 
 or with greater care than Newman's " Apologia 
 
222 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 'pro Vita Sua " — the Roman Cardinal's justifica- 
 tion of his own life. At one period of my hfe 
 it fascinated me. But how the arguments which 
 weighed with him came to be sufficient, is a point 
 which always eluded my grasp. I would gladly 
 admit that the inefficiency was in myself, if it were 
 not that men so much wiser and with so much more 
 learning confess the same bafflement. And the puz- 
 zle is there, too, in Purcell's " Life of Manning." 
 What it was precisely which led Manning to do 
 as he did is obscure and intangible. When you 
 read Edna Lyall's " Donovan " years ago, though 
 you read it with admiration and sympathy, you 
 were puzzled as to why the young Atheist became 
 a Christian. You were glad he did. You would 
 have been disappointed if it had not worked out 
 that way. But you could by no means under- 
 stand what arguments had been powerful enough 
 to bring about the change. And you said, " But 
 this is a weakness in the book." It is no weakness. 
 It is true to life. The change is eff^ected. Pre- 
 sumably, something has brought it about ! Whatf 
 you cannot discover — at least, you cannot ade- 
 quately explain. 
 
 Let me take an illustration from contemporary 
 movements in England. Doubtless there is much 
 like it in the hfe of this country. The last few 
 years have seen a curious though ephemeral re- 
 crudescence of popular infidelity. A " smart " 
 journalist, possessed of a vigorous slap-dash style, 
 has galvanised the old Bradlaugh-Ingersoll mate- 
 rialism into spasmodic activity. His assaults have 
 
MORAL MIRACLES 223 
 
 been repelled with an effectiveness which has flung 
 up into bold relief the feebleness of the atheistic 
 attack. And yet, during one year's ministry at 
 least, never a week passed without bringing to my 
 own knowledge some case of man or woman 
 tempted to repudiate the faith of Christ as the 
 result of reading these trashy books and pam- 
 phlets. The unfortunate thing was that these 
 people, generally young people, had the energy to 
 read the nonsense, but not to read the replies. For 
 there was not an argument of the atheists which 
 was not met, not an objection which was not shat- 
 tered, not a dogmatic assumption which did not 
 crumble into dust. This generation has not seen 
 anything like such a demonstration of the incredi- 
 ble weakness of the infidel position. One of the 
 books issued in reply was entitled " Religious 
 Doubts of the Democracy." The chapters are 
 written by different men, amongst them four who 
 had lost the faith which they once held, and found 
 their way back to it. Three of these are working- 
 men; one is a scholar. The first tells how he was 
 working in good causes ; how he lost hope ; how he 
 was saddened by the ills which he was daily com- 
 bating ; and had little hope for his fellows and for 
 the future. He asked himself whether he had not 
 made a mistake in abandoning the faith of other 
 days, whether it would not be to him now a joy, 
 a motive, a strength, a hope, an inspiration. And 
 he went back to it ! 
 
 The second gives no account of the process of 
 return. He heard a course of sermons or lectures 
 
224 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 in defence of Christianity, admitted the argu- 
 ments to be sound, and re-accepted the faith. 
 
 The third read something of Bernard Shaw, 
 which led him to read something of Tolstoy, which 
 sent him back to Christ. 
 
 The fourth is a trained thinker. He thought 
 out every argument for and against the existence 
 of God to the very farthest limit to which he was 
 capable of carrying it. Then he made his choice 
 between the two sets of arguments; and decided 
 for faith. 
 
 These three — for I leave out of account the one 
 who does not attempt to give a detailed story — 
 are valuable. But you must see that there is 
 something you do not see ! The " moving why 
 they do it " is still to seek. You say : " I am glad 
 those men found their way back to faith. I am 
 glad they have boldly set forth so much of their 
 inner and secret life. I hope that other men 
 may find their way back to Christianity in the 
 same way. But I cannot quite see what it was 
 which was powerful enough to bring them back. 
 The fact is there. But I do not quite feel that 
 I can explain it." The wind bloweth where it 
 listeth, and you hear the sound thereof, but can- 
 not tell whence it comes nor whither it goes. So 
 is every one who is born of the Spirit. 
 
 We will not fail to gather up the lessons of 
 this in a minute or two. But first, let us take 
 some instances of moral regeneration. 
 
 Here, again, the type case is familiar. It is 
 the case of Augustine. This man had burnt the 
 
MORAL MIRACLES 225 
 
 candle at both ends. He had lived on two differ- 
 ent planes at the same time — intellectuality and 
 sensuality. He was consumed by a feverish frenzy 
 of thought, and scorched by the fires of unholy 
 passion. His mother's piety, his father's vices, 
 fought for mastery in his blood. He tried again 
 and yet again to abjure his worldly, wicked life, 
 and to accept the faith. For years he lived with 
 a divided soul. One day, exhausted by strong 
 sobbing, he flung himself down beneath a fig-tree in 
 his garden, and he heard a voice, as of a boy or 
 girl singing in a neighbouring house, " Take and 
 read; take and read." Checking his tears, he 
 rose; went to the place where he had left his 
 book ; opened it at random, read the first verse 
 on which his eye fell : " Not in revelling and drunk- 
 enness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in 
 strife and jealousy. But put ye on the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the 
 flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof." * And he says, 
 " No further would I read ; nor was there need ; 
 for instantly at the end of this sentence, as though 
 my heart were flooded with a light of peace, all 
 the shadows of doubt melted away." f Not very 
 rational, is it.'' But you cannot deny that some- 
 thing happened. This polished man of the world 
 with his worldly vices became a saint of God, for 
 bane and blessing the doctor of the Church of 
 Christ for fifteen centuries. 
 
 We can find an illustration nearer home. Most 
 of you are familiar with the work of the late 
 ♦Romans xiii. 13, 14. f " Confessions" : book 8 ; chapter 12, 
 
£26 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 Samuel H. Hadley. His book, " Down in Water 
 Street," the story of sixteen years' life and work 
 in Water Street Mission, has been widely read 
 and freely discussed. Many of you knew the 
 man; most of you know the work. Let us take 
 his story: 
 
 " On Tuesday evening, the 18th of April, 1882, 
 I sat in Kirker's saloon, in Harlem, at One Hun- 
 dred and Twenty-fifth Street and Third Avenue. 
 Our home was destroyed, and my faithful, loving 
 wife had gone back South where I had married 
 her. She had stood by me to the last. How she 
 could do it I cannot understand. Dear, faithful, 
 truthful wife ! She is still living, and I pray niay 
 be spared many years to me. I think I had never 
 given her a cross word — surely she had not given 
 me one : but our home was a drunkard's home, and 
 all was gone. I had pawned everything or sold 
 everything that would buy a drink. I could not 
 sleep a wink. I had not eaten for days, and for 
 the four nights preceding I had suffered with 
 delirium tremens from midnight until morning. 
 
 *' I had often said I would never be a tramp, I 
 would never be cornered, for if that time ever 
 came, I had determined to find a home in the 
 bottom of the river. But our Lord so ordered 
 it that when that time did come I was not able 
 to walk one quarter of the way to the river. 
 
 ** I was sitting on a whiskey barrel for perhaps 
 two hours, when all of a sudden I seemed to feel 
 some great and mighty presence. I did not know 
 then what it was. I learned afterwards that it 
 
MORAL MIRACLES 227 
 
 was Jesus, the sinner's Friend. Dear reader, 
 never until my dying day will I forget the sight 
 presented to my horrified gaze. My sins ap- 
 peared to creep along the wall in letters of fire. 
 I turned and looked in another direction, and 
 there I saw them again. 
 
 " I have always believed I got a view of eter- 
 nity right there in that ginmill. I believe I saw 
 what every poor lost sinner will see when he stands 
 unrepentant and unforgiven at the bar of God. 
 It filled me with an unspeakable terror. I sup- 
 posed I was dying and this was a premonition. I 
 believe others in the saloon thought that I was 
 dying, but I cared very little then what people 
 thought of me. I got down from the whiskey 
 barrel with but one desire, and that was to fly 
 from the place. 
 
 " A saloon is an awful place to die in if one 
 has had a praying mother. I walked up to the 
 bar and pounded it with my fist until I made the 
 glasses rattle. Those near by who were drink- 
 ing looked on with scornful curiosity. I said: 
 
 " ' Boys, listen to me ! I am dying, but I will 
 die in the street before I will ever take another 
 drink ' — and I felt as though this would happen 
 before morning. 
 
 " A voice said to me : ' If you want to keep that 
 promise, go and have yourself locked up.' There 
 was no place on earth I dreaded more than a 
 police station, for I was living in daily dread of 
 arrest; but I went to the police station in East 
 One Hundred and Twenty-sixth Street, near Lex- 
 
228 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 ington Avenue, and asked the captain to lock 
 me up." 
 
 Well, after he had spent some time in the cell, 
 he found his way to his brother's house, where 
 every care was given to him. On the Sunday 
 morning he went to a mission service. When the 
 invitation was given, he knelt down with a crowd 
 of drunkards and others. At last he stammered 
 a prayer, " Dear Jesus, can you help me.'* " And 
 the rest must be told in his own words again : 
 
 " Dear reader, never with mortal tongue can 
 I describe that moment. Although up to that 
 time my soul had been filled with indescribable 
 gloom, I felt the glorious brightness of the noon- 
 day sunshine in my heart. I felt that I was a 
 free man. Oh, the precious feeling of safety, of 
 freedom, of resting on Jesus ! I felt that Christ 
 with all His love and power had come into my life. 
 From that moment until now I have never wanted 
 a drink of whiskey, and have never seen money 
 enough to make me take one. The precious touch 
 of Jesus' cleansing blood in my soul took from 
 my stomach, my brain, my blood, and my imagina- 
 tion the hell-born desire for whiskey. Hallelu j ah ! 
 What a Saviour ! " 
 
 It is time to gather up some of the lessons. 
 These phenomena of intellectual and of moral 
 regeneration are past all explaining. We cannot 
 see what the force has been nor how it has acted. 
 What does this suggest.'' 
 
 Here is encouragement for the parent and the 
 teacher. The influences of early days and early 
 
MORAL MIRACLES 229 
 
 precepts come back in the life of Augustine and 
 ten thousand others. The work seems thrown 
 away. The lesson is lost. The early influences 
 are dead and buried, and there is no glorious hope 
 of a blessed resurrection for them. So it seems. 
 But that is not the case. The forgotten name 
 comes back when you cease to think about it. 
 After many days the bread you have cast upon 
 the waters is found again. Your Sunday School 
 work is poor enough, in the eyes of men who would 
 never dream of lending a hand to help you. It 
 is small and contemptible, despicable in the eyes 
 of the strong and clever. But you Sunday School 
 teachers may do your work in hope and with a 
 brave heart, for all that. When your scholars — 
 though they forget you — are preaching the Gos- 
 pel from honoured pulpits as ministers of Christ, 
 or setting fresh dignity upon the Christian name 
 by lives of honourable citizenship, when 
 
 The world shall link their names 
 With gracious lives and manners fine, 
 The teacher shall assert her claims, 
 And proudly whisper, " These were mine." 
 
 And if you do not live to see it, believe that In 
 characters which have been ennobled, lives en- 
 riched, and souls saved, the energy of your life 
 has become immortal. 
 
 Here is mighty encouragement for all forms of 
 non-sensational preaching. We will not deny the 
 fervid mission, the penitent bench, the inquiry 
 room, the hypnotism, to those who can serve God 
 with such machinery. But will you trust the 
 
230 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 power of truth? Will you be satisfied to 
 preach the word faithfully, leaving to the Spirit 
 of God the work of following this calm, reasoned, 
 strong ministry of yours? Will you take your 
 stand with Jean Ingelow and say : 
 
 I am glad to think 
 I am not bound to make the world go right ; 
 But only to discover and to do, 
 With cheerful heart, the work that God appoints. 
 
 I will trust in Him, 
 That He can hold His own. 
 
 But the best of all is the encouragement which 
 is afforded to worJc of every conceivable variety. 
 It is impossible to tell how a book, an argument, 
 a sermon, will strike any given human being. All 
 preaching is relative — relative to the person to 
 whom it is addressed. Every apologetic is rela- 
 tive — relative to the person to whom it is pre- 
 sented. When an argument for the truth of 
 Christianity is demanded, you must consider, 
 What sort of an argument is wanted? as much as. 
 What sort of an argument is needed? You have 
 all the experience of all the ages against you 
 when you conclude that a flawless argument, 
 armour-plated and irrefutable, can alone convince 
 and convert. You have all the experience of all 
 the ages against you when you conclude that only 
 the highest type of teaching commands adherents, 
 only the sublimest eloquence wings the preaching 
 of the Gospel message. A preacher often finds 
 that a sermon so paltry, so wretched that it has 
 
MORAL MIRACLES 231 
 
 made him despise himself and pray that he may 
 never preach again, has carried a blessing to some 
 human heart. There is no mete nor bound nor 
 measure to the variety of men and minds, and 
 none to the arguments and appeals which may 
 reach them. This is a plea for tolerance of every 
 known and conceivable method of Christian service. 
 And it is more. It is a reminder of the existence 
 of those omnipotent forces outside ourselves which 
 we have come to regard as the Spirit of God. We 
 do not need to scout intellectuality, and all the 
 gifts of culture, method, order, eloquence, which 
 the Church is able to display and to direct. But 
 beyond these, greater than these, \^orking through 
 them often, and often disdaining them, is the 
 Spirit which, like the viewless, restless wind, 
 breathes where it will, uncommanded, chainless, 
 free, convicting the world of sin, of righteousness, 
 of judgment, provoking penitence, inspiring as- 
 surance, blessing the soul with enduring peace. 
 Touched by this Spirit, the failures of God are 
 seen to be richer than the triumphs of men, the 
 weak things of earth confound the mighty, the 
 small become world-great, and our human society 
 is transformed into the Kingdom of God. 
 
XIV 
 THE FIRST AND THE LAST 
 
XIV 
 THE FIRST AND THE LAST 
 
 '• He taught them as one having authority." 
 
 — Matthew vn. 28. 
 
 As one "having authority" — not by authority. 
 And it makes a whole world of difference. There 
 were those on the earth at that time who could 
 and did speak by authority. They have passed 
 away, and mankind knows them and their au- 
 thority no more. Christ spoke as one whose 
 authority is personal and innate. And each age 
 adds fresh lustre to His name. 
 
 In Jerusalem sat Caiaphas, High Priest of 
 Jehovah, supreme head amongst mortals of the 
 Jewish Church, living embodiment of a thousand 
 years of history, of Providential guidance, of 
 glorious traditions running back to the day when 
 on the mountain height Moses held awful com- 
 munion with God, and Aaron spoke to the great 
 congregation as the mouthpiece of Deity. In the 
 person of Caiaphas justice and religion should 
 both have been visibly set forth before the eyes 
 of the nation. In the person of Caiaphas justice 
 and religion were alike trampled under foot. Upon 
 him the real guilt of the Crucifixion rests. And 
 not a human being amongst earth's uncounted 
 millions would to-day so much as remember his 
 235 
 
236 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 name but for his connection with that terrific 
 crime. Yet he spoke by authority. 
 
 In his palace at Tiberias sat another who spolce 
 by authority. In the portrait galleries of history 
 it would be difficult to find one at once so dissolute, 
 so wicked, and so contemptible as Herod Antipas. 
 In Jerusalem Pontius Pilate reigned by the au- 
 thority of distant and mighty Caesar. Proudly 
 the Roman lord boasted his power, bidding the 
 Saviour of the world, on the day when He stood 
 at his judgment bar, remember, " I have power 
 to set Thee free and power to send Thee to 
 the Cross." These two are names written in 
 water. The gnat that sports for a day his little 
 life in the sun would possess as much significance 
 for us as both together were they not linked on in 
 the minds of men forever with the Pale Prisoner 
 who set their authority at nought. The genera- 
 tions have crowned Him Lord of All. The great- 
 est intellects of nineteen centuries have bowed be- 
 fore His authority. 
 
 There was an occasion when the representa- 
 tives of law and order and political authority 
 sought to minimise His personal authority by a 
 question entirely conditioned and circumscribed by 
 the life of which they formed a part. Officers 
 had been sent to arrest Him. They were para- 
 lysed in His presence. His spell was omnipotent 
 over them. They could no more have executed 
 their warrant than they could have snatched the 
 Bun from the heavens. They came back reporting 
 their failure and declaring, " Never man spake 
 
THE FIRST AND THE LAST 237 
 
 like this man." Their masters demanded of them: 
 " Are ye also led astray ? Have any of the rulers 
 believed on Him? " Any of the rulers? The 
 question is significant. It was meant to convey an 
 argument. " The judgment of the illiterate mob 
 whom this Man has moved is worthless. Do you 
 not see that no person of culture, of taste, of 
 social position, no person of importance in the 
 community, has lent the weight of his name and 
 his authority to the impostor .f* Go to now. He 
 is nothing. Have any of the rulers believed on 
 Him?" 
 
 This is a question which all but the most vigor- 
 ous and independent minds are every day asking. 
 In the world of literature, of art, of social ob- 
 servance, it is the first and last question. That 
 answered, all is known. Who has declared this 
 book to be " literature " ? Who has answered the 
 question about this picture. Is it art? Who has 
 certified this person? Have any of the rulers? 
 For who are we that we should read a book for 
 ourselves, and form an unbiassed judgment, and 
 cherish an admiring and grateful sentiment to- 
 ward its unknown writer? Or what are we that 
 we should so much as know whether we like a 
 picture or not, or dare to say that our souls 
 were suffused by an added tenderness as our eyes 
 feasted on its beauty? And how should we dare 
 to dress as we choose, or furnish our rooms as we 
 like, or set our own precedents and establish our 
 own conventions? It is out of the question. No- 
 body but a Philistine, living on the outer edge of 
 
238 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 barbarism, an offence to the Chosen People, the 
 children of culture and light, would even dream of 
 such an outrage. Men and women were meant to 
 be gregarious. Minds were intended to be ground 
 together into pulp by the social organism. God 
 may have created man upright ; but He is a long 
 way off, and Mrs. Grundy is very near; and you 
 might as well be out of the world as out of the 
 fashion. Wherefore, thou shalt by no means think 
 for thyself, nor see with thine own eyes, nor 
 follow thine own judgment, nor obey the dictates 
 of thine own heart ; for all these things do the 
 prophets and brave men seek after. Verily, I say 
 unto you, they have their reward. But mediocre 
 natures must forever ask, Have any of the rulers 
 believed on this wise.'* 
 
 Now, you do not need to be reminded that this 
 is a way of living absolutely ruinous to every 
 noble impulse of mind and spirit. It is the stulti- 
 fication of our manhood and womanhood. It is 
 the bankruptcy of individuality. It is the degra- 
 dation of the intellect. It is ultimately the loss of 
 the soul. It is degeneration of the worst type, 
 degeneration that blasphemes the divine Father- 
 hood, and by the very potency of its stubborn 
 weakness thwarts the Almighty purpose in ordain- 
 ing us men and women. For were it proper for 
 us to cease from thinking and accept opinions 
 imposed upon us by outer authority, to cease to 
 aspire, rebel, and create; were the faculty of imi- 
 tation the one by which supremely we ought to live, 
 then the effort of making us rational human crea- 
 
THE FIRST AND THE LAST 239 
 
 tures was an act of supererogation on the part of 
 Omnipotence. Men and women were not needed for 
 such a Hfe. Monkeys would have done as well. 
 We degrade ourselves when our first question and 
 our last is, Have any of the rulers believed on — 
 this or that? 
 
 There is no sphere of our life, no sphere of 
 intellect, emotion, or action, which can claim ex- 
 emption from this law. Least of all must you 
 dare to claim it for your religious life. You must 
 not accept as infallible the decrees of any Pontiff, 
 Priest, or Church. You must not deliver up your 
 judgment at the bidding of any man however holy, 
 nor attempt to walk life's long journey in the 
 fetters of any creed that man has made. The 
 moment you admit that any oracle, human or 
 divine, any doctrine or any literature or any rev- 
 elation, is too sacred to be examined by your rea- 
 son, you are a mental serf. In this free land you 
 have a perfect right to state what you at the 
 present time believe, if you wish to make the state- 
 ment and if you think that it has any interest 
 for your neighbour. But there is no land beneath 
 the sun where you have the moral right to pledge 
 yourself to-day to believe the same thing to-mor- 
 row. I know not yet whether on this vast conti- 
 nent, amid the aberrations of the many sects, 
 there may not be found Baptists who have so far 
 departed from the Baptist spirit as to impose 
 upon themselves the limitations of a Creed. It 
 is the glory of the Baptist folk from whose loins 
 I spring, the heroic people who have led the van 
 
240 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 in the march of humanity toward soul-hberty and 
 light, that they have never, Hke " lesser breeds 
 without the law," taken shelter from the storm of 
 intellectual and spiritual unrest within the con- 
 volutions of a Creed. And for myself I know that 
 I would not sign a Creed even though I had writ- 
 ten it with my own hand ! There is a fine passage 
 in Max Miiller in which a point of grammar be- 
 comes luminous with great teaching for the soul. 
 He tells us that the Hindoo word for " truth " is 
 a participle of the verb " to be." It is the word 
 " sat," meaning that which is. And Max Miiller 
 adds: 
 
 " Whoever has once stood alone, surrounded 
 by noisy assertions, and overwhelmed by the 
 clamour of those who ought to know better, or, 
 perhaps, did know better — call him Galileo or 
 Darwin, Colenso or Stanley, or any other name — 
 he knows what a real delight it is to feel in his 
 heart of hearts, this is true ; this is ; this is sat — 
 whatever daily, weekly, or quarterly papers, what- 
 ever bishops, archbishops, or popes may say to 
 the contrary." 
 
 Yes; that real delight is worth knowing. It 
 is worth enduring much that we may gain it. In 
 the animation and invigoration which it pours 
 into the blood life is worth living. And compared 
 with its glad pulsations we only live at some poor 
 dying rate when our religious life is bounded 
 north, south, east, and west by the question. 
 Have any of the rulers of the people believed all 
 this before us.'' 
 
THE FIRST AND THE LAST 241 
 
 So far I trust you have agreed with me. But 
 let us consider this matter widely and wisely. We 
 shall not consider it wisely unless we view it widely f 
 I have conceded, surely, all that you can possi- 
 bly demand on the part of human liberty. I have 
 admitted that you cannot be expected to accept 
 anything solely on the ground that it is certified 
 to you by authority. But now I desire to ask 
 whether there is not a legitimate sphere of au- 
 thority. And whether in the nature of things 
 we must not forever and forever recognise the 
 place and function and power of one who speaks 
 as having authority — whether, to accept the 
 formula of the Pharisees again, there are not 
 occasions when it is perfectly honourable and even 
 our duty to ask, Have any of the rulers believed? 
 We have seen that the question may be the hall- 
 mark of a snob, an intellectual degenerate, a spir- 
 itual bond-slave. I submit, however, that it may 
 be asked in such a way as to deserve none of these 
 epithets : and that, as a matter of fact, life could 
 not be lived if it were not so. If none of us is 
 ever to yield precedence to those who speak, not 
 by authority, but as having authority, why, 
 Chaos is come again. Such an attitude is 
 unthinkable. 
 
 Let us go into this for a minute or two. And 
 the position seems to be this : it is your inalienable 
 right to repudiate dictation as to what you shall 
 think or what you shall believe, come the dictation 
 from what source it will. You may break entirely 
 with the past. It is your prerogative. You may 
 
242 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 repudiate every utterance of wise men and brave, 
 poets and prophets, evangelists and seers, and 
 every word of Christ Himself. You may stand 
 upon your rights as a free and conscious person 
 on this earth, assert your claim to think for 
 yourself and judge for yourself, and hold no con- 
 clusions but those to which your own unfettered 
 mind has singly come. That is your right. And 
 if you choose to exercise it you, will find that life 
 is but a tale told hy an idiot, full of sound and 
 fury, signifying nothing. In Mr. Owen Wister's 
 fine book, " The Seven Ages of Washington," he 
 complains that a wrong conception even of the 
 Declaration of Independence as Jefferson's orig- 
 inal invention prevails to this day. He points out 
 that it could not be an original invention, of 
 Jefferson or of any other man. Jefferson merely 
 drafted the document, expressing ideas well estab- 
 lished in the contemporary air. And he wrote his 
 sentences loosely, because the ideas they expressed 
 were so familiar as to render exact definitions need- 
 less. And I suppose that it would be an easy, 
 though a very lengthy, task for any of us to 
 trace the historical evolution of those ideas. It 
 has been often done in the literature of several 
 generations and of various countries besides this. 
 What part France contributed, and how much 
 England — do we need to debate it now.'* And our 
 study of the liberties of the American people, 
 would it not take us back step by step until we 
 stood with sword on thigh with the Barons who 
 faced King John at Runnymede, and back further 
 
THE FIRST AND THE LAST 243 
 
 still until we lost ourselves in English villages 
 long centuries before the English people saw the 
 British Isles, when each community kept sacred 
 its OAvn borders, in the little corner of North- 
 western Europe between the country we now call 
 Schleswig-Holstein and the sea? The men who 
 signed the Declaration of Independence were inde- 
 pendent enough and ready enough to declare it. 
 They had the right to break with the thought of 
 ages past and gone. They were in the mood to do 
 a little breaking! In their souls they felt the 
 glorious impulse of that right, and eighty millions 
 of freemen to-day live by its breath. But they 
 knew and we know that it is not in human nature 
 to tear up the past by the roots and plant life 
 afresh in the soil as though nothing had ever 
 grown there. They repudiated, very effectively, 
 the dictation of men and governments and na- 
 tions that would speak to them by authority. But 
 the Constitution under which we live is the eternal 
 witness to their acceptance of the vital and pro- 
 lific thought of heroic souls, the obscure, the silent, 
 and the dead, who were not dead but alive, and 
 who spoke as those having authority, authority to 
 shape the thought of living men. 
 
 This should be clear enough. If not, consider 
 your own attitude to Science. Any Science will 
 do. Astronomy will serve. You decide to begin 
 the study of it. You have a perfect right to 
 repudiate all the conclusions of your predecessors, 
 to disdain the slow processes of their investiga- 
 tions, and to ignore their results. You have a 
 
244 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 perfect right to begin from the very beginning 
 of things and give us a new Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence concerning things astronomical. But I 
 seriously advise you to do nothing of the sort. 
 I am afraid you will be star-gazing a long time 
 before you see anything worth seeing. You have 
 just the same right as Galileo or Newton or 
 Herschel or Lockyer or anybody else to have 
 opinions about the stars, and to state them. Only, 
 if you begin by proclaiming that indubitable fact, 
 and steadily refuse to profit by the work of men 
 who still speak as having authority, the world is 
 likely to grow cold in waiting for some opinion 
 of yours which happens to be worth waiting 
 for! 
 
 All this holds good of Religion. If it is his- 
 torically true of the founders of constitutional 
 liberty, and if it is necessarily true of every study, 
 the most elementary or the most profound, to 
 which you can apply yourself, it must also be 
 true of religious speculation and conviction. Your 
 mind is not built in water-tight compartments. 
 You have the right to think out everything for 
 yourself, to begin at the beginning, to start as 
 though no human being had ever inquired or 
 yearned or aspired or prayed, and to ignore alike 
 the beliefs of philosophers, the witness of martyrs, 
 and the raptures of saints. You have a right 
 to do all this. No man nor body of men, no theo- 
 logian nor Church, can limit your freedom by 
 authority. Claim your right, and — forgive me 
 — ^you will only be a laughing-stock for your 
 
THE FIRST AND THE LAST 245 
 
 pains. You may split the ears of the groundlings, 
 but you will make the judicious grieve. You will 
 gibbet yourself for the ridicule of earnest souls 
 who love liberty as dearly as you do, but know that 
 centuries of aspiration and of heroism speak, as 
 having authority, to the children of every suc- 
 ceeding age. 
 
 I do not claim too much on behalf of such au- 
 thority. I am willing to confine it within bounds. 
 But you will admit that in the experience of men 
 and women who have loved God, lived in His fear, 
 and died in the faith of Jesus, and in the history 
 of nations in the midst of which His name has 
 been held dear, there is at least that which serves 
 to create a presumption in favour of the truth 
 and reality of religion. A presumption, I say ; 
 that is not claiming too much. 
 
 Men have borne this witness: They say that 
 there have been times when the veil which sepa- 
 rates the visible from the invisible has worn thin 
 in places, and they have seen God. They say that 
 they have been conscious of power granted to 
 them in their weakness, power not of earth, but 
 of heaven. They say that they have called to God 
 and He has heard, given rest amid toil, peace in 
 conflict, comfort in sorrow, strength in temptation, 
 and life from the dead. They declare that they 
 have been as sure of the existence of God as of 
 their own, and have had as good reason for be- 
 lieving in His love as for believing in that of 
 father or mother, husband or wife. This testi- 
 mony has been consistent with itself. It has not 
 
246 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 faltered with the shock of persecution. The wit- 
 nesses have sealed it with their blood. 
 
 And in the course of history, the most colossal, 
 outstanding, omnipresent fact is that of Religion. 
 The Church is the most conspicuous object, look 
 where you will at any time for the last fifteen 
 hundred years. The greatest church in the great- 
 est city in the world is named after the greatest 
 apostle of the crucified Nazarene; upon its top- 
 most spire gleams the Cross ; and the world's most 
 daring poet of revolt, Shelley, "Atheist Shelley," 
 as people called him, has sung God's own truth 
 to intellect and heart in his famous line; 
 
 Blazoned, as on heaven's immortal noon, 
 The Cross leads generations on. 
 
 Such testimonies and such facts of history are 
 entitled to respectful consideration at your hands. 
 I speak as unto wise men. Judge ye what I say. 
 You cannot ignore the Atlantic. There is noth- 
 ing to laugh at in Mont Blanc or the Matterhorn. 
 The Himalayas and the Andes are not ridiculous. 
 Ahke, the rise and fall of nations, and the sins, 
 repentance, tears, and victories of the saints of 
 God, are facts which the man of truly scientific 
 temper will know he has to take into account. 
 This is not to say that you must surrender your 
 judgment and blind the eyes of your mind because 
 other men and other ages have believed in God. 
 Christian thought is more sweetly reasonable than 
 to suggest such a thing. But it is to claim that 
 men and ages speak as having a certain authority 
 
THE FIRST AND THE LAST 247 
 
 which, in any other walk of life, you would be 
 ready enough to admit. 
 
 At the very least, they speak with sufficient 
 authority to impose a modest self-restraint upon 
 us when we exercise our indefeasible right of criti- 
 cism or denial. Mr. Gladstone, in a famous sen- 
 tence, once expressed his belief that the faith 
 of Christ would look down upon the floating wreck 
 of many a boastful modern theory which has 
 thought to usurp its place. The storms which 
 have raged round it while it has stood secure, as 
 founded upon a rock, justify his confidence. And 
 when we remember that we are none of us in- 
 fallible, not even the youngest of us, we feel that 
 Cromwell's exhortation to the Scotch divines in 
 the seventeenth century, " I beseech you, by the 
 mercies of Christ, think it possible you may be 
 mistaken," might be well addressed to ambitious 
 thinkers of the twentieth. There are still those 
 who can speak as having authority. 
 
 You know to what this leads up. You know to 
 Whom. It leads to that One who spoke as never 
 man spoke, as one having authority, not as the 
 Scribes. Robert Browning was thinker brave and 
 virile and independent enough. His conclusion 
 lacks nothing of robustness : 
 
 I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ, 
 Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
 All questions in the earth and out of it. 
 And has so far advanced thee to be wise. 
 
 If you doubt the tremendous conclusion, put it 
 to the test. The proof of Christianity is in itself. 
 
248 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 If a man wants to know whether Christianity 
 is true, let him try it. 
 
 What is it in Christ which appeals to us, as we 
 study His life? What is this authority which we 
 find He has? 
 
 Negatively, I note in Him the entire absence 
 of any sense of sin. I am not asserting that we 
 know all His Hfe and know that He was without 
 fault. I leave you the loophole of our ignorance 
 of His hfe from twelve years of age to thirty. 
 I am only calling your attention to the patent 
 fact that in no act of His, in no single word or 
 sigh, do we find the remotest suggestion of any 
 trace upon His own soul of the stain of guilt or 
 pang of remorse. 
 
 Equally, there is a complete absence of any- 
 thing like aspiration, regret, or unsatisfied desire. 
 He does not desire to be other than He is. Paul's 
 passionate prayer, " Who shall deliver me from 
 the body of this death? " is not further removed 
 from His spirit than Tennyson's 
 
 Oh, for a man to arise in me 
 
 That the man I am may cease to be ! 
 
 He is ever at home with Himself, His soul, and 
 His Father, God. 
 
 And so He knows no fear. With immovable 
 calm He pursues His course. There is no strain, 
 no visible effort, no conflict. He is a child of the 
 Galilean sunshine. And even when He seems to 
 feel the burden of the world's sin upon His own 
 soul, and His great heart is torn with anguish. 
 
THE FIRST AND THE LAST 249 
 
 though for one black, bitter moment He has lost 
 grip on God, and cried, " My God, my God, why 
 hast Thou forsaken me ? " it is but for a moment ; 
 with exquisite resignation He sighs, " Father, 
 into Thy hands I commend My spirit," and His 
 end is ineffable peace. 
 
 Consider His teaching. His positlveness is 
 amazing. He has no doubts. He never stands 
 in pause or in uncertainty. His words throb 
 with vital assurances. To this hour they nerve the 
 world with incessant affirmations. Is there a life 
 other than this with protoplasm for its basis which 
 a grain of sand or drop of poison may destroy.? 
 Yes: Fear not Mm that can kill the hody; fear 
 only him who can kill the soul. Will this hidden 
 life live on when the visible life shall be no more? 
 Yes: Because I live, ye shall live also. Will it be 
 a real life, not an existence of ansemic ghosts in a 
 world of shadows, but a vivid and palpitating 
 deathlessness .f* Yes: In my Father^ s house are 
 many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you. 
 Who shall open to us the gates of this distant 
 heaven.'' I am the Resurrection and the Life. He 
 that liveth and helieveth in Me, though he were 
 dead, yet shall he live. And whoso helieveth in 
 Me shall never die. Then how shall we learn to 
 cultivate the soul within us and escape from the 
 touch of mortality .? I am the Way and the Truth 
 and the Life. But shall we be left to our own 
 resources, orphans in a world which has wandered 
 from God.P / will not leave you comfortless. My 
 Father will love you. And We will come unto you. 
 
250 OLD EVENTS AND MODERN MEANINGS 
 
 and make Our abode •with you. Then, who art 
 Thou, Thou thorn-crowned, regal One, who dost 
 promise such wondrous things to mankind? Art 
 Thou man, myth, or mystery? / and my Father 
 are one! It is marvellous — marvellous. He speaks 
 as one having authority, but in the words of 
 Sabatier, it is " the authority of the divine work 
 which He carries on in the hearts of men. It is 
 the authority of His person, if you will, so far as 
 His person is the incarnation of His Gospel, and 
 as both are clothed with the ascendency of holi- 
 ness and the conquering charm of love. He pro- 
 poses to men the divine verities which were revealed 
 to Him in His consciousness, and by proposing 
 He imposes them, or rather, they impose them- 
 selves by their own virtue. By an all-powerful 
 moral contagion He communicates to others the 
 divine life which is in Himself. . . . His author- 
 ity over the conscience is of the same nature as 
 that of God — inward, moral — and, by that very 
 fact, sovereign. It is the authority not of the 
 letter which oppresses and kills, but of the spirit 
 which makes alive." 
 
 To the acceptance of this authority I invite 
 you. It makes no demand of Reason which Rea- 
 son cannot reasonably concede. It issues no com- 
 mands which do not approve themselves in the 
 normal, unsophisticated conscience. It formu- 
 lates no philosophy which is not broad-based in 
 human experience; and it holds out no promises 
 which, on earth at least, are not a million times 
 fulfilled. For Christ will be no man's debtor. 
 
THE FIRST AND THE LAST 251 
 
 Good measure, pressed down and running over, 
 He pours into the bosom of those that love Him. 
 He is better than His word, more gracious than 
 all His promises. His love looks mighty, and is 
 mightier than it seems. And the best of all is 
 that a knowledge of it has not to be certified to 
 us by outward authority. The ground of Reh- 
 gion is the ground of modern Science. It is 
 verifiable by experiment here and now, and as 
 often as we try it we find it true. Oh, taste and 
 see how gracious the Lord is ! 
 
 THE END 
 
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