STUDIES IN OPTIMISM 
 
 OR 
 
 SUBJECTS SUGGESTED BY THE HUMANISM 
 AND HOPE OF THE TIMES. 
 
 BY 
 
 AFFORD BROWN PKNNIMAN 
 
 Author of the " History of Union Church," '• The Fruit of the 
 Spirit and other Sermons." 
 
 ADAMS, MASS. 
 
 FREEMAN PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 1902. 
 
the library of 
 congress. 
 
 Two Copies Received 
 
 FEB 2 1903 
 
 Copyright Entry 
 'CLASS 6L XXc, No 
 \ COPY B. 
 
 
 Copyright, 1909, by Alford Brown Penniman. 
 
DEDICATED 
 TO MY PATIENT READER. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 These studies are printed with the hope 
 that they will not retard the new works of 
 new days. They have been presented to my 
 people in substantially the form in which they 
 here occur. The themes have been chosen 
 from that range where doubtful controversy 
 finds the air too rare for breathing. They 
 deal with Jesus as the head of humanity and 
 not simply the head of the church. The 
 great business of the preacher is to develop 
 manhood, and the themes which serve this 
 purpose are the large themes of faith, hope 
 and love, divine humanism and optimism, the 
 power of the Holy Spirit as ethical, rational, 
 historical and immanent, the knowledge of 
 God as derived from an unfolding brother- 
 hood. 
 
 The Bible is a theme, for the pulpit, as an 
 evolution within an evolution, an inspiration 
 recorded within an inspiration too great for 
 record. Progress is often slow, because even 
 good men have yet no practical belief in the 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 truth that every man is immortal, rather than 
 "immortable," and therefore has stamped 
 upon him by his Maker the image and super- 
 scription of his infinite value, attested by the 
 cross of Christ. The cross is an accident 
 incident to the freedom of man, but reveals 
 the essential which abides in the love and 
 eternity of God. To convince all men that a 
 righteous society is surely coming on Earth, 
 and each man of immortality, there must be 
 on the part of all God's children a vital faith 
 in the qualities for which the name of Jesus 
 historically stands. 
 
 A. B. P. 
 
 Adams, Mass., December, 1902. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 :rmon 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. 
 
 The Imperative and Privilege 
 
 
 
 of Love .... 
 
 3 
 
 Ill 
 
 Christian Optimism 
 
 39 
 
 III. 
 
 Gaining Knowledge of God . 
 
 . 71 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Value of Man 
 
 91 
 
 V. 
 
 What is the Bible . 
 
 . 115 
 
 VI. 
 
 The Gospel Power 
 
 135 
 
 VII. 
 
 Life and Immortality . 
 
 . 155 
 
I. 
 
 THE TWO-FOLD IMPERATIVE AND 
 PRIVILEGE OF LOVE. 
 
'The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal." 
 
 — Rev. XXI: 16. 
 
 'Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for ! my flesh, that 
 
 I seek 
 In the Godhead ! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be 
 A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me, 
 Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever: A Hand like this 
 
 hand 
 Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee ! See the 
 
 Christ stand!" 
 
 —Browning's Saul. 
 
 "There are three possible states and moods under which 
 the mind may fulfil its function. There is a dull and quies- 
 cent condition, when reason and judgment act, but act with- 
 out fervor. Power is there, but it is latent, jnst as heat is in 
 the unkindled wood lying in the grate, but the heat is hidden. 
 Then there is a higher mood of the mind, when, under the 
 influence of conversation or reading, the mind emits jets and 
 flashes of thought, through witticism or story; but this 
 creative mood is intermittent and spasmodic. I^ast of all is 
 that exalted mood when the mind glows and throbs, when 
 reason emits thoughts, as stars blaze light; when the nim- 
 bus that overarches the brows of saints in ancient pictures 
 literally represents the effulgence of the mind. Work done 
 in the lower moods is called mediocre; work done by the 
 mind in the second stage is associated with talent, but when 
 through birth or ancestry, the mind works ever in regnant 
 or supernal moods, it is called genius. Affirming that all 
 minds rise into this higher mood at intervals, we may also 
 affirm that all the best work in literature or art or commerce 
 has been wrought during these exalted states when love for 
 the work in hand has rendered the mind luminous and 
 crystalline." — Newell I>iri</Jit Hillis. The Investment of In- 
 fluence, p. %65. 
 
I. 
 
 THE TWO-FOLD IMPERATIVE AND 
 PRIVILEGE OF LOVE. 
 
 'But the Pharisees, when they heard that he had put the 
 Sadducees to silence, gathered themselves together. And 
 one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, 
 Master, which is the great commandment in the law? And 
 he said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
 all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, 
 This is the great and first commandment. And a second, 
 like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy- 
 self. On these two commandments hangeth the whole law, 
 and the prophets."— Matt. XXII: 34-40. 
 
 These Pharisees were partisans. The 
 motive of their gathering was admiration 
 for a man, who had silenced their adver- 
 saries. The Sadducees did not believe in a 
 resurrection. The Pharisees did. The 
 crowd was hungry for argument. There 
 was no delay. A theological lawyer asked, 
 with an air of superiority, a question which 
 now would surely be regarded as very 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 commonplace. His inquiry was made 
 "tempting" Jesus, much as a cow-boy at a 
 safe distance, protected by others, might 
 seek, half in earnest, half in sport, to en- 
 tangle a beast of burden or of prey. 
 
 Jesus gave the lawyer the expected 
 answer. The first and great command is 
 to love God. But the lawyer's way of 
 loving God was not the way of Christ. 
 Jesus adds: "And a second like unto it 
 is this, thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
 thyself." The Scribes and Pharisees were 
 notorious breakers of both commands. For 
 them, ritual was love, Divine commands 
 were priestly rules, beliefs and traditions 
 were laws. For Jesus there were no rules, 
 save those deriving authority from a prin- 
 ciple. Worship, in his teaching, could not 
 be substituted for that principle. To him 
 there was no such thing as a guilty opin- 
 ion or a ceremonial sin. There was one 
 principle of love, with infinite applications, 
 divided by two similar objects, God and 
 man, Father and child. 
 
 If God is love and the source of love, 
 4 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 any intelligent being ought to love Him 
 supremely. But in the real world, the 
 order of the ideal is not the order of time. 
 Before love can be intelligent, time is re- 
 quired to escape wrong ideas of the object 
 loved. To love the neighbor, as thyself, 
 is not the same as to love the neighbor, 
 as one ought to love himself. The former 
 is Jewish justice. The latter is Christian 
 principle. If our love to self be the meas- 
 ure of love to another, then the higher the 
 self-love, the more good bestowed. Love, 
 for the better self, is given with "all the 
 soul, might, mind and strength," that the 
 neighbor may rejoice. Love for man, 
 founded in a deep self-respect, is the key 
 to Divine love. The second command 
 comes before the first, because there is a 
 law of all progress, that obedience to 
 known law is the only way to arrive at a 
 knowledge of the unknown. 
 
 The invectives of Jesus Christ fell like 
 hail upon the Scribes, because the}' had 
 cauterized their human feeling, and were 
 attorneys for a God having all the attri- 
 
INPEBATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 butes of a devil. They frightened the 
 unlearned, by preaching future torment for 
 those who would not neglect their parents 
 to enrich the opulence of the Temple. 
 Jesus asserted that the penalties of the 
 future were for those who neglected their 
 brethren. He was not a "vivisectionist of 
 souls," but strong strokes were needed to 
 pierce the conscience of a Scribe. God is 
 not a great Pharisee. To love God we 
 must serve man. That is real in religious 
 thought, which has passed through relig- 
 ious experience. We discover, b)' a living 
 way, that God is not a being called love, 
 but a lovable God. 
 
 Love is one, indivisible and progressive. 
 Not only is God love, but love is God. 
 The Divine Spirit and Providence bring 
 us slowly, but surely, into the consciousness 
 of God. We may not say, This is human, 
 that Divine. No one can draw the line. 
 We live under such an economy, that to 
 begin with any side of love, is an earnest 
 of ending with a glorified humanity, whose 
 length and breadth and height are equal. 
 6 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 Perfect love has balance. This fact is 
 emphasized, in the text, by the conjunction 
 "And." "Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
 God * * and thou shalt love thy neigh- 
 bor." Love comprehends all being, and 
 ceases at the point of wilful exclusion. 
 Love is manhood, including morality 
 toward man, or righteousness, and morality 
 toward God, or piety. Service expands 
 the ideal. Ideals react and expand ser- 
 vice. Kindness and firmness mingle. Zeal 
 walks with patience. Dignity is both flex- 
 ible and earnest. Bravery grows in grace 
 and becomes courage. 
 
 Verily, love is the science and art of liv- 
 ing, the natural powers in tune, the whole 
 carriage of the soul. Thence extend all 
 gracious ministries, like the sevenfold 
 colors of the sunlight. Love is not enthu- 
 siasm, nor taste, nor the social nature, nor 
 intellect, nor emotion, nor will-power, nor 
 imagination. Love is enthusiasm and taste, 
 and the social nature, and intellect, and 
 emotion, and will-power, and imagination 
 harmonized by the Spirit of God. 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 The first task is to control appetite and 
 passion. Here the low lines of animal 
 cunning assert themselves, and are imputed 
 unto men for sagacity. The last vestige 
 of this appears as spice in a late popular 
 novel. The hero, David Harum, lays 
 down the motto, "Do unto the other feller, 
 the way he would like to do unto you, 
 and do it fust." While we smile at the 
 funny side of the fact, we can not forget 
 that the strength of the story lies in its 
 humanity. 
 
 The history, of each individual, and each 
 generation, epitomizes the history of the 
 race, in our escape from animal domina- 
 tion. The laws of Moses sustained the 
 same relation to his own high plane as 
 leader, that our civil laws sustain to the 
 Christian ideal. The object of Moses was 
 to secure decency. The commands writ- 
 ten on stone were written for men just 
 freed from chattel slavery. So far as their 
 position in Egypt went, there was little 
 difference between chattel and cattle. 
 Their religion was sensual and their gods 
 8 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 many. Laws, too ideal, would have been 
 worse than none. The statutes were nega- 
 tive. Men can avoid when they can not 
 attain; or rather their avoidance may be a 
 heroic attainment. Note how ten rules 
 cleared the ground for the foundation of 
 love. 
 
 First. "Thou shalt have no other gods 
 before me." The immediate force of this 
 was, Thou shalt not deiiy fears and lusts. 
 
 Second. "Thou shalt not make unto thee 
 any graven image," means, Down with all 
 that symbolizes the licentious. Abandon 
 the cause of disease. The infancy of 
 painting and sculpture, could not then 
 have defense, without peril to the higher 
 art of character. Before Art can be the 
 handmaid of Religion, there must be devel- 
 opment of morality, and a division of labor 
 between Palestine and Greece. 
 
 Third. "Thou shalt not take the name 
 of the Lord thy God in vain." The rev- 
 erent can not take root in the profane. 
 The titles of God are too sacred to be 
 dragged in the mire. Today it is clear, 
 9 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 that the man who ever goes about in 
 complaint, is swearing inside, however 
 free from oath. The police force of Israel 
 did not report this kind of profanity. 
 Otherwise all the camp might have been 
 under arrest, with no one on duty. 
 
 Fourth. "Remember the Sabbath day, 
 to keep it holy." It was more practical 
 to regard one day than seven. It was 
 wiser to observe one place as holy, than 
 many holy places. Jesus taught that all 
 things derive their sacredness from their 
 power to benefit men. He would rebuke 
 those who deprive workmen of a rest day 
 on the same principle that he struck a 
 blow for the liberty of his disciples to do 
 works of mercy on the Sabbath. 
 
 Fifth. "Honor thy father and mother: 
 that thy days may be long upon the land 
 which the Lord thy God giveth thee." 
 At last we have an exception, a positive 
 command. This rule had the aid of the 
 family, in addition to public worship. 
 Obedience enables the young path-finder 
 to take advantage of the past. The patri- 
 10 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 archal prepares for the national. The 
 household contains the germ of God's self- 
 revelation. Moses left to a later genera- 
 tion the disposition to hammer this nug- 
 get, till it enjoined all reverence and obed- 
 ience, including the plain duty of "Young 
 America" to respect his elders. 
 
 Sixth. "Thou shalt not kill." Human 
 life is sacred. Death followed trivial en- 
 counter. The lawgiver himself had brok- 
 en this law before it was written on stone. 
 The rule forbade murder. Nothing was 
 said about a quick temper. Many things 
 kill. Foolish fashions, bad ventilation, 
 long stairways, poor water-supply, dissipa- 
 tion gradually murder men. Israel was 
 commanded to avoid the craft and violence 
 that end in immediate death. 
 
 Seventh. "Thou shalt not commit adul- 
 tery." The worst form of impurity is 
 singled out. Prohibition did not prohibit, 
 but there were gains. Christ forbade the 
 lustful eye. Moses was content with less. 
 Now the rule is used to discourage all 
 indelicacy. 
 
 11 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 Eighth. "Thou shalt not steal." The 
 rights of property are inviolable. It is not 
 a question of title, but ownership. Courts 
 can steal. Petty larceny is not half as 
 criminal. When men led a plundering 
 life, with no fixed abode, and with facility 
 of escape, there was slight protection. 
 Moses did not emphasize public spirit or 
 systematic benevolence. There is a mod- 
 ern discovery, that stealing time is steal- 
 ing money. Returning borrowed articles 
 is a late achievement. 
 
 Ninth. "Thou shalt not bear false wit- 
 ness against thy neighbor." The worst 
 form of lying. Here is no injunction to 
 love the truth. A half-loaf is thankfully 
 taken. 
 
 Tenth. "Thou shalt not covet." Seek- 
 ing something for nothing, and without 
 regard to the rights of others, is con- 
 demned. This is the alphabet of political 
 economy and ethics. Men were rolling in 
 sloth and greed. The problem was to 
 enforce a law insuring a few specified 
 12 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 rights of "life, liberty and the pursuit of 
 happiness." 
 
 These commands were adjusted to the 
 average man. Doubtless some did not 
 need rules about matters of their habitual 
 regard. These souls were the heralds of 
 love's own sunrise. Parental care fostered 
 morality. The settled homes of Canaan 
 took the place of the Arabian tent, kept 
 the traditions and lessened the burdens of 
 the people. Patriotism grew. Judges, 
 psalmists and prophets arose, separated by 
 lessening spaces. There w 7 as an ever 
 growing company who exclaimed, "Oh, 
 how we love thy law!" One speaks for 
 others saying: 
 
 "I,ord who shall sojourn in thy tabernacle, 
 
 Who shall dwell in thy holy hill ? 
 
 He that walketh uprightly and worketh righteousness, 
 
 And speaketh truth in his heart, 
 
 He that slandereth not with his tongue, 
 
 Nor doeth evil to his friend, 
 
 Nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbor." 
 
 Here is truth in heart and behaviour. 
 Vague fear has given place to explicit 
 reverence. The author has discovered that 
 God loves the righteous man. 
 13 
 
INPEBATIVE AND PBIVILEGE. 
 
 In the drama of Job, we have this type 
 of character at its best estate. Job will 
 not swerve, though the God of his strange 
 friends should turn against him. The 
 hero pleads integrity as against power, 
 and declares that he will do so till death. 
 To please Omnipotence, he will not yield 
 to pessimism and curse his own God of 
 righteousness. 
 
 Time would fail me to speak of all the 
 prophets. Many voices join at last in 
 singing with the skylark of the Psalms, 
 who sings as he soars, and "soaring ever 
 singeth." 
 
 "The Lord is my shepherd, 
 I shall not want." 
 
 The spiritual element, of the Old Testa- 
 ment history, merges gradually into more 
 definite anticipation and forecast, till the 
 history and revelation culminate in Jesus 
 the Christ. 
 
 The New Testament lifts all former stand- 
 ards into a white light. Sufficient moral 
 preparation to receive a revelation, ever finds 
 God ready to reveal. Duty becomes in- 
 14 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 tense. How can a man get right, when 
 the high ideal of Jesus has increased the 
 task a thousand fold ? When at last even 
 the Jobs and Isaiahs must change their 
 minds, and cry out in despair, "Who shall 
 deliver us from the body of this death," 
 what can the weakest man do ? The 
 answer is found in that unique personal- 
 ity, who joins love to God and man. 
 
 We have seen how God has led men, a 
 step at a time, from the range of outward 
 conduct up to a point in history, where 
 all currents of character seem to join in 
 one man. We have his portrait in the 
 New Testament. There were philosophers 
 before him, but they had little sway with 
 the masses. They did not appreciate the 
 individuals of whom the mass is made. 
 There were men of popular power, but 
 they failed in depth and continuity. Men 
 of zeal arose, blindly buzzing themselves 
 in and out of the world. To Jesus relig- 
 ion and morals seem easy save in the 
 wilderness, in the garden and at the cross. 
 He kept close to men, and bore their sins 
 15 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 and sorrows. He fought and won every 
 battle, to which human powers are ex- 
 posed, and his baffled temptations came 
 and fled on higher planes, and under more 
 subtle disguises, than those which over- 
 whelm us. Nevertheless he conquered. 
 
 Men grope upward looking for God. 
 He came downward as a sunbeam. His 
 descent was without condescension. He 
 honored the good already in the world. 
 He did not preach a new law, but the 
 rounding out of the old. "The Kingdom 
 at hand" makes all possible peace with 
 the past. He asked in effect, Am I ac- 
 cused of forsaking the law and the proph- 
 ets? "Blessed are the poor in spirit," the 
 teachable and open minded toward all that 
 is true in the past, "for theirs is the 
 Kingdom" of the future. "Blessed are 
 the meek," for they shall have pursuing 
 them all the promises of earthly prosperity 
 promised in the olden day. The soul lens 
 is delicate and accumulates dust, but 
 "Blessed are the pure in heart for they 
 shall see God." Such purity has a right 
 16 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 to correct the old laws. A look may be 
 adultery. Anger is the spirit of murder. 
 Love for our unrighteous neighbors and 
 enemies should supplant retaliation. This 
 is the example of God and the destiny of 
 his children, to love where love is needed. 
 The preacher appears before them as the 
 son of a carpenter. He does not declare 
 himself the Messiah, though he does de- 
 clare the Messianic principle. If he were 
 a false prophet, the unlearned could test 
 him by his fruits. Life appealed to life. 
 What an appeal ! What a life ! His was 
 a character, which joined humble submis- 
 sion with the proudest freedom. Some 
 soar among the clouds. Others despising 
 sentiment, walk on the ground of reason 
 working toward matter, and never feel a 
 wing-beat. Jesus was ideal and real. 
 The lamented Ruskin, however partial to 
 one artist, taught us the beauty there is 
 in truth. Carlyle taught, however savage- 
 ly at times, the truth there is in beauty. 
 The Christ brought beauty and truth into 
 perfect vital union. Inward and outward 
 17 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 beauty combined with inward and outward 
 strength. If others were coldly secu- 
 lar, he gave to all things a spiritual glow. 
 If others have identified all progress with 
 some special stage of it, he knew no arrest 
 of development. If there is any teaching 
 for all ages, that teaching is the teaching 
 of Jesus Christ. There is a significant par- 
 able of this truth, in the painting en- 
 titled, "The Dream of Pilate's Wife." 
 The artist, Dore, depicts the march of 
 Christian civilization. In the background 
 moves the great multitude whom no man 
 can number. Three lights appear. One 
 gleams from a lamp in the apartment of 
 the Roman matron who is walking in her 
 troubled dream. - Another glows from the 
 cross upon the multitude. The third 
 shines from the face of "that just man," 
 whom to see was never to forget. These 
 lights blend. Christ is inseparably joined 
 to human history and welfare. He is not 
 only a memory, but a prophecy, and not 
 only a prophecy, but a presence. 
 
 But, not to anticipate, let us still ap- 
 18 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 proach the deep secret of love, in the 
 rational faith that the best comes last. 
 We find that Jesus practices his teaching 
 of man's dependence on God. He sought 
 solitude, where like the unruffled surface 
 of some mountain lake, his soul, sheltered 
 from the winds of the world, reflected the 
 face of God. This dependence is not a 
 defect, but man's normal state. The 
 human becomes more human by commun- 
 ion with the source of humanity. Jesus 
 knew nothing of worry, the greatest curse 
 of good men. He enjoyed an accumula- 
 tion of power, due to repose of conviction. 
 Where others talk of a "leap of faith," 
 he took the firm step of faith. Ordinary 
 life becomes extraordinary. Art and Nature 
 yield hidden meanings. All Christ touches 
 turns to gold. His themes break through 
 all barriers of speech and race. They en- 
 list the scholarship and the people of 
 nineteen centuries. Five hundred years of 
 the English Bible alone make a crescendo 
 of moral grandeur. As the world widens, 
 the power of God required by Jesus, is 
 19 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 not less needed by his younger brethren. 
 Love to man includes the complex sub- 
 jects of a just wage, the tariff in relation 
 Porto Rico, temperance at home, in 
 Hawaii and the Philippines, sound money, 
 the health of operatives, capital and labor. 
 All such topics are religious or society 
 will be infidel. Christians are learning 
 that the Christian use of capital touches a 
 thousand lives, where stated benevolences 
 touch only ten. 
 
 The objection is offered, in some 
 quarters, that affairs of state and society 
 belong to Caesar, and not to the Christ- 
 ian. The Church and the ministry are 
 told to mind their own business. Religion 
 is one thing and business is another. 
 This attitude ignores the fact that Christ- 
 ianity has happily been so long in the 
 world, that wherever it is in operation, 
 there has been a passing out of the sanct- 
 uary and the Sabbath into the mill, the 
 market and the caucus. Many need to be 
 reminded, as one has said, that in a 
 20 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 republic, before, on, and after election day, 
 ever)' citizen is a sovereign. 
 
 The apostle Paul bore witness, that in 
 this world we know in part and prophesy 
 in part. This applies on both ethical and 
 spiritual lines. We can not lay down 
 rules and declare how vigorous ethical 
 preaching should be, nor say how much 
 penalty is wise for preaching in general. 
 Preachers differ in ability to deal with 
 subjects, motives and men. Christ chose 
 preaching because living truth is the 
 world's greatest power. Finney preached 
 the dignity and freedom of the will, and 
 gained the power of an unused truth. 
 Bushnell taught the dignity of ever}^ 
 faculty, and men came to realize that they 
 were sons of God, not by analog3 r , but in 
 realit}'. Men who learned of both these 
 teachers, became not only "keen, active, 
 executive" and sacrificing, but "sweet, 
 kindly and fullsouled." In general the 
 sower follows the plowman, as Jesus 
 follows John. Edwards, Park and Finney 
 21 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 are followed by Fairchild, Storrs and 
 Beecher. 
 
 There is difficulty in joining extremes. 
 The broadest men feel it. The easier task 
 is to find a middle ground. This com- 
 promises questions too deep for compro- 
 mise. Easier still is it to adopt an ex- 
 treme. This man may be a fanatic. The 
 man of the happy mean, may be a 
 weather-vane. Our circumstances set limits 
 to our activities, even when our sympa- 
 thies are broad. He who made Loch 
 Katrine immortal so that its simple scenery 
 is a paradise of rhythmic lore and poetic 
 feeling, was not the man w 7 ho would be 
 likely to make that lake quench the 
 thirst, and clean the streets of a city on 
 the Clyde. 
 
 Everything hangs on love, the law and 
 the prophets, nature, science. That is a 
 false religion which fears science. That is 
 a false science which fears religion. The 
 universe is unity in diversity. The open 
 mind will not deny a fact, because a way 
 has not been found to harmonize that fact 
 22 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 with another. Christianity is a progessive 
 religion, the sum of the truth in all 
 religions, and vaster, but it can not yield 
 all we desire for the satisfaction of rever- 
 ent curiosity. Matter and mind are not 
 one, but there is a unity which includes 
 them. Science will lead us to God. God 
 will lead us to science. Concerning men 
 on either side of a dispute, now rapidly 
 passing, there are more things in Heaven 
 and Earth than are dreamed of in their 
 philosophy. 
 
 The world has often found two ideas too 
 much for the shelf of one mind. One 
 idea has been compelled to climb down 
 without ceremony, that another thought 
 might be comfortable on the same mental 
 shelf. "Behold the man!" cries one. 
 "Behold the God!" cries another. The 
 broad browed Galilean says, for sub- 
 stance, Surely two great and harmonious 
 ideas are better than one. No one word 
 is large enough to represent Christianity. 
 James talks of works. He means deeds 
 that do good as against abstract faith. 
 23 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 Better silence in the prayer meeting and 
 no sand in the sugar, than speech there- 
 with. Paul wrote about faith. He means 
 vital connection with the source of all true 
 activity. John tells us, that if we do not 
 love the visible brother, it is gratuitous to 
 mention our love for the invisible God. 
 In the familiar poem, "Abou Ben Adhem," 
 the angel announces him as foremost, 
 "who loves his fellowmen." The poet is 
 right, provided there is no design to 
 substitute philanthropy for religion. Paul's 
 poem is better, wherein he tells us, that 
 eloquence, theology, philanthropy, religious 
 zeal, are all nothing without love. The 
 mountain of love has many ways of ap- 
 proach, is never twice alike, can not be 
 appreciated from one place, at one time 
 or by one person. Faith is present vision. 
 Have not men, blindty wise, bent upon 
 happiness, too long sought peace by obed- 
 ience to law? In other words, has not the 
 most important law of all been forgotten, 
 the law of faith ? By faith I mean moral 
 sense, "sanctified imagination," the power 
 24 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 in us to appropriate our ideal., our God. 
 The message is. Seek uot peace by obed- 
 ience, but peace and obedience by faith. 
 The wise man will put himself under the 
 sway of love as Gospel, that he may be 
 inspired for love as duty. In all ages God 
 has led men by hope. They follow on to 
 know the Lord, stumbling blindly upward, 
 until they recognize their leader, and ex- 
 claim with Thomas, " My Lord and my 
 God." God is the strong warp, with the 
 double thread of love from God and love 
 to God. Man is the woof, with the 
 intertwining threads of love to man and 
 love from man. Christianity is the fabric. 
 Write me as one who loves his fellow- 
 men, who loves Christ, the manifold dis- 
 closure of man, the heart of very God. 
 
 When at last we reach the culumiation 
 of the life of Jesus, we find in his death 
 the same love which actuated his life. I 
 can not believe that his death is like the 
 death of the millions, who, in darker days, 
 have been supposed to go like autumn 
 leaves to enrich the globe. His love con- 
 25 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PBIVILEGE. 
 
 quers death. Love is no longer defined 
 by a rule of reciprocity. "A new com- 
 mandment give I unto you, that ye love 
 one another as I have loved you." 
 
 Surveying the finished work of the historic 
 Christ, what is the precise power which 
 any soul can use to surmount the sense 
 of accumulated sin ? It is not an act of 
 God, lifting us out of an undesirable into 
 a desirable place. The power is not 
 physical. The power that saves is moral. 
 It is not any single moral act. The 
 moral power is not an isolated deed of 
 mystic sentiment, wreathed with fear and 
 shadow about a Roman crucifix. In the 
 voluntary death of Christ, the new com- 
 mand of love is written in the largest 
 type. His own ethics shrank at first 
 from the bitter cup. The disciples fell 
 into despair. Jew and Greek are still 
 stumbled by the Cross. Not the will of 
 Jesus, but the will of the Father, was 
 done. The death of Jesus therefore is 
 peculiarly the revelation of God's interior 
 life, notwithstanding the victory in Geth- 
 26 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 semane. Back of power, before all his- 
 tory, within all souls, behind the single 
 acts and incidents of redemption, there is 
 an infinite suffering love for every human 
 being. 
 
 In the light of this event, we see that 
 what Jesus was in his brief life on Earth, 
 God is forever. Jesus is not only a host- 
 age given by God to us, but he so iden- 
 tifies himself with us that he struggled 
 with God in the garden that he might 
 remain. He gave up only when he saw r 
 that it was expedient for us that he 
 should go, in order that the local might 
 become universal and that the Spirit of 
 God might comfort us with the truth, 
 that the "lamb was slain from the founda- 
 tion of the world." 
 
 We are led to think, not of our love to 
 God, but of God's love for us. At the 
 point w T here life and death met in the 
 Son of Man there is the inmost disposition 
 of the transcendent God. Not Jesus 
 Christ, not Jesus Christ crucified, but 
 Jesus Christ crucified yesterday, today and 
 27 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 forever ! God does not make an offer of 
 salvation. He is himself an everlasting 
 free gift. Jesus is like an arm of the 
 sea, bringing the very quality of the 
 ocean far up between the peopled banks, 
 which make a coast like that of Scot- 
 land. The moon moved waters press in- 
 land, rebuking the mouth of each propiti- 
 ating stream from the inconsistent hills of 
 fate, and give up their force and volume 
 with resistless tide. 
 
 The love of God passes measure, be- 
 cause unconditional. Like all the upper 
 and nether air, his love is pervasive, 
 vital, electric. That which has ever been 
 around and within men, comes to the sur- 
 face of consciousness. Franklin's kite 
 string and key gave us the use of elec- 
 tricity. The historic Christ gave us, I say 
 it reverently, the use of God. Sin does 
 not cause God to deny himself. Sin is 
 not an obstacle to love. God is God, be- 
 cause prompt at the point of need. God 
 is disclosed in the storm of sin and pas- 
 sion, at first a flash light of the Eternal, 
 28 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE . 
 
 but at length inspiring all the sons of 
 progress and providing the motor for the 
 widest moral commerce. 
 
 What then is the bearing of this interpret- 
 ation of love on the Church and the individ- 
 ual ? 
 
 First, the relation of this conception 
 of love to the Church. Christ is the un- 
 qualified head of the Church just so far as 
 the Church is identical with the social and 
 spiritual Kingdom of God. The Church 
 grows. It takes on more power and does 
 more. There is ferment and expansion. 
 There is being repeated, nowadays, our 
 Master's last prayer for unity. This unity 
 will not be formal. Christianity needs to 
 be defined and enthroned before we can 
 organize it. No one wants to see all the 
 evils of all the sects combined in one 
 organization. The first secret is learning 
 that variety is necessary to unity. To 
 insist on uniformity of belief is to fly in 
 the face of Natuie and God, to turn de- 
 nominationalism into a species of polytheism. 
 The sects are variously equipped dispen- 
 29 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 saries. We may expect too much or too 
 little from them. They are work shops, 
 not picture galleries, hospitals, not clubs. 
 As the Church grows, she will learn to 
 abandon much now thought to be neces- 
 sary baggage. 
 
 The devotional church needs the mes- 
 sage, "Pure ritual and undefiled before 
 God and the Father is this, To visit the 
 fatherless and the widow in their affliction 
 and to keep" itself "unspotted from the 
 world." The church standing for a single 
 ordinance, or for none, should hear again, 
 "In Christ Jesus, neither circumcision 
 availeth anything, nor uncircumsion; but 
 faith which worketh by love." The emo- 
 tional church will hear Christ say, "If ye love 
 me, keep my commandments." The church 
 of good works, will accept the message 
 "This is the work of God that ye believe 
 on [appropriate] him whom He hath sent." 
 The doctrinal churches must heed that 
 declaration, "Ye search the Scriptures, for 
 in them ye think ye have eternal life, and 
 they are they which testify concerning me, 
 30 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 but ye will not come to me, that ye might 
 have life." The church of the "last 
 things" will accept the word, "Strive to 
 enter in at the strait gate." 
 
 The coming Church will make her doors 
 as wide as love, as wide as the twelve 
 gates of the New Jerusalem when placed 
 side b} 7 side. She will be more catholic 
 than the Roman, more apostolic than the 
 Anglican, more devotional than Episcopa- 
 lian. Emotion will have place, but the 
 name Methodist will not survive. Symbols 
 will improve, but the word Baptist will 
 pass. Activity will be stimulated, but 
 Unitarianism will not appear on the ban- 
 ner. Men will go on thinking and mak- 
 ing statements of belief, but Congregation- 
 alism and Presbyterianism must lose their 
 lives to save them. One clear note of 
 love will re-sound in Christendom. Apos- 
 tolicity, ritual, conduct, feeling, thought 
 will be struck through with a vital atmos- 
 phere. Mediaevalism and paganism will 
 linger only in patches, like our April snow 
 on the north side of a stone wall, or be- 
 31 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 neath low clumps of evergreen. But 
 even there some arbutus will neighbor and 
 make no apology. The winter of discon- 
 tent will pass. The presence of Christ 
 will be the soul of the feast. 
 
 Second, the bearing of this view of love on 
 the individual. The law says we ought. 
 The Gospel says we can. The invitation 
 is extended not to talent, to culture, to 
 creed or to character, but to every man. 
 At no stage of our moral education does 
 God stop us with an intellectual stone 
 wall. He requires today what he required 
 in the time of Hosea. "What doth the 
 Lord require of thee but to do justly, to 
 love mercy and to walk humbly with thy 
 God?" The supreme question is, are we 
 lovers of the best love we know ? This is 
 the cure for doubt, for care and for sin. 
 The steps are renunciation of all that is 
 hostile to love, adherence to all that is 
 friendly to love and the construction of 
 love itself. Mistakes may be serious, but 
 they are not sins. The only sin is a 
 refusal to love. Having made the best 
 32 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 choice, it is time for a man to ask, What 
 are the ideas which live next door to 
 love ? What wrong ideas have I about 
 sin, immortality, Jesus Christ, God ? Prior 
 to all is the duty of love. To illustrate, 
 let us start with Jesus as a good man. 
 Follow that goodness. The result is we 
 are better men. We now appreciate him 
 more. We follow that better conception 
 and discover that he is the best man. 
 The best man followed proves unfathom- 
 able, therefore Divine. There is only one 
 whom the world agrees to call the best. 
 It is of very much importance to us, that 
 we have the true idea of him, as a "hand 
 reached down" from God and not a groper 
 with other teachers of the world's history. 
 More is it to Jesus Christ, that we appre- 
 ciate his love than that we explain it. 
 
 What is the plane of our ethics ? Are 
 we living in the day of Moses, content to 
 keep the ten rules ? Do we live in the 
 later day of David or Isaiah, conscious of 
 some gains, but without a grand ideal ? 
 Do we live in a century, boastful of prog- 
 33 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 ress, but forgetful of inspiration ? Ra- 
 phael's St. Cecelia reminds us how poor 
 and coarse are all our earthly attainments, 
 in comparison with the Divine. The 
 patron saint of music is surrounded in the 
 painting, by Paul, John, Mary Magdalene 
 and Augustine. They en]oy her render- 
 ings. But while she plays, a melody of 
 unseen angels makes their hearts beat with 
 a joyous wonder. The earthly music is 
 forgotten. The crude instrument, of late 
 so full of charm, is fallen in deserved neg- 
 lect. There is room for analysis of moral 
 relations and conditions. We must weigh 
 and measure, contrast, suggest and discrim- 
 inate. But, oh, how wearisome is that pro- 
 cess, when we have failed to bring down 
 into it a sense of God's love. 
 
 A second coming of the Son of man, 
 with a body like Apollo, a purpose like 
 Cromwell, an intellect like Shakspeare, a 
 heart like St. John, would be incarnate 
 weakness, compared with the constant com- 
 ing again of the Christ in the soul. Love 
 is the center and circumference of an infi- 
 34 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 nite glory entering the humblest heart. 
 Often what is called religion makes men 
 hard and cold and partial and selfish. 
 Often what is called morality makes men 
 proud, ambitious, envious and avaricious. 
 There is a music sweeter than the clink 
 of coin. It is the music of the wedding 
 feast. The bans have been declared for 
 the marriage of the moral and the spirit- 
 ual. There is a host, who stands ever)- 
 test of quality, harmony, variety, richness, 
 beauty and power. The severity of his 
 justice is mercy in disguise. We know 
 not what our stripes will be. We only 
 know that we are accountable, not to a 
 magistrate, but to a parent. Dynasties per- 
 ish. The household daily grows in power 
 to interpret God. We are no longer ser- 
 vants, but friends. Is one so base, that he 
 can give to such love, a seventh of his 
 time or a tenth of his income ? Shall we 
 give to God, only our sad feelings and our 
 stated prayers ? Is business too good or 
 pleasure too radiant, to associate with the 
 source and crown of joy ? Faith means 
 35 
 
IMPERATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 salvability. Love is salvation. Law is 
 love. Love is law and Gospel. Honor to 
 the law of liberty. All honor to the lib- 
 erty of law. Hail to the two-fold love. All 
 hail to the Chief in the legion of lovers, 
 Who "hath joined together" what "no 
 man" may "put asunder" law and love, 
 Earth and Heaven, God and Man ! 
 
 36 
 
II. 
 
 CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
"See, then, how the issue is forced. Either nature is suf- 
 ficient of itself and wants no God at all, or else this whole 
 idea, the history of which we have been tracing, is radically 
 false. * * What, then, is the alternative view? It is the utter 
 rejection, with Berkeley and with Swedenborg, of the indepen- 
 dent existence of matter and the real efficiency of natural 
 forces. * * In a word, according to this view, there is no 
 real efficient force but spirit, and no real independent ex- 
 istence but God." — Le Conte. Evolution and its Relation to 
 Religious Thought, second ed. revised, p. p. 300-801. 
 
 "It is eternal nature of God to give himself for men, that 
 they may be lifted up out of their lowness and meagerness 
 unto him. Now this view is to be found all through the Bible, 
 from beginning to end, and it is to be found nowhere else, 
 that I know of. as it is found in that book. * * It is the 
 slowest and last thing for men to learn. I do not understand 
 this to be the idea of Calvinism and Augustinianism. I hold 
 Calvinism to teach the sovereignty of absolute will and wisdom. 
 Every man is a Calvinist, no matter what church he belongs 
 to, who has a great deal of will, and thinks it ought to domi- 
 nate."— Henry Ward Beecher, Yale Lectures, Third series, p. S3. 
 
 "Finallv, religion is not a creed, long or short, nor a cere- 
 monial, complex or simple, nor a life more or less perfectly 
 conformed to an external law; it is the life of God in the soul 
 of man, recreating the individual; through the individual con- 
 stituting a church, and by the church transforming human so- 
 ciety into a kingdom of God."— Lyman Abbott, The Evolution of 
 Christianity, p. 251. 
 
 "I believe in a future age 3^et to be revealed, which is to be 
 distinguished from all others as the godly or godlike age, an 
 age not of universal education simply, or universal philan- 
 throphy, or external freedom, or political well-being, but a 
 day of reciprocity and free intimacy between all souls and 
 God. Learning and religion, the scholar and the Christian, 
 will not be divided as they have been. The universities will 
 be filled with a profound spirit of religion and the bene orasse 
 will be a fountain of inspiration to all the investigations of 
 study and the creations of genius."— Horace Bushnell, Work 
 and Play. 
 
II. 
 
 CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad; 
 and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose." — 
 Isaiah XXXVI: 1. 
 
 The message for the age is a message of 
 hope. God resides in his world, and his 
 world is daily becoming more conscious of 
 the fact. The consciousness of this resi- 
 dence is perfect in Jesus Christ. Let us 
 survey a part of the ground of hope for 
 the triumph of Christianity, the base of the 
 claim for the exaltation of the Christ. 
 
 Beginning at the bottom, we ask, what 
 light do nature and science give, as afford- 
 ing a basis for religion and righteousness? 
 Whatever has been placed near enough to 
 us, we can examine. Beforehand we could 
 not say what forms creative energy would 
 39 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 take. We explore what has been done. 
 Agreements among men of science furnish 
 certain facts. The universe has a behaviour 
 excluding chance and caprice. This is law. 
 Behind this habit is an infinite energy. All 
 events have unity, continuity, veracity. 
 Variety consists with the usual and unusual 
 rather than the uniform. Change and prog- 
 ress are constant. Within this ordered 
 movement is intelligence. Everything has 
 been "thought through." The primitive 
 cords of the human heart thrill when we 
 think God's thoughts after him. 
 
 True, we have varying success. We learn 
 by mistakes, but what we learn no man 
 taketh from us. How mistaken were our 
 first attempts to study the stars. Egyptian 
 astrology cast men into shadows of super- 
 stition about the birth hour, business and 
 outlook on life. Waking from long sleep 
 men ceased to believe the world flat. 
 Astrology was exchanged for astronomy. 
 To-day, in a rickety tower above San Min- 
 iato at Florence, you can see the shabby 
 apparatus with which that genius of the 
 40 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 heavens, Galileo, toiled to extend our ideas 
 from Ptolemaic to Copernican range. We 
 have escaped, so as by fire, from a narrow 
 world of space. 
 
 Penetrating the crust of our planet, geol- 
 ogy rose again to say that creation had 
 been going on for millions of years, instead 
 of six days. Our world is older than the 
 trifling item of six thousand years. 
 
 Men gathered up the dust of the earth, 
 out of which according to the legend, man 
 was created, and analyzed it. The magic 
 black art of alchemy vanished before scien- 
 tific chemistry. There is a partly meas- 
 ured, and still measureless meaning, in 
 every pebble of the side-walk. Every atom 
 is eloquent. 
 
 The work grew, so that no one man could 
 be an all round scientist, Iyabor was 
 divided. The astronomer, geologist, zoolo- 
 gist, chemist, biologist, botanist, each in his 
 own line applied himself, made his detour, 
 and returning to report, all spoke the same 
 word in the same breath, ''Progress!" 
 Then they said, all science must be progres- 
 41 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 sive. Another man came and said, Religion 
 is the queen of the sciences, with a most 
 royal progress. Our ideas of God have 
 been Ptolemaic. They must become Coper- 
 nican. Once the Divine method appeared 
 mechanical, and we illustrated by the anal- 
 ogy of a machine. Now we know the prog- 
 ress vital, and we illustrate as our Lord, 
 by the "seed," "blade," "ear" and "full 
 corn." Once we considered creation instan- 
 taneous, now we know that it is gradual. 
 Waste does not hang so heavily on the 
 heart, when we discover, that in the econ- 
 omy of nature no fragments are lost. Last 
 year's leaf will enrich the soil for next 
 year's harvest. Impure water disappears by 
 evaporation, to be glorified with purity and 
 returned to the earth. The burden of proof 
 lies with the man who claims that the 
 "heedless world" has "lost one accent of 
 the Holy Ghost." 
 
 The strong and the weak are often in con- 
 flict. There is, in the short run, such a 
 thing as the triumph of brute force. But 
 the struggle for the weak is more mighty 
 42 
 
OHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 than the struggle against the weak. If not 
 the animal world would be self-annihilating, 
 in a brief period. Parental care of offspring, 
 the extended period of human infancy, the 
 foreshadowed cross even in the parental 
 instinct of the lioness, reveal the survival of 
 the weak. On the other hand where the 
 weak go to the wall, they reappear to con- 
 tinue the battle in new forms and on event- 
 ually higher levels of power and sacrifice. 
 Mind wins as against matter, brains over 
 the brute, brains and conscience over brains 
 alone. The Christian does not believe that 
 the being, he calls God, has so low intel- 
 ligence as to make a world, as a man would 
 make a house, then lock the door and throw 
 the key away, obliging himself to work a 
 miracle to get back in again. If we, with 
 our limitations, can by the telescope, the 
 spectroscope, the telegraph, telephone and 
 Marconi devices, somewhat master these 
 enlarged worlds of space and time, how rea- 
 sonable is it to believe that God is not less 
 able, and to apprehend how he dwells with 
 us, alike at home in the distant star, the 
 43 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 microscopic flower and the spirit of man. 
 
 Strangely true it is, that for ages God 
 could give the millions no greater light, 
 under the law by which light is imparted, 
 than the light of nature. Nothing was 
 ready-made. All this while he was laying a 
 noble foundation. When your architect 
 sends his building up twenty-five stories, he 
 is careful to send it down, proportionately, 
 below the ground level. So God anticipated 
 no collapse, when millions of years ago, he 
 began the foundation for the "house not 
 made with hands," the full grown Son of 
 God. 
 
 In the second place, what light do the 
 Scriptures shed to justify the hope of the 
 optimist ? The genius of the Bible is sym- 
 pathy for mankind. The first verse of Gen- 
 esis substitutes a personal God for force and 
 many gods. This God creates man in his 
 own likeness. There is one key-note from 
 beginning to end of the sacred parch- 
 ments, the note of ascending sympathy. 
 Discords exist as incidents to the process of 
 an orchestra becoming attuned. Sin is in 
 44 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 the world, but outmatched. The "head" of 
 the serpent is bruised by man, while the 
 "heel" of man escapes with a passing 
 injury. Prosperity of all kinds will over- 
 take the righteous nation. The sinner can 
 be cured, though his sins be "as scarlet." 
 
 Surely by this literature we are borne on 
 a rising tide, a stream of prophetic glory. 
 The river of water of life, rising in prehis- 
 toric time, widens, deepens, gains momen- 
 tum and majesty. On its bosom sail vast 
 fleets of hope. It surpasses all the rivers of 
 time, the Nile, fertile mother of nations, the 
 Mississippi opening a continent, an East 
 River or Hudson making market for the 
 world. Follow the stream of the Bible, 
 from the everlasting heights of Moses with 
 God, down by the rich valleys of the Shep- 
 herd psalm, through the broad plains, where 
 sword is exchanged for plowshare, by the 
 arid desert where the thorn gives way to the 
 myrtle tree and to the rose. Listen to the 
 beatitudes of Jesus, as they swell the cur- 
 rent. Ponder the depth of the river, in the 
 parable of the " Prodigal son," its peace in 
 45 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 the ' 'upper room," its unlimited power to 
 turn all the wheels of human life as it falls 
 in the Niagara of the Cross. Behold the 
 ideal of love inspiring Paul to give us his 
 charity chapter, widening into God's ocean 
 of love. The "fruit of the Spirit" grows 
 on the river's bank by the automatic law of 
 Heaven. Verily the Bible is the great 
 charter of human rights, the history of the 
 success of the strong, proving themselves 
 worthily strong, because of their sympathy 
 for the weak. 
 
 Abraham, in the day of human sacrifice, 
 spares the life of his son, by reason of a 
 higher thought of God. Follow this trend 
 and it leads to the passing of the Druids, 
 and to the crumbling, at this very moment, 
 of the Temple of Saturn in the Roman 
 Forum. The absolutism of Pharaoh is 
 strong, but not strong enough to keep the 
 Hebrews in bondage. They depart to dwell 
 in a land flowing with democratic ideas and 
 righteousness. Woman ascends from polyg- 
 amy to monogamy. The pessimist will no 
 longer quote the passage " All is vanity," 
 46 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 because he believes Solomon said it, and 
 that any man with a thousand wives would 
 say something of the sort. Household slavery 
 among the Hebrews was almost dead by the 
 time of Christ. 
 
 The Gentiles are to share the privileges 
 of the Jew, said Isaiah. They are on the 
 same level with the Jew, said Christ. The 
 autocratic idea must go. The Son of Man 
 said: "You know that they which are 
 accorded to rule over the Gentiles lord it 
 over them, * but it is not so among you." 
 It was not so at Scrooby or Leyden or Ply- 
 mouth. In the obscure village of Auster- 
 field, England, there is a little Anglican 
 church, where Governor William Bradford, 
 of Plymouth Colony, was baptized. The 
 now sacred font, once discarded and used by 
 the sexton to water his chickens, has been 
 discovered and restored by those who 
 cherish the memory of the noble Pilgrim. 
 In an aisle, restored by Americans, a lawyer 
 and member of that church, living in the 
 adjacent village of Bawtry, has placed these 
 words in bronze: <k To Governor William 
 47 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 Bradford, the foremost American to bear 
 rule by the free choice of his brethren." 
 Scripture is fulfilled. The poet of the peo- 
 ple sings for us, with just such instances in 
 mind." 
 
 "Princes and lords are but the breath of kings 
 An honest man's the noblest work of God." 
 
 A.t the beginning of Christ's ministry, he 
 read from the prophet of the exile, that pass- 
 age he meant to stand for the central feature 
 of his ministry. 
 
 "The spirit of the I,ord is upon me, because he anointed 
 me to preach good tidings to the poor. He hath sent me to 
 proclaim release to the captives, and recovering of sight to 
 the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, and to pro- 
 claim the acceptable year of the I,ord." 
 
 At the end of his work, he said to his dis- 
 ciples, that they would do, in his name, 
 greater things than he had done. Verily 
 the Scriptures breathe sympathy for all 
 men, especially for the man who is down. 
 Divinity is disclosed as, serving rather than 
 receiving service, saving rather than con- 
 demning. Deity prefers to suffer rather 
 than inflict suffering, to forgive rather than 
 punish. The Pharisee is condemned with 
 48 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 tears, because he is a man; with severity be- 
 cause of his inhumanity. 
 
 The central petition of the Lord's Prayer 
 is, that the " Kingdom" may "come and 
 God's will be done on Earth as it is in 
 Heaven." The New Testament closes with 
 a sublime drama of victory. The shout of 
 triumph rises above the din of conflict and 
 the fires of the Roman persecution. How 
 like a mighty tower of defense the Script- 
 ures rise before the vision of the common 
 people. When does a man appear so small 
 as when he stands up beside the Bible and 
 assumes that he can defend it or that it 
 needs his defense ! 
 
 We can go through the Scriptures and 
 select another line of texts and so arrange 
 them as to make a different impression, that 
 is, upon the unwary. A mosaic of Bible 
 texts, contradicting the genuine import, can 
 be arbitrarily invented. There are many 
 such. Verses torn from their connection, 
 set out in false patterns, have deceived the 
 very elect. The Pretorium has been re- 
 paved. Over these cold and cruel pave- 
 49 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 ments, they have again led forth our Lord 
 for crucifixion, worse than that of Golgotha, 
 because declared necessary to make, rather 
 than express, Divine sympathy. 
 
 From a third point of view, let us note 
 how social progress, since Bible times, has 
 justified the Christian optimist. During the 
 Roman Empire, unwelcome children were 
 exposed under conditions of peculiar horror. 
 When escaping the teeth of dogs, they were 
 sought, that their brains might be used for 
 medicine. The drowning for babes was in- 
 deed a happy escape from the world. 
 
 Not long since children of tender age 
 were doomed to drag carts in coal pits, har- 
 nessed with women. Till Parliament passed 
 a law in their defense, children were driven 
 down hot smoking chimneys by cruel 
 masters. Fewer by far are the sweat shops, 
 where pallid, emaciated, scrofulous and con- 
 sumptive children labor long hours for a 
 wicked wage. 
 
 Once a stranger was an enemy. In Ger- 
 many, at one time, a year's residence was 
 necessary to defend a tribe against one man. 
 50 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 Their proverb ran, "Two nights a guest, 
 three nights a servant." 
 
 Before Christ, in a great part of the 
 world, licentiousness was a religion; since 
 Christ, it has become a crime. The home, 
 as an institution, has had a wonderful devel- 
 opment. Birth occurs higher and higher on 
 the scale of tendency to righteousness. 
 
 Slavery's sun has set. Slaves make good 
 ancestors, if far enough back. Britain, for 
 two hundred and fifty years before William 
 the Conqueror, raised British youth and 
 drove young men and maidens in chains, to 
 be sold in the open market, at port cities 
 like Bristol. The historian, Bancroft, has 
 stated that three and one quarter millions of 
 slaves were taken from Africa by the slave 
 trade in one century, and that of this num- 
 ber two hundred and fifty thousand were 
 thrown to the sharks from the ships, on the 
 way to the colonial plantations. 
 
 From the time of Howard and Mrs. Fry, 
 
 the prisoner has been the constant study of 
 
 the philanthropist. Formerly confined for 
 
 life, herded without classification, starved, 
 
 51 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 tortured, and all as a matter of course; now 
 it has been demonstrated that the great 
 majority of criminals can receive an inde- 
 terminate sentence and go back to society 
 good citizens. 
 
 War, when waged for the excitement of 
 bloodshed, received direction from some 
 strong man, who ruled a limited area, pro- 
 posing to himself do the plundering other- 
 wise carried on by families. The church 
 set limits to these "private wars." At last 
 they were abolished. The nation confeder- 
 ated the tribes. National alliances checked 
 nations. International law scattered leaves 
 of arbitration for the healing of the world. 
 War changed its motive. The end is a pro- 
 tectorate for childhood peoples. The next 
 step seems to be the establishment of an 
 international Supreme court to still further 
 lessen the chances of war. 
 
 Education, formerly possible for a few, is 
 now compulsory for all. Time was when 
 there was one Bible in the community and 
 that chained even for Protestants. Five 
 hundred years of the English Bible, to- 
 52 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 gether with the study of every science and 
 art consequent upon the revival of learning, 
 tell their own story. We are informed that 
 the Vatican is publishing an edition of the 
 Bible for popular use. The little red school 
 house has dug the grave of superstition. It 
 has a right to be red. It has cost blood. Is 
 it too much to hope that such men as Arch- 
 bishop Ireland will help put the Bible back 
 on the school teacher's desk ? 
 
 With the rise of the people, governments 
 have changed. They have no divine right 
 save the right to secure the welfare of 
 the governed. National governments the 
 world over have become more representative. 
 The barons still stand around King John of 
 tardy pen, crying, "Sign, sign the charter!" 
 King Charles still has his Cromwell. George 
 the Third his Washington. The lamented 
 McKinley called attention to the fact, that 
 the only time Washington formally spoke 
 before the Constitutional Convention, over 
 which he presided, was when he success- 
 fully appealed to the delegates for a "larger 
 representation of the people in the National 
 53 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 House of Representatives." On the Janic- 
 ulum Hill, overlooking Rome and the Vati- 
 can, stands the equestrian statue of 
 Garibaldi. The feet of the war horse are 
 firmly braced. The general imparts his 
 spirit to the steed, seeming to say, "Here I 
 stand and here I will remain!" On the 
 side of the pedestal is an allegorical group 
 representing America. Columbia, attended 
 by Mercury of the winged feet, is saying, 
 "Carry this message and motto to Italy and 
 to the w T orld, 'The state forever without a 
 church, but never without a religion.' " 
 
 Survey industrial conditions. The pris- 
 oner of war met death because there was no 
 work for him to do. Later he went to the 
 mines, the galleys and the fields. When 
 freed from sale, he yet could own no land. 
 Escaping serfdom, he gained a small wage 
 for long hours. Wages rose. Thrift made 
 him a capitalist. Toil and slow progress 
 are attended with birth pangs. Men, of the 
 strenuous life, seek by gradual rather than 
 revolutionary processes, to protect the weak 
 and make them strong, to capture the Rob 
 54 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 Roy of industry at the point where his in- 
 justice checks industry, and threatens the 
 public welfare. 
 
 The golden rule is working better. The 
 weal of all on Earth, not the welfare of a 
 remnant hereafter, is our goal. No man is 
 to be thrown down. All are to be lifted up. 
 The task is difficult, but rewarding. Fewer 
 put on brakes while we are going up hill. 
 
 Doubtless when the report of Moses' 
 death was at last believed, men said, 
 "There never will be another man like 
 Moses." But Abraham Lincoln was much 
 like him. The disciples of John the Baptist 
 no doubt said, "There will never be an- 
 other." Savonarola, Carlyle and John 
 Brown of Harper's Ferry look after that 
 succession. Chrysostum, of the silver 
 tongue, left a vacancy that was never to be 
 filled, till Parker, Brooks and Beecher came. 
 Such as Longfellow, Whittier, Emerson and 
 Hawthorne make good substitutes for 
 Dryden and Byron. Fielding and Smollet. 
 Ian McLaren has added to Scotch literature 
 a keen appreciation of the religious ele- 
 55 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 ment not found even in Walter Scott, thus 
 connecting beauty with truth and nature 
 with God. 
 
 Today, in Venice, the people are sad be- 
 cause the Campanile has fallen. That beau- 
 tiful shaft, of three hundred feet, guarded 
 cathedral and palace for nine hundred years. 
 The chimes rang joyfully to salute the sun 
 as his first ray kissed the angel on the sum- 
 mit; and his last said a sweet good-night 
 to the Adriatic queen. The muse of archi- 
 tecture today, mourns amid the "Stones of 
 Venice" powerless to toll the wonted bells 
 of grief. Men shake their heads and say, 
 "All Venice is falling and there will never 
 be another Campanile!" 
 
 Nay! Not so. Look yonder. "Alps on 
 Alps arise." Things are never so bad, but 
 that they can always be better. Human 
 life, character, skill and capacity are in 
 their infancy. Art is being popularized. 
 The useless will find use. Ugliness turns to 
 beauty. The weak becomes strong. The 
 strong true. There is to be a better Venice, 
 a nobler Campanile. 
 
 56 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 Note a quiet and deep growth toward 
 unity of human feeling. Beneath the dis- 
 tinctions of race, color, climate, condition 
 and creed, brotherhood seeks to answer the 
 last petition of Christ for unity. This spirit 
 is to wipe out what remains of the line 
 between mass and class. Sects will continue 
 to be born again into their higher and pro- 
 founder agreements. Science and religion 
 will find their interests identified with the 
 development of the whole man. All bar- 
 barous antagonisms and vestiges of animal 
 cunning will fade away. 
 
 Less and less do we hear men crying for 
 the ''good old times;" times when banks 
 were holes in the ground, when wealth was 
 never active, save when building a palace for 
 a king, or when the people were eager 
 to erect a cathedral, for joy that the year 
 one thousand came, without the ending of 
 the world by fire and brimstone. 
 
 Who asks to have again the day of 
 
 Pompeii, whose wall-paintings can not be 
 
 shown to women; the day when the vestal 
 
 virgin cried "thumbs down" and the sand of 
 
 57 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 the Colosseum was stained with martyr's 
 blood. When in Rome, let us not forsake 
 the assembling of ourselves, where the full 
 moon rises above the roofless rim of the 
 Vespasian amphitheatre. In this arena, 
 numberless Christians hastened the rise of 
 Christianity from the catacomb to the palace. 
 Here, dying like gods, they defied the 
 emperor and made death a greater pastime 
 than they furnished to the "glutted eyes of 
 Rome's proud populace." Do you ever 
 sing ? This is the place and this the time 
 for hymns; and if for one, that one shall be, 
 "All hail the power of Jesus' Name." 
 
 Oh, yes! Restore the olden day of the 
 inquisition and ingenuity of horror. Get 
 court evidence by the "ordeal of fire." Dig 
 deep pits and put poisonous serpents in 
 them, to sport with human beings. Bring 
 back the rack, the fagot and wheel, the 
 gridiron and boiling oil. Let us have holo- 
 caust and black death, witch-craft and 
 ascetic rigors. Perhaps there is a man pres- 
 ent who wants a half-holiday of this kind for 
 himself and family. 
 
 58 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 If the social reincarnation of Jesus has 
 wrought such changes in the dispositions of 
 men, we shall not be surprised, as we pass 
 on, to discover that our ideas also have 
 changed for the better. Right thinking has 
 advanced. We honor the "heretics of yes- 
 terday," IvUther, Knox, Bruno, Huss. They 
 were not heretics, but only called such. The 
 real heretic is the pessimist. The Gnostic 
 said, God is too good to touch the world. 
 The Manichee said, The world is corrupt. 
 Sin he declared a disease, not an act of will. 
 Generation was in his view iniquity, regene- 
 ration impossible, and the world hopelessly 
 damned. Augustine, after all due credit 
 is allowed him, was stained through with 
 these mediaeval dyes. His world was lost. 
 Adam fell from the summit of all good to the 
 bottom of all evil, and took with him every 
 member of the race. God was more than 
 just, in consenting to save a few by divine 
 decree, without the slightest reference to 
 their character. This was done out of re- 
 gard for Jesus Christ, not for man. This 
 regard for Christ was conveyed to the 
 59 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 knowledge of the elect, not directly, but by 
 a succession of agencies, desirable to break 
 the shock of even this alleged mercy. The 
 priest, the saint, the virgin, the Christ, and 
 at last, so as by fire, the Almighty conde- 
 scended. It is not hard to see how the law 
 took the place of vital creed. There were 
 priests, but not a prophet whose life was 
 safe. God was absent, the clergy present. 
 A deposit of grace, transferred by specific 
 conveyance through some intermediate 
 agency, took the place of coming to him who 
 never casts out. Tradition expels Scripture 
 and reason. Salvation was defined as safety 
 from future fire, and considered far more 
 desirable than character here. The secular 
 was unholy. The people, who then believed 
 these things, were pessimists of course, but 
 if one believes them now, we have no word 
 left to describe him. He is a Pessimist, let 
 us say, with a capital P. Such a one may 
 believe that hell is a literal place of fire and 
 brimstone, will turn his back on the noble 
 teachings of Jesus, which employs fire as the 
 symbol of purification and never as a symbol 
 60 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 of torture. He will only escape, from his sad 
 state of mind, when he learns that our Lord 
 taught that to get a man out of hell, we have 
 only to get hell out of the man. 
 
 "Well, how about Calvin?" He escaped 
 from the spiritual despotism of his age. He 
 hit on the Scriptures as our guide. So far he 
 was right. But the Scriptures, rightly 
 understood, correct Calvin. All honor to 
 the man who, had he been less stern, save in 
 the matter of Servetus,we had been less free. 
 But he carried over into Protestantism many 
 an error of Augustine. He, too, unwittingly 
 slandered Adam. But to the testimony. 
 What do the four gospels say about Adam ? 
 Not a word. Jesus is absolutely silent on 
 the point which is made the strong staple on 
 which Calvin and Augustine hang their sys- 
 tems. Going back to the Old Testament, 
 there is no word of recognition for Adam, 
 save in Genesis. If we had found the same 
 story of a serpent and forbidden fruit any- 
 where else, we should have said, It is a para- 
 ble with a moral like the parables of Christ 
 himself. Take up the Acts and Epistles; 
 61 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 silence reigns in John's letters, in those of 
 Peter, in Paul in every book except one, and 
 in every chapter of that book except one, and 
 there he is illustrating, as an evangelist, for 
 Jews, saying, If, as ye believe, all died in 
 Adam, know that salvation is designed to 
 extend as far as the curse. These innocent 
 words of Paul have got into bad company. 
 Pessimists can go to heaven, but does it not 
 become pretty clear that they will have to 
 back inf Surely "Every man is a sinner," 
 but what about the profounder truth, that 
 "Every sinner is a man?" 
 
 No one shall outdo me in emphasis of the 
 sovereignty of God, the responsibility and 
 accountability of man and the redemption of 
 the race. These were the great fundamental 
 doctrines of the fathers which we have de- 
 veloped. We have only honor for Pilgrim, 
 Puritan, Covenanter and Huguenot. They 
 nobly served their generation. Of what solid 
 oak were they. After the first cruel winter, 
 half their number dead, Bradford could 
 write, "No one went back in the May- 
 flower." They forsook their Egypt, not 
 62 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 fearing the wrath of the Stuart king, and 
 "endured as seeing him who is invisible." 
 Pass by the skull and cross bones on their 
 tombs. According to their light the Pil- 
 grims were the children of joy. When re- 
 embarking at Southampton, the crowd made 
 merry over their plain clothing and dialect. 
 They were said in derision to be going to 
 America to "sing psalms through their noses 
 and to live among salvages." They walk- 
 ed by faith, not by sight. The men of sight 
 are pessimists. The men of faith are op- 
 timists. In every great enterprise the son of 
 despondency will say, "Do it not." The 
 son of hope will say, "I can and I will." 
 Call them visionaries and men of dreams, 
 but God will put them in the calendar which 
 extends the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. 
 They are approved watchmen on the walls of 
 Zion— ever crying with the the true reformer, 
 "The morning star! The morning star!" 
 The last witness we may call the life of God 
 in the soul. Society rests on its units. 
 "The hope of glory here or hereafter is 
 Christ in us," as individuals. Today the 
 63 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 Christian met defeat, but he has enlisted for 
 a campaign, not a single engagement. His 
 company is not the corps or the division or 
 the army. To lose courage we have only to 
 identify a part with the whole. One kind of 
 weapon may fail, but there is a full armory. 
 The individual faces a threefold situation. 
 First there is the grade where hope is feeble, 
 and requires strong stimulus. Then we have 
 a second range where a moderate exercise 
 of happy anticipation may be obtained by a 
 moderate stimulus. Third, the self-kindling 
 range of courage for the future marks the 
 highest type. All the excitements, by which 
 God stimulates men to advance, have their 
 place, however mixed with human infirmity. 
 We have organization, knowledge, creed, 
 liturgy, business, useful and fine arts, litera- 
 ture, journalism, philanthrophy, religious 
 zeal. All these excitements fail without 
 that love which the Gospel inspires. If or- 
 ganization had been sufficient, the Roman 
 church would have converted the world long 
 ago. The victory of righteousness is won, 
 not by might nor by power, but by the spirit 
 64 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 of God in his world. The mainspring of the 
 world's momentum is the loving, sovereign 
 God. "Thou art our Father though Abra- 
 ham knoweth us not." The benevolent pur- 
 pose of God, in earliest creation, notes the 
 latest sparrow's fall. God sees the travail of 
 his soul and is satisfied. "The whole crea- 
 tion groans," but "he that hath subjected 
 the same in hope," "not willingly," slumbers 
 not. "The earth is the L,ord's and the full- 
 ness thereof." It is easy for animal spirit 
 to overflow, but to know the evil of the 
 world, and looking beyond it, ever to rejoice, 
 that is the attainment of the full grown man. 
 The righteous cause is delayed, but not 
 defeated. Progress is not made by a 
 straight line. Rather, like the spiral railroad 
 tunnel of St. Gotthard, it turns backward on 
 itself while rising within the dark mountain. 
 Now and then the train passes out on some 
 favoring ledge, to still ascend, only to be 
 again driven w ? ithin the mountain, forging 
 upward till the full and open vision of the 
 mountain height breaks upon the view. 
 65 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 Progress is sure like the general course of a 
 ship which winds compel to tack — 
 
 •'Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 
 'Tis of the wave and not the rock." 
 
 Of what use is it to support the ark, when 
 it can support itself ? 
 
 "You may as well go stand upon the beach 
 And bid the main flood bate its usual height, 
 Yon may as well use question with the wolf 
 Why she hath made the ewe bleat for her lamb, 
 You may as well forbid the mountain pines 
 To wag their high tops and make a noise, 
 When they are fretted with the gusts of Heaven." 
 
 as seek to prevent the ultimate victory of Al- 
 mighty God. 
 
 The hope of the believer rests in no sur- 
 face feeling. It is no specialization of de- 
 sire. It is the joy of living in a world of 
 rich experience and magnificent forecast. 
 The whole world lies at his feet. Rome 
 brings organization. Art comes from Greece 
 with philosophy. Mind, dominant over 
 matter, is the gift of Asia. Conscience was 
 the key-note with Israel. Germany, Hol- 
 land and Britain stand for liberty. America 
 attempts to fuse them all in a holy service 
 of brotherhood. The vision of Paul, mak- 
 66 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 ing Christianity the assimilator of all good, 
 regarding "whatsoever" is "true" or "hon- 
 est" or "pure" or "lovely or of good re- 
 port," is best fulfilled in a land of world- 
 wide welcome. America is, of all nations, 
 nearest to the test. There are exclusions 
 and compromises, but the tares are in the 
 wheat, not the wheat in the tares. Outlook 
 is based on no selfish Heaven, but eternal 
 life in the present tense. The secret of a 
 happy life is to get into the currents of God. 
 Here is summer in the soul, expelling the 
 "winter of our discontent," interpreting all 
 permitted evil, as having in it the character- 
 istic and primary mercy of God. They who 
 complain, because they have been pushed 
 aside by those who "strive and cry," may 
 well take heart. They who "stand and 
 wait" are God's reserves. "They also 
 serve." Two worlds will realize what one 
 world can not. 
 
 "Oh yet we trust that somehow good 
 Will be the final goal of ill 
 To pangs of nature, sins of will 
 Defects of doubt and taints of blood." 
 
 67 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 Standing where the two worlds meet is 
 the Cross of Christ. By that God has sworn 
 that he will bring men up out of prison 
 and poorhouse, out of hospital and tene- 
 ment, out of sin and ignorance. By the 
 groans and tears of Jesus, by his scourging 
 and bitter death, the word has gone forth, 
 that God is everlastingly committed to 
 fight man's battle with him, but not for him. 
 There can be no bitterness in mystery whose 
 heart is sacrifice. The Earth shall behold 
 that bright hour of which prophets speak 
 and poets sing. "The desert shall blossom as 
 the rose." "The knowledge of the Lord 
 shall cover the Earth, as the waters cover 
 the sea." Hail to him, who rideth forth to 
 victory, having on his vesture and on his 
 thigh, a name written, "King of Kings and 
 Lord of Lords!" 
 
 68 
 
III. 
 
 GAINING KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
"Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every 
 one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God. He that 
 loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love."— I. John IV: 7, 8. 
 
 "There are hours, and they come to us all at some period of 
 life or other, when the hand of mystery seems to lie heavy on 
 the soul — when some life shock scatters existence, and leaves 
 it a blank and dreary waste henceforth forever, and there 
 appears nothing of hope in all the expanse which stretches 
 out, except that merciful gate of death which opens at the 
 end— hours when the sense of misplaced or ill-requited affec- 
 tion, the feeling of personal worthlessness, the uncertainty 
 and meanness of all human aims, and the doubt of all human 
 goodness, unfix the soul from all its old moorings, and leave it 
 drifting, drifting over the vast infinitude with an awful sense 
 of solitariness. Then the man whose faith rested on outward 
 authority and not on inward life, will find it give way: the 
 authority of the priest, the authority of the church, or merely 
 the authority of a document proved by miracles and backed 
 by prophecy, the soul, conscious life hereafter, God, will be an 
 awful desolate perhaps. Well, in such moments you doubt 
 all — whether Christianity be true: whether Christ was man, or 
 God, or beautiful fable. You ask bitterly, like Pontius Pilate, 
 What is truth? In such an hour, what remains? I reply, 
 obedience. Leave those thoughts for the present. Act— be 
 merciful and gentle — honest; force yourself to abound in little 
 services; trv to do good to others; be true to the duty that you 
 know. That must be right, whatever else is uncertain. And 
 by all the laws of the human heart, by the word of God, you 
 shall not be left in doubt. Do that much of the will of God 
 which is plain to you, and you shall know of the doctrine, 
 whether it be of God.'— Fred W. Robertson, Obedience the 
 Organ of Spiritual Knowledge. 
 
III. 
 
 GAINING KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.' 
 Matthew V: 8. 
 
 There are two kinds of truth, physical 
 and moral. The best knowledge concerns 
 moral sense. This is the knowledge of God, 
 because he must give final significance to 
 the real world and to the world at its best. 
 
 Moral truth also falls into a two-fold divi- 
 sion. These ideas, as the}' concern God, 
 are a catalogue of his various attributes and 
 direct knowledge of his disposition. The 
 character or disposition of God is the chief 
 human interest. Men have asked for bread 
 and have been given a stone by all not in 
 sympathy with this distinction. The feel- 
 ing of the victims of disappointment is, 
 71 
 
KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 "Away with the sawdust which masks as 
 meal; tell me, if you can, how you know a 
 God who cares for me." Our Lord sought 
 to do just that. His Sermon on the Mount 
 has, as its salient feature, the call of men 
 to blessedness. Beatitude after beatitude 
 form introduction to this statement of Jesus, 
 "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall 
 see God." He has been saying that the 
 Kingdom of Heaven is for the humble, com- 
 fort for the sad, control of the Earth for the 
 spiritual and that satisfaction awaits aspira- 
 tion. The merciful find mercy. Then he 
 evidently thought, My hearers shall not 
 think that I am a sentimentalist, substitut- 
 ing confectionery for food. I must proclaim 
 that fundamental law of the spiritual realm, 
 which underlies every virtue. They must 
 not for a moment suppose that these sayings 
 of mine are a row of beautiful pearls strung 
 on a string of chance association. The fun- 
 damental law of all spiritual progress is thus 
 given in the introduction to his sermon. By 
 purity of moral life comes clarity of moral 
 vision. Jesus forsakes the path of the teacher 
 72 
 
KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 who is content with, conformity to rule. He 
 is not even willing to select a virtue from 
 any genuine life. He goes deeper and de- 
 clares that all advance in the righteousness 
 of the Kingdom, is in exact ratio to, and 
 absolutely dependent upon, fundamental 
 heart quality. All character so won is real, 
 divine, and so far as it goes, a vision of 
 Deity. The joy of the beatitude consists, 
 not so much in the completeness of the 
 divine vision, in any given moment and in- 
 stance, as in the discovery of the process by 
 which we advance. 
 
 Let us examine the pathfinder of the spirit 
 and consider its separate elements. First, there 
 is receptivity, willingness of mind, openness of 
 temper, thorough going honesty, a truth lov- 
 ing disposition. The ingenuous spirit is in 
 love with reality, whatever its origin. The 
 teachable pupil can learn. 
 
 As a youth Jesus had a rare acquaintance 
 with the great men of Israel, derived from 
 the instruction of his parents, the synagogue 
 school at Nazareth, and his reading of the 
 "law and the prophets." He drank in the 
 73 
 
KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 majesty and grandeur of the Old Testament 
 literature. With this background of venera- 
 tion he was to associate the more filial and 
 affectionate qualities. He had, on a very 
 much higher plane, the universal element 
 suggested in Milton and Dante. Love was 
 not mere sentimentality with him, because it 
 was set against a background of power. 
 With this training came that respect and 
 love due to the noble in the past. Those 
 who prayed to the God of Abraham, Isaac 
 and Jacob, stood on a level with the Ameri- 
 can who reserves a sacred precinct in his 
 soul for the memory of Washington, Sumner 
 and Lincoln. If there are those among us 
 who have lost, or who have yet to gain re- 
 spect for our national heroes, let us trust 
 that their number is small. They may pro- 
 test that they are not hero-worshippers. And 
 how can they be, since they worship them- 
 selves? 
 
 It is not contended that a man is never to 
 
 have another chance, because he makes an 
 
 honest, but mistaken endeavor to have the 
 
 scope of the senses greater than their Maker 
 
 74 
 
KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 designed. The scientific skeptic does not 
 smell with his eye or hear with his tongue, 
 however much he may deny in terms the 
 possession of a spiritual sight, hearing and 
 taste. There is more truth beneath the gibe 
 that an "Honest God is the noblest work of 
 man," than the skeptic discerns. Blessed is 
 the honest man, for he will recognize honesty. 
 "Blessed are the pure in heart," for the 
 quality of the lens determines the result of 
 the observation. This is the only method of 
 knowing God. There can be no rational 
 objection to it. This Divine method is em- 
 ployed when our higher experiences inter- 
 pret God. The method is abused when we 
 follow the practice of barbaric days, and 
 derive ideas of God from our lower experi- 
 ences. Real knowledge will be as free as 
 possible from the artificial, external and 
 purely material sources, 
 
 Again men fear to trust reason, even 
 when a servant of the moral sense. They 
 have demanded a deposit of grace and author- 
 ity, which takes from man all responsibility 
 for knowing God or access to him. The 
 75 
 
KNOWLEDGE OF GOB. 
 
 Church, the succeeding representatives of 
 an original vicar of Christ, holds a supposed 
 deposit, which dispenses with earnest search 
 for truth in the spiritual realm. The church- 
 man and the agnostic usually agree in giving 
 up the problems of the spirit. The church- 
 man turns the problem over to the Church. 
 The agnostic is prone to give it up as insol- 
 uble. Light dawns when we recognize the 
 difference between a revelation in and a con- 
 veyance to the soul. The knowledge of 
 God's character is obtained through our 
 higher nature, under the law of growth, and 
 on the principle that like understands like. 
 With this agrees our study of comparative 
 religion and national development. Here is 
 the key to the Divine evolution, which in- 
 cludes both the Old and New Testament 
 histories. The law recurs in a thousand 
 changing forms of narrative and parable, 
 proverb and song, familiar epistle and drama, 
 ''Blessed are the pure in heart, for they 
 shall see God." 
 
 A second element, involved in this law of 
 vision, is the appropriation of the presence 
 76 
 
KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 of God. This was the habit of select spirits 
 before Christ. A noble expression of this 
 faith is found in the one hundred and thirty- 
 ninth psalm: 
 
 "If I ascend into heaven, thou art there; 
 
 If I make my bed hi the grave, behold, thou art there. 
 
 If I take the wings of the morning, 
 
 And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; 
 
 Even there shall thy hand lead me, 
 
 And thy right hand shall hold me." 
 
 If only one be not insulated against God, if 
 the heart is not a wilful vacuum, God, who is 
 atmospheric, finds conscious residence. So 
 also Wordsworth sang in the Lake Country. 
 
 "I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 
 Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime 
 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns 
 
 And the round ocean and the living air, 
 
 And the blue sky and the mind of man, 
 
 A motion and a spirit that impels 
 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought 
 
 And rolls through all things." 
 
 Some here this morning will soon be in 
 the mountains or by the shore. We may 
 find ourselves on the Gorner Grat where the 
 sun, opening the gates of day, gilds the 
 Matterhorn with glory. By forest and 
 stream, in garden and farm, through moun- 
 tain pass, in the gallery of art, by cottage 
 77 
 
KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 and hedgerow, we can behold the garments 
 of God, and discern him who dw T ells just 
 within the beautiful in art and nature. 
 
 Still the vision of power comes from with- 
 in, not from without, not even from the 
 flow r ers and the field. The inner revelation 
 is our citadel against the terror of nature, in 
 some of her moods. God is in the still small 
 voice, not in the storm and avalanche. Eli- 
 jah's experience is an epitome of that of the 
 race. God does not ignore our mood but 
 can meet us on the level of it, and by the exag- 
 geration, we are impressed with the contrast- 
 ing reality and duty. The soul becomes calm. 
 The image of God reflects his presence. God's 
 self-expression, "the Word," was gradually 
 and continually developing a sense of God 
 in man, long before "the Word became 
 flesh." The process was adjusted to the idea 
 that his children could not conceive of any- 
 thing wholly unlike their experience. When 
 man seemed be trying to transcend this lim- 
 itation, he failed. He made a centaur, half 
 man, half beast, fragments of experience 
 joined. The early lessons in the lore of 
 78 
 
KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 Divinity found men calling God a lion or 
 some strong creature of the jungle. Men 
 were children of the chase. Women were 
 Amazons of war. Judges were Samsons, 
 men of brawn, ancient prize fighters. They 
 could interpret the law with the jawbone of 
 an ass. Men became pastoral, and God was 
 a shepherd. They tilled the soil and God 
 was a husbandman. They became wealthy, 
 sought strong government and God was a 
 king. The arts flourished and they saw the 
 King in his beauty, the beauty of holiness. 
 The family flourished and God was a Father. 
 God is called "Father" six times in the Old 
 Testament and three hundred times in the 
 New, because our capacity to know God 
 increased. We anticipate, then recognize 
 the Daysman. Hopes are aroused and rea- 
 lized. Prophets and philosophers join in 
 asserting necessity for "A God or a God 
 inspired man to teach us our religious duties 
 and take away the darkness from our eyes." 
 He came. God's revelation of his character 
 in Jesus Christ was the Word made Flesh. 
 God and man are revealed by God in man. 
 79 
 
KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 Grandeur is carried up to service and sacri- 
 fice. Fear, conscience, beauty are born 
 again for the race. Still, his own received 
 him not. The Jew continued to say that 
 God loves only the Jew. The ecclesiastic 
 limited God's interest to the church. The 
 people of the reformed faith declared God's 
 interest confined to the elect. It is now 
 pretty well understood that God loves us 
 all. 
 
 Luke introduces us to Simon, a Pharisee, 
 who invited the Lord to dine. Unbidden 
 guests, according to the free ways of the 
 Orient, followed the more honored guests, as 
 spectators. They sauntered leisurely in the 
 open courts and stood by the table couches, 
 enjoying the cheer of the feast. As the fes- 
 tivities lengthened, the crowd grew. A 
 woman, bankrupt in character and reputa- 
 tion, stood near the couch where our Lord 
 reclined, with his feet turned backward. 
 She was near enough to see and be seen. 
 She has a partial view of his face and can 
 distinctly hear his words. Behold her, wist- 
 ful, sad, gazing into vacancy. Perhaps she 
 80 
 
KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 once had lived in the country and had drifted 
 into the city with a caravan. There is some- 
 thing in the great guest reminding her of 
 the old mountain home. The pure days of 
 her happy girlhood come again in day 
 dream. Though apparently unconscious of 
 her presence, the rich intonation of the 
 Lord's voice plays upon her spirit as aeolian 
 harp strings touched by invisible fingers. 
 She knows that the prophet is not here as a 
 guest of love. Curiosity and investigation 
 are in the air. The host had neglected the 
 common courtesy to guests of providing water 
 for the Master's feet. She notes the neglect 
 and quietly stoops to remove the dust with 
 her hair. Finding the attention welcomed, 
 she covers those feet with kisses and with 
 ointment, which, had they been those of a 
 Pharisee, would have been used to spurn her. 
 What impression does this affair make on 
 the host? 
 
 "Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he 
 spake within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, 
 would have perceived who and what manner of woman this is 
 which toucheth him, that she is a sinner. And Jesus, answer- 
 ing, said unto him. Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee. 
 And he saith, Master, say on. A certain lender had two 
 
 81 
 
KNOWLEDGE OF GOB. 
 
 debtors: the one owed him five hundred pence, and the other 
 fifty. When they had not wherewith to pay, he forgave them 
 both. Which of them, therefore, will love him most? Simon 
 answered and said, He, I suppose, to whom he forgave the 
 most. And he said unto him, thou hast rightly judged. And 
 turning to the woman, he said unto Simon, Seest thou this 
 woman? I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water 
 for my feet; but she hath wetted my feet with her tears, and 
 wiped them with her hair. Thou gavest me no kiss: but she, 
 since the time I came in, hath not ceased to kiss my feet. 
 * * Wherefore I say unto thee, her sins, which are many, 
 are forgiven, for she loved much: but to whom little is for- 
 given, the same loveth little." 
 
 That which made this incident possible, was 
 precisely what made Jesus a prophet. Yea. 
 more than a prophet. 
 
 Verily a man can take the Scripture record 
 and find all he needs to bring him into 
 higher personal relation with God. He needs 
 no capital save his own need. He may say 
 to himself, I need God. God would be 
 Satan to make that need on purpose to dis- 
 appoint me. I take the New Testament as 
 any other book. It satisfies, by its guidance, 
 all the wants of my soul. Therefore, I have 
 found God. 
 
 The Holy Spirit has at last abundant ma- 
 terial for motive in the life and teachings of 
 Christ. With this inspiration our concep- 
 tion of the Christ grows from a star to a sun 
 82 
 
KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 at dawn, and then a mid-day glory. The 
 laws of the spiritual realm become more 
 clear. The prophet outruns the priest. The 
 gown is forgotten because not a badge of 
 service but a badge of office. The adjust- 
 ment of the Spirit to human life is sublime. 
 God takes man where he is and develops 
 him. 
 
 The law of gravitation is surely not more 
 clear than this fundamental law of Christi- 
 anity. Consider Newton beneath an apple- 
 tree. He observes an apple, a fact; a falling 
 apple, a force. He concludes that any body 
 of the same weight, whatever the distance, 
 will follow the same law T , the details of which 
 he can later work out by experiment. Now 
 then, for our food or medicine, as the case 
 may be. A good man, a fact; another man 
 associating with him finds that he is grow T - 
 ing better, in direct ratio to fellowship, a 
 force. Let any man do likewise and he will 
 gain a like result, a law. Apply the same 
 process to religious thought. Jesus the 
 good will be found better, the better will 
 prove the best, the unique a hand reached 
 83 
 
KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 down from Heaven, not another guess about 
 Heaven. Thus it becomes evident that the 
 pure heart is progressive, and in time opens 
 all doors of character and religious thought. 
 This is the simple and profound solvent for 
 the simplest duty of today, and for the spec- 
 ulations of the seventh Heaven about the 
 eighth. 
 
 But does the man believe correctly about 
 everything? Not at all. His practical the- 
 ology will improve under that treatment. 
 What is theology? Knowledge of God. How 
 is it obtained? From the service of God. 
 How is the service rendered ? Ity vital rela- 
 tions with living men. But how does a man 
 know God? Just as he knows his brother, 
 except that in the case of God there is no 
 bodily and sensuous aid. I know you be- 
 cause I have heard you speak. I have seen 
 you make a gesture. Performing an act of 
 memory, I interpret you. There is one 
 thread. Another and another follow, till we 
 have woven the warp and woof of friend- 
 ship. 
 
 God is truth carried up by faith, persoiii- 
 84 
 
KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 fled and then brought down in sympathy. 
 How do we get this truth? The Jew said by 
 study. But Christ said act. Train the 
 will and the affections, then will the mind 
 become clarified. 
 
 "Ye search the Scriptures, because in them ye think ye 
 have eternal life, and they are they which testify concerning 
 Me, but ye will not come to Me that ye might have life." 
 
 How shall we know the qualities of the 
 Christ? On sight. This is a sight draft. Is 
 the flower beautiful? Hold it up. Would 
 you prove that the symphony is sweet? Play 
 it. 
 
 Third — The Spirit of God helps our prog- 
 ress, disclosing himself to us in our human 
 service. This is eminently the age of hu- 
 manity. We are discovering the humanity 
 of God and the dignity of man. Over the 
 door of one of the buildings belonging to 
 Glasgow University, a few years ago one 
 might have seen the words, "The Humani- 
 ties." At the beginning of the revival of 
 learning, that chair stood for Latin, one of 
 the first concessions for general study. Now 
 we have compulsory education for humanity. 
 85 
 
KNOWLEDGE OF GOB. 
 
 In America we put a school house where 
 feudalism put a castle. The best literature 
 at one's own price is sown broadcast. Near- 
 ly two hundred editions, not reprints, of the 
 works of Robert Burns have appeared during 
 the last one hundred years. Why this de- 
 mand? The secret largely lies in the lines, 
 
 "For a' that an' a' that 
 It's coming yet, for a' that 
 That man to man the world o'er 
 Shall brithers be for a" that." 
 
 This is only another form of "Inasmuch as ye 
 did it unto one of these, my brethren, even 
 these least, ye did it unto me." This spirit 
 is that which forecasts our destiny. It will 
 make every heart a temple, every home a 
 Bethany, every land a holy land, every 
 stream a Jordan, every good a sacrament and 
 every benefactor a missionary. The phrase 
 "foreign missionary" is unfortunate. What 
 are called "foreign missions" constitute a 
 vast human movement. The goal is nothing 
 alien to man, but includes every creature. 
 America, like Israel, is an elect nation to 
 elect the world. The spirit of God is the 
 Holy Spirit because he has undertaken the 
 86 
 
KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 emancipation of Humanity. The secular is 
 sacred. Sects surrender their hatreds to the 
 coming Kingdom of Love. Who is there 
 even now who will volunteer to number the 
 cloud of witnesses? 
 
 Christianity, as never before, is inspiring 
 science and art. Music, poetry, painting, 
 sculpture are freer, since the highest themes 
 are Christian. The modern city is the nerve 
 center. Every live man feels the pulse and 
 throb of its life. The thickest of the fight is 
 not far to find. For all there is a hard 
 fought field at hand. About the issue, there 
 can be no doubt. The race is redeemed. 
 We are not the "just made perfect," but 
 there is an availing struggle for justice. 
 About us are the signs of a conflict not 
 soon to end for society. It is the finest of 
 the fine arts to learn how to live together, 
 with malice toward none, and justice for all. 
 There is to be no partiality or respect of 
 persons. Justice has her eyes of prejudice 
 blindfolded while she holds the scales. 
 Better laws, recognizing that disputes have 
 two sides in the matter of the rights of labor 
 87 
 
KNOWLEDGE OF GOB. 
 
 and capital, are sure to find enforcement and 
 result in public protection. Neither labor 
 union or trust can be a law unto itself. It is 
 not simply a question which of two dispu- 
 tants is right in any contest. There is the 
 profounder fact that we are all bound to- 
 gether in a vast human ascent. Individuals 
 are summoned aside, but the militant king- 
 dom abides, perennial, prevailing. 
 
 We shall soon hear the summons, as indi- 
 viduals, to throng the steps of light. Past the 
 flashing gates, we can go with ten thousand 
 times ten thousand,rejoicingtofind Humanity 
 saved indeed. There one vision of our Lord, 
 now revealing his goodness and veiling his 
 glory, will justify all cost, and instant wel- 
 come will be endless joy. 
 
 88 
 
IV. 
 
 THE VALUE OF MAN. 
 
"But the conception of man has changed as well as that of 
 God. We may without extravagance say that man had never 
 come by his rights in religion; for either, when God was great 
 and of infinite majesty he had been humbled into the dust; or, 
 where God was very terrible he had been degraded into an in- 
 strument that could be broken and cast away, or depraved 
 into a coward who would offer the fruit of his body for the sin 
 of his soul; or, where God was complaisant, he had taken him 
 into his own hands and done with him as he pleased. To find 
 a fit relation or a seeming equilibrium between God and man 
 is a thing hard enough to be esteemed impossible, yet this 
 was what Christ achieved. He made man stand upright before 
 God, conscious of his dignity. It does not become a being of 
 infinite promise to lie prone in the dust, even before the In- 
 finite Majesty. To feel what it is to be the Eternal Father's 
 son, is to learn to behave as a son, possessed of his privileges 
 as well as bound by his duties; and it is also to feel that all 
 sons are equal in their potential, though not perhaps in their 
 realized worth. Hence, the Christian idea created two novel 
 notions as to man: the value of the unit and the unity of the 
 race.'-'— Andrew Martin Fairbairn, D. D. L. L. D. The Philoso- 
 phy of the Christian Religion, p. 5hk. 
 
 "It is quite possible that through our very failure to enter 
 into God's own deep reverence for the person, in the recogni- 
 tion of man's divinely given individuality, as well as through 
 failure to recognize the essential likemindedness of men, we 
 have been shutting the door of hope, where God has not shut 
 it, and have limited beyond warrant the divine mercy. Even 
 in the life of heaven men cannot be all alike. "Who art thou 
 that judgest the servant of another? to his own lord he stand- 
 eth or falleth. Yea, he shall be made to stand; for the I,ord 
 hath power to make him stand." — Rev. Henry Churchill King, 
 D, D., Theology and the Social Consciousness, p. p. 2U5-2U6. 
 
IV. 
 THE VALUE OF MAN, 
 
 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? 
 And the son of man that thou visitest him ? 
 For thou hast made him but little lower than God, 
 And crownest him with glory and honour. 
 
 R. V. Ps. 8: 4, 5. 
 
 The: psalmist's song is about man's dig- 
 nity. He sees the dawn of the day of man's 
 power over all nature. The consciousness 
 of being a man, not a sheep or an ox or a 
 beast of the field or some creature of the 
 ocean, wakes the poet's heart. He sees 
 man as the king of the earth. He wears a 
 crown placed on him by the King of kings. 
 Nature is subject to him, as he himself is 
 subject only to God. He is no menial sub- 
 ordinate, but one honored in rank and re- 
 sponsibility. He is made but little lower 
 than God, and crowned with glory and 
 91 
 
THE VALUE OF MAN. 
 
 honor. A true sense of his dignity as a man, 
 leads the poet, up from thought of himself, 
 to the adoration of God, saying, "Oh Lord, 
 our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all 
 the earth." 
 
 The singer of this old song had a good 
 idea of man's supremacy over sheep and 
 oxen, the finny tribe and the fowl of the 
 air, but with how much more inspiration 
 could he invoke his muse today. Franklin 
 has put the lightning in our hands. Steven- 
 son has given us the locomotive. Whitney 
 left the legacy of the cotton gin. Modern 
 life is rich with ten thousand inventors and 
 inventions. Man's increase of dominion 
 over the forces of nature has no assignable 
 limit. He began with the simple contract of 
 naming a few of the larger animals, proba- 
 bly on the ding dong theory of the sound they 
 were heard to make, so that they may be 
 said almost to have named themselves. 
 Now the makers of dictionaries, with all 
 their enterprise, cannot keep pace with 
 science. What was absurd yesterday is the 
 attainment of today, Opacity is conquered. 
 92 
 
THE VALUE OF HAN. 
 
 That clever little "fowl of the air," whom 
 the psalmist may have seen putting his ear 
 to a tree to listen for its prey, is surpassed 
 by the cathode ray revealing the worm. 
 The hawk, with keen vision, discovers a dis- 
 tant object, where man's unaided eye fails, 
 but man invents the telescope which brings 
 nigh the very stars. 
 
 Mastery of nature, by the supremacy of 
 mind, is but the beginning of wonders. All 
 attainments, brilliant as they are, and the 
 half has not been hinted, are child's play to 
 the service that they are destined to render 
 to the spiritual nature. God has given man 
 a conscience as well as brains. The dignity 
 of man is seen in the part which conscience 
 plays in history. The early promise of pros- 
 perity to the nation keeping the moral law, 
 can be traced in all the happier fortunes of 
 man. Penalties have sometimes been de- 
 layed. The full reward has not been imme- 
 diate. God has been patient and deliberate. 
 Prosperous nations will discover that their 
 prosperity rests on their obedience to the 
 moral law. 
 
 93 
 
THE VALUE OF MAN. 
 
 The nations of antiquity might have main- 
 tained some degree of undisturbed barbar- 
 ism, but for the low ambition of their kings. 
 Given over to conquest and luxury, they fell 
 a prey to their own vice. Egypt, Chaldea, 
 Assyria, Persia, Israel, Greece, Rome, tot- 
 tered and fell. Over their grave is written 
 one concise epitaph: "The name of the 
 wicked shall rot." Wealth, law, art, culture 
 could not save them as nations. The moral 
 dignity of man is held before us by the lives 
 of men, whom the world calls prophets. 
 These men were not chiefly remarkable for 
 prediction. They did not become prophets 
 by ecclesiastical method or palmistry. They 
 recognized the moral law as the voice of 
 God, and obeyed the voice. They were 
 often able to say things which others only 
 saw. They differed among themselves, as 
 star from star, but their glory was not essen- 
 tially different from that of any man who is 
 really trying to hear the word of God in his 
 soul. We are slow to realize this idea, but 
 it is getting quite a strong hold upon the 
 world. 
 
 94 
 
THE VALUE OF MAN. 
 
 When a given national life rises high 
 enough, their poets rank among the proph- 
 ets. We find it hard to make a distinct and 
 distant order which leaves out of the proph- 
 etic roll great modern men. They do not 
 get nearer God or man, by supposing that 
 Isaiah, David, Jeremiah and others, belong 
 to another order of being. The author of 
 Job has given us the sunshine and shadow 
 of his own sublimely human experience. It 
 is more than likely that he was one, who 
 was more than his property, stronger than 
 his enemies and true to his God. There is 
 great gain for humanity, when it is discover- 
 ed, that not all the major prophets are in the 
 Bible, nor all the minor prophets out of it. 
 What reality life has, when one begins to 
 really believe that all the prophets were not 
 Hebrews. Every man is a prophet in his 
 degree. If he can understand Isaiah, there 
 must be something in common. Inspiration 
 admits of degree. Religious instruction is 
 founded on experience. The world for some- 
 time yet, will go on repeating its old delu- 
 sion that mankind is divided into prophets, 
 95 
 
THE VALUE OF MAN. 
 
 priests, kings and common folks. In the 
 beginning it was not so. It will not be so at 
 last. Every man's dignity will be seen to 
 contain these three sacred functions. He 
 will be a prophet, because he has put moral 
 truth into practice. He will be a priest, 
 because any man who practices righteous- 
 ness, is a medium of help to his brother. 
 He will be a king, because there is no other 
 essential royalty than to be a true man, and 
 to be a true man one must have that royalty 
 which man's maker inspires. 
 
 Additional gifts will be cause for thanks- 
 giving, but they find honor only when their 
 possessors recognize their duty to mankind. 
 That fine quotation from the German poet, 
 that exquisite song, that handsome face, 
 those jewels, that dividend you wish to de- 
 clare, that raise of salary, that office in the 
 gift of the people, are all nothing, unless 
 founded on a paramount and dominant pur- 
 pose to promote the highest welfare of all 
 men. They can luridly reveal the life you 
 might have led. They may sadly disclose 
 the crumbling glory of a great nature. The 
 96 
 
THE VAL UE OF MAN 
 
 dignity of man, like the former beauty of an 
 old abbey, is often seen in its ruins. The 
 treacherous mantling ivy of vanity fastening 
 on the old castle wall, will drag it down to 
 the very earth, unless some lover of the 
 beautiful makes a speedy restoration. For 
 every diamond a woman wears, let her wear 
 ten diamonds in her soul. We may not 
 neglect a proper attention to the exterior, 
 but one can in the moral sphere far more 
 readily than in the sphere of household taste, 
 put a ten cent picture in a ten dollar frame. 
 A sincere popular preacher, who lives first 
 and preaches second, or rather preaches by 
 his whole life, may show occasional crudity 
 of expression, but this all must grant, that 
 he does not fall into the worse error of a false 
 heart content with animated art for art's 
 sake. 
 
 The special testimony of Scripture is every- 
 where for the great value of the soul. The 
 Book of Beginnings declares man made in the 
 image of God. Moses sees a great future in 
 a nation of slaves. He conceived the idea 
 that all the Lord's people may have the 
 97 
 
THE VALUE OF MAN. 
 
 hidden gift of prophecy. Observe this ray 
 of light from the times of barbarism. 
 
 "And there ran a young man, and told 
 Moses, and said, Eldad and Medad do 
 prophesy in the camp. And Joshua, the son 
 of Nun, the servant of Moses, one of his 
 young men answered and said, My Lord 
 Moses, forbid them! And Moses said unto 
 him, Knviest thou for my sake? Would God 
 that all the Lord's people were prophets, 
 and that the Lord would put his spirit upon 
 them." Isaiah, feeling that men were losing 
 self-respect in abject confession and on con- 
 stantly bended knees of sin-consciousness 
 and spiritual pauperism calls out in the 
 name of the Lord, "Stand upon thy feet and 
 I will speak to thee." In the book of Job, 
 we are told that "There is a spirit in man 
 and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth 
 him understanding." In the Proverbs w 7 e 
 are informed that "The spirit of man is the 
 candle of the Lord." Passing on to the 
 words of Christ we detect the same vein 
 cropping out in his treatment of the child. 
 The very babes, which, political economy of 
 98 
 
THE VALUE OF MAN. 
 
 the selfish order must decide to be a burden, 
 have a divine dignity. This little non-pro- 
 ducer is the germ of a great soul. We have 
 often read the passage which contains the 
 statement that it were better that a mill- 
 stone be hung around a man's neck, and 
 that he be drowned in the sea, than that he 
 should cause a little child to stumble. The 
 King James translation is very mild. The 
 following is nearer to the original. It were 
 better that no ordinary mill-stone, such as 
 can be turned by hand, but one so heavy 
 that it would require an ass to turn it, be 
 hanged about the neck, and that such one 
 were drowned, not in ordinarily deep water, 
 but far out and away in the ocean's depth. 
 That is a matter to keep in mind at the 
 spring election, if we believe that tem- 
 perance and other questions have to do with 
 the welfare of our children and youth. 
 
 On the other hand there is the far more 
 important truth that our lives are not made 
 by laws. Our youth are to become heroes, 
 not b\* removing temptation so much as em- 
 powering them to overcome it. The main em- 
 99 
 
 LofC. 
 
THE VALUE OF MAN. 
 
 phasis is on the ability, nobility and knight- 
 hood of Christian manliness. The inciden- 
 tal and inevitable stress is on sweeter man- 
 ners and purer laws and protection for the 
 weak who have been saved from sentimental- 
 ism and the disposition to charge their sins 
 upon their circumstances rather than to 
 themselves. 
 
 The Jewish authorities denied the right of 
 Christ to teach them. He was accustomed 
 to give the laws of Moses a larger meaning 
 than was acceptable to the rabbis. They 
 challenged him on a certain sabbath, accus- 
 ing him of breaking the sabbath law, by al- 
 lowing the disciples to thrash wheat. The 
 offense was robbing the kernels out of chaff 
 as they passed through a field of grain, 
 plucking the heads and eating as they 
 walked. 
 
 "But said he unto them, have ye not read 
 what David did when he was hungred, and 
 they that were with him; how he entered the 
 house of God, and did eat the shew-bread, 
 which was not lawful for him to eat, neither 
 for them that were him, but only for the 
 100 
 
THE VALUE OF MAN. 
 
 priests? Or have ye not read in the Law, 
 how that on the sabbath days, the priests in 
 the temple profane the sabbath and are 
 blameless ? But I say unto you, that in this 
 place is one greater than the temple." 
 
 How clearly is here set forth the appeal of 
 Jesus from all externalism to the intrinsic 
 worth of the soul. Nothing has value in it- 
 self. No temple, picture, marble, drama, 
 essay. All must kneel to the shrine of hu- 
 man benefit. The member is not for the 
 church, the ordinance or the creed or the 
 sabbath day, but all are for him. The little 
 child is greater than all the temples and 
 altars and holy implements. 
 
 Whenever art has supplemented nature, 
 it's success consists in its value to men. It 
 is not in aD} T of its many departments an end 
 in itself, but stands or falls before the ques- 
 tion, does it benefit man? The most admir- 
 able art can not find an end in itself. That 
 surpassing structure of antiquity, the temple 
 of Herod, combined excellence of finish, 
 richness of decoration, stability of structure, 
 grandeur of impression. All the world had 
 101 
 
THE VALUE OF MAN. 
 
 contributed to that splendor. With all the 
 glory of race associations the temple stood 
 surrounded and filled with men who were 
 proud to live for it, to rehearse its laws and 
 traditions. It was the incarnation of all the 
 Jew held dear. Approaching Jerusalem in 
 the morning from the east, the temple stood 
 pure white and radiant in the sun. And 
 small wonder that a building surpassing the 
 Greek Acropolis, should occupy so high a 
 place in the mind of a nation bound up with 
 the memories of ages past, and sacred pro- 
 phecies for ages to come. Nevertheless 
 Christ said " In this place," that is in this 
 wheat-field, "is one greater than the tem- 
 ple." Wherever there is any work of right- 
 eousness, mercy and justice, in the wheat- 
 field, the blacksmith shop, the dairy, the 
 hospital, the street car, the kitchen or the 
 parlor there is liberty. The deed gives 
 value to the day. He struck this staggering 
 blow for the dignity and liberty of his dis- 
 ciples. All external to the soul receives im- 
 portance from its serving power. Above all 
 forms, organizations, observances, sacra- 
 102 
 
THE VALUE OF MAN. 
 
 merits, stands man, the individual man. 
 The Jew reversed this Divine order. He 
 thought on new moons and feasts. Christ 
 thought of man. He thought of man as 
 walking beneath the smile of God, reaching 
 out on every side and commanding the ser- 
 vice of everything which can aid the ascent 
 of man. If on the way up the steep there is 
 a temple, the Bible, a prayer book, a sermon, 
 a meeting that can help us, we use it. The 
 value of church organization is in itself 
 nothing. Instrumentally it may be invalua- 
 ble. It is not something to join or be lost, 
 not a chain to restrain our liberties. It may 
 be a hammer to break our chains. It is not 
 an institution to block out all our time, but 
 an inspiration aiding us to block it out our- 
 selves. Man is greater than any sacrament 
 or custom. A church ceases to be Christian 
 when it ceases to defend Christian liberty. 
 
 The church can not serve man if it turns 
 into a club. All that is human must have a 
 fascination for the church of Jesus Christ. 
 Hxclusiveness and pride have no place in 
 the centre aisle, because the centre of the 
 103 
 
THE VALUE OF MAN. 
 
 kingdom is full of human feeling for human 
 need. There is danger when we talk in a 
 pleasant room full of well-clothed, welf-fed, 
 well-to-do people about love to man, that 
 they will say, "Certainly we do love man. 
 Do we not provide a church, a Sunday 
 school, pleasant rooms for man ? Do we not 
 have ushers to show them seats and do we 
 not have suppers and socials? " This is all 
 easy, provided the man behaves himself and 
 has ten cents or more. Take a real test. 
 Here stands a man in ragged clothing. He 
 has an unclean and disorderly appearance. 
 You shrink. You dread contamination. 
 You love clean and pure men. But stop ! 
 You are in the presence of a man. He is a 
 son of God. Tread softly. Stand back in 
 deference. What slumbering powers are in 
 him? What may the interior of the man 
 even now prove to be ? What is his history? 
 What is his ancestry? What are his sur- 
 roundings ? It is the narrow, selfish and ig- 
 norant man who scoffs at any man. Jesus 
 Christ spoke in great severity to some men, 
 but never spoke in scorn ! The only thing 
 104 
 
THE VALUE OF MAN. 
 
 he scorned was scorn itself, and those whom 
 he chided most were chided for contempt of 
 men. In the first chapter of the book of 
 Revelation, the author, after calling Jesus 
 Christ "the faithful witness," "the first be- 
 gotten of the dead," "the prince of the 
 kings of the earth," practically dedicates 
 the work to "Him that loved us and washed 
 us (the order is significant) from our sins in 
 his own blood, and hath made us kings and 
 priests unto God and his Father, to Him be 
 glory and dominion forever and ever, 
 Amen." Redemption thus completes crea- 
 tion. The testimony is uniform. The 
 Bible begins, continues and ends with one 
 consistent, sublime teaching on the value of 
 the soul. 
 
 We may now consider several things which 
 are involved in this view of man. 
 
 First, the saving forces of the world are 
 moral forces. Without moral force man 
 lapses to the range of the beast. The nations 
 which lead civilization today, do so in exact 
 ratio to their moral development. The no- 
 bility of man is seen where this nature has 
 105 
 
THE VALUE OF MAN. 
 
 its freest and fullest opportunity. The na- 
 tions which had least sympathy for the 
 Greek as against the Turk, are those nations 
 where the people have the least to say in af- 
 fairs of the government, Russia, Germany 
 and Austria. Those whose moral sympathies 
 restrained them from violence against the 
 Greeks, are the nations where the rights and 
 duties of men have had most increasing re- 
 spect, Great Britain, France and Italy. 
 France found it hard to take the right side in 
 our war with Spain, but Britain remained 
 true and in a crisis there would have been 
 others to stand for the right. This, with the 
 added ideas that no nation is left without its 
 democratic witness, and no emperor repre- 
 sents the best in his empire, will afford us 
 hope for human weal in either the avoidance 
 or issue of war. In every European crisis 
 we have the sad spectacle of rulers opposing 
 the desire and welfare of the people. Hu- 
 manity is at a disadvantage, but it is not to 
 forever remain in a condition hostile to its 
 own interest. Surroundings favorable to 
 selfishness and greed may have their own 
 106 
 
THE YAL UE OF MAN 
 
 way toda}^ but not tomorrow. Character 
 suffers and gains by surroundings, but is 
 quite superior to them. The thrones of Eu- 
 rope shake more from fear of the people than 
 from fear of disturbing the balance of power 
 among rulers. The nations that have dis- 
 covered man, hold the real ascendency. The 
 The iron monsters that sail the deep must 
 defend the weak against the strong. The 
 history of civilization is the history of the 
 conversion of power. Whenever power is 
 being used to serve the interests of a few at 
 the expense of many, the blood of Abel cries 
 out for judgment, and God is not deaf. In 
 every great srruggle for human rights, noth- 
 ing quite so clearly reveals the type of man- 
 hood as the side which one takes. If he 
 sides with the strong against the weak he 
 sides against God. 
 
 Second, let us never give a man up, how- 
 ever desperate his case. The estimate of 
 man's dignity grows with his own growth. 
 We can not remind ourselves too often of 
 that large charity due souls under infinitely 
 varied and trying conditions. It is the mis- 
 107 
 
THE VALUE OF MAN. 
 
 fortune of many to have spent most of their 
 life in contact with narrow, weak and mean 
 types of men. The answer they give to the 
 question, "What do you think of man?" is 
 quite different from that of those who have 
 all their days lived among large-hearted and 
 generous spirits. It is not within the power 
 of man, to entirely transcend his surround- 
 ings. He is the child of his age, his nation, 
 his climate, his educational advantages. But 
 within quite large limits, his freedom to 
 choose and control is a guarded gift of God. 
 Within these confines, "where there is a will 
 there is a way." With such there are no 
 evil stars. No defeat overtakes them but it 
 is turned into victory. It is said that George 
 Washington lost more battles than he won. 
 His genius lay in organizing success out of 
 defeat. When his foes thought that they 
 were managing him, he was managing them. 
 He was a fighter from his ancestors. The 
 very stars in our flag are taken from the com- 
 mon origin of the rowel pointed spurs in a 
 family coat-of-arms, but they shine with a 
 worth that makes us proud of our country 
 108 
 
THE VAL UE OF MAN. 
 
 and our race. The trouble with the world 
 is not that it fights, but that it fights on the 
 wrong side, at the wrong time, for wrong 
 ends and with the wrong spirit. The Lord 
 declared that he came, not to send peace but 
 a sword, and advised the disciples to carry a 
 sword. "He that hath no sword let him sell 
 his garment and buy one." ''And they said 
 Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he 
 said unto them, It is enough." 
 
 Lastly, the dignity of man is vindicated in 
 the Son of Man. He revealed humanity at 
 its best. As the best humanity he fulfilled 
 the ethical conditions for a Divine self-reve- 
 lation. The value of man cannot be abso- 
 lutely appraised by the best man, unless that 
 best man also has a unique and Divine quality 
 which transcends humanity. God and man 
 are kin, but we are brought to the realiza- 
 tion of this fact by the supernatural element. 
 This is not less true because we have a right 
 to broaden our ideas of the supernatural to 
 include the supersensuous. The fundamen- 
 tal dignity of man consists with the absence 
 of any natural gulf between him and God. 
 109 
 

 THE VALUE OF MAN. 
 
 Jesus brings this fact into clearer social con- 
 sciousness. Religion with him has a sanity 
 of symmetry and an inspiration to live. He 
 answers all the great questions of the human 
 heart. Who is God? What is man? Why 
 do we live? W 7 hither go we? We are in- 
 structed by the record of his teachings, not 
 in metaphysics, not with bewildering detail, 
 but by the fundamentals needed for our de- 
 velopment. These facts are not made so 
 clear that the}^ can not be doubted. Our 
 character depends on the power to doubt, 
 the danger of a fall, the uuobtrusiveness of 
 God's Providence, the unfettered will, the 
 power to change our minds and train our af- 
 fections. 
 
 God sends many prophets, though but one 
 Eldest Brother. When the messages of all 
 the prophets are united and made alive, they 
 will still require, for the explanation of their 
 unity and life, that unique life which antici- 
 pated the highest evolution of humanism. 
 In the Son of Man we find the universal 
 man, who is the pledge and potency by which 
 each individual and each individual faculty 
 110 
 
THE VALUE OF MAN. 
 
 reach a final goal in the fullness of Chris- 
 tian manhood and social transfiguration, the 
 Utopia of the Kingdom of God. 
 
 Our estimate of a man depends on what 
 we are willing to let our estimate cost us. 
 "Greater love hath no man than this, that a 
 man lay down his life for his friends. ' ' Jesus 
 set an infinite value upon each member of 
 the human race, because his death w T as the 
 expression of God's love for every man as a 
 child of God. Others have this idea now, 
 but it was original with Jesus as the one who 
 reveals God, and therefore, the reality and 
 not the mere possibility of our sonship and 
 brotherhood is signified. 
 
 No doubt God is the only being capable 
 of anticipating man's true nature. His re- 
 bukes are real, terrible because merciful. 
 There are no threats. The greater the na- 
 ture, the greater the shadows of its fall 
 and peril. With such a constitution, w T ith 
 God clothing us, his children, with a majestic 
 nature, holding before us all conceivable in- 
 ducements to live worthily of our high call- 
 ing, how is it possible for us to sell our birth- 
 Ill 
 
THE VALUE OF MAN. 
 
 right for a song or count ourselves strangers 
 to the valuation made by the cross of Christ. 
 As the soldiers contested for his robe, so 
 the theologians have fought for the philoso- 
 phy of the cross. The robe was without 
 seam, but the theologies have been full of 
 seams. The great idea of salvation is that 
 Jesus Christ came to release men from slavery, 
 to disengage Divine forces resident in the 
 race, by which each person might rise to a 
 full development. The cross is the accident 
 which reveals the essential. The love of God 
 met the free will of man in the time-server 
 and did not prevent the consequences which 
 would have occured had the object of their 
 hatred been any other man. But the will- 
 ingness to suffer and to wait, till love is 
 stronger than force, till all veils are rent and 
 garments have no seams, till men shall strive 
 with one another to provoke to good works, 
 this is the nature of God. "Put ye in the 
 Lord Jesus Christ," then you will have veri- 
 fied the Divine estimate of your own soul and 
 by inference that of all men. 
 
 112 
 
V. 
 
 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 
 
"We define criticism, therefore, as that mental process in 
 modern Christianity whereby the historic character, the true 
 nature, of divine revelation is appreciated and manifested. 
 * * And to study the Bible critically is to assert its right to 
 be understood, to be taken in its own sense.'*— Henry 8. Nash, 
 TJie History of the Higher Criticism of the New Testament, 
 pp. 1U-15. 
 
 "The Bible, then, is safe, both in the greater moral trial and 
 in the slighter intellectual, because Christ is in it. Behind the 
 New Testament is his Divine Person, and if, as I believe, the 
 author of the Fourth Gospel is right, behind the Old Testa, 
 ment, back of the life of historic humanity, beyond the dim 
 beginnings of our race upon this planet. Not upon literature, 
 composed although it is of inimitable biography, wonderful 
 history, unapproachable Psalm and prophecy, rests our be- 
 lief; not in a record of a divine ministry, made up as it is of 
 priceless evangelical narrative and glowing epistle, stands 
 our faith, but upon the Spirit that produced these, upon the 
 Person who did the works, who brought into existence the 
 facts, and who revealed the eternal moral order of God of 
 which the Testaments, Old and New, are but an incomplete 
 version." — Rev. George A. Gordon, D.D., The Christ of To-day, 
 pp. 165-166. 
 
 "Man are crying lo here ! and lo there ! We must find the 
 source of authority in an inerrant Book, or in an enlightened 
 reason or in au infallible Church, or perhaps all three; as if 
 there could be three sources of one anthority, or as if a 
 channel could ever be rightly called a source. Let us not 
 hesitate to pass through this confusion of tongues and of ideas, 
 serene and untroubled, with the message of a more excellent 
 way. Christ is the Light of all Scripture. Christ is the 
 Master of holy reason. Christ is the sole Lord and life of the 
 true Church."— Henry Van Dyke, D.D., The Gospel For an Age 
 of Doubt, pp. 198-199. 
 
V. 
 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 
 
 "Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself 
 to this chariot. And Philip ran thither to him, and heard 
 hirn read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou 
 what thou readest? And he said, How can I, except some 
 man should guide me?" Acts VIII: 29-31. 
 
 The Bible never had so much attention 
 paid to it as it has to-day. There is no 
 body of literature which deserves so much 
 attention at the hands of a scientific and 
 busy age like ours. This literature outlines 
 a majestic movement more fascinating, to the 
 student who loves his fellow men, than any 
 other movement in the history of the globe. 
 
 From the beginning to the end of this 
 collection of writings, called a book, but 
 really sixty-six, there may be discovered one 
 common thread in the warp, the thread of 
 love. Sometimes it is God's love for man, 
 115 
 
WHAT IS THE BIBLE. 
 
 sometimes it is man's love for God and again 
 man's love for man. Whatever the period, 
 whatever the group of writings, this thread 
 of gold is found from first to last. This is 
 the strongest of the threads that bind the 
 books together. If we should bind every 
 book separately, as we sometimes do, no 
 amount of separation could obliterate this 
 central fact, which accounts for their long 
 association under one cover. Whatever 
 criticism of the Bible may do or may not do, 
 it can only bring out into more striking relief 
 this message of love. As regards the great 
 duty of love, the wayfaring man, though a 
 fool, can not err therein. 
 
 It is true that the intelligent reader of the 
 Bible, who yet is no scholar, can obtain a 
 great deal of information beside the emphasis 
 of the universal law of love. There is cer- 
 tainly a constantly increasing tax laid upon 
 men to understand the Bible, as other sub- 
 jects occur in the literature that constitute 
 the setting of that great principle which ful- 
 fills the law. It is this difficulty which 
 accounts for the fact, that the Bible was so 
 116 
 
WHAT IS THE BIBLE. 
 
 long a closed book, even after the discovery 
 of movable type. It is very largely a closed 
 book now. This is further due to the fact 
 that men have been so anxious to have a 
 ready, external authority to settle all sorts ot 
 questions and controversies, that they have 
 insisted that the Bible is inspired of God for 
 that very object. 
 
 It is instructive first to recall the varieties 
 of literary form which this library contains. 
 There are poems and parables. There are 
 several kinds of poetry, lyric, epic, dramatic. 
 We have genealogy, annals and history. 
 Laws appear both as principles and Hebrew 
 statutes. Here is a body of practical political 
 economy in the form of proverbs. There are 
 love songs, the idyls which tell the old sweet 
 story of the heart. Besides all this, theology, 
 philosophy, correspondence, biography, fic- 
 tion and prophecy help to make one grand 
 chorus. The participants in this oratorio 
 wear varied clothing soiled by their journey. 
 Their ideas are contradictory. Sometimes 
 the} 7 are right, sometimes wrong and ever 
 fallible and partial, but their key-note and 
 117 
 
WHAT IS THE BIBLE. 
 
 symphony is love. It appears in the low and 
 far away plaint of the minstrel, pleading his 
 righteousness in the dark shadow of a fear 
 that he has heard his God in the thunder, 
 and ends in the hallelujahs of those standing 
 uncounted in white. 
 
 The fact now appears, that the Bible is not 
 a message from God, like a letter from a 
 father to his son at college. It is something 
 better. Men have ever craved some easy 
 going substitute for labor. In tropical 
 climates, where men pick their living off the 
 trees, the nations have remained in the in- 
 fancy of civilization. When the time came 
 for some higher development, God has pro- 
 vided for more stimulating surroundings 
 which would tax their self-reliance. He led 
 the Israelites into the wilderness of Sinai, 
 the Pilgrims into the wilderness of Cape Cod. 
 In the historical period of the Bible, and in 
 the lessons found in the whole course of 
 every national history, God follows one con- 
 sistent rule, of throwing us as far as possible 
 upon our own resources. The Bible is not a 
 mint, where we gather the current coin of the 
 118 
 
WHAT IS THE BIBLE. 
 
 realm, to be had onty for the asking. It is 
 a mine in which we are to dig or beg. The 
 ore is to be smelted. We are not to stultify 
 ourselves by calling the crude ore, refined 
 metal. In this, as in all other things we gain 
 success by most diligent and life-long ap- 
 plication. A man who starts out saying, 
 The Bible is a good thing, I must be religious 
 and read my Bible a little, opening at random, 
 will make a failure. He is like a ten } T ear 
 old boy in London setting out at midnight to 
 find the King. He is likely to strike the 
 genealogical tables, or the visions of Daniel, 
 or the Song of Solomon. He will often get 
 harm as well as good, for he will shut up the 
 book thinking he is pious because he has 
 read the Bible. The Bible is like an ency- 
 clopedia, if not strictly one itself . One needs 
 to know what he needs, to use it to best ad- 
 vantage. He needs to learn where that 
 which his condition requires is to be found. 
 He will then turn to it, with profit and 
 pleasure. The fifteen pound, dust-covered 
 family Bible, in the dark parlor, is not used 
 because when people needed comfort, and 
 119 
 
WHAT IS THE BIBLE. 
 
 went to the book under a false theory and 
 did not find at once what they needed, they 
 ceased going. 
 
 They will not give up, so easily, when the 
 truth conies to them that the book was 
 written by forty or fifty different writers, who 
 did their work independently, none of them 
 dreaming that their writings would form a 
 part of a collection of books, dealing with the 
 social and religious development of man. 
 They will face the new problem. The pains 
 required will not discourage them. 
 
 "Yea ! if thou criest after knowledge, and 
 liftest up thy voice for understanding; if thou 
 seekest her as silver and searchest for her as 
 for hid treasures; then shalt thou understand 
 the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge 
 of God. ' ' Instead of being stumbled by some 
 hard and cruel utterance, which is arbitrary 
 and relative, having explanation in the 
 writer's infirmity and limited point of view, 
 they come back from their despair, to the 
 study of the Scriptures, as those who have 
 found great spoil. 
 
 It is often forgotten that inspiration is 
 120 
 
WHAT IS THE BIBLE. 
 
 compatible with fallibility. On the verbal 
 theory of inspiration, one passage would re- 
 quire a very astute treatment by a commen- 
 tator holding that theory, "The letter killeth, 
 but the spirit giveth life." What had the 
 apostle in mind in saying that the letter kills, 
 that inspiration is compatible with fallibility ? 
 It is not understood that God's only conceiv- 
 able method of revelation must keep pace with 
 human limitations, use the weak symbols of 
 human speech and employ prophets whose 
 vision is largely limited by their own age. 
 Each human writing, whatever its Divine 
 content, must mark some stage of the process 
 by which each person and nation is developed 
 from within out. Since even the letter killeth 
 when perfect, how Divine is the Providence 
 which makes the letter imperfect, in order 
 that we may be the less tempted to depend on 
 the letter. 
 
 Every book has a face, character and life 
 of its own. We meet one of them and 
 acquaintance begins. We ask and get 
 answers to such questions as the following : 
 W 7 ho wrote you ? When were you written ? 
 121 
 
WHAT IS THE BIBLE. 
 
 Where? For whom? For what intent? 
 What is local and what universal in your 
 teaching ? Thoroughly to understand the 
 Bible, one needs to know nearly ever} 7 thing 
 that is outside the Bible. To thoroughly 
 understand what is outside of the Bible, one 
 needs to know what is inside of it. Back of 
 the World's Bible, is God's first volume of a 
 revelation which includes the preparatory 
 education of the race with God as instructor. 
 We see more clearly and grasp with a more 
 intelligent faith, the distinctive revelation 
 made through any given form of this litera- 
 ture, when we approach it through a mastery 
 of the earlier development. We see the debt 
 of each writer to nature, to conscience, to old 
 libraries, to the ages of struggle, which are 
 represented in man's aspiration toward the 
 ultimate satisfaction of his soul. In an age 
 of doubt, and wide-spread secularity, it may 
 seem like a profanation to say that the 
 prophets were men of like sorrows and 
 passions with us. The fresh interest which 
 the Bible has, is coming to us from the dis- 
 covery that God's inspiration adjusts itself to 
 122 
 
WHAT IS THE BIBLE. 
 
 human error and need by speaking through 
 men who are themselves also "compassed 
 with infirmity." In thus adapting Himself 
 to fallible men, and deigning to employ 
 human peculiarities, of thought, tempera- 
 ment and limitations, a method is used which 
 is in complete keeping with the Gospel idea 
 itself, love striving with the unthankful and 
 those who are ignorant and out of the Avay. 
 The Holy Spirit is found to be not an im- 
 personal, mechanical force, carrying us to 
 shrines, altars and books, but God in the 
 soul, speaking through the partial materials 
 of our limited experience. 
 
 The phrase, "Word of God," as found in 
 the Bible, will have new meaning for us, 
 when we find it in use before the Bible 
 existed. The message of God is in the souls 
 of men. Sometimes men reduce this message 
 to writing, sometimes they do not. The best 
 things were never written. These men of the 
 Bible, separated at the extremes by fifteen 
 hundred years, who sang, who acted, who 
 spake, did all as they were moved by the 
 Holy Spirit. If they wrote they had all the 
 123 
 
WHAT IS THE BIBLE. 
 
 preparation necessary. If infallibility had 
 been necessary, that would have appeared. 
 
 The Divine inspiration is more rational 
 than that of the sibyl. No peculiar mystery 
 or spell, which is not the legitimate off-spring 
 of truth, is claimed. Inspiration, on the 
 contrary, is in perfect harmony with a 
 literature which takes its rise and form under 
 the common failings of human symbols and 
 immaturity. How mechanical and wooden 
 is that sort of inspiration which makes the 
 Bible a monograph. A pretended revelation 
 might be written by one man, and written 
 with great care, so that all superficial points 
 might betray no contradiction. A real revela- 
 tion is imbedded deeply in the progress out 
 of all that is conflicting and struggling and 
 weighed down with error. 
 
 The glory of the Bible is, that it partly 
 registers the progress of God's people as they 
 advanced under His inspiration. L,ike the 
 new invention, commonly known as the 
 biograph, we have so many means of taking 
 photographs, so many pictures of ancient 
 Jewish life preserved, that we can make the 
 124 
 
WHAT IS THE BIBLE. 
 
 men of God to live again and walk in their 
 habit, as they were. We see that they did as 
 we are learning to do. They did not abandon 
 their idea of inspiration, because they wished 
 to incorporate into their literary work any 
 existing records regarded by the writer as 
 trustworthy. In his hymn of creation, the 
 editor might use materials which other 
 national records show to be a common stock 
 of tradition. 
 
 Inspiration, man breathing in the breath 
 of God, begins at the beginning of things. 
 The Bible marks an epoch in the history of 
 the globe. Fifteen hundred years of Bible- 
 making seems a long time, relative to the 
 unity of the literature, but it is no more to 
 the history of the planet, than fifteen minutes 
 to the life of an average man. At the begin- 
 ning of Genesis we find one God asserted as 
 behind and in all phenomena. The books of 
 the Bible are snap shots taken at long inter- 
 vals in the life of a single people. They have 
 the truth of photographs. Situations are 
 described. Neither favorable nor unfavor- 
 able criticism is advanced. If there is any- 
 125 
 
WHAT IS THE BIBLE. 
 
 where an endorsement of a course inconsistent 
 with true righteousness, this is readily refer- 
 able to the limitations of the age in which 
 the writer lived. The pertinent query is, 
 1 ' Would you have done as well in his place ?' ' 
 
 Truth does not spring full grown from the 
 brain of God. It passes, through stages of 
 partial disclosure, toward a perfect growth. 
 
 The Bible is not a purely human book, be- 
 cause it contains the accounts of men who 
 speak messages for God which take color 
 from passing through the faulty human 
 medium. It is true that many a man has said 
 to another, Thus saith the Lord, when the 
 Lord did not say any such thing. A writer 
 may write, Thus saith the Lord, without in- 
 sincerity, when the Lord did not speak, even 
 in his soul, as the writer thought. This but 
 reveals the fact that God can use for one 
 generation, a man who could not serve 
 another generation. Erring as he is, he leads 
 those who are about him to the dawn of a 
 better day. It is nowadays, for example, 
 getting to be very hard to use the Psalter, 
 because the Psalms need so much sifting to 
 126 
 
WHAT IS THE BIBLE. 
 
 find sentiment suitable for Christian worship 
 and feeling. Single passages of great in- 
 spiration, on account of their lofty plane, are 
 mixed with long outgrown ranges of thought 
 and life. 
 
 The Bible does not part with Divine in- 
 spiration, because it invites and ever chal- 
 lenges great freedom of interpretation. Your 
 interpretation may be right or wrong, but the 
 literature was never written with that modern 
 exactness of verbal criticism which salutes a 
 book to-day fresh from the press. Some 
 things come out by accident rather than on 
 purpose. Some things may never be under- 
 stood, but the literature deals frankly, 
 simply, largely, ingenuously with us. 
 
 By deciding, in advance, how good or 
 great God is, and how he reveals and in- 
 spires, we limit the Holy Spirit in His effort 
 to develop us b3^ bringing together anew for 
 every soul, those materials which are needed 
 to reveal God to that soul. Such a man 
 cannot be taught. The truth is just so long 
 and just so broad. It is caught in the amber 
 of the book. There is no room for sugges- 
 127 
 
WHAT IS THE BIBLE. 
 
 tion. He can not press on with courage for 
 the future. Fear is his mood. The golden 
 ages are for him the ages of the Canon. 
 
 There is also a use of the word plenary, in 
 the matter of inspiration, which is employed 
 to express dissent from strictly verbal in- 
 spiration, but which is not conceded to con- 
 tain any considerable departure from the 
 traditional use of the Scriptures. The Bible 
 inspires, because it suggests, but does not 
 describe the truths of the moral and spiritual 
 sphere. It shows us the partial, not the 
 plenary power. There is a great storehouse 
 of fact and latent philosophy in this litera- 
 ture, but it never had in any of its parts a 
 theological motive as the primary one. Even 
 in the Gospel of John, the spiritual idea is 
 far in advance of the theological. The books 
 are all the more evidently Divine, because 
 they do not pretend to contain all Divine 
 truth. It was expedient that Christ should 
 go away, in order that the Holy Spirit might 
 not be localized and in order that worship 
 might be no longer at either Gerizim or 
 Jerusalem. The Spirit of the living God 
 128 
 
WHAT IS THE BIBLE. 
 
 moves in humanity revealing God, revealing 
 man, revealing immortality. The Bible, 
 Nature, Humanity, pour into the deep sea of 
 Christian consciousness raising each genera- 
 tion nearer God. 
 
 The Bible has happily been so long in the 
 world, and so won its way amongst men, that 
 many are sensitive to any word that seems 
 too tamely to describe its place and power. 
 There is such a vast scale of progress between 
 its earlier and later compositions, that words 
 used to describe the former fail to do fairly 
 by the latter. The early writers deal with 
 beginnings, and are themselves beginners. 
 The later writers are penetrated with the 
 lofty Spirit of Christ, and rise with Him into 
 a lofty enthusiasm for humanity. The Bible 
 is a vital, not an ecclesiastical collection. 
 The books are spiritual photographs of the 
 process of revelation. These pictures were 
 taken at different times and from different 
 points of view, with varying light and shade. 
 They are all the more valuable because the 
 ages were unconscious of being in any 
 camera. The records are artless and accurate 
 129 
 
WHAT IS THE BIBLE. 
 
 reproductions of the times, the state of litera- 
 ture and the condition of the people. From 
 them can be traced the steps of the unfolding 
 revelation. The words used for the name of 
 God are radiant with evidence of this develop- 
 ment. The Bible, in its human coloring, like 
 the Lord, is not less Divine because so human 
 and real. Its visions are sudden, but not 
 without long periods of preparation. The 
 Bible is more complete and deserves more 
 honor because of the imperfections made 
 necessary to Divine adaptation. By imper- 
 fections is not meant the errors of copyists, 
 but those involved in the whole process of 
 human and Scripture development. A period 
 of conduct precedes a period of high motive. 
 Principles are slow to fulfill rules. The least 
 in the kingdom is greater in opportunity than 
 the greatest prophet of the old order. Rev- 
 elation is of, rather than from God. It is in, 
 rather than to man. It is recorded and un- 
 recorded, but never lost. It is not at any one 
 point, the last word on the everlasting theme. 
 As concerns source and direction, the current 
 of the Old Testament is the current of the 
 130 
 
 
 
WHAT IS THE BIBLE. 
 
 New. However, the river of Life deepens 
 and hastens and widens as it flows. The 
 writers are inspired. They inbreathe God. 
 They have sufficient preparation for their 
 work. They have all the preparation they 
 can appropriate. Some have great gift but 
 less spirituality. Others great spirituality 
 but less gift. The literature fascinates and 
 stimulates. It never represses thought. It 
 gives a starting capital to the wayfaring man, 
 but refuses to hold him up with authority or 
 crutch by a plain meaning for every Scrip- 
 ture. He must dig or beg. The Bible does 
 not pauperize a man either mentally or 
 spiritually. It is a standard, not the only 
 infallible rule. It is a Divine auxiliary to 
 revelation, not the revelation itself. That 
 distinction belongs to Jesus Christ. He is 
 the head of the corner, the keystone of 
 History. The Bible is a telescope through 
 which we look to find God. 
 
 Our theory of inspiration need not suffer 
 
 because the writers incorporated existing 
 
 records. Errors of immaturity serve as 
 
 eddies in the stream, and show by contrast 
 
 131 
 
WHAT IS THE BIBLE. 
 
 the strength of the main current. We are 
 not to defend a course contradicting the 
 Spirit of Christ, when the Bible records a 
 wrong, with or without favorable character- 
 ization. Inspiration may concern any partial 
 statement which it would require knowledge 
 of contemporary conditions to fully explain. 
 Inspiration leaves room for interpretation. 
 How can we know any subject or object 
 without the double right of bringing it to the 
 reason and the reason to it. 
 
 The parts of the Bible which help us, the 
 diligent learn to find and love. We magnify 
 the final discrimination of the apostle. 
 
 "Every Scripture, given by inspiration of 
 God, is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, 
 for correction, for instruction in righteous- 
 ness, that the man of God may be thoroughly 
 furnished unto every good work." 
 
 132 
 
VI. 
 
 THE GOSPEL POWER. 
 
"And I, brethren, when I came unto you. came not with excel- 
 lency of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the mystery 
 (or testimony) of God. For I determined not to know any- 
 thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified." 
 (Not the crucifixion of Christ, but the character of God repre- 
 sented in his disposition to suffer and die for his children.) 
 —St. Paul. 
 
 "I plead for the love of God. which resists sin and triumphs 
 over it, not for a mercy which relaxes the penalties of it. 
 With continual effort, only by the help of that revelation of 
 God which is made in the Gospel of Christ I am able to believe 
 that there is a might of good which has overcome evil. * * 
 To maintain this conviction, to believe in the love of God, in 
 spite of the appearances which the world presents and the 
 reluctance of my own nature, I find to be the great fight of 
 life. * * I admire unspeakably those who can believe in the 
 love of God and can love their brethren in spite of the opinion 
 which they seem to cherish, that he has doomed them to de- 
 struction. I am sure that their faith is as much purer and 
 stronger than mine, as it is than their own system. I do not 
 call them to deny anything they have been wont to hold; but I 
 call upon them to join us in acknowledging God's love and 
 his redemption first of all, and then to consider earnestly 
 what is or is not compatible with that acknowledgment." — 
 F. D. Maurice. 
 
 "This revelation which is made in the person of Christ 
 brings God ver}' near to us. We see this son of God entering 
 into all our human experiences, toiling, hungering, thirsting, 
 rejoicing, weeping; we hear him calling himself the Son of 
 Man, and it is borne into our minds that the chasm which our 
 thought had made between divinity and humanity does not 
 exist; that we are, indeed, what Jesus always calls us, the 
 children of our Father in heaven. * * But the sufferings of 
 Christ reveal something more than the love of God for men, 
 they reveal his hatred of sin. For in order that men ma3 r be 
 saved, it is needful not only that they be enabled to under- 
 stand God's love for them, but also that they be taught to 
 share his wrath against the sin which is destroying them. To 
 human beings in their present environment, these two ex- 
 periences are necessary to salvation,- love of the good and 
 hatred of the evil." — Washington Gladden. 
 
VI. 
 THE GOSPEL POWER. 
 
 '"I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ ; for it is the 
 power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth ; to 
 the Jew first and also to the Greek." Rom. 1:16. 
 
 This is the greatest theme possible to 
 letters or speech. It underlies everything. 
 It concerns the most important affairs of our 
 nature and future. The apostle Paul realized 
 that it was necessary to solve the problem of 
 being, to learn the secret of a happy life, to 
 in some way gain the end, the goal of exist- 
 ence. He therefore sought what he called 
 righteousness. Righteousness was the end 
 as regards virtue ; joy was the end as regards 
 welfare. The two were necessarily united. 
 The apostle stood at a period in history when 
 he sought to tell his countrymen, that the 
 time had come to seek righteousness by a 
 higher process and by a more effectual 
 method than had ever been used. The Jews 
 were very much afraid that the apostles were 
 135 
 
THE GOSPEL POWER. 
 
 going to abandon Moses, throw away the 
 orthodoxy of the past, rid the world of the 
 wisdom of the ages. They therefore adhered 
 to what they called the law, or righteousness 
 as administered by Moses and the prophets. 
 But Paul said, That which you have only 
 been trying to do by law is accomplished in 
 a person, is realized by a new method, the 
 Gospel, the glad tidings of Jesus Christ. He 
 knew that he would everywhere meet with 
 opposition. He did. The Greek opposed 
 him with what Paul called "wisdom," that 
 is philosophy. The Roman opposed him 
 with organization and force. The Jew op- 
 posed him with those methods of righteous- 
 ness with which Paul himself, had become 
 familiar as a scholar under Gamaliel. 
 
 The apostle did not throw away the past. 
 He honored the moral constitution of the 
 race. He declares that those, whose moral 
 natures have not had the Jewish training, 
 can "do by nature the things contained in 
 the law." The men, like Socrates, who rose 
 above their fellows, received full credit for 
 their attainments as well as for their common 
 136 
 
THE GOSPEL POWER. 
 
 humanity. There is do sneer at ethics as 
 such. Rather there is no higher moral 
 standard than that which he proclaims. It 
 is not his first care however to set forth the 
 superiority of his model. This is assumed. 
 Paul puts himself on common ground with 
 those devout souls who have not accepted the 
 Christ. He assumes that they with him seek 
 to attain an ideal, and seek it by the best 
 means. Finally he says, I have discovered 
 the way to do it. The power which can 
 carry this work on, from the point where all 
 else fails, is found in the Messiah. All that 
 men tried to do with simple light of unin- 
 structed conscience, all that the Jew sought 
 by ritual and priesthood, is made complete 
 in the personal power of God revealed through 
 Jesus Christ. Paul had stumbled around too 
 long, as great intellects have often done, to 
 exhort his readers to do good and be good, 
 without giving them some proportionate in- 
 centive. Christianity was not, first of all, 
 righteousness to Paul, but a power to secure 
 righteousness in the soul and society. 
 
 The primitive religions had failed. The 
 137 
 
THE GOSPEL POWEB. 
 
 empires with which they were connected 
 were falling into decay. Conduct was their 
 criterion and not a very high standard either. 
 They dealt with the idea of obedience. This 
 was their refrain, "obey, obey"; not so much 
 an inner principle as an outward law, but 
 whether they were trying to obey the inner 
 or the outer, nevertheless that word was 
 about as far as the human race had come. 
 "Obey" is a most important idea, but it is 
 weak relative to the whole problem of in- 
 spiration and salvation, because it commonly 
 leaves out that degree of obedience which has 
 given us the Gospel. The individual existed 
 for the state in old Sparta, not the state for 
 him. When the true place of man was dis- 
 covered old traditions fell back. Once the 
 ideas to conjure with were Roman citizen- 
 ship, or being a son of Abraham. Their 
 service to the world was to fade before the 
 new idea of human brotherhood. 
 
 The Jewish system above all the other 
 systems emphasized righteousness, and cul- 
 tivated moral earnestness. A deep sense of 
 unrest was found in the great natures, and 
 138 
 
THE GOSPEL POWER. 
 
 we find them tossed with the feeling of the 
 contrast between the ideal and the real. 
 They knew not where to turn because of the 
 vastness of the problem of life. Now we are 
 in the same old struggle. It is a study of 
 the human mind. It is not theology. It is 
 not philosophy, but simply fact. All have 
 this great gap between what they are and 
 what they would be, what they see and what 
 they want. This ideal chafes against the real 
 till it passes into worry and fret. It is also 
 the Divine Providence that the world is to be 
 lifted up by compelling us to strive. We 
 have before us the ideal man Jesus. We 
 have in him what we nowadays call manhood 
 instead of righteousness because manhood is 
 a word that is more natural and more com- 
 prehensive. If Jesus Christ is a model of 
 manhood, then in order to be a progressive 
 man, one must be Christian, because the 
 future of the race and the definition of the 
 nature of any individual in it, is realized in 
 Jesus Christ, who stands as the actual com- 
 prehension of the ideal and the real. This 
 however is not the Gospel. If it proved im- 
 139 
 
THE GOSPEL POWER. 
 
 possible for the ancient world to build men 
 and nations on conscience and intellect 
 struggling with law, then the problem is 
 rendered impossible of solution, since we are 
 given only a harder task. The gulf widens 
 between us and the tantalizing vision of per- 
 fection which enchants as it recedes. Every 
 proclamation of the beatitudes may make us 
 despise the righteousness of the scribe, but 
 we are lost to all peace and progress if we 
 attempt the repentance of Jesus with the 
 baptism of John. 
 
 The power of Jesus was unique. Many 
 have tried to account for Jesus by inadequate 
 methods. He was not an orator as Cicero. 
 He taught the people by the roadside and the 
 well. He calmly sat and conversed w T ith 
 them. He simply reasoned the simplicities 
 of the truth as it is. Men saw and loved him. 
 He was born under a cloud. He had no 
 schooling, as schooling w r ent in the theo- 
 logical seminaries of that day. He had no 
 ordination from the temple authorities, and 
 yet he was a religious teacher. He did not 
 affect any of the fine arts in his work. He 
 140 
 
THE GOSPEL POWER. 
 
 did not use philosophy. He did not organize 
 to any considerable extent. His organiza- 
 tion was of such simple character that it is 
 almost impossible to find it. He never wrote 
 a line of parchment, leaving the field of 
 literature entirely out of view. He did 
 nothing in the way of diplomacy. He made 
 no appeal to the sword. He had no wealth. 
 He did not know in the morning where he 
 was to lay his head at night. He did not 
 know from whence was to come his next 
 meal . He was dependent upon the generosity 
 of a few friends. Their gifts were devoid of 
 special money value. He stood for one idea, 
 that idea as large as the universe, the idea of 
 love, friendship, brotherhood. And he raised 
 that so high or rather brought it so low that 
 the centuries have said that the best is in him 
 and that if we reach the best in us, we must 
 discover an inspiration, a sufficient motor to 
 move the soul and solve the problem of reach- 
 ing the complete human stature. Christ's 
 example alone is the absolute annihilation of 
 hope, but Paul proved that there was no hope 
 141 
 
THE GOSPEL POWER. 
 
 even before the consideration of this example, 
 of gaining the ideal. 
 
 Nor is this all which impels us to look 
 further than love considered as duty, to find 
 hope for the individual and society. Many- 
 things have followed the advance of Christ- 
 ianity. Science, commerce and art have 
 poured their treasures upon the nations where 
 Christ is held in honor. Honesty, virtue, 
 truth, righteousness, make rich. All the 
 promises of the Old Testament about abun- 
 dant vineyards are being fulfilled in every 
 righteous people. These things added to us, 
 as those who put first the Kingdom of God, 
 bring great problems, especially where it is 
 proposed to cut down the tree and keep the 
 fruit. The generations have passed through 
 a great evolution. What is that resident 
 force which helps individual men to toil 
 wuthout weariness, to master the flesh, to 
 grow without the withering sense of failure. 
 
 We may not part from our ideals, we do 
 
 not readily do so in matters not religious. 
 
 The house we live in w 7 as once nothing but a 
 
 hole in the ground and then came the idea of 
 
 142 
 
THE GOSPEL POWER. 
 
 four posts with some kind of thatch and finally 
 another room where we put a part of our 
 things instead of having them all in one room, 
 and then three rooms, and by and by came 
 architecture and all the comforts of life as re- 
 gards the home. Everything we take up has 
 this wonderful evolution in it. We work it 
 out in everything except religion, and then 
 we say, Well, I don't know. I think I am 
 good enough now, I don't need any more re- 
 ligion. Here we have the old story of con- 
 ceit, and nothing can be done about it. 
 Nothing ever grew in that soil. You can 
 improve the soil in a man of weak mental 
 faculties, but there seems to be nothing to do 
 for the man or the mood of self-sufficiency. 
 One may say, If there is anything better than 
 I have, I want it. The other says, There is 
 nothing better than I already have. 
 
 There is however the man who confesses 
 his shortcomings, and still shirks. He urges 
 inability as excuse for a lack of aspiration. 
 The ideal is degraded by others who want 
 credit for being conscientious and yet desire 
 to escape from the labor which duty involves. 
 143 
 
THE GOSPEL POWER. 
 
 They accuse the leaders of being dreamy, 
 impracticable. They do not as of yore, kill 
 the prophet, but they freeze him. To escape 
 the annoyance of hearing what they do not 
 propose to apply, they may rid themselves of 
 the pain of straight preaching, by staying at 
 home and cutting the nerve, leaving the hand 
 dead and powerless to lift their fellow-men. 
 Or on the other hand, they may attend 
 church and insulate themselves by the at- 
 tempt to feed their religious natures on the 
 falsely mystical, not on music, but on music 
 divorced from truth and life. Paul was not 
 that kind of stuff. He faced his ideal. He 
 concealed nothing. He ran from nothing. 
 He stood before the truth, heard it through 
 and then declared what, in various measure, 
 is the universal experience of those w T ho try 
 to find peace by working on lines of law. 
 
 "Oh wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver 
 me from the body of this death!" 
 
 In the forced inarch of virtue, he was 
 
 chained by the wrist to a dead comrade, 
 
 whose body he was compelled to carry 
 
 while trying to maintain his place in the 
 
 144 
 
THE GOSPEL POWER. 
 
 ranks. The power of deliverance which he 
 sought and found, he now proclaims to the 
 world. His message came with a moral 
 grasp felt by a mind of the first order, and a 
 heart large enough for Jew and Greek. 
 
 The secret of our success in this life, as 
 God counts success, the secret of it in the 
 individual and in our prosperity as a nation, 
 our social regeneration and development in 
 sweeter manners and purer laws, the sole 
 secret is the Gospel. That is the remedy. 
 That is what this country needs, life from 
 God, more life from a God who is in sym- 
 pathy with humanity, who identifies him- 
 self with men, who gives himself in Jesus 
 Christ as a hostage, so that he goes up or 
 down with us. A great wrath and pity are 
 self-reconciling in an infinite love bent upon 
 and realizing the cure and salvation of men. 
 We are identified with him and he with us 
 in this fact of power to build manhood. 
 Thus, while we hold our ideals, and do not 
 try to put them down, nor ignore them, nor 
 stay away from places where they are con- 
 templated and studied, but make a business 
 145 
 
THE GOSPEL POWER. 
 
 of guarding the slightest flame of the spiritual 
 nature, we do so by a new method. We 
 substitute a personal for a legal process, we 
 find that our relation to Jesus is one of friend- 
 ship, and therefore identification of interests. 
 He bestows power upon us as a gift. This 
 gift does not imply a dole or charity, but 
 friendship. God is our friend and he brings 
 power. He throws his force into the scale 
 where are balanced evil and good, and evil 
 kicks the beam. He asks us not to keep the 
 iron hot by striking it, but to heat the iron 
 and when it is hot, to strike it. We are to 
 be saved, not by what we already are, not by 
 the virtues he has helped us in other ways 
 to attain, even if one should surpass the 
 apostle St. John, but by himself, by his 
 eternal nature revealed in Jesus Christ. 
 Why does God help you and me? Why does 
 he take an interest in humanity? Because 
 he loves to do so. Why did you help that 
 man yesterday? You love to do those things. 
 The philosophy of it is that you have a habit 
 of helpfulness, the outgrowth of action and 
 life choice. God loves the sinner, and the 
 146 
 
THE GOSPEL POWER. 
 
 gospel for every age and country is, that 
 when we have power oi any kind, be it wealth 
 or learning or skill, that superiority brings 
 with it responsibility, and we merge our- 
 selves in our brethren and we love to do it. 
 We live in it and grow by it. God's method 
 is, to be sure, ethical, but ethics that depend 
 upon the absolute God. If we are trying to 
 be right, if we are in a current of desire, 
 hope and attempt, God says, Those imper- 
 fections in my child do not count. I do not 
 hold those against him. I am tr}4ng to take 
 him where he is and get him up out of his 
 imperfections. I am trying to bring him 
 into a personal relationship that will make 
 life a large, free, rich thing to him, so that 
 the Christian life will be a privilege and the 
 service of God a delight. That is the way 
 God talks to us. The morality we have is 
 good as far as it goes. God desires that we 
 should all have more. This is not only de- 
 sirable but necessary, because not to grow is 
 to die. Higher character is absolutely indis- 
 pensable. God is not jealous of you because 
 you are able to add some qualities that do 
 147 
 
THE GOSPEL POWER. 
 
 not at once seem to be very directly related 
 to prayer and the church, but remember that 
 this morality is but the root of a tree yet to 
 grow, of fruit yet to be harvested. Spiritu- 
 ality and morality then center in this devel- 
 opment of salvability. Is there anything 
 that we ought to be more thankful for than 
 the fact that we can grow? We are here to 
 grow in charity for one another, in generosity 
 and magnanimity and kindness and love for 
 all mankind. This is the first great lesson 
 of life. 
 
 A rich man is not to be despised because 
 he is rich. Who does not want riches? A 
 poor man is not to be despised because he is 
 poor and wears poor clothing. He cannot 
 change his clothing as often as other men. 
 He is no more vulgar, if he be vulgar, than 
 the vulgar rich man who knows how to earn 
 his money and does not know how to spend 
 it, while the poor man thinks he knows how 
 to spend it and may not know how to earn it. 
 W T e are not to be communists and hold all in 
 common, but what we need to do is to put 
 together our common interests in the com- 
 148 
 
THE GOSPEL POWER. 
 
 mon brotherhood of charity, to realize that 
 when we have worked our full time in the 
 mill, we have not discharged our full obliga- 
 tion to our employer, since he is also out 
 brother; and when the employer has paid the 
 wage agreed upon he has not, in so doing, 
 discharged his full responsibility because he 
 too, is dealing with a brother. We are to 
 see Jesus Christ in the face of every man, 
 not by virtue of the character which is now 
 his, but by virtue of that salvability, the 
 process of righteousness which the friendship 
 principle works out. That is the Gospel. 
 That is all of it. Brethren, we are called to 
 the liberty of the sons of God. 
 
 Salvation is thus a very clear process in 
 which reason, conscience, ideals, motives 
 and friendship mingle. Salvation means that 
 God loves man and man, despite his wander- 
 ings, loves God. The love in God is the 
 ground of our hope and accomplishment. 
 The love in us is the salvability which gives 
 salvation, or the love of God, its leverage and 
 opportunity. We would not be salvable, by 
 any fictitious, imputed righteousness. Now 
 149 
 
THE GOSPEL POWER. 
 
 if there be any old commentary or sermon 
 about the house that preacheth another gospel 
 you may not need to keep it under lock and 
 key, because the sheep know the voice of the 
 shepherd, and it probably has few if any 
 readers. This sort of literature is already 
 on sale in job lots with many other books for 
 a few cents, or found in broken sets on the 
 top shelves of second hand book stalls. 
 Such works have but a fleeting interest for 
 the man who has formed the habit of rever- 
 ing a book as a book, just as people are 
 willing to believe a statement they see print- 
 ed, when if the same statement were made 
 by word of mouth, they might give it no at- 
 tention whatever. 
 
 The apostle was not a theologian engaged 
 seventeen hundred years in advance of the 
 Westminster Confession, to support that false 
 system. He was a brother Jew writing to 
 his countrymen in the Jewish quarter at 
 Rome, and incidentally to the Gentile 
 element, that there was a new motor discovery 
 for right living and that it would w T ork for all 
 mankind. The epistle to the Romans is no 
 150 
 
THE GOSPEL POWER. 
 
 longer the hard book to understand which 
 the teachers made it. A child can under- 
 stand it now, if I am right in the following 
 free paraphrase in words of one syllable : 
 Paul, who was a great and good man, who 
 had love for all men and his Lord, said that 
 men who sought to do right and to be right 
 at heart by work at the church and such like 
 things were in the same wrong way he was 
 when a young man. He did not blame them, 
 but said, while you should not work less, do 
 not get the cart in front of the horse. Do 
 w r ork in the free air of love. Work by love 
 not b}^ mere love of work. Peace will dwell 
 in your mind as you learn to lose self in the 
 work of love. You seek to do good not to get 
 peace, and peace seeks you. So you see 
 peace is the child of love and faith, not of 
 work for the sake of work. Where love is, 
 sin is not, for love casts out sin. 
 
 The law of ritual is fulfilled in the law of 
 love. The law of ethics is completed in the 
 law of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is 
 holy, because perfectly ethical and friendly. 
 The law of lofty ideal becomes the law of 
 151 
 
THE GOSPEL POWER. 
 
 happy obedience. Peace in the soul enables 
 us to walk with God through the imperfect 
 and failing scenes of a life growing in strength 
 and freedom. We are not ashamed of the 
 Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God 
 unto salvation, to both salvability and grace, 
 to salvation by truth, by the living truth of a 
 perfect friendship. 
 
 152 
 
VII. 
 
 LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
"There is a drawback to the value of all statements of the 
 doctrine; and I think that one abstains from writing or print- 
 ing on immortality of the soul, because, when he comes to the 
 end of his statement, the hungry eyes that run through it will 
 close disappointed; the listeners say, that is not here which 
 we desire, — and I shall be as much wronged by their hasty 
 conclusion, as they feel themselves wronged by my omissions. 
 I mean that I am a better believer, and all serious souls are 
 better believers in the immortality than we can give grounds 
 for. The real evidence is too subtle, or is higher than we can 
 write down in propositions, and therefore Wordsworth's 
 "Ode" is the best modern essay on the subject. We can not 
 prove our faith by syllogisms. The argument refuses to form 
 in the mind. * * Speak of the mount in the mount. Not by 
 literature or theology, but only by rare integrity, by a man 
 permeated and perfumed with airs of heaven,- with manliest 
 or womanliest enduring love,— can the vision be clear to a use 
 the most sublime. And hence the fact that in the minds of 
 men the testimony of a few inspired souls has had such weight 
 and penetration. You shall not say "O my bishop. O my 
 pastor, is there any resurrection? What do you think? Did 
 Dr. Channing believe that we should know each other? did 
 Wesley? did Butler? did Fenelon?" What questions are these? 
 Go read Milton, Shakespeare or any truly ideal poet. Read 
 Plato, or any seer of the interior realties. Read St. Augustine, 
 Swedenborg, Immanuel Kant. Let any master simply recite 
 to you the substantial laws of the intellect and in the presence 
 of these laws themselves you will never ask such primary 
 school questions." — Ralph Waldo Emerson. Letters and Social 
 Aims. Essay on Immortality, pp. 280-281. 
 
 "It is not by any speculative ideas of philosophy, but by the 
 vision of Jesus' life and death, and by the feeling of his im- 
 perishable union with God that mankind, so far as it believes 
 in these things, has attained to that certainty of eternal life for 
 which it was meant, and which it dimly discerns- eternal life 
 in time and beyond time. This feeling first established faith 
 in the value of personal life. But of every attempt to demon- 
 strate the certainty of immortality by a logical process, we 
 may say in the words of the poet: 
 
 Believe and venture; as for pledges, 
 The Gods give none. 
 
 Belief in the living Lord, in a life eternal, is the act of the 
 freedom which is born of God."— Harnack. What is Chris- 
 tianity? p. 176. 
 
VII. 
 
 LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 "I am come that they might have life, and that they might 
 have it more abundantly.'* Jno. 10: 10. 
 
 "I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a 
 place for you I -will come again and receive you unto myself 
 that where I am there ye may be also.*' 1 Jno. 14: 2, 3. 
 
 Men cling to life. Outside of the range of 
 Christian influence, men not only fear death, 
 but even regard it with terror. Christianity 
 has largely removed the fear of death, while 
 at the same time doubling her own task, by 
 increasing the desirability of life. There is 
 rarely much pain at death. What men dread 
 is annihilation. Some sa} 7 that death ends 
 all . Others deny that death is the end . The 
 result is a painful questioning. It is no un- 
 common thing to hear a man say, "I would 
 give anything to know T whether immortality 
 is a fact." A large class comes into contact 
 155 
 
LIFE AND IMMOBTALITY. 
 
 with religion just enough to keep agitated, 
 and not enough to make its great truths the 
 basis of conduct or the inspiration of life. 
 They deprive themselves of the greatest proof 
 of immortality. There is a proof of immor- 
 tality in the probable argument from reason 
 working in the fields of philosophy and 
 natural science. There is however a higher 
 and more convincing proof in the demand the 
 soul makes when that same reason is clari- 
 fied, not by an emotion, but by that more 
 complete obedience to law which can make 
 the mortal heavenly. 
 
 We are not to refuse audience to the views 
 of philosophy, because our own faith in every 
 future event rests on probability. Let us 
 rather call up, as our first witness, Father 
 Time himself, with his scythe, hour glass, 
 hoary locks, and high forehead. He is to 
 testify of time not eternity. Tell us Father, 
 what you know about immortality from your 
 observation of men. His answer is, that 
 men, as a rule, have ever clung to a belief in 
 their immortality. Here and there individ- 
 uals have doubted and attacked the doctrine. 
 156 
 
LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 These cases are exceptional. They have 
 rather served to demonstrate the vitality of 
 the teaching, which has gained headway in 
 spite of attack and strengthened its hold on 
 the soil, as the winds of wintry doubt have 
 wrestled with its branches. It is easy to 
 undervalue this witness. No one can afford 
 to ignore the drift of the centuries. It may 
 pay to ignore the testimony of one man, or 
 ten men, but the agreement of a race, and an 
 agreement made emphatic in the ratio of 
 growth in civilization, is quite another 
 matter. "Men may," it is objected, "believe 
 what is after all not true." Yes, one man, 
 ten men, even a generation; but when you 
 consider the masses of men, it takes less 
 credulity to say that the fact of immortality 
 corresponds to the belief, than to say that it 
 is untrue. This idea gathers force when we 
 remember that we do not have to quote 
 merely the heroes of the visible church, but 
 that Cicero, Plato, Plutarch, Montesquieu, 
 Franklin, Robert Burns, Emerson, and a 
 host beside, held to belief in immortality. 
 157 
 
LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 These facts remove the question above the 
 level of scorn. 
 
 No man ought to want to die as the beast 
 dies. If he takes such a creed, let him hold 
 it reluctantly, not by choice. There is noth- 
 ing very pleasant about it. Let him prove 
 to us that death ends all. We are all alive 
 here today. We shall all be alive tomorrow, 
 unless something occurs before that time to 
 kill us. The only thing we know, that can 
 be conceived to kill us, that is, to com- 
 pletely end both soul and body, is called 
 death. So far as anyone can see to the con- 
 trary, death only disorders the material or- 
 ganism. It redistributes the type in nature's 
 font. It cannot distribute the ideas and 
 spirit which the type has expressed. I exist. 
 It is an assumption wholly without founda- 
 tion, that death touches the soul. No one 
 should say, I die with the body, when even 
 Mr. Ingersoll can assert, "Hope may hear 
 the nutter of a wing, and faith may see a 
 star." 
 
 Science has taught us to expect surprises. 
 Immortality is no greater surprise than the 
 158 
 
LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 origin of species. The origin of species is 
 no greater surprise than the development of 
 animal from vegetable life. This in turn is 
 not so great a leap as the one from inorganic 
 to organic nature. These facts remove all 
 presumption against a future environment 
 for the soul which shall correspond to its 
 nature and the law of its growth. If science 
 has established anything in regard to the 
 method of the Divine creation, it is, that 
 harmony exists between the various parts of 
 nature. A fin on a fish means water. A 
 wing on a bird means air. A cushion on the 
 end of a camel's leg means hot sand. The 
 wild geese going south means winter. Mor- 
 tise and tenon do not so closely fit as one 
 part of God's creation fits another. The de- 
 sign is not less because of the manner in 
 which it is displayed. The harmony tran- 
 scends appearance, and reveals as kindred, 
 varing forms of life. The Christian is the 
 type of the future. The Earth, though a 
 vestibule of immortality, is becoming like 
 the porch of the Hebrew temple, beautiful. 
 Nature furnishes the raw material. The 
 159 
 
LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 harmonies are hidden. The order is, search, 
 discovery, use. The stages of ascent are 
 barbarism, civilization, christianization, im- 
 mortality. We do not have to wait for the 
 full development to enjoy a goodly measure 
 of its benefits. We are under happy laws, 
 not caprice. God could be neither wise nor 
 good to give the young wild goose the in- 
 stinct by which it safely goes from Manitoba 
 to the sunny south and then bestow on man 
 the much stronger instinct for a summer land 
 of immortality only to fool him with anni- 
 hilation. We not only believe in and desire 
 a future life, we demand it. Animals do not 
 demand it. The law of harmony is not 
 violated in their case. Unlike men they 
 have a bounded horizon. They secure a 
 speedy development and serve their purpose 
 of utility. Man, on the other hand, develops 
 slowly and at the best only gets a start in 
 this life. When he shakes off the flesh, he 
 is just prepared to live. The greatest men 
 are in haste to call themselves infants. They 
 admit that they have but touched the hem of 
 the garment of knowledge and character. 
 160 
 
LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 They "have only taken a few steps. Earth is 
 the alphabet, Heaven the literature of hu- 
 manity. Our lives are full of plans. Some 
 succeed. Some fail. "Hearts are broken, 
 heads are turned by castles in the air." It 
 was not wrong to construct some of them. 
 "Better to have loved and lost than never to 
 have loved at all" applies to much of this 
 life. It is quite another thing to say that 
 disappointment is the main fact, when all the 
 facts are understood. Men cannot be fooled 
 all the time. They will not be content with 
 the food that satisfies a brute. Aspiration is 
 not forever married to doom. What God has 
 not joined together He will most certainly 
 keep asunder. 
 
 Things happen every day which make us 
 desire distributive justice. We say that man 
 will have to give an account. There will 
 have to be a reckoning. A righteous appre- 
 hension of a future judgment rises in us. It 
 looks beyond this life. The Creator could 
 put in us an apprehension of a future judg- 
 ment to act solely as a restraint in this world. 
 He would be guilty of making us believe a 
 161 
 
LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 lie in order to govern us. The government 
 of human affairs is clumsy. Men who are 
 smart go free. The dull criminal is caught. 
 Those who are comparatively innocent suffer 
 degrading punishment. God's justice w r orks 
 itself out on a long and correct scale. Our 
 God surely believes in government by the 
 people, instead of interfering Himself or help- 
 ing kings and vice-gerents to do so in His 
 name. But should he hold court at the town 
 hall tomorrow, in place of our regular judge, 
 we should be interested to see who would be 
 called into court. It requires a future life to 
 make the last first and the first last, to right 
 wrongs, to proclaim things secret, to vindi- 
 cate honor. Merciful and righteous dis- 
 criminations will obtain dominion. Immor- 
 tality is necessary. There is a Heaven, 
 There is a Hell. Neither is physical. Both 
 begin in this life. The former never ends. 
 The latter does not end in this life. Here is 
 a good man impressed with hope. There is 
 a man depressed with fear. His sins are 
 real, great and unforsaken. The feelings 
 are not accidental. They follow law. We 
 162 
 
LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 are looking at a portrait of humanity. These 
 facts have little meaning unless there is a 
 future life. 
 
 Note also the abounding hardship of the 
 world. Terrible diseases are to be fought. 
 Pov T erty is to be struggled against by millions. 
 Storms, fires, floods, earthquakes, massacres, 
 temptations, evils legion, mountain high, 
 attend the infant steps of man. "The whole 
 creation groans." Mr. Ingersoll was right. 
 Said he, "If I were to make the world I would 
 make health catching." He is right, if this 
 world be all. The sacrifice would not pay. 
 The burden would be too great. The pain 
 is not guaged to the need of one short life 
 soon to end forever. Force yet rules the 
 larger portion of the world. The vast mili- 
 tarism of the European powers, is a confes- 
 sion of this fact, whether it is regarded as a 
 necessary defense or the spirit of aggression. 
 The doctrine of one w T orld at a time is false, 
 if by it one means to ignore the worth and 
 dignity which the truth of immortality be- 
 stows. Mental, moral and spiritual manhood 
 are trained in the school of difficulty. Too 
 163 
 
LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 noble qualities are being developed to make 
 health catching. The cost is too great for 
 the return on the investment. We demand 
 an immortality wherein pain and every sort 
 of expense shall prove themselves justifiable. 
 No one objects to a God who is a consuming 
 fire if His fire has a purifying purpose and 
 result. 
 
 Again the belief is not only associated with 
 the highest type of character found in the 
 world, but men and women declare that 
 without the fact of immortality they would 
 not have that character. It would seem to 
 be impossible to escape the conclusion that 
 belief in immortality is essential to the 
 growth of the best manhood. The lives not 
 only of Paul and Luther, but our February 
 saints, Lincoln, Mary Lyon and George 
 Washington received motive and power from 
 an immortal perspective. If it be declared 
 that they only imagined the dome over their 
 heads to be lighted by beams from an eternal 
 world, then we are asked to believe that a 
 delusion can produce good character and that 
 a falsehood is more wholesome than the truth. 
 164 
 
LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 Bach year many loyal citizens step aside from 
 their usual duties to give special honor to 
 Abraham Lincoln. Many a pulpit rings with 
 patriotic pride for the martyr president. Of 
 him John Lothrop Motley, the historian, has 
 said, "He went through life bearing the load 
 of a people's sorrow with a smiling face. As 
 long as he lived he was the guiding star of a 
 whole brave nation, and when he died the 
 little children cried in the streets." Is this 
 such a man as our pantheistic friends sacrifice 
 to the mass of society, while leaving no more 
 room for his own personality after death, than 
 the smoke of a locomotive has, as it dis- 
 appears in the frosty air ? Our home and 
 friendship ties bind us more closely together 
 as years pass. The young couple have a 
 more demonstrative love than the old. The 
 old couple have a deeper love than the young. 
 Time enriches life. It removes some things 
 and brings in others. The vitality and power 
 of the affections are intense, unconquerable 
 and always growing. Little ones come and 
 go. Often the only consolation that makes 
 life endurable is belief in immortality. Life 
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LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 would be a tantalizing thing, not worth 
 living, a lie, without a future life. 
 
 Thus far we have been answering the 
 question put in the book of Job, "If a man 
 die shall he live again ?" We may open the 
 New Testament and find that Jesus Christ 
 assumed immortality, while he brought life. 
 If He had not been going to prepare heavenly 
 mansions for them, He would have told them 
 so. Such things were matters of course. 
 The prime condition of the occupation of the 
 mansions, was keeping His commandments, 
 character. He therefore spent all his time 
 in telling them by example and precept, how 
 to live. Having the revelation, the personal 
 Gospel of the risen L,ord, we have complete 
 peace. The Gospel is not a guess. It is 
 revelation. It is not limited. It is univer- 
 sal. It is not relative. It is absolute. It is 
 not a future matter to wait for, but a present 
 lever to pry up life. It is itself life. It is 
 for Earth as well as Heaven. It is eternal, 
 a gift rather than a promise, a possession 
 rather than a hope. "He that believeth on 
 me hath eternal life," not will have it. Who 
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LIFE AND IMMOBTALITT. 
 
 believes that He who spoke these words was 
 annihilated at the change we call death? 
 Love declares its own eternity. There are 
 transient elements in the Earth, but genuine 
 virtue is not one of them. Some say that "a 
 man without virtue may exist hereafter, but 
 that a man with virtue ought to live forever." 
 He will. Eternal life and eternal virtue are 
 synonymous terms. It is not enough to 
 exist. We must live. Existence without 
 life may be worse than death. Life without 
 existence is an absurdity, Doubt and sin 
 are not necessarily related. It is neverthe- 
 less true, that more men would have the con- 
 viction of immortality, were it not for the 
 blur which sin makes. Eternal life should 
 appeal to man not as a reward but as an in- 
 trinsic good. It develops the whole man. 
 It builds him on a larger scale than he would 
 otherwise be constructed. Immortalit} r gives 
 scope, outlook and satisfying range to the 
 mind. It gives tonic. It makes tolerant. 
 It justifies sacrifice. It can afford to be 
 serene in the storms of life. It is full, free, 
 growing, abundant lite. Some one asks 
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LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 whether I am willing to "call it salvation." 
 No ! It is more. It includes salvation. It 
 is sufficient in itself. It can if necessary be 
 happy in Hell. 
 
 Looking at humanity exactly as it is, we 
 often fail to discover very much dignity. 
 We might easily spare the citizens of China, 
 India, Africa, Turkey and many other coun- 
 tries. Sink these countries in the sea and it 
 would be hard to show that the world had 
 lost one idea or a single invention. Take an 
 illustration nearer home. Take the first man 
 you meet. He has this, that or the other 
 good quality. The rest is accounted for by 
 the fact thai he is assuming, or is good look- 
 ing, or that he has a good address, or has 
 had forty thousand dollars left him by a rich 
 annt. He is an overestimated soul. He is 
 an immortal far from home. Can we help 
 matters? We can first of all throw the man 
 on the true and eternal perspective. Wait. 
 He is now in the seed form. I grant you 
 more, that the man is mean, that he is a liar. 
 You will have to regard him as a very sick 
 patient. Project this ignorant, sinful man 
 168 
 
LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 against the background of a hopeful eternity 
 and you will be able to work when you would 
 otherwise despair. There is a victory for the 
 race through him who "tasted death for 
 every man." Each man has an infinite 
 value and unlimited possibility of growth. 
 
 Heaven is pictured for us in the Scriptures. 
 We receive it as pictorial. From the ex- 
 ample of the Scriptures we, as individuals, 
 accept the same structural principle of pic- 
 turing our Heaven. The pigments of our 
 painting are taken from our daily life. 
 Deeds and spirit mingle to make a beauty 
 which we can not analyze. The best artist 
 is the one whose w r ork is the most truthful. 
 He has the ascending habit of imagination. 
 His moral genius works upw T ard instead of 
 downward. He parts with a dear friend and 
 Heaven is joined to earth by one more golden 
 cable. The older he gets the more populous 
 the other world becomes. The disposition of 
 us in families here, the gradual, certain call- 
 ing of us all one by one, deepens our convic- 
 tion of immortality. 
 
 We dare not trust mere existence. If we 
 169 
 
LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 hope to meet and associate forever with those 
 who have gone before us, we must live on 
 their plane. Existence in an animal can 
 be conceived to consist with annihilation. 
 The question has been raised whether we are 
 naturally immortal or whether we win our 
 way to immortality in life inspired and im- 
 parted by Jesus Christ. While one may not 
 subtract at all from the importance of the 
 arrival at Heaven by the vital ethical process 
 of "truthing it in love,/' as Paul would say, 
 we must believe that immortality is knit into 
 our soul tissues. It is easier for one to 
 believe that man is so made in the image of 
 God, that it is all but impossible to get that 
 image out, than it is to think that there is so 
 little of His image in a man, that masses will 
 have to meet annihilation because they do 
 not rise into the life of the Christ in this life 
 or the life beyond. It was for this reason 
 that Jesus rejected the temptation to em- 
 phasize material prosperity or to win results 
 with the crowds by sensations of magic, or 
 lord it over them by power. 
 
 Whether your view of the facts leads you 
 170 
 
LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 to hope or to fear, this great fact remains, 
 God is love demanding life and life is love 
 demanding, not a fair chance merely, not a 
 probation even, but all that an almighty, all- 
 loving father can devise in not only begin- 
 ning, but completing the creation and educa- 
 tion of his own child. It is our highest 
 privilege to find refuge in God's eternal 
 goodness. The incarnation and the events 
 which it includes, were not after-thoughts of 
 God to relieve a desperate and unexpected 
 situation. It was God speaking to his child, 
 as soon as the child could hear. It was God 
 appearing to his child, as soon as the child 
 could see. The practical question is a pres- 
 ent world issue. 
 
 Jesus assumed the truth of immortality. 
 He did not discuss the speculative question 
 whether immortality is natural or an attain- 
 ment. Neither did he fail to make it vividly 
 clear that immortality, like our experience 
 on Earth, depends for its value on our obedi- 
 ence to the laws of our being. His thought 
 transcended time. Eternal life was not life 
 belonging to eternity, but life in common 
 171 
 
LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 with time and eternity, above both, coinci- 
 dent with and independent of both. It was 
 life from God and in God, life in society here 
 and there, life abundant and growing, de- 
 manding prepared environment for a pre- 
 paring character, an environment adapted 
 to the needs of each, and directed by the 
 Heavenly Father in his universal problem of 
 educating and training his family. He has 
 undertaken the work and he will carry it to a 
 successful issue. The proof of immortality 
 for a given person is another matter. Shall 
 we exist or live? As we answer this ques- 
 tion, in this world, each one for himself, we 
 admit or reject an enlarging sense or personal 
 proof of the dignity of life, the humanity of 
 God, the victory of righteousness and im- 
 mortality itself. 
 
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