Class 
 Book. 
 
 Copyright^?. 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT; 
 
 ! 
 
FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 BY ADDISON BALLARD, D.D. 
 
 author of "from talk to text," "through the sieve," 
 "arrows; or, teaching a fine art." 
 
 BOSTON 
 SHERMAN, FRENCH fcf COMPANY 
 
 1910 
 
BX7333 
 
 . 13*23 F? 
 
 Copyright, 1910 
 Sherman, French & Company 
 
 ©CU268416 
 
As He "Calked with us by the way ; 
 He opened to us the Scriptures 
 
 Luke 24. : I 
 
This book is designed as a companion 
 volume to the author's " From Talk to 
 Text." It is taken in part from the 
 author's "Through the Sieve," now 
 wholly and permanently out of print. 
 
MOTTO AND MOTIVE 
 
 It is a danger of serious import that 
 we believe we are advanced toward per- 
 fection in proportion to our knowledge 
 of the way. 
 
 FENELON 
 
 What we most need in our religion is, 
 not to be informed, but reminded. 
 
 HANNAH MORE 
 
 Not the advancing, therefore, of any- 
 thing ' new" to be believed, but the 
 urging of old and acknowledged duties to 
 be done. 
 
 THE AUTHOR 
 
CONTENTS 
 I. 
 
 Page 
 
 I. Common Sense, Faith and 
 
 Ignorance 1 
 
 II. A Sure Guide and Goal .... 4 
 III. Neighborliness Next to 
 
 Godliness 8 
 
 IV. Fullest Accord in Warfare 
 
 and Worship 13 
 
 V. Christianity, a Religion of 
 
 Facts 16 
 
 VI. Likewise 20 
 
 VII. Contrariwise 25 
 
 VIII. An Original Guest — The 
 Lower Ennobled by the 
 
 Higher 31 
 
 IX. Our One Concern 36 
 
 X. Self-Harming Haste 43 
 
 XL The Weighing of a King ... 49 
 
 XII. Unused Spices 54 
 
 XIII. Reintroductions 57 
 
 XIV. The Joy of Immediate Sur- 
 render 60 
 
 XV. The Silent Life 63 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 XVI. The Cross, a Symbol of Obe- 
 dience 67 
 
 XVII. Beyond Peradventure .... 70 
 XVIII. No Compromise with Tyr- 
 anny 73 
 
 XIX. Paul's Quarrel with Peter 78 
 XX. The Multitude of the 
 
 Saved 83 
 
 XXI. A Quick Turn from Sorrow 
 
 to Joy 86 
 
 XXII. Satan's Fall Foreseen .... 91 
 
 XXIII. Perfect at Last 93 
 
 XXIV. Love's "Finally" 96 
 
 II 
 
 XXV. The Early Morning Outfit 
 
 of Prayer 101 
 
 XXVI. Gifts for Gain 105 
 
 XXVII. Good Cheer for Darkest 
 
 Hours 108 
 
 XXVIII. The Broken Heart 116 
 
 XXIX. Tenacity of Christian Pur- 
 pose 127 
 
 XXX. Giving Conscience the Ben- 
 efit of the Doubt 131 
 
 XXXI Numbering our Days 136 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 XXXII. System and Sentiment in 
 
 Giving 141 
 
 XXXIII. The Greater of Two Great 
 
 Victories 144 
 
 XXXIV. Gratification and Gratitude 148 
 XXXV. Intercession for the III 
 
 Deserving 152 
 
 XXXVI. Slander — Its Methods, Mo- 
 tives and Results 154 
 
 XXXVII. The Foolish Formalist 160 
 
 XXXVIII Two Kinds of Religion, and 
 
 the Better of the Two . 165 
 XXXIX Heart-Reception of Jesus . 174 
 
 XL. An Old Man's Prayer 189 
 
 XLI. Faith's Tranquility 193 
 
 XLII. Forward 197 
 
 XLIII. Free to go Back, but Liking 
 
 Better to go on 203 
 

COMMON SENSE, FAITH AND 
 IGNORANCE 
 
 So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast 
 seed into the ground; and should sleep and rise 
 night and day; and the seed should spring and 
 grow up, he hnoweth not how. Mark 4: 26, 27. 
 
 The acting out of true religion, as we find it 
 unfolded in one of our Lord's parables, is made 
 up in about equal parts of Common-Sense, Faith 
 and Ignorance. The husbandman "casts seed 
 into the ground." That is his common-sense. 
 This done, he "sleeps and rises night and day," 
 in full confidence that the seed will "spring and 
 grow up." That is his faith. But, it is added, 
 he "knoweth not how." That is his ignorance. 
 
 For the doer of the things that most need to 
 be done, this "how" is a question which may either 
 be ignored or the consideration of which may be 
 indefinitely postponed. Be she the veriest "fool" 
 as to the chemistry of combustion, the housemaid 
 "errs" not in the boiling of her tea-kettle. Be 
 the husbandman ever so unversed in the philoso- 
 phy of plant-growth, he is yet at no loss as to 
 the plowing of his field or the sowing of his seed. 
 He is not that other "fool" he would surely be 
 were he either to decline or delay his farm-work 
 unless he first have fully explained to him the 
 scientific secret of seed-sprouting, stalk-shooting 
 
2 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 and ear-filling. Prompt to do his stint, he trusts 
 with no distraction of doubt that his silent and 
 unseen Co-Worker will do His own full share of 
 their joint undertaking; that He will see to it 
 that soil and sun and shower and season do each 
 its appointed task. Caring less for causes than 
 for results, so the outcome be sure, he will not 
 stumble at the mystery of the cause. Accepting 
 the established facts of farming experience, he 
 goes cheerily through the whole round of summer 
 toil, not puzzling himself about those hidden links 
 which join his own work with the greater work 
 of God. 
 
 As is the domain of earth, so, also, is the King- 
 dom of Heaven. The husbandman knows well 
 what his farm duties are. We know just as well 
 what our Christian duties are. We know what it 
 is, first of all, to treat one another in a Christian 
 way ; to do to others and to all others as we would 
 have them do to us ; what it is to put envy away 
 from us and to rejoice in the gifts, acquirements 
 and successes of others as we would have them 
 rejoice in our own; what it is to lend a helping 
 heart to those in sorrow and a helping hand to 
 those in need. We know what it is to love, pray 
 for and forgive our enemies. Equally well do we 
 know that besides these duties toward our fellow- 
 men, we are to seek for a nearer acquaintance 
 with God by diligent study of His Word and by 
 prayer. We know that we are to pray in our 
 closets and that we are to use all social and pub- 
 lic helps of Christ's appointment. 
 
FAITH AND IGNORANCE 3 
 
 All these are just as plain duties of the Chris- 
 tian as were those in the parable of the husband- 
 man. Are we practising these duties? We can- 
 not but be growing Christians if we are. And 
 these duties any Christian may do and be wholly 
 ignorant of technical theology. No man who 
 wishes to come to Christ need lose a moment's 
 sleep because he cannot understand the new birth 
 or reconcile foreordination with free-will. We 
 may have the full and blessed benefit of prayer 
 and know nothing of its philosophy. We may 
 plant and water and gather precious fruit in the 
 Lord's vineyard, yet know not how it is that God 
 quickens the seed and gives the increase. Enough 
 for us that He does bless our labor for Him and 
 for souls; enough that He does bless to us the 
 Word and prayer and the sacraments and fellow- 
 ship of His church. We may not see it from day 
 to day, but if we are doing our part faithfully we 
 may rest in assured confidence that God is doing 
 His, and that we are, therefore, both growing to 
 the stature of perfect men in Christ and gather- 
 ing fruit unto life eternal. 
 
II 
 
 A SURE GUIDE AND GOAL 
 
 Looking unto Jesus, the captain and perfecter of 
 our faith. Heb. 12: 1. 
 
 When the Arctic explorer, Nansen, announced 
 to the crew of the Fram his determination to quit 
 the ship for good and all and push his way north- 
 ward alone over the ice-fields, Petersen begged 
 that he might accompany his captain on the 
 journey. 
 
 "It will be no child's play," said Nansen. "The 
 journey will be one not only of severe hardship, 
 but of great danger." 
 
 "I would not think," replied Petersen, "of 
 taking it alone, but with you along, I know it will 
 be all right." 
 
 The world's best framed code of morals leaves 
 us stranded on the way to our strenuously sought 
 goal of a perfect life as discouragingly as the 
 Pram halted Nansen on his way to the Pole. In 
 this crisis of our need, Jesus appears and encour- 
 ages our quest with the assurance that, if we but 
 follow in His steps, He will make our seeking a 
 success. 
 
 But first He would have us consider well what 
 following in His steps means — the living by us 
 of the same self-denying, cross-bearing life that 
 He Himself lived here on the earth — a life of 
 equal love to our neighbor and of supreme love 
 
 4 
 
FAITH AND IGNORANCE 5 
 
 to God ; the doing to others, in all our social and 
 business relations, as we would have them do to 
 us; the refusing to put fame, power, wealth or 
 selfish ease or advantage before love ; the suffering 
 of loss, if need be, in the maintaining of this high 
 standard ; meekness under wrongs done to us ; for- 
 giveness for the wrong done, and for the evil a 
 return only of good; obedience to whatever it be 
 God's will that we should either do or suffer. 
 
 To live such a life as this in such a world as 
 this Jesus would at the outset have us understand 
 is no "child's play." On the contrary, that it 
 means hardness to be endured, dangerously mis- 
 leading by-paths to be shunned, rising inclina- 
 tions to turn aside or turn back to be steadfastly 
 resisted; a fight against disloyal doubt to be 
 fought in right soldierly fashion, and fought to 
 a triumphant finish. 
 
 In a crowd the little child holds tight to its 
 father's hand. In the heart of a forest the trav- 
 eller fears losing sight of his guide. Like the 
 child and the traveller we are all beset by dangers, 
 to defend us from which we need a higher wisdom 
 than our own. For those who believe in either one 
 Supreme Being or many superior beings, it is the 
 greatest of comforts to know that He or they are 
 both ever near them and ever able and willing to 
 defend them from all that is evil and bring them 
 to all that is good. 
 
 It is in this natural and universal feeling that 
 idolatry, or sight-worship, has its root and, to a 
 
6 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 certain extent, its justification. If I can see the 
 God I worship, then I know that He sees me ; that 
 He takes note of my homage, beholds my offerings 
 and hears my prayers. Better, a thousand times 
 better, the devout idolater than the no-God atheist 
 or the know-nothing-of-God agnostic. For idol- 
 worship is still worship; a humble acknowledg- 
 ment of dependence on divine wisdom and 
 strength. As much better than atheism or agnos- 
 ticism as a living tree, however disfigured by un- 
 sightly excrescences, is better than a dead tree, 
 however tall and shapely; better as crudest pe- 
 troleum, which may yet be refined to brilliancy, is 
 better than deadly gas, however scientifically pre- 
 pared, which extinguishes any light over which 
 it is poured. Be it that idol-worship is but a piti- 
 ful mockery of the soul's deepest need, it is still 
 a constant reminder of that unsatisfied need. Such 
 a point of union is thus established between poly- 
 theism and Christianity as easily accounts for 
 the welcome which the honestly inquiring idol- 
 worshipper has gladly given to those new and 
 trustworthy answers of Revelation which give 
 true scope and direction to the hitherto blind im- 
 pulses and aspirations of his religious nature. 
 
 What the hardships and perils of that Arctic 
 expedition from the Fram would prove to be, 
 Nansen himself could no more tell than could his 
 would-be follower. It would be an equal risk for 
 them both. 
 
 In Jesus we have an experienced as well as a 
 
A SURE GUIDE AND GOAL 7 
 
 faithful guide. He knows the way; is Himself 
 the way. He knows our need; just what 
 strength for whatever weakness, what support 
 under whatever burden of care, what succor for 
 whatever kind of temptation, what comfort for 
 whatever sorrow, what courage for whatever dis- 
 heartening fear. More than guide, He is also a 
 companion ; eating with us the bread of whatever 
 trial, tasting with us the cup of whatever afflic- 
 tion. He not only feels for us; He feels with 
 us. Hence the calm and fearless trust with which 
 we go on to meet whatever the future may have 
 in store for us, in assured confidence that we shall 
 be welcomed, at last, to the joy, in heaven, of 
 our faithfully followed Leader and Guide. 
 
Ill 
 
 NEIGHBORLINESS, NEXT TO 
 GODLINESS 
 
 First, be reconciled to thy brother, and then come 
 and offer thy gift. Matt. 5 : 23, 24. 
 
 Wholly taken up with the decent semblance of 
 religion, formalism ignores morality. Fancying 
 that God is pleased with the shows of outward 
 worship, the over-devout formalist feels himself 
 at liberty to treat his fellow-men with a rudeness 
 or injustice which upright, though perhaps 
 prayerless persons would scorn to commit. Hence 
 that unseemly yoking together of strenuous piety 
 with sickening depravity which our Lord so aptly 
 describes as "straining out a gnat and swallowing 
 a camel." 
 
 The men thus satirized by Christ were a set of 
 religionists who maintained that a man might 
 keep the first table of the law so punctiliously 
 that he need not keep the second table at all; 
 might serve God so devoutly that he could with- 
 out blame hate men as cordially as he pleased; 
 who imagined that they could so hoodwink God 
 by bribes and flattery that He would care little 
 whether or how much they abused their neighbors. 
 Making the law of no effect through their tradi- 
 tional glosses and false interpretations, where 
 their lives did not fit God's pattern they changed 
 
 8 
 
NEIGHBORLINESS 9 
 
 the pattern to fit their lives — strangling the law 
 under show of embracing it. 
 
 In strongest opposition to these Pharisaic no- 
 tions the Bible everywhere puts morality before 
 what is generally termed piety; doing right be- 
 fore praying; duty to our fellow-men before di- 
 rect duties to God. Even in the Old Testament 
 God made it to be clearly understood that He 
 cares nothing for religious forms in themselves. 
 "I have," He says, "forms and offerings enough 
 of my own, if that were what I wanted. The 
 beasts of the forest are mine, and the cattle on a 
 thousand hills. If I were hungry I would not 
 tell thee. . . Offer unto the Lord the sacrifices 
 of righteousness." "Seek judgment, relieve the 
 oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the 
 widow." "Make all right with your fellow-men, 
 and after that I will make all right with you." 
 
 In the New Testament the teaching is the 
 same; only if possible more full and emphatic. 
 It was by such preaching that John prepared the 
 people to receive Christ. When told of Christ's 
 coming and how important it was that they 
 should be ready to receive Him, the people "asked 
 Him saying, What shall we do then?" 
 
 "He that hath two coats let him impart to him 
 that hath none; and he that hath meat let him 
 do likewise." 
 
 "Then came also publicans to be baptized and 
 said to Him, Master, what shall we do ?" 
 
 "Exact no more than that which is appointed 
 
 you." 
 
10 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 "And the soldiers likewise demanded of Him, 
 saying, And what shall we do?" 
 
 "Do violence to no man, neither accuse any." 
 
 Thus was a pure and honorable morality the 
 trumpet by which the coming of Jesus was her- 
 alded to the world. 
 
 Our Lord taught nothing more pointedly than 
 that unneighborly acts are a complete bar to ac- 
 ceptable worship. 
 
 "First, be reconciled to thy brother." You 
 have come bringing a gift to the altar of wor- 
 ship ; to render praise, offer thanksgiving, seek 
 forgiveness for your sins, drop money into the 
 Lord's treasury. Before bending your knees in 
 adoration, singing your hymn or making your 
 contribution, you think of some unrighted wrong 
 done to a neighbor — unpaid debt, unfair bargain, 
 rude discourtesy, tale-bearing, kindness repaid by 
 neglect, pretext of injury received when you 
 were yourself the injurer. What Jesus would have 
 the very first sight of His altar do for you, the in- 
 tended worshipper, is to quicken remembrance of 
 wrongs which it has hitherto been convenient for 
 you to forget. What would He have you do? Go 
 on with your worship? No; "Leave there thy 
 gift before the altar." Leave it before the altar, 
 but do not put it on the altar. It is a defiled gift, 
 and will not be accepted. Let the prayer go un- 
 said, the psalm go unsung, the money stay awhile 
 in thy purse. You have come to make your ac- 
 knowledgments to God; but there are other ac- 
 
NEIGHBORLINESS 11 
 
 knowledgments which are more important just 
 now, and which He says you must make first or 
 He will not accept those made to Himself. "First, 
 be reconciled to thy brother." God wants the 
 first table of the law kept, but not at the expense 
 of the second. He would not suffer broken tables 
 to be put into His ark nor to be brought into His 
 sanctuary. Whole tables must be brought in or 
 none. What is technically called "religion"; 
 prayer, thanksgiving, confession, are good; but 
 they are not good, they are worse than useless if 
 disjoined from a high-toned, rght-minded, hon- 
 orable treatment of our fellow-men. Unless 
 wrong done to our neighbor be righted, devotion 
 of whatever kind is of absolutely no account what- 
 ever in the sight of God. That wronged brother 
 is also a child of God ; and would you as a father 
 smile on the man who has done some grievous 
 wrong to your child and who leaves the wrong 
 unacknowledged? What would that be but to 
 wink at the indignity and outrage? 
 
 It may be that some who are not Chrsitians are 
 saying to themselves, "That is what I like; that 
 is a comfort to me." I am glad if you like it and 
 glad if it is a comfort to you ; although I did not 
 say it for that, but because it is true. It is a 
 comfort to any man that he is not mean, selfish, 
 or underhanded in his treatment of his fellows. 
 It is a comfort to be tenderly, honestly, nobly 
 mindful of the rights, good name, prosperity, and 
 happiness of one's neighbors. And there are 
 
12 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 men out of the church as well as in the church 
 who have this stamp of nobility and honor. 
 
 We say to such men, You are on the right road ; 
 but you have by no means completed your jour- 
 ney. You need to be devout towards God as well 
 as upright towards men. 
 
 To the offender against morality Jesus does 
 indeed say, "Put not thy gift on the altar." He 
 does not say, "Take away from the altar thy 
 gift." "Leave there thy gift before the altar and 
 go thy way. First, be reconciled to thy brother" ; 
 but there is a second; "Then come and offer thy 
 
 gift." 
 
 This explains in what sense morality is more 
 important than piety. Here is an old stubble 
 field, and I would sow it to wheat. Which is more 
 important to be done first, sowing or plowing? 
 Plowing, certainly, since without that the sowing 
 would be labor lost. But I do not stop with the 
 plowing. So Jesus says we must not stop with 
 the strictest morality. If everything is right in 
 the home, in the office, shop and store, in society, 
 then I may go to Christ about my personal re- 
 lations with Him. From the altar thus revisited 
 I shall bear away the inward consolation of an 
 accepted gift. 
 
IV 
 
 FULLEST ACCORD IN WARFARE AND 
 WORSHIP 
 
 The people went up into the city, every man 
 straight before him, and they took the city. Josh. 
 6:20. 
 
 And they were all with one accord, in one place. 
 Acts 2:1. 
 
 In order to win the happiest success in Chris- 
 tian work, there must be both unity of action and 
 freedom of action. After the walls of Jericho 
 had fallen "the people went up into the city every 
 man straight before him, and they took the city." 
 They went up as one body. None stayed behind, 
 none straggled, none shirked. Every man was 
 in his place in the ranks — priest, officer and pri- 
 vate ; each in his own place. It was not by a se- 
 lect and privileged few that the victory was won. 
 The army moved with one purpose, as though it 
 were one man animated by one spirit. Yet along 
 with this oneness of purpose and spirit, there was 
 complete personal liberty. All went up together, 
 but every man went up "straight before him"; 
 every man in his own path. Every man had both 
 foot-room and elbow-room. The man was not 
 sunk in the mass. Each soldier fought after his 
 own fashion, and on his own individual responsi- 
 bility — no crowding, no interference, no damag- 
 ing criticism ; no saying of one to another, "You 
 
 13 
 
14 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 must grind your spear exactly as I grind mine 
 and wield it exactly as I wield my own." 
 
 And shall one follower of Christ now say to 
 another, "Come under my form of church-gov- 
 ernment ; fall in with my manner of worship and 
 my mode of administering the ordinances, or I 
 cannot recognize you as a fellow-disciple of the 
 Master"? As fitly might the English at Sevas- 
 topol have said to their French allies, "We would 
 like your help in the taking of this fortress, but 
 we cannot allow you to have any hand in the busi- 
 ness ; at least, we cannot give you any recognized 
 place in the lines of investment and battle, un- 
 less you will consent to exchange your French 
 gray for our English scarlet; unless you alter 
 your Chassepot rifles into our Enfields ; unless on 
 your banners you emblazon our Hon and unicorn 
 over your fleur-de-lis." 
 
 Unhindered by overawing or needless restric- 
 tions, sacrificing cheerfully so much of what is 
 peculiar to himself in opinion and practice as the 
 best good of all may require, each hardness-en- 
 during soldier of Christ will wish to go up and 
 help fight his Lord's battles. But because he loves 
 his brethren, also, he will wish for them what he 
 desires for himself, that each of them be allowed 
 to go up "straight before him," do his own share 
 of the work, and win and receive his own due 
 share of the reward. 
 
 And as in warfare, so in worship. Going to 
 service one Sunday morning, I was seized with a 
 
WARFARE AND WORSHIP 15 
 
 pleasurable surprise as all of a sudden the city 
 bells rang out with the accord of their joyous 
 tones. Subdued and blended by the intervening 
 hillside, some notes as of a familiar church-tune 
 came to my ear. Is it the "Reformed" or "Trin- 
 ity/' I at once asked myself, that has so quietly 
 during the past week put a new chime into its 
 old bell-tower? Listening more intently, how- 
 ever, I soon distinguished the sounds of the indi- 
 vidual bells of the different churches. My next 
 thought was, What, after all, if the bells of ad- 
 jacent churches were really tuned in groups and 
 rung as a chime? Some by preconcerted arrange- 
 ment pealing forth notes for the line, "How 
 pleased and blest was I" ; others taking up the 
 refrain, "To hear the people cry"; and others 
 following with, "Come, let us seek our God to- 
 day." Such a united call from all the churches, 
 what a delightful sense would it give of the one- 
 ness of all Christians in worship if not in creed ! 
 
CHRISTIANITY, A RELIGION OF FACTS 
 
 And ye are my witnesses of these things. Luke 
 24: 48. 
 
 This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all 
 are witnesses. Acts 2:32. 
 
 Christianity has for its key-phrase, "And it 
 came to pass." It is distinguished from false re- 
 ligions in that it is essentially a record of events. 
 It is this advantage which it has of certified nar- 
 ration over uncertain speculation that gives it a 
 reach which is infinitely above all that to which 
 even the most profound philosophy has ever at- 
 tained. Who of all the "wise and prudent" 
 thinkers of all the ages is more wise and prudent 
 than is Plato? Yet Plato has no story to tell us. 
 It is the Athenian cult. What "all the Athenians" 
 want, what "all the strangers" who have caught 
 from them the spirit of mental collision and com- 
 bat want, is not finalities, but new and yet newer 
 things about which there can be no end of discus- 
 sion — a competitive field for logical and metaphy- 
 sical gymnastics. So long as St. Paul has any- 
 thing to offer about which they can dispute with 
 him, it is all right. They will not only argue with 
 him to the "end of the chapter," but they will 
 then be just as eager to begin a new chapter of 
 disputation. The history of philosophy, indeed, 
 has no last chapter, ending with maledictions 
 
 16 
 
A RELIGION OF FACTS 17 
 
 against any man who shall either add to, or take 
 from, the words that have been already spoken. 
 
 St. Paul does indeed have something new to 
 say to these ever-inquisitive Athenians by way of 
 argument, but what is vastly more to the purpose, 
 he has news to tell them. He is not, from choice, 
 a disputant. He is, chief of all, a reporter of up- 
 to-date transactions. They listen not only pa- 
 tiently, but interestedly, to the new argument 
 about "the unknown god" ; but no sooner does he 
 go on to clinch his argument with the news of 
 Christ's resurrection, than they call him down, 
 and, with their hootings and cat-calls, compel 
 him to stop. 
 
 It is the historically established fact of the 
 resurrection that makes it so well worth while to 
 know all else that can be known about the words 
 and works of Jesus. But for His resurrection all 
 else would be but little more than a matter of in- 
 teresting but merely human biography. His hav- 
 ing been both "raised up" and "taken up" gives 
 a life-and-death significance to His whole mission 
 upon earth. 
 
 Essentially, then, Christian preachers are al- 
 ways and everywhere to be evangelists — to preach 
 as the Evangelists wrote — not inferences, experi- 
 ences, systems or dogmas, but — facts. It is the 
 "Gospel — the Good News — according to Mat- 
 thew" — not according to the catechism or the 
 creed. "Ye are my witnesses," says Jesus; and 
 the business of a witness is to tell not what he, 
 
18 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 the witness, feels or infers from the facts, but the 
 facts. Tell the facts. Tell them over and over 
 again. Keep on telling them. Then let the facts 
 speak for themselves. Let them make their own 
 appeal to the minds, consciences and hearts of 
 those who hear them. "It is the facts," says 
 Paul to his Corinthian brethren, "in which you 
 stand. It is the facts by which you are saved. It 
 is the facts that you are to hold fast — the facts 
 which I delivered to you, first of all, and which 
 you also received — how that Christ died for our 
 sins, that He was buried, and that He was raised 
 again the third day; that, as an indisputable 
 proof of this, He was seen of Cephas, then of the 
 twelve; after that, of five hundred brethren at 
 once ; that He was seen of James, then of all the 
 apostles ; and, last of all, of me also." 
 
 Some are, no doubt, at a loss to know just how 
 to take St. Paul when he says that he rejoices and 
 will continue to rejoice in even make-belief 
 preachers of Christ ; who have only a feigned in- 
 terest in what they preach. What has now been 
 said makes it easy of interpretation. If there be 
 a fact which it is all-important for the world to 
 know, let any one tell it who will. The Tories of 
 the American Revolution did not much like the 
 way the war had ended. Yet. if they pretended 
 to like it, and started out to spread abroad the 
 good news of the peace that had been made with 
 the mother country, even the most loyal of pa- 
 triots would have bid them Godspeed. "Tell it to 
 
A RELIGION OF FACTS 19 
 
 all the inhabitants of the land." It is what they 
 want; what they need; what they are waiting to 
 hear. 
 
 "Go into all the world," is the great commis- 
 sion, "and tell to every creature in it the 'good 
 news' of Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from 
 the dead; who, having been delivered for our of- 
 fences, was raised again for our justification." 
 
VI 
 
 (1) 
 
 LIKEWISE 
 
 And as ye would that men should do to you, do 
 ye also to them, likewise. Luke 6: SI. 
 
 Five hundred years before Christ, the great 
 heathen moralist of a great heathen nation gave 
 this as a complete guide for our treatment of 
 others : "Never do to another what you would not 
 like done to yourself." 
 
 This does not tell us to do anything; it only 
 tells us what not to do. 
 
 The hermit keeps this rule to perfection. He 
 has no "others" about him to be either hurt by, 
 or to hurt. Instead of vexing himself with the 
 thousand and one troublesome problems of social, 
 business or religious intercourse, he thinks it 
 wiser to run away from them all. Xo neighbor- 
 hood squabbles for him, no peace-conferences, no 
 labor-disputes, no political or church controver- 
 sies, no home or foreign missionary appeals, no 
 contribution-box for any cause to be passed to 
 him. Such commands as "To do good and com- 
 municate, forget not"; "Rejoice with them that 
 rejoice and weep with them that weep"; "Look 
 not every man on his own things, but every man, 
 also, on the things of others" — such precepts as 
 
 20 
 
LIKEWISE 21 
 
 these have no practical meaning for him — a nega- 
 tive way of keeping to a negative rule. 
 
 Are even Christian churches and ministers in 
 danger of taking this narrow, eremite view of all 
 that is outside their own denominational inter- 
 ests; of keeping as aloof as possible from those 
 bearing other names than their own? 
 
 In his annual Thanksgiving sermon a minister 
 once gave as one cause for thanksgiving, that he 
 and his people had, the past year, gotten along 
 so pleasantly with the minister and people of an- 
 other large, near-by, wealthy and influential con- 
 gregation. Then he gave as the reason for it that 
 they had had during the year so little to do with 
 one another! Two near-by, yet hermit congre- 
 gations. That is one way — husbands and wives, 
 brothers and sisters, families, neighbors, churches, 
 towns and countries, having as little to do with 
 one another as possible — hermit families, hermit 
 churches, hermit neighborhoods and hermit na- 
 tions. 
 
 Yet even Confucius did not advocate seclusion. 
 To one who expressed the wish that he might be 
 a recluse, Confucius said, "We cannot withdraw 
 from the world and associate with birds and beasts 
 that have no affinity with us. With whom should 
 we associate but with suffering men? The disor- 
 der that prevails is just that which requires our 
 efforts. If right principles prevailed in the 
 world, there would be no necessity for us to 
 change its state." 
 
22 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 To shirk duty because it is hard is to play the 
 coward. To do it is to act the man. We may 
 avoid possible unpleasantness by living apart, but 
 what we want to know is how we may live to- 
 gether and live in right human fashion, too. 
 
 The world's rule for our treatment of others is 
 summed up in the one word "retaliation" — taking 
 the word in its exact, literal meaning, "the like 
 again" — good for good, bad for bad. The world 
 regards it good legal tender if you pay a man 
 back in the same coin that he has paid out to you 
 — be the coin what it may. Most men, I think, 
 answer their consciences fairly well if they give 
 back either as good or as bad as has been given 
 to them. "Whatsoever things men do to you, do 
 ye to them likewise" is the way Christ's currency 
 is alloyed in the world's mint. True, even our 
 Lord would say that this is right, provided it is 
 only kindness that is done to you. Do good to 
 them that do good to you, certainly. Never 
 lived another man so susceptible to kindness as 
 Jesus was. Never did He forget the least kind- 
 ness done to Him, and what is more, He said that 
 He never would forget it ; that He would not let 
 even a cup of water, given to one of His disciples 
 in His name, go without its reward. Instead of 
 doing more than others, that professed disciple of 
 Jesus would do less than others — less even than 
 the heathen — were he not to respond thankfully to 
 any act, however small, of good will done to him. 
 It was a heathen who had the sense to say, "You 
 
LIKEWISE 23 
 
 have said everything bad of a man when you have 
 called him ungrateful." 
 
 A mere world-adviser says to a young man or 
 woman just starting out in life, "Would you suc- 
 ceed in either society, politics or business, you 
 must, first of all, make a careful study of human 
 nature. You must understand men so as to know 
 how to take them; that is, how to use them for 
 your own advantage; but, of course, without let- 
 ting them see that they are being used in that 
 way." 
 
 Christ's teaching is immeasurably above that. 
 He, too, tells us that we must study human na- 
 ture. But He tells us where we are to study it, 
 and for what purpose. The world's man studies 
 human nature in other men to find what use he 
 can make of them for building up himself. 
 Christ's man studies human nature in his own 
 heart ; studies to know what kind of treatment he 
 himself would like in order that he may know 
 what kind of treatment to give to others. "What 
 shall I do for my neighbor in any particular 
 case?" will be answered in a Christian way only 
 when I have asked and answered this other ques- 
 tion, "What would I, in like circumstances, wish 
 to have him do to or for myself?" When each 
 and every man shall study human nature, first of 
 all, in himself, with the earnest purpose to find 
 in himself a guide for his treatment of others, the 
 millennium will have dawned on the world. It 
 is the Golden Rule of Christ, not alloyed by over- 
 
4 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 weening selfishness, but 24 carats fine in practice 
 that is to usher in the Golden Age. 
 
 In a perfect society where there are only the 
 pure, good, loving and true, the word "likewise" 
 is all that is needed. Retaliation — the like again 
 — is the law and the practice of all holy beings. 
 It is in accordance with this law of holy retalia- 
 tion that the education of heaven goes on, and 
 that its joy is heightened and perfected. The 
 worship of heaven is not individual worship 
 alone; it is also a worship of immediate and lov- 
 ing responses. Cherubim and seraphim not only 
 cry, but they cry one to another, "Holy, holy, 
 holy is the Lord God of Hosts." 
 
VII 
 
 (2) 
 
 CONTRARIWISE 
 
 Not rendering evil for evil, but contrariwise, 
 1 Pet. 3:9. 
 
 But in this sin-troubled world of ours is a dif- 
 ferent kind of experiences, calling for the appli- 
 cation of a far nobler requirement, for the exer- 
 cise of a far loftier spirit. A man attacks, de- 
 fames, vilifies, wrongs me in any way. Now 
 what am I, as a Christian, to do? Not likewise, 
 but contrariwise; "not rendering evil for evil, 
 nor railing for railing, but contrariwise, bless- 
 ing." Here, retaliation — the like again — would 
 be wholly ^christian. Here is a case where the 
 superiority of Christ's man over the world's man 
 is to appear, where is to be shown the advantage 
 which the new nature has over the old and cor- 
 rupt nature. We are not to bear such injuries 
 in even equivocal silence; we are to go further 
 than silence; we are to render positive good for 
 real evil — to answer rudeness by courtesy, haugh- 
 tiness by humility, reserve by openness, greed by 
 generosity, cursing by blessing; anything low, 
 base and wrong by its exact opposite. 
 
 Christianity has this for its grand distinction 
 that it begins where the best unchristianized dis- 
 position leaves off. Just where the world's man 
 
 25 
 
26 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 stops and beats a hasty retreat, Christ's man takes 
 up his ownward and glorious march. "You have 
 heard that it was said to them of old time, an eye 
 for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say 
 unto you, that ye resist not evil; but whosoever 
 smites you on the one cheek, turn to him the other 
 also. And if any man sue thee at the law and 
 take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak, also. 
 And whosoever shall compel thee to go with him 
 a mile, go with him twain." The old Adam goes 
 not a step further than he is compelled to go. 
 The moment he is let go, he hastens back with all 
 speed, nursing his wrath and waiting with the un- 
 tiring patience of revenge for the time when he 
 can compel his tormentor to go a troublesome 
 mile with himself. The new Adam stops not at 
 the end of the first mile, but offers of his own 
 accord to go another. 
 
 Does Jesus here deny the right of proper self- 
 defence? If assailed in my property, reputation 
 or life, may I not defend myself? Yes, provided 
 I do it in such a way as to show, beyond a doubt, 
 that the abuse has aroused in me no feeling of 
 malevolent revenge ; that I have no wish to harm 
 my assailant as he has to harm me. We may 
 comprehend perfectly the extent of the wrong 
 done to us, we may protest against it, we may re- 
 buke it, but this out of no rancorous resentment 
 against the wrong-doer. We are to pray for those 
 who despitefully use us, that God may give them 
 
CONTRARIWISE 27 
 
 a better mind. "If thy brother has trespassed 
 against thee, have him arrested, at once? No, 
 go and tell him his fault between you and him 
 alone. If he hear thee, thou hast gained thy 
 brother." It is not to vent feelings of anger; 
 not to rebuke and shame the transgressor, but to 
 gain him for a brother. 
 
 As a special incentive to this duty of return- 
 ing good for evil, we have the promise of a spe- 
 cial blessing. Our Christian profession on this 
 point will pretty surely, some time or another, 
 perhaps often, be put to the test. Offences will 
 come so that we will have the chance to pray for 
 those that despitefully use us and persecute us. 
 When that trial comes, we are to remember that it 
 is sent for a divine and good purpose. It is 
 Christ coming to test the genuineness of His own 
 graces in us ; and this is a fact we are expected 
 to know beforehand so as not to be taken by sur- 
 prise: "But contrarywise blessing, knowing that 
 you are thereunto called that you may inherit a 
 blessing." Shall we by carnal recreancy lose the 
 crown which at such a moment Jesus is ready to 
 place upon our brows ? Shall we, at the very time 
 of all, when that in our Christian profession is ap- 
 pealed to which, perhaps more than anything else, 
 is its distinctive badge and its crowning glory, 
 shall we then basely falsify and dishonor it? 
 Shall we with an inconsiderate and fatal ease pro- 
 fess Christianity as a whole, but when the trying 
 times come, take it all back, piece by piece? 
 
2S FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 The success likely to attend the following of 
 this contrariwise precept of Jesus is another en- 
 couragement to its observance. It is by rendering 
 good for evil that the evil is overcome. Evil can- 
 not be killed by direct attack any more than Her- 
 cules could kill the hundred-headed hydra by 
 simply cutting off its heads. As soon as he had 
 cut off one head, another started up in its place. 
 Hatred has a like pertinacity of life which mere 
 power, however sharply, skillfully and persist- 
 ently exercised, can never subdue. By threats of 
 vengeance it may be cowed for a time, but can- 
 not be overcome. It can be overcome only by 
 appealing to an opposite feeling. When the en- 
 vier or hater brandishes his hateful sword, leave 
 him to beat the air alone, while you quietly, by 
 some act or word of unmistakable good-will, stir 
 up whatever there may be in him of ingenuous 
 shame. Get the man's own better disposition to 
 fight against the worse. "Wherefore, if thine 
 enemy hunger, feed him ; if he thirst, give him 
 drink, for by so doing you shall heap coals of 
 fire on his head." It was Hercules' fire that did 
 the work, and the hydra of enmity is killed not 
 by vengeful decapitation, but by the caustic of 
 forbearance, forgiveness and love. You heap 
 coals of kindness on your enemy's head, not to 
 give him pain, not as a refined and exquisite mode 
 of revenge, but to burn away his ill will. 
 
 In deliberative assemblies there are always 
 
CONTRARIWISE 29 
 
 honest differences of opinion — on questions not, it 
 may be, where any moral principle is concerned, 
 but on questions of mere expediencey. One man 
 says aggressively and defiantly, "I have taken my 
 ground and I shall listen to nothing else." The 
 tendency of this is to make others just as head- 
 strong and unyielding, and so you have a dead- 
 lock and nothing moves. Now let another man 
 say, "I believe that I am right, too. I am fully 
 convinced that my way is the best way. But I 
 am not going to insist on its adoption against the 
 judgment of a majority of my associates. For 
 the sake of harmony and efficiency I am willing 
 to make sacrifices." Obstinacy is at once shamed 
 by the exhibition of such a spirit. Mutual con- 
 cession, mutual forbearance; each esteeming 
 other better than himself; in honor preferring 
 one another — such is the spirit and the law of 
 Christ. 
 
 But it is in the home that most frequent occa- 
 sions arise for the conflict of opposite views and 
 feelings ; most frequent occasions, therefore, for 
 the exercise of contrarywise forbearance. Under 
 some provocation hard words are let slip. This 
 provokes a retort in the same spirit. If the re- 
 tort be made, it provokes the first offender still 
 more, and so it goes on until the spark becomes 
 a blaze. How shall that be avoided? Either by 
 not replying to the harsh and hasty utterance — 
 keeping "not a sullen but a serene silence" — or 
 by the soft answer which turns away wrath. A 
 
30 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 spark or a burning coal left to itself soon goes 
 out. It takes two to make a quarrel as well as 
 two to make a bargain. 
 
 It were much had Jesus only given us His beau- 
 tiful, God-like precepts. But He has given us 
 more. One may give me directions, orally or in 
 writing, how I may go safely over a difficult and 
 dangerous ground. But it were my best guide 
 could I see before me the steps of one who had 
 gone over it before ; so much easier is it to follow 
 steps than it is to follow directions. Jesus has 
 given us an example that we should "follow His 
 steps." When He was reviled He reviled not 
 again. When He suffered, He threatened not. 
 Spitting, buffeting, mocking He bore meekly and 
 silently. He dealt no answering blow, He re- 
 turned no contemptuous or angry look, He ut- 
 tered no counter-threat. For the scourge, the 
 cross, the spikes and the spear, for wagging 
 heads and cruel taunts He had only pity, forgive- 
 ness and prayer. 
 
 And it was in just this way that Jesus over- 
 came the evil and that He is still overcoming it. 
 So does He not keep back, but slay the enmity. 
 Like Him let us also overcome. If others do us 
 good, let us respond lovingly and do good to 
 them "likewise." But if any do us evil, let us be 
 ready, "contrariwise," with a blessing. 
 
VIII 
 
 AN ORIGINAL GUEST— THE LOWER 
 ENNOBLED BY THE HIGHER 
 
 Draw out now, and bear to the governor of the 
 feast. John 2 : 8. 
 
 No matter how elaborate or abundant such an 
 entertainment as that of the marriage-feast in 
 Cana of Galilee might be in other particulars; 
 in one particular there must be no failure — the 
 wine must not give out. But it begins to be ap- 
 parent at a certain stage of this banquet that it is 
 likely to break down in that, as it was then re- 
 garded, most important part. An ill-natured 
 guest would have said unkind things about the 
 slenderness of the provision. Deeply concerned 
 for the reputation of the bridegroom and his 
 friends, Mary applies to Jesus to help them out 
 of their difficulty. He kindly supplies what is 
 lacking. He not only by His presence approves 
 and encourages the enjoyment of the occasion, 
 but he takes up the feast when it is likely to fail 
 and makes it a success. He rescues the banquet 
 from the reproach which would otherwise have 
 been sure to follow, and makes it honorable. He 
 saves the feast from a mortifying decline and 
 prolongs it in undiminished credit and enjoyment 
 to the end. 
 
 In its "beginning" the world's entertainment 
 promises well. "Every man at the beginning sets 
 
 31 
 
32 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 forth that which is good." Everything is bright 
 and sparkling to the young. Every relation, en- 
 terprise and occupation promises well at the 
 start. Every new home gives promise of con- 
 tentment and of pure and growing affection. 
 Every scheme, ordinance or system devised by 
 men for their common protection, improvement or 
 happiness is full of hope in its beginning. The 
 founders of dynasties, governments and institu- 
 tions are grandly optimistic. But who can say 
 that affairs may not take so disastrous a turn as 
 to justify the forebodings of the most gloomy 
 pessimist? Heraclitus bewailed with weeping the 
 wickedness of men; Democritus jeered at their 
 follies. But the tears of the one and the laugh- 
 ter of the other spoke alike the failure of men in 
 their search for a happiness that should not only 
 satisfy, but endure. 
 
 Jesus redeems life from this failure. He saves 
 it from the laughter of fools on the one hand, and 
 from the sneers of cynics on the other. He keeps 
 it from becoming either tragedy or comedy. He 
 takes up the feast where the guests were ready to 
 abandon it in disgust or despair, prolongs it with 
 honor and makes it a success. With Christ in his 
 heart, no man need ever outlive any true enjoy- 
 ment of the world. Christ in the heart keeps pure 
 and fresh the Christian's love for nature, for his 
 friends, for society, for literature, science and 
 art. He that loves the Bible keeps relish for all 
 good books. He that takes Christ with him finds 
 
AN ORIGINAL GUEST 33 
 
 unabated enjoyment in all rational social festiv- 
 ity. The Christian is no complainer, no misan- 
 thropist, morose and soured with the world. He 
 enjoys life more and longer than he does or can 
 who has not Christ for a friend and fellow-guest. 
 Christ is staying power to the spirit. The Chris- 
 tian outstays the worldling, even at the world's 
 own banqueting table. 
 
 We are not necessarily low-lived although we 
 be ever so keenly alive to that which is low. To 
 be low-lived is to be satisfied with that which is 
 low. It is not his fondness for eating that makes 
 the glutton. It is that eating is what he most 
 cares for and lives for. The enthusiastic student 
 enjoys the pleasures of a well-spread table, and 
 enjoys them none the less, but rather more, be- 
 cause of his fondness for study. Be his relish for 
 books never so keen, he is still not in the least 
 ashamed to boast that he has a good appetite 
 and a good cook. 
 
 Yet, let the student, also, beware. Is he so 
 wholly given to study that he begins to care less 
 and less for his friends? Has the young man or 
 woman away at school or college found home- 
 love dying out of his or her heart? To that ex- 
 tent, then, is he or she low-lived. It was of such 
 a one, a favorite daughter, that a sorrowful 
 father once said to me, "True, I have gained a 
 scholar, but I have lost a child!" 
 
 There is the like warning, too, for fathers and 
 mothers — for fathers so devoted to business, club- 
 
34 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 life, or politics; for mothers so surrendered to 
 the exactions of social or even philanthropic am- 
 bition as to justify the children's lament: "True, 
 we have gained a captain of industry, finance, let- 
 ters or art; true, we have gained a society-star, 
 but we have lost a father, a mother, and a home." 
 To the extent of such parental neglect, such hus- 
 bands, wives, fathers and mothers are low-lived. 
 It is but a kind of self -degradation ; the sacrific- 
 ing of a higher form of life to a lower. 
 
 Not that there is in this the least implied cen- 
 sure of any sort whatever of worldly ambition, en- 
 terprise or success. God is Himself the greatest 
 of legislators and rulers, of farm, forest and 
 mine proprietors; of geometricians, architects 
 and artists. Take a good look at "Solomon in 
 all his glory," and then consider God's "lilies." 
 He likes to see His children, made in His own 
 image, till farms, develop mines, plan great en- 
 gineering works, build dwelling-houses, ware- 
 houses, ships, halls of legislation, justice, science 
 and art. "Every house is built by some man." 
 This is all secular, indeed ; but it is, or should be, 
 much more than that. There is, or should be, a 
 sacredness in it all. Such sacredness there is for 
 the builder who reverently considers that "He who 
 made all things is God" ; and that among the "all 
 things" is the builder Himself. The crown and 
 radiance of the whole world's business ambition 
 and enterprise is this filial recognition of the 
 Father's love. Let this thankful acknowledg- 
 
AN ORIGINAL GUEST 35 
 
 ment be wanting, and God may well complain, 
 "True, I have gained a husbandman, an engineer, 
 an architect, a jurist, a statesman, a general, an 
 orator, a financier, an artist, a scholar; but, alas, 
 I have lost a child !" 
 
 The worldling is the wedding-guest to whom 
 the wine and the delicacies of the feast are all 
 and all. And herein is the world's sin. 
 
IX 
 
 OUR ONE CONCERN 
 
 What is that to thee? Follow thou me. John 
 21:22. 
 
 These seven disciples are now at a standstill, 
 knowing not whither to go or what to do. For 
 the three years past all has been plain. They 
 have been doing their work under the immediate 
 direction and supervision of the Master. But, 
 although He has twice appeared to them since 
 His resurrection, He has given them no instruc- 
 tions as to future service. Has their apostolic 
 commission, then, expired? If so, will it be re- 
 newed, and when? The over-strenuous Peter is 
 impatient of delay. He will do what he can. 
 Until there are again more men to catch, he will 
 again catch fish. He does not say tentatively, 
 '"Suppose we go a-fishing, then?" "I am going," 
 he says, in his bold, independent fashion. The 
 six f ailing in, they all start together for the lake, 
 pull out from shore, drop anchor and cast the net. 
 Making no catch, they row, anchor and cast 
 again. They try their luck in this place and 
 that, but without success. Undisciplined lands- 
 men would have given up in disgust ; would have 
 tumbled the limp net into the boat, pulled straight 
 to shore and scattered to their homes long before 
 midnight. Not so with these seven experienced 
 fishermen. Too well they know the fickleness of 
 
 36 
 
OUR ONE CONCERN 37 
 
 their craft to think of farming the sea as the 
 farmer farms his fields. With the fisherman's 
 proverbial patience they toil through the entire 
 night till the stars fade and the east reddens with 
 the dawn. 
 
 Now, looking shoreward, they see a stranger 
 standing there near the water's edge. He calls 
 aloud to ask whether they have anything on board 
 for a breakfast. "No, we have toiled all night, 
 but have taken nothing." "Cast on the right side 
 of the boat and you shall find." No sooner does 
 the net now settle and spread than they find it 
 dropped into a school of fishes — so full, directly, 
 that they cannot pull it in — not to be drawn but 
 dragged. 
 
 John has his hands on the ropes of the net 
 with the hands of the rest ; but no sooner does he 
 feel the weight and motion of the darting and 
 struggling prey than a new thought strikes him. 
 Casting a searching glance at the stranger on the 
 beach, in a quick, eager undertone he says to 
 Peter, "It is the Lord!" John is the first to see, 
 but Peter is the first to act. "What ! the Lord, 
 my Lord, my kind, forbearing, forgiving Master ! 
 This is now the third time He has come to see me 
 since His resurrection, and not a word, not a look 
 or slightest hint has He given me about my sleep- 
 ing in that sorrowful garden, or about my follow- 
 ing Him afar off when His enemies were leading 
 Him away, or about my again and again denying 
 that He was any friend or even acquaintance of 
 
38 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 mine." No sooner does he catch John's words, 
 " It is the Lord," than he lets go the net, 
 snatches up his coat from the bottom of the boat, 
 throws it on, leaps into the sea, now swimming 
 and now wading to shore, leaving the six to bring 
 in the loaded net as best they can, while he hast- 
 ens to look once more into those dear eyes whose 
 glance of mingled pity, reproof and love in the 
 judgment hall there broke his unsteadfast heart 
 and sent him out alone in the darkness, weeping 
 bitterly. 
 
 If Peter has a lurking dread lest that sorrowful 
 and reproachful look may now be repeated, he is 
 not long in discovering that such fear is ground- 
 less — equally so if he has feared lest, although 
 Jesus may forgive, He will never again take back 
 as a trusted friend one who had proved faithless 
 in the hour of such extreme trial. 
 
 We, alas, who are ourselves so very imperfect, 
 count it magnanimity if we go so far only as 
 to say of one who has once shown himself incon- 
 stant, "Yes, I forgive him, but I can never again 
 trust him." Poor, pitiable magnanimity ! Not 
 so Jesus to his once weak and erring disciple. He 
 not only freely forgives him, He gives him again 
 his freest and fullest confidence. He trusts and 
 honors him just as completely as though Peter 
 had never deserted and denied Him. Jesus does 
 indeed in the most delicate way awaken Peter's 
 grief by thrice asking, "Lovest thou me?" but 
 when comes the appealing answer, "Lord, thou 
 
OUR ONE CONCERN 39 
 
 knowest that I love thee," the appeal is at once 
 followed by the thrice-given renewal of his apos- 
 tolic commission, "Feed my sheep" — at the same 
 time foretelling for him a life of faithful service 
 to be crowned at its close with the glory of mar- 
 tyrdom. 
 
 We cannot doubt that Peter was given this 
 prediction as a needed check to his naturally too 
 impetuous and self-confident disposition. The 
 chastened spirit with which he now follows the 
 Master is in striking contrast with his once for- 
 ward boast, "Though all should forsake and deny 
 thee, yet will not I." Methinks he is now saying 
 to himself, "Yes, my Lord is taking me at my 
 old word. I said that I would die for him and 
 to that test it seems I am one day to be brought." 
 And feeling now his weakness more deeply than 
 ever before, we are sure of the unutterable long- 
 ing with which his heart goes out for that stead- 
 fast strength which shall keep him henceforth 
 unswervingly true and loyal to the end. 
 
 We see, too, how entirely natural it is that on 
 turning round and seeing John, he should ask, 
 "Lord, and what shall this man do? Thou hast 
 appointed for me the life by which I am to prove 
 my love for thee and the death by which I am to 
 glorify God. What is his work and his end to 
 be? Shall we who have alike enjoyed privileged 
 companionship with thee, who were together on 
 the Mount of Transfiguration and at the Resur- 
 rection-tomb, share also the martyr's doom, or 
 must I alone be carried whither I would not?" 
 
40 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 This concern of Peter about the future of John 
 our Lord sharply reproves: "If I will that he 
 tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow 
 thou me." 
 
 Stumble over it as we may, the fact remains 
 that God does make marked differences in both 
 the lives and deaths of even his equally loved 
 children. Of the eleven apostles John alone was 
 spared martyrdom. Persecuted, banished, often 
 in jeopardy of his life, he yet died in his bed in 
 a good old age. He tarried, according to the 
 foretelling, until Christ's coming to destroy 
 Jerusalem — it having pleased God to set him 
 apart from the rest for the honored task of com- 
 pleting the canon of his revealed and written 
 Word. 
 
 An unaccountable, if not unfair, discrimination 
 seems, at first view, to be made here against Peter. 
 His own later warning, indeed, implies how en- 
 tirely natural it is for us to wonder at the "fiery 
 trial" which even the best beloved of our brethren 
 are sometimes appointed to endure. Of a certain 
 friend, for example, I am tempted to say, "He 
 is, so far as I can see, no more of a Christian than 
 am I. Why, then, should God give to him so 
 much better a time, so much more honored a pos- 
 ition, than he gives to me?" Who can tell? 
 Health and sickness, weakness and strength, toil 
 and ease, poverty and wealth, lowliness and lofti- 
 ness of rank, ten talents and two — these widely 
 different gifts and experiences God does either 
 
OUR ONE CONCERN 41 
 
 ordain or permit. To some He gives all the 
 abounding comforts of this life "and heaven be- 
 sides." What concern of mine if He does? My 
 course is plain. I have but to follow Christ — 
 sure, if I do, that however hard and rough the 
 way, it will lead to the same bright and happy 
 heaven at last — brighter and happier, it may be, 
 since the heavier the cross, if patiently borne, the 
 richer the crown. 
 
 Give our blind, rebellious impatience its way 
 and it would make a quick average of these so 
 unequally distributed gifts, attainments, pros- 
 perities and adversities. Thus of one who has 
 been long and signally prospered we are tempted 
 to say: "Never mind; his turn will come one of 
 these days!" Perhaps not. His "turn," in that 
 sense, may never come at all. It may please the 
 Master to give him a smooth and pleasant path 
 to the very end. "What is that" to me ? Is there, 
 then, such a superabundance of happiness in the 
 world that I should enviously wish that there were 
 less ? 
 
 Two ambitious sons of an ambitious mother once 
 asked Jesus for what they mistakenly imagined 
 were the two highest honors in his gift. The 
 answering rebuke and questioning test are as fit- 
 ting now as they were then : "How poor and un- 
 worthy is your estimate of me and of my king- 
 dom! Enough, if you partake with me of this 
 my cup and of this my baptism, which speak not 
 of any earthly glory but only of loving service 
 
42 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 and sacrifice for the relieving of the suffering, the 
 comforting of the sorrowing, and the saving of 
 the lost." 
 
 
SELF-HARMING HASTE 
 
 Do thyself no harm, for we are all here. Acts 
 16:28, 
 
 Paul and Silas were fortunately a little too 
 quick for their despairing prison-keeper. A 
 second or two more and he would have made out 
 of his own heart a new and bloody sheath for his 
 drawn sword. Seeing the prison-doors open and 
 supposing, naturally enough, that his prisoners 
 had escaped, he knew that in the eyes of the law 
 he was already as good as dead. Paul and Silas 
 knew it, too. They would recall the old Hebrew 
 usage illustrated by the soldier who said, on de- 
 livering a prisoner whom he had taken in battle 
 to a fellow-soldier: "Keep this man; if by any 
 means he be missing, then thy life shall be for the 
 life of him," as also by what Jehu said to the 
 eighty men appointed to keep guard over the 
 worshippers of Baal : "If any of the men whom 
 I have brought into your hands escape, he that 
 letteth him go, his life shall be for the life of 
 him." 
 
 As for the Roman law, the Philippian jailer 
 had every reason to expect the like fate with that 
 of the sixteen soldiers whom Herod a few years 
 before had ordered put to death for allowing their 
 prisoner, Peter, to escape. His own case, indeed, 
 seemed the more hopeless of the two — punishment 
 
44 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 of Paul and Silas having been demanded by the 
 popular fury aroused against them by the owners 
 of the damsel out of whom, the day before, Paul 
 had cast an evil spirit of divination; so fierce the 
 mob that the magistrates, waiving the customary 
 formalities of trial, had ordered them, having 
 first been scourged, to be guarded with the ut- 
 most vigilance in prison. Whatever milder views 
 the jailer may himself have taken of the alleged 
 offence, his stern sense of official duty left him 
 no choice. It was, we may reasonably conclude, 
 out of no "gratuitous inhumanity," but in simple 
 obedience to his instructions that he thrust the two 
 men into the inner prison and made their feet 
 fast in stocks. 
 
 The earthquake throb of Christ's rewarding 
 love which brought joy to his two steadfast ser- 
 vants filled the jailer with despair. There was 
 everything to heighten his dismay — the seismic 
 shock, the bewilderment which attends being 
 wakened from the first sound sleep of the night, 
 the darkness, and, worst of all, his seeing by the 
 light he had called for that the prison-doors were 
 open, compelling instant belief that the prison- 
 ers whom he had been so strictly charged to keep 
 had fled. Fully aware that no explanation or 
 apology would avail him, in affright and despair 
 he foresaw awaiting him only certain and speedy 
 death. With the stern stoicism of a true Roman, 
 he at once unsheathed his sword, resolved to avert 
 from himself and from his friends the disgrace, 
 at least, of a public execution. 
 
SELF-HARMING HASTE 45 
 
 For such self-destruction the jailer's way was, 
 ethically speaking, easy and open. His cons- 
 cience was not of a kind to make him afraid. 
 Being but a Gentile, he had none of those sixth- 
 commandment scruples which would have re- 
 strained a Jew. As for Roman sentiment, there 
 had been no occasion to fortify himself before- 
 hand by defiant membership in some city "suicide 
 club." That sentiment as voiced by earlier and 
 later philosophers, was on his side. "The an- 
 cient sage," said Chrysippus, "had the conscious- 
 ness of an invincible mind within, which placed 
 him above the power of fate. He was conscious 
 of an entire equality in moral elevation with Jupi- 
 ter himself. He was master of his own life and 
 might take it whenever he found that he could no 
 longer live in a manner worthy of himself. On 
 this principle many noble Romans acted, not only 
 when they wished to escape from the ignominy 
 of despotism, but also when disease cramped their 
 powers and rendered life insupportable." The 
 case is cited of a man of threescore and seven lying 
 under a incurable disease who, when his physician 
 wished him to take nourishment, dismissed the 
 doctor with the word, "My mind is made up ;" 
 upon which Pliny remarks, "I admire the spirit 
 of the old man and wish I possessed it." 
 
 It was the teaching of Pliny that "Among the 
 great evils of our earthly existence the greatest 
 good which God has bestowed on man is the power 
 of taking his own life," and it was in this prevail- 
 
46 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 ing temper of sadness mixed with cold resignation 
 that he encountered and fell a victim to the flames 
 of Vesuvius. 
 
 Seneca maintained that "The eternal law has 
 made nothing better for us than this, that it has 
 given us only one way of entering life, but many 
 ways of going out of it. If thy 
 
 mind then be melancholy and in misery, thou 
 may est put a period to this wretchedness. Where- 
 ever thou lookest, there is an end to it. Seest 
 thou that precipice? There thou may est have 
 liberty. Seest thou that lake, that river, that 
 well? Liberty is at the bottom of them. Seest 
 thou that little tree? Freedom hangs upon it. 
 Thy own neck, yea, every vein in thy body may 
 be a refuge to thee from such servitude." 
 
 A few years only had elapsed since this stoical 
 philosophy had been exemplified by the death of 
 two of Rome's noblest sons on that very spot. 
 After the victory of the imperial army under 
 Anthony and Octavius in the battle at Philippi, 
 Brutus and Cassius, who had staked the Republic 
 on that single engagement, both perished by 
 throwing themselves on their swords, escaping 
 thus an ignominy they could neither avert nor 
 bear by "flying with their hands when no longer 
 able to fly with their feet." To these examples 
 of desperate determination this Philippian jailer 
 is about to add another, but that instantly the 
 tables are turned. The warden is now become 
 the ward. The two men whom he has been keep- 
 
SELF-HARMING HASTE 47 
 
 ing from mob violence are now to keep him from 
 self-violence and self-destruction. Seeing his 
 forlorn and desperate purpose, Paul cries out with 
 a loud voice and just in time to prevent the fatal 
 stroke, "Do thyself no harm, for we are all here." 
 
 Another marvel in this scene of wonders — pris- 
 oners declining to be rescued and, in place of kill- 
 ing the guard, preventing the guard from killing 
 himself. Bent a moment ago on destroying him- 
 self, the jailer is now all anxiety to know how he 
 shall save himself; not for this world, but for 
 that other world into which, all unprepared, he 
 was about to plunge. "Sirs, what shall I do to 
 be saved?" is the question which he instinctively 
 feels that these two wonderful men can answer. 
 
 When morning came, on what a scene did it 
 dawn? Not on a suicide's ghastly death- wound; 
 not on a widowed mother and fatherless children ; 
 not on souls shrouded still in heathen doubt and 
 hopelessness ; but upon a household of truth- 
 enlightened, believing, baptized, saved and rejoic- 
 ing disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 To be on our guard against either hasty utter- 
 ance or act in time of sudden distress or danger; 
 to remember that, bad as things are, they may 
 not be nearly as bad as they seem ; to bear in mind 
 that the "unknown being always the region of 
 terror," discouragements look more discouraging 
 when seen through discouraged eyes ; that things 
 may be just ready to brighten when they look the 
 darkest; never to forget the wrong of resorting 
 
48 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 to any rash, desperate, dishonest, doubtful or 
 self -harming expedient for obtaining relief; to 
 know that "God will not have us break into His 
 councilhouse or spy out His hidden mysteries," 
 but that we must wait His time with watching and 
 prayer — such are the lessons embodied for us in 
 the Philippian story. 
 
 To a man bereft at a stroke of property, child- 
 ren, and health, a foolish woman once said, taunt- 
 ingly, "What of your God now? Curse him and 
 then die and be done with it." The man did bet- 
 ter. He gave to the world, instead, a world-old 
 and much-needed lesson on the happiness of en- 
 during. By reason of it all the generations since 
 have heard of and seen two things which it would 
 have been an unspeakable loss to have missed — 
 "The patience of Job and the end of the Lord." 
 
 What the Lord's beginnings may be with us 
 in this world matters comparatively little since, 
 as both Job and the jailer found, "His end" 
 shows Him to be "very pitiful and of tender 
 mercy." 
 
XI 
 
 THE WEIGHING OF A KING 
 
 Thou art weighed in the balances and art found 
 wanting. Dan. 5 : 27. 
 
 Risen at length by inheritance to the throne of 
 a great empire, a monarch has presented to him 
 the possibility, through right ruling, of such use- 
 fulness and renown as even Gabriel might envy. 
 Will he see this path of honorable fame, and, so 
 seeing, will he follow it? Will he stand at atten- 
 tion before the Muse of History as, pointing to 
 an as yet unsullied page, she bids him fill it with 
 a record of noble deeds? Will he heed those 
 purer promptings of his nature which counsel him 
 to live not selfishly for his own, but, self-sacrific- 
 ingly , for his people's good ? Not for a few years 
 of ignoble pleasure, but for an age-long term of 
 worthiest recompense? Will he be instructed by 
 the example of his discrowned father, who, for 
 his self -idolizing pride, was smitten with lunacy, 
 stripped of his royal robes, driven from the sons 
 of men, his heart grown to be like the heart of a 
 beast, his dwelling with the wild asses, fed with 
 grass like oxen, and his body wet with the dews of 
 heaven, until he should understand that the Most 
 High God ruleth in the kingdom of men and that 
 He appointeth over it whomsoever He will? Will 
 he be the true minister of God, a terror always to 
 evil works but never to the good? Will he devise 
 
 49 
 
50 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 only equal and just laws and be firm and impar- 
 tial in their execution? 
 
 Here is one path bright and glorious ; sure to 
 shine more brightly and gloriously to the very 
 end of however prolonged a reign. 
 
 Sadly enough, however, there is this other and 
 wholly unlike path. His throne may be the seat 
 of pride and obstinate self-will. Conceiving him- 
 self to be raised above that strict accountability 
 to which men of lower place and blood are held, 
 he may drink in the flattery which is sure to whis- 
 per that the throned heir of so vast an empire 
 need, in shaping his course, neither to fear God 
 or to regard man. Taking no counsel but of his 
 own passions and caprices, he may become inso- 
 lently despotic and cruelly vindictive; may abuse 
 his power of patronage to gratify personal favor- 
 itism and revenges, calling around him only such 
 self-seeking advisers as shall keep him undis- 
 turbed, both by the wrongs, miseries and protests 
 of his people, and by the hidden dangers which 
 menace the stability of his throne. 
 
 Which path will this monarch choose? The 
 two choices are the balances in which he is to be 
 weighed and by which is to be found and declared 
 what manner of man he is in his inmost heart. 
 During the seventeen years of his reign the long- 
 suffering Arbiter holds patiently aloft the trem- 
 bling scales. Now strikes the hour when the 
 Weigher lowers the beam. The weighing is 
 ended, the unimproved opportunity is irrecovera- 
 
THE WEIGHING OF A KING 51 
 
 bly gone. This last banquet of idolatrous mirth 
 fills at once the measure of God's forbearance and 
 of the monarch's guilt. No sooner is the Hand 
 which has so long held the balance disengaged 
 from that secret task, than it comes forth and 
 writes over against the candlestick upon the plas- 
 ter of the wall of the King's palace : 
 
 "WEIGHED AND FOUND WANTING." 
 
 After the weighing, the finding. After the 
 finding, the marking. 
 
 After the marking, the irreversible doom: "In 
 that night was Belshazzar slain, and Darius, the 
 Median, took the kingdom." 
 
 The desire to know beforehand the character 
 and qualifications of those with whom we contem- 
 plate having either social or business intercourse 
 finds expression in the confident boast of practical 
 phrenology. By practitioners in this so-called 
 science, intelligence offices are opened in which 
 the skillful manipulator of heads offers himself as 
 an infallible guide to the safe selection of both 
 intimate companions and associates in business. 
 The attempt is thus made to put prophecy in the 
 place of probation, and, by so doing, to revolu- 
 tionize the world-old method for the determination 
 of character, endowment and adaptation. How- 
 ever sincere the attempt, it is both futile and mis- 
 leading. For the clear ascertaining of such 
 mental and moral values, the actual conduct of 
 
52 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 life is the only accurately weighing instrument. 
 Opportunity is the one true test; the seeing how 
 any man does what it is given him to do. In every 
 home, office, shop, store, school of learning, hall 
 of legislature, are poised invisible scales by which 
 are silently weighed husband and wife, father and 
 mother, child, brother and sister, merchant and 
 clerk, capitalist and laborer, teacher and pupil, 
 law-maker, judge and executive official. By im- 
 provement, mis-improvement or non-improvement 
 of afforded opportunity is each probationer both 
 tried and made. Antecedent demonstration is 
 altogether out of the question. Until thus tested 
 the probationer does not himself know just what 
 manner of man he is. Whether it be in the home 
 or in business, the men and the women who, year 
 after year, make a failure of lif e are as much an 
 astonishment to themselves as they are to their 
 acquaintances and friends. 
 
 In this present lif e of ours in this way tested 
 may be seen as in a mirror the lif e that is to come. 
 The fleeting fashion of this world becomes the 
 fixed fashion of the next. In this present scene 
 of things is enclosed the germ of that spiritual 
 kingdom whose issues take hold on eternity — those 
 principles of moral order which must determine 
 each man's place in the coming world. Our prone- 
 ness to dangerous f amiliarity with the opportuni- 
 ties and momentous possibilities of the everyday 
 life we are now living, gives startling significance 
 to the Master's words, "Notwithstanding, be ye 
 
THE WEIGHING OF A KING 53 
 
 sure of this, that the kingdom of heaven is come 
 nigh unto you." In the different courses and 
 characters here taken and formed one sees the 
 finger of God pointing silently to the awards of 
 eternity. We mistake if we think of the "day of 
 judgment" as the weighing day. That day is 
 simply the day for declaring the result of this 
 earthly trial and assigning to each man that 
 "place" which he has already made "his own"; 
 his final answer to the question asked day by day 
 of his earthly life now ended, "Will this man 
 glorify the God in whose hand his breath is and 
 whose are all his ways ?" 
 
XII 
 
 UNUSED SPICES 
 
 Now, on the first day of the week, very early in 
 the morning, they came to the sepulchre, bringing 
 the spices which they had prepared. John 24: 1. 
 
 Love is love, however blind or mistaken its 
 methods. Were the "spices" which the Marys 
 and the "others with them" brought to the sepul- 
 chre, in sorrowing love for their buried Lord, less 
 odorous or precious because not needed? 
 
 Our careful and costly preparations for doing 
 some special work for the Master may turn out 
 to have been utterly wasted. We find things to 
 be quite the opposite of what we expected. Health 
 gives out at the very moment of intended action; 
 or, through unlooked-for reverses, the means fail 
 just at the last for doing what we had set our 
 hearts on accomplishing. The devoted Lowrie 
 goes down in the Bay of Bengal with the ship 
 which is nearing the land, to bless which with his 
 missionary labors he had made long and expensive 
 preparation. 
 
 A father has planned to give the best educa- 
 tion he can to an only son ; but the son dies on the 
 very threshold of his educational career. The 
 father's generous hands are stayed and held. 
 
 A mother makes a long and tedious journey to 
 see a sick child, taking with her carefully-pre- 
 pared gifts for her child's relief and comfort. 
 
 54 
 
UNUSED SPICES 55 
 
 But she has no sooner come than she is told that 
 her child is no longer living. What now of the 
 gifts, of which her loving hands are full? The 
 dear one, on whom she is ready to bestow them, 
 is no longer here to receive them. 
 
 In what strange perplexities are we thus some- 
 times overwhelmingly plunged! How inscrutable 
 God's dealings with us and ours! 
 
 But not always, and not for long, does the 
 Father mean that His children shall be kept in 
 harrowing suspense, nor long be balked in the 
 expression of their love. Men, in shining gar- 
 ments, appear to the baffled and wondering disci- 
 ples with words of explanation, of promise and 
 of larger hope. The love of these faithful disci- 
 ples shall find expression still — only in higher, 
 purer and more joyous ways. How much better, 
 heart-satisfying worship of a risen and ever-living 
 Saviour, than spices, however odorous and costly, 
 for a dead and buried Christ ! 
 
 It may be, instead, that the way to our in- 
 tended work proves to be more open to us than 
 we had at first thought. We may find the stone 
 rolled away for us — an obstacle removed we could 
 not have ourselves surmounted — so that we can 
 enter more quickly, even than we had supposed, 
 the field of our purposed deed of love. But then 
 the field itself we find to be altogether abandoned. 
 That on which we were about to bestow our labor 
 is gone ; we know not whither. 
 
 With God, motive governs and determines the 
 
56 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 reward. The motive right and pure, lamented 
 mistakes turn always, in the end, to joyous sur- 
 prises. 
 
 What became of those first Sunday's spices? 
 They have a precious existence still. Although 
 unused, yet, like the spikenard, that was used 
 before His burial, they at once took on the power 
 of living and most persuasive speech. "Wherever 
 this Gospel is preached," with what a tongue do 
 they tell even us of the ignorance and unbelief of 
 our sorrow, and of the greater, more exalted and 
 more glorious scope of God's plans respecting 
 Jesus and ourselves ! 
 
 Odorous spices and beautiful flowers, if you 
 will ; you who drop unbidden tears over the graves 
 of your loved ones — spices and flowers and tears, 
 but never, with them, words of lamentation and 
 despair. Let our thoughts rather be of angels, 
 in shining garments, with whom the ascended 
 souls of our departed are even now walking, and 
 of Jesus, who walks with them evermore by the 
 banks of the river of life. 
 
XIII 
 
 REINTRODUCTIONS 
 
 And their eyes were opened, and they knew him. 
 Luke 24:31. 
 
 It is a common enough experience that an ac- 
 quaintance to whom we were years ago introduced 
 seems to us, after a time, so changed in manner 
 or appearance that reintroduction becomes neces- 
 sary to recognition. "He has grown so out of our 
 knowledge" is our way of explaining it. We 
 chide ourselves for our obtuse imperception, real- 
 izing that the embarrassment it has occasioned us 
 might have been avoided had we been more dis- 
 cerning of our friend's real character, or had we 
 followed more intelligently his developing pur- 
 pose and career. 
 
 John had introduced Jesus as "The Lamb of 
 God that takes away the sin of the world." Jesus 
 had Himself told His disciples beforehand of His 
 death and resurrection as indispensable to the ac- 
 complishing of this His great work. A more 
 careful weighing of this foretelling, and the two 
 in their walk to Emmaus on that first Lord's Day 
 afternoon would not have talked to one another 
 in the doubtful, sad and fearful way they did; 
 they would have been spared that reproof from 
 the unrecognized friend who had joined them, 
 "Oh, fools and slow of heart to believe all the 
 prophets have spoken," and they would not have 
 
 57 
 
58 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 needed the reintroduction He gave them of Him- 
 self as their risen Lord at the breaking of bread. 
 His resurrection would then have been to them 
 not a surprise, but an expected and joyous ful- 
 filment. 
 
 Their understanding having been thus once 
 opened, we look naturally to see the disciples 
 guard themselves more carefully against any 
 further discounting of the promises and predic- 
 tions of Jesus. For a time they do. They con- 
 tinue with one accord in prayer and supplication 
 for the promised Spirit. The manner of its out- 
 pouring was more startling by far than was the 
 manner of the resurrection. The fact of the 
 resurrection was disclosed with the utmost quiet- 
 ness — disclosed gradually to but a few at a time. 
 Pentecost came suddenly. It came with a rush — 
 a sound from heaven as of a mighty wind. Cloven 
 fiery tongues appeared. Once it would have 
 affrighted them to hear such a sudden rushing 
 sound, and to see such tongues of fire, even had 
 they been playing on the ceiling or upon the 
 walls of the chamber where they were sitting. 
 These forked fires came straight down from above 
 and, sitting, hold their place upon the head of 
 each of them. Startling indeed! Yet are they 
 not in the least startled. They do not count it 
 strange, but begin at once to speak with other 
 tongues as the Spirit gives them utterance. Jesus 
 has no need to reintroduce Himself to them as 
 bountiful bestower of wisdom and power by the 
 
REINTRODUCTIONS 59 
 
 Holy Ghost. Recognizing Him as their gracious 
 promiser steadfastly making good to the full the 
 utmost that He has promised, they begin at once, 
 with no fear of failure, to speak with other and 
 unfamiliar tongues as the Spirit gives them utter- 
 ance. 
 
 Peter's intelligence is now broadened enough 
 to understand the risen Christ as the real subject 
 of prophecy in the sixteenth Psalm ; yet he needs, 
 and later on must receive, a reintroduction to 
 Jesus as Saviour of the Gentiles as well as of the 
 Jews. So tightly closed by Jewish bigotry had 
 been both mind and mouth that both had to be 
 pried open by special vision and command. Only 
 then could Peter say, "Of a truth I perceive." 
 
 Alas, that some of us should have needed, 
 through our purblind "slowness of heart to be- 
 lieve," so many re-introductions to God as our 
 Father with all that tenderest fatherliness im- 
 plies; to Jesus as our loving, heavy-laden cross- 
 bearer for our sin-burdened souls, and to the Holy 
 Ghost as our full and immediate Sanctifier (if 
 only we will let Him be), as our Comforter under 
 whatever sorrow, and as our ever-ready and faith- 
 ful Guide "into all truth." 
 
 When, if ever, shall we take it to our very heart 
 of hearts, not once only, but once for all and for- 
 ever, that God is all that He so fully declares 
 Himself to be, that He means all that He prom- 
 ises, and that all which He has promised for both 
 ourselves and the world He will, even to the utter- 
 most, assuredly fulfil. 
 
XIV 
 
 THE JOY OF IMMEDIATE SURRENDER 
 
 Immediately I conferred not with flesh and 
 blood. Gal. 1: 16. 
 
 Our houses were within eye-shot of one another, 
 and we were back and forth in them almost every 
 day. They, of the other house, were a young 
 married couple. The union being every way a 
 most congenial one, they were the happiest of the 
 happy in their new home — a bond all the more 
 strong and tender because hallowed by a common 
 love to the same Saviour. His position as Uni- 
 versity professor being exactly suited to one of 
 his fine literary tastes, combined with a fondness 
 and aptitude for teaching, gave promise of a 
 long, successful and happy career. 
 
 The thwarting of these fondly cherished hopes 
 came in a wholly unlooked-for time and way. 
 Soon after the birth of their second child, the 
 young mother was taken with a severe pulmonary 
 illness — not alarming at first, but steadily per- 
 sistent and increasingly violent. The symptoms 
 at length pointed to slow and remediless con- 
 sumption. Although grievously concerned for 
 the final result, the husband would not for weeks 
 allow himself to despair of her ultimate restora- 
 tion to her former unimpaired health. But, de- 
 spite all that the best medical skill and the most 
 faithful nursing could do, the physician was 
 
 60 
 
IMMEDIATE SURRENDER 61 
 
 forced, at length, to pronounce the case beyond 
 hope of cure. 
 
 Calling at my friend's house soon after this 
 fateful announcement, he met me at the door, 
 took me by the hand, and led me into a room 
 apart, and while we were kneeling in prayer, 
 although it was with streaming eyes and in an 
 agony of grief, he then and there made a full 
 surrender of that dearest treasure of his heart, 
 which he acknowledged as a now sovereignly re- 
 called gift of his Heavenly Father's love. 
 
 The surrender was complete. The battle 
 against doubt and dread and despair was fought 
 to so clear and decisive an issue as never, even for 
 a moment after, to be renewed ; victory over death 
 was won, weeks in advance of its approach. The 
 invalid's trust had been serene and unshaken from 
 the first. Now they are one in confident assurance 
 that all has been ordered in infinite wisdom 
 and love. Their earthly companionship is indeed 
 soon to be broken, but it will, ere long, be renewed 
 in a brighter and happier sphere, never to suffer 
 interruption again. 
 
 The sick room, on which had rested the gloom 
 of the husband's hitherto inconsolable grief, is 
 now so brightened by his changed look and man- 
 ner that friends are drawn to it by the cheerful 
 greetings with which their visits are now met. The 
 winter sunshine which floods the room typifies the 
 confiding love which now brightens all hearts and 
 faces. It is the joy of sweet and loving surrender. 
 And it continues to the end. 
 
62 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 In an even more beautiful way the invalid 
 mother evinced the reality and depth of the like 
 joy -imparting surrender. The new-born child 
 was sent miles away in the country to a faithful 
 nurse, who was in the habit of bringing the baby 
 in, every few days, for the mother to see. A friend 
 suggested to the mother that this was mistaken 
 kindness on the part of the nurse, owing to the 
 new pain which each of these partings must give 
 her. "Oh, no," she said. "I had my final parting 
 with the little fellow weeks ago. I gave him up 
 to God as soon as I was assured that I was not 
 going to get well. The pain of parting is over; 
 let the nurse bring him in as she has been doing." 
 
 How well for us could we as God's children an- 
 ticipate our appointed end by an immediate, full 
 and loving surrender to Him of our whole earthly 
 life and of all, even the most valued, of our 
 earthly plans, ambitions, possessions and hopes. 
 From the moment of such voluntary divesting 
 ourselves of it, then, and then only, do we enter 
 on our fullest en j oyment of the world. 
 
XV 
 
 THE SILENT LIFE 
 
 But when Jesus saw the reasoning of their 
 hearts, he took a little child and set him by his side, 
 and said unto them, Whosoever shall receive this 
 little child in my name receiveth me. Luke 9 : 47, 48 e 
 
 For one, I know of nothing on earth so sweetly 
 hallowed, so exquisitely sacred, as the silent life 
 of a little child; nothing which so directly and 
 without the medium of any consciously intellectual 
 process assures us of the being of God by bring- 
 ing upon the spirit the hush of His over-shadow- 
 ing presence. It was for those silent beatitudes 
 which come only in answer to prayer that those 
 far-seeing mothers who brought their little ones 
 to Jesus, came asking that He would "lay His 
 hands on them and pray." 
 
 The record is not that Jesus loved and prayed 
 for little children as a class, but that He took 
 them in His arms, one by one, and that, one by 
 one, He blessed them. He was careful to individ- 
 ualize even little children; He said, "This little 
 child." By so doing and saying He but repeated 
 what was done and said, when His own mother 
 having brought Him to the temple to do for Him 
 after the manner of the law, the devout Simeon 
 took Him in his arms and said, "This child is set 
 for the fall and rising again of many in Israel." 
 
 Nor of little children only is it true, this per- 
 
 63 
 
64 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 sonalizing by prayer. This silent life, this deep, 
 ineradicable consciousness of his affinity with the 
 unseen Creator and the unending hereafter, is that 
 which more than ought else individualizes each 
 and every man both to himself and God; which 
 assures him that he is more than an inconsiderable 
 fraction, more than an undistinguishable atom of 
 some huge, agglutinated mass ; that he is, instead, 
 a distinct personal unit; a separate, whole, re- 
 sponsible member of the family and Kingdom of 
 God; as surely, as completely so, as though he 
 were the only child of the family, the sole subject 
 of that divine Kingdom. 
 
 After the fight at Chattanooga those who were 
 sent to bury the slain are said to have come upon 
 a dead Union boy in a sitting posture — his back 
 against a tree and in his lap a pocket-Bible lying 
 open at the twenty-third Psalm. How, on the 
 instant, does this one young man change for us 
 the whole aspect of that battlefield! Before the 
 battle we were thinking of the opposing armies 
 only as two great wholes, as but two terribly de- 
 structive machines — the sole question at issue 
 being which of the two were the more likely to 
 out -match, out -fight, and out-destroy the other. 
 But how completely is the whole struggling mass 
 now resolved into distinct and rounded personali- 
 ties ; how flashed upon us the conviction that amid 
 all the roar, confusion and carnage of battle, each 
 soldier stands just as clearly apart to the All- 
 seeing Eye as in the stillness and solitariness of 
 
THE SILENT LIFE 65 
 
 the closet of secret prayer. How blessedly real 
 it makes for us the fact of a close, personal rela- 
 tionship to Christ, and the possibility that this 
 relationship may be for each and every soul a 
 union of intimate confidence; of sweet and indis- 
 soluble affection. How it raises us above the 
 dreary monotony of all commonest things, lifting 
 each soul to the sacredness of individual fellow- 
 ship with the one all-merciful Father, the ever- 
 loving Saviour, the all-comforting Spirit. In- 
 stead of the noun of multitude, "mankind," so 
 cheerless in its vagueness and generality, how it 
 gives us, in its stead, the warm, loving personality, 
 giving us to Christ by our names and giving 
 Christ by all His appropriate names to us ; invit- 
 ing us whenever we will to turn away from all the 
 neglects, injustices, envies and cruelties of the 
 world, and with the upward glance of the loving 
 child's confidence to say, "The Lord is my shep- 
 herd; / shall not want. He leadeth me by the 
 still waters. He restoreth my soul. Thy rod and 
 thy staff they comfort me." 
 
 The Bible is, in this respect, just such a book 
 as we might expect it to be, if it be indeed a mes- 
 sage from God to us His children. 
 
 It was the sad lament of one of the greatest of 
 heathen philosophers that "God does not care for 
 individual men." But we see everywhere in the 
 Bible that God does care for individual men. Over 
 thirteen chapters of the book of Genesis are taken 
 up with the account of His dealings with Abra- 
 
66 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 ham; with only touches here and there of con- 
 temporaneous history, and those given to illus- 
 trate more fully the life and character of the 
 patriarch. Over eight chapters are employed for 
 the career of Jacob; over twelve for that of Jo- 
 seph — thirty-three out of the fifty of which the 
 book is composed. Joseph is not brought in to 
 set off the grandeur of Egypt, but Egypt is in- 
 troduced to show the care which God takes of 
 Joseph. One whole book, and that one of the 
 longest, is given to prove the regard which God 
 had for one man struggling to keep his faith 
 under manifold and overwhelming afflictions. 
 Little is told us in that book of the arts, manners 
 or politics of that day, but who has not heard of 
 the "patience of Job and seen the end of the 
 Lord, that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender 
 mercy" ! 
 
 So, all through the New Testament, how many 
 names are given with minute relation of time, 
 place and circumstance, of those whom Jesus in- 
 structed, comforted and healed. Everywhere we 
 see Him as a tender friend and helper, adapting 
 his ministrations of mercy to the special needs of 
 each separate one: "He calleth his sheep by 
 name." 
 
 The world is yet to be saved from the deper- 
 sonalizing spirit of industrialism, commercialism 
 and militarism by the self -integrating power of 
 the silent life. 
 
XVI 
 
 THE CROSS, A SYMBOL OF OBEDIENCE 
 
 He became obedient unto death, even the death of 
 the cross. Phil. 2 : 8. 
 
 In either the true son's or the true servant's 
 "What wilt thou have me to do," the stress-word 
 is "what," willingness to obey being taken for 
 granted, whatever the command. 
 
 By some commands, however, the spirit of obe- 
 dience is more severely tested than it would be by 
 others. While "an angel would obey with equal 
 alacrity, whether bidden to sweep a street or rule 
 a kingdom," he might properly enough prefer 
 the latter, were it his to choose. 
 
 The voluntary surrender, if for a time only, of 
 rank, riches and honor, any sound mind will, "if 
 it be possible," avoid. Jesus would gladly have 
 escaped making such surrender, if He could. Had 
 it only been His Father's will, He would have had 
 pass from Him not only the cup of Gethsemane 
 and Calvary, but that also of the Bethlehem man- 
 ger, of life-long poverty and dependence and of 
 the servant's form. As that could not be, His 
 whole life from first to last was one continuous 
 act of most perfect and willing obedience. 
 
 While, therefore, to the question, "For what 
 did Jesus Christ come into the world," we have 
 for the proximate and specific answer, "To save 
 sinners," we also have given us, "To do the will 
 
 67 
 
68 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 of God," as that ultimate and generic answer 
 which the, as yet, unincarnated Christ Himself 
 prefaced with, "Lo, I come." 
 
 What the Father did was to deliver His Son 
 up to the world that the world might do with Him 
 as it would. There was no call or occasion for 
 God to stir up the avarice of Judas, the scorn 
 of the elders, the malice of the priests, the time- 
 serving fear of Pilate, the fury of the mob, the 
 zeal of the soldiers to the carrying out of a famil- 
 iar decree of blood. He had not to depute angels 
 to ply the scourge, plait the crown of thorns, put 
 on the mock apparel, drive the nails or thrust the 
 spear. Men were at hand ready enough, unbid- 
 den and untempted, to do it all — the natural out- 
 working of an enmity roused to rage by the fear- 
 less preaching of God's pure truth exemplified 
 and confirmed by the preacher's sinless life. 
 
 To take one's cross, then, means the deliber- 
 ately-formed determination to do one's whole duty 
 at what hazard soever and at whatsoever cost — 
 the extremest hazard possible being the hazard 
 and loss of life itself. What the actual cost, no 
 intending follower of Jesus can beforehand com- 
 pute; whether a life of calm repose or whether it 
 may be "given him on the behalf of Christ not 
 only to believe on Him but also to suffer for His 
 sake." Paul was shown, indeed, what great 
 things he must suffer for the Master's sake, but it 
 was only little by little as he went along. It was 
 denied to Peter to know how John's career was to 
 
A SYMBOL OF OBEDIENCE 69 
 
 differ from his own. Alike in fidelity, yet how 
 unlike in service and in suffering — Peter crucified ; 
 John dying peacefully in his bed at a good old 
 age! We pledge ourselves "in blank" when we 
 become followers of Christ, leaving it entirely to 
 Him to fill out the lines, but ready to honor what- 
 ever drafts, be they few or many, great or small, 
 which He may make upon us for either service, 
 sacrifice or suffering. 
 
 In one respect the obedience of Jesus to the 
 death of the cross was an obedience which He 
 alone could render. For while on the merely hu- 
 man side He came to his death as did Abel, Ste- 
 phen and Paul to theirs — martyrs alike from the 
 exasperating goodness of an unalterable purpose 
 to do the will of God — yet to Jesus came a suffer- 
 ing deeper by far than that caused by Cain's club, 
 the witnesses' stones or Nero's sword — the agony 
 and grief of a cross of expiation for the world's 
 sin, the chief anguish of which lay in the hiding 
 from Him of His Father's face. 
 
 That anguish His faithful followers are 
 spared. To Stephen was vouchsafed the vision 
 denied to the crucified Christ. While the stones 
 were raining on the martyr's head, lo, the heav- 
 ens were opened and he saw Jesus standing at 
 the right hand of God. That which was actual to 
 Stephen, the like steadfast faith will make virtual 
 to any and every obedient child of God during 
 however sorrowful a life, in however painful a 
 death. 
 
XVII 
 
 BEYOND PERADVENTURE 
 
 He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till He hath 
 set judgment in the earth. Is. 42: 4. 
 
 Whenever and wherever are promoters or pro- 
 jectors, they must use such helpers as they can 
 find, whether the selected agents are well adapted 
 to their purposes or not. 
 
 Hence it is that merely human endeavors are 
 so often blocked ; sometimes by the dearth, incom- 
 petency or intractability of laborers; sometimes 
 by the prejudice, narrow-mindedness or down- 
 right opposition of those whose concurrence is in- 
 dispensable to the carrying on of the work ; some- 
 times by natural obstacles almost insuperable; 
 sometimes, as in the digging of the Suez and 
 Panama Canals, by all three obstacles combined. 
 Genius, combined with unconquerable determina- 
 tion, may indeed surmount these difficulties, yet, 
 all the same, the difficulties do interfere with and 
 delay, even although they may not ultimately de- 
 feat, the triumph of the projector. 
 
 Whenever and wherever God wants a man for 
 any place or work, He has but to make him. He 
 endows and trains him, brings him on the stage of 
 action at exactly the right moment; then guides 
 and sustains him until his work is done. "He 
 knew who the man was that should deliver His 
 people from Babylon, and called him by name 
 
 70 
 
BEYOND PERADVENTURE 71 
 
 scores of years before he was born, saying of Cy- 
 rus, 'He is my shepherd and shall perform all my 
 pleasure.' " 
 
 The purposes and plans of God proceed under 
 His wise and wide survey with harmonious con- 
 vergency to the desired end; even as the Amazon 
 folds in his mighty embrace all his great eddies 
 and sweeps on, unhindered by them, to the sea. 
 
 At a distance, we see rising from the threshing 
 and winnowing floor only clouds of dust and 
 chaff; we hear only the rumbling, rattling and 
 clattering of wheels and shaken sieves. But, on 
 closer inspection, we see streaming into the wait- 
 ing bags the life-supporting grain. 
 
 So it were but a narrow, starved and pinched 
 conception which would lead us to find ever in the 
 clamor of political controversy, in the darkening 
 of the air by sectarian strife, in the mad rush and 
 din of money-getting greed ; to find in any or all 
 of these the slightest ground for discouragement 
 to effort for the promised coming of the Kingdom 
 of truth, righteousness, liberty and peace in all 
 the earth. 
 
 In the vocabulary of that Kingdom the word 
 "crisis" has, therefore, no place. Critical times 
 there have, indeed, been in battles, sieges, revolu- 
 tions, dynasties, governments ; in the history of 
 this and that movement for civic and political re- 
 form; of individual churches, missions, revivals. 
 The crisis once passed, there has come either prog- 
 ress or decline, establishment or extinction. But 
 
72 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 never has there been, never will there be, an uncer- 
 tain point of danger in the carrying out of the 
 Divine purpose for the world's redemption. 
 
 Rising slowly in its might, a huge wave rolls in 
 from the ocean and dashes itself with a great roar 
 on the beach. An inexperienced observer might 
 well conclude that such a standard of energy as 
 that could not long be maintained. The sea must 
 sooner or later exhaust itself by such vast forth- 
 putting of its power. So, for a brief interval, it 
 would seem ; the next few waves being so small and 
 feeble. But presently in comes another long roll 
 just as grand, just as irresistible as the first. 
 Watch long as we will, we discover no abatement 
 in the sea's strength. Our confidence in the con- 
 stancy of the vast power at work is increased 
 rather, the longer we look. 
 
 He shows himself to be but a like impatient and 
 superficial observer of events who, from the occa- 
 sional lessened activity of the church of Christ, 
 argues the gradual exhaustion of either God's 
 purpose or power to regenerate the world. Back 
 of the truce with evil which He may seem at any 
 time to have called, His unchanging love is pre- 
 paring for new onsets and victories unmatched by 
 any that have gone before. "The Mighty God," 
 He is also the "Everlasting Father" ; as unweary- 
 ing in His purpose as He is unwasting in His 
 power. 
 
XVIII 
 
 NO COMPROMISE WITH TYRANNY 
 
 Our cattle also shall go with us; there shall not a 
 hoof be left behind. Ex. 10:26. 
 
 After the plague of flies, Pharaoh proposed a 
 compromise. The Hebrews might go and sacri- 
 fice to their God, provided they would not in so 
 doing leave the king's country. 
 
 "No," came the prompt answer, "we must be 
 allowed to go as far and in whatever direction we 
 choose — out into the wilderness, a good three days' 
 journey at least." 
 
 "In that case," the king said stiffly, "you shall 
 not go at all." 
 
 After the plague of the hail, however, he 
 yielded enough to say, "Well, then, name your 
 terms. How many of you are going?" 
 
 "Young and old, sons and daughters, flocks 
 and herds ; we are all going," was Moses' frank 
 and bold reply. 
 
 "That will I never consent to. I will do this, 
 though: I will meet you half-way. I will grant 
 what I understood was all you asked for at the 
 first. You men may go, but the women and chil- 
 dren must stay. That is my last word." 
 
 Locusts and three days of pitchy darkness; 
 then from the king a "hurry" call for the two 
 commissioners ; "I will meet you more than half- 
 
 73 
 
74 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 way. Go, little ones and all ; you need leave only 
 your flocks and herds." 
 
 "No compromise," demands the man of God. 
 "No meeting half-way; you must come all the 
 way to meet us. 'Unconditional surrender' is the 
 word. Our cattle must go too — every one of them. 
 Not a hoof shall be left behind. It is all or 
 nothing." 
 
 "All or nothing" is the demand and rightful 
 claim of Jesus. No half surrenders, no nine- 
 tenths, no ninety-nine-hundredths compromises. 
 Those who came to him hoping for easier terms 
 without exception failed to find them. He at once 
 discouraged the would-be follower who wanted 
 first to be assured that his following would not in 
 the end leave him worse off than the fox without 
 a hole or the bird without a nest. To another and 
 yet another on the same occasion the Master said, 
 "If you propose following me, it must be without 
 any 'if s' or 'buts' ; even though one 'but' be, 'Let 
 me first go and bury my father'; and another, 
 'Let me go first and bid farewell to them that are 
 at home at my house.' " The furrow once started, 
 no withdrawing the hand from the plow until the 
 furrow is finished. 
 
 That husband or father who reverses the terms 
 of Pharaoh's proposed compromise and says, 
 "Yes, my wife and my children may join the 
 Lord's pilgrim band and welcome," while himself 
 hanging back, will find that no such family con- 
 cession is accepted by the Master in lieu of his 
 
NO COMPROMISE 75 
 
 own personal following. It was finding that he 
 could not consecrate himself to Jesus unless he at 
 the same time consecrated his "great possessions" 
 that caused the rich young man to go away sor- 
 rowful. 
 
 No, "not a hoof behind." Along with that 
 which is most precious — our purest and deepest 
 affections — we must also bring as a willing sacri- 
 fice to Jesus that which is least and lowest; all 
 that pertains to even our mere animal nature — so 
 to eat and drink that with the temple of our 
 bodies we may best glorify God. 
 
 "A prophet like unto me." In nothing was 
 Jesus more like Moses than in thus demanding 
 that our whole manhood; that families, that na- 
 tions, that all our business and all our gains should 
 accept without reserve his provided and offered 
 deliverance from the bondage of the world's sin, 
 to be brought into the glorious liberty of the chil- 
 dren of God. 
 
 So distinctively is the spirit of God a spirit of 
 peace and confiding gentleness that the dove, 
 which is its emblem, takes readily by symbolic 
 fitness to the care and protection of men. Secure 
 in the house prepared for it, though it be one of 
 unbarred door and open windows, it neither fears 
 nor suspects harm, as it has no wish or thought 
 of harming others. 
 
 But is not this gentle, peaceable, confiding dis- 
 position a constant menace to its very existence? 
 
76 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 Does it not make the dove an easy victim of all 
 ravenous birds of prey, leaving it utterly without 
 defence against the grasping claw and tearing 
 beak of hawk, eagle, and vulture? Must not their 
 crafty rapacity always prove more than a match 
 for its unwary weakness? And must not it and 
 all its kind, therefore, in time, wholly perish and, 
 through "survival of the fittest," leave to the 
 fierce, the unscrupulous and the devouring full 
 possession of the field? 
 
 The drift of things indicates already, and God 
 is pledged to show, one of these days, beyond all 
 further doubt or discussion, what that is which 
 He judges fittest to survive — whether the meek, 
 the gentle and the lowly, or that which from its 
 stealthy perch watches for a sure moment in which 
 to swoop down, seize, bear away and destroy. The 
 success of hawks and vultures lies only in keeping 
 themselves at a safe distance from the home-en- 
 closures of men. Yet are they not by any means, 
 as they complacently imagine, beyond reach al- 
 ways of the fowlers eye or marksman's ball. And 
 when, struck at last by the avenging bolt, the 
 disturber and destroyer tumbles from his proud 
 eyrie, none are sorry and all are glad. 
 
 Year by year we see the noxious, even in na- 
 ture, driven back within ever-narrowing circles, 
 presaging its utter and final extinction. It may 
 still have further lease of existence, but on one 
 condition only — that it stop hurting: that it 
 cease betraying the unsuspecting and harming the 
 
NO COMPROMISE 77 
 
 helpless. There are chances ahead for the despot 
 who shall see his mistake and be done with his des- 
 potism ; for the envious, the malicious, the discour- 
 teous, the covetous, who shall quit their envy, 
 their malice, their discourtesies and their greed; 
 The asp and the cockatrice may survive, pro- 
 vided they no longer shoot poison from fang and 
 eye, and so become harmless playmates of the lit- 
 tle child. The "bear" may survive, if he can 
 make up his mind to feed peaceably "with the 
 cow," and the "lion," if he will learn to "eat straw 
 like the ox." 
 
 More and more relentless and persistent must 
 pursuit to the death be of all wrong, outrage and 
 injustice against even the weakest, most uncom- 
 plaining and unresisting of our fellows — the pur- 
 suit kept up unfalteringly till the last unrepent- 
 ing tyrant and tormenter shall, with the last viper 
 and vulture, have perished from the earth. 
 
 In that good time coming the meek shall flour- 
 ish and shall possess the land. When those who 
 have kept themselves apart from their fellows in 
 the selfish seclusions of place and power shall have 
 been brought low, then shall room, and honor, and 
 power, and plenty be given to the lowly. 
 
 The fittest will survive. No vulture to vex 
 longer the freedom of the upper sky, the whole 
 wide air shall thenceforward be safe and shall 
 everywhere be winnowed only by the soft wings 
 of peace. 
 
XIX 
 
 PAUL'S QUARREL WITH PETER 
 
 But when Peter was come to Antioch, I with- 
 stood him to his face, because he was to be blamed. 
 Gal. 2:11. 
 
 Taking all the goodness out of the "good 
 news" of salvation by grace alone, is the heresy 
 against which Paul warns his Galatian brethren 
 and to which he charges Peter with having once 
 lent the sanction of his apostolic example. 
 
 "You know," writes he, in effect, "how I once 
 fairly hated the word 'Christian'; how mad, how 
 exceedingly mad, it made me to hear it spoken; 
 how fiercely I fought it ; how I persecuted and 
 wasted the church of God. But when it pleased 
 God, out of mercy to my ignorant unbelief , to 
 show me the awful mistake I was making by re- 
 vealing His Son to me and in me, I began forth- 
 with to be as zealous for Christ as I had before 
 been against him. Not only did I not ask author- 
 ity or permission of those who were apostles be- 
 fore me; I kept wholly aloof from them; acting 
 as I did under orders received directly from 
 Christ himself. It was three years before I even 
 went up to Jerusalem, and when I did go, the only 
 apostles I saw there were Peter and James, the 
 Lord's brother. With the work they were doing 
 in the home field I did not interfere ; did not even 
 show myself to the churches of Judea. All they 
 
 78 
 
PAUL'S QUARREL WITH PETER 79 
 
 knew about me was that I was now earnestly en- 
 gaged in preaching the faith which once I de- 
 stroyed. 
 
 "It was full fourteen years before I visited Je- 
 rusalem again. Then I told them the kind of free 
 gospel I was preaching to the Gentiles. I told it 
 to only the leading men there, and to them in the 
 quietest way possible, as I did not wish to have 
 my work hindered by unnecessarily antagonizing 
 their Jewish prejudices. By this prudence I so 
 carried my point that although Titus, who was 
 with me, was a Greek, they did not compel him 
 to be circumcised. The result was that the false 
 brethren who come in on the sly to spy out our 
 liberty which we have in Christ, and to bring us 
 into bondage, could make no headway against us. 
 
 "It was some time after this that I had my first 
 and only quarrel with Peter. He had come down 
 to Antioch where I then was. At first, he did as 
 I did; kept company with some who were not 
 Jews, and even ate with them at the same table. 
 He knew, as well as I did, that there was nothing 
 wrong about that. In a way, he knew it better 
 than I did. He had been favored with the special 
 vision of the great sheet knit at the four corners 
 and let down to the earth, and word from God to 
 tell him what it meant — the day's journey to 
 Cesarea to tell the inquiring Centurion what he 
 ought to do, 'You know,' he said, 'that it is an 
 unlawful thing for a Jew to keep company or 
 come to one of another nation, but God has showed 
 
80 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 me that I should not call any man common or un- 
 clean.' In spite of that, there were some so in- 
 tensely Jewish as to have censured Peter for doing 
 at Antioch what he had done freely at Cesarea. 
 Lingers still in the apostle some of the old timid- 
 ity which led him thrice to deny his Lord in the 
 judgment hail of Pilate. So afraid is he to have 
 those whom James had sent down to Antioch see 
 on what easy and f aniiliar terms he is living with 
 outcast Gentiles, that he withdraws and separates 
 himself from them. When I saw this, and saw, 
 too, how other Jews, and even Barnabas, were car- 
 ried away with this dissimulation, I could not let 
 such a cowardly compromising of the truth go, 
 and I keep still. Loyalty to Christ and His 
 gospel compelled me to speak out, and I rebuked 
 Peter sharply and openly. I said to him before 
 them all, "If you, a Jew, live as do the Gentiles, 
 why do you compel the Gentiles to live as do the 
 Jews? Jews, as you and I are, we are now en- 
 lightened enough to know that a man is not jus- 
 tified by the works of the law, but by the faith of 
 Jesus Christ. For my part, I am ready to say al- 
 ways, and everywhere, that this grace, this gift 
 of God, through His Son, is my sole reliance for 
 pardon and salvation. I do not frustrate this 
 grace : do not set it aside, and so dishonor it by 
 putting a particle of trust in anything else what- 
 soever.' " 
 
 Penance is a false and blind substitute for re- 
 pentance. It is misleading and mischievously op- 
 
PAUL'S QUARREL WITH PETER 81 
 
 posed to the idea and fact of that free, full, im- 
 mediate and unrevocable forgiveness by which 
 true repentance is invariably followed. This, 
 whether the penance take the form of wearing 
 coarse clothes, ascetic abstinence from personal 
 adornment, going barefoot, fasting, flagellation, 
 or singularity of speech, dress or manners. 
 
 When the self -exiled, home-deserting son came 
 to consider the great wrong he had been doing 
 and had at last determined to do the best he could 
 to make it right with his father, and when he 
 went back and said frankly, "Father, I know that 
 I have been doing wrong since I left you," what 
 did the father say? Did he say, "My boy, you 
 had good clothes on when you left home ; here you 
 are back in tatters. Wear your rags awhile 
 longer that all may see what prodigality brings a 
 young man to in the long run. Where is the ring 
 I made you a present of at your last birthday? I 
 buy no more jewelry for the pawn-shop. You 
 went away well-shod ; you come home barefoot. It 
 will be a good reminder to go barefoot awhile 
 longer. You always had a bountiful table to sit 
 down at here at home. You ran yourself down 
 and out until at last you had only husks to eat 
 and only swine for messmates, and nobody to care 
 whether you ever had anything better or not. I 
 prescribe for a few weeks, by way of probation, a 
 diet of bread and water." 
 
 Was that the way the father did? For rags, 
 instead, it was a robe, and that of the very best. 
 
82 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 For the empty hand that had been throwing 
 husks to the swine, a ring. For the bare and 
 bruised feet, shoes. For fasting, feasting; for 
 gloom, gladness ; for misery, merriment ; for 
 moans, music and dancing. 
 
 What the father would say or do to him in 
 case he should return, the now penitent son did 
 not know. But that was not for the son to con- 
 sider. One thing he could do, and it was all he 
 could do. He could go back to his father's house. 
 One thing he could say, and it was all he could 
 say : "Father, I have sinned." However it might 
 turn out, he would do his part, leaving it to his 
 father to do as he would. 
 
 Feeling as he did, I think that the son would 
 have come back, even had he counted on being re- 
 proved and perhaps repulsed by his injured 
 father. Certainly he was not prepared for the 
 welcome that followed — the kiss, the ring, the best 
 robe, the feast — all to express the father's glad- 
 ness for his boy's return. 
 
 God give to these poor, hesitant, doubting, 
 fearful hearts of ours to see deeper down than we 
 have ever yet seen into the unsearchable depths 
 of the Father's ever-welcoming, freely-forgiving, 
 guilt-removing love. 
 
XX 
 
 THE MULTITUDE OF THE SAVED 
 
 A great multitude whom no man could number. 
 Rev. 7:9. 
 
 It is both comforting and inspiring to note the 
 different ways in which the earth's population 
 and the population of heaven are increased. 
 
 Here, one goes out of the world almost as fast 
 as another comes into it. Had it been all entrance 
 and no exit, the globe's population, like the corn 
 which Joseph gathered in Egypt, had long since 
 exceeded the limit of practical notation. As it 
 is, decrease by death keeps almost even pace with 
 increase by birth. The most healthful city out- 
 grows but slowly the enclosures of its dead. 
 Through war, famine, pestilence, earthquake, vol- 
 cano, fire or flood, the ratios may be so sadly and 
 suddenly reversed that, as in Martinique, it be- 
 comes easier to count the living than the dead. 
 While it may have taxed an antediluvian states- 
 man's power of computation to sum that old 
 world's population, a child now needs but his 
 "eight" fingers to tell how many souls were then 
 "saved by water." To know at any nightfall the 
 aggregate of the earth's inhabitants, we must 
 take from that day's census of the newly come, 
 the evening list of the newly gone. 
 
 But, thanks be to the Love which we know has 
 provided it, there is another world — another and 
 
 83 
 
84 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 a better. Were it not so, He who knows both 
 worlds would surely have "told" us. In that world 
 whosoever comes, comes to stay — no departing 
 and hence no parting ; no cemetery census there to 
 be subtracted from that fair city's ever-growing 
 population; no name ever dropped from that 
 heavenly directory, the Lamb's Book of Life ; the 
 new heaven, new in that it is convulsed by no hur- 
 ricane, cyclone, tempest or tornado ; the new earth, 
 new in that no life is ever lost by sickness, earth- 
 quake, volcano, fire or flood. 
 
 Now and then an earthly monarch sees with 
 alarm that the population of his empire has come 
 to a stand-still. Never so with our Immanuel's 
 Kingdom. It is ever and forever on the increase ; 
 a Kingdom of which there is no more an end of 
 souls than of years. About this wonderful expan- 
 sion St. John the Divine had in Patmos his once 
 narrow notions wonderfully expanded. He 
 "heard," but what he afterward "saw" was in- 
 finitely more than what he had heard. What he 
 heard was but "a number"; the number of "all" 
 that were "sealed of the tribes of the children of 
 Israel." That exact calculation of the chosen, the 
 covenant people of God, is as far as at one time 
 even the "beloved disciple" would have gone, had 
 he like Jesus been asked, "Are there few that be 
 saved"? But after this numerical hearing the 
 Revelator sees — and lo, "a great multitude whom 
 no man could number of all nations and kindreds 
 and people and tongues standing before the 
 
MULTITUDE OF THE SAVED 85 
 
 throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white 
 robes and palms in their hands and crying with a 
 loud voice, 'Salvation to our God which sitteth 
 upon the throne and unto the Lamb.' " 
 
XXI 
 
 A QUICK TURN FROM SORROW TO JOY 
 
 And they departed quickly from the sepulchre 
 •with fear and great joy; and did run to bring his 
 disciples word. Matt. 28:8. 
 
 On their way to the sepulchre the two Marys 
 are walking together in the same dark shadow 
 that from the beginning has shrouded the hearts 
 of mourners visiting the last resting-places of 
 their dead. They go, looking to find all at the 
 tomb as they saw it left by Joseph and Nicode- 
 mus on the preceding Friday afternoon. It is as 
 quiet as it was then, but in all else how changed ! 
 The stone lying at a distance away and, where it 
 had stood, a black open doorway instead. The 
 accustomed signs of death are gone. Can it be 
 that they had missed the way; that they have 
 come to the wrong spot, as is not unfrequently 
 the case amid the intricate windings of a mod- 
 ern city cemetery? No, they cannot have mis- 
 taken either the path or the place. The path from 
 Jerusalem is both short and plain. The sepul- 
 chre is by itself, in a private garden. The place 
 and its surroundings are recognized as soon as 
 seen; the same stone-hewn vault, the same rocky 
 shelf on which they saw tenderly laid the lifeless 
 body of their Lord. Here lay His head, and there 
 His feet. But there where lay His feet are now 
 only the linen bandages in which the body was 
 
 86 
 
FROM SORROW TO JOY 87 
 
 wound, and here wrapped together in a place by 
 itself is the napkin that was about His head. 
 Even the silence is changed; more profound and 
 painful than it would be were the body still here. 
 At this so strangely altered appearance the two 
 friends are most deeply and painfully perplexed 
 — the perplexity soon turns to affright as close 
 beside them is suddenly seen standing, with light- 
 ning-like countenance and snow-white apparel, an 
 angel of the Lord. Falling upon their knees they 
 lean forward, bowing their faces in terror to the 
 ground. 
 
 From this terrified suspense they are quickly 
 relieved, however, by the loving tones of the an- 
 gel's voice which is as f ear-dispelling as his words : 
 "You seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not 
 here. He is risen. Come see the place where the 
 Lord lay." 
 
 But why this "Come"? Had they not already 
 and but just now seen the "place" and noticed 
 carefully how everything about it appeared? 
 Yet well does the angel say, "Come"; so differ- 
 ently will the self -same burial-place look to them, 
 now that they have a messenger from the Father 
 to stand beside them and talk to them of the res- 
 urrection. When at the angel's word they do rise 
 and look again, behold, the tomb is no longer the 
 dread place to them that it was before. In that 
 chill gloom which had made of the two nights and 
 of the intervening day one long night of death, 
 their Lord had indeed lain. Why is He not here 
 
88 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 now ? Is it because either Pilate's band, the faith- 
 less gardener, or the faithful disciples had first 
 disrobed and then stolen him away? And is it 
 the angel's comfort that he will at once go and 
 dispute with Pilate about the body so that, re- 
 covered and restored to its former resting-place, 
 these doubly-sorrowing friends may yet re-embalm 
 Him with their own waiting spices and with this 
 same fine linen which Joseph bought and which 
 the grave-robbers were considerate enough to 
 leave behind? 
 
 Far sweeter solace than that! The assurance 
 that never again will Jesus need either grave- 
 clothes or spices or even a tomb ; that having en- 
 tered once for all that dismal waste and unbound 
 all its dread fetters, never shall the place where 
 he lay wear again the gloomy aspect of death; 
 that the dark door of the sepulchre out of which 
 he returns conqueror is to be evermore the gate- 
 way, instead, of never-ending life. 
 
 To complete their joy the angel makes the 
 women sharers with himself in this ministry of 
 consolation: "Go quickly and tell His disciples. 
 This is still a troubled morning for them as it has 
 been for you. Lost in a maze of sorrow ; the ob- 
 ject of their deepest love and fondest hopes gone, 
 they know not whither; stunned and bewildered, 
 they wander about, desolate and aimless orphans. 
 Be you the angels to cheer them as I have com- 
 forted you. Tell them that Jesus is alive and 
 that He loves them still. Tell them to go to their 
 
FROM SORROW TO JOY 89 
 
 Galilean home whence He called them and whence 
 they followed Him, and that there amid the places 
 of their most loving communion and away from 
 the scenes of His humiliation and death, they shall 
 see Him. Lo, I have told you !" 
 
 They need no second telling. The wonderful 
 news gives them angels' tongues and almost an- 
 gels' wings. They depart quickly from the sep- 
 ulchre with fear and great joy and run to bring 
 the disciples word. 
 
 That angel of our Lord's resurrection still 
 lives. Would it comfort us to find him some day 
 standing in his shining garments by the graves 
 of our own loved ones, and to have him assure us 
 that they still live, albeit their bodies still remain 
 buried? A surer guide, a holier comforter we al- 
 ready have in the ever-present Jesus who, Him- 
 self, the resurrection and the lif e, bids us turn our 
 eyes up from our loved ones' graves to the man- 
 sions He has gone to prepare for them in His 
 Father's house. 
 
 Have we sometimes exclaimed in bitterness of 
 anguish, "O Elmwood; Woodmere; O Wood- 
 lawn ; O Greenwood ; how you mock me with your 
 beauty because you are so dumb !" Taking Jesus 
 with us always in these visits of sorrowful remem- 
 brance, we will say that no more. The friends 
 we mourn are with Him who has gone before, in 
 far better than all places of even sweetest earthly 
 communion, into heaven itself. 
 
 Such is the new, bright chapter in the annals 
 
90 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 of bereavement which was opened for us and for 
 the world by that early-morning walk of the spice- 
 bearing Marys to the sepulchre of their risen 
 Lord. 
 
XXII 
 
 SATAN'S FALL FORESEEN 
 
 I beheld Satan, as lightning fall from heaven. 
 Luke 10:18. 
 
 A carpenter's apprentice was once asked by his 
 sick pastor, at whose house he was then working, 
 to offer a prayer at his pastor's bedside. Many a 
 young man in such circumstances would, out of 
 natural diffidence, have asked to be excused. But 
 that young mechanic consented, and so moved 
 was the pastor by his prayer that he took the 
 young apprentice into his family and educated 
 him for the ministry, and, as it proved afterward, 
 for missionary work in India. This led that same 
 pastor to the establishment of a Manual Training 
 School for needy Christian young men, and that 
 school, on being removed from Germantown to 
 Easton, Pa., became the nucleus of Lafayette 
 College. That modest, uneducated carpenter's 
 apprentice saw nothing beyond what seemed to 
 him at that time a simple but difficult duty ; but 
 what great and far-reaching results did Christ 
 foresee then and does the world see now ! 
 
 The mother of Samuel J. Mills dedicated him 
 when an infant to God. But in and beyond that 
 faithful mother's act of consecration what did 
 Christ see? Looking down the coming years, 
 Christ traced the career of that infant child ; saw 
 him a student in Williams College; saw him re- 
 
 91 
 
92 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 newing there his mother's act of consecration; 
 dedicating himself to foreign missionary work; 
 enlisting a number of his fellow-students in the 
 same cause and becoming the virtual founder of 
 the American Board of Commisioners for Foreign 
 Missions. What did Christ see in that mother's 
 simple act of consecration? He saw the old and 
 dreadful superstitions of two continents reeling 
 to their fall. 
 
 The work done by the Seventy sent out, two 
 and two, was far greater than they had them- 
 selves been at all aware of. They had been wholly 
 taken up with the success of their work from day 
 to day, and beyond that there was nothing which 
 they could see. But Jesus tells them that he saw 
 a great deal more and a great deal further. He 
 assures them that their humble work done faith- 
 fully, although on so small a field, was to have a 
 world-wide influence ; that it would have to do 
 with the complete overthrow of the Prince of 
 Darkness in this world ; "Behold," he said, "I saw 
 Satan as lightning fall from heaven." 
 
 Jesus sees as only Jesus can see, how far any 
 act done by him in however humble a way, in 
 however humble a sphere, may extend. But He 
 assures us that every such act helps toward the 
 utter casting down of error and wrong and toward 
 the full and everlasting enthronement of truth 
 and righteousness. 
 
XXIII 
 
 PERFECT AT LAST 
 
 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father who 
 is in heaven is perfect. Matt. 5 : 48. 
 
 The schoolboy's crooked up-and-down strokes 
 on the first page of his copy-book are to the on- 
 looker an almost ludicrous contrast to the finely 
 engraved model above; a discouraging contrast, 
 no doubt, to the pupil himself. The last line on 
 the page shows a noticeable, perhaps, but still 
 very distant approach to the perfect strokes at 
 the top. Yet through each successive page the 
 improvement continues until at the end of the 
 many-leaved book is a line of which the pleased 
 and patient master is pleased to say, "That, my 
 boy, is as well done as I could have done it 
 myself." 
 
 "Perfect as your Father which is in heaven is 
 perfect," is no mere tantalizing theory, no im- 
 possible command. There have been heart-heroes 
 who have said, "It shall be done," and who have 
 done it. Paul does not encourage or excuse any 
 half-hearted "beating of the air" by saying, "I 
 am trying hard as I ever can to keep my body 
 under." He keeps it under. Stephen does not 
 try merely to keep his temper before the preju- 
 diced and persecuting council with its suborned 
 false witnesses. He keeps it; keeps it perfectly. 
 When at length he feels the thud of the cruel 
 
94 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 stones, his "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge" 
 is a perfect echo of the "Father, forgive them" 
 of Him who had felt the thrust of the cruel spear. 
 Our trying is a poor trying enough at first, but 
 our faith being fuller of force than our trying 
 is of faults, we do not give over until at length 
 we succeed so well that the Master smiles upon us 
 an approving and rewarding, "I could Myself 
 have done it no better." 
 
 Looking out in the dead of winter over his 
 snow-imprisoned acres, the farmer (but that he 
 has been otherwise instructed by experience) 
 might exclaim despairingly, "What can I do to 
 be saved from threatened hunger and starvation? 
 To melt this forbidding mass of snow and ice is 
 beyond my most earnest and toilsome endeavor. 
 Were I even to cut and burn a hundred forests, 
 the mighty hecatomb would not suffice to warm 
 the soil or quicken the seed or ripen the harvest 
 on a single field." 
 
 True. But coming already on its way is the 
 summer; God's loving offer of help to His 
 children in their mortal need, and ready, other- 
 wise, to perish. 
 
 His offer accepted, on what a scene of re j oicing 
 activity does the Father look complacently down 
 — a million plows turning the soil on hillsides and 
 in valleys, by great rivers and on boundless 
 prairies; harvests shouted home by myriads of 
 exultant reapers; happy households gathered 
 
PERFECT AT LAST 95 
 
 around bountifully spread tables; the great 
 globe's teeming population kept alive and saved. 
 
 What of the unspeakably greater good to be 
 secured for the soul? How supply its famishing 
 hunger with the bread of life? 
 
 "Looking at my heart and life," says one, "I 
 behold a scene more wild and desolate than snow- 
 wrapped fields; more despairingly enchained by 
 more than Arctic frosts of pride, covetousness, 
 envy, worldly ambition, self-righteousness and 
 unbelief. Though art, taste, refinement and phi- 
 losophy were to kindle all their fires and compass 
 me with all their brilliant and crackling flames, 
 they could not thaw the icy impenitence of my 
 soul ; could not cause to spring one holy desire or 
 ripen one holy act." 
 
 True, again. But if God give one summer for 
 the life of the body, "how much more" will He 
 give another for the lif e of the soul ! 
 
 Shall I be forever deploring, then, as though 
 it were a just cause or excuse for despondency, 
 that unless some all-powerfull Friend undertake 
 for me, I can never repent, believe, and love unto 
 salvation and eternal life ? 
 
 From all such deprecatory and despairing nega- 
 tives God's full provision and loving promise bid 
 me wholly and at once to break away; bid me 
 leap, rather, to say with most grateful though 
 most humble positiveness, "Without Christ I 
 could indeed do nothing, but such is not my case. 
 I have Christ and with Him I can do all things." 
 
XXIV 
 
 LOVE'S "FINALLY" 
 
 Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of 
 the Lord may run and be glorified, even as it is also 
 with you. II. Thes. 3:1. 
 
 Nearly two-thirds of St. Paul's letter (the 
 Second to the Thessalonians ) had been taken up 
 with matters which concerned the brethren to 
 whom he wrote ; not a word as yet about himself ; 
 about his own labors, hardships, dangers and self- 
 denials, although these had been so many and so 
 great. So full was his loving heart of concern 
 for his brethren's trials, perils and temptations 
 that he had cast about him for that by which they 
 might be shielded, comforted and encouraged. 
 Only then does he say "finally" — "for what re- 
 mains," as the original is. As much as to say, 
 "I will improve the little time I have left to say a 
 word about myself. I need your prayers as much 
 as you need mine. Brethren, pray for us." 
 
 In our own letter-writing we are apt to tell 
 about ourselves first, apologizing for it, perhaps, 
 at the close. But in St. Paul's correspondence 
 we see: 
 
 Love's beautiful postponement of self. 
 
 Then, too, although he does say, "Pray for 
 us 5 " it is not after all for himself, but for the 
 great work in which he is engaged. He no sooner 
 remembers himself than he forgets himself : "Pray 
 
 96 
 
LOVE'S "FINALLY" 97 
 
 for us, that the word of the Lord may have free 
 course and be glorified." Here we see : 
 
 Love for self losmg itself m care for its chosen 
 object. 
 
 It is as contributing to this that he asks them 
 to pray that he "may be delivered from unreas- 
 onable and wicked men" — men "that have no 
 faith." Here we have : 
 
 Lack of faith is that which makes men unreas- 
 onable and wicked m their treatment of those en- 
 thusiastically engaged m proclaiming the gospel 
 of Jesus. 
 
 Now comes a quick and happy turn from a 
 merely negative deliverance to positive support 
 and assurance of success: from men who cannot 
 be relied on for help to One who can : "The Lord 
 is faithful, who shall establish you and keep you 
 from evil" ; or, 
 
 Love's constant, ever-to-be-trusted care of its 
 own. 
 
 This love of God is that to which, above every- 
 thing else, we need to have our hearts "directed," 
 or (as the Greek of it is) "made to go"; to go, 
 not in some round-about, dilatory way, but in a 
 straight or direct way, indicating how liable we 
 are to go to God's love — the truest, purest and 
 surest of all — by the circuit either of lesser human 
 loves or of some form or other of impatient, half- 
 doubting legalism. In praying that their hearts 
 may be "directed into the love of God and into 
 
98 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 patient waiting for Christ," St. Paul shows us 
 what is 
 
 Love's most needed, most earnest prayer for 
 those whom it would bUss. 
 
II 
 
XXV 
 
 THE EARLY MORNING OUTFIT OF 
 PRAYER 
 
 My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, Lord; 
 in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, 
 and will look up. Ps. 5:3. 
 
 Some one has said that "happiness consists in 
 one's having more work that he wants to do, than 
 he has time for doing it." 
 
 Something more than time, however, is needed 
 — the knowing how to do the most and the best 
 work in what time we have. This question I will 
 try to answer. 
 
 Standing once by the immense granite quarry 
 in Rockport, Cape Ann, and seeing how easily 
 and constantly the steam-engine lifted the huge 
 blocks from the quarry to the car, I said to the 
 engineer, "This looks to me like too small an 
 engine for so great a work; how do you manage 
 it?" 
 
 "Well," he replied, "the man before me said 
 he could not manage it, and so he was dis- 
 charged." 
 
 "How is that?" I asked. 
 
 "This way," said he. "That man was in the 
 habit of coming late to the power house, and of 
 starting the engine before the steam was up to 
 par pressure. Consequently, it was a drag to 
 start with, and as he never could catch up, it was 
 
 101 
 
102 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 a drag the whole day through. I am always here 
 on time. I get the engine in full working order 
 before I begin, and so, as you see, it does the 
 work easily enough." 
 
 Just so with the day's work which any of us 
 may have to do. All depends on getting the right 
 start; getting ourselves in good working order 
 before we begin — steam up and the machinery 
 well oiled and ready for work. 
 
 Now, as to the work — we all have, or are likely 
 to have, heavy loads to lift and carry before the 
 day is done. Housekeepers understand this; un- 
 derstand it so well that I need not stop to explain, 
 specify or enlarge. Fathers (and mothers, espe- 
 cially) understand this perfectly — the meals to 
 get at the right time and of the right kind; the 
 children's clothes to be made and kept in repair; 
 their morals, manners, studies, companionships 
 and recreations to be carefully looked after — for 
 all of which the parents need a great deal of wis- 
 dom, strength and endurance, and patience with- 
 out prescribing how much. 
 
 Business men, too, have their burdens of care, 
 anxiety and much toil of brain, if not of the 
 hand. How go through all this with uniform and 
 quiet steadiness and without the wearing friction 
 of fret fulness, worry or impatience? 
 
 The best preparation, as I think, is the early 
 morning prayer; to begin the day by asking the 
 blessing of God on our work, whatever the work 
 may be, and then calmly committing ourselves, 
 
THE OUTFIT OF PRAYER 103 
 
 our loved ones, our country and the world to His 
 loving, wise and safe care and direction. So, so 
 only, shall we be fully prepared to do well what 
 it may come to us to do ; to bear whatever it may 
 come to us to bear — heavier tasks it may be, than 
 we have looked for ; it may be, sudden and wholly 
 unexpected sorrow. The reserved strength which 
 prayer gives takes us through the hardest as well 
 as through the easiest of our toil and trial. 
 
 It was a large, early-morning congregation I 
 once saw, although it was not a congregation of 
 people, nor was it gathered in chapel, church or 
 hall. It was an assembly of white, red and green 
 lanterns on the long platform of an "L" railway 
 station in New York. The lanterns had been 
 widely scattered during the night — some doing 
 low-track ; some, platform ; some, tower and pillar 
 service — each at its own assigned post of duty. 
 This meant naturally an inch-by-inch lowering of 
 the oil-levels in the lamps, and this, such a con- 
 stant though imperceptible lessening of their illu- 
 minating energy that they must all gather at 
 their one common source of supply, to be there 
 refilled before separating again to their several 
 posts of service. 
 
 We go forth, morning by morning, as full of 
 good intentions as the signaling lamps are of oil ; 
 with a fixed determination to answer cheerfully 
 every call of duty; to stand in our respective 
 places as sentinel examples of Christ-like living. 
 Then comes the gradually depleting time. The 
 
104 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 fret of home cares, the anxieties of business, pro- 
 vocation to wrong feeling, speech and act, social 
 dissipation of serious thought, make silent with- 
 drawal from our stock of grace. Our lamps grow 
 dim and must be refilled and retrimmed if we would 
 have them continue to bless those to whom we are 
 set to guide, warn and cheer. 
 
 The promise is explicit, that those who wait 
 upon God in prayer shall renew their strength. 
 Of those who do thus wait upon Him some walk 
 without fainting, and some are not weary, even 
 though they run. W e may even get wings. 
 Some do. 
 
XXVI 
 
 GIFTS FOR GAIN 
 
 Occupy, till I come. Luke 19: 13. 
 
 Neglect not the gift that is in thee.. I Tim. 4: 14. 
 
 "Occupy" ; or, Anglicizing the Greek, "Prag- 
 matize with the talents I give you, till I come." 
 True, a single talent is a little sum, but for a start 
 in "pragmatism," it is enough — enough, that is, 
 for the obedient and faithful servant — enough 
 wherewith to insure from the Lord of the talents 
 not only a welcoming "well-done," but promotion 
 to rulership over great "cities." 
 
 With what silent compulsion of beautiful and 
 yet serious example do we see the command and 
 the implied promise borne in upon us by all grow- 
 ing things about us; by growing things of the 
 garden, conservatory, orchard, field and forest. 
 A garden-seed, a flower-bulb, a grain-kernel, a 
 beech-nut, an acorn — what little things they are ; 
 yet to each has been given a hidden potency of 
 beauty or of fruitfulness for the support and joy 
 of our human lives. To each comes the command, 
 "Stir up the gift of God that is in you." And 
 what is the response? "Lord, it was a little seed, 
 but as return for that little gift, I bring back to 
 you the 'gain' of this lily, of this wheat-harvest, 
 the fruit of this orchard, the elms, oaks and 
 sequoias of this forest." And with what thankful- 
 ness of men are they all received and enjoyed, 
 
 105 
 
106 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 and with what a smile of benediction from the ap- 
 proving Lord! 
 
 "Freely ye have received." If I may be al- 
 lowed the "free coinage" of a convenient word, I 
 would say that donability, or the ability to give, 
 is always conditioned upon susceptibility, which, 
 looking at its root-meaning, we see to be simply 
 the ability to take. 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes once said to a friend: 
 "Come with me out to my farm, and I will show 
 you what a tree can do when you give it a 
 chance !" And what was the secret of that grand 
 old evergreen's magnificent success but that it 
 had kept on steadily enlarging year by year its 
 susceptibility, or taking power, until at length 
 there was as much of a tree below ground as there 
 was above, and until the aggregate of its leaf- 
 surface is reckoned no longer by square yards, 
 but by square roods? 
 
 Our orchards, vineyards and grain-fields — why 
 do they find themselves in the condition they are 
 to make their yearly contributions to the world's 
 need but that they have been as quick to seek and 
 as free to take as they are now ready and gener- 
 ous to give? What have their restless rootlets 
 been but so many busy fingers spread out in all 
 directions to feel after and find whatever the 
 friendly soil has been free to furnish ? And what 
 have the leaves been but so many beseeching and 
 eager palms extended to welcome the help which 
 
GIFTS FOR GAIN 107 
 
 has been offered them in the air and in the sum- 
 mer's sunshine and showers? Vines and trees are 
 generous givers only because, first, they have 
 faithfully kept themselves in constant touch with 
 their own proper sources of supply; because, 
 second, they have been diligent to improve this 
 opportunity of contact by receiving and appro- 
 priating the provision offered ; and because, third, 
 they have been careful to enlarge their power of 
 appropriation to meet their continually growing 
 needs. 
 
 Why is it that some Christians we see are 
 branches clustered always with spiritual fruit, 
 ready always with their cheerful gifts of time, 
 thought, prayer, sympathy, money, as opportuni- 
 ties arise or fit occasions are presented? For the 
 like three reasons, and for these only — because 
 they keep themselves by an unwavering trust in 
 closest union with Christ, the true Vine; because 
 mind and heart are thus kept uninterruptedly 
 open to receive the life He is ever waiting to im- 
 part, and because along with these is a constantly 
 growing susceptibility welcoming the larger and 
 yet larger gifts of His inflowing love. 
 
XXVH 
 
 GOOD CHEER FOR DARKEST HOURS 
 
 Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer, for I believe 
 God that it shall be even as it was told me. Acts 
 27:25. 
 
 The ship on which Paul is being taken as a 
 prisoner to Rome is a merchantman carrying a 
 cargo of grain from Egypt. There are on board 
 of her two hundred and seventy-six persons: the 
 ship-master and crew, the owner or supercargo, 
 some passengers from Cesarea, a military com- 
 pany with Julius their captain and some state 
 prisoners, whom he is taking to Rome. Among 
 these prisoners is Paul, accompanied by two of 
 his most faithful friends, Aristarchus of Mace- 
 donia and Luke, who is both physician and evan- 
 gelist. 
 
 The difficulties of navigating the Mediterra- 
 nean were the same two thousand years ago as 
 they are to-day. "If the difference between 
 ancient ships and our own is borne in mind, the 
 problems of that early seamanship are reduced 
 nearly to those with which the modern navigator 
 has to contend in the same waters." 
 
 Owing to contrary winds it was with diffi- 
 culty that the vessel had made Fair Havens, a 
 road-stead on the southern shore of the island of 
 Crete. It was then about the first of October, 
 the season of the year beyond which it was "im- 
 
 108 
 
CHEER FOR DARKEST HOURS 109 
 
 prudent to try the open sea, and the exact time 
 when seafaring was pronounced to be dangerous 
 by both Greek and Roman writers." It became, 
 therefore, a matter for serious consideration and 
 consultation whether to remain at Fair Havens 
 for the winter or to seek some better harbor. 
 Paul's advice is that they should remain. He 
 warns the Centurion, Julius, that should he con- 
 tinue the voyage at that time, it would be not only 
 with great injury to the cargo and ship, but with 
 great risk of their lives. The captain and super- 
 cargo take a different view of the matter and 
 advise to continue the voyage. As they have a 
 greater personal interest in the safety of the ship 
 and cargo, and are besides experienced seamen, 
 the Centurion, naturally enough perhaps, takes 
 their advice ; the more readily because their opinion 
 is approved by a majority of those on board. As 
 soon, therefore, as a fair wind springs up they 
 set sail, hoping to reach Phenice on the western 
 coast of the same island, a more commodious har- 
 bor and a better wintering place. 
 
 "The sailors," says Howson, "already see the 
 high land of the coast and are proceeding in high 
 spirits, fair-weather sails set and boat towing 
 astern, forgetful of past difficulties and blind to 
 impending dangers, when an alarming change 
 comes over their fortunes without a moment's 
 warning. While pursuing their course in full 
 confidence close by the shore of Crete, a violent 
 wind with all the appearance of a hurricane comes 
 
110 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 down from the mountains and strikes the ship 
 with such violence that the pilot can no longer 
 keep her to her course. They are blown off from 
 the island and compelled to scud before the gale. 
 In order to make sure of sea-room and at the same 
 time drift to the westward, the ship is laid to. 
 They strike sail, hoist the boat on board, under- 
 gird the hull with cables and lighten the ship by 
 throwing all the spare tackling into the sea." 
 Hopeless wreck stares them in the face. 
 
 It has been all the harder to bear the calamity 
 which has come upon them, for the reason that 
 they had been kindly warned against it. Paul, 
 as we have seen, had earnestly admonished Julius 
 that after the "fast," sailing was dangerous, and 
 that they had better wait at Fair Havens for 
 fairer weather. It was natural, perhaps, that the 
 Centurion should believe the supercargo and the 
 captain more than the things which were spoken 
 by a man like Paul, who is only a religious 
 teacher, and but one of a squad of prisoners whom 
 the Centurion is conducting for trial to Rome. 
 He soon finds, however, that a minister of the 
 Gospel, and a prisoner at that, may possibly know 
 something worth attending to, even about busi- 
 ness. It is not long before the ship begins to be 
 knocked about by an insolent and loud-mouthed 
 sea, that pays no sort of respect to the dignity of 
 even an imperial Captain. Just as the apostle 
 had foreseen, "Euroclydon," that surly giant of 
 the Adriatic, falls into one of his wrathful, peri- 
 
CHEER FOR DARKEST HOURS 111 
 
 odic fits and is now mercilessly buffeting the un- 
 wary vessel. Here is a good chance for Paul to 
 take his revenge. The taunt would have been in 
 order, "I gave you fair warning; you have run 
 into this trouble with your eyes open, and now 
 you must get out of it the best way you can." 
 But Paul is of a different spirit; higher, purer, 
 nobler. True, he does say, "Sirs, you should have 
 hearkened unto me and not have loosed from Crete 
 and to have gained this harm and loss." But this 
 is no ugly, "I told you so." Paul does not sulk 
 and throw up the whole business simply because 
 his own advice was not taken. He has no small 
 pride that must be apologized to, before he will 
 volunteer to help. He frankly accepts the situa- 
 tion and in a thoroughly manly way applies 
 himself to the bettering of it. Instead of still 
 further weakening his shipmates by selfish re- 
 proaches, he strengthens them with words of 
 cheer. If he does call to the Centurion's mind the 
 mistake in not listening to his counsel, it is not to 
 make capital out of it for his own distinction, but 
 only that his comrades may the more easily rise 
 above the mistake by seeing how heartily he can 
 himself forgive it and how thoroughly he can 
 forget it: "One glance only at the mistake made 
 and the harm done ; now let it go, and let us do 
 what we can to better the present and brighten 
 the future" — such is the noble, Christ-like spirit 
 of the apostle's talk. 
 
 And that they may not look on all this as the 
 
112 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 cheap exhortation of a lucky weather-prophet, 
 Paul lets them into a great secret of his — a report 
 he has received from the only infallible signal- 
 service Authority, that they shall weather the 
 storm ; that the ship will be lost, but not a single 
 life. With entire self-renunciation, and with the 
 beautiful candor of humility, he gives all the 
 credit of his confidence and courage where it justly 
 belongs : "For there stood by me, this night, the 
 angel of God, whose I am and whom I serve, 
 saying, Fear not, Paul; thou must be brought 
 before Caesar and, lo, God hath given thee all 
 them that sail with thee. Wherefore, Sirs, be of 
 good cheer, for I believe God, that it shall be even 
 as it was told me." 
 
 Paul believes two things: first, that God had 
 through a special messenger sent him a promise 
 of deliverence, and, second, that what God had 
 thus promised He would certainly perform. In 
 the midst of the darkness and danger which sur- 
 rounds him this two-fold confidence makes Paul 
 calm, cheerful and courageous. 
 
 As we ourselves make the voyage of life, we 
 are liable, every one of us, to be overtaken by 
 storms as sudden and as violent as that which came 
 down on that ill-fated ship. Losses, bereavements, 
 oppositions, sicknesses, calumnies, may smite us 
 and drive us far out of the course which we had 
 marked out for our passage. And this may come 
 to the best of men ; to God's own and dearest child. 
 
CHEER FOR DARKEST HOURS 113 
 
 "True," says one, "yet a way may be found to 
 bear uncomplainingly all such merely temporal 
 afflictions as loss of property, position, popular 
 esteem; of health and of friends even, knowing 
 that these losses may somehow issue in a more than 
 equivalent spiritual gain ; that a wholesome check 
 to our rebellious complainings may be found in 
 the words of the blind, bewailing Hebrew 'Ago- 
 nistes' : 
 
 ' But peace ! I must not quarrel with the will 
 Of highest dispensation which herein 
 Haply hath ends above my reach to know/ 
 
 but what of that deepest trouble of all; trouble 
 which comes to us, not as trouble came to the 
 shipwrecked sailors simply through an error of 
 practical judgment, but through the dark fore- 
 bodings of a guilty and awakened conscience — ■ 
 sins committed by us against warnings and coun- 
 sels of the dearest and wisest of friends ; against 
 the gentle but earnest dissuasions of the heavenly 
 monitor within"? 
 
 Yes, trouble, indeed ! "Fortune lost" ; do you 
 say? "Health gone? Friends removed or 
 estranged?" Not one of these, nor all of them 
 together, are worthy to be named in the com- 
 parison. These earthly sorrows are but the shore- 
 shallows of the mind. Would you know where 
 the deep-sea soundings are? Cast your lead into 
 the depths of a soul sorrowing over its remem- 
 bered sins. Know by sad experience what it 
 
114 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 means to be tossed up and down in that Adria of 
 anguish, where neither sun or star in many days 
 appears ; when no small tempest beats on the soul, 
 and when all hope that it will be saved is taken 
 away. 
 
 In such an hour as that, it will help us, if we 
 recall the darkness, the helplessness, the despair 
 in which that ship of Alexandria was reeling and 
 pitching in the merciless, mad waves of the Adri- 
 atic — officers, prisoners, passengers and crew, all 
 at both their wits' end and their hopes' end — 
 "all" hope that they would be saved taken away. 
 Yet, just when they deem that they draw near 
 to death, a light breaks forth in their very midst ; 
 a light which banishes fear and inspires courage ; 
 a light kindled by an invisible spark from the 
 heavens ; a message of love, a promise of deliver- 
 ance direct from God. 
 
 So when tempest-tossed by reason of our sins, 
 reeling under the blows of an accusing conscience, 
 enveloped in the gloomy mantle of shame, terri- 
 fied by the thunders of violated law, ready to 
 despair of ever attaining to eternal life; even in 
 that night of the soul a light shines forth; a 
 voice of cheer comes to us; the light not shining 
 visibly; the voice not speaking audibly from the 
 skies, but none the less a light and a voice from 
 God, shining and speaking to us from His holy 
 Word; a message of love, of mercy, of deliver- 
 ance; assuring us that the God with whom we 
 have to do is merciful and gracious, that he passes 
 
CHEER FOR DARKEST HOURS 115 
 
 by iniquity, transgression and sin; that he does 
 not take advantage of our iniquities to mark them 
 against us; that from our worst mistakes, errors 
 and follies He turns away just so soon as we turn 
 away from them to Him; and that He then not 
 only "takes the sting out of the remembrance of 
 our wrong-doing," but that He makes use of our 
 failures and our faults only as the dark cloud in 
 which to set His bright bow of pardon, of promise, 
 of hope, of eternal life. 
 
XXVIII 
 
 THE BROKEN HEART 
 
 The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken 
 heart, and saveth such as are of a contrite spirit. 
 Ps. 34: 18. 
 
 When we telephone a message which is to be 
 sent by telegraph, if it be a specially important 
 message, we repeat it to the telegraph operator 
 and have him repeat it to us. 
 
 God had an important message for Pharaoh. 
 It came to Pharaoh in two dreams : one, about the 
 well-favored and the ill-favored kine; the other, 
 about the full and the empty ears. Yet, when 
 Joseph was called to interpret them, he told 
 Pharaoh that the dreams were one, because, al- 
 though so unlike in form, they were alike in 
 meaning. They were parallel dreams. 
 
 We have a like parallelism in the text. To be 
 of a "contrite spirit" is the same as to be of a 
 "broken heart" ; and "having God nigh to us" is 
 but another way of saying what it is to be 
 "saved." The message is repeated for the same 
 reason that the dream was doubled to Pharaoh: 
 to make assurance doubly sure that it is a thing 
 unalterably established by God. The dream was 
 given to Pharaoh to save the life of the body only ; 
 the text is given to us for the saving of the soul. 
 
 But we have a Book-parallelism as well as a 
 verse-parallelism — the teaching of the New Tes- 
 
 116 
 
THE BROKEN HEART 117 
 
 tament being in exact accord with the teaching of 
 the Old. Jesus gives the indispensableness of 
 humility in order to salvation the very first place 
 in His list of beatitudes: "Blessed are the poor 
 in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." 
 "Do you think," asks an apostle, "do you think 
 that the Scripture saith in vain that God resisteth 
 the proud, but giveth grace to the humble?" 
 And, "humble yourself therefore under the 
 mighty hand of God that He may exalt you in 
 due time," is but another parallelism to my text. 
 
 "But what does this mean," you ask; "what is 
 it to be of a broken heart and a contrite spirit ?" 
 
 "Breaking" means — yielding to pressure. 
 There comes a heavy snow-fall; the roof yields 
 to the pressure and is broken in. A tornado — a 
 too violent wind pressure — and the steeple rocks, 
 topples and falls. The mine-owner robs the pillars 
 of coal left to prop the roof of the mine. At 
 length they begin to "crawl out" at the foot, the 
 hill settles and buries the unfortunate miners. In 
 all such cases there is resistance up to a certain 
 point ; then the stay yields. It may be broken in 
 a few pieces — in "two" only, perhaps — or, as 
 with the pillar of coal, it may be broken into a 
 great many — "broken all to pieces," as we say. 
 Then it is "contrite," for to be contrite means to 
 be crushed ; to be broken all to pieces. In either 
 case, the meaning is the same — a ceas'mg utterly 
 to resist. 
 
118 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 The text speaks of a heart that is broken ; of a 
 spirit that is contrite ; and the assurance is given 
 that God is nigh to such a heart; that such a 
 spirit He saves. 
 
 But why break any man's heart ; why wish that 
 any one's spirit should be crushed? What is there 
 in the spirit of any man, woman or child that God 
 must see it crushed before He can draw nigh to it 
 and save it? 
 
 Is not this the exact opposite to what we would 
 naturally expect? Is it not contrary to the very 
 first principle of all true architecture? What 
 does your trained civil engineer do but make the 
 most careful study of the strength of the mate- 
 rials he is to use, so as to make sure that the pillar, 
 the beam, the arch, the bridge, be not broken? 
 How much pressure it will bear without breaking? 
 A careless estimate, and you have the crowded 
 platform at a public gathering give away; you 
 have the Ashtabula-bridge horror; you have the 
 collapse of the New York Orchard Street houses. 
 Instead of weakening, breaking, crushing, or tear- 
 ing down, does not the honest and wise builder 
 stiffen and strengthen, and so build that the build- 
 ing will stand and never give way and fall? 
 
 Is it not this, too, what we seek in character 
 building, for ourselves, our children, our fellow- 
 men? Do we not study how much their disposi- 
 tion, temper, patience, moral fibre, will bear? 
 Are we not careful, and ought we not to be care- 
 ful, not to subject them to too great a strain? 
 
THE BROKEN HEART 119 
 
 "What is a broken-spirited man, woman or child 
 good for?" we ask. Is he not a misery to himself, 
 a burden to his friends, and the pity of the world? 
 And is it not cruel, is it not a shame, is it not a 
 crime, to break down the spirit of your child, of 
 your friend, of your neighbor? Must not that 
 be a mistaken kind of religion that would break 
 us down and so make weaklings of us all? 
 
 The answer is that there are in us all both good 
 and evil, and that it is the evil and the evil only 
 that God wants to have broken down and de- 
 stroyed. Whatever is good, pure, right and 
 praiseworthy in any one, that He desires to have 
 strengthened and by all means to be built up; 
 built up so firmly and securely as to stand, and 
 stand forever. 
 
 To make this clear, suppose of a boy that he 
 has pleasing qualities of person and of mind ; that 
 he is beautiful in feature and form; that he is 
 bright, intelligent and in many respects amiable; 
 but that he is wilful, headstrong, disrespectful, 
 disobedient ; that he declares by his actions, if not 
 by his words, that he will not be ruled by his 
 father; that he will do just as he pleases, whether 
 it pleases his father or not. Now that obstinate, 
 rebellious spirit spoils everything, and will so 
 long as it is held to. That stubbornness, you 
 say, he must in some way be made to give up; 
 that proud, defiant, disobedient spirit must be 
 broken. It must, or the boy is ruined. So long 
 as that disposition remains, there cannot be — how 
 
120 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 can there be? — happy intercourse between his 
 father and him? Some things are impossible, and 
 this is one of them. It is a moral impossibility 
 for the father to draw nigh to such a child in an 
 approving way until that wayward, unfilial, undu- 
 tiful, insubmissive spirit be given up. By that 
 spirit the child puts up an effectual bar between 
 himself and his father. Any excellencies he may 
 have cannot make up for this radical wrong. He 
 may be quick in apprehension, versatile in talent, 
 diligent in study, even brilliant in genius. His 
 intercourse with his companions may be honorable 
 and courteous. Outside of the home circle, his 
 conduct may be without reproach. The neigh- 
 bors, who do not know what his home-conduct is, 
 may all speak well of him. But for the father, 
 who does know it all, that makes the matter worse 
 rather than better. Nothing of all that satisfies 
 the yearning he feels for his child's confidence 
 and love. The father is glad of every good en- 
 dowment his child has and of every good acquire- 
 ment. It is not these that he would have lessened 
 in the least. Not his comeliness of person, not his 
 quick and retentive memory, not his vivacity and 
 mirthfulness, not even his strength of will — 
 nothing in him that is good, honorable, excellent 
 and praiseworthy does the father wish to have 
 interfered with or damaged; only that which is 
 an evil and a curse, only that which carries in it 
 the seeds of shame, disgrace, unhappiness and 
 ruin to the child himself. But the last vestige 
 
THE BROKEN HEART 121 
 
 of every such thing in the boy, the father does 
 want broken and done away with forever. If you 
 are a wise and faithful father, you will leave no 
 means untried to save your child from so terrible 
 a ruin. You will bring such pressure of appeal 
 to bear on his heart and conscience as, if anything 
 can, will cause him to yield ; and you will continue 
 to press these appeals until that unfilial obstinacy 
 be given up. 
 
 Just that and nothing more does God desire to 
 have broken and crushed in any man's heart. The 
 undutiful, disobedient child of God indulges 
 towards God, his Heavenly Father, a spirit which, 
 if he be himself a father, he cannot at all put up 
 with in his own child toward himself. He does 
 exactly what pleases himself, not asking and not 
 caring much to know whether it pleases God or 
 not. What God bids him to do he refuses to do, 
 unless it happen to fall in with his own inclina- 
 tions. What God forbids, that, if it suits him, he 
 does not scruple or hesitate to do ; the bitter enor- 
 mity, the heaven-and-earth astonishing crime of 
 which God complains: "Hear, O heavens and be 
 astonished, O earth; I have nourished and 
 brought up children and they have rebelled 
 against me." "If I be a father, where is my 
 my honor?" God has no fault to find with any- 
 thing else. He grudges no uncoverted, prayer- 
 less man any intellectual gifts he may have, be it 
 breadth of culture, refinement of taste, grace of 
 manner, felicity of speech, success in business, 
 
122 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 any accumulation of honest wealth. God is glad 
 to see any man's barns filled with plenty, to see 
 his table bountifully spread, to see him happy in 
 the society of many friends. Is it not He that 
 gives friends, health, talent, riches, honor? Who 
 makes His sun to shine on the evil, and sends 
 rain on even the unjust? But how can He take 
 pleasure in those whom He thus blesses and bene- 
 fits so long as they maintain towards Him an at- 
 titude of unthankfulness and insubmission? How 
 can He draw to them and save them? This un- 
 thankful, unfilial, disobedient spirit must be giv- 
 en up, and the moment it is given up there is lov- 
 ing communion between father and son. Then 
 the returning wanderer is given the ring, the 
 shoes, the robe and the feast, and then is there 
 jcy even among the angels of God. 
 
 Consider, now, the pressure that God brings to 
 bear on the impenitent and self-willed to cause 
 them to yield. There is the pressure of fear. 
 The one thing most to be dreaded in this world 
 or in any world is, knowing what is right, either 
 not to do it, or to do what is wrong : — 
 
 " What conscience dictates to be done, 
 Or warns me not to do; 
 This give more than hell to shun, 
 That more than heaven pursue." 
 
 As it would be both weak and wrong in God to 
 surrender his right to our obedient love, He 
 
THE BROKEN HEART 123 
 
 warns those who would contend with Him against 
 so unequal a strife — unequal, because, on our 
 part, so unjust. 
 
 But there is another and mightier appeal — an 
 appeal to hope, to gratitude, to love. God takes 
 away all excuse for continuing the contest by the 
 gracious offer of the free, full and immediate 
 forgiveness of all past wrong-doing, and of a 
 complete and joyous restoration to all the priv- 
 ileges of loyal subjects and dutiful sons. And 
 does not a heart need to be broken which resists 
 both the fear that drives and the love which 
 draws ? 
 
 The giving up of this enmity and the thank- 
 ful acceptance of the offer of pardon and eternal 
 life through the Lord Jesus Christ — taking our 
 proper place again as obedient children in the 
 family and as loyal subjects under the govern- 
 ment of God — this is to be of a broken heart and 
 a contrite spirit. 
 
 1. That we may avoid being mistaken in so 
 important a matter, it is to be carefully con- 
 sidered that one may be broken handed without 
 being broken hearted. Although utterly broken 
 handed, Napoleon on St. Helena is not at all 
 broken hearted. Though now powerless, he is 
 none the less proud. He refuses to take defeat 
 as a lesson in humility. "My soul," he says, 
 "is marble; calamity has no more effect upon it 
 than oil poured upon a rock." In spirit he fights 
 
124 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 against the providence which dooms him thus to 
 lif e-long exile from the scenes of his former gior j. 
 He shows no relenting for lives sacrificed, homes 
 made desolate, conjugal vows violated. His 
 dying words, "The head of the army," show that, 
 to the very last, his thoughts are still on con- 
 quest, on dominion, on a war-lord's renown. 
 
 2. It should, again, be noted that to be 
 broken-hearted is not, by any means, to be down- 
 hearted. It is not to give up hope, courage, 
 enterprise and energy in the affairs of this world. 
 Some there are who have met with ill-fortune; 
 who, for one reason or another, have failed of 
 success ; who have been beaten back as fast as by 
 much painstaking effort they had gotten on- 
 ward; who have lost property, credit, position, 
 friends. They struggled bravely for a time, but 
 they have at length become discouraged. They 
 no longer have ambition; have ceased trying to 
 retrieve their affairs. They have lost heart and 
 hope. They are dejected. What is worse still, 
 they may have beeome bitter, misanthropic and 
 morose. 
 
 Such persons are Spirited, but they are not 
 contrite in spirit ; they are down-hearted, but 
 they are not broken-hearted. Misfortune has not 
 led them back to God, to find in Him a Father 
 who chastens only because He loves. 
 
 3. And, once more, to be broken-hearted is 
 more than it is simply to bend under the pressure 
 of divine truth. Many there are who bend, but 
 
THE BROKEN HEART 125 
 
 do not break. They have what is likely to prove 
 a fatal quickness in assenting to even the most 
 faithful preaching of the Word of God ; examples 
 of "deadening familiarity" with duty acknow- 
 ledged, but not done; self-complacent in the use 
 of merely the words and the attitudes of worship. 
 
 What is needed in the case of such persons is a 
 full and honest acceptance of the naked truth of 
 things ; an unreserved acknowledgment as true, 
 of all the facts of their past lives ; a frank con- 
 fession of their need and of their duty as set 
 forth in the Word of God. Our real manhood 
 and our safety for this world and the next de- 
 pend on our looking the facts of our lives — and 
 it is only with facts that God deals — dark, dread- 
 ful, humiliating as they may be — squarely, stead- 
 ily, unflinchingly in the face. We must not bend. 
 Standing bolt upright, full-fronting God's stern 
 truth, let the confession and the submission be 
 quick and full : "What is so, Father, is so, and I 
 have nothing to say." 
 
 This ends the ^controversy. No concealment, 
 no prevarication, no evasion, no rebellious and 
 deceitful postponement of an immediate duty. 
 
 Why do not all who are convinced of their sins 
 and sinfulness do this? Because, when thus con- 
 vinced, our first instinct is to put out our hands 
 for support. We do not like to fall. We crave 
 sympathy in our distress; the distress of hard 
 pressed but, as yet, unbroken hearts. The de- 
 sire for such sympathy is unwholesome, unmanly 
 
126 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 and is really insincere. Such sympathy, could 
 we have it from never so many friends, would be 
 vain and unrelieving. What we need is not sym- 
 pathy in our sin, but sympathy and help in an 
 honest purpose to confess and forsake it — sym- 
 pathy, not in any attempt to escape our duty, 
 but in a dead-in-earnest determination to do it. 
 What we are to do is not to "fawn around the 
 cross," but resolutely to take the cross and bear 
 it after Jesus. The moment we do this, what an 
 untold wealth of the richest, tenderest sympathy 
 awaits us ! How the heart of Jesus warms to- 
 ward us ! How angel-bands bend lovingly toward 
 us and beckon! How Christian friends, how the 
 church of Christ below and above welcome us! 
 Then is God indeed nigh to us ; then does He save 
 us with an everlasting salvation. 
 
XXIX 
 
 TENACITY OF CHRISTIAN PURPOSE 
 
 Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, 
 that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, but 
 was let hitherto. Rom. 1: 13. 
 
 We call a uniform way of acting a law — a 
 natural law, if it be a natural force that so acts. 
 "Directly as the mass and inversely as the square 
 of the distance" is gravity's way of acting. It 
 is not a whim, a caprice, acting one way at one 
 time but another way at another. It is something 
 that can be relied on with no fear of failure. It 
 is as strong and as persevering now as it was a 
 thousand or ten thousand years ago. It does not 
 grow weary by waiting. Hindered it may be for a 
 time, yet it bates not one jot of either its purpose 
 or its power. It does not cease to act because 
 balked awhile in its aim. Hold a stone in the air 
 for a hundred days. It does not fall ; but why? Be- 
 cause it is "let hitherto" by the counter-working 
 force of a human will. But, although not drawn 
 to the ground it is, none the less, drawn. And 
 this tireless force out-tires the strongest arm. 
 And why this? Because there is in it the un- 
 lessened might of Omnipotence working against 
 an obstacle of limited and diminishing resistance. 
 Reaching up its unseen fingers it is, even now in 
 this midsummer day, pulling at every leaf on 
 every tree. It is "let" for a little, but its triumph 
 
 127 
 
128 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 is sure. A few more days, and it will strew the 
 ground with its autumn spoils. It is not daunted 
 by the pyramids even, but will one day bring 
 them down, mingling their sand with the sands of 
 the desert. 
 
 There is a law of the summer. Be it that the 
 spring is backward and discouraging. All the 
 same the summer comes. The very latest of the 
 leaves escape, at length, from their prison-cells. 
 And when they come, it is with this salutation: 
 "We would not have you ignorant that oftentimes 
 we purposed to come to you, but were let hither- 
 to." 
 
 There is a law of Christian purpose; of a 
 purpose inspired, energized, directed and gov- 
 erned by love to the Lord Jesus Christ, His people 
 and His cause. We are as morally certain what 
 a man so purposing will do under given circum- 
 stances as we are naturally certain what, under 
 given circumstances, a natural force will do. 
 Whatever may be the hindrances to its success, it 
 still works with a determination that is never 
 spent and that never tires. 
 
 St. Paul serves as a striking illustration. Al- 
 though he has made three missionary journeys, 
 he has never yet visited Rome. Such aloofness 
 might, not uncharitably, perhaps, be taken as 
 intended neglect; not only because the Roman 
 Church, made up largely as it is of Gentile con- 
 verts, calls for his personal supervision; but be- 
 cause, also, it is a much more important church 
 
TENACITY OF PURPOSE 129 
 
 than are most of the churches which he has him- 
 self gathered. It has come to be widely known 
 for its Christian zeal and steadfastness. Its 
 faith is spoken of "throughout the whole world." 
 The apostle, besides, has a personal acquaintance 
 with may of its members, as shown by the many 
 salutations at the close of the epistle. 
 
 That he has not long since visited these be- 
 loved brethren who have stood so faithfully for 
 Christ in the foremost seat of officially-protected 
 heathenism is, he assures them, from no lack on 
 his own part of either interest or intention. He 
 has a strong desire to see them. It is a desire 
 which, for years past, he has warmly cherished. 
 It has, indeed, been more than a desire; it has 
 been a fixed purpose. Again and again he has 
 fully determined to make this visit; has set a 
 time, over and over, for his coming, but, each time 
 something has prevented him. So, although no 
 apology is needed yet, as he would not have his 
 detention construed as indifference, he does make 
 ample explanation: "I would not have you 
 ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed 
 coming to you, but was let, hitherto." 
 
 As proof of the earnest sincerity of this pur- 
 pose, "Pray with and for me," he adds, "that I 
 may be delivered from them that do not believe 
 in Judea and that my service which I have for 
 Jerusalem may be accepted of them, that I may 
 come to you with joy by the will of God, and may 
 with you be refreshed." 
 
130 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 The appeal to God finds an unlooked-for 
 answer in the "appeal to Caesar." Planned and 
 "personally" conducted for him by his bitterest 
 enemies, the journey which the Apostle has so 
 long and so ardently wished and prayed that he 
 might take, brings him at length to that welcom- 
 ing escort of brethren from Rome which at Ap- 
 pii Forum causes him to "thank God and take 
 courage." The long hindered purpose, made in- 
 vincible by prayer, is now happily fulfilled. 
 
XXX 
 
 GIVING CONSCIENCE THE BENEFIT OF 
 THE DOUBT 
 
 But he that doubteth is condemned if he eat, be- 
 cause he eateth not of faith; and whatsoever is not 
 of faith is sin. Rom. 14: 23. 
 
 Some one has said and said truly, as I think, 
 that every man's first duty in life is to preserve 
 the peace of his own mind; that he can do this 
 only by keeping on good terms with his own cons- 
 cience, and that an uneasy conscience will disturb 
 a man's peace more than will any form of merely 
 outward affliction; more than would the loss of 
 health, property, position or friends. If, then 
 we would have this "New-year" to be for us a 
 really "happy" one, our first care must be to do 
 nothing which we either know, or believe, to be 
 wrong. 
 
 Now, I have no hesitation in saying that there 
 is not one of us here, this morning, but intends 
 to be careful in just that way. We are all going 
 to keep ourselves so well in hand as not to do any- 
 thing wrong ; nothing very wrong, I mean ; noth- 
 ing positively, absolutely wrong; nothing which 
 we know our consciences would condemn us for 
 having done. Not one of us is in the least afraid 
 of being haled before the district judge, or of in 
 any way justly forfeiting the good opinion of 
 either society or of our friends. Our danger, if 
 
 131 
 
132 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 danger there be, will lie in the temptation to do 
 things which we fear are not exactly right, but 
 which we hope are not exactly wrong; things 
 which make us debate with ourselves whether we 
 ought to do them or not. Finding ourselves dis- 
 tracted about them ; pulled now this way and now 
 that ; we would be heartily glad if some one whom 
 we could trust would decide the matter for us ; one 
 who would, at least, help us to decide and to decide 
 rightly. For all such cases, I venture to propose 
 this as a safe rule for us to follow: Until my 
 course be perfectly clear, I will give my con- 
 science (not inclination) the benefit of the doubt. 
 Take, by way of illustration, so simple a matter 
 as that of eating and drinking; something which 
 we all not only have to do, but which we enjoy 
 doing; but for the very reason that we enjoy 
 doing it and in proportion as we enjoy it, some- 
 thing which we are in constant danger of over- 
 doing. It may not be true of everybody, but for 
 very many of us it would be worth a good deal to 
 know, if we could, two things: First just what 
 it would be best for us to eat and drink ; but even 
 more than that, how much at each of the thou- 
 sand and odd meals of the year, it would be best 
 for us to take. Many persons have little idea of 
 how much this would mean to them, to how great 
 a degree health depends upon it, and, with health, 
 temper, disposition and ability to do our best 
 work in the best way. Quite recently, one of our 
 most honored and most useful citizens told me of 
 
BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT 133 
 
 the care he had found it indispensable for him 
 to take about his diet; and especially about the 
 matter of over-eating. A still more striking ex- 
 ample is this. I was once an inmate of a home 
 where the honored president of one of our New 
 England colleges was sometimes a guest. On all 
 such occasions he brought to the table a pair of 
 little scales to weigh whatever he ate Yes, I know 
 — you smile; a smile of amusement; perhaps of 
 derision ; and I know what you are ready to say : 
 "Oh, he was one of your confirmed dyspeptics." 
 True enough, he was ; but now had he become so, 
 is the question. 
 
 A greatly esteemed physician once told me that 
 he avoided over-indulgence by always rising from 
 the table with as good an appetite as he sat down 
 with — too hard a rule, I am sure, for the average 
 man or woman to follow; certainly so for the 
 average child. 
 
 A celebrated divine once gave this warning 
 to his friends : "Bring your hour-glass with you 
 to the table. Set it down by your plate. See 
 how long you are in enjoying the over-luxurious 
 banquet; then turn the glass and see how long 
 you are in suffering from it." This is a clever 
 enough epigram, but it is hardly a safe rule, for 
 the reason that the enjoyment is present, known, 
 and sure, while the suffering is remote and some- 
 what uncertain. 
 
 The best rule I know of was once given to some 
 of us college boys, at Williams" by our wise, re- 
 
134 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 vered, and much-loved professor, Albert Hopkins. 
 It is this: "The moment you begin to doubt 
 whether you have eaten enough or not, is the time 
 to stop." This is the Scriptural rule, he said; 
 and in confirmation of it he quoted what St. Paul 
 says about this very matter of eating: "Happy 
 is the man that condemneth not himself in that 
 thing which he alloweth. He that doubteth is con- 
 demned, if he eat, because he eateth not in faith ; 
 for whatsoever is not of faith (that you are not 
 clear about) is sin." 
 
 We shall, I am sure, be saved from a good deal 
 of unhappiness during the year on which we are 
 now entered, if we are careful to apply this same 
 test, not only to this, but to all other instances 
 of questionable behavior — to things which we 
 shall be tempted to do, but things which we shall 
 hesitate about doing, saying or writing because 
 not fully persuaded in our minds that it would 
 be right for us to do them. It may be doubtful 
 ways of spending time or money ; doubtful ways 
 of doing business ; doubtful places and forms of 
 pleasure or amusement ; doubtful ways of spend- 
 ing the Sabbath. All such questions we must 
 consider with ourselves honestly and conscien- 
 tiously. There are so many ways of cheating, or 
 trying to "cheat, an uncomfortable conscience," 
 that we are often reluctant even to consider the 
 possibility that we may be wrong. Giving con- 
 science the benefit of the doubt until sure that 
 we are right, will be the safe, and the only safe, 
 course for us to take. 
 
BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT 135 
 
 Nothing will help us, in such cases, so much as 
 prayer. We believe in prayer, or we should not 
 be here this morning. We have for our en- 
 couragement this special promise of answers to 
 such prayers: "If any man lack wisdom, let 
 him ask of God who giveth to all liberally, and 
 upbraideth not ; and it shall be given him. But let 
 him ask in faith, nothing wavering." 
 
 So praying and so doing, at the close of the 
 year (or, should we not live to see it, then at the 
 close of our life) "our rejoicing will be this, the 
 testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity 
 and godly sincerity we have had our conversa- 
 tion," both with ourselves and "with the world." 
 
XXXI 
 
 NUMBERING OUR DAYS 
 
 So teach us to number our days that we may ap- 
 ply our hearts unto wisdom. Ps. 90:12. 
 
 "I suppose you have your itinerary all mapped 
 out, even to a day," I said to a friend about mak- 
 ing a long tour abroad. 
 
 "No," he replied, "that would spoil it all for 
 me. I do not tie myself down as to either places 
 or times. I shall go and stay, and go and stay 
 again, as the mood takes me." 
 
 That, though, is something most tourists can- 
 not do. There is a limit to the number of days 
 they will have at their command. The sailing- 
 dates are fixed for both going and coming. It 
 is not from choice but from necessity that, having 
 cut it short, what they will take in and leave out, 
 they "apply their hearts to the wisdom" of mak- 
 ing the most they can of their sight-seeing days. 
 
 A young man decides on a professional career 
 in life. Compared with its anticipated duration, 
 his days of preparation are comparatively few. 
 He numbers them easily enough; three years in 
 fitting for college, four years in college, and 
 three in the professional school. Allowing forty 
 weeks of study to the year, on the use made of 
 these four hundred weeks depends the good or 
 the ill success of his whole life. The "wise" 
 student counts carefully the weeks of each passing 
 
 136 
 
NUMBERING OUR DAYS 137 
 
 term, not because they are so many but because 
 they are so few; so almost nothing, indeed, com- 
 pared with the many decades which he means to 
 fill with useful and honorable work in the world. 
 Gladstone is reported as having once punctuated 
 the difference between the student who thus 
 thoughtfully numbers his college-days and one 
 who lets them slip by carelessly unimproved, by 
 saying, "One-third of our Oxford and Cambridge 
 men come only because they are sent; one-third 
 come with no other idea than that of having a 
 good time. The other third rules England !" 
 
 If it be worth while asking, "Where and how 
 shall I spend these few, fleeting days of my 
 earthly life?" how vastly more to the purpose 
 must it be to ask, "Where and how shall I spend 
 my eternity?" It is a short problem to reduce 
 the traditional "three-score years and ten" to the 
 twenty-five thousand five hundred and fifty days 
 of which they are composed. True, they do seem 
 so defined, to be a large sum. But the point to 
 be considered is that it is, after all, a sum — a 
 sum-total. Each day spent takes one from the 
 number and brings us that much nearer the end. 
 What, then, of even the longest lived of the an- 
 tediluvian patriachs? What of Methuselah, him- 
 self? Were we, too, to be multi-centenarians, how 
 surely would come the hour when, looking back, 
 we would be compelled to ask, "For what is our 
 life?" and to answer, "Verily it is but a vapor 
 which appeareth but a little while and then vanish- 
 eth away." 
 
138 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 A weaver's shuttle, a shepherd's tent, the swift 
 ships, the eagle hastening to its prey, the shadow 
 that declineth, the fading flower, the withering 
 grass, the ebbing tide, a tale that is told — yes, 
 satire, sorrow and despair have exhausted the 
 vocabulary of simile and metaphor to depict the 
 swift passing of this our earthly life. Why "all 
 vanity and vexation of spirit" but that it is all 
 so brief? 
 
 Yet is the cynic's shaft blunted, grief com- 
 forted and despair chastened by Nature herself 
 showing all who have eyes to see and ears to hear, 
 how disproportionately vast is the good that fol- 
 lows the right improvement of even short periods 
 of time. What gives the seed-time its super- 
 lative importance, but that it is so brief? Yet, 
 promptly and faithfully improved, these few days 
 insure support for the remaining three hundred 
 and sixty-five. Numbering the days and apply- 
 ing both heart and hands to this kind of admoni- 
 tion, the "wise" husbandman plows in plowing 
 time, in planting time, he plants, in harvest time, 
 he reaps and gathers into barns. 
 
 What, then, of the life to come, the everlasting 
 life ? Of the world where time shall be no longer ; 
 from whose speech all our time-words are fore- 
 ever dropped; where is no reckoning of days, or 
 years, or centuries, or milleniums ; where is neither 
 calendar or almanac marking the days of the 
 week and month, the flow of the tides, the rising 
 and setting of sun and moon? Here, seeking in 
 
NUMBERING OUR DAYS 139 
 
 vain for some time-unit of measurement, the most 
 profound student of numbers finds himself de- 
 pairingly out-numbered. Be it, that he could 
 number the dust-grains in the whole wide air, 
 the drops of all the oceans, the leaves of all the 
 forests — taken all together, they give no ground 
 for intelligent comparison; they are not even the 
 smallest fraction of eternity. In imagination we, 
 now and then, try as time-engineers to survey 
 that on-stretching road of the hereafter, but we 
 tire at length of carrying our chain forward and 
 driving and numbering our stakes. We pause, 
 and at length we cease. The world and the life 
 we have here entered is a world and a life with- 
 out end. 
 
 Just here, however, we are confronted with the 
 honest and anxious doubter to whom it seems 
 most unreasonable and unjust that so moment- 
 ous an issue, so vast a destiny, should be made to 
 hang on the short, uncertain time allotted to us 
 in this world. How can poor, weak, tempted and 
 sinful mortals hope, by even the most faithful 
 endeavor to pass examination for a world which 
 only the righteous can enter? To the most 
 strenuous, but unaided human effort, it were, in- 
 deed, impossible. Impossible, were our Examiner 
 strict to mark our offences and implacable in His 
 judgments. But since He is a compassionate, 
 and merciful Father, a happy issue of life is 
 possible for even those who have wandered fur- 
 thest from the right, the safe path. For, what 
 
140 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 is conversion? It is simply a "turning;" fanning 
 from the wrong road to the right one. It is a 
 matter, therefore, not of distance but of direction. 
 It is like the turn-table at a railroad station, the 
 object of which is simply to change the direction 
 of the train. Its length of a few yards only is 
 as nothing compared with the breadth of the con- 
 tinent across which the train is to ran. But short 
 as it is, it determines the traveler's destination. 
 God in His great mercy has provided in the Gos- 
 pel of His Son the means and opportunity for 
 such a change as will take us to our journey's end 
 in peace. For making this change, a very little 
 time is enough. True, there may be an unneces- 
 sarily long struggle with pride, self-will or un- 
 belief before the one moment of final and happy 
 decision. But the wickedest man may at any 
 time, if he so wills, "forsake his way and the most 
 unrighteous man his thoughts and mav return 
 to the Lord*' who will then have mercy upon him 
 and who will at once and abundantly forgive and 
 biot forever all his sins. How long did it take 
 Peter and Andrew, James and John to leave their 
 nets : Matthew his "seat at the receipt of custom :" 
 Zaccheus, to welcome Jesus as his guest : Saul, to 
 look up and say, "Lord, what wilt thou have me 
 to do?" 
 
 So easy is it for us all to forget hozc quickly 
 the years pass, that we cannot pray too earnestly, 
 "So teach us to number our days that zee may 
 apply our hearts unto icisdom.''' 
 
 
 
XXXII 
 
 SYSTEM AND SENTIMENT IN GIVING 
 
 And when they brought out the money that was 
 brought into the house of the Lord, Hilkiah the 
 priest found the book of the law of the Lord, by the 
 hand of Moses. II Chron. 24: 14. 
 
 The raising of money for religious uses was 
 a thing well and wisely looked after in the old 
 Levitical days and, with all our up-to-date pro- 
 gress, we have neither outgrown the need or out- 
 done the method. 
 
 It was thoroughly systematic, to begin with. 
 "It was a book of rates," as Henry says ; "so 
 much for a child over one month old and under 
 five years ; so much for those between five and 
 twenty years ; so much for those over sixty — the 
 rich, according to their ability, and the poor 
 according to theirs ; something for those of either 
 sex and of every age- — the money that every man 
 is set at." 
 
 It was not an open question whether the means 
 for the support of public worship should be pro- 
 vided or not. A solid foundation was laid in un- 
 debatable requirement. At the same time pro- 
 vision was made for the free exercise of individual 
 sentiment and choice ; "All the money that cometh 
 into any man's heart," or, as in the margin, "All 
 the money that ascendeth upon the heart of a 
 man." Here we have not only the strength of 
 
 141 
 
142 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 method but the beauty of desire ; the love of God 
 overcoming the naturally gravitating power of 
 gold, giving it buoyancy to ascend from the cold 
 depths of the man's pocket upon the warmth of 
 the man's heart so that, not by any penalizing 
 compulsion but out of the fulness and freeness of 
 his love, he brings his uncommanded gift into the 
 Lord's house. 
 
 The pastor of probably the richest of all our 
 great city churches once administered a whole- 
 some and stinging rebuke to his congregation for 
 the slipshod way in which the financial affairs of 
 the church were being conducted — a chronic de- 
 ficit (just then $7,000.00 behindhand) which 
 had always to be made up, if made up at all, by 
 piteous appeals to individual members for supple- 
 mentary subscriptions. Whence the trouble? 
 From failure to make systematic provision for 
 promptly meeting obligations which the church 
 voluntarily assumes. Business is business. Pro- 
 perly conducted, there can be no church or mis- 
 sionary panic any more than, in case Wall-Street 
 business be honestly conducted, there can be no 
 Wall-Street panic. Shall the business men of a 
 church keep to snug ways of managing their own 
 concerns and at the same time let the Lord's 
 business go haphazard at sixes and sevens? It 
 may not be altogether easy, in every instance, to 
 hit upon a plan which will work smoothly and ac- 
 ceptably to all; but, the harder the problem, the 
 more cheerfully will love to the Master welcome 
 
SYSTEM IN GIVING 143 
 
 the privilege of solving it ; trusting in Him for 
 the wisdom necessary to solve it rightly. 
 
 From the building and repairing of the temple 
 in the Old Testament to the widow's mite in the 
 New comes the assurance of God's blessing on 
 gifts laid freely on the altar of His love. Per- 
 haps we have no more beautiful example than that 
 of the good king, Josiah. He sought earnestly 
 to God for wisdom. His prayer was answered 
 by his being stirred up to repair the temple which 
 a second time had fallen into decay: "Let the 
 keepers of the temple-door deliver the money 
 into the hands of the doers of the work that have 
 the oversight of the Lord's house; and let them 
 give it to the doers of the work which is in the 
 house ; unto carpenters and builders and masons, 
 and to buy timber and hewn stone to repair the 
 house." 
 
 How did God bless that undertaking? In the 
 process of repairing, the lost "book of the Law" 
 was found which "had been either neglected and 
 mislaid carelessly or maliciously concealed;" and, 
 as the result of finding and reading the book, a 
 glorious revival of religion followed, to the spirit- 
 ual improvement and uplifting joy of the nation. 
 
 Let money be now poured into the Lord's treas- 
 ury for the support of all His workers in all His 
 fields, at home and abroad, and He will make His 
 Bible a new Bible and His truth new truth for 
 ourselves, for our country, and for the world. 
 
XXXIII 
 
 THE GREATER OF TWO GREAT 
 VICTORIES 
 
 So the armed men left the captives and the spoil 
 before the princes and the congregation.. II Chron. 
 28:14. 
 
 The beautiful spirit of compassion shown 
 toward the sufferers from earthquake and fire in 
 Southern Italy, although justly set down to the 
 credit of the teachings and example of Christ, 
 was yet more than paralleled, some seven centu- 
 ries before the Christian era, by what befell the 
 people then living on the Eastern shore of the 
 same great inland sea, whose Western shore was 
 as lately the scene of such awful devastation. 
 
 The people of whom I speak had been attacked 
 by the combined enemies of Syria and Israel. 
 They had fought a double battle, had suffered a 
 double defeat; and this two-fold defeat had been 
 followed by a twofold deportation. The Syrian 
 King had carried away a great multitude of the 
 captives to Damascus. Israel smites Judah's 
 King with a great slaughter, makes prisoners by 
 the hundred thousand of men, women and chil- 
 dren, robs them of their possessions and brings 
 the spoil to Samaria — a far deeper sorrow than 
 it would have been, had their belongings been 
 swallowed up by an earthquake or destroyed by 
 fire. 
 
 144 
 
TWO GREAT VICTORIES 145 
 
 As these Samaritan conquerors, flushed with 
 the joy of victory and exulting proudly over the 
 downfall of their traditional enemies, draw near 
 to their own royal city, they are, all at once, 
 strangely interrupted in their advance. They 
 find themselves confronted by a "prophet of the 
 Lord." The column halts to see by what message 
 this holy man of God dares silence the rejoicing 
 of his victorious countrymen. It proves to be a 
 message such as only a true prophet of God 
 would have had the courage to deliver: "Behold, 
 because the Lord God of your fathers was wroth 
 with Judah, He has delivered them into your 
 hand, and you have slain them in a rage that 
 reacheth up to heaven. And now you intend to 
 keep under the children of Judah and Jerusalem 
 for bondmen and bondwomen unto you. But are 
 there not with you, even with you, sins against 
 the Lord your God? Now, hear me therefore, and 
 deliver the captives again which you have taken 
 of your brethren; for the fierce anger of the 
 Lord is upon you." 
 
 A most timely rebuke and admonition, most 
 graciously sent, most faithfully uttered, and 
 most sensibly and wisely taken! 
 
 The program for a grand triumphal entry into 
 Samaria is at once reversed — changed from any 
 further humiliation of the despoiled and heart- 
 broken captives to the subjecting of their own 
 haughty and revengeful spirit to the purer and 
 nobler dictates of humanity and mercy. The bat- 
 
146 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 talions detailed to guard the prisoners give up 
 their charge and "leave them and the spoil in the 
 hands of the princes and of the whole concourse 
 of the people." The appointing of a relief -com- 
 mittee is next in order. The men thus named 
 enter promptly and heartily into the work : "They 
 rise up and take the captives, and with the spoil 
 clothe all that are naked among them, and give 
 them to eat and to drink, and anoint them, and 
 carry the feeble among them upon asses and bring 
 them to Jericho." Then without more ado, they 
 return to Samaria. 
 
 Great-minded, large-hearted Samaritans ! An 
 example for that later countryman of yours who, 
 near that same "city of palm trees," rescued a 
 half -dead traveler by the wayside — and, like him, 
 worthy to be commemorated in the more than 
 monumental pages of divine inspiration! And 
 beside the honor, what increase of purest happi- 
 ness for you! The beaming faces of these be- 
 friended prisoners, how much pleasanter a sight 
 than the gleam of conquering ensigns ; than the 
 flash of victorious swords ! These forlorn captives 
 whose half -naked bodies you have clothed, whose 
 bare and bleeding feet you have shod, whose hun- 
 ger and thirst you have appeased, whose heads 
 you did not forget to anoint (adding the cour- 
 tesy of luxury to the promptings of humanity) ; 
 the sick and feeble whom you tenderly carried — 
 yes, this defeated, dejected, despairing band of 
 exiles whom, thus generously cared for, you have 
 
TWO GREAT VICTORIES 147 
 
 restored to their former condition and helped to 
 re-establish in their dear old homes — how much 
 more their tears of happy and loving thankful- 
 ness are worth to you than would or could have 
 been their enforced toil in what would have been 
 to them your most sad and homesick service! 
 How much sweeter than the clangor of boasting 
 trumpets is to you the music of mercy's gentle 
 voice; and, with it, the grateful breathings of 
 answering hearts calling down by prayer on you, 
 your children and your nation, the richest bless- 
 ings of heaven ! 
 
 How incalculably greater was that of the two 
 great victories then and there won. Nature — are 
 we, at times, tempted, bitterly tempted, to call her 
 cruel? Yet, in even her most awful visitations 
 there come calculable pauses. But human Nature 
 — to what unforeseen, unimagined extremes of 
 cruelty will it go, once are let loose the unre- 
 strained passions of pride, jealousy, ambition or 
 revenge ! Our depraved humanity may well learn 
 the lesson of humility from the devastating con- 
 vulsions of Nature. Not only has the loss of life 
 and treasure occasioned by her outbreaks of vio- 
 lence been really insignificant compared with the 
 sweeping desolations of war, but never is it hers, 
 as it is not seldom the infamy of war, to add gra- 
 tuitous insult to the suffering caused by her 
 plagues, earthquakes, fires or floods. 
 
XXXIV 
 
 GRATIFICATION AND GRATITUDE 
 
 Bless the Lord . . . and forget not all his bene- 
 fits. Ps. 103:2. 
 
 Literally translated, the word "benefit" means 
 "good" of some sort "done" to the person on 
 whom the benefit is bestowed. 
 
 But (a step further) to do one good means to 
 contribute in some way to that one's pleasure, 
 happiness or advantage. It is because we both 
 enjoy and are nourished by it, that we pronounce 
 "good" the food of which we daily partake. We 
 say of a well played or well sung piece, of an ex- 
 cellent picture, of a beautiful landscape, of a fine 
 poem, "They are good," by which is meant simply 
 that in these things we find a measure of gratifi- 
 cation. And, in general, whoever calls into exer- 
 cise any susceptibility we may have of true and 
 rational enjoyment does us a good; confers on us 
 a "benefit." 
 
 Whoever, again, does us an intended good 
 shows by so doing that he feels kindly toward 
 us. Otherwise, why seek to gratify or aid us? A 
 benefit, then, is a sure token of both interest and 
 affection. A good act is a kind act. Back of the 
 good done is some one's good-will. 
 
 In such "good-will" there is more, incom- 
 parably more, than there is in the gift itself. 
 There was more in the beautiful seal sent to 
 
 148 
 
GRATIFICATION AND GRATITUDE 149 
 
 Goethe, the idea of which was conceived by the 
 then young Carlyle and the design of which (the 
 serpent of eternity encircling a star, with the 
 legend "Unhasting, Unresting") was sketched by 
 Mrs. Carlyle — there was vastly more in the seal 
 than in the seal itself — "A memorial," as the giv- 
 ers wrote, "of the gratitude we owe you, and 
 which we think the whole world owes you." 
 
 And, as there is more in the gift than the gift, 
 so in the thanks for the gift is there more than 
 the thanks. 
 
 What follows, then? This, that the receiving 
 of a benefit excites, or should excite, in the recipi- 
 ent, a feeling quite distinct from, and far above, 
 that which comes from any advantage or enjoy- 
 ment from the good itself. Coming home, of an 
 evening, you find awaiting you a gift of which 
 you had not beforehand had either knowledge or 
 expectation. Naturally, your first thought is 
 about the gift — what a help, comfort or pleasure 
 it will be to you. But you do not dwell long on 
 that thought alone. You come upon the name of 
 the giver, and now the gift speaks not alone, or 
 chiefly, to the supplied need or gratified taste; it 
 now comes as an appeal to your heart ; a challenge 
 to your love ; and this makes the offering dear to 
 you far beyond its power of imparting to you any 
 gratification whatever. You might have gotten 
 the self -same thing by purchase, but with what a 
 different feeling would you then have regarded it ! 
 The seller you may not love; the giver, you do. 
 
150 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 Thus good, as the expression of good-n-ill, accom- 
 plishes its truest and best end, only when it begets 
 good-will, in turn. The gratification ends in ut- 
 ter selfishness unless it awakens gratitude. 
 
 This statement we find beautifully illustrated, 
 and confirmed by noticing that these two words, 
 "gratification" and "gratitude" have precisely 
 the same root ; a word, namely, which means kind- 
 ness, or good-will. This not only makes them He 
 very near to one another on the same page of the 
 dictionary, but it points with delightful signifi- 
 cance to the fact that they are joined lovingly to- 
 gether on the same leaf of the rightfully inter- 
 preting heart. 
 
 This, too, gives answer to the question which a 
 Christian friend once asked earnestly of me, "How 
 is it that we can bless God? He blesses us, we 
 know, by giving us no end of things which we 
 not only need, but which we could not possibly 
 do without. But how can we bless Him since He 
 can easily enough dispense with even the best and 
 costliest of our gifts?" In precisely the same 
 sense, is the answer, although in a different way. 
 The spirit of blessing is the same in both; kind- 
 ness, good-will, affection. God blesses us by His 
 good gifts : we bless Him by the loving acknowl- 
 edgment of His loving acts. 
 
 Gifts, however beautiful or costly, are but 
 shadows, and like shadows they pass away. Is 
 the gift a gem? It may be crushed, stolen or lost. 
 Is it a more brilliant gem of speech ? Crystallized 
 
GRATIFICATION AND GRATITUDE 151 
 
 in words of whatever tongue, yet all tongues 
 shall cease. Is knowledge the gem? It shall van- 
 ish away. The love, of which the gift is but the 
 momentary expression, "abides." 
 
XXXV 
 
 INTERCESSION FOR THE 
 ILL-DESERVING 
 
 And Abraham stood yet before the Lord. Gen. 
 18:22. 
 
 There was no very urgent reason, as men 
 would say, why Abraham should interest himself 
 particularly in the fate of Sodom, or even of his 
 nephew who lived there. Were not the people of 
 Sodom "wicked and sinners before the Lord ex- 
 ceedingly"? Was not that city a plague-spot on 
 God's fair earth, corrupted and corrupting, pois- 
 oned and poisoning, and would it not be every 
 way better that such a sink of iniquity be 
 cleansed by the potent disinfection of brimstone 
 and fire? And as for Lot, did he not, in utter 
 disregard of what was due to the age and prior 
 claim of his uncle, and taking mean advantage 
 of his uncle's generosity, did he not choose the 
 fertile valley of the Jordan for his own pasture- 
 grounds and deliberately pitch his tent toward 
 Sodom? And did he not, after that he had be- 
 come thoroughly acquainted with the pollutions 
 of the town, did he not take his family there and 
 make it his chosen residence? And would it not, 
 then, have been a fitting recompense had his in- 
 jured uncle left him to shift for himself as best 
 he could in the coming overthrow? 
 
 That would indeed have been the way of the 
 
 152 
 
THE ILL-DESERVING 153 
 
 world — the spirit which leads the man who has 
 attained all of rank, power and wealth which he 
 desires, to leave his fellows to struggle alone with 
 their temptations, hardships and dangers, and 
 to excuse their own neglect by the heartless old 
 plea, "Am I my brother's keeper? Things must 
 take their course. It is no more than right that he 
 suffer the consequence of his folly." 
 
 Abraham does better. His own affairs are 
 indeed satisfactorily adjusted, his own interests 
 are well looked after, his own safety is assured, 
 his glory as founder of a great nation is fully 
 guaranteed. Still he has more to ask. "He 
 stands yet before the Lord." No sooner have the 
 two men turned their faces toward the doomed 
 city than he begins that humble, earnest, impor- 
 tunate intercession which has ever since been the 
 guide and encouragement of God's people in their 
 supplications for the worst of sinners. 
 
XXXVI 
 
 SLANDER— ITS METHODS, MOTIVES 
 AND RESULTS 
 
 Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? Who 
 shall dwell in thy holy hill? . . . He that backbit- 
 eth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neigh- 
 bor, nor taheth up a reproach against his neighbor. 
 Ps. 15:1,3. 
 
 I begin with tailor-made slander ; with the man 
 who manufactures falsehoods out of whole cloth 
 — stories which have not, and which he knows 
 have not, a shadow of foundation. 
 
 Next comes the patchwork calumniator. 
 Though not an out-and-out liar, he does more 
 harm than if he were, since his calumnies are less 
 easily refuted. What he does is to pick the worst 
 things out of what is partially true and so put 
 them together as to create in the public mind a 
 thoroughly false impression. By putting the 
 worst construction possible on what may have been 
 said or done, saying not a word about alleviating 
 circumstances, minimizing the good and maxi- 
 mizing the bad, he sends out a damaging report 
 which is, in a way, worse than downright false- 
 hood. The whole truth not being told and what 
 is told being falsely colored, an ingenious patch- 
 work of ill-assorted, mutilated facts is stealthily 
 thrown over the back of a neighbor from behind, 
 who, thus shamelessly attired, goes forth to be 
 suspected by the good and mocked by the vile. 
 
 154 
 
SLANDER 155 
 
 Next comes the truth-telling backbiter who 
 tells of faults that have come to his personal 
 knowledge, but which he is in duty and honor 
 bound to keep to himself; telling them gratu- 
 itously with the two-fold mean intent; first, of 
 letting the fault be known ; and, second, by going 
 on to excuse it, of gaining for himself a reputa- 
 tion for charitableness. Instead of "seeking love 
 by covering the transgression," he seeks a selfish 
 gain by revealing it. Were he "of a faithful 
 spirit, he would conceal the matter." 
 
 He, again, is involved in like guilt who helps 
 to circulate incriminating reports, even though 
 he may have had nothing to do with originating 
 them. Many do this who would scorn to do the 
 other. They hold themselves blameless if they tell 
 only what they hear. On the contrary, it is just 
 this tale-bearing that makes most of the trouble. 
 Were there none to retail his wares, the fabricator 
 of slander would soon have to go out of business. 
 He derives all his importance and all his success 
 from those who lend their more respectable names 
 to his falsehoods or exaggerations. "This is that 
 which maintains and gives subsistence to calumny, 
 which would starve and die of itself if no one gave 
 it a lodging. When malice pours it out, if our 
 ears be shut against it and there be no vessel to 
 receive it, it would fall like water upon the ground 
 and could no more be gathered up." 
 
 To the question, "Lord, who shall abide in thy 
 tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill?" 
 
156 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 comes for answer, "he that backbiteth not with his 
 tongue ;" but it is added, "Nor he that tdketh up 
 a reproach against his neighbor." "Where there 
 is no tale-bearing, the strife ceaseth." Since the 
 Hebrew word for talebearer signifies a "peddler," 
 we have him here described as one "who picks up 
 ill-natured stories at one house and utters them at 
 another, bartering slanders by way of exchange." 
 Again, we violate the spirit of the ninth com- 
 mandment whenever we entertain and countenance 
 damaging rumors, though we may take no part in 
 either starting or spreading them. The essence 
 of the sin consists in our being glad to hear such 
 reports, and to have them disseminated; in our 
 being inwardly pleased to see others brought into 
 disrepute. We are bound, on the contrary, not to 
 receive remarks obnoxious to the good name of 
 our fellows: and particularly of those to whom 
 we would appear friendly. "Thou shalt not re- 
 ceive (marginal reading) a false report." "The 
 north wind driveth away rain, so doth an angry 
 countenance a backbiting tongue." We are not 
 to stand silent and see a neighbor's fair reputa- 
 tion slaughtered before our very eyes. Promptly, 
 decidedly and manfully we are to defend a neigh- 
 bor's good name when it is unjustly or causelessly 
 assailed. And our defence should be hearty and 
 whole-souled — not "prefacing our defence with a 
 feigned regret and semblance of pitying our 
 neighbor and adding withal some words of com- 
 mending him in somewhat else." 
 
SLANDER 157 
 
 Then there is pantomime slander. "A 
 naughty person, a wicked man, walketh with a 
 froward mouth. He winketh with his eyes, he 
 teacheth with his fingers; frowardness is in his 
 heart; he deviseth mischief continually; he sow- 
 eth discord." This back-biting with a wink, a 
 word, a gesture, a shrug of the shoulders, a leer, 
 a cough, a laugh, a sentence half uttered and not 
 completed, is often the crudest kind of slander — 
 just enough being said or done to allow full play 
 to the busy imaginations of those who hear — the 
 dastardly trick of shrewd men who do the mis- 
 chief, but who know how to shift the responsi- 
 bility upon less dishonest people ; who keep them- 
 selves in the background while secretly they work 
 the wires ; whisperers who say in a confidential un- 
 dertone what they mean that others shall speak 
 out plainly and openly. 
 
 MOTIVES TO SLANDER 
 
 With some it is sheer envy. "At the expense 
 of the good name and esteem of others the back- 
 biter seeks to increase his own ; out of others' ruins 
 to build up himself, and for this reason inclines 
 always to hear and speak of the imperfections 
 and dispraise of others rather than to their ad- 
 vantage. The good man needs not this dishon- 
 est way to raise himself, but is glad to see what- 
 ever is praiseworthy flourish in whomsoever. 
 Lover of God and of His glory, he is glad to see 
 many enriched with His best gifts." 
 
 With others the secret dragging down of a 
 
158 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 neighbor's good standing is the working out of a 
 settled, deep-seated, but carefully concealed pur- 
 pose of revenge for some real or fancied injury 
 or affront. The revenger speaks neither good or 
 bad, but waits and watches for the fit time when 
 his purpose can be most safely and surely accom- 
 plished. 
 
 With others, again, the sin has its root in a 
 thoughtless propensity to gossip; it is so much 
 easier for them to talk about people than about 
 anything else. 
 
 THE EVILS OF SLANDER 
 
 The harm from evil-speaking is by no means 
 confined to those thus spoken against. One after 
 another becomes entangled in this net of Satan. 
 Friends take sides. Harsh censures provoke un- 
 charitable speeches in return until, at length, an 
 entire neighborhood (or church, it may be) is in- 
 volved in broil and strife. Families are set at 
 variance, friends converted into enemies, neigh- 
 bors into strangers. Harmony, hospitality and 
 peace sicken and die, and every office of kindness 
 is interrupted. A disparaging remark concerning 
 a parent to a child, concerning a teacher to a 
 pupil, concerning a pastor to a parishioner, may 
 destroy or greatly lessen the influence of parent, 
 teacher or pastor over those to whom, or in whose 
 hearing the injurious remark is made. No won- 
 der, if from such seed be reaped a harvest of in- 
 subordination, discord and revolt. "To the hap- 
 piness of good neighborhood succeeds a train of 
 
SLANDER 159 
 
 groveling, base, serpentine hostilities, depraving 
 all who practice them and distressing all against 
 whom they are practised." 
 
 "It cannot be supposed that in such a course of 
 hostilities against his f ellowmen the slanderer will 
 escape the common resentment of those whom he 
 has injured. An enemy to all men, all men at 
 length become enemies to him. Such as have 
 smarted from his tongue will take care to make 
 him smart in return. He is likely to be excluded 
 in due time from all decent society, and to be 
 openly treated to indignities which he knows not 
 how to brook yet dare not resist." 
 
 Hence the truth of the proverb that "the back- 
 biter wounds three at once — him against whom 
 he speaks, him who hears, and, most of all, him- 
 self." 
 
XXXVII 
 
 THE FOOLISH FORMALIST 
 
 Fools! did not he that made that which is without 
 make that which is within, also? Luke 11:40. 
 
 It is at a morning hour, and before He has 
 broken His fast of the night, that Jesus is ad- 
 dressing a great, out-door, surging crowd of 
 eager listeners. Naturally, He is in need of bod- 
 ily refreshment. The Pharisee, therefore, who 
 makes bold to interrupt the speaking by inviting 
 the speaker to his house for breakfast has set 
 down to his credit an act of true and most season- 
 ably offered kindness. As the invitation is 
 promptly accepted, why is the accompanying and 
 customary invitation to wash before eating just 
 as promptly declined? 
 
 Certainly not because Jesus sees anything 
 wrong in the custom itself. Did He not, on an- 
 other occasion, administer a delicate reproof to 
 another Pharisee for having neglected so usual 
 a mark of social courtesy? In the present in- 
 stance, the reason for abstaining lies in the su- 
 perstitious notion which leads this Pharisee to 
 "marvel" at the omission. The simple non-com- 
 pliance with a social custom would be too small a 
 matter to make him "marvel." No, but he is a 
 slave to the tradition that the man is morally de- 
 filed who ventures to eat with unwashen hands. 
 With the same religious scrupulosity he washes 
 
 160 
 
THE FOOLISH FORMALIST 161 
 
 cups, pots, couches and brazen vessels, and many 
 other like things he does. He fasts often. He is 
 strict to pay his tithes. He tithes even the small- 
 est herbs, the mint and the rue, of his garden. He 
 lays conscientious stress on all these little details. 
 He makes many uncalled-for additions to even the 
 ceremonial requirements of the law. 
 
 While doing this, however, he neglects the one 
 and the only really essential thing — the state of 
 his heart. He makes everything of the outside, 
 having little thought or care for that which is 
 within. So he be punctilious in outwardly wor- 
 shipping of God, it matters little how he feel 
 toward, or how he treat, his fellow men. If he 
 make "long prayers," and make them long 
 enough, he then has no scruple about enriching 
 himself by oppressing the poor, even to the point 
 of devouring widows' houses. The motive of his 
 religious performances is of no account with him, 
 so the motions be gone through with. With him 
 motive and motion are one. When he fasts, he 
 wants people to know it. He calls their attention 
 to it by disfiguring his face. When he gives 
 alms, he wants people to know that. He employs 
 a trumpeter for that purpose. 
 
 At the breakfast table by which we now sup- 
 pose ourselves standing, Jesus takes occasion to 
 expose the folly of this Phariseeism. He shows 
 that it is neither more or less than sheer hypoc- 
 risy ; and he furthermore shows that such hypoc- 
 risy is foolish. "Fools," He says. "What fools !" 
 
162 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 would be our impatient, sarcastic way of saying 
 it. 
 
 He does not say, "Ye wicked." Folly is not 
 necessarily wickedness. Of course, the choice of 
 a wrong end is as wicked as it is foolish. But 
 folly, as such, consists simply in the use of means 
 which are ill-adapted to secure the end in view, 
 whatever that end may be. Two lawmakers may 
 be equally honest ; they may wish, one as truly as 
 the other, that only such laws shall be passed as 
 will be for the public good. Yet one of them 
 may be foolish and the other wise. The foolish 
 lawmaker, like the sincere but foolish reformer, 
 may defeat the very end he has in view, since 
 "Good motive even is unavailing without good 
 method." 
 
 The formalist is foolish in that he defeats his 
 own purpose. Why does he go through the forms 
 of devotion? Only because he hopes to gain by 
 his hypocrisy. But success depends on his play- 
 ing the hypocrite so successfully as to avoid de- 
 tection. If those whom he fancies he is deceiving 
 see through the disguise, he not only misses the 
 mark, but he is worse off than he was before he 
 put himself in the way of being detected. He not 
 only gains nothing; he loses incalculably. He 
 thought to gain respect. Instead, he incurs the 
 scorn of those on whom he thinks to impose. 
 
 It is hazardous always to attempt this even 
 with men. Still with men it is not absolutely fool- 
 ish, since men do and must, as a rule, look only on 
 
THE FOOLISH FORMALIST 163 
 
 the outside of things. They cannot see the heart, 
 and thus it is that a man may make a mask so per- 
 fect that men shall not see that it is a mask, at all. 
 The man who tries to palm himself off on the 
 world for what he is not, is not, therefore, abso- 
 lutely and necessarily, a fool. 
 
 But the man is el fool, always and absolutely, 
 who tries to impersonate either piety or charity 
 before God. God sees behind the mask as clearly 
 as He sees the mask. With Him, therefore, the 
 self -flattering formalist misses his mark. Think- 
 ing to win favor with God as well as with men, 
 he incurs, instead, only the all-seeing One's most 
 pronounced displeasure. 
 
 Jesus exposes and illustrates this supreme folly, 
 thus : "Now do you, Pharisees, make clean the out- 
 side of the cup and the platter, but your inward 
 part is full of ravening and wickedness. Fools ! 
 Did not He that made that which is without make 
 that which is within, also?" 
 
 What would any one of us think of the man 
 who, under the guise of friendliness, should offer 
 us a cup however beautifully and elaborately de- 
 signed and decorated, if upon looking into it we 
 should see a clear proof that some selfish motive 
 lay at the bottom of the gift? Just as little does 
 God care for mere forms of worship — the gor- 
 geous cathedral, the grand church-edifice, the 
 elaborate singing, the floral decorations, the elo- 
 quent prayer, the polished discourse, the chanted 
 creed, the Lord's Prayer recited in unison. It 
 
164 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 goes without saying that these are all right and 
 acceptable to God, provided they are but the out- 
 ward expression of truly thankful, adoring, peni- 
 tent and loving hearts. Yet, considering the fas- 
 cination which fixed forms of worship have to the 
 unreflecting, is not the self-deception of symbol- 
 atry a danger and a sin against which even the 
 most sincere worshippers should be continually on 
 their guard? 
 
XXXVIII 
 
 TWO KINDS OF RELIGION, AND THE 
 BETTER OF THE TWO 
 
 Two men went up into the temple to pray; the 
 one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. 
 
 The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself: 
 God, I thank thee that I am not as other men; ex- 
 tortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this pub- 
 lican; I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all 
 that I possess. 
 
 And the publican, standing afar off, would not 
 lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote 
 upon his breast, saying: God be merciful to me, a 
 sinner. Luke 18: 10-13. 
 
 In creed, these two men are alike. They be- 
 lieve, one as fully as the other, that God is 
 pleased with those who do right and displeased 
 with those who do wrong ; and that to be on good 
 terms with God is therefore, or should be, every 
 man's chief concern. 
 
 There is this difference, however. One of these 
 two men is quite at his ease because he has never 
 thought of doubting but that he is on the very 
 best of terms with God, already. His prayer 
 reads like a good prayer, certainly — a good 
 prayer of a good man. He asks God for noth- 
 ing ; he has only thanks to give for what God has 
 already done for him. And what this Pharisee 
 thanks God for is the very best thing that any 
 man can pray for ; or, if he has it, that he has the 
 
 165 
 
166 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 greatest reason to be thankful for — not that he is 
 such a learned, highly respected, well-to-do man — 
 no, but that he is such an out-and-out good man ; 
 that he has been led of God to give first consider- 
 ation to the scrupulous performance of his de- 
 votional duties. 
 
 Naturally, too, it would seem to be still greater 
 cause for thanksgiving, if a man be not only 
 good, but if he cannot but see that he is better 
 than other men. It is so with this Pharisee. 
 Other men are extortioners ; he, thank God, is not 
 one of them. Other men are unjust ; he is not one 
 of them either, thank God. Other men are adul- 
 terers ; again, God be praised, he is not an adul- 
 terer. No doubt, he might have made his list of 
 negations longer. He did, in fact, make it 
 longer; as long as the added list of mean, dis- 
 loyal and dishonest things for the doing of which 
 he held the average publican in such supreme con- 
 tempt. 
 
 Nor is it merely for the bad things he had not 
 done that he is thankful to God; but even more, 
 perhaps, for the good things he has done. Was 
 it not a good thing to fast, now and then? Yes, 
 we are all in danger, at least three times every 
 day, of either eating and drinking what is not 
 good for us ; or, if not that, of eating and drink- 
 ing more than is good for us. Fasting, now and 
 then, if done in the right way, helps toward keep- 
 ing us from becoming slaves to these dangerous 
 appetites. And, this Pharisee fasts regularly and 
 
TWO KINDS OF RELIGION 167 
 
 often; as often as twice every week. Another 
 thing he says he has done; he has paid his 
 "church-dues," as we would now call them — the 
 tithes assessed on his property for the support of 
 the priests, the maintenance of the synagogue and 
 temple worship and for charity to the poor. And 
 here, certainly, he makes a good point in his own 
 favor. He sends in an honest, a complete list ; "I 
 pay tithes of all that I possess ; yes, even to the 
 anise, cummin and rue of my garden." That was 
 a good thing under the Old Testament way of do- 
 ing such things, and it is just as good a thing now 
 under our New Testament way. It is something, 
 now, for any man to be sincerely thankful for, if 
 he find it in his heart to give as God has pros- 
 pered him for the support and spread of the gos- 
 pel of Christ and for the comfort of those in need. 
 This Pharisee's prayer is, therefore, an excep- 
 tionally good prayer — that is, if he be at heart 
 the exceptionally good man he believes himself to 
 be. 
 
 We turn now to the other man's prayer ; to the 
 prayer of the publican. 
 
 It is the exact opposite, we see, to the prayer 
 of the Pharisee ; the exact opposite in that he has 
 nothing good, absolutely nothing, to say for him- 
 self. But, why not? Has not he, too, his good 
 points? Is he not kind to those who are kind to 
 him? Is he not prompt to salute his brethren? 
 To exchange civilities with his friends? Is he 
 not a man of steady-going, business habits? He 
 
168 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 has, no doubt, a comfortable home, and to his hos- 
 pitable table does he not invite his friends ; and, 
 at times, even strangers? There are plenty of 
 worse men ; men who go by the name of "sinners" 
 — men, yes and women too, who do things he 
 would never even think of doing ; men and women 
 who are in a discredited class by themselves. For, 
 be it remembered, the fault-finding Pharisees and 
 scribes did not ask the disciples of Jesus: "Why 
 eateth your Master with publicans who are such 
 notorious sinners"? The question was: "Why 
 eateth your Master with publicans and sinners"? 
 — both classes despised, but for very different rea- 
 sons. 
 
 Had the publican of my text had the Phari- 
 see's disposition he, like the Pharisee, would have 
 thanked God that he was not like other men: 
 idlers, vagabonds, debauchees, adulterers. He, 
 also, would have rehearsed to God some of the 
 good things he had done ; that he had always been 
 polite to those who were polite to him, and how 
 he had lent money to those who had lent money to 
 him. 
 
 But not a word of all this. And why? Be- 
 cause it has been given him to see that this ex- 
 change of neighborly good offices is, after all, 
 only a kind of refined selfishness ; done not out of 
 that true, heart-love which God requires ; and that 
 such supreme regard for one's own pleasure, or 
 advantage is the real root of all, of even the worst, 
 evil. He sees that, at heart, he is as bad as any 
 
TWO KINDS OF RELIGION 169 
 
 of those whom, in common with people generally, 
 he has been in the habit of calling "sinners." In- 
 deed, he now calls himself "a sinner." And Oh, 
 how great a sinner does he now see himself to be ! 
 How unworthy in the sight of Him who judges 
 not by the outward appearance but by the inner- 
 most secrets of the heart. He now sees what he 
 had never so much as dreamed of before, that he 
 has always put love of self before love to God and 
 his neighbor; that, therefore, he has never had 
 any true, unselfish love for either. He has no ex- 
 cuse to offer; he asks for no indulgence on the 
 ground of either ignorance, heredity or environ- 
 ment. He acknowledges himself a "sinner" 
 whose one great need is that he be forgiven. So 
 heart-broken is he over his sins that he cannot so 
 much as lift up his eyes to heaven, but smites 
 upon his breast, crying, "God be merciful to me, 
 a sinner." 
 
 Here, then, are the two kinds of religion set be- 
 fore us by our Lord in this parable — one, a self- 
 congratulating, self -justifying religion; the 
 other, a self -humbling, sin-confessing, God- justi- 
 fying religion. Which is the better of the two? 
 
 Suppose the question to be, "Which is, on the 
 whole, the better of two specified towns to live 
 in ?" Here is a man who has lived in one of these 
 towns, only; has never seen the other and knows 
 nothing of it, except by hearsay. Here is an- 
 other man who has lived in both towns; who is, 
 therefore in a condition to make an intelligent 
 comparison between them. 
 
170 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 Fortunately for us, we know of a man who had 
 made thorough trial of both these religions. He 
 compares the two for us ; or, rather, he has found 
 one of them so much better than the other that he 
 says there is no comparison between them. There 
 were, he admits, some good points about the first ; 
 the self-complacent, self-sufficient, self -justifying 
 kind. He goes on to enumerate these good points, 
 adding that he has himself more of them to his 
 credit than has any other man he knows. "I was 
 dedicated to God," he says, "in earliest infancy. 
 I had a pious ancestry, reaching back nearly two 
 thousand years. I was a religionist of the strict- 
 est sort ; was scrupulously careful to do all the lit- 
 tle traditional things of our ceremonial law. As 
 to our moral code, I was as careful about observ- 
 ing that as I was about compliance with our ec- 
 clesiastical requirements. Touching that right- 
 eousness, also, I was absolutely blameless. In 
 short, I was a Hebrew of the Hebrews and a Phar- 
 isee of the Pharisees. So firmly convinced, in- 
 deed, was I that this religion of ours was the only 
 true religion, that I did my best to put down and 
 stamp out a certain new and contrary religion 
 that was springing up around us — proclaiming 
 the forgiveness of sins and acceptance with God 
 by simple faith in one who, as I firmly believed, 
 was a self-seeking imposter, drawing multitudes 
 after him to their undoing." 
 
 All at once, however, this man is made to see 
 how lamentably and how dangerously mistaken he 
 
TWO KINDS OF RELIGION 171 
 
 has been about this same Jesus ; how blind to that 
 very promise of a Deliverer which "the twelve 
 tribes" had been, day and night, praying God to 
 fulfill. Then when the Deliverer came, they 
 killed Him, and went on killing or imprisoning 
 His disciples. He was, as he himself confessed, 
 the foremost one of these persecutors. "I was," 
 he says, "exceedingly mad against them. I per- 
 secuted them even to strange cities, and if ever the 
 question came up whether they should be killed 
 or not, I not only cast my vote aganist them, but 
 I did it with a right good will,* for I surely 
 thought that I was doing God service by so 
 doing." 
 
 Little wonder, then, that he is deeply humbled 
 now that Jesus has caused the scales to fall from 
 his eyes, so that he sees what a proud and self- 
 righteous heart lay under the deceitful semblance 
 of this extraordinary zeal for God. No wonder 
 he feels himself to be almost past hope of forgive- 
 ness ; that he would, indeed, have despaired of ob- 
 taining forgiveness, but that he had sinned "ig- 
 norantly, in unbelief." Behold, now, the miracle 
 of grace by which Saul, the self -exalting Phari- 
 see, is changed into Paul, the self -humbling pub- 
 lican ! "God be merciful to me, the chief of sin- 
 ners," is now his most earnest prayer. 
 
 He "obtains" mercy. And now he knows Christ 
 as the Saviour through whom have come to him 
 
 *The Greek has this intensive meaning. 
 
172 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 an enlightened conscience, a penitent and contrite 
 heart, and peace with God. So exceedingly pre- 
 cious is this knowledge of Christ to him that he 
 now makes absolutely nothing of what he had 
 made everything of, before. He finds that what 
 he had so fondly thought to be gold is counter- 
 feit, and worse than worthless. "The things that 
 were gain to me," he says, "those I count as loss 
 for Christ ; and not those things only, but I count 
 everything else but loss ; and the reason for my 
 doing so is that I find the knowledge of Christ is 
 so much better; so unspeakably better that, in- 
 stead of counting it a sacrifice, what I have given 
 up seems to me only as so much trash to be thrown 
 on the rubbish-pile, so I may make sure of win- 
 ning Christ, and of being found in Him, not hav- 
 ing my own righteousness which is of the law, but 
 that which is through the faith of Christ; the 
 righteousness which is of God by faith." 
 
 It is not said (be it carefully noted) that the 
 "certain" to whom the parable was spoken were 
 either Pharisees or publicans. There may have 
 been among them some of both. All Pharisees 
 were not hypocrites. Paul was not. Neither, we 
 may believe, was the Pharisee of our Lord's 
 parable. Instead of being ostentatiously "long," 
 his prayer was unusually short ; offered, too, not 
 in a synagogue or at a street corner, but in the 
 temple — the "house of prayer." We have no 
 ground for concluding that he was one of those 
 who "devoured widows' houses." Some publicans, 
 
TWO KINDS OF RELIGION 173 
 
 too, were honest — good husbands, fathers, neigh- 
 bors and citizens. Such, no doubt, was Matthew ; 
 first, the publican, and afterward, the apostle. No, 
 the parable is directed not against Pharisees as 
 such, but pointedly and particularly against those 
 of whatever name or of no name who "trust in 
 themselves that they are righteous, and despise 
 others" ; who make little or no account of any 
 whose morality, as they imagine, is either some- 
 what less moral than their own, or is of a some- 
 what less select sort. 
 
 By all seriously disposed persons it will, of 
 course, be readily admitted that of the two re- 
 ligions set forth in this parable, the better must 
 be that which is approved, accepted and rewarded 
 by God. It is not enough that we worship. There 
 are worshippers with whom God is not well pleased. 
 There are prayers offered which were as well left 
 unsaid. If, wishing to be sure and safe in so 
 great a matter, any earnest inquirer finds himself 
 unwilling to trust even so signal an experience as 
 was that of Saul the Pharisee and Paul the pub- 
 lican, let him rejoice that he has for his guidance 
 the assurance of Jesus Himself that God "had re- 
 spect" to the publican and his prayer, but that to 
 the Pharisee and his prayer "He had not re- 
 spect" ; that it was the publican who, as he left 
 the temple, "went down to his house justified 
 rather than the other." 
 
XXXIX 
 
 HEART-RECEPTION OF JESUS 
 
 And he made haste and came down and received 
 Him joyfully. This day is salvation come to this 
 house. For the Son of Man is come to seek and to 
 save that which is lost. Luke 19: 6, 9, 10. 
 
 Jesus is now on this, his third and his last jour- 
 ney from Galilee to Jerusalem. He has reached 
 Jericho. He needs no introduction ; his fame has 
 preceded him. So extensively has He travelled 
 during the three years of his public ministry, so 
 astonishing the doctrines He has taught and the 
 deeds He has wrought, that his name has become 
 a household word in even the remotest corner of 
 the land. He is everywhere spoken of as the man 
 who makes it his business to go about doing good ; 
 the man who not only preaches a life of supreme 
 love to God and equal love to one's neighbor, but 
 whose own life stands squarely with his preaching. 
 Nowhere do people tire of hearing and telling the 
 beautiful story of his love ; of his compassion for 
 the sick; for the deaf, dumb, and blind; for the 
 bereaved; for the poor, and the oppressed; for 
 the most despised of outcast sinners — the story 
 that He has so much at heart the wants and suffer- 
 ings of others as to make little account of his 
 own. 
 
 Such being the celebrity He has gained, we 
 should of ourselves infer the eagerness of all 
 
 174 
 
HEART-RECEPTION OF JESUS 175 
 
 classes of people to see and to hear Him. "Of 
 course," we say, as we read such accounts as these, 
 that "His fame went throughout all Syria ;" that 
 "there followed Him great multitudes of people 
 from Galilee and Decapolis and Jerusalem and 
 Judea and from beyond Jordan" — the multitudes 
 made up largely, it is true, of those seeking in^ 
 struction or cure, but in greater number, of peo- 
 ple impelled by a natural curiosity not only to 
 hear and see such wonderful things said and done, 
 but even more to get a near sight of the man who 
 says and does them. Just as, to-day, men of all 
 political beliefs come from far and near to see 
 with their own eyes the man who has won the 
 highest honor in the nation's gift. 
 
 Such an excited crowd now surrounds and ac- 
 companies Jesus as He enters and passes through 
 the city of Jericho. How will the people of the 
 town, and especially its most influential citizens, 
 receive Him? That is a question which it is of 
 greater concern for them to answer than it is for 
 Him. He is not wondering nervously whether the 
 political or the ecclesiastical magnates will extend 
 him a welcome in behalf of the city. He desires 
 no compliments, acceptance of which might em- 
 barrass his uttering woes against iniquity in high 
 places as well as in low, or which might shake his 
 standing with the people at large as a divinely 
 authorized teacher of religion and morals. Dis- 
 honest officials will naturally enough either fight, 
 or fight shy of, this man whose exposures and re- 
 
176 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 bukes tend to bring both themselves and their con- 
 duct into openly pronounced popular disesteem. 
 
 One such official is living in Jericho. He is a 
 publican; one, that is, who is engaged in doing 
 business for the public. His business is to ap- 
 praise property and to assess and collect taxes. 
 He is the town-treasurer. To assist him he has 
 subordinates for whose conduct in office he is held 
 responsible. He is "chief of the publicans." In 
 this free country of ours we choose men to do this 
 appraising and tax-collecting business for us. We 
 pay them fixed salaries for doing it. But Syria 
 is, at the time of my text, a conquered Roman 
 province. The appointee buys from the govern- 
 ment this appraising and tax-collecting privilege 
 — his contract holding him to only the paying of 
 a stipulated sum to the government, while what- 
 ever more he may contrive in ways of his own 
 choosing to gather in, he appropriates as so-called 
 compensation for his so-called services — a unique 
 field for graft, for the exercise of predatory ava- 
 rice, limited only by its ability to wring from suf- 
 fering and protesting but helpless citizens the last 
 farthing unscrupulous greed is able to extort. It 
 follows as a matter of course that, as a rule cer- 
 tainly, this much despised office of publican will 
 be neither sought nor accepted save by a man 
 whose theory of life is this ; that on however low 
 a social, intellectual, moral or religious plane a 
 man may be, he is still the man for you, provided 
 only that he have plenty of money; that, too, 
 
HEART-RECEPTION OF JESUS 177 
 
 wholly regardless of his ways of getting it. But 
 for a Jew to accept this office under the hated 
 Roman rule, subjects him not only to the charge 
 of avarice and dishonesty, but to the added odium 
 of disloyalty to his oppressed nation. 
 
 Zaccheus is just this kind of renegade publi- 
 can; so blinded by his covetousness to the best 
 things of life as deliberately to barter away the 
 good-will of his fellow-citizens for his opportuni- 
 ties of dishonest gain ; complacently content to be 
 what he knows full well he is, the most disliked 
 and the most generally disliked man in all Jericho. 
 
 Not, paradoxical as it may seem, not that he 
 thinks himself so bad a man, after all. Not that 
 he has in so many words given up having any 
 more to do with the moral and religious traditions 
 of his race. Likely enough he continues to at- 
 tend the synagogue-service and even contributes 
 handsomely to its support. The ten command- 
 ments are still a familiar story for him. He knows 
 them by heart. He even natters himself that 
 after a fashion he has kept them from his youth 
 up. What! the eighth commandment, too? "Well, 
 to be sure, Sinai did thunder as threateningly 
 against the breaking of that commandment as of 
 the other nine, but it thunders less forbiddingly 
 now. The times are different, now. As Moses 
 did not contemplate our modern ways of doing 
 business, we must not take that particular injunc- 
 tion too seriously. It may be well enough to re- 
 tain it as part of an old historic symbol, the whole 
 
178 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 of which is after all chiefly venerable for its an- 
 tiquity. Creeds and rabbis come and go, but busi- 
 ness and my pile go on forever. Loving my 
 neighbor as myself, strict honesty in all my deal- 
 ings with him — yes, beautiful in theory, but (as 
 shown by the lives of even our most devout, often 
 fasting and most punctually tithe-paying lead- 
 ers) impossible in practice." Pricks of conscience 
 now and then? Yes, but Zaccheus, like a certain 
 young lawyer, has learned to justify himself by 
 that easy trick of evasion which consists in asking 
 for definitions. "Love my neighbor as myself? 
 Certainly, but then who is my neighbor?" Never 
 yet a rabbi who has given him a satisfactory an- 
 swer to that crucial, conscience-and-heart-search- 
 ing question. Zaccheus will see whether or not 
 this new and much be-praised prophet can do any- 
 thing better. He will get a sight, if he can, of 
 this travelling preacher who, if the half of all that 
 is said of him be true, is the moral wonder of the 
 age. "I will see this Jesus, who he is ; whether 
 he looks it or not ; whether his figure, voice, man- 
 ner and face measure up to the high character for 
 which he stands." 
 
 Zaccheus is sitting alone in his office, deeply 
 pondering this important question. He must be 
 quick, for by the steady tramping of feet outside 
 he perceives that Jesus has entered and is passing 
 through the town. He opens his office door, steps 
 down and out, and joins the crowd. But, being 
 little of stature, taller men obstruct his view. It 
 
HEART-RECEPTION OF JESUS 179 
 
 would cost him a struggle to elbow his way 
 through the crowd, and few, if any, would extend 
 to him, at least, the courtesy of giving way. But 
 aroused curiosity is fertile in expedients. He 
 plunges down a side street, runs out of the town, 
 gets well ahead of the procession, climbs a road- 
 side tree and waits the coming of the throng. 
 Mark tells us that it was as Jesus "went out of 
 Jericho with his disciples and a great multitude 
 of people" that He cured the two wayside beg- 
 gars of blindness. Zaccheus as he looked down 
 must have seen this miracle performed ; must have 
 heard Jesus say to Bartimeus, "Thy faith hath 
 made thee whole," and must have heard the joy- 
 ous acclaim of the people glorifying God for hav- 
 ing sent them so powerful as well as so compas- 
 sionate a Savior. 
 
 As he looks and listens, both the conscience and 
 the heart of Zaccheus are most deeply touched — 
 and that not by the miracle alone, but by Jesus 
 himself ; the quiet dignity of his manner, the win- 
 ning tones of his voice, the beaming benignity of 
 his countenance. The publican and Jesus ! how 
 at the opposite poles they are, the one from the 
 other in both principle and practice ! "This man," 
 Zaccheus is now saying to himself, "this man 
 choosing for companions the poor, the neglected, 
 the despised, the unfortunate, the disconsolate 
 and discouraged; the deaf and dumb; the blind, 
 the demoniac ; the morally degenerate and socially 
 ostracized — bearing all their sins, sufferings and 
 
180 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 sorrows as though they were his very own; so 
 bearing them as to remove them ; and all done out 
 of pure, self-denying, unrecompensed good-will 
 — and I? What am I and what has my manner 
 of life been? Making heavier the already heavy 
 burdens of the toiling and struggling poor; car- 
 ing not how others may be impoverished, so that 
 I through their poverty may be made rich. And 
 the outcome of it all as unlike as our lives: He, 
 loved; I, hated; He, followed; I, shunned; His 
 fame, His glory; my fame, such as it is, my in- 
 famy. How ashamed would I feel to meet this 
 man, face to face; I, who am about the last man 
 in the city, I am sure, whom He would care to see 
 or to whom He would care to speak." 
 
 But the Gospel of Jesus has from the first been 
 full of wonderful and joyous surprises. It is in 
 God's kingdom of grace that the unexpected hap- 
 pens; the most unexpected of all. One of these 
 blessed surprises now awaits Zaccheus. How mean 
 and unworthy his own lif e now looks to him ; how 
 noble and beautiful, in contrast, the character and 
 life of Jesus ! As, stirred by these new and self- 
 humiliating thoughts, he fixes his now yearning 
 gaze on Jesus, lo, Jesus looks up and with a 
 strange air of authority, says: "Make haste and 
 come down, Zaccheus, for to-day I must abide in 
 thy house." Never an invitation more promptly 
 accepted ; never a command more quickly or more 
 gladly obeyed. Zaccheus makes haste, he comes 
 down, he receives Him joyfully. 
 
HEART-RECEPTION OF JESUS 181 
 
 Another surprise, now, although of quite a dif- 
 ferent sort. To the multitudes this honor shown 
 to Zaccheus is a bewildering disappointment — this 
 preacher of righteousness, this champion of the 
 oppressed poor, this denouncer of woes against 
 tyranny and corruption in high places, against 
 rich men harder to be saved than for a camel to 
 go through the needle's eye — to select for his host 
 the most notoriously dishonest, falsely accusing 
 man in all Jericho. No wonder at the sullen dis- 
 content to which, not a few envious ones only, but 
 to which all without exception give angry and 
 audible expression. It is a sudden and sad blow 
 to their confidence in their till now idolized leader. 
 Very much as it would have been had Gen. Wash- 
 ington, coming from Philadelphia to take com- 
 mand of the Revolutionary army in Cambridge, 
 chosen as a companion for his j ourney , in place of 
 that staunch patriot, Gen. Schuyler, some dis- 
 loyal tory, long known to be bitterly opposed to 
 the American cause. Such a choice, had it been 
 made, would have shaken, for a time at least, the 
 people's confidence in their new commander. 
 
 Zaccheus hears the murmuring. He sees that 
 he is himself the occasoin of having the good name 
 of the Master compromised with the wondering 
 and complaining multitude. This will not do. 
 He will not let it go so. An explanation is called 
 for, and he is the man to make it. He knows well 
 what the people do not know, that he has wrought 
 no change in Jesus, but that Jesus has wrought 
 
182 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 a most blessed change in him. "Stop, Lord. Be- 
 fore we take another step I must make this thing 
 right with these old neighbors of mine." He 
 neither crawls, cringes, crouches, nor bends. It 
 is the erect posture that best becomes a noble deed. 
 Standing squarely on his feet, he turns to Jesus 
 and makes, in a manly way, this manly confes- 
 sion : "Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give 
 to the poor, and if I have taken anything from 
 any man by false accusation, I restore him four- 
 fold." "No longer, then, the avaricious, dishon- 
 est, hard-hearted official from whose false ap- 
 praisements and assessments we have so long and 
 so grievously suffered. Gone to be guest of a man 
 that is a sinner? Yes, but why were we so blind 
 as to forget that He has from the first been known 
 as a friend, as the friend, of publicans and sin- 
 ners ; that He has before this eaten with them at 
 their home-tables?" Oh, how happily are their 
 doubts now removed, their murmurings silenced, 
 and their hearts warmed, as it is borne in upon 
 them anew that eating and drinking with even the 
 worst of sinners has meant no compromise with 
 their sins, but that it does mean the most loving 
 purpose to win them from their evil ways to heart- 
 felt repentance, to the peace of forgiveness, to 
 the joy of a holy life; that He seeks the lost, but 
 only to save them. "This day," declares Jesus, 
 "this day is salvation come to this house." 
 
 A HINDERING HIERARCHY 
 
 1. We see, now, whence salvation comes : that 
 
HEART-RECEPTION OF JESUS 183 
 
 it comes from a reception of Jesus Christ as Lord 
 of the heart and of the life. This is the secret of 
 the great change in Zaccheus. True, what Jesus 
 said was "I must abide in thy house," but Zac- 
 cheus has already opened wide the door of his 
 heart and it is there that Jesus has already taken 
 up his abode, not for a day only, but for all days 
 and for ever. Any reception of Jesus other than 
 this falls short of salvation. A physician comes 
 to cure you of an otherwise fatal sickness. You 
 receive him politely, but only as a friendly visitor. 
 You engage him, or try to engage him, in con- 
 versation on a great variety of topics ; on the lat- 
 est scientific discoveries, on the progress of in- 
 vention, literature and the arts, on the 1 political 
 situation of the country, on new educational 
 theories ; you wish to draw him out, perhaps, on 
 evolution and the higher criticism — interesting 
 and important topics, but if this be as far as you 
 care to go, the physician has not been properly or 
 even honestly "received." If this be all, he will 
 go away, grieved and disappointed, perhaps of- 
 fended. "If you do not need me as a physician, 
 there are others who do both need and want me; 
 my time is precious and to them I must go." It 
 is to sin-sick hearts that Jesus comes — comes to 
 make them whole. This is the first and chief les- 
 son from my text. 
 
 2. The second lesson is that this change from 
 heart-brokenness to heart-wholeness, from spir- 
 itual death to spiritual life comes or may come 
 
184 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 quickly. How long does it take to accept an in- 
 vitation? How long, when a friend is at the 
 door, to open the door and receive him? How 
 long did it take Zaccheus to come down from the 
 tree and receive Jesus? He was told to "make 
 haste." Well does he know that he is not worthy 
 to be the host of such a guest. But he knows also 
 that Jesus knows that as well, and a great deal 
 better, than he knows it himself. Yet, knowing 
 it all, He says, "Come." The publican does not 
 argue the question with either Jesus or himself. 
 He does not give way, not even for a moment, to 
 doubt or fear. He is like that Mary whose bro- 
 ther Lazarus Jesus has restored to life and to her ; 
 that Mary of whom Tennyson writes : 
 
 " All subtle thought, all curious fears 
 Borne down by gladness so complete, 
 She bows, she bathes the Savior's feet 
 With costly spikenard and with tears." 
 
 S. This leads us to the third lesson of my text 
 which is, that this receiving of Jesus into the 
 heart should be and may be and often is, attended 
 from the very first with joy. It was so with 
 Zaccheus: "he received him joyfully." No self- 
 righteous, grace-postponing, grace-dishonoring 
 penance to be first undergone, no fasting, no 
 sack-cloth and ashes, no agonizing, because only 
 half -believing, prayers; no shutting of one's self 
 away from the sweet light of day; from any of 
 the duties, cares, responsibilities, or unforbidden 
 pleasures and enjoyments of life. 
 
HEART-RECEPTION OF JESUS 185 
 
 If passing through the gloom of some peniten- 
 tial purgatory were ever a prerequisite to the joy 
 of forgiveness, it might well have been so for 
 those three thousand to whom Peter on the day of 
 Pentecost had brought home the wickedness of 
 putting to the most shameful death, a man by his 
 good deeds approved of God in the midst of them, 
 and that man their own Messiah. "What shall 
 we do," they ask in alarm, "to escape the conse- 
 quences of such guilt? Assign us any task, we 
 will at once undertake it. Put us on any course 
 of self-denial, we will follow it. Lay on us the 
 burden of any sacrifice whatever of ease, time or 
 possessions ; we will bear it, Oh so willingly, with 
 such welcoming submission. Only tell us what we 
 must do to be saved." And what is the apostle's 
 answer? "Great as your sin is, are you at heart 
 sorry for it? Well, that is all. On the instant 
 you are saved. Now, make open confession of 
 your sorrow and of your trust in God's offered 
 mercy, by being baptized in the name of that 
 same crucified Jesus now acknowledged as your 
 Lord ; do this and you are not saved merely ; but 
 you, too, shall receive this most precious of all 
 gifts, the gift of the Holy Spirit." Who of them 
 were thus baptized; who of them did receive the 
 gift of the Holy Spirit? Those who "received 
 the word." And how did they receive it? As 
 Zaccheus received the invitation and command of 
 Jesus — instantly, gladly, joyfully. 
 
 We learn once more from the text that Jesus 
 
186 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 ccmes to each sinner as directly, as individually, 
 as though he were the onlv sinner needing Him as 
 a Savior. We know how hard, how almost im- 
 possible it is for any ordinary man to get a per- 
 sonal interview with any of our world-kings. He 
 must have some one at court to speak for him. 
 Not so, our Jesus, though He be King of kings 
 and Lord of lords. Did He say to Zaccheus, "I 
 cannot receive a man like you, nor be received by 
 you in any familiar, informal way. If I deal with 
 ycu at all, it must be through either the ruler of 
 your synagogue, or your high priests or the el- 
 ders of your great council." Oh, how blindly 
 does any such thought misrepresent and how 
 dreadfully dishonor our Jesus ! Anything is infi- 
 nite dishonor to Him, and an unspeakable wrong 
 to those seeking Him as a Savior — anything 
 whatever which makes Him seem to be so offended 
 with sinners that it is only through some more 
 compassionate intermediary that they can gain 
 even a favorable consideration of their case. Yet. 
 strange as it may seem, even pastor and church 
 may unwittingly allow themselves to stand as just 
 such intermediary hindrances in the way of sin- 
 ners earnestly seeking salvation. 
 
 It was during a revival when manv had loner 
 been anxiouslv. but as vet unsuccessfullv. seeking 
 salvation, that I heard the pastor say to them : "I 
 fear lest you are clinging to your pastors skirts 
 for your salvation. If so, I shake you off." 
 
 "But," asks one, "may it not help open the way 
 
HEART-RECEPTION OF JESUS 187 
 
 to the heart of Jesus, if I first join the church, 
 and partake of the ordinances of baptism and the 
 Lord's supper?" "Absurd," you may be ready to 
 answer; yet, ill-considered as it may seem to us 
 now, just such, one hundred and fifty years ago, 
 was the "half-way covenant" plan of many of our 
 New England churches. "Join the church"? 
 But what is the church? If we mean by it the one 
 true, spiritual church on earth of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, then it is composed of those, and of those 
 only, to whom salvation has already come by a 
 true, heart-reception of Jesus. How pertinently 
 and with what unmistakable clearness was this de- 
 clared at Pentecost, of which we read: "And the 
 Lord added daily those who had been saved to the 
 church" Not, let it be noted, that the Lord 
 added daily to the saved such as had joined the 
 church! Yet, it is precisely this perversion of the 
 reading and of the divine order that makes pos- 
 sible, as indeed it has made actual, a human hier- 
 archy; or, as the word means, "a ruling over, a 
 controlling, a monopolizing of sacred things" — 
 the sole repository as it is claimed of all that is 
 implied in the salvation of mens' souls; a di- 
 vinely authorized attorneyship to undertake any 
 and every sinner's case and to guarantee its suc- 
 cessful settlement with God — a claim which, how- 
 ever unwittingly, none the less deplorably 
 and dangerously, "frustrates the grace" the 
 freely forgiving mercy, of God; takes the "All 
 hail" from the name of Jesus, the Savior; robs 
 
188 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 the cross of its chief glory, the full, free, imme- 
 diate forgiveness of the worst sins of the worst 
 sinners. Well may we to whom God has given it 
 to know, and rejoice in, — this blessed liberty of 
 faith, well may we "protest" against that inver- 
 sion, as it is a perversion, of that Pentecostal dec- 
 laration — against every hindrance which seeks to 
 thrust itself in between Savior and sinner. But, 
 whether we make formal protest or not, every 
 Christ-receiving, trusting and gratefully loving 
 disciple of Jesus, is in himself a living protest 
 against every form and degree of such a grace- 
 hindering, grace-dishonoring intrusion and inter- 
 ference as would weaken or postpone the assur- 
 ance of Jesus, "This day is salvation come to this 
 house." 
 
XL 
 
 AN OLD MAN'S PRAYER 
 
 Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake 
 me not when my strength faileth. Ps. 71 '. 9- 
 
 The old man is David, and this is his prayer, 
 "Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake 
 me not when mj strength faileth." 
 
 Since we could not "cast off" one whom we had 
 never taken on; could not "forsake" one whom 
 we had never befriended, we find in this prayer 
 first of all, an implied acknowledgment of God's 
 loving care, hitherto. Such thankful acknowledg- 
 ment it has always been the best part of David's 
 happiness to make. Very early in life he learned 
 in the beautiful lesson of humility the true secret 
 of worthiest success. "Once on a time," so he re- 
 assured the faint-hearted Saul, "while I was keep- 
 ing my father's sheep, and there came a lion and 
 took a lamb out of the flock, I caught him by the 
 beard and smote him and slew him, and the same 
 Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion 
 will deliver me now out of the hand of this Philis- 
 tine." Was he afterward saved from the hand of 
 Saul and of all his enemies ? Did he find himself, 
 at length, not only peacefully enthroned, but have 
 the undoubted assurance that his house and his 
 kingdom should be established forever? Did he 
 live to see completely baffled even Absolom's con- 
 spiracy against his throne and his life? For all 
 
 189 
 
190 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 his deliverances, for all his victories, for all his 
 glorious service to his country and generation, he 
 ever gave most thankful praise to that one Friend 
 who, as he declared, was a Friend not only from, 
 but even before his birth — the Friend to whom he 
 owed life itself and all those powers of body and 
 min d, through the faithful exercise of which his 
 life had been made such a blessing to the world. 
 Had he songs of triumph? Yes: but, sweetest 
 psalmist of Israel as he was also her greatest 
 king, he was sure to turn each chant of victory 
 into a hymn of praise. The psalm itself in which 
 he deprecates being cast off and forsaken abounds 
 still in thanksgiving for what has been and in 
 confiding hope for all that is to be. 
 
 "But," asks one, "why the petition then? Is it 
 not at odds with the expectation?" Xo, since the 
 petition is but the instinctive, unreasoning cry of 
 conscious weakness for renewed assurance of God's 
 presence and love. Second childhood, like the first, 
 has its felt need of most considerate kindness. 
 Withdrawn from the activities of lif e, it is thrown 
 back, more and more, upon whatever garnered 
 stores it has of strength and comfort. David has 
 had a strenuous time of it in camp, field and court. 
 From all that he is now laid aside. He is King 
 still, but only in name. Such compelled retire- 
 ment from the world's business invites to thought 
 about higher things. It takes the place of that 
 supreme effort of will by which alone in youth 
 and middle life we attend at all to the wants, 
 
AN OLD MAN'S PRAYER 191 
 
 claims and issues of our spiritual nature. The 
 world gets its best proof of the preciousness of 
 God's care and love from the witnessing of very 
 aged Christians who testify to their having found 
 in Him the ideal friend — the kind of friend, and 
 the only kind it is really worth while having — one 
 who is as good a friend to-day and will be to-mor- 
 row as he was yesterday and the day before; as 
 true a friend when we are in any sort of trouble 
 as when all goes prosperously with us; when we 
 are sick the same as when we are well; when we 
 are weak as when we are strong; when we have 
 lost money, position and dearest earthly friends 
 as when we possessed them ; who makes as much 
 of us, and even a little more, when we are old and 
 feeble as when we were young and strong. 
 
 Our joy in this Heavenly Friend is greatly en- 
 hanced by our seeing to what an extent the old are 
 neglected by the world, generally; how young 
 people especially are led to look on them, if not 
 with amusing pity, at best, with a self-complacent 
 compassion. Said an observer of how old age is 
 neglected in America: "It seems an impertinence 
 on this side the globe to be alive after sixty, and 
 I have often thought how much we lose by not 
 cultivating fine old-fashioned ladies and gentle- 
 men. Our aged friends and relatives seem to be 
 tucked away, now-a-days, into neglected corners, 
 as though it were the correct thing to give them a 
 long preparation for still narrower quarters. For 
 my own part, comely and debonair old age is most 
 
192 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 attractive, and when I see the thick silver-white 
 hair lying on a serious and weather-worn face, like 
 moonlight on a stout old tower, I have a strong 
 tendency, whether I know the person or not, to 
 lift my hat in token of my affectionate esteem 
 and reverence." 
 
 There is, I think, no one thing in the life of 
 Frances Burney (afterward Madame D'Arblay) 
 more attractive than the beautiful attachment she 
 formed for the aged Mrs. Delaney ; a young lady 
 of genius and fame, who would gladly at any time 
 forego the brilliant assemblies of wit, learning 
 and fashion where her praises were on every lip, 
 that she might share the ripe wisdom, while she 
 cheered the widowed loneliness, of her beloved 
 friend of fourscore years. 
 
 How sadly unlike to this the feeling of some 
 who even wonder why the old are permitted to live 
 and who think that the sooner they die the better. 
 Specially fitting and sure of being graciously an- 
 swered, most comforting for such aged persons is 
 the Psalmist's prayer, "Do not Thou cast me off 
 in the time of old age; do not Thou forsake me 
 when my strength faileth." 
 
XLI 
 
 FAITH'S TRANQUILITY 
 
 He that believeth shall not make haste. Is. 28: 
 16. 
 
 As a motto for this New Year there has come 
 to me this: "He that believeth shall not make 
 haste" — a motto which, if carried out in practice, 
 will make the year a happy one for us. 
 
 A year ago we were wishing one another a 
 "Happy New Year." We were more than wish- 
 ing; we were hoping that the year would prove 
 a happy one for those thus cordially saluted. But 
 in the case of some our wishes and hopes failed of 
 fulfillment. Our ranks have been thinned. In all 
 likelihood, it will be so in the present year. No 
 one of us owns the house — the body — he lives in. 
 He cannot rent it even. If I rent a house for a 
 year and have the lease drawn up in due and legal 
 form I have in some degree a settled feeling. I 
 have shelter for myself and family for a year at 
 least. If, besides, the lease gives me an option at 
 the end of the year for five years more, I have a 
 more comfortable feeling still. But our great 
 Landlord, Houselord and Lifelord vouchsafes no 
 leases of land, house or life. He claims the right 
 to turn us out of house and home, not only any 
 month or week, but any hour of any day or any 
 night, and to do this without giving us the slight- 
 est notice. Then the day He turns us out! If 
 
 193 
 
194 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 the undertaker would come with a van and pile 
 into it our friend's belongings — wardrobe, furni- 
 ture, books, pictures — we would not mind it so 
 much. He might take them and carry them away 
 and either cremate or bury them. But instead of 
 a van he comes with a hearse and takes away the 
 husband, the wife, the father, the mother, the 
 child, the sister or brother. This is what may 
 happen during the present year, and be we at our 
 work, our pastimes, our devotions, there sits over 
 them this "mute shadow watching all." 
 
 "But why talk to us in this doleful fashion on 
 this first morning of the glad New Year?" 
 
 Had I thought of stopping here I would not 
 have begun. Had I nothing better to say I would 
 say nothing. Something vastly brighter and bet- 
 ter there is, and I turn to it. 
 
 The Lord of our lands, of our homes, of our 
 lives is no such hard-hearted, unmerciful propri- 
 etor as ever to dispossess His children without the 
 best of reasons for doing it. He is a compassion- 
 ate, loving Father. He wishes us to have so 
 strong a hold on life, on the true lif e : on happi- 
 ness, the true happiness, that we can keep our 
 hold of them. He would not have us play with 
 shadows : would not have us be ever like children 
 blowing bubbles to see them break as soon as 
 blown. He has prepared a solid foundation for 
 us on which to build both our hopes and our hap- 
 piness ; rather, on which we ourselves may be 
 built, and built to stay. "Behold," He says, "I 
 
FAITH'S TRANQUILITY 195 
 
 lay for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a pre- 
 cious corner-stone, a sure foundation. He that 
 believeth shall not make haste." 
 
 This is where we make our start — the founda- 
 tion. The foundation for the twenty-two stories 
 building at the corner of Broadway and Pine 
 streets, New York, was prepared without regard 
 to cost of time, labor or money. Those who saw 
 this done have now no fear of going into that 
 building, into any part of it, and of staying in it, 
 as long as they may choose. God spared no cost, 
 no sacrifice, necessary to the laying of a sure 
 foundation for all our varied, for our utmost 
 need. "He spared not His own Son, but freely 
 gave him up for us all," that in Him might be 
 laid deep and strong the foundation for our par- 
 don, our peace with God and ourselves, our eter- 
 nal well being. Those who will be at the trouble 
 to carefully examine this foundation are not 
 afraid to rest their all upon it, for this world and 
 for the world to come. 
 
 How safe would we like to be? "As safe," do 
 you say, "as Enoch, Abraham, Moses, Elijah, 
 Isaiah, John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, 
 Paul, Peter?" Well, we are exactly as safe as 
 they, provided we rest ourselves on the same 
 foundation, the Lord Jesus Christ — "built upon 
 the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles" — but 
 they and we with them, built on Christ, the "Chief 
 Corner-stone." 
 
 Suppose that, if we have not done it before, we 
 
196 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 do now say, "Yes; I do trust to the promised 
 mercy and love of God through the Lord Jesus 
 Christ," what is our Father's word to us then? 
 He would have us go back with free and glad 
 hearts to all the work and enjoyment of our 
 every-day life; to do and enjoy all with perfect 
 tranquility of mind; free from all haste and 
 hurry, anxiety and fear; to do quietly, leisurely 
 and well whatever it is given us to do. Is it pans 
 of milk you are to skim? Skim them. Rooms to 
 sweep and dust? Meals to prepare? Dishes to 
 wash? Sewing and mending? Work in mill, fac- 
 tory, office or store? Do all as under the loving 
 Taskmaster's eye. Do not say, "I wish this was 
 out of the way, so that I could take up something 
 better." There is nothing better just now. This 
 is the ideal thing for you to do. The kind of oc- 
 cupation makes less difference with God than we 
 are, perhaps, apt to think. We talk about choice, 
 select occupations, but we can put just as loving 
 and faithful service into one occupation as in 
 any other. Suppose, then, we take for this year's 
 motto: 
 
 "He that believeth shall not make haste." 
 
XLII 
 
 FORWARD 
 
 And he said to them, It is not for you to know the 
 times or the seasons which the Father hath put in 
 his own power. But ye shall receive the power of 
 the Holy Ghost coming upon you; and ye shall be 
 witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all 
 Judea, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. 
 Acts 1 : 1, 8. 
 
 We now see clearly enough the two mistakes 
 which these honest-hearted but narrow-minded fol- 
 lowers of Jesus are making as, just before His as- 
 cension, they put to Him the question, "Lord, wilt 
 thou at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel." 
 
 Their first mistake is seen in the use they make 
 of the word "restore." 
 
 For what is it to restore? It is simply to bring 
 back to a former condition. For any increase of 
 the Kingdom, therefore, they seem neither to look 
 or to wish. Enough, if Jesus will recover for His 
 people the splendor of the first temple and the 
 glory of the reigns of David and Solomon. So, 
 although just on the eve of Pentecost, they are 
 looking backward instead of forward ; sighing for 
 the return of the old when they should be alert 
 to greet and embrace the new. Standing at the 
 very threshold of such an enlargement of Mes- 
 siah's Kingdom as has never yet been seen or ad- 
 quately conceived, they still turn their backs on 
 these unfolding glories, content to have revived 
 
 197 
 
198 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 the dim and feeble adumbrations of the past. That 
 which with God has been but preparatory, inter- 
 mediate and transient, they in their shortsighted- 
 ness would make permanent and final. Because 
 its blossoms have fallen, they would have restored 
 to the tree its flowering splendors and that, too, 
 although the time of its richest fruitage is just at 
 hand. 
 
 Jesus now gives them this new lesson to learn, 
 that not restoration but progress is the true 
 watchword of His Kingdom, and that He is about 
 to confer on His people such honor and might 
 that even the temple and reign of Solomon him- 
 self should have no glory by reason of the 
 greater glory which is to come. Not the Roman 
 yoke, but that far heavier yoke of manifold ob- 
 servances which neither they nor their fathers had 
 been able to bear is now to be broken. Instead 
 of bulls and goats and calves and lambs and all 
 the tedious formalities of a veiled, symbolic ser- 
 vice, spiritual sacrifices of prayer, praise and 
 good works are henceforth to be everywhere ac- 
 ceptable to God. No longer confined to Jerusalem 
 as the one place of obligatory worship, the Father 
 would thenceforth seek anywhere for worshippers 
 those who should worship Him in spirit and in 
 truth. The veil once rent is nevermore to be re- 
 knit or re-hung. Henceforward the heart of each 
 believer is to be a temple of the Holy Ghost — the 
 place where God will write His law, reveal His 
 glory, receive intercession, and answer prayer. 
 
FORWARD 199 
 
 Very soon are those darkened diciples, illumined 
 by that Spirit for which they are directed to pray, 
 to see that not restoration, but expansion and com- 
 pletion are henceforward to be the goal of their 
 hopes, their labors, and their prayers. 
 
 The second pre-Pentecostal mistake of the dis- 
 ciples is indicated by the word "Israel" — a mis- 
 conception as to the race extent of the "kingdom," 
 as the first mistake had been as to its spiritual 
 nature and development. They have no con- 
 ception that the new privileges and honors of the 
 coming reign are to be enjoyed by any save the 
 literal descendants of Abraham; that from that 
 day onward the bounds and populousness of Im- 
 manuel's empire are to have wonderful enlarge- 
 ment; that presently it is to be seen how glori- 
 ously comprehensive the word "Israel" is; that 
 it includes in every nation all sincere worshippers 
 of the one living and true God; that Abraham 
 thenceforward is to receive a distinction never 
 yet accorded to him even by his devoted children 
 so jealous of his ancestral fame; that he is to 
 stand forth as the progenitor of a spiritual race 
 in whose world-wide territory Palestine shall be 
 scarcely a noticeable point, of whose swelling host 
 all Judah's millions will be the unit ; that the in- 
 heritance is not by the law or by natural descent, 
 but by promise and by faith; that they who be- 
 lieve are the children of Abraham ; that they who 
 are Christ's are Abraham's seed and heirs; that 
 having broken down the middle wall of partition 
 
200 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 between Jew and Gentile and having made in him- 
 self of twain one new man, Christ is henceforth 
 the true Israel's bond of union and of peace; a 
 mystery yet to be revealed even to these holy 
 apostles who, as we see, are praying for restora- 
 tion instead of for fulfilment, for Judea rather 
 than for the world, for Israel rather than for 
 mankind. 
 
 The truth is that Judaism had come to be a 
 theocratic monopoly, whereas in reality it was 
 but God's trustee, designed to hold and guard 
 the treasures of divine truth and blessing until 
 such time as He should see fit to call for them, 
 when it was to yield them up for universal dis- 
 tribution. Long possession had so wrought the 
 conviction of not only rightful but exclusive 
 ownership, that when God called for His gracious 
 deposit of love, the Jew would not give it up. It 
 was because Jesus would not be the Jew Christ 
 Jesus, but would be the " man Christ Jesus" that 
 they crucified Him. With bad consistency they 
 persecuted Paul because he preached Christ as the 
 Savior of the Gentiles as well as of the Jews. 
 Paul gave them a circumstantial account of his 
 conversion, telling them of his earnest wish and 
 prayer that he might tarry among his own coun- 
 trymen. "But," added Paul, "He said to me, 
 Depart, for I will send thee far hence unto the 
 Gentiles." That was more than they would 
 stand: "They gave him audience unto this word 
 and then lifted up their voices and said, 'Away 
 
FORWARD 201 
 
 with such a fellow from the earth, for it is not 
 fit that he should live.' And they cried out and 
 cast off their clothes and threw dust into the air." 
 The utterance of that one word "Gentiles" turned 
 that assembly into a howling mob. It was for 
 turning the world upside down by liberally dis- 
 pensing God's life-giving truth to all classes of 
 men in all nations of the world, according to 
 Christ's command, that Paul was sent to Rome, 
 to prison, and to death. 
 
 And how did God dispose of that reactionary 
 intolerance which resisted His plan for the broad- 
 est dissemination of His truth? 
 
 When Mary would anoint Jesus for His burial, 
 she brought for the purpose an alabaster box of 
 ointment very precious. The box itself may have 
 been beautiful and costly. But it was either so 
 tightly sealed that she could not epen it, or so 
 narrow at the lip that it would not pour. But 
 Mary was not to be kept from that tender act of 
 love on which her heart was set. She broke the 
 box and poured it on His head, and the house 
 was filled with the odor of the ointment. When 
 His people resisted, God smote His beautiful 
 casket, the holy temple, full of treasured blessing 
 for the world. He denationalized His own people 
 who resisted, while the consenting church went 
 forth with joy and triumph, dispensing freely 
 in all the world the treasures of life. 
 
 The surface waters of the narrow strait which 
 leads to the open Polar Sea are seen to move 
 
202 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 southward and to carry the floating ice-fields with 
 them. Yet the great iceberg is seen moving 
 northward against the stream, borne on by the 
 mightier sweep of the waters beneath. So, the 
 current of this world's ambition is set strongly 
 away from the glories of Christ's future reign, 
 carrying down the deluded multitudes on its sur- 
 face; yet, moving up steadily, sublimely against 
 this opposing current of skepticism and indif- 
 ference is the kingdom of Christ, a resplendent 
 mountain of light, its base reaching far down 
 into the deep under current of God's great and 
 glorious purposes of salvation. Casting our 
 anchors into the side of this upward moving moun- 
 tain of light, we shall be borne with it and by it 
 towards the spreading waters of the world's re- 
 demption. 
 
XLIII 
 
 FREE TO GO BACK, BUT LIKING 
 BETTER TO GO ON 
 
 And truly if they had been mindful of that coun- 
 try from which they came out, they might have had 
 opportunity to return. But now they desire a bet- 
 ter country, that is a heavenly; wherefore God is 
 not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath 
 prepared for them a city. Heb. 11: 15, 16. 
 
 The calling of Abram was a call to bid good- 
 bye forever to what had always been his home 
 and to go he knew not whither, but to some far- 
 away, strange land which God was to show him. 
 
 That was a much harder thing to do then than 
 it would be now. Now a man could hardly say 
 "I know not whither I am going," whatever spot 
 on the entire globe he might be starting for. The 
 whole habitable earth has now been explored. 
 Maps of even the dark continent no longer have 
 "Unexplored Regions" printed across them. 
 Stanley, having small chance to win further 
 laurels as an explorer, takes a quiet seat in the 
 British Parliament. Whatever part of the world 
 a man now be called to go to, he has for his in- 
 formation maps, artificial globes, gazetters, geo- 
 graphies, time-tables and guide-books. Abram 
 had none of these. If he went out he must go 
 without knowing whither he went. 
 
 It was by no means an easy thing for Abram 
 
 203 
 
204 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 to do, but he was not forced to do it. He was to 
 think it all over carefully, and then go or stay 
 as he saw fit. He thought it over and in the 
 exercise of his own perfect freedom he decided 
 to go. 
 
 Along with the command which he was called 
 to obey, God gave him a promise which he was 
 called to believe: that, in case he went out, God 
 would go with him, show him the way, bring him 
 to the place appointed, make him not only a 
 great nation; but, through that nation, a great 
 blessing to the world. 
 
 That was a hard thing to believe, but Abram 
 was not forced to believe it. It was for him to 
 say, after thinking the matter over, whether he 
 would believe it or not. Again, in the exercise 
 of his perfect freedom, he chose to believe. 
 
 Freely believing and freely obeying he goes 
 out — whither he does not know. Even supposing 
 another Pisgah near enough at hand, it is not 
 given him to see from its top the road leading on 
 to the far away promised land. The road will 
 interpret itself to the traveler as he goes along. 
 Although not knowing whither he goes, he still 
 goes. His going is a going out. His departing 
 is a final, a whole-souled, a forward-looking leave- 
 taking of his old home. He "gathers all to- 
 gether." He leaves nothing behind as a hostage 
 for his possible return. The proposed journey 
 is not an excursion; no sly, secret, clandestine, 
 stealthy, cautious exploring trip, as a man leaves 
 
LIKING BETTER TO GO ON 205 
 
 his family and business to look at some distant 
 country to see if it be as represented by some 
 flattering promoter; and if not, then to return. 
 No, it is not an excursion but an emigration. He 
 leaves for good and all. He stakes his obedience 
 on the command; his trust on the promise. 
 
 This believing and obedient purpose he cleaves 
 to resolutely, undeviatingly. No wavering, no 
 regrets, no looking back. Look at this sturdy, 
 robust adventurer. He journeys. He does not 
 stand still, at a loss to know whether he may not, 
 after all, have been foolish and over hasty in his 
 going out. His course is onward. Which way? 
 "Toward the South" — further and further away 
 from his old Chaldean home. 
 
 But what we are now to consider is not that 
 Abram went away freely, but that he and his peo- 
 ple staid away as freely as they went : "For verily 
 had they been mindful of that country from 
 which they came out, they might have had oppor- 
 tunity to return." They were no more obliged to 
 go on than they were to go out. They were at 
 any point in the journey just as free to stop as 
 they had been to start. They could at any time 
 doubt the promise if they wished to ; and, if they 
 so wished, could at any time refuse to complete 
 the journey which they had begun. 
 
 Jesus does by every one of us to-day precisely 
 as God did then by Abram. He claims our full 
 belief in all that he says, and our entire obedience 
 to all that he commands. He tells us to think 
 
FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 it over carefully ; to look at all sides of the ques- 
 tion ; and then to make our choice. Here are the 
 teachings of Jesus — do you believe and accept 
 them? Here are His commands — would you like 
 to do them? Here is Jesus Himself — do you 
 freely take Him to be your teacher, example, 
 guide, Savior, and Lord? 
 
 The true church of Christ is made up of those 
 who have thus freely given themselves up to the 
 Lord Jesus Christ ; to trust Him fully and to 
 obey Him fully. 
 
 As, at the first, it was with all such a matter 
 of free choice whether or not to begin the service 
 of Christ, so it is still and will continue to be to 
 the end, a matter of freeest choice with them 
 whether to continue in his service or not. 
 
 I think it should be more generally understood 
 than I fear it is, that a man is just as free after 
 becoming a Christian as he was before. Some 
 seem to have the idea that a church is much like 
 a trap or a spring-cage; that persons, young 
 persons especially, enter it under some momentary 
 excitement of happiness, sympathy or fear, but 
 that once in the church their freedom is abridged ; 
 that after a while they find that their hearts are 
 just as much set on the world as they ever were, 
 and that then they stay in the church only or 
 mostly through pride of consistency, or dread of 
 being called apostates ; that they stay not because 
 they really love to stay, but only or chiefly be- 
 cause, as they suppose, they must. 
 
LIKING BETTER TO GO ON 207 
 
 This supposition is a wholly mistaken one and 
 may prove to be a highly injurious one. At no 
 time and under no circumstances whatever does 
 Jesus wish, or will He accept any such merely 
 formal, forced or constrained service — any ser- 
 vice rendered from mere regard to outward con- 
 sistency, or shame of backsliding. We remember 
 that on one occasion when He had preached the 
 sovereignty of God in the salvation of men, it is 
 said that "many went back and walked no more 
 with Him." Did He try to stop them? Did He 
 apologize for anything He had said, or soften 
 it down to conciliate His dissatisfied and deserting 
 hearers? Nothing of the sort. Instead of that 
 He at once turned to the twelve and said to them, 
 "Will ye also go away? If you cannot receive 
 the truth, you too must leave me and follow those 
 who have already gone." 
 
 He says the same thing, in effect, now, to all 
 who profess to follow Him. "Some," He says, 
 " who once professed friendship for me have de- 
 serted me. Some who declared that they would 
 honor me before the world are now a scandal to 
 me and to my cause. Some who engaged that 
 they would attend faithfully on the word, sa- 
 craments and prayer, have nearly or quite for- 
 saken them all. Some who convenanted to walk 
 in a Christian way before their children and 
 households, are now setting before them an un- 
 christian example. Some who promised kindly 
 to admonish, if need be, their fellow members, now 
 
208 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 turn away from those who kindly admonish and 
 would reclaim themselves. They have gone; will 
 ye also go away?" 
 
 This brings me to say that although one who 
 has by the Holy Spirit been brought to heartfelt 
 confession and trust in God's mercy through 
 Christ is ever after free to go back, he will yet 
 never so retrace his steps as to settle down into his 
 former impenitency. A seeming Christian may 
 do that — a real Christian, never. 
 
 And why does he persevere? Is it because he 
 would go back, but dare not ? Because he dreads 
 having people think that in a moment of am- 
 bitious haste he had undertaken more than he 
 could carry out? Because, having given his 
 word, he thinks that he must now make the best 
 of a foolish bargain ? Nay, verily : "For truly 
 had they been mindful of that country from 
 which they came out they might have had oppor- 
 tunity to return, but now" — and here follows the 
 secret of his perseverance — "but now they desire 
 a better country, that is, a heavenly." 
 
 Look at John B. Gough. He quit drinking, 
 gave up the whiskey-bottle and the wine cup, cut 
 loose from his drinking-comp anions and signed 
 the pledge. Very soon he was satisfied that he 
 had done a good thing. Had he been mindful of 
 the low estate from which he had come out — the 
 degradation, the misery, the despair, the inward 
 hell of remorse, the ruin of all peace in time and 
 hope for eternity — he might have had oppor- 
 
LIKING BETTER TO GO ON 209 
 
 tunity to return. We know how he was tempted to 
 return, how he was goaded by the horrible ap- 
 petite he had formed, how a snare was set for him 
 by those whose unholy gains were being brought 
 down by his successful advocacy of temperance. 
 But God strengthened him and he persevered. A 
 bargain indeed! Trade with men and you are 
 apt to get the best of your bargain first — the 
 best peaches at the top of the basket, the fairest 
 apples face the unheaded barrel. Trade with the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, your purchase grows fairer, 
 finer, richer all the way through. 
 
 What did Gough find? A small return at 
 first — a few dollars of hard-earned wages, the 
 offered friendliness of a single humane stranger, 
 a wish he faltered to express — a wish rather than 
 a hope — that he might make his newly signed 
 pledge good. 
 
 What did he find as he went on? He found 
 the confidence of his friends, and especially his 
 mother's confidence in him increasing. He found 
 his power of resistance augmenting, his victory 
 over appetite growing more and more assured. 
 He found wasted talent restored to him, and not 
 only that, but gradually he found what had ap- 
 peared but a simple knack of mimicry unfolding 
 into peerless gifts of dramatic eloquence. He 
 found his little school-room audiences swelling by 
 degrees to the crowded floors and galleries of the 
 largest auditoriums. He found the compassionate 
 kindness of a single stranger multiplying into 
 
210 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 a million-hearted sympathy in both hemispheres. 
 Himself the reclaimed one he found honored as 
 the reclaimer of hundreds of thousands. The 
 self -distrusting, broken-hearted inebriate who had 
 craved prayer and succor for himself from a few 
 pitying hearts, found that same prayer spreading 
 like the prophet's cloud, until at length from the 
 whole broad heavens there were distilling upon 
 him continuous showers of grateful blessing. 
 Gough, go back! Back from the beautiful home 
 his eloquence had won for himself to the maudlin 
 moans of the gutter! Back from his newly 
 gained companionship with the intelligent and re- 
 fined to the brutish society of the dramshop! 
 Back from the lecture platform to the low play- 
 house! Back from his now lofty place of earth- 
 wide usefulness and honor to the pit and mire of 
 short-lived animal indulgence! And was it mere 
 pride of consistency, suppose ye, a dread of being 
 called weak and unstable that kept John B. 
 Gough a sober man? I trow not. He was no 
 longer mindful of that condition from which he 
 had come out because he had found another and a 
 better; and because he was looking to find, what 
 we are sure he has already found, a brighter and 
 a better still in the unending hereafter. 
 
 Just as absurd and preposterous seems to any 
 true follower of Jesus the idea of his going back 
 to the world — the more so the older he gets to be. 
 The longer he lives, the greater appears to him 
 the contrast between his former condition of 
 
LIKING BETTER TO GO ON 211 
 
 spiritual darkness, bondage and fear, and his 
 present standing in light, forgiveness, freedom, 
 love and hope. He is more and more satisfied 
 with the exchange he made when he gave up sin 
 for Christ and the world for his soul. He may- 
 have made other decisions which he does regret; 
 but that was a decision which he has no desire to 
 change or even to reconsider. He leaves the past 
 behind him gladly for the deeper joy here and for 
 the abiding joy beyond — "a better country, even 
 an heavenly." 
 
 Of the surpassing glory and blessedness of that 
 better country we get a glimpse in the latter part 
 of my text: "Wherefore God is not ashamed to 
 be called their God, for he hath prepared for 
 them a city." 
 
 Any man may well be "ashamed" who promises 
 more than he performs ; who of set purpose ex- 
 cites desires and expectations only to disappoint 
 those who trust him — the greater the promise, 
 and the fuller the trust, the more thoroughly 
 ashamed of himself ought the hope-exciter and 
 the promise-breaker to be. A true man will weigh 
 well what it involves, before he allow himself to 
 be called minister, lawyer, physician, teacher, 
 artist, mechanic, employer or employe. Can he 
 be depended on to do all that the name which he 
 has taken implies? If not, he is bound to suffer 
 mortification for having dishonered his fair pro- 
 fessions. 
 
212 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 Very seriously indeed will a man think it over 
 before he allow himself to be called a husband. 
 One who has taken that name says to his bride: 
 "I am going to leave you for a little while, not 
 because I want to, but because I want to do the 
 very best things for you and because I can do 
 better for you by going than I could do by stay- 
 ing. I am going to prepare a much better home 
 for you than I can make for you here." He goes 
 and it may be he stays away for what she thinks 
 is a very long time. But at length word comes 
 from over the sea, saying that the new home is 
 ready and bidding her to leave everything where 
 she is and come. Trusting fully in both his sin- 
 cerity and in his ability to do as he has promised, 
 she does leave all ; much that has been very dear 
 to her — behind, and sets out on the long and 
 wearisome journey. Would he not be "ashamed" 
 on her coming, were she to find that his descrip- 
 tions of the place had been overdrawn and de- 
 ceptive ? Were she to find the new home inelegant 
 and inconvenient, the scenery tame, the society 
 rude and wholly uncongenial? Would he not be 
 heartily ashamed that he had lured the trusting 
 one by at best half-fulfilled promises and that he 
 must now witness the cruel disappointment of 
 those very hopes which he had himself excited 
 and encouraged? What sort of a husband would 
 he be? Would he not be ashamed to be called 
 one? Yes, but he would not be ashamed to be 
 called husband, friend and guide in case the 
 
LIKING BETTER TO GO ON 213 
 
 reality justified, and more than justified, her very 
 fondest expectations. How he will glory in the 
 name rather — how rejoice rather with a pure and 
 a proud joy, as he sees the rising gladness with 
 which she catches a sight of the beautiful mansion, 
 and her ever-growing delight as she is shown the 
 numberless appointments by which every require- 
 ment of taste and comfort is met, as on looking 
 about she gazes on scenery of hitherto unimagined 
 loveliness, and especially as, on becoming ac- 
 quainted with those who are to be her neighbors 
 and companions she finds them, without exception, 
 to be persons of congenial kindness, courtesy, 
 intelligence and refinement. 
 
 What is there of His own creation, even here 
 in this world, of which our God need be 
 "ashamed?" Is it of these glorious mountains, 
 these flowing seas, these lovely valleys, the bloom 
 and verdure of spring, these summer and autumn 
 harvests, these sunrisings and sunsettings? Im- 
 agination confesses itself weak fitly to portray the 
 beauty, grandeur and sublimity of even these 
 lowest of the works of God. 
 
 " These are thy glorious works, Parent of good, 
 Almighty! thine this universal frame, 
 Thus wondrous fair. Thyself how wondrous then! 
 Unspeakable! who sitt'st above these heavens, 
 To us invisible, or dimly seen 
 In these thy lowest works; yet these declare 
 Thy glory beyond thought, and power divine." 
 
214 FROM TEXT TO TALK 
 
 So, too, although there are characters formed 
 here in His image by the grace of Christ, of 
 which even God Himself need not be and will not 
 be ashamed, yet we know that He has in prepara- 
 tion for us, (and of which we shall ourselves be a 
 part) a perfection of beauty, of character, of 
 social order, and a perfection of bliss, of which 
 the best that we see here is but a dim foreshadow- 
 ing. Let not the most sanguine be afraid of fan- 
 ciful expectations. Let imagination take the 
 freest, boldest flights to which her eager wings 
 may carry her; since "vast as our expectations 
 may be, the realities of God will infinitely surpass 
 them." 
 
 Will Jesus ever be ashamed, think you, that He 
 has allowed Himself to be called by so many en- 
 dearing names — friend, lover, husband, Savior, 
 Lord, of His people? Will he ever be ashamed 
 for the promise made to the loved ones He was 
 about to leave, "I go to prepare a place for you ?" 
 It is indeed a wonderful condescension, a vast re- 
 sponsibility, in God, that He allows Himself to be 
 called "our God :" yet will He never be "ashamed" 
 that He offers Himself to be even "a God" to us 
 His people, when once this short earthly journey 
 being ended, we shall, one by one, enter the gate 
 of that beautiful city which is awaiting us and 
 whither so many of our loved ones have already 
 gone? 
 
JUL * 
 
 Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proces 
 Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
 Treatment Date: April 2006 
 
 PreservationTechnologie 
 
 A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATH 
 
 1 11 Thomson Park Dnve 
 Cranberry Township. PA 16066 
 (724)779-2111 
 
One copy del. to Cat. Div. 
 
 JUL 20 ***$ 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 017 524 790 7