Class : 1 . ; • ..■■ I Bonlc \\ 4 - S 4- COPYRiGHT DEPOSm old Truths and New Facts THE COLE LECTURES Old Truths and New Facts - - ( ig^s ) By Charles E. Jefferson, D.D. The North American Idea - - - ( ^9^ ) By James A. Wacdonald, LL. D. The Foundation of Modern Religion - ( ^9'(> ) By Herbert B. Workman, D. D. Winning the World for Christ - ( ^9^5 ) By Bishop Walter R. Lambuth. Personal Christianity - - - - ( ^9^4 ) By Bishop Francis J. McConnell. The God We Trust ( ^9^3 ) By G. A. Johnston Ross. What Does Christianity Mean ? - {'^9^2]) By W. H. P. Faunce. Some Great Leaders in the World Movement - - - - - ( ^9^1 ) By Robert E. Speer. In the School of Christ - - - ( ^9^0 ) By Bishop William Fraser McDowell. Jesus the Worker ( ^909 ) By Charles McTyeire Bishop, D. D. The Fact of Conversion - - - {\igo8 ) By George Jackson, B. A. God's Message to the Human Soul ( 1907 ) By John Watson (Ian Maclaren). Christ and Science ( igo6 ) By Francis Henry Smith. The Universal Elements of the Christian Religion ----- ( ^905 ) By Charles Cuthbert Hall. The Religion of the Incarnation - ( ^903 ) By Bishop Eugene Russell Hendrix. The Cole Lectures for igi8 dtli'vertd before Vanderb'dt Univeniiy Old Truths and New Facts Christian Life and Thinking as Modified by the Great War >By CHARLES ^ JEFFERSON, D. D. Pastor of the Broadway Tabernacle, New York New York Chicago Fleming H. Revell Company London and Edinburgh Copyright, 191 8, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY ^ (o New York : 1 58 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh : 75 Princes Street THE COLE LECTURES THE late Colonel E. W. Cole of Nashville, Ten- nessee, donated to Vanderbilt University the sum of five thousand dollars, afterwards increased by Mrs. E. W. Cole to ten thousand, the design and con- ditions of which gift are stated as follows : '• The object of this fund is to establish a foundation for a perpetual Lectureship in connection with the Bib- lical Department of the University, to be restricted in its scope to a defense and advocacy of the Christian re- ligion. The lectures shall be delivered at such inter- vals, from time to time, as shall be deemed best by the Board of Trust ; and the particular theme and lecturer shall be determined by nomination of the Theological Faculty and confirmation of the College of Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Said lecture shall always be reduced to writing in full, and the man- uscript of the same shall be the property of the Univer- sity, to be published or disposed of by the Board of Trust at its discretion, the net proceeds arising therefrom to be added to tlie foundation fund, or otherwise used for the benefit of the Biblical Department." Preface THESE lectures have for their aim the indication of a few of the points at which it is reasonable to expect a modification of Christian opinion to be brought about by the great war. It is haz- ardous to make predictions at a time like this as to the total outcome of the war, for no one can declare with assurance what the war is going to accomplish. It is not likely, however, that there will be any revolutionary changes in the Church and her teachings. The prophets of evil who declare that the Church will be hopelessly crippled are cer- tainly mistaken, so also, perhaps, are the prophets who picture in glowing colours a Church intensely spiritualized and completely made over. But at various points there will most likely be changes of emphasis. Certain Christian doctrines will receive a prominence which has hitherto been denied them, and 7 8 PREFACE sundry truths will be pushed into greater clearness by the pressure of this vast world upheaval. C. E. J. New York, N. V. Contents I. The Conception of Jesus Christ . 1 1 II. The Appreciation of Vicarious Suffering 45 III. The Idea and Practice of Prayer . 79 IV. The Attitude to THE Church . 117 V. The Use of THE Bible . . -155 VI. The Estimate of the World Mission OF Christianity . . . .191 LECTURE I THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS CHRIST LECTURE I THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS CHRIST THE writer of the last book of the New Testament says that when he saw Jesus Christ he fell at His feet as one dead. This is something we do not find in the Gospels. No disciple in the Gospels is so overpowered by the presence of Jesus as to fall down before Him awestruck and unnerved. This is because Jesus in the Gospels is in the days of His humiliation. He is there in the form of a servant and is found in the fashion of a man. His majesty is hidden and His glory is veiled. But the exile on Patmos, gazing upon Jesus Christ as He walks in the midst of the world's life, beholds Him in the full splendour of His authority and power, and when he sees Him thus, he falls speechless and overwhelmed at His feet. That is a striking description which meets one in the first chapter of the book of the Revelation. It is the only description of 13 14 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS the Risen Christ which the New Testament contains. Let us look at this figure which amazes and paralyzes the prisoner on Patmos. He is clothed with a garment which reaches down to the foot. He is girt about with a golden girdle. His head is white as white wool, white as snow, that is, it is perfectly white. His eyes are as a flame of fire. They flash and burn. His feet are like unto burnished brass, as if it had been refined in a furnace. His voice is all pervasive as is the voice of the ocean booming along the shore. In His right hand He holds seven stars. In His mouth He car- ries a two-edged sword. His face glows, shining as the sun shines in his strength. John declares that when that figure ap- peared before him, he fell at His feet as one dead. We are surprised that he should have been so solemnized. To us the figure seems grotesque, almost ridiculous. If we should see somebody with white hair carrying a sword in his mouth and holding seven stars in his hand, and walking with feet of brass, we should gape at him with amazed curi- osity or we should laugh right out. How could John be so profoundly impressed by what he saw? THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS CHRIST 15 We must remember that this is a symbolic description of Jesus Christ and iiot a picture of Him. The book of the Revelation is symbolic and not pictorial. There are no pictures in it for the eye. We have dif- ficulty in reading the book because we stumble constantly over our eye. We per- sist in making the book a book of pictures. But it is not a picture book. It is a book of symbols. Symbols are for the reason, and not for the eye. An algebra, for instance, has no pictures in it. Many a pupil has wished it had. It has things in it which look like this : x + y^ + z^ = ( a -|- ab -|- c=')'' That is not for the eye, but for the mathe- matical understanding. Many persons like that sort of thing when they have the key which unlocks the meaning. Revelation is a book of symbols presented for the in- struction of the spiritual reason. It is the attributes of Jesus Christ which are being expressed in literary symbols, which the writer has culled from the literature of his race. He says that Christ has a robe reaching down to His feet. By this he tells us that Christ is a priest, a High Priest, a servant of God. The writer is a Jew who has become a Christian, and his mind is filled with the traditional conceptions of the l6 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS Jewish people. To a Jew the highest per- son on earth was the High Priest. He was a mediator between God and man. His robe symboHzed his authority and dignity. To John on Patmos Christ is the High Priest of humanity. He wears the sacer- dotal robe, and over the robe He wears a girdle. It is a golden girdle. A golden girdle was a feature of the dress of kings. John is telling us, that to him, Christ is not only priest, He is also king. He is priest of humanity, He is king of the nations. He wears His girdle not round His waist, but up under His breasts, as was the custom of the High Priest when he was on duty, show- ing that Christ is engaged in active service. The Christ whom John sees is working mightily in human history. His hair is white — absolutely white. He is old, very old, old as eternity. When Daniel described the " ancient of days " he gave him hair white as wool. John expressed in the white hair the eternity of Jesus. His eyes flash and burn like flames of fire. Fire is the most penetrating and searching of all the elements. The eyes of Christ pierce, they look through men, they burn their way into the innermost recesses of the heart. Christ is omniscient. His omniscience is symbol- THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS CHRIST 1 7 ized by the eyes of fire. His feet look like brass which has been heated to a white heat in a furnace. Here we are told of the om- nipotence of Christ. His feet are hard and hot; they trample down all opposition; they scorch and shrivel into nothingness all ob- stacles and foes. His voice is like the ocean's voice, all pervading. The world is filled with the reverberations of what He says. In His hand He holds stars. The stars are churches. There are seven of them. Seven is symbolic of completeness. He holds all the churches in His hand. He holds them high above the raging flood which threatens to engulf them. The sword of Christ is His word, His message, His judgment. The Prophets had loved to say that when the Messiah came He would smite the nations with the word of His mouth. John symbolized Christ's word by the image of a sword. It is a two-edged sword. It cuts in every direction. There is no escape from its keen and pitiless edge. His face shines like the sun when the sun has no cloud upon it. We Americans do not know the sun. Sometimes in July and August we think we are quite well ac- quainted with him, but we know him only a little. You must go to the Orient to find 1 8 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS what a cloudless sky is, and to feel the power of the sun shining in his strength. When the oriental sun shines in his strength, both man and beast wilt down before him. No living creature can long stand his rays. To gaze upon him is impossible. His glory immediately strikes the eye blind. John sees Christ in His glory. He symbolizes the glory by the strongest symbol the world affords — " the sun shining in his strength." " When I saw Him I fell at His feet as one dead." But Christ is not willing that His servant should lie on the ground paralyzed and help- less. He lays His right hand upon him saying: "Do not be afraid: I am the first and the last. I am the Living One. I was dead, and behold I am alive forevermore. I have the keys of death and of Hades." The book of the Revelation was written to inspire courage and endurance and hope. All who would go into it must pass this figure of Christ at the threshold. It is only when we see Him that we can hope to understand the contents of the chapters which follow. The prisoner on Patmos, when he sees Jesus Christ, working in human history, endows Him with all the attributes of God. THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS CHRIST 19 During the last hundred years Jesus of Nazareth has been forging steadily to the front. Early in the nineteenth century the cry went forth : " Back to Jesus ! " and the religious world has been wondrously stirred and moved by that cry. It may be said to have been the most potent cry of all that wonderful century. The student of church history has many surprises, and one of them is the subordinate position which has been given to Jesus Christ through extended periods of Christian history. Through large parts of the Christian world, during what we call the middle ages, the Virgin Mary held the supreme place in the popular mind. Most of the prayers were offered to her. To her went out the richest love of the heart. Jesus was hidden behind His mother, and sometimes lost to view completely amid the vast company of the saints. The story told of an experience in the life of Martin Luther, when he was a young man, throws a flood of light upon the mental habits of the early sixteenth century. Luther had been brought up in a pious home. Both of his parents were devout. When young Luther, overtaken by a thunder-storm in a field, sees his companion struck down by lightning, he falls upon his knees crying in 20 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS consternation: "Help, Saint Anna! I'll be a monk." He did not think of crying to Jesus. He cried to Jesus' grandmother. Even in Protestantism, Jesus has often been permitted to sink into the background, and the Gospels have been denied that supreme place which they claim and hold to-day. Luther exalted Christ, but it was the Christ he found in the Pauline Epistles rather than the Christ of the Gospels. It was Paul's letter to the Romans which opened to him the gates of Paradise, and he always declared that the letter to the Gala- tians was his wife; he loved it more than any other book of the New Testament. The English Puritans of the seventeenth century placed the Old Testament on a level with the New, and some of them lived more in the Pentateuch and the Psalter than they did in the Gospels. The heart of John Wesley was kindled in the eighteenth cen- tury not by a sentence from the Gospels, but by an idea in a letter of Paul. As an illustration of this subordination of the Gospels, look at the Burial Service in the Anglican Prayer Book. Here is a service to be used in the most solemn hour of life, when hearts are bruised and bleed- ing, and the sweetest words of consolation THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS CHRIST 21 are needed, and to whom do the compilers of this service go? The service begins w^ith a quotation from Jesus, just one sentence, and passes at once to Job, and then goes to Job again. It then takes a chapter from the Psalter, and then another chapter from the Psalter, and not until the end do we have any extended passage from the New Testa- ment, and then it is not from the Gospels but from one of St. Paul's epistles. That is indeed a surprising fact: that Christian men formulating a Burial Service in the sixteenth century should make place in it for only one sentence from the lips of the Son of God. There is no branch of the Christian Church in our day which would or could form a service after that fashion. Jesus has come to the front. In our deep hours we desire to listen to Him. To-day the attention of the Christian world is focused on Jesus. Everything con- nected with His earthly life has become sacred to us. The whole Christian Church is interested in Palestine. Within the last fifty years that little country has been ex- plored as no other country has ever been explored in all the world. Geographers have mapped the courses of the streams, and computed the height of the hills, and 22 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS sounded the depths of its lakes, and meas- ured every square mile of its surface. Geologists have gone under the surface, and have reverently studied the rock strata as though these too were holy. Archeologists have been busy with their pick and spade searching for fresh knowledge in the dust heaps and debris. Artists have travelled through the country painting its landscapes and the customs of its people. Photog- raphers have gone everywhere, photograph- ing every natural object, bringing the whole land close to the eye. The world is flooded with pictures of Palestine. Christian homes are not complete without pictures of the Mount of Olives and the Sea of Galilee. It is indeed a holy land, because " over its acres walked those blessed feet which 1,900 years ago were nailed for our advantage to the bitter cross." Along with this labour of the explorer and artist there has gone forward a work of investigation of the words and deeds of Jesus. The Gospels have been made the supreme subject of study. They have been studied as no other books have ever been studied since men learned how to study. Every chapter, every verse, every word, every syllable has been dissected and THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS CHRIST 23 analyzed, and compared, and squeezed that every drop of its meaning might be gotten out. The Gospels have been put into a crucible, and the crucible heated seven times hot, and an analysis has been conducted as complete and searching as any chemical analysis, and every ingredient, literary, his- torical, physical, psychical, has been labori- ously segregated and studied. One might say that the Gospels have been distilled, and that every globule of vapour has been put under the eye of the compound microscope of modern scientific scholarship, in order that nothing may escape. No other books in the world have been subjected to such long continued and pitiless scrutiny. You who are busy in other fields have no con- ception of the vast and unwearied and pains- taking and conscientious and fearless study which has been expended on these writings. And what is the outcome of it all? An augmented emphasis on the humanity of Jesus. The man Jesus is now vivid to every eye. We know Him as He lived and talked and worked in Palestine. We know Him better than the men of any preceding generation have ever known Him. He stands before us clean cut, picturesque, fascinating. We see Him — the Galilean 24 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS teacher. We see Him teaching' on the side of the hill, on the shore of the sea, in the temple. We see Him, the Galilean healer, the great physician, who had wonderful power over the bodies of men. We see Him, the lovable and faithful friend, the comrade, the companion, the man who loved society and found supreme delight in fellow- ship. We see Him, the hero and martyr, the man who was crucified outside the wall of Jerusalem, and who was buried in a rich man's tomb. All this has been made pos- sible by the indefatigable labours of scholars within the last hundred years. The emphasis on the physical side of Jesus' life, however, has not been without sundry regrettable consequences. We have studied the man Jesus so long that we have become somewhat blind to His majesty. Familiarity has not begotten contempt, it could never do that, but it has taken oflf some of the edge of our reverence. We do not feel the awe which the exile on Patmos felt. You can see the lowered reverence in some of our Gospel hymns. Not a few of them are quite sugary. They have a deal to say about " dear Jesus " and " sweet Jesus." We have dwelt so long at the manger, and have made so much of Christ- THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS CHRIST 25 mas poetry, and Christmas songs, and have so magnified the babyhood of Jesus that many pious persons speak of Jesus in much the same kind of language which a mother uses in speaking to her baby. The tend- ency comes out in other fields. There are travelling evangelists, some of them of coarse minds and vulgar tongue. Men of this stripe slap Jesus, as it were, on the shoulder, and speak to Him as though He were a street Arab. It is not surprising that a man here and there should be willing to indulge in such ill-mannered, shocking speech, but it is appalling that Christian people in large numbers should endure this form of sacrilege, even for an hour. It proves our spiritual degradation. It shows that the flame of reverence in America is burning low. For a long time we have been catering to the eye, and often at the expense of the mind. Not a few ministers, in order to secure a crowd, had converted public wor- ship into a stereopticon show, exhibiting pictures of Jesus and of the scenery of Palestine, and as soon as the moving picture arrived, it was pressed at once into the service, riveting the eye upon the surface aspects of Jesus' Palestinian life, and sub- 26 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS stituting sight-seeing for thought. It would be fooHsh to claim that there is no place for the stereopticon and moving picture in re- ligious work. They can be made of great service. I simply call attention to a danger. The danger is that we may dwell so long upon the physical features of the Man of Galilee that we may miss the eternal majesty and burning glory of the Eternal Son of God. The Christ we worship cannot be thrown upon a screen. The effect of all this is seen in the tone of religious thought and feeling in multi- tudes of churches. The Jesus of popular thought is a meek and mild-eyed saint who was always saying gracious things and al- ways doing gentle deeds. He was a man who spoke always with the wooing note — indeed almost with the cooing note — and who was unwilling to hurt the feelings of anybody. He was a Palestinian idealist, with the soft touch of a woman ; He was a first century martyr, beautiful in His life and noble in His death. This is the only Jesus Christ whom many church members know anything about. The Christ of his- tory, the Christ with eyes of flame and feet of brass is a stranger to them. Because the Church has confined itself so THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS CHRIST 27 largely to the picturesque aspects of the life of the Man of Galilee, there has been a grow- ing feeling in circles of educated people that the founder of the Christian religion has nothing to teach our generation. He was a teacher of the first century. He lived in a simple environment. Society had not yet evolved into those complex and baffling forms with which we are called to deal. He spoke to a world in its infancy. His message does not fit the world of our day. While the Christian Church served a useful purpose in the earlier stages of social evolu- tion, its usefulness has been waning, and it may now be regarded as an obsolescent in- stitution. Its great work has been done. Its teaching is not broad enough to cover the wide areas of our modern need. We cannot go back, men tell us, to the first century for instruction. The modern mind is impatient of the guidance of ancient teachers. If this is the feeling among large numbers of the intellectuals, it is also the conviction among multitudes of so-called practical men, the hard-headed men of the world, business men and politicians, men who have little time for theorizing or dreaming, but who must grapple with the world as it is. Jesus, 28 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS according to many business men, is the con- soler. He is the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He has a heart over- flowing with pity, and therefore He is of great service to those who are poor or sick or lying at the gates of death. But Jesus has nothing to do with business. " Business is business," men say, with an accent that is final. Jesus, to be sure, insists on the principle of service, but what can you do with that in business? The principle of cooperation is extolled in the New Testa- ment, but the modern world is foundationed on the principle of competition, and what has Jesus to do with our social order? .He is a beautiful saint who long ago said lovely things, but the captains of industry and the kings of commerce have no use for His ex- hortations or laws. When we push our way into the political world, we seem to get even further away from the domain of this Jesus of Nazareth. If business is business, so is politics politics. A man in politics must get his candidate into office, and he has no time to consult Jesus Christ about the way in which he does it. The world is what it is, and men must be influenced as they can be and not as they ought to be, if the political party is to tri- THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS CHRIST 29 umph. Men who are called to do the rough work of the world cannot allow themselves to be handicapped by the theories and ideals of a teacher who lived so long ago. This is the feeling that possesses the heart of the average politician. It does not occur to him that he has anything to do with Jesus Christ. When we come into the realm of world politics, we seem to have left Jesus com- pletely behind. It has been generally as- sumed in Christendom, as in all pagan coun- tries, that a nation must look out chiefly for itself. It must seek constantly its own aggrandizement. It must ever put itself first. This is the doctrine that is proclaimed boldly in all Christian countries: "America first " is a watchword in many American papers. A novelist of considerable distinc- tion has told us that every nation must be as selfish as it Can be. To be sure, Jesus says that not domination but service is the law of national life, but what does He know about the world in which we are now living? He declared that the first shall be last, and the last first, but that does not chill the ambition of any nation to push its way, at all hazards, into the foremost place. The people would immediately retire from office 30 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS any set of officials which did not work all the time for the profit and prestige of their own country. Only a few believe that Christ is indeed King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and hence His principles have throughout Christian history been largely ignored if not cynically flouted. We need to come to this book of Revela- tion, and study carefully the Jesus Christ at whose feet the seer on Patmos fell. What a man of faith he was! He lived in a ter- rible time. The skies were black, and furi- ous storms swept and shook the world. All humanity lay in the evil one. Most of the races were either savage or barbaric. The Roman Empire was tyrannical and increas- ingly corrupt. Morality was at a low ebb. Everywhere vice held carnival. The appe- tites and passions held men in their mighty grip. Truth was derided and virtue laughed to scorn. The little congregations founded by the apostles of the Man of Galilee were struggling for their life. Their members were again and again hauled before tribunals, whipped and thrown into prison. Again and again they became the victims of cruel and fanatical mobs. They were for the most part obscure and uninfluential peo- ple. Many of them were discouraged by the THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS CHRIST 3 1 awful pressure to which they were subjected. The Httle groups of persecuted saints were threatened not only by enemies without but by still more dangerous enemies within. Faith was weak, hope was darkened, love in many cases had grown cold. The churches were saturated with the spirit of the world. The same demons which worked destruction in pagan society made ravages also among the confessed followers of Christ. The scattered congregations flickered like so many tallow dips in the blustering and awful night, and it seemed sometimes as though the last light would be extinguished by the fury of the storm. But there is one man who is not dismayed — the exile on the isle of Patmos. From his prison he looks calmly out upon the world, and in the midst of the welter of confusion and chaos, he sees Jesus walking. He is no longer the meek and quiet teacher who had instructed peasants by the Sea of Galilee; He is now the august and mighty Son of God. His eyes are flames. His countenance shines. His feet burn. The sword of His authority cuts. He holds safe in His strong right hand all the churches. Ponder this stupen- dous act of faith. John takes the Jesus of Nazareth and puts Him at the center of the 32 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS Stage of the world's history. He hfts Him out of Galilee, and makes the entire world His province. He takes a Palestinian peas- ant, poor and despised through His life, dying at last on a cross as a condemned criminal, and dares seat Him on the throne of the universe. He gives Him eyes which see through everything, a sword sharper than the sword of Domitian, and feet able to trample all opposition into the dust. He endows Him with the attributes of God. This is one of the sublimest acts of faith in the entire history of the human mind. You cannot prove that Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. There is no con- clusive evidence yet that every knee shall bow to Him. There is no overwhelming proof that He is to master all nations and races, or that He is indeed the eternal Son of the living God. When we exalt Jesus Christ to the right hand of God, we walk by faith and not by sight. When you look upon Jesus Christ, what do you see — a teacher, a healer, a martyr, only a man who is one among a company of heroes and saints who have brightened the world by their words and their deeds? If that is all you see, you make Christianity a sort of Confucianism, and Jesus is only a THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS CHRIST 33 tall ethical teacher. You make the Chris- tian religion a sort of Buddhism, and Jesus is merely a sweet soul who taught gentle- ness and resignation. The prisoner on Patmos saw more than that. He saw Jesus Christ as Lord of all. Do you see Him as Lord of Lords? This is the central doctrine of the Christian Church. Jesus Christ is the Lord of history. He is the judge of nations and races. He walks in the midst of the things you see. In Him you behold the mind and the heart and the will of the Eternal. The war is giving us a fresh revelation of the majesty and power of Jesus Christ. It will enlarge our conception of His person. It will help us to transfer Him from Pales- tine, and give Him His place on the stage of the world's life. It will assist us to read the New Testament. Many of us have been reading it with one eye closed. We do not read the New Testament as it is written, if we think that Jesus always spoke words which were gentle, and pronounced upon all sorts and conditions of men indiscriminate benedictions. In Galilee and in Judea He spoke to men as a judge. Some men He praised, and other men He denounced. Some men He extolled and other men He 34 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS lashed with the whip of His scorn. Some men He called hypocrites, and some men He called liars, and some men He called murderers, and some men He called fools, and some men He called blind, and some men He called serpents and vipers, and to some men He put the question — " How can you escape the condemnation of Gehenna? " He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for- ever. He is the Lord of all life. He is the judge of us all. We cannot escape Him. We are always in His presence. He goes through our city, and some men He calls hypocrites, and others liars, and others murderers, because they have hate in their heart, and others fools, and others blind even though they sit in high places, and are counted learned and clever, and others ser- pents and vipers because they have in their tongues and their hearts the poison of asps. To multitudes He says to-day what He said 1,900 years ago: " How shall you escape the condemnation of Gehenna?" In Palestine He never ceased to warn. He told men that some of them would be beaten with many stripes. He said that the message He was announcing was a momen- tous message, and that those who fell on it would be broken to pieces, and that those THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS CHRIST 35 Upon whom it should fall would be scattered as dust. He said that it would be better for some men if a millstone were hung round their neck and that they be hurled into the middle of the sea — and that to a Jew seemed the worst of all deaths. He said that it would be better for some men if they had never been born. He said that there are sins for which there is no forgiveness, either in this world or in the next. Time and again He closed His discourses with a reference to the outer darkness and the gnashing of teeth. He made it clear as language could make it that there is no peace for the wrong-doer until he gives up his wrong-doing, and that the penalty for persistent trampling on God's law is terrible beyond the picturing power of human speech. And what He said, He says. He says to-day and every day to all trans- gressors: "Unless you repent, you shall all perish." He warns men who do wrong of a wrath to come. He told men that after His death He was coming again. He said He would come while some of those who listened to Him were still alive. He said He would come when the world was in a frightful condition, men suffering a tribulation such as mankind 36 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS had never known before. And He kept His word. He always fulfills His promises. He said He would come on the clouds of heaven. Some of us make sad work of the New Testament when we come to interpret its figurative expressions. We are occidentals, and we are stupid and clumsy in our inter- pretation of oriental metaphors. We often miss the meaning of an important sentence because of our wooden literalism. When the Hebrew prophet foretold a time when the sun would be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, he was not thinking of the sun which astronomers study or the moon under which lovers walk. He was thinking of social commotions, and political disasters which were certain to devastate and frighten the world. The sun is turned into darkness when the light in men's hearts goes out, and the moon is turned into blood when carnage reddens the earth. The material universe reflects the disturbed con- dition of men's minds and hearts. The ancient prophets were not interested in the physical heavens. When our Lord said that He was coming in the clouds of heaven, He made use of a figure which had long been common on the pens of apocalyptic writers. He did not mean to say that He was coming THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS CHRIST 37 on rolling masses of aqueous vapour. What He meant was that He would come in stormy times, in vast social upheavals and commotions, in mighty reformations and revolutions, in political convulsions and national tragedies; and so He has often come. He came in the destruction of Jeru- salem, when the temple disappeared in smoke, and when the bodies of the slaugh- tered dead were piled in sickening heaps around the demolished city walls. His words were literally fulfilled. Not one stone was left standing on another. He came again in the downfall of the Roman Empire. He sat as Judge, and the mighty Empire of the Caesars passed away. It was He who said: " Depart, ye cursed," He came again in the French Revolution. For generations the lords and nobles of France had trodden the common people under their feet, and at last the Lord of Lords ascended the throne, and the old regime, which had made it hard for men to live, came down in blood and ashes. The other day He came again in the collapse of the Russian Empire. For many a year Russia has had one of the rottenest of all the governments which ever disgraced the earth. Her history has been a long drawn tragedy. And now the King of Kings 38 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS has come, and the Russian Empire is no more. You could have heard, if you had had ears to hear, the hiss of Christ's awful sentence: " Depart ye cursed." Look out upon Europe to-day, and what do you see? Can you not see that this is a Judgment Day, and that all of the nations have been summoned to stand before Christ? Do you not see that He has re- vealed Himself again as the Lord of Lords, and that He has cast the nations into hell? The feeling that has come to us most frequently within the last four years is a feeling of helplessness. We are simply swept along by forces which we cannot control. We are held in the grip of some- body from whom there is no escape. We are helpless as individuals, as institutions and as nations. There is no power on earth to save. No one could stop the war after it had once begun. Finance could not stop it. Clever men had long assured us that bankers could prevent a war. " Money talks," men said, " and when money cries — Halt ! — a war will stop!" But the voice of money was completely drowned by the boom of the guns. Commerce, it was claimed, would never allow such a war as this. War upsets commerce, and throws the business world THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS CHRIST 39 into chaos — but commerce was not heeded when this war began. Education was also helpless. She had renowned faculties of learned men. She held in her hand the garnered wisdom of the ages, but she was impotent in the hour of the world's greatest need. Art also was helpless. She knew what lay in the future. She recognized that paintings would be burned, and that cathe- drals would be shattered, and that priceless treasures of many kinds, immortal creations of the human spirit, would all be devoured by this monster of war, but Art could do nothing. International Law was as im- potent as Art. For a century the noblest men in the world had laboured in the con- struction of safeguards against war. There had been Hague Conferences, and arbitra- tion treaties, and arbitral courts. There stood in the capital of Holland a beautiful Palace of Peace. Its gates were wide open, but no one could be induced to enter. There was no power to coerce the nations to make use of the machinery which peace-lovers had laboriously constructed. Socialism had been looked upon by many as an unconquerable defender of peace, but socialism went down in the surging war flood. The Church of Christ, pledged to the Gospel of Justice and 40 'OLD TRUTHS ^AND NEW FACTS Love, was as helpless as all the other institu- tions. There was none mighty to save — no, not one. Reason was impotent, conscience was helpless, the heart could do nothing. There was nothing which could save Europe from slipping down into the arena of blood. Have you asked yourself why? It may be that the Judge has taken the world into His hands. It may be that Christ has come to pass judgment. The war began with three nations involved: Germany and Austria and Russia. But other nations began to slide in. One after another slipped down into the abyss of tears and woe, until there were six, and then ten, and then twelve, and then fifteen, and then twenty, and now there are twenty-three. What a spectacle that is — the like of it has never been seen since the world began — twenty-three nations, one after the other sinking down into this fire, every one of them protesting that it did not want to go in, all of them with one accord declaring that it could not possibly stay out. Have you any explanation for that? Does it not look as though we might have fallen into the hands of the King of Kings? We have heard constant talk about stopping the war. Men speak glibly of this as though it might be stopped almost any THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS CHRIST 41 day if a few resolute men would set about it. Now and then, somebody suggests that we all get together and pray — this would speedily bring the war to an end. Some- body else suggests that a Conference be held in Sweden or somewhere else, for the pur- pose of framing a resolution that the tragedy has continued long enough. Has it ever occurred to you that possibly you cannot stop it, that nobody can stop it? After it started no one was able to prevent twenty other nations from going in, and why should you think that any one should now be able to put the fire out? Suppose that this is Gehenna fire, the fire of which Jesus spoke, the unquenchable fire which is to burn up the chaff, the fire of which John the Baptist spoke, and that it must burn on and on until it has done its perfect work? When you set a city on fire, you cannot ex- tinguish the flames by the clock, and when you get twenty-three nations engaged in a life and death struggle, you cannot induce them to lay down their arms when you think they have fought long enough. The fire will burn on until the wood and the hay and the stubble have been consumed, and there remains of our world only the silver and gold and precious stones. 42 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS Our civilization has been judged. It has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. We have been proud of it, and gloated over it, but it has been an abomina-' tion to Jesus Christ. It has been a mili- taristic civilization. All the Christian na- tions have been armed to the teeth. They have beaten the implements of industry into swords. They have squandered the taxes wrung from peasants' blood upon the para- phernalia of battle. They have squandered the precious years of their young men in military drill, perfecting them in the hellish art of ripping open human abdomens with sharpened steel. Do you wonder that the God of love has said: " Away with it! " It is amazing He should have borne with it so long. Ours is a capitalistic civilization. The production of wealth and not the production of men has been our cardinal aim. Our business world has been founded not on cooperation for service, but competition for private profit. Bitter rivalry, and not fra- ternity, has been the outstanding feature of the Christian world. Under this capitalistic system nine-tenths of all the wealth of the leading nations have gotten into the hands of one-tenth of the population. A few men THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS CHRIST 43 have lived in palaces, and hundreds of thou- sands of God's children, brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, have been packed away like puppies and pigs in foul and darksome rook- eries and hovels, and the brotherly heart of the Son of God has blazed out against it all. It may be that before the war is ended our whole social order will go up in smoke. It may be that our civilization is doomed, and that we stand at the threshold of a new dis- pensation in the evolution of mankind! If our civilization is on its death-bed, still must we say as one said of old : " The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous alto- gether." Lift up your eyes and look! Do you not see Him? You are blind if you do not see Him! He has come. He is here. His eyes are flame. His feet are brass. He is trampling into nothingness the things which obstruct His purposes. He is fulfilling the second Psalm. He is breaking the nations with a rod of iron; He is dashing them in pieces like a potter's vessel. He is walking in the midst of the things you see. He is proclaiming Himself the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings. Listen and you will hear Him saying: "I am the first and the last, the Living One. I was dead, and I am alive 44 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS forevermore. I have the keys of death and of Hades." He who reads the history of this world must exclaim with Paul: "Behold then the goodness and severity of God: toward them that fell severity; but toward thee goodness, if thou continue in his goodness : otherwise thou also shalt be cut off." Unless one is in harmony with His purposes, it is indeed an awful thing to fall into the hands of the living God! God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. The Son is the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. And when I saw Him I fell at His feet awe- struck and overwhelmed. What, then, is the modification which we may reasonably expect in our conception of Jesus Christ? A shifting of the emphasis, I think, from His humanity to His divinity; a less exaggerated estimate of His gentle- ness and meekness, and a fuller recognition of His majesty, severity, and power. LECTURE II THE APPRECIATION OF VICARIOUS SUFFERING LECTURE II THE APPRECIATION OF VICARIOUS SUFFERING BY vicarious suffering is meant the suffering which one person under- goes for another. The principle of vicarious suffering Hes at the heart of the Christian rehgion. " Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures," so says Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians. " One died for all," so he says in the second letter to the same church. " While we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly. While we were yet sinners Christ died for us," so he says in his letter to the Romans. " Christ suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God," so says Peter, and he also puts it in this way: "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree." John phrases it thus : " The blood of Jesus his son, cleanseth us from all sin." " He is the pro- pitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world." 47 48 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS Why did the apostles teach this? It was because their Master taught it. Here are Jesus' words: " The son of man came not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give his Hfe a ransom for many." " I am the good shepherd, and I lay down my life for the sheep." " Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." It was this fact above all others which Christ desired His disciples to remember. On the night on which He was betrayed, He took bread and brake it and gave to them saying: "This is my body which is given for you," and the cup in like manner, saying: "This cup is the new covenant in my blood even that which is poured out for you." The greatest of the early Christian preachers declared that it was his purpose to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Wherever the Christian religion has gone, it has gone as the religion of the cross. IMillions of tongues around the world keep on singing: " In the cross of Christ I glory, Tow'ring o'er the wrecks of time ; All the light of sacred story Gathers round its head sublime." The doctrine of vicarious suffering is VICARIOUS SUFFERING 49 fundamental in our religion; and no doctrine has been so frequently attacked, and so violently repudiated as this one. The oppo- sition began at once, and has continued to the present hour. Paul found the cross to be obnoxious to both sections of the world of his day. To the Jews it was a stumbling block, and to Gentiles it was foolishness. The Greeks laughed at it as something ridiculous, and the Jews, while facing it seri- ously, had infinite difficulty in reconciling it with their idea of God. The same attitudes of mind are still with us. Some men con- sider the doctrine of the vicarious suffering of Jesus as something too preposterous to be investigated, and others, finding that it is taught clearly and emphatically in the Scrip- tures, regretfully discard it or finally accept it with reluctance and misgivings. Men are pondering to-day the questions which have vexed them for two thousand years: Why should one man suffer for another? How can suffering and death save us? How can the suffering and death of one man affect the sins of others? In their impatience with what they call theological notions, many men have tossed aside the Christian doctrine of the atone- ment as something incredible, going so far 50 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS as to deny the fact of vicarious suffering altogether. The great war is teaching us many things. It is forcing upon us facts which we have ignored completely or greatly minimized. One of the colossal facts being burned into the consciousness of the entire race is the fact of vicarious suffer- ing. It has always been conceded that the innocent suffer with the guilty, and it is becoming equally clear that the innocent often suffer for the guilty, and it is dawn- ing for the first time upon many minds that it is only by the suffering of the innocent that the world can be saved. The war is exerting a tremendous pressure against rooted prejudices which have caused multi- tudes to hold aloof from the Christian Church. It is a huge torch which is throw- ing a flood of light on the fundamental prin- ciples of human life. It is a vast conflagra- tion in whose fierce heat many a doubt will forever disappear. It must be admitted that not a little of the opposition to the doctrine of vicarious suffer- ing has been due to the clumsy and un- fortunate forms in which that doctrine has frequently been presented. The analogies have often been far fetched, and the illus- trations have sometimes been repellent and VICARIOUS SUFFERING 5 1 misleading. This is to be regretted, but is scarcely to be wondered at. Great spiritual truths are not easily expressed in human speech. Language cracks and breaks when we try to force into it celestial meanings. The death of Jesus on the cross is a vast mystery. No man would venture to assert that he has seen to the bottom of it, or is able to take in its immeasurable and awful content. Peter in speaking of the sufferings of Christ says that angels desire to look into them, and intimates that even they are un- able to pierce their fathomless depths. Many of the illustrations used by Christian teachers have been crude and revolting, and some of the arguments have been faulty and unconvincing; but the fact that Jesus, an innocent man, died an agonizing death upon the cross, is one of the best attested facts in history, and so long as the human mind has sufificient vitality to grapple with great prob- lems, it will be unable to leave this problem alone. Different interpretations have been offered, and still others will be forthcoming through the ages. Theories are intellectual statements devised to interpret facts, and the growing mind becomes dissatisfied with statements which were counted adequate in the earlier stages of its development. Cer- 52 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS tain doctrines of the atonement have long since become obsolete, others are obsoles- cent. It would not be going too far to say that no doctrine of the atonement is final. Two clear facts, however, stand out before us : Jesus died upon the cross. He did not die for Himself, He died for others. The fact that He died for others gives His death a piercing and overwhelming power. The death of guilty men does not profoundly impress us. It gives the heart a certain measure of relief. It seems just that a criminal shall die for his crimes, that a vicious man shall perish because of his sins, but when an innocent man dies for others, our spirit is purified and exalted, and the heart looks on with an indescribable and transfiguring awe. The suffering and death of Jesus have been too often separated from ordinary human life, and studied in isolation as though they were something solitary and unique. We understand them best when we see in them the illustration of a principle which has been working in humanity from the beginning, and the climax of a tragedy as old as the world. The world has always been full of vicarious suffering. Everything good has been bought by a price. The VICARIOUS SUFFERING 53 world has never gotten on save by the sacri- fice of the lovers of progress. It is only be- cause the innocent have suffered for the guilty and the strong have sacrificed them- selves for the weak, and the righteous have borne the burden of the wicked that civiliza- tion has become possible. The world has many kinds of suffering, but no form of it is so divine or so impressive as vicarious suffering. The brightest page in the Hfe of any community is the page which tells the story of how men and women have suffered for others. The heroes and heroines of the world are those who suffer vicariously. The man who rescues a boy from drowning at the expense of his own life; the man who carries a baby out of the top story of a burning building at the cost of burns which leave him scarred for life; the man who in railroad wreck or in shipwreck beats back death from others by offering up his own life, these are the men before whom we all bow down. We not only believe in vicari- ous suffering, we glory in it, and we know that without it the world would be shabby and mean. It is only because parents are willing to sacrifice for their children, and teachers are willing to bear the ignorance of their pupils, and philanthropists are willing 54 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS to be patient with the ingratitude of the people they endeavour to help, and re- formers are willing to endure misrepresenta- tion and calumny and hatred of the world they are trying to make better, and patriots are willing to lay down their lives for their country, and God-fearing men and women are willing to grieve over the sins of the fallen, and give themselves to those who have wandered from the way, that humanity makes progress, and hope has any chance to live. When some one, therefore, asks the ques- tion why should one man suffer for another? the reply is that it is only by such suffering that the world can get on. It is only by that kind of suffering that any one of us has been able to arrive at the point where we are. It is only by men suffering for others that life in any community is ren- dered tolerable. It was only by vicarious suffering that this nation came to be, and it was by the same sort of suffering that the nation was saved. No demons which afflict our world can ever be cast out except by the self-sacrificial efforts of men' who love righteousness more than comfort or ease. You cannot overthrow the saloon without the patient and persistent and heroic efforts VICARIOUS SUFFERING 55 of multitudes of workers who are willing to spend and be spent in the noble cause. You cannot save the young men and the young women of our great cities from moral degradation without the efforts of anxious minds and suffering hearts. Nor can you deliver mankind to-day from the tyranny of Prussian diabolism except by the bloody sweat of innocent men. It is vicarious suffering which the war is forcing on our attention. We are not aston- ished by the suffering of the guilty; it is the suffering of the innocent which attracts and holds us. It has been often said that this war is retribution, the penalty which has come upon the world because of its trans- gressions. This is true. But not all the suffering of this war is punitive. Most of it is vicarious. It is not the guilty but the innocent who are suffering most. Take, for instance, the suffering nations. Can you measure their moral desert by the magni- tude of their woe? You may say that Russia is suffering for her sins, and that Great Britain and France are also in part responsible for the conditions out of which the present war emerged: but how about Belgium and Poland and Armenia? These are the most bruised and bleeding of all the 56 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS lands, and certainly these three were not responsible for this war. These three peo- ples so far as causing the war is concerned are guiltless, and yet they are suffering most. We are all agreed that Germany is >^ most responsible for the precipitation of the war. Her military masters willed it, as Maximilian Harden long ago admitted. Her diplomats led her into it, as her ambassador ,^ to Great Britain, Prince Lichnowsky, can- didly confesses in his famous memorandum. History will have no difficulty in fastening the guilt of this war on Germany. She stands condemned not only before this generation, but before all the generations that shall ever be. Great Neptune's ocean will never wash this blood clean from her hand. And yet, up to the present hour, she has suffered in many ways less than Serbia, Poland, France, and Belgium. She has looted every nation upon which she has planted her brutal feet, and what could not be carried off she has committed to the flames. The arch-culprit in this awful tragedy seems to be escaping the frightful retribution she deserves. When you consider classes of men, which classes are suffering most in all of the bel- ligerent countries? Surely not the ruling VICARIOUS SUFFERING 57 classes, and not the classes most directly- responsible for the war. There are not over a hundred men in Europe who can be said to have made this war inevitable. If the men responsible for it could be seized, court martialed, shot in some public square in full view of the onlooking world, the human heart would give a sigh of relief. One could then more readily believe that there is such a thing as justice still potent in the world. But these men have not been shot, nor are they likely to be shot. The men who have been shot, who are being shot, and who will continue to be shot had nothing whatever to do with the bringing on of this war. It is a slaughter of the innocents. Take, for instance, the little children, the babies in their cradles, and the boys and girls at school. IMany of them have been blown to pieces by bombs dropped from aeroplanes. They were as innocent of all wrong as are the angels, and yet they have perished miserably. Next to the children come the women. What a vast host they are ! Mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, sweethearts! Not one of them responsible for the waging of this war, as free from guilt as though they had lived on some other planet, and yet they are 58 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS suffering as much as the men — yea — more than the men. The women have not been voters in Europe. They have not conceived the poHtical poHcies, nor made out the state programs. They had nothing to do with the precipitation of this catastrophe. They are absohitcly innocent of the gigantic crime, but oh, their suffering! They are suffering vicariously. They are suffering for others. They are suffering in the place of others. When you pass into the trenches, you are still in the company of the innocent. These soldiers are all young men. They had nothing to do with this war. They did not create the forces which caused it. They did not frame the legislation which made it possible. Their advice was not asked in any country. Like sheep they have been driven to the slaughter. Men over fifty brought the world into such a condition that millions of men under thirty have been obliged to die. Far behind the guns there are men between sixty and seventy-five years of age who map out the campaign and determine when and where the attack is to be made, but it is the youth who do the dying. We read about a great drive. It is a drive in more senses than one. Some- VICARIOUS SUFFERING 59 times it is the slaughter of a lot of school- boys driven from their mothers to the field of blood by their superiors. This is one of the outstanding features of war : the young men die for the old men and in place of them. Science has increased the magnitude of vicarious sufYering. War has always been full of it, for war from the beginning has meant the killing of men, and men cannot be killed without the wounding of the hearts of women. But modern warfare has im- measurably increased the suffering of the innocent. It is singular that all of the modern instruments of war are blind. A howitzer cannot see even twenty miles, much less can it see at a distance of eighty miles. The submarine cannot see. It can- not discriminate between belligerent and non-belligerent on the high seas. The aero- plane is blind. It cannot see the difference between a hospital and an arsenal at the height of two miles. An asphyxiating gas is as blind as Samson in the mill at Gaza. Science has put out the eyes of war; and its eyes being out, war is more cruel than ever. In olden times an effort was made to spare the innocent. They can be spared no longer. The innocent and the guilty must 6o OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS perish together. In olden times it was only a small fraction of the nation which fought. It is now necessary that the entire nation shall be mobilized. Victory depends as much upon the men and women behind the lines as upon the men in the trenches, and therefore the burdens of war fall upon all. It is upon the innocent poor that they fall with crushing force. Poverty is dismal in peace, but in war time it is fatal. We shall never know the tens of thousands of human beings which this war starved to death. Old men who had served God through a long life, and aged women who had counted it their joy to help others, have been left in many lands to perish, with no one able to offer relief. It is when one thinks of the immeasurable suffering and woe of the innocent that the war takes on a fresh horror, and solemnizes the heart won- derfully. What does all this mean? Why is this permitted? Does it happen by chance or does it come to pass by the per- mission of an all-wise and all-loving God? Can this be a feature of His plan? Is this one of the ways in which He works? Is there a force in vicarious suffering which has a peculiar and an indispensable efficacy? Is suffering for others a principle deep- VICARIOUS SUFFERING" 6 1 rooted in the constitution of the universe, one which cannot be torn out, and which can no more be changed than the character and purpose of God? We must seek an answer for these ques- tions at the foot of the cross of Christ. Why did Jesus die? Was His death an accident? Was it one of those chance, dark happenings of which there seem to be so many in this bewildering world? Was it due to the fact that Caiaphas happened to be High Priest, and Pontius Pilate chanced to be Roman Procurator of Judea, and that Jesus happened to speak a few phrases which the crowd happened to be in the mood to resent and distort? In the whirling of the wheel of circumstances, did Golgotha happen to drop out? In the turning of the big world kaleidoscope did this black bead smeared with blood suddenly and by chance appear? That is a conceivable explanation, but it will never permanently satisfy the human mind. The only interpretation which has in it an abiding satisfaction is that which the apostles accepted two thousand years ago, namely, that the death of Jesus fell in with heaven's plan, and that it for- warded God's purposes for mankind. In the words of Peter in the first recorded apostolic '62 "OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS sermon : " Him being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye did crucify and slay, whom God raised up, having loosed the pangs of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it." God is not then absent or asleep when Jesus dies upon the cross. He knows what is going on. Jesus is not left to die by chance nor in vain. The world being what it is, it becomes necessary for the son of God to die. Men being what they are, the death of Christ becomes in- evitable. Without His death the power of sin cannot be broken. If this be true, then may it not be true that the bulk of the suffering of this present time is sacrificial, and is it too much to hope that it is working out an exceeding weight of glory? Is not the world's experience to-day related to the experience of Jesus on the cross? Are not men to-day drinking of the cup of which He drank? Is not the law which was fulfilled in His passion receiving a fresh fulfillment in the sufferings of a vast multitude which no man can number? Many men are finding to-day their sweet- est consolation in this thought. A dis- tinguished professor of Oxford University has told us how day by day he is haunted by VICARIOUS SUFFERING' 63 the thought that men are dying for him, young men, noble men, men whom he knows and loves are laying down their lives that he and his fellow countrymen may be free. It solemnizes him and gives him a new in- sight into the mystery and glory of life. A writer has told us how, in walking along the roads of Northern France, he has been com- forted by the crucifixes he has passed on the way. These crucifixes are symbols of the suffering of Jesus, and the sight of them has braced the man's heart and soothed his spirit as nothing else has been able to do. In the midst of so much pain and woe it has comforted him to remember that Christ also suffered, and that somehow the same great laws and forces which worked in the death of Jesus are also to-day working out divine ends in the sufferings and death of all these men. If you ask why the just must suffer for the unjust, the innocent for the guilty, the fit for the unfit, there is probably no better answer than, " It is the way of love." Why, for instance, does a mother suffer for a way- ward son? He has chosen the broad way which leads to death. He is going down to perdition before her eyes. She follows him day and night with her love and prayers. 64 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS She sufifers more than words can tell. The whitening hair and the deepening lines in the face, and above all the pathetic sadness in the eyes, tell a little of the tragic story. She suffers more than he does. To an on- looker he does not seem to suffer at all. His laugh is loud, and through the days and nights he eats and drinks and makes merry. He the guilty one does not worry. He the sinner feels slight compunction. His mother is a woman of sorrow and acquainted with grief. She is innocent, but she bleeds. She is guiltless, but she suffers. In all her son's degradation she is afflicted. His transgressions she carries on her heart. For him she wrestles in the garden of Geth- semane. For him she hangs on a cross. This is a piece of life, authenticated and in- controvertible. This tragedy has taken place in every land and in every time. How will you account for her sufferings? Why does she suffer? Try for a moment to make use of some of the theories which have been used in the realm of theology to explain the sufferings of Jesus. Try the ransom theory, and say that she suffers in order to pay a ransom to the devil that he may set her son free. How fantastic that sounds ! Try the theory of Anselm. Say that her son has in- VICARIOUS SUFFERING 65 curred an enormous debt and that only by her tears can this debt be Hquidated. How mechanical, how hollow! Try the govern- mental theory. Say that the laws of justice have been transgressed, the government of God has been insulted, and that in order to vindicate the principle of righteousness it is necessary that the mother shall go down weeping to her grave. How incredible! Try the moral influence theory. Say that she weeps in order to influence her son. She puts on her sad face to show him how badly she feels. She makes an exhibition of her grief for the impression she hopes to make on him. But here again we are in the realm of the external and the mechan- ical and the theatrical. Tears shed for a purpose are not tears at all. Such tears are drops of water squeezed out of certain ducts for the securing of desired ends. Tears are words of the heart. Tears have blood in them. Tears are never shed for effect. They cannot be. They are inevitable. No power on earth or in heaven can hold them back. Talk to a mother about the ransom, or debt, or governmental, or moral influence theory as an explanation for her agony of heart, and she will gaze at you in amaze- ment. You speak a language which she 66 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW^ FACTS does not understand. Ask her why she suffers so because of the sins of her son, and she has one answer only — " Why ! I am his mother!" That is the sole and sufhcient answer. She suffers because she cannot help it. She cannot help it because she loves him. It is the nature of love to suffer. Love always suffers. Love would cease to be love if love should lose the power of suffering. Love and suffering always go together. You cannot have the first with- out the second. The deeper the love the greater is its capacity for suffering. The greatest lovers suffer most. Sympathy is a form of love. By sympathy we enter into the experiences of another. If the experi- ences of that other are sad and bitter, then our sympathy brings us pain. You cannot sympathize with the bereaved without bear- ing their grief, nor can you sympathize with the degraded without bearing their sins. Here then we find at least a partial ex- planation of the sufferings and death of Jesus. He was a lover. He loved men. Loving them, He sympathized with them. He could not look upon them without feel- ing compassion. His heart was torn by the sight of their helplessness and misery. He was so sensitive to human need that His VICARIOUS SUFFERING 67 soul went out spontaneously to meet it. He responded so quickly to the tragedy of human life that He became at once a man of sorrows. Love rejoices when it is re- ceived; love is pierced when it is rejected. Slighted love is a love which bleeds. Jesus' love was slighted, scorned, rejected. He came unto His own, but His own received Him not. He was caricatured and hooted at by His enemies, He was misunderstood and disappointed by His friends. He trod the wine-press alone. At the crisis of life all forsook Him and fled. He braced His heroic soul by the thought, " I am not alone, my Father is with me." In a world like this you cannot have a perfect man who is not also a suffering man. On a planet so weighted down with sin and woe, an ideal man must of necessity be acquainted with grief. Jesus suffered because He loved. Jesus died because He loved to the end. But we cannot stop at the cross outside the wall of Jerusalem. That cross has a cosmic significance. It is a window opening out on the infinite. Through the tragedy on Golgotha, we pass into a deeper appre- hension of the character of God. Jesus claimed to be the eternal Son of the living God. He said that nobody understands the 68 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS Father except the Son, and those souls to whom the Son makes a revelation of Him. He asserted that he who has seen the Son has seen the Father, and that the Son and the Father are one. Jesus dies on the cross then because God loves. God so loved the world that He gave His Son. No father gives up his son to death without grief. God is, therefore, a sufifering God. Unlike the serene and indififerent gods of the Pagan world, the God of Christianity is a God who sympathizes with men. In all their afflic- tions He is afflicted. He carries their woes on His infinite heart. He grieves over their blunders and transgressions, and bears daily the unimaginable weight of their sorrows. This is a truth to ponder in these shadowed days. Multitudes of hearts are sorely troubled. The human spirit is in every land wounded and depressed. The best men are staggering under the weight of all this weary and unintelligible world. The human mind is bewildered. The human heart is lacerated. There are those who can with difficulty work, and it is not easy for them to sleep. It is the noblest spirits who are most depressed, it is the most sensitive souls who suffer most. Where shall we obtain relief? In the VICARIOUS SUFFERING 69 thought that the Eternal suffers with us. We could not suffer so if God were not a suffering God. We suffer because He made us in His image. Our heart is something like His own. If we being hardened by evil, and rendered more or less callous by long continued transgressions, are able to enter into the agony of the world, how much more fully must the infinitely sensitive God enter into all that mankind to-day suffers. A God indifferent to the cries of a world in distress can be to us no God at all. A God incapable of feeling compassion on the multitudes of sorrowing mothers, and the vast companies of orphaned boys and girls, could evoke no response in our hearts. It is only a God who carries on His heart the sins and sorrows of all His children, and who is entering into all the torture and anguish of these awful times, who can re- tain a place in our affections, or put forth any claim upon our obedience. We can worship only a God who suffers for others. It is the inexorable demand of our heart that the God of the universe shall carry a cross! The Christian religion meets this instinctive cry of our souls with the assur- ance that the tragedy on Golgotha was not an incident closed nineteen hundred years 70 OLD TRUTHS 'AND NEW FACTS' ago, but a process which runs on through the ages. The lamb was not slain in a certain month of a particular year in the reign of Tiberius Caesar. The lamb was slain from the foundation of the world. God has carried a wound in His heart from the day on which sin worked its first havoc. It is only because He carries our sins that we have hope of final deliverance from them. If He were indifferent to suffering and sin, we should be without hope in the world. There is no hymn more appropriate for a world in darkness than " When I survey the wondrous cross, On which the Prince of Glory died." When, therefore, men hereafter sneer at the doctrine of vicarious suffering as a piece of savage superstition, a remnant of primi- tive Jewish thinking which the world has carried far too long, let us ask them to open history and find out for themselves if it is not true that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. Count up the evils from which the world has been de- livered, the vipers which the race has shaken from its hand, the demons which have been exorcised, and see if in a solitary instance the price demanded has not been the VICARIOUS SUFFERING 7 1 shedding of blood. The bloody Roman gladiatorial games did not vanish until some one was willing to die. Slavery would not go until many had died. Superstitions in heathen lands have been overthrown only by the bloody sweat of missionaries. Cruel diseases have been conquered only because physicians have been willing to lay down their lives in making experiments in search of a remedy. New continents have been torn from the grip of savages and opened up to civilization only by pioneers who reckoned their lives of small account. We march on to victory only over the graves of the heroes and heroines who have gone before us. We are once more face to face with the thrilling and solemnizing fact that without the shedding of blood there can be no redemption. The world has long staggered under the accumulated weight of an armed peace. The policy of armed peace was the product of a philosophy the fundamental as- sumption of which is that war is a good thing, a cardinal feature in the curriculum prescribed by the Almighty for the educa- tion of nations. War is a needed tonic, men said, war is essential for the maintenance of moral and physical virility, it is only by war 72 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS that nations can keep their fighting edge. This was the talk not only in one country but in all countries. This was the philosophy of larger or smaller groups in every Chris- tian land. Men persisted in talking about the glory of war, and continued to throw round its bloody shoulders shining garments woven in the loom of the imagination. But war has been the supreme scourge of the race. Its havoc no man can measure, no mind can conceive. It is progressively destructive, and in each succeeding genera- tion, because of sharpened instruments of slaughter, an augmented toll of life and treasure is taken from the nations who choose to indulge in it. Nevertheless its ancient fascination has continued unbroken. Men have refused to see that it is a sin against God, and a crime against mankind. How can the needed lesson be taught? Apparently only by a world-devastating, world-shattering war, not a short war but a long one, not a cheap war, but an expensive war, so expensive that the richest nations of the world will be left bankrupt, not a local war but a war stretching around the whole earth, that the entire human race may be made to realize what war really is. In our generation Germany has been pre- VICARIOUS SUFFERING 73 eminently the home of the war cult. It is there that the art of human slaughter has been carried to its loftiest and most devilish perfection. In Germany the military caste has been granted a prestige and pre- eminence allowed it nowhere else. From the German press has flowed a constant stream of military literature poisoning the mind of the whole world. In this way Ger- many has made herself a nuisance and menace. At a time considered opportune by these war nabobs of Potsdam, the present gigantic conflict was launched. There was nothing for the neighbours of Germany to do but to try and curb this wild outburst of lawlessness and barbarism. When her neighbours were discovered to be unable to cope with the giant, our own Republic went to their assistance. For over a year we have been giving assistance toward the winning of the war. Many suggestions have been offered as to how it is to be won. Some have said it is by ships, others have said by aeroplanes, others by munitions, others by food, and others by money, but while all these are indispensable, they will not of themselves bring final victory. The victory is to be won not by material things of any sort, but by the pouring out of 74 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS human life. The war will be won not by coal or by steel, by wheat or by gold, but by men who are willing to die. The world will be made safe for Democracy only by a dying man ! It is an awful fact which we ought calmly to face that without the shedding of human blood there can be no military triumph. Our supreme contribution to the M^ar will not be anything that we can get out of our mines or our shops, out of our soil or our shipyards, but only what we take out of our homes. It will be the best and the strongest of our youth who will go to the front, and many of them will never come back. There will be mourning — it may be — in ten thousand homes, but this will be our consolation. These young men will not have died in vain. They will by the laying down of their lives have assisted in breaking the power of a diabolical tradition, and in overthrowing one of the most merciless and savage hordes of war-makers which have ever cursed and disgraced the world. These young men will not die for them- selves. They will die for others — they will die for us. They will die for all men every- where. They will die for the German peasants who have had no heart in the war, but who have been lashed to the wheels of VICARIOUS SUFFERING 75 the chariots of the war lords who have dragged them to the field of blood. They will die for generations yet unborn. Their sacrificial death will have a potency which will continue to work for ages. They will enter by their dying as a permanent force into the life of the world. They will make it easier for others to live. They will add a brightness to the skies which will bend over their graves. Wonderful is the power of vicarious suf- fering. Even the babies do not die in vain. Those babies in London and other cities, torn to shreds by the cruel bombs, the dead bodies of those little children floating on the waters that closed over the Lusitania, do you suppose they died in vain? I tell you nay! Those little ones plead trumpet tongued to all the world against the deep damnation of their taking off. The manner of their death blows Germany's horrid deed into every eye, and deepens in unnumbered hearts the indestructible determination that the barbarians and brigands of Potsdam shall not win. The women do not suffer in vain. Their sad eyes and white faces will rise whenever hereafter any man attempts to orate on the glories of war. The aged men and women who were starved to death 76 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS in their cottages and hovels did not die in vain. The remembrance of their sufferings and death has already intensified the loath- someness of war, and has hastened the day when war shall be buried without hope of resurrection. Majestic and mysterious is the potency of vicarious death. It is appointed unto each one of us to die. For most of us death will be an incident speedily forgotten, with no appreciable influence on the conduct and career of the world. But when men die for others, their death becomes a form of life. They rule men's spirits from their urns. The death of Jesus is the mightiest power in human history. Its efficacy lies in the fact that He was sinless and that He died for others and that He was the Son of God. You will not find the secret of Jesus' power in the Sermon on the Mount, or in His parables, or in His miracles. It is to be found where He told us to look for it — in His death. He spoke truly when He said that unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone, but if it dies it brings forth fruit. He read the future clearly, and showed His mastery of the principles of life when He declared : " I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." VICARIOUS SUFFERING ^^ The human heart is hard and stubborn. It can withstand much. There is something, however, which it cannot permanently re- sist. It cannot resist love which is faithful unto death. Paul was only the first of an innumerable multitude to surrender, chastened and overpowered by the thought: " He loved me and gave himself up for me ! " LECTURE III THE IDEA AND PRAC- TICE OF PRAYER LECTURE III THE IDEA AND PRACTICE OF PRAYER THE immediate effect of war is to drive men to their knees. Any sudden catastrophe awakens the soul, and the soul, when facing immediate peril, throws itself back on God. It is as true to-day as it was when the Hebrew poet wrote the 107th Psalm, that when men are overtaken by disaster, they cry unto the Lord in their trouble. Man is by nature a praying animal, and whenever he lives in the depths of his being, he instinctively cries out for God. Europe was not in a prayerful mood in the early summer of 1914. Europe was worldly, heedless, skeptical. Christianity had fallen on evil days. The leaders of society in large numbers had built altars to strange gods, and multitudes of the people were eating and drinking with no thought or fear of their Creator. The churches were largely forsaken. Christianity survived as 8i 82 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS a living force in many individual hearts, but it did not mould the policy of nations, nor was it a ruling power in the life of the masses of the people. But early in August all was changed. In the twinkling of an eye, Europe passed from a holiday mood into a mood more serious than it had ever known. Men suddenly faced a war, the dimensions of which no one could conjec- ture. Husbands and sons were torn from their homes by the millions, and their faces were set toward the field of blood. Immedi- ately the churches became crowded. It was not an isolated phenomenon, a sight wit- nessed in only one country, it was common to all countries. The Russian and German and French and British papers reported the same scenes. Men before proceeding to the front went into the church to pray. After they had departed, men, too old to fight, and women thronged the churches, pouring out their sad hearts to God. It looked for a time as though all the belligerent countries might be swept by a great spiritual awaken- ing. In many cities special prayer meetings were held, and church members, who had hitherto cared only for the sermon, now found themselves hungry for the prayers. In supplication to the Almighty the heart THE IDEA AND PRACTICE OF PRAYER 83 found relief not to be obtained in any other way. In every nation throngs of reverent people besought God day and night that He would not forsake them, and lead their armies to victory. Then gradually there came a change. The early fervour cooled. The initial en- thusiasm died down. The congregations dwindled. The thoughts of men were fixed more and more on military preparations. Women had a thousand things to do, things apparently more immediately necessary than praying. Many thoughtful persons be- gan to ask themselves if prayer after all is efficacious in time of war. The fact that Christians were praying on opposite sides struck many as highly ludicrous. The spec- tacle of learned and gifted Germans impor- tuning God for the overthrow of England, while gifted and learned Britishers were imploring Him to wreak vengeance on Ger- many, threw the practice of prayer into a new light, and gave the ungodly large op- portunity to blaspheme. As the war went on, it became increas- ingly evident that victory could not be se- cured by supplications to the Almighty. He did not seem to hear what any of the nations were saying. Each nation seemed to sue- 84 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS ceed just in proportion to the number of its guns and the skill of its generals, the result being that prayer fell more and more into the background. War is a vast physical enterprise. Armies fight with carnal weap- ons. The apparatus of war is ponderous and complicated, and to create and sustain this apparatus requires the expenditure of a large share of the mental energy of a nation. Howitzers are wonderfully effective when they are big enough, and are placed on solid foundations, and are manipulated by men who know how to use them. Submarines and aeroplanes are discovered to be indis- pensable to a nation which is going to win. In the realm of war, Napoleon's dictum seems to be correct that God is on the side of the biggest battalions. He seems to pay more respect to the size of the shell and the skill of the gunner than to the right- eousness of the cause which the gunner rep- resents. And so war must always be what it has been from the beginning, a terrible materializer of the human heart. It fixes the attention on physical machinery, and men come unconsciously and inevitably to underestimate the value of spiritual forces. To multitudes prayer comes to be an anachronism, an impertinence, almost a THE IDEA AND PRACTICE OF PRAYER 85 joke. When one is dealing with machine guns and hand grenades, and poisonous gases, it seems absurd to ask anybody to squander time in prayer. Prayer may have a minor function in the piping days of peace, but surely it is out of place in the blustering and awful days of war. And so the journalists never call upon their readers to pray. They ask them to buy Liberty Bonds, to conserve the coal and the wheat, to combat German propaganda, to push forward the construction of ships and of guns, to enlist in the army or the navy, but not a word is said about prayer. According to the newspapers, there are only three essentials in modern warfare; men, munitions and money. The man who would add prayer as a fourth would be laughed at. One paper says the war will be won by ships, another is sure it will be won by steel, another asserts that it will be won by food, another is certain it will be won by aero- planes, another thinks it is largely a matter of coal, another of copper, and another of money. All these things are physical. They can be seen and measured and handled. No journalist has yet suggested that prayer may possibly be one of the weapons by which the stronghold of evil is 86 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS to be pulled down. When we go to the arsenal of war to gaze upon the instruments by which our modern warriors are to hack their way to triumph, we find battle-ships and submarines, torpedo boat destroyers and armoured cruisers, aeroplanes and howitzers, bayonets and liquid fire, but prayer is conspicuous for its absence. We have reached, they tell us, a crisis in the world's life, a momentous day more tragically important than any other day known to history, a time when all available forces must be mobilized for the defense of righteousness; but when you scan the list of the forces wdiich are available you find that prayer has been omitted. Lumps of coal, bits of copper, plates of steel, loaves of bread, these all are recognized as forces, mighty and indispensable, without which no nation can hope to win, but prayer, by many of the wise men of our modern world, is not considered a force at all. They cast it as rubbish to the void, and make their pile complete without it. There is much to be said in justification of their position. Recent experience seems to support them. Did not Russia pray at the opening of the war? Did not the Czar and the Holy Synod fill the cathedrals of THE IDEA AND PRACTICE OF PRAYER 87 Petrograd and Moscow with throngs of de- vout and earnest-hearted men and women to pray for the victory of the Russian arms? The pictures of those praying multitudes are still vivid before our eyes. And have other nations not had days of prayer, days set aside by governmental and ecclesiastical authority, on which the hearts of God- fearing men have been united in an agony of appeal to the Heavenly Father to stay the awful ravages of the plague, and to lead the feet of the nations into the paths of peace? And what have these days of prayer accomplished? Have not millions of Christian hearts all over the world besought God in secret chambers, day and night, to have compas- sion on our poor bleeding mangled race, and to curb the wild passions of fighting men? Through nearly four long drawn years these prayers have continuously ascended, but the heavens have remained as brass and the earth still runs blood! It is not to be wondered at that the skeptics of the twentieth century repeat the questions of the Book of Job : " What is the Almighty that we should serve him? And what profit should we have, if we pray unto him?" All this is exerting an influence on the 88 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS Christian Church. Christians can never escape entirely the spirit of their time. The same forces which play upon the men of the world play upon Christians also, and church members as well as unbelievers respond in varying- measures to the pressure to which they are subjected. When the question is asked : What can the Christian Church do at a time like this? there are many Chris- tians who would never think of prayer as a cardinal part of the Church's contribution to the winning of the war. The average mind runs of¥ at once to thoughts of things material, such as knitting sweaters and socks, and making bandages, surgical dress- ings, and collecting clothing. To many of us this seems the supreme work; to a few of us, perhaps, it seems the only work which really counts. The binding up of physical wounds becomes in time of war so tremen- dously important that it is likely to dwarf every other form of service, and even Christian men and women are in danger of forgetting the very thing which Christ and His apostles counted all important. Philan- thropy in all of its forms looks superlatively lovely to our eyes at a time like this, and for one Christian who feels the immeasur- able importance of constant communion THE IDEA AND PRACTICE OF PRAYER 89 with God, there are, perhaps, a dozen Christians who are most of all interested in sending tobacco and candy to the soldiers in the camps, or in providing for them entertainments which will break the monot- ony of camp life. To the average man in the Church, as also to the man in the street, prayer in war time takes a back seat. Prayer seems more appropriate and defensi- ble in time of peace. When we are doing our utmost to make the world safe for democracy, many of us feel we are too busy to pray. To be sure, our Lord says that men ought always to pray, but then He never anticipated such a war as this! The war has forced upon all thoughtful Christians a reconsideration of the entire doctrine of prayer. Questions have arisen which will not down. Prayer has for a long time been a problem for many. Modern scientific conceptions have made havoc with many of the old views. The idea of law, uni- versal and unchangeable, has weakened the confidence of many a man in the efficacy of prayer. In a universe which works so much like a machine there seems to be no room for prayer. The war has accentuated the old difficulties, and forced them upon us in a new form. How can you fit prayer into a 90 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS world geared up for the slaughter of men by machinery? Questions such as these keep running through the mind: Is it worth while to pray? Does anything happen as the result of my praying which would not happen if I never prayed? What can I bring to pass by my praying in time of war? Can I reach by my petitions the field of battle? Can I influence the program of an army? Can I safeguard a human life by my suppli- cations? Can I hasten by my entreaties the coming of peace? Or is prayer out of place on the battle-front? When men descend to the field of slaughter, do they enter a king- dom where the laws of prayer do not pre- vail? When men commit themselves to the arbitrament of bayonets, is it worth while to pray any longer? What can I do for the individual soldier by my prayers? If I con- clude that I can serve the individual, am I to assume that I can do something for a nation by my supplications? Or is a nation too large to handle in this way? Is interces- sory prayer solely for individuals, and must nations be left to the operation of other forces? Is it presumptuous for one to pray for millions of people at once? In short, is prayer sensible or efificaclous in the interna- tional realm? Assurance is all important THE IDEA AND PRACTICE OF PRAYER 9 1 in the domain of prayer. We cannot pray with satisfaction so long as our mind is har- assed by questions and torn by doubts. An ancient writer considered it axiomatic that " he that cometh to God must beheve that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that seek after him." These -questions are no longer academic. The war is making them grimly practical. Hundreds of thousands of American boys are already in France. Other hundreds of thousands are going. They leave behind them loving and anxious hearts. These hearts will follow them with affectionate thoughts. They will follow them also with thoughts which are turned toward God. And even in the midst of the praying there will come now and then the question : What can I hope to accomplish by this? Many hearts will pray on, not daunted by ques- tions. They will remember that Christ said that men ought always to pray, and this will be sufficient. Others, however, will wrestle with doubts. They will be driven to pray by the exigencies of the situation. When it is impossible to reach their loved ones by letter, or when a great battle is on, the heart will assert its rights. It will go boldly to the throne of grace and speak. But later 92 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS on, there will be questionings. One must of course walk by faith, but it is instinctive to seek rational grounds for faith. No one wants to do a futile thing. The honest heart cannot repress the query: What can be accomplished by prayer? The father and mother will pray for their son, the wife for her husband, the sister for her brother, the maiden for her lover, the grandparents for the sons of their children,, Through these solemn months a vast company will be praying. Men who have not been in the habit of praying will pray now. Women who have prayed languidly will pray fer- vently. Households which have been prayerless will have a new atmosphere. Questions which have hitherto remained outside the circle of immediate concern will become fascinating and absorbing. The mind once started on the track of inquiry does not readily turn back. There is no desire keener when once aroused than the desire to know. Multitudes will become conscious of their ignorance of these high things of the spirit, and will struggle valiantly for light. Most of us believe in prayer as an exercise beneficial to ourself. There can be no doubt of its subjective effects. They are good. THE IDEA AND PRACTICE OF PRAYER 93 The experiment can be tried. Wherever it is tried faithfully the outcome is the same. Men who pray most are most certain of the blessings of prayer. They are blessings which fall within the circle of consciousness. When we pray in the spirit, our troubles vex us less, our burdens become lighter, there comes into the heart a certain mysterious tranquillity. At times there comes a new strength, confidence, courage by which we are enabled to do or to bear what seemed to us impossible. Or perhaps the answer comes in the form of gladness. The shad- ows vanish. We find ourselves in the sun- shine again. There is no doubt of the sub- jective effect of prayer. But this is not enough — not enough for a crisis like this. This is a time when we want to pray for others. We want to know whether the results of prayer are solely subjective, shut up within the mind which prays, or whether there are results which are objective, lying completely outside the praying mind. For instance, when we pray for our soldiers be- yond the Atlantic, there will come a certain relief to our own burdened hearts, but will any relief come to those for whom our prayers are offered? Can we touch their mind by our petitions? Can we soothe or 94 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS brace their hearts by our supplications? Can we key their courage to a higher pitch? Can we breathe into them comfort, strength and cheer? Can we take off the edge of their loneHness? Can we make better sol- diers of them by our prayers? This leads to another question. If it is granted that we can hearten men's minds three thousand miles away by our prayers, can we do anything for their bodies also? Can we protect their flesh from the cruel shell? Can we alter the curve of a flying bullet? Can we reduce the power of a high explosive? Can we neutralize the poison of an asphyxiating gas? Can we shift the wind by our petitions and save a regiment from the deadly vapour? Can we reduce by continual praying the number of the wounded? Is it possible by the prayer of faith to beat back even on the battle-field that old enemy death? If you admit that even in the physical realm desired results can be obtained by prayer, the question arises, how can you tell what it is that has been accomplished? A mother, whose boy is at the front, prays fervently that he may be safeguarded from all harm. She prays for him morning, noon and night. The boy comes through the bat- THE IDEA AND PRACTICE OF PRAYER 95 tie unscathed. He has several wonderful escapes. j\Ien are killed all around him. He remains untouched. All his comrades are wounded, some of them fatally, but he comes out without a scratch. Later on word arrives that the boy is safe. In a let- ter he recounts to his mother all the perils through which he has passed. He tells her he has no doubt he owes his life to her prayers. The jubilant woman overflows with gratitude to God. She now believes in prayer as never before. She has had posi- tive demonstration that God is good. Hav- ing seen, she now believes. She tells all her neighbours of God's goodness to her and of how wonderfully her prayers were answered. She wonders that any one can doubt the efficacy of prayer, or the goodness and the power of God. But a few doors down the street there lives another woman whose son is also at the front. She is devout and prays to God day and night for the safety of her boy. She commits him to His keeping, and in faith expects her son to return. After the battle is ended, her son is found among the dead. She had thrown her prayers around him, but in vain. She had done all that love could do, but love was impotent. She had 96 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS committed her only child to God, and God had permitted him to be blown to pieces by a bursting shell. She listens with incredu- lity to what her neighbour says about the certainty of God answering prayer. Here then are two facts which clash. A mother prays, and her son is saved; another mother prays and her son is killed. Was prayer operative in either case? The old question pushes itself back again: Is it worth one's while to pray? Does anything happen as a direct result of prayer? Are the supposed answers to prayer only coincidences, chance happenings? Is there a God who pays at- tention to the petitions of us mortals? These are questions which will occur to parents and brothers and sisters and lovers and friends, and even little children, when they pray for their father, will ask their sad-eyed mother whether God is sure to hear. Prayer is becoming an urgently practical subject to all of us, and to none is the subject so vitally important as to those of us who call ourselves Christians. For we Christians are committed to the doc- trine of prayer. Our Lord was a man of prayer. He prayed for Himself, He prayed for others. He prayed in secret, in public, in the home, in the synagogue, in the tem- THE IDEA AND PRACTICE OF PRAYER 97 pie, in the fields, in the streets. He prayed so often and so fervently that those who came the nearest to Him felt they had never mastered the art of praying. " Lord, teach us to pray! We do not know how!" He is revealed to us in the Gospels as praying at all the crises of His life. He went out of this world praying. He exhorted all men to pray. He warned them against fainting. He urged them to keep on, and on, and on. It was His conviction that the heavens can be opened by prayer, and that by it blessings can be secured which are not to be obtained in any other way. His word for us all is: " Men ought always to pray and not to faint." Prove that prayer, either in peace or in war, is of no avail, and you shatter the Christian religion. It is not to be regretted that the war has forced on us a restudy of the doctrine of prayer. Our prayer life has been too long neglected. The doctrine of prayer has not received at the hands of religious teachers the critical attention it has deserved. The instruction of the pulpit has not been full or precise enough at this point. Much of the praying of Christian people has been de- moralizing because they were never in- structed in the laws of prayer. Christ has 98 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS told us that we ought not to pray after the fashion of the pagans, and yet there are large pagan elements in much of the Christian praying of the world. Multitudes have never grasped Christ's high conception of prayer. They have conceived of prayer as a sort of magic by means of which we can induce God against His natural inclination to show us a favour. Thousands of years ago, men prayed to God simply for what they thought they might get out of Him, and there are men in the twentieth century who have gotten no further. There are many Christians whose prayer life has been tragically disappointing because they have prayed in the wrong way and for the wrong things. It is an ancient blunder. Even in the first century the Bishop of Jerusalem was compelled to write to his converts: " You ask and receive not, because you ask amiss." Many Christians imagine they have a right to ask God for anything they can think of, and then fall into the slough of despondency because God pays no attention to their requests. It is the vicious ways of praying, and the false claims which have been made for prayer, which have been re- sponsible for not a little of the skepticism both in the Church and out of it. If you THE IDEA AND PRACTICE OF PRAYER 99 claim too much for prayer, you weaken con- fidence in all prayer whatsoever. If you insist on thrusting prayer into regions where it does not belong, you expose it to the ridicule of ail men who think. If you try to substitute prayer for some other form of energy, you awaken expectations which can never be fulfilled. If you persist in con- sidering prayer a form of magic which you can make use of to get you out of hard places, you are certain, soon or late, to find yourself in a situation where the magic will not work. There were many devout Christians who felt at the beginning of the war that the war would never have gotten fairly started if only a few thousand good people had then and there offered up a prayer of faith. They had no doubt this world catastrophe could have been warded off, if only Christian men and women in large numbers had asked God to do it. When He did not do it they were convinced that the prayers had not been offered in faith. That is a favourite way of accounting for all the delayed answers to prayer. All through the war we have been as- sured from time to time by sundry pious people that the war could be stopped almost ICX) OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS any day if only devout men and women would implore God to stop it. Prayer, in their conception, is a sort of magician's wand, and all you have to do is to wave the wand, and you can then have just the kind of world you want. We have had a rude awakening. The popular conception of prayer must be purged of its heathen im- purities, and we must bring our practice of prayer into line with the methods of God as these have been revealed to us. It must be borne in mind that there is a law of prayer. Man's spiritual life does not lie outside the sovereignty of law. We do not in passing from the physical to the spiritual leave the God of law behind us. Prayer is a rational act of the human per- sonality, and like everything else ordained of God, it is held in the grip of His orderly mind. It is because prayer has been so often placed outside of the kingdom of law that men scientifically trained have looked askance at it. A man educated in the modern schools does not like magic. He does not feel at home in the realm of the accidental and the whimsical. The only God whom he knows is a God of order, and if he is to believe in prayer, then prayer must be lifted out of the realm of caprice. THE IDEA AND PRACTICE OF PRAYER lOI The modern man knows that all things are conditioned. Sequences cannot be altered by wishes. Certain antecedents produce certain consequents everywhere and always. Change your causes and you change your effects. The chemist always knows what to expect, so does the physicist, and so does the astronomer. Things do not happen by accident in the univ^erse so far as we know it, and it is not likely that in the life of the soul things are left to run at haphazard. The soul as well as the atom is under law. It prospers when it is obedient to that law. Disobedience brings discord and disaster. Prayer is a force. When God created the universe of forces He made a place for the play of the prayer-force. This force is not an intruder, or upstart. It is at home in human life. A kingdom was provided for it from the foundation of the world. It does not annihilate other forces, or act independ- ently of them. It cooperates with other forces for the securing of desired ends. Ac- cording to the New Testament all answers to prayer are conditioned. These condi- tions are fixed and can no more be changed than can the conditions which the chemist deals with in his laboratory. The law of prayer is as sacred and eternal as the law of I02 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS gravitation. Laws cannot be suspended by the repetition of pious formulas. There is a harvest law in the physical world, and there is a harvest law in the world of the soul. Whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap. This law cannot be abrogated by prayer. A man who indulges to excess in alcoholic liquors for twenty years cannot by an earnest prayer change in an hour or a day the processes which have been started in his blood and body. What he has sown he must reap. You cannot change the law of gravitation by a prayer. The man who drives his automobile over a precipice goes to the bottom no matter how many prayers may be offered by the horrified onlookers. The man who sows his field with tares can- not change those tares into roses by offering up a series of Pater Nosters. You cannot set a great city blazing and then stop the conflagration by falling on your knees. This is a truth which was forgotten by the enthusiastic persons who thought that the war could have been checked at the begin- ning, if only groups of believing souls had prayed. You cannot abrogate the law of the harvest by your supplications. For a generation Europe had sown bayonets, and when the time arrived for it to reap battles. THE IDEA AND PRACTICE OF PRAYER I03 it \vas too late to stop the war by prayer. For forty years the statesmen of Europe had soaked their nations with naphtha, and when the continent caught fire from the pistol shot in Serajevo, it was impossible to quench the flames by invocations addressed to the King of Kings. You can no more check the conflagration of a blazing conti- nent by prayer than you can check by a pious wish the tongues of flame which are licking up the buildings of a wooden city on a windy day. How pathetic it was to see the pious Russians on their knees. Of course God could not grant their request. For generations the government of Russia had been tyrannical and corrupt. Rulers in Church and State had been shamefully recreant to their trust, and the very fabric of society had grown rotten. How absurd, therefore, for any one to suppose that God could give victory to the arms of any nation which had trampled on His laws so out- rageously and so long. There are times when God plainly says to a nation: "When you spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you : Yea. when ye make many prayers, I will not hear." There is a law of prayer and there is a law of the harvest, and the first cannot annihilate or I04 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS suspend the latter. H is easy for a govern- ment to appoint a day of prayer on \Ahich all the people are to ask the Almighty to help them out of their distresses, but whether or not the prayer is granted de- pends on the previous conduct of the people, and also upon the present condition of their hearts. A prophet long ago told his coun- trymen that their praying was all in vain. He assured them that he could hear God saying: " Bring no more vain oblations; in- cense is an abomination unto me. Wash you, make you clean ; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well." One of the cardinal laws of prayer is the law of limitations. Prayer is efficacious only within definite and narrow limits. To claim that it can do everything is to jeopardize one's belief that it can do anything. When men say sarcastically : " You cannot win a war by prayer " the reply is: What you say is true. Nor can you win a war by copper, or by steel, or by coal, or by wheat. You cannot win it by aeroplanes, or submarines, or by howitzers or hand grenades, or by torpedo boat destroyers, or trawlers, or by military skill or by millions of men. You cannot win a war by any one of these by THE IDEA AND PRACTICE OF PRAYER 105 itself, or by any three or four of them taken together. But you might win a war by combining them all. There are a multitude of forces which must be bound together for the winning of a war, and when you make out your list, do not fail to put the prayer- force in. You cannot win a war by prayer alone, but combined with other forces it works mightily. We recognize the limitations of prayer in the physical realm, and it is important that we should admit limitations in the spiritual realm also. We know that we cannot change the colour of our eyes by praying, or the shape of our nose, or the height of our stature. We realize that we cannot by praying cause apple trees to blossom in February, or bring on a snow-storm at the end of June. There are vast realms in which prayer is able to do nothing. God has told us in our experience that there are things about which we are not to talk to Him, He has informed us that there are thousands of things for which we are never to ask. But we are slow to take the hint, and too often we rush into provinces where it is not lawful for us to go, and ask for things which are as clearly beyond the reach of our prayers as the colour of our eyes or Io6 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS the shape of our chin. Many Christians are discouraged in their Christian hfe because they have never paid attention to this law of limitations. By assuming that they have the privilege of asking for anything they want, they meet with so many refusals at the hand of God that they come at last to ques- tion His willingness to listen to any petition at all. God does not allow us to substitute one form of energy for another. We often com- mit to the prayer faculty duties which be- long to other powers of the soul. Prayer, for instance, will never fill the place of physical labour. There are many blessings which can be obtained only by manual toil, and to try to substitute for such toil religious devotions is a sort of blasphemy which God treats with contempt. You cannot by pray- ing coax out of the soil either oats or barley, or corn or wheat. No man can raise rad- ishes or cucumbers or tomatoes or peas by saying his prayers over a patch of prepared soil. If you want vegetables you must work for them. The farmer who spends his sum- mer afternoons in a camp meeting will find a short harvest when autumn arrives. Corn fields have great respect for a man with a hoe : they care nothing for a man on his THE IDEA AND PRACTICE OF PRAYER 107 knees. JMuscle and steel are prime essen- tials in the raising of crops. It is wise for a farmer to pray. He will be a better farmer than he would be if he lived a prayer- less life. But prayer cannot take the place of the plow and the hoe and the perspiration of his brow on an August day. Prayer is good only when held in its place. Like the farmer, the surgeon depends on muscle and steel. It is a good thing for the surgeon to pray, but he cannot depend entirely on his religious faith. He may speak to God often in the course of his work, but without skill and his instruments he is nothing. A surgeon with a prayerless heart, but possessed of skill and a sharp knife, is more to be desired than a surgeon whg remains long at his prayers, but is too lazy to perfect his skill or sharpen his lancet. God does not allow us to substitute prayer for anything else. We send our boys and girls to school not that they may pray, but that they may study. You cannot do anything with the Greek conjugations or the Latin declensions by attending prayer meeting. Piety cannot be substituted for honest mental toil. Mathematics is a kingdom which opens not to the man who has a devotional vocabulary, I08 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS but to the man who is willing to do a deal of hard work. A student should pray. Every seeker after truth should keep as close to God as he can. Every one who would hold his brain at its highest point of efficiency ought to be in harmony with the Supreme mind at which all our intellectual torches are lit, but prayer is not a substitute for intellectual exertion, and only he goes into the kingdom of scholarship who is will- ing " To scorn delights, and live laborious days." Even spiritual institutions cannot be sus- tained and made successful by prayer. A Christian Church cannot survive without prayer, but prayer alone will never make a church prosperous. There must be a deal of hard and honest mental work. There must be meditation, careful planning, a look- ing backward and a looking forward, a con- stant forthputting of the full measure of the energy of all the faculties of the mind, not only of the minister but of many of the lay- men, and not only must the mind be willing to spend and be spent, but hands and feet must effectively cooperate, the bodies of men as well as their souls being offered a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God. THE IDEA AND PRACTICE OF PRAYER 109 Many churches are comparatively impotent in the community because they persist in substituting songs and prayers for heroic, aggressive, and self-sacrificing labour. The great war lights up in a most start- ling manner the fatal consequences of trying to substitute prayer for something else. Europe has for a thousand years been a continent of prayer. Cathedrals and churches exist in large numbers in all European countries, and in these sacred edi- fices companies of devout souls have through the generations offered up their prayers. Europeans and Americans alike have prayed continually for peace. The world has unitedly implored God to save it from the awful scourge of war. Christians in every land have repeated the beatitude: " Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God," and have bowed the knee to Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. But alas ! praying for peace is one thing, and working for peace is another thing. The first is easy, the second is hard. The first costs nothing, the second costs much. The first exposes one to no persecu- tion, the second provokes the world's criti- cism and scorn. How few peace workers there have been in any country within the no OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS last fifty years. Little groups of men did what they could, but their following was meager, and their influence upon govern- ment was almost nothing. They were caricatured and lied about by nearly all the papers. Millions of Christians have prayed for peace, but only hundreds of them have worked for it. And now we see what it costs not to labour for peace. If the nations had laboured for peace within the last fifty years with one-tenth of the energy with which they have toiled to prepare for war, this world-shattering catastrophe would never have been. Everybody knows that it costs much to wage war. Millions of men and billions of treasure — that is the cost of war. That is also the cost of peace. We never can have peace on this earth until we work for it, and we are never going to work for it until we love it with all our heart and mind and soul. Which one of the nations of the world has within the last fifty years spent a paltry million dollars in cementing international friendships, or used the energy of even a thousand men in constructing a plan by which the world might be saved this recurring baptism of blood and tears? No, the Christian nations have never worked for peace. The Christian diplomats have as a THE IDEA AND PRACTICE OF PRAYER III rule not worked for it. The Christian parHaments and congresses have not worked for it. The Christian Church has not worked for it. The Christian Church has prayed for it. The pulpit has talked now and then about it, but never since Jesus died on the cross have the Christian clergy or the Christian laity worked whole-heartedly, and resolutely, and self-sacrificingly for the over- :thro\v of the god of war, and the ringing in of a thousand years of peace. Do we then disparage prayer when we group it along with other forces? Do we deny it that royal place which it holds in the Christian Gospels? No! Do you disparage a man when you say that he cannot do certain things which a horse can do? He is the lord of creation, and do you break his scepter when you say that a dog in certain respects far surpasses him? Do you dis- parage electricity when you call attention to the fact that there are many things which the electric current cannot do? Within its own province electricity is a giant, a Titan, almost a god. And yet what severe and unescapable limitations! It is one of the mightiest of known forces. There are a hundred wonders it is able to perform. It can light vast cities. It can convert the 112 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS night into day. It can induce men to forget the moon and stars. It can turn a million wheels. It can manufacture things to work with and to wear. It can carry millions of people, and tons of merchandise through long distances. We stand awed in the presence of a power so amazing, and yet how limited electricity is, both in the doing of great things and in the doing of little things. Outside its narrow province it can do no mighty work. It cannot do a great thing, such as teaching a child to read, nor a little thing such as tying up a pound of tea. Electricity is mighty, but it works within limits, and it is best for us that these limits should be ascertained and acknowl- edged. We gain nothing by assuming that electricity can do everything. We lose much by assuming that prayer can do all. Within the limits set by the Almighty the prayer of the righteous man avails much. More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, and still more things could be wrought if all men everywhere would study it, and use it according to the will of God. It should never be forgotten that prayer is a force to be used in conjunction with other forces. We are to work and pray, THE IDEA AND PRACTICE OF PRAYER II3 serve and pray, watch and pray, suffer and pray. When Paul sketches his portrait of the Christian warrior, he mentions the belt and the breastplate, and the sandals, and the shield, and the helmet, and the sword, all essential pieces of armour, and he then adds prayer as the vitalizing force by which all these bits of armour are to become most highly effective. It is sometimes asserted that Christians think they can impose their will upon God. By their importunity they imagine they can induce the Almighty to exchange His plan for theirs. Instructed Christians think nothing of the sort. No prayer is truly Christian which does not breathe the spirit — " Not my will but thine be done." We do not want to change God's will; we want to bring ourselves up to it. We do not desire to alter His plan; we desire to know what His plan is and to fall in with it. " Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven " — that is the cry of every truly Christian heart. It is not egotistical or presumptuous to pray, if we pray after the manner of Jesus. Nor is it futile to pray even for things which cannot be granted. Saul of Tarsus prayed repeatedly that a certain physical 114 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS infirmity of his might be removed. His re- quest was denied, but his praying was re- warded. By prayer he was lifted above his thorn, and became able at last to say: "I take pleasure in weaknesses, injuries, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake : for when I am weak, then am I strong." Jesus implored God again and again that the cup might be removed from Him, and God denied His request, but by His prayer new channels were opened through which the divine power streamed into Jesus' soul. In the picturesque phrase of the Gospel — "An angel came and strengthened him." God did not take away the cup from His lips: He gave Him strength to drink it. When God does not give us what we ask. He gives us something better. Let us now return to the questions with which we started. In these heart-breaking days can we find relief in prayer? Certainly we can. If you doubt it, try it and see. Can we assist our soldiers in the trenches by our petitions? We have a right to believe we can. Jesus prayed for Simon Peter, and for many others. One man can help an- other by his prayers. We may not be able to explain how the help is imparted. We THE IDEA AND PRACTICE OF PRAYER I15 do not know the character or possibiUties of the mystic bonds by which we are bound together. " Our echoes roll from soul to soul forever and forever," and if this be true, then a man is justified in praying not only for himself, but for all who call him friend. Is it possible to shield our boys by our prayers from weariness and wounds and suffering and death? No! In war, multi- tudes must suffer and die. That is the price of victory. When men are fighting for a righteous cause, we ought not to count that price too great. We have a right to pray that the cup may pass, but the heart must add : " Not my will but thine be done." We cannot be sure, then, that our boys will come home again. Thousands will come back, but ours may not be among them. What then? If we have prayed as Paul prayed, and as Jesus prayed, we shall have strength to rise above our grief, and be able by God's grace to thank Him that it was our privilege to share in the world agony, and to furnish sons who by their life and death made a contribution to the emancipation of the world. LECTURE IV THE ATTITUDE TO THE CHURCH LECTURE IV THE ATTITUDE TO THE CHURCH THE general attitude to the Church in our generation may be described as critical, not in the sense of dis- criminating appreciation, but in the sense of censoriousncss. For fifty years the Church has been exposed to a criticism more gen- eral and biting than it had been called upon to endure since the first centuries of its career. The condemning judgment has come from all quarters. It has swept across the world like a deluge. In many quarters the criticism has been supercilious and haughty, in other quarters it has been cynical and bitter. Many scoffers have thrown stones at it, and many prophets have gone abroad declaring that the Church is ready for the fire. No other institution in our day has been so vigorously castigated and cudgelled ; so mercilessly lampooned and trampled upon as the Church of Jesus Christ. The faultfinding and denunciation have been participated in by all sorts and 119 I20 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS conditions of men, from the highbrows of intellectual centers, down to the atheistic soap box orator, who is convinced that all religion is superstition, and that the Church, long the enemy of liberty and happiness, has been left hopelessly and forever behind. This incessant and vehement abuse has had its effect on the mind and heart of the clergy. Not a few of them have come to take a censorious attitude to the Church of Christ in general, and to their own branch of it in particular. It is not uncommon to hear a clergyman on the platform saying disparaging things of the Church, or to find him setting forth in some magazine or paper scornful estimates of the wisdom and power of organized Christianity, Its limitations are exploited, its sores are exhibited in the public square. Some of the severest strictures made upon the Church within the last quarter of a century and some of the most pessimistic views of its present condi- tion and outlook have been made by its or- dained leaders, men who might reasonably be expected not to exaggerate the defects of an institution to which they are com- mitted, or to be unduly hopeless of a cause whose fortune lies largely in their own hands. I d THE ATTITUDE TO THE CHURCH 121 The effect of clerical criticism on the Church, combined with the tempest of fault- finding outside, has had a disastrous effect on large numbers of the laity. There are many Christian congregations in which the fires of enthusiasm burn low, and many com- munities in which the cohorts of the Lord are doing a halting and disappointing serv- ice. When a leader gives himself up to faultfinding and cynicism, he takes the heart out of those whom he has been called to lead. There are many thousands of church members who have no zeal for their church, and who have come to doubt the value of church membership altogether. It has become in many communities an ac- cepted truth that it is not necessary for a Christian to belong to the Church, and some amiable and intelligent people have gone so far as to assert that there are just as many good people outside the Church as inside, and that anybody can be just as faithful and useful a follower of Jesus Christ without any church connections as with them. It is an outstanding feature of the life of our day that many persons subscribe heartily to the teachings of Jesus of Naza- reth, and yet feel no responsibility for the prosperity of the institution which bears 122 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS His name. There are men who applaud to the echo the name of Jesus who have noth- ing but jeers and groans for every mention of the Church. What will be the effect of the war on the attitude of church members and outsiders to the Church? It is an interesting question, and one worthy of our serious consideration. Already men have begun to give answers to it, and their answers do not agree. Some are convinced that the war is going to put an end to the Church, that the soldiers now at the front will have no use for the Church when they come home. The world is get- ting its eyes opened — they tell us — in this awful ordeal, and never again will humanity be willing to be hoodwinked by the old formulas and creeds. The Church has long been ready for the burning, and the fire has at last been prepared in which it is to be consumed. Others feel confident that the Church will survive the war, but that it will be radically changed. Its old methods will be discarded, its former programs will be revised, its mes- sage will be cast into a new form. Old things will have passed away, and nearly everything will become new. The new Church — men assure us — will be a vast im- THE ATTITUDE TO THE CHURCH 1 23 provement on the old. With the ancient accretions sloughed off, men will in the fu- ture rally to the support of the Church in a manner unheard of hitherto. This is a hope. Others, less sanguine in their expecta- tions, prophesy that the Church will go on substantially as it has been going. Human nature, they tell us, is not going to be altered by the present conilict, and the Gospel of Christ is forevermore the same. The revela- tion of God in Christ, and the nature of the human heart remaining unaltered by the war, what reason, men ask, have we to ex- pect any revolutionary changes in the Christian Church? Let us hope it will be in many ways a better and more efficient Church, but let us not expect the impossible. It is by no means certain that the immedi- ate effect on men's attitude to the Church will be favourable. It may turn out to be bad. It may be that the Church will lose heavily in many ways because of this war. Accessions to her membership may be greatly reduced. A multitude of her pres- ent communicants may drop out. She may be seriously crippled in various departments of her work. Her prestige and glory may pass into eclipse. But there is no ground 124 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS for thinking that the Church will be per- manently damaged by the war. She may be wounded by the war, but the wounds will not prove fatal. The idea that she may lose her life in the war is preposterous. The gates of Hades shall not prevail against her. If she dies, she will rise again. The world cannot endure without her. Whatever she may lose in passing through the fire, she can afford to lose. She will be only refined by her sufferings and losses. There are several encouraging facts which should not be overlooked. When the war first broke out, the question was often heard: "Why did the Church not prevent this?" Men asked one another in scornful tones: "Where is the Church?" "What has the Church been doing? What is the Church for if it cannot ward off a catas- trophe like this? " Nobody inquired: Where is Science ? The very power which had been proclaimed as the coming saviour of the world was not so much as thought of by anybody in those first dreadful days. No- body asked: Where is Education? Where are the colleges and the universities? Where is Art, and where are all the Artists? Where is Philosophy? Where is Reason? Where is Common Sense? No one went THE ATTITUDE TO THE CHURCH 125 in pursuit of any other agency or institution than the Christian Church. The world was disappointed that the Church had not been able to do a mighty work. The masses of men felt aggrieved because the Church had not come up to their expectations. This arraignment was a beautiful testimony to the faith in the Church of God which lies deep rooted in the heart of our Western world. Sad and dejected as the two dis- ciples who walked toward Emmaus on a Sunday evening long ago, men said, we had hoped that the Church of Christ was the one who was to redeem Israel! Christendom assumes that the Church ought to render wholesale human slaughter impossible. The average man assumes that this is a part of the Church's mission. He takes it for granted that no other institution is equal to a task so gigantic. For all these assump- tions we should be glad. The hidden atti- tude of the human heart to the Church is, even in days of criticism and denunciation, one of faiih and hope. A second fact to be noted is that as soon as Caesar determined to unsheathe the sword, he looked to the Church for assist- ance. He did this in every land. He realized that without the aid of the Church 126 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS his battalions could not march to victory. There are two forces which every belliger- ent country has cultivated during the last four years with great assiduity — Labour and the Christian Church. Our own gov- ernment has been specially outspoken in confessing its dependence on our churches. Washington City knows that however im- perfect the Church may be in its organiza- tion, and however ineffective it may be in some of its work, it nevertheless is one of the mightiest forces under heaven for the moving of men's hearts and the attainment of great ends. The appeals which our gov- ernment has made to the ministers of this country within the last year for assistance in winning the war is a proof that however impotent, in the judgment of many critics, the pulpit may be, and however negligible organized Christianity may be in the practical work of our day, nevertheless the Christian- Church is not despised by men who understand the nation, and who wish to mobilize to the utmost our national re- sources. It is conceded by those who know that a Christian nation cannot win in a great war without the whole-hearted sympathy and cooperation of the Christian Church. A third fact not to be lost sight of is that THE ATTITUDE TO THE CHURCH 127 the government, as soon as it declared war, began at once to make use of the methods which have been employed by the Church from the beginning. The Church has al- ways believed in preaching. It has confi- dence in the force of words. It relies much upon the power of the tongue. IMany dis- paraging things have been said in recent years about preaching. It has been said that the day of vocal triumphs has passed, that the power of the tongue has been broken. But every nation now at war has confessed its belief in the power of the tongue. As soon as the United States de- clared war, a vast company of speakers were sent broadcast to give instructions to the people. As in the days of the early Church, some of these messengers were apostles, ordained by the President himself, some were prophets, their main business being to interpret the moral aims of the war, some were evangelists, their aim being the imme- diate conversion of men to the belief that ours is a holy war. Some were exhorters. They stood on street corners and in public halls, and simply exhorted men to enter the army or navy. There were divers kinds of tongues, and they all proclaimed the same message : " The world must be made safe 128 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS for democracy." Csesar recognized at once that the method of the Church is wise, and that whatever other agencies may be made use of in the winning of modern wars, the tongue cannot be dispensed with. This war differs from all other wars in many points, and one of its most distinguishing character- istics is the manifested belief in the power of words. Never before have words been used in such enormous quantities as in this war. Millions of shells have been used, and tens of millions of words. The words and the shells are counted equally indispensable. Every government has carried on a sys- tematic and vigorous propaganda. The printing presses have been kept running day and night, turning out tons of leaflets and pamphlets and tracts for the education of the people. Words are seen to be as potent as shrapnel. The pen can do what the sword may be unable to accomplish. The tongue can pull down strongholds which lie beyond the reach of the howitzers. Two of the outstanding victories of Germany in the war — the rout of the Italian army and the overthrow of Russia — were brought about largely by the skillful use of words. Every nation now realizes that it cannot win by the sword alone. It must use also the tongue THE ATTITUDE TO THE CHURCH 1 29 and the pen. Here then is a recognition of the wisdom of Jesus. When He opened His compaign for the conquest of the world, He sent forth men to preach. He beHeved in words. He knew the shattering power of ideas. He knew that the most potent of all the swords is the sword which a man carries in his mouth. Caesar has learned at last that words are bullets, and is better able to un- derstand Paul's remark that God is going to save this world by the foolishness of preaching. Another feature of the war is the large number of public meetings. Caesar believes in getting men together. He sees that whenever men come together in the name of a great cause, a psychical power is gen- erated which can be gotten in no other way. There has been much skepticism in recent years on the efficacy of church meetings. Such meetings have often been voted a bore; men have claimed that they could serve themselves and mankind by reading good books in their home without subject- ing themselves to the inconvenience of going to church. Public worship has been de- clared to be unnecessary, and the singing of anthems an inherited form of ancient super- stition. And then one April day the gov- I30 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS ernment decides to engage in a great enter- prise, and one of the first things it does is to encourage men to assemble themselves together. People pass immediately into a devotional frame of mind, and they stand with reverent hearts while musical instru- ments play the Star Spangled Banner. Anthems do not seem to be so antiquated after all, when great things are to be done. Even congregational singing becomes popu- lar again. Men full of feeling love to pour out their feeling in song. All over the land great congregations sing with swelling hearts : " My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of tliee I sing." There seems to be no objection to congre- gational singing when the heart is lifted to the level of a great ideal. Everybody in war time seems to know that it is a good thing to sing together, and that it not only gives relief to the heart which engages in the sing- ing, but likewise increases the volume of patriotic emotion in the hearts of the people. Patriotism, as well as religion, recognizes the place and the power of public assemblies and the inspiration and uplift of congrega- tional singing. THE ATTITUDE TO THE CHURCH 131 As soon as war was declared everybody believed in symbolism. Flags were immedi- ately displayed. The streets of all our great cities were aflutter with them. The flag seemed to express more than it was possible to declare either in song or in speech. Patriotism loves to appeal to the eye as well as to the ear. Every spirit in the soul of man is fed by sights and sounds. The human heart is naturally fond of symbols. But men have been talking in many quarters against the foolishness of symbols. They have laughed at baptism as a foolish rite, and have steadfastly refused to participate in a ceremony so meaningless as that of the Lord's Supper. Of what value, men have asked, can be a few drops of water on the head, and of what significance can be a crumb of bread and a sip of wine? Such questions are asked by those who do not understand the power of symbols, and the place they have in the evolution of the moral life of mankind. But every patriot knows the value of a symbol when that symbol takes the shape of his nation's flag. It is only silk or cotton to the man who does not love his country, but to the heart that is patriotic that flag ceases to be silk or cotton, it becomes the symbol of all that is most 132 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS glorious in his nation's soul. When a gov- ernment girds itself for a mighty task, it does precisely what Jesus did — it makes use of symbols, something which will appeal to the spirit through the senses of the body. An invisible patriotism is no patriotism at all. Those men who would like to strip re- ligion of everything which makes it visible and audible and tangible would never allow you to strip patriotism of its national an- thems and flags, and military processions, and all the other insignia of power. In time of war, we all believe in organiza- tion. We know that the isolated man is impotent. It is only when men cooperate that they are able to overcome a foe. The word corps takes at once a new place in our conversation. We talk of the Red Cross Corps, and the Hospital Corps, and the Medical Corps, and the Signal Corps, and the Engineers' Corps, and the Aeroplane Corps, and twenty other kinds of Corps — in other words, we think and talk in terms of social organization. We lose our interest in the individual man. We love to think of men massed together. We know that with- out organization we are helpless. It is through organized groups of men that patriotism can do its mighty work. Much THE ATTITUDE TO THE CHURCH I33 has been said for a long time against organi- zation in the realm of religion. Some men have smiled at it, and others have denounced it as a device of the Devil. They have scorned all ecclesiastical organization as though it were a degradation of the pure religion introduced into the world by Jesus of Nazareth. They have assumed that re- ligion is a purely spiritual thing, and that it can exist upon this planet without a body. Christianity, to these men, is a set of ideas, and these ideas will do their perfect work without the assistance of any organization. Such men are dreamers! Christianity can- not survive in a world like this without a Church any more than a man's spirit can survive without his body. A patriot knows that it is not enough to believe in the idea of democracy, and to hold in one's heart a hatred of Prussian militarism. These feel- ings and ideas are impotent unless you can organize men who hold them into an army. Nothing but organized strength can over- come Potsdam. The man who says he is against the Kaiser, but refuses to enlist in the army; who asserts he is a friend of the United States, but declines to march under its flag; who declares he is a patriot, but refuses to keep step with the men who are 134 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS marching to the front, will be put down as a slacker, no matter what he may say. It is the command of Jesus that all men who be- lieve in His principles, and wish to see them established in the hearts and homes of men, must come out from the crowd, be baptized into His name, and march together and fight together against the hierarchy of Night. This is also the method of Caesar. He knows that a rampant individualism is fatal to all great achievements, and that it is only through the consolidated strengths of vast numbers of men, compacted into a vital and solid body that great ideals can come to their coronation. All the fundamental methods of the Christian religion have been approved and adopted by the nations en- gaged in this war. But it is not only the methods, but also the principles of the Christian Church which the whole world is just now extolling. One cannot pick up a paper without reading in the editorial columns one or another of the commonplaces of the Christian pulpit. For instance, we are told every day we must not think of convenience or comfort. We must put duty first. The man who in time of war does not exalt the idea of duty is held up for swift reprobation. To win the approbation THE ATTITUDE TO THE CHURCH 1 35 of God and men a man must do his duty. That is what the Church has always said. The papers say that personal safety is not a matter of the first concern. Soldiers can- not think of their own personal safety. That is unmanly. Soldiers must think only of how best they can serve their country. All this is clear in time of war. To the teachers of religion it is equally clear in time of peace. Among true and courageous men safety is never first. Financial greed, the papers say, is an ugly and degrading thing. Men who love money more than they love mankind, and who sacrifice the interests of the nation in order to put money in their purse, are called profiteers, and the word is as odious as coward, thief, or traitor. A man who puts money first when other men are laying down their lives for him is despicable. Money must never be put first. The man who puts it first is a traitor to mankind. The Chris- tian Church has proclaimed that from the beginning. Even the man in the street knows it now. We are all under the law of service — so say the papers every day. It is our duty to help the Belgians, and the Servians, and the Poles, and the Armenians and the French. 136 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS We must bear one another's burdens. The preachers have said it all the time; the editors are now saying it also. We must not rate life too highly. We must not fear death. We must keep death in its proper place. Physical life is not too great a price to pay for noble principles, and for the freedom and happiness of human homes. The fear of death is an ignoble fear, and there are times when men must lay down their lives for others. The most worldly papers announce these truths as axiomatic. The pulpit has proclaimed them in season and out of season through nineteen hundred years. In short, the non-churchgoing, non-believ- ing, non-Christian world has come to see in these days of war that the fundamental principles of the Christian faith are nothing more or less than the principles of all wholesome and victorious life. The ideas of Christianity are being everywhere pro- claimed in the language of the shop and the street by men who do not realize that they are repeating the teaching of the pulpit. The law of universal obligation to service, and the law of sacrifice are the two laws which are to-day proclaimed across the land as laws which are binding on all our people, THE ATTITUDE TO THE CHURCH 137 and what are these two laws but the ancient moral principles announced by the Hebrew prophets, and in the fullness of time revealed and enforced in the life and death of Jesus Christ? This then is significant, that the political leaders of the world have come round in this crisis of history to subscribe to the cardinal principles of the Christian religion, and to acknowledge the wisdom of the methods of the Christian Church. This will not be for- gotten when the war is over, and will make it easier for multitudes to confess them- selves followers of the Son of God. Moreover, the war has helped us to see how sorely the world needs an institution whose supreme business is feeding the springs of good will. There is no doubt as to the mission of the Christian Church, Its mission is written large across the pages of the New Testament. It exists to establish, not in some other world but in this one, the kingdom of God, which is righteousness and peace and joy. Its fundamental doctrine is the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Its passionate appeal is: "Love one another even as I have loved you." The most vivid of its parables is that of the Good Samaritan, in which a man of one race ren- 138 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS ders assistance to a man of another. Chris- tian ministers are embassadors of reconcilia- tion. They are ordained to bring men closer to God, and nearer to one another. Their supreme task is building up in men the mind of Christ, and the mind of Christ is sympathy and forgiveness and love. They hold up before men's eyes the image of Christ the peacemaker, and their constant exhortation is that men may put of¥ the old man with his doings, and put on the new- man where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision or uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman : but Christ is all and in all. Of course the Church has never done its work efficiently. Like all human institu- tions it is made out of men, and men are creatures of many infirmities and limitations. The Church of Christ must always be handi- capped by the ignorances and prejudices and passions of the people who compose it, and not until men become perfect can the Church ever perform a perfect work. It would be absurd to claim that the Church has ever at any time performed its full duty, or to deny that it has not constantly sinned and fallen short of the divine glory. The great war has lit up luridly by its flames THE ATTITUDE TO THE CHURCH 1 39 the imperfections and blunderings of the Church, and the Church has no disposition at the present time to excuse itself or to deny its manifold weaknesses and shortcom- ings. In the hearts of the most faithful of its members there stands the spirit of the Publican, scarcely daring to lift its eyes unto heaven, and praying again and again — " God be merciful to me a sinner! " But however incompetent and unworthy in times past the Church may have been, the war has forced on us the imperative need of an institution which shall attempt with zeal and power to do what the New Testa- ment says the Church of Christ is estab- lished to do. We cannot get on without an institution whose supreme business it is to bind human hearts together, and to make war on those sentiments and dispositions which drive communities and nations apart. We live in a world of many prejudices and antipathies. Inherited antagonisms and traditional animosities slumber in human hearts everywhere. Dangerous fires smoulder under the surface of society, ready, at almost any moment, to burst into flame. The very structure of modern society seems to lend itself to the work of pushing men apart. The division of labour has driven 140 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS each man into his own little corner, where he is in danger of becoming lost in himself and forgetting his brothers. The inequal- ities of social condition wear chasms be- tween different classes, and across these chasms men glare at one another in sus- picion and ill will. The principle of compe- tition on which our modern civilization is built has a tendency to whet the greed of men, and to array the strong against the weak, and the many against the few. Surely we need an institution which shall keep on asking: " Have we not all one Father? hath not one God created us? " In a world in which an exaggerated nationalism is playing an increasingly con- spicuous part, and in which the various nations of our Western world are compet- ing with one another in a frenzied effort to obtain zones of influence and valuable con- cessions in the lands of belated peoples, and in which mischief makers of many kinds abound, how can humanity hope to survive and prosper without an alert and mighty Church? There are journalists who make a practice of poisoning the wells of inter- national good will. There are writers of skill and influence who take delight in fanning the fires of suspicion and dislike. THE ATTITUDE TO THE CHURCH 14I Lying rumour and poisonous gossip have great opportunities in a world of telegraph lines to do their deadly work. A thousand forces work day and night to array men against one another, and to snap those bonds of sympathy and trust without which man- kind falls into chaos. The war, then, does not prove that the Church of Christ is not needed in our modern world : it proves we need it desper- ately. It demonstrates that we cannot get on without it. It calls attention to the fact that we must have a better and a stronger Church if we are to cope successfully with the foes of modern civilization. Instead of tossing the Church aside because the world has tumbled into a ditch, we must cling to the Church with a new devotion, and pour into it a fuller measure of our strength and love. It is not a lesser Church but a greater Church which humanity is crying out for. The Church has failed, men say. Very well, if it has failed, we must see to it that it never fails again. The Church is behind the times, we are reminded. If that be true, then it is the duty of all men of strength and vision to bring the Church up into the forefront of the times. The Church is weak, men say; its influence is a dwindling one. If that be 142 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS the case, there is nothing for the lovers of mankind to do but to join heads and hands in a strenuous effort to make the Church what it ought to be. There are certain institutions we cannot get on without. The family is one of them, the State is the second, and the Church is the third. Since these are indispensable, we gain nothing by decry- ing them. It is the part of wisdom to note the points at which they fail, and then use all our powers in devising plans by which old weaknesses may be eradicated and new vitality be imparted. Let us hope that the attitude to the Church hereafter may be more and more constructive, every man ask- ing, not what flaw can I discover, what de- fect can I bewail, but what defect can I remedy, and what added energy can I bestow? Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for it. We ought to follow His example. We have a right, then, I think, to antici- pate a changed attitude to the Church as the result of the great war. The new facts are lighting up the old truths. The twelfth chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corin- thians now burns with a new glory, and the entire letter to the Ephesians ought to take a place it never had before. It may be that THE ATTITUDE TO THE CHURCH 143 no part of Christianity will be modified in more particulars by the war than the organi- zation and program of the Church, and it is not unlikely that on no other doctrine will men's ideas undergo such a radical modifica- tion as in their conceptions of the Church's nature and mission and importance. We have a right to expect a changed atti- tude on the part of those doleful ministers of the Gospel who have found it difficult to speak half an hour without giving theology a dig, and denominationalism a slap. When Roman Catholic prelates want to prove to the faithful that Protestantism is a failure and disgrace, all that is necessary for them to do is to weave together a series of quota- tions from the lips of prominent despondent Protestant clergymen. Probably one of the effects of the war will be an increasing reluctance on the part of these clerical critics to wash our soiled linen in public. A new league has been just now announced — the " Lip Service League." It has taken its place in the long list of organizations which the patriotic spirit of our country has recently called into existence. The purpose of the league is to put an end to the habit of grumbling and faultfinding, and to induce all good Americans to talk their government 144 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS up. Its aim is to get rid of that spirit of faint-heartedness which expresses itself in lugubrious forebodings, and to inspire men to speak in a bolder and more jubilant accent. Why should men and women think well of America and talk about her in terms of appreciation and confidence? They should do this because she deserves it, and because we ought to tone up public opinion, for public opinion in a country like this is after all the supreme force which moulds the career and character of the nation. America cannot do her share in the winning of the war unless patriotic Americans be- lieve in their country and in their country's ability to accomplish the work she has started out to do. There are many things to be sure which are going poorly, many blunders are being committed, and there are mistakes not a few, but in time of national crisis there is something more important to do than to grumble and find fault. It is in the atmosphere of hope that nations triumph, and it is by faith that demons are cast out and dark hierarchies overthrown. Generals in the army, who made a practice of underestimating and carping at the troops under their command, would not be tolerated by their government, no, not for THE ATTITUDE TO THE CHURCH I45 a day, nor should ministers of the Gospel be allowed a place in our pulpits who everlast- ingly disparage and slander the Christian Church, The attitude of the pulpit will be altered, no doubt, in another particular. The preacher will look upon his sermon as a call to sacrifice. The pulpit has been on the whole too easy in its demands. It has not asked enough. It has not dared to drive the idea of the cross home. The Govern- ment has taught us much at this point. The Government has no hesitancy in asking for the surrender of everything. It asks and expects men to give up not only luxuries but comforts, not only conveniences but things which have been counted necessities. The State dares to ask men to subject them- selves to every conceivable discomfort and risk, and to lay down even life itself. When Cccsar speaks in this tone, he uses the tone of Jesus. It was with that note that Jesus talked to His disciples. He told them they must give up everything, and must not hesitate to surrender life itself. He ap- pealed to the heroic in man, and whenever the heroic is appealed to, men are certain to give a response. The pulpit is going to shake off its fears. It will dare hereafter 146 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS to ask for the very largest things. The young men of the world have shown what they are capable of, and the ministers are not going to forget it. There will be a new attitude of trust in young men, the like of which we have never known before. With this changed attitude of the preacher to his message and his congregation, there will come a changed attitude in his people. They will come to think of the Church more as an army. That is what it has been from the beginning. Paul considered it an army, and called the men who laboured with him fellow soldiers. He looked upon every Christian as a warrior, and urged him to put every piece of the prescribed armour on. John also looked upon the Church as an army, and in the book of the Revelation Jesus is pictured as a general on a war horse, followed by soldiers dressed in white. From the beginning, the Church on earth has been called the Church Militant, but too often the martial note has been lost, and men have been allowed to forget that they are in this world for the express purpose of pulling down the strongholds of evil. When Chris- tians forget that, they go to sleep. A church which can find nothing in the town to fight is a church which becomes atrophied. THE ATTITUDE TO THE CHURCH I47 It is only by struggle that any church can become strong. The war has breathed into us something of the aggressiveness of the Apostolic Church, and men now sing with heightened ardour: " The Son of God goes forth to war, A kingly crown to gain." When our laymen get to fighting the forms of evil in their community they will believe more fully in the blessings of pubHc wor- ship, and in all the meetings of the Church. The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper will come to have a deeper meaning. It will be- come what it was to the early Roman Chris- tians, an oath of loyalty to their commander. Church members will believe more enthusi- astically in their church, and this enthusiasm will have its effect on the attitude of out- siders. The world outside the Church is learning many things. UnbeHevers, as well as Christians, are subjected to-day to a serious discipline. Men are pondering things in their hearts. Men are wondering, meditat- ing, asking questions, wrestling with diffi- culties as never before. Out of this sweat of intellect and turmoil of heart will come a harvest to the glory of God. Many men 148 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS are seeing for the first time that the Church is indispensable to the well-being of society. The Church's agent— the Y. U. C. A.— is bringing Christian hymns and Christian prayers and the Christian sacraments to the attention of tens of thousands of young men who have been thus far indifferent to re- ligion. The Y. M. C. A., by ministering to the young men of the world, is giving them a clear conception of what Christianity really means. It is showing them that a Christian is a man who for the sake of Christ is glad to help his fellows, and that he counts his own life as nothing if he can only min- ister to the lives of others. There is no institution on the face of the earth so popular at the present hour as the Y. M. C. A. It has written its name on the hearts of millions never to be effaced. The service gladly rendered by Y. M. C. A. secretaries to young men far from home, in their hours of loneliness and homesickness, and often in hours of pain and suffering, and in many cases in the hour of death, is making an im- pression on the mind of the present genera- tion which will be a force in shaping the future. Now the Y. M. C. A. is simply the Christian Church, girding itself for a special form of service. The secretaries are Chris- THE ATTITUDE TO THE CHURCH 149 tians, members of the Church, the directors are Christians, also members of the Church. The money is given — most of it — by Chris- tians, also members of the Church. It is the Church, then, which through the Y. M. C. A. is ministering to the young men of many lands. It does not labour in vain. It is casting its bread upon the waters, and it will find it after many days. It is sowing seeds, and there will be a harvest later on. After the war is over there will be a new world of men with a changed attitude to the Church of Christ. A part of the change will be due, by the grace of God, to the noble and self-sacrificing labours of the Y. M. C. A. The awakened sense of national great- ness and responsibility which the war has brought, and the deeper and more fervent patriotism which the war has kindled in millions of hearts are going to lead to a changed attitude to the Church of Christ. We now see more clearly the necessity of having a united country. We are on the stage of the world's life, and we are to re- main there to the end of the human drama. We cannot play our part successfully unless we are a united people. We can never be racially one. We are fed from all the coun- tries of the globe. Our unity must be I50 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS sought, then, in the realm of the spirit. It is only in common ideals that all our people can come together. A common language will help to unify us, and so will our system of common school education, but these will prove insufhcient unless supplemented by the fusing power of religion. Religion is the greatest power under heaven for the fusing of hearts. Men become one at the throne of God, It is when souls bow at the name of Christ that racial and political and social differences are forgotten, and all come to feel they are one. Our love of country will help us become better Christians. We are seeing more clearly the necessity of a united Church. We must have a united country, and to get a united country we must have a more united Church. We Christians must come closer together. Shame on us if we dilly-dally any longer. We have dwelt too much on our differences, and not enough on our agreements. The war is forcing us together. It is baptizing us into a common grief. It is rolling on us a common burden. Men of all denomina- tions are camping together, marching to- gether, fighting together, suffering together, dying together. Women of all denomina- tions are knitting together, working to- THE ATTITUDE TO THE CHURCH 151 gether, praying together, weeping together. Sectarian animosities are being smothered, denominational rivalries are being sub- merged. The pressure of this colossal tragedy is breaking down the walls of separation. The war will surely modify in many and wonderful ways the religious temper and tone of the country, and will change the attitude of millions of Christians to church unity and church union, to the work of coordinating and consolidating the religious forces of the nation. In the gigantic task that awaits us of binding up the wounds made by the war, men long separated are going to join sympathetic hands, and hearts long estranged are going to flow together. We shall sing as never before : " Blest be the tie that binds Our hearts in Christian love." For the first time we are thinking as a people of our place among the nations of the earth. We have at last the world- vision, and are possessed of the international mind. We see as never before the problems and perils of the coming years. We are face to face with tasks more colossal than those which any preceding generation ever 152 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS faced. We have a whole world to plan for and direct, to teach and to save. A burden is rolled on us which we cannot bear alone. When we look out upon the world problems we cry in distress : " Who is sufficient for these things?" and then the comforting thought comes to us: "Our sufficiency is from God." He has made a way of escape from all our tribulations and perils. He has ordained an instrument by which the great work is to be accomplished. A new world is to be created by the instrumentality of an organization baptized into the spirit of Jesus and endowed with His might. The world is to be redeemed by Christ through His Church. The Church is His body. The Church is His bride. The Church is His temple. The Church is the pillar and ground of the truth. The Church is the family of God. The Church is the city of God. " And the nations shall walk in the light thereof; and the kings of the earth do bring their glory into it ; and they shall bring the glory and the honour of the nations into it; and there shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean, or he that maketh an abomination and a lie : but only they which are written in the Lamb's book of life." *' There is one body and one spirit, even as THE ATTITUDE TO THE CHURCH 1 53 also ye were called in one hope of your call- ing; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all." LECTURE V THE USE OF THE BIBLE LECTURE V THE USE OF THE BIBLE THE great war burns on like a con- flagration, and many things are being consumed. They are swept away on the wind Hke ashes. The Bible will remain. Many things are melting and flowing into new forms. The shape of the Bible will not be altered. Many things are losing their colour and luster, but the Bible will lose nothing. It is a sort of Daniel. The lions cannot tear it. The fires cannot burn it. It is beyond the reach even of war. No submarine can sink it, no howitzer can demolish it, no asphyxiating gas can smother it. It is on the earth, and yet it is where neither moth nor rust consumes, and where thieves do not break through and steal. At the end of the war, the Bible will still con- tain sixty-six books; not one chapter will be missing, or one sentence erased. You can no more burn up the Bible than you can burn up the Milky Way. But there is rea- son to think that the use of the Bible will in many quarters be modified. Many Chris- 157 158 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS tians will read it from a new view-point. Because of the altered method of reading it, fresh light will break forth from it to guide humanity on its way. The war has given us two solemnizing revelations concerning the Scriptures. First, it has shown us that multitudes of young men even from Christian homes know little of the Bible. We knew it before — we know it better now. The religious leaders of Great Britain have been appalled by dis- coveries they have made. They have found out what a slight hold the Bible has on the average Britisher, and what little progress he has made in the understanding of it. But this revelation is scarcely more startling than the discovery that many religious teachers do not know how to use the Bible. Christian ministers of reputation, and even learned doctors of divinity, have in many cases given the most surprising exhibitions of their ignorance of the Scriptures, and have used the Holy Writings in ways for which there is no justification. One cannot help wondering if the reason why so many young men are not interested in the Bible is because their pastors have held belated con- ceptions of it, and have persisted in using it in antequated and irrational ways. THE USE OF THE BIBLE 159 Everything depends on the way in which a book is used. A good book may be used in ways which produce bad results. Even the Bible may be so interpreted and applied as to retard the progress of mankind. No book in all the world has been so persistently and flagrantly misused as the Bible. This misuse began early, and has been continued down to our own day. It matters little how earnest or how honest a man may be, if he perverts the Scriptures and tortures them into teaching things which are not true or right, he damages the reputation of the Holy Volume, and handicaps the Church in all its work. Nothing, perhaps, has so plagued and crippled the cause of Christ through 1,900 years as false conceptions and mis- taken interpretations of the Bible. One of the blessings which we have a right to ex- pect the war to confer upon the world is the breaking of the grip on many minds of a false theory of the Bible, and the banishing of certain methods of interpretation which have harassed and hampered us through many generations. No matter what may be the subject of controversy, the Bible is certain, soon or late, to be dragged into it. This is inevi- table. Christians, believing that in the l6o 01 D TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS Bible they have a message from God, natu- rally search the Scriptures for sentences which seem to support the position they are trying to maintain. Agnostics and un- believers are also glad to quote the Scrip- tures w^hen they can, because the Bible is a book of vast prestige, and a man adds weight to his argument by weaving into it the apparent approval of some prophet or apostle. The Bible is often quoted by men who have no interest in the Christian re- ligion. They quote the Bible just as they quote Shakespeare and Browning. It adds distinction to a man's cause to link it up with a lustrous name. And so in every dis- cussion on themes of vital moment, the Bible is sure to be quoted by the disputants on both sides. In the astronomical controversy of the sixteenth century, in the political con- troversy of the seventeenth, in the witch- craft controversy in the eighteenth, and in all the controversies of the nineteenth, in- cluding the use of anaesthetics, the practice of vaccination, the use of lightning rods, the scheme of life insurance, the cause of pro- hibition, the right of women to speak in church, and the ethics of holding black men in slavery, the Bible was used as an arsenal of ammunition by both sides. And what THE USE OF THE BIBLE l6l went on in all preceding centuries goes on in our own. The suffragists and the anti- suffragists, the vivisectionists and the anti- vivisectionists, the socialists and the indi- vidualists, the militarists and the pacifists all have no difficulty in bolstering up their respective positions by quotations from the Bible. It is as true to-day as it was when Shakespeare said it: " What damned error but some sober brow Will bless it, and approve it with a text." Several months ago a man in Kansas pro- pounded the question : Does the Bible sanc- tion war? Not long afterward, a conscien- tious objector in the city of Brooklyn was turned down by the Examining Board of that city, the chairman writing on the back of the petition handed in by the conscien- tious objector this sentence from the fourth chapter of the Book of Nehemiah : " Re- member the Lord who is great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your houses." At this point the discussion was taken up by a New York journalist who in an editorial referred with glee to the action of the Brooklyn judge, and commended his clever quotation from the Bible as a full and l62 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS sufficient answer to the question propounded by the man in Kansas. The Brooklyn judge and the New York editor are referred to here solely because they are representatives of a large class of intelligent people to be found in every community. Many min- isters and church officials would have done the same. These men assume that you can answer a deep moral question like that pro- pounded by the Kansas man by dipping into the Bible anywhere and pulling out a sen- tence which seems to contain the answer you want to give. They make no distinc- tion between what the Bible teaches, and what is said in the Bible. That is a fatal piece of carelessness. The Bible does not teach everything that is said in the Bible, any more than Shakespeare teaches every- thing which is said in the plays of Shake- speare. There are a great company of speakers in the Bible, of all stripes and grades of ethical development, including the devil himself, and we must be careful lest in our effort to get the Bible on our side we make use of a method which may finally bring us to confusion and shame. Does the Bible sanction polygamy? The Patriarchs were all polygamists, and they seemed to be on intimate terms with the Almighty. If THE USE OF THE BIBLE 1 63 God ever told them they were committing a sin by having more than one wife that communication is not recorded. David is said to have been a man after God's own heart, and he had wives and concubines. It would seem, then, that there can be noth- ing immoral in concubinage. The leaders of the Latter Day Saints quote the Scrip- tures precisely after the fashion of the Brooklyn judge and the New York editor. Does the Bible sanction slavery? Here is your answer in unmistakable terms written out for you in the twenty-fifth chap- ter of Leviticus: "Both thy bond men and thy bond maids which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen round about you; of them shall ye buy bond men and bond maids. Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land, and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession : they shall be your bond men forever." The slaveholders of a generation ago quoted the Bible after the manner of the New York editor and the Brooklyn judge. Does the Bible encourage men to drown 1 64 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS their sorrow in drink? It would seem so, for this is plainly written in the thirty-first chapter of the Book of Proverbs, a book which preserves the concentrated essence of Hebrew practical wisdom : " Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine to those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more." All the apologists for the liquor traffic, and all the defenders of the guzzling of rum, quote the Bible after the style of the Brooklyn judge and the New York editor. Does the Bible teach that death ends all? Hear what is said in the third chapter of the Book of Ecclesiastes : " That which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them ; as the one dieth so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again." The cynics who scoff at immortality, and who look forward to an eternal sleep, quote the Bible after the mode of the New York editor and the Brooklyn judge. Does the Bible sanction persecution? Elijah was one of the greatest of the prophets, so great that his countrymen re- THE USE OF THE BIBLE 165 fused to believe that he could die, and loved to think that he ascended into heaven in a chariot of fire, so great that the early Chris- tians clung to the report that he and Moses had communed with Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration. Now in the eighteenth chapter of the First Book of Kings, we are told that Elijah said this : " Take the prophets of Baal: let not one of them escape. And they took them : and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there." Many of the perse- cutors in Christian history, the pitiless judges and executioners of the Inquisition, the cruel bigots and the wild fanatics of many lands, have quoted the Bible after the method of the Brooklyn judge and the New York editor. Does the Bible believe in witchcraft, and does it sanction the execution of witches? Here is your answer in the twenty-second chapter of the Book of Exodus: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." The men who did to death a hundred thousand human beings in the seventeenth century on the charge of witchcraft kept the Bible open at the Book of Exodus. They quoted the Scriptures after the way of the New York editor and the Brooklyn judge. l66 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS Does the Bible sanction the doctrine of mihtary frightfuhiess? Read what is writ- ten in the fifteenth chapter of the First Book of Samuel: "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." Saul refused to carry out the fear- ful command. " Then came the word of the Lord unto Samuel, saying, It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king, for he hath not performed my commandments." And what Saul refused to do, Samuel did. " He hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal." All the advocates of military frightfulness from Attila the Hun down to the military staf¥ of Potsdam have quoted the Bible after the pattern of the Brooklyn judge and the New York editor. Does the Bible sanction war? Of course it does, if by that you mean, Does any one of the men who wrote the Bible throw his approbation round the slaughter of the battle-field? In the Book of Exodus it is plainly stated that God Himself is a man of war, and in the Psalter we hear the exultant shout of an unknown warrior praising God because He has taught his hands to make THE USE OF THE BIBLE 167 war, and trained his fingers to fight. All the devotees of INIars in Christian lands, from the first military butcher down to Bcrnhardi, have known how to quote the Scriptures after the method of the New York editor and the Brooklyn judge. It is this manner of using the Bible which, let us hope, the great war will forever dis- credit. It has tormented and disgraced us long enough. It was when Goldwin Smith saw the slave dealers using the Bible in defense of slavery that he wrote his fiery pamphlet in which he declared that the Old Testament is a millstone around the neck of the Church, and that the Church must get rid of it, if it is not to be overwhelmed. Even so calm and self-restrained a writer as George Adam Smith does not hesitate to say that it is an open question whether the brutal and superstitious ideas and practices of the earlier books of the Old Testament have not had a greater influence on the civilization of Europe than the masterpieces of high thinking and feeling in the Books of the Prophets. Right onward through the generations this reckless and erroneous use of Scripture has been perpetrated on the world, and men of vision and of heart have cried out in pain : " O wretched men that 1 68 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS we are, who shall deliver us from the body of this death?" It was in the nineteenth century that his- torical criticism brought relief by applying the idea of development to the Scriptures. We were in slavery to a theory. The theory was that the Bible is a single book, a dictated book, equally authoritative in all its parts. The Bible, it was said, is the word of God, and since it is the word of God, it must be perfect like God Himself. It must be infallible in all its teaching, it must be inerrant in all its statements, it must be binding on all generations. This is the theory which has been held by many in- fluential ecclesiastical leaders through the last four hundred years. Early in the nine- teenth century, Samuel Taylor Coleridge declared that the generality of the popular divines in Great Britain held that " all parts of the Bible are equally inerrant because equally dictated by the Supreme Being to a mechanical amanuensis." This is the theory which still lingers in the popular mind, and against which the historical scholarship of our day wages un- compromising war. Modern scholarship has made it clear that the Bible is not one book, but many books, sixty-six books, a THE USE OF THE BIBLE 169 library, bound together in one volume, to be rightly understood only as its varied and miscellaneous character is remembered. It is not the word of God in its every part. The word of God is in the Bible, but the Bible itself is not the word of God. The Bible is a lantern. There is a light in the lantern, but the framework of the lantern is not light. Christ is the word of God. " In the beginning was the word, and the word waTwith God, and the word was God." " O word of God incarnate, O wisdom from on high O Truth unchanged, unchanging O Light of our dark sky." In Christ there is no blemish, in Him there is no darkness at all. He is as a Southern poet says— the " Crystal Christ." But the Bible is not free from imperfections. It is the historical record of the religious develop- ment of a singularly gifted people. Like all other peoples they rose " on stepping stones of their dead selves to higher things." Light came to them, as to all mortals, gradually. Their greatest and best men were not per- fect either in life or thought. Their standards were not ideal, their moral judg- ments were not in every case sound. These lyo OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS men were human. They made mistakes. They saw through a glass darkly. They erred often in trying to read the future : they erred sometimes in interpreting the present. They occasionally mistook their own desires for the will of God. They sometimes read into Deity their own passionate and selfish nature. What seemed to them a " thus saith the Lord " was sometimes only an echo of their own carnal heart. Now the Old Testament is the literary record of the spiritual evolution of this oriental nation. It is the sifted literature of more than a thousand years. In such a collection of writings one would expect to find just what we do find, imperfections, immaturities, con- tradictions, here and there an error. Dif- ferent grades of mind are represented, dif- ferent degrees of spiritual vision. These books are not all on the same level. They are not of equal value. Their authors are of divers religious culture, and they speak to us with varying notes of authority. There are threads of barbarism woven into the wondrous fabric, echoes here and there from a savage world. Jesus loved the Old Testament, but He read it with discrimina- tion. He said to His countrymen : " It was said to them of old time, thus and thus, THE USE OF THE BIBLE I7I but I say unto you, this and this. I assure you that on certain points those men of former times were mistaken, that in various matters they missed the way, that in some of their principles they were wrong, and I have come to proclaim to you the perfect truth." We Christians are followers of Jesus, and nothing in the Old Testament is of authority to us which falls below the level of His teaching. All the books of the Old Testament stand before the judgment seat of Christ to render an account of the things done in their body. Everything that falls below the level of His ideas is for us obsolete. Anything which contradicts His teaching has no binding force on us. " We needs must love the highest when we see it." Jesus is the highest we have seen. Jesus is, therefore, our Master. All this has been set forth in many vol- umes by modern scholarship, and these con- clusions have been accepted by most of the people who think and read and know. But the pulpit, on the whole, has not yet made these things clear to the laity. The general public does not know them. The average Christian does not know them. The pulpit has not clearly and boldly repudiated the seventeenth century conception of the Bible; 172 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS and multitudes of people imagine that the Christian Church is committed to the doctrine of verbal inspiration, and an in- errant text. There are many conservative Christians who are reluctant to surrender inherited ideas, no matter how false and foolish those ideas are, and there are not a few ministers who keep silent upon matters on which it is imperative that they should speak. One of the outstanding scandals of this war is the reckless and unscrupulous way in which the Bible has been quoted by men who ought to have known better. In our own country many a minister has by his use of Scriptural Cjuotations forever dis- credited himself as a safe interpreter of the Bible. Doctors of Divinity who have framed an argument for war by weaving together sentences from the Books of Joshua and Judges, Chronicles and Kings, have put a stain on their intellectual reputation which will never be washed out. It is simply scandalous for a Christian minister in the twentieth century to attempt to justify war as a method of settling international dis- putes by isolated sentences torn here and there from writings nearly three thousand years old. By such a method you can prove anything you wish. This was the method THE USE OF THE BIBLE 1 73 of the Inquisition, and the method of the Defenders of Despotism, and the method of the slaveholders, and the method of Paul Kruger, and the method of all the fanatics and tyrants who have attempted to forge chains around the souls of men. It is the present method of the Kaiser, of Von Hin- denburg, and of all the whole brood of sycophant German pastors who are dis- gracing themselves and the Church of God by their disgusting attempts to justify the atrocities of the German military stafif by sentences from Holy Writ. The fact that German professors and pastors can make use of the Bible in defending the in- human and unpardonable crimes of Ger- many against mankind is going to arouse multitudes who have hitherto been in- different to the questions of Biblical criti- cism, to the cardinal importance of finding out what the Bible really is, and what it is that this Book actually teaches. Certainly there must be something radically wrong with the traditional use of the Book when it can be prostituted to support ambitions and practices which might cause even a savage to blush. The prattling of the Kaiser about " Gott," a God unknown to the New Testament, has made religion odious 174 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS to multitudes, and has forced us to face the necessity of recognizing the hmitations of many Old Testament conceptions, and of using a discrimination in Bible reading which has been too often lacking. Any view of the Bible which renders it possible to make use of it for the vindication of the rapacity of the Pan-Germanists, and the justification of the doctrine of military frightfulness, is a perilous conception, para- lyzing to the Church and deadly to humanity, and one which must be rooted out of the human mind as speedily as possible by the ordained teachers of the Christian religion. Those American preachers who justify war by quoting scattered sentences from ancient Hebrew historians play into the hands of the German pulpit sophists, who to-day de- fend the sinking of the Litsilojiia, and the rape and massacre of women and children in Belgium and France by the alleged orders of Jehovah to the ancient Israelites to annihilate the entire population of Canaan- itish cities down to the babies at their mothers' breasts. The war will join hands with modern historical scholarship in driv- ing from the world forever — let us hope — a conception of the Bible which has held sway over the human mind through many THE USE OF THE BIBLE 1 75 dreary centuries, and which has worked confusion and havoc and unspeakable tragedy all the way. What are we to say then to the question : Does the Bible sanction war? The answer is that the New Testament has nothing whatever to say on the subject, and that the Old Testament speaks with conflicting voices. In the lower parts of the Old Testa- ment war is accepted as a part of the divine plan— God Himself is a colossal warrior — and practices are condoned and even com- mended at which our heart revolts. But in the higher regions of the Old Testament war is abhorred. Many of the Hebrew poets record their scorn of military para- phernalia. For instance : " There is no king saved by the multitude of a host. A horse is a vain thing for safety." Or again : " He delighteth not in the strength of the horse." Horse in the Old Testament means, as you know, war horse, and whenever you find an Old Testament writer sneering at a horse, he is doing it because the horse is the symbol of war. None of the prophets is enamoured of the pomp and circumstance of war. They all view it with detestation, and look for- ward to the time when it shall curse the world no more. Hosea — a prophet dear to 176 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS Jesus' heart — told his countrymen that God would save them, but not by bow nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses nor by horsemen. The greatest of the prophets — Isaiah — warned his fellow citizens against the folly of building their hopes on military equipment, and of supposing that a nation strongly defended by arms is secure. To Isaiah there is no glory in war. It is a grizzly intruder, by and by to be cast out. He loved to dream of the day when the boots of war and the garments rolled in blood will be tossed into a glorious bonfire, and he felt certain that a time will some day come when the instruments of human slaughter will be transmuted into the imple- ments of industry, and nations will refuse to lift up sword against one another, and will cease to squander time and money on the demoralizing preparations for killing men. Can, then, Nehemiah answer a conscien- tious objector of the twentieth century? Certainly not. Nehemiah was a good man, and a brave one, and there was no doubt in his mind that if his countrymen were to complete the task of rebuilding Jerusalem, there was nothing for them to do but fight. There is no ground for thinking he was mis- taken. But if you can prove by quoting THE USE OF THE BIBLE 1 77 Nehemiah that a conscientious objector in the twentieth century is wrong, then by the same method you can prove that the Prus- sian poHcy of miUtary {rightfulness is right. The early Israelites did exactly what certain German armies have done. The soldiers butchered the old people and kept the girls for themselves. They did it, it is written, under orders from God. This quoting of Scripture is a hazardous business. The Bible is a two-edged sword, and a man will cut his own fingers who does not know how to use it. All that we can say about Nehemiah is that in the fifth century before the Christian era there came a crisis in the history of his people in which, so far as he could see, the only thing to do was to fight. And fight he did. I do not condemn him. I do not question the wisdom of his action. All I claim is that his decision is not a law for us. We also are living in great days. A crisis has come for this Republic. The question arose — Shall we fight? It was decided that we should and would. There was no consulting of a book. This world is not guided by a book. It is guided by the Living God. Men cannot in the twentieth century, in order to ascertain their duty, 178 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS turn back to find out what somebody did in entirely different circumstance twenty-five hundred years ago. We follow the voice of God as He speaks in our reason and our conscience. God has access to all hearts. He is as near to us as He was to the Hebrews in the olden times. He is the same yesterday, to-day and forever. He is with us always even unto the end of the world. We are justified in feeling that it was right for the United States to go into the great world war, not because of anything said in the Old Testament, or anything done by the ancient Jews, but because in the mind of President Woodrow Wilson, and in the minds of the members of his Cabinet, and of the members of both Houses of Congress — the most fully informed men in the coun- try — it was made clear that the time had arrived when we as a nation could not in justice to ourself, and in fidelity to the in- terests of mankind, any longer hold aloof. We have been promised the guidance of the Holy Spirit. If at so momentous a crisis in human history it was not possible for us to get any guidance from heaven, except what little might trickle through a few sentences written in a book many centuries ago, then the fundamental promise of the Christian THE USE OF THE BIBLE 1 79 religion is without value, and we are really without God and without hope in the world. It is an intolerable thought that God spoke to men twenty-five hundred years ago, but is either unwilling or unable to speak to anybody now. The proper thing to say to a conscientious objector is not a quotation from the Book of Nehemiah, but a few sen- tences from the lips of Woodrow Wilson. He is our leader, and we have a right to expect God to speak to us through him. If, then, it is not proper to seize upon isolated sentences in the Old Testament and convert them into laws for our action at the present time, what shall we do with the New Testament? Is it legitimate to quote Peter or John or Paul? Is it proper to quote our Lord? It is right to quote Jesus and the Apostles on any subject on which they have expressed a clear-cut and definite conclusion, although the Apostles said sun- dry things which have no binding force on us. But no one of them— so far as we l^now — ever expressed himself about war. War does not seem to have come within the circle of our Lord's immediate concern. He spoke on many subjects, but so far as He has been reported. He never took up the question of international conflict. We do l8o OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS not know what He thought about it for that century, and even if we knew His judgment for that time, we should still have to find out His judgment for us, for " new occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth." The Apostles followed the ex- ample of their Master in leaving slavery and war alone. They were twin abominations of the ancient world, and Jesus and His Apostles kept their fingers off both of them. When, therefore, a militarist or a pacifist wishes to support his argument by quota- tions from the New Testament, he should be careful to deal fairly with what is written there. The reckless way in which good men sometimes deal with Scripture is dishearten- ing. They seem to forget that the New Testament is literature, and that, like every other piece of literature, it must be read in obedience to established laws. When we use a sentence from a Gospel or an Epistle, we must pay attention to the laws of grammar and of rhetoric. We must remem- ber that the meanings of words are subtle and changing, and that the content of a sen- tence is conditioned by what goes before and what comes after. To pick up a sentence as though it were a verbal Melchizedek THE USE OF THE BIBLE l8l without ancestors or descendants, and make use of it in a scheme which we wish to carry out, is a dishonest trick with language. The significance of every text is conditioned by its context — the areas of language by which it is surrounded. The New Testa- ment is not a book of isolated oracles lying- like so many gems or marbles in a box, into which box a man can dip his hand, and pick- ing up whatever sentence he happens to light on, find in it an argument for or a demonstration of the point he wants to prove. A man of sensitive conscience will not play fast and loose with words, especially with the words of Jesus. And yet that is what many intelligent and honourable men under the stress of the hour sometimes do. The pacifist of a certain type seizes, for in- stance, upon the phrase: "Resist not him that is evil," and on that slender foundation proceeds to build an elaborate argument to prove that the Christian religion does not allow a state to make use of force in resist- ing encroachments upon its rights. But this is only one sentence in one of the Gos- pels, and it is sheer caprice to seize upon this one sentence and contend that it is the very foundation and core of the Christian religion. There are many other sentences 1 82 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS of Jesus equally important, and all of these must be taken together, if we are to find out what the trend of Christian teaching really is. This particular sentence must be in- terpreted with a view to the sentences which precede and follow it, and a literalism can-- not be allowed in the interpretation of this sentence which we rule out when it comes to interpreting a sentence like this: "Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away." Jesus had a way of throwing His ideas into striking verbal forms, and He trusted men to use their intellect in an honest effort to ascertain the truth which lay half hidden in His words. The man who wishes to estab- lish the contention that Jesus of Nazareth preached the doctrine of non-resistance as that doctrine is understood by groups of men who now proclaim it, must produce more abundant and more satisfying proof than is contained in the few short words: " Resist not him that is evil." Always be- ware of the man who attempts to establish a truth, which he considers absolutely indis- pensable for the salvation of the world, upon a solitary sentence, the meaning of which is not altogether clear to anybody. Possibly no sentence of the New Testa- THE USE OF THE BIBLE 183 ment has been so often quoted since the war began as the words of Jesus: "Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace but a sword." This has been used to prove that Jesus was not a pacifist, and that war is a part of the divine scheme, and that huge mihtary prepara- tions in time of peace are necessary, and that war as a human discipUne will never be outgrown, and that universal conscription is indispensable to national health, and that war is God's tonic which He administers to nations which are becoming anaemic, and that we are justified in fighting Germany at the present time. It is used on all occasions, and for all purposes, and by all sorts of speakers. Even editors use it. The aver- age man who quotes it pays no attention to the chapter out of which he got it. He knows the meaning of one word in it — " sword " — and knowing this he proceeds to build the sentence into his argument. In order to grasp the meaning of the words we must first ascertain what our Lord was talking about, and to whom He was talking. He was sending twelve young men out to preach, and before they started He gave them a charge. He told them that they were to go out as so many sheep in the 1 84 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS midst of wolves. Every one of the twelve understood what that meant, for every man of them had been brought up among sheep, and every man of them had heard the howl of a wolf and had seen the flash of his teeth. Every man of them understood what a wolf does to sheep, and also what happens to a sheep when a wolf comes near him. To make His meaning absolutely clear, He went on to say : '' I want you to be harmless as doves." With a sheep and a dove before their eyes as symbols of what they were to be, He felt sure they would not go astray. He does not hold back from them the un- pleasant truth that some of them will be killed. He tells them not to be afraid of death. That is a price which a man ought to be willing to pay in an effort to make the world better. Of course all this comes to them with a shock of surprise. They had long looked forward to the setting up of the Messianic Kingdom, and they had dreamed of the high positions which they would fill, and of the peace and prosperity which would immediately follow the advent of the King. Jesus warns them against such rosy and jubilant expectations. " Do not think," He says, " that you are going to do your work in tranquillity. Do not imagine that the THE USE OF THE BIBLE 185 world is going to roll at once into a great calm. Do not dream that men are going to accept these higher standards without pro- test, or that they will surrender to these heavenly principles without resistance. If you preach high ideals you will stir up oppo- sition. If you force home the truth you will get yourselves into trouble. Wherever you go with my ideas, you will create dissen- sions and divisions. Communities will be thrown into tumult, and even families will often be rent in twain. But you must put your devotion to me above that to every- body else. No man is fit to be counted a follower of mine unless he is willing to pay the supreme price. If you do not take your cross and follow after me, you are not worthy of me." This is good sensible teaching. It has been tested through sixty generations and all the world is agreed that the doctrine is wholesome. A teacher of religion must not fight. He ought to be wise, but he must be harmless. He may be insulted, but he ought not to retaliate. He may be lied about, but he ought not to breathe revenge. He may be struck, but he ought not to strike back. He may be scratched and torn, pos- sibly bitten, but he must not scratch or tear 1 86 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS or bite. Why not? Because he is a teacher of good will. He is an embassador of patience. He is a minister of compassion. He is a herald of love. And since this is the burden of his message, he must show all these things in his life. If he becomes vindictive and bitter, his message loses its force. If he meets violence with violence, his usefulness will be snuffed out in a brawl. No matter how numerous and furious the wolves, he must remain a sheep. No matter how hungry the birds of prey, he must con- tinue a dove. Jesus counted this funda- mental in teachers of His religion, and so do we. We do not allow ministers of the Gospel to fight. If they do, they are dis- missed. We do not permit Christian teachers to carry bowie knives or clubs. Their only armour must be their beautiful spirit. It is not allowed missionaries to land on a foreign shore with a machine gun or a supply of hand grenades. We expect them to go unarmed. We know that some of them may suffer many things, a few of them may lose their lives, but this does not cause us to alter our policy. We carry out the program along the lines which our Lord at the beginning laid down. Christian min- isters and teachers, whether at home or THE USE OF THE BIBLE 187 abroad, must never be wolves. They must be content to be sheep and doves. What then has this sentence to do with war? Nothing at all. Jesus is not dis- cussing war. He is not giving a lecture on statecraft, or on the functions of prime min- isters and diplomats. He is not thinking of international relationships, or of the com- plications which may arise between rival states. All these matters He passes over to devote His attention to the men who are to carry His good tidings to the end of the world. Non-resistants in search of a bolster- ing text might be excused for seizing upon a sentence like this as pointing in the direc- tion in which they wish the world would go, but non-resistants never use this. Strange to say, it is used always by militarists and by the apologists for war. And yet it is one of the sentences which a militarist ought to keep far away from. The sentence does not refer to the political world, and it does not look in the direction of international strifes, and therefore we have no right to drag it out of the sphere in which it belongs into the kingdom of state policy and pro- gram, but if you do insist on making this a principle of action in every department of 1 88 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS life, individual and social and industrial, and political, and national, and international, then you have a wholesale and positive con- demnation of war. If you insist that this sentence prescribes a course of action for statesmen and kings, then you make Christ say that a nation must be a sheep, a Chris- tian nation must be a dove, a nation worthy of Him must never strike back, must never use violence, must always submit, must allow itself, if called upon, to be chewed up by the wolves ! It is amazing that any man who wishes to defend war should ever make mention of a sentence like that. But does our Lord in this charge to the Apostles condemn war? I think not. Jesus is not discussing political affairs. He is giving advice to Christian preachers, and there is no parallelism between a Christian preacher and a state. The business of a preacher is to proclaim by voice and life the spirit of gentleness and love; the business of a state is to safeguard the life and the prop- erty, and the liberties of its people. To say that a state, if true to Christ, must never do anything which it would not be right for a Christian minister to do, is in my judgment the very climax of absurdity. Jesus is not discussing the subject of war at all. The THE USE OF THE BIBLE 189 New Testament has nothing directly to say- on that subject. Where then shall we find out what to do? We must go to God ! He is the living God. He is a guiding God. He gives wisdom to those who ask for it, and does not upbraid those who ask. He gives His spirit to lead men into whatever truth it is needful for them to know. We are not dependent on some one afar off who will tell us in the hour of crisis what we are to think or say or do. It is told us in that hour by Somebody inside of us what we are to do. When we saw Germany trample Belgium under her brutal and bloody feet, and discovered later on that Great Britain and France, unassisted, were unable to drive the monster back, then it was told us in that hour what we ought to do. We were not dependent on a book. We got our direc- tions straight from God. And this is the ancient promise ever more fulfilled. The Holy Spirit points out the path our feet shall travel, and gives us strength sufficient to bear the burden and complete the task. This, then, is what the war is doing for all open-minded Christians around the world. It is showing us more clearly what the Bible is. It is admonishing us that we must read the Scriptures with keen and reverent dis- I90 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS crimination. It is revealing the duty of all Christian ministers and Bible teachers to get rid, as speedily as possible, of these ignorant and antiquated notions of the Bible, and to substitute for them conceptions which modern men can entertain. Above all things else it is proving our dependence on the living and ever present God. The war is demonstrating the futility of Bibli- olatry. We cannot live upon a book. No book can tell us all we want to know, or do for us all that we must have done. We are dependent upon God in Christ. Christ is the living bread which comes down from heaven. Unless we eat His flesh and drink His blood, we have no life abiding in us. LECTURE VI THE ESTIMATE OF THE WORLD MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY 1 LECTURE VI THE ESTIMATE OF THE WORLD MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY THE cause of foreign missions has never stood high in the esteem of multitudes outside the Christian Church, and inside the Church there have always been groups who have remained in- different to the foreign missionary appeal. What will be the effect of the war on our work for Christ in foreign lands? The immediate effect must, of course, be bad. The immediate effect of war on every- thing is bad. It turns many things upside down ; it throws not a few of the kingdoms of life into confusion. It retards and com- pletely checks various forms of good work. It undoes many pieces of work which have already been accomplished. It throws back reform movements. It demoralizes more or less the moral standards of individuals and of nations. It cripples the Church in its work of spiritual regeneration, and turns 193 194 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS the minds and hearts of men to physical preparations. It partially empties the class- rooms of universities, and burdens even wealthy institutions with deficits. Even business, although in certain branches accelerated by it, is in the long run damaged by it. The furious activity induced by war is abnormal, and, like a fever, after it has run its course, it leaves the patient demoral- ized and exhausted. Commerce is thrown into chaos, and the industrial world is filled with new conditions calling for readjust- ments and leading to bitter and dangerous contentions. War upsets everything, in- cluding the human heart, and, therefore, foreign missionary work cannot escape. The immediate effect of war upon foreign missions is more disastrous than on almost any other form of human activity. Chris- tian work done by nations at long distances from home is exposed to the full blast of the tempest. In some cases the work is badly damaged, and in others it is completely wrecked. The work of the American Board, for instance, in Turkey has been largely suspended. The work of the German Boards in India has been stopped. German mis- sionary work in all the possessions of the British Empire has come to an end. There WORLD MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY 195 is no missionary work done by any of the foreign Missionary Boards which has not been profoundly modified by the great war, and in many fields the havoc is wide-spread and distressing. This is the immediate effect away from home, and at home there is a sinking of heart in various circles, and a disposition to query whether, after all, the foreign missionary enterprise really pays. When one thinks of the forty million dollars expended in Turkey by the American Board alone, within the last hundred years, and looks to-day upon the bloody fields of ravaged Armenia, he cannot escape the question : Is this all which can be shown as the result of a century of Christian heroism and sacrifice? There are probably a few who would be willing to assert that the effect of the war on foreign missions is fatal. It would seem as though not for a long time would any Christian nation have the courage to set itself up in the midst of a non-Christian population as a teacher of love. This is a Christian war, that is, it arose in Christen- dom, and has been conducted and financed by so-called Christian nations. The cruel apparatus was all devised by men who have been baptized into the name of Jesus, and 196 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS the leaders of all the belligerent nations are the confessed .followers of the Prince of Peace. It is where the Bible has been read longest, and where Christian prayers have ascended in largest number, that this hideous thing was born. The philosophy out of which the war sprang was conceived in the brains of so-called Christian thinkers, and nothing of value made use of in the war was fashioned by other than Christian hands. The only two non-Christian nations which have cut any considerable figure in the war — Turkey and Japan — were in no way responsible for causing the war. They sailed into it solely because they were lashed to the masts of Christian ships. It was Christian nations which dragged them in. The war has been as savagely conducted as any ever waged in barbaric lands. Every principle of right and every dictate of humanity has been ruthlessly trampled down, and the question arises. How can representatives of any one of these nations ever again gain a hearing for the Christian doctrine of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man? Surely the non- Christian world w'ill turn with scorn on our proffered message, and the taunt will be hurled in our teeth : " Physician, heal thy- WORLD MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY 1 97 self." When the leaders of thought in non- Christian lands read the story of brutalities and atrocities of men who were reared in the shadow of great Christian cathedrals and listen to their songs of hate, they must most certainly wonder why the Christian religion, if indeed from heaven, has been so impotent in shaping the minds and hearts of those who have so long been subjected to its teaching. The Christian Church has al- ways claimed to be a divine institution, and insists that it enjoys the presence of the omnipotent Christ, and yet, finding itself unable to curb the wild passions of the men who bow at its altars, it may fairly be chal- lenged when it attempts again to speak with authority to nations which have not yet confessed their allegiance to Christ. One would say that the Church itself must feel in its own heart the handicapping sense of inconsistency, and must find it difficult, for a long time to come, to open its mouth boldly in proclaiming in non-Christian lands the unsearchable riches of Christ. What Christendom really is will speak so loud that the so-called pagans will not be able to hear what the Christian missionaries say. But the situation is not so bad as it looks. The world is never so hopeless as super- 198 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS ficial indications would justify us in believ- ing. Christians should never be daunted by any sky however dark, or by any tempest however furious. We are children of the day. We can gather sunbeams out of rolling thunder-clouds. We can sing of summer when the world is stiff with ice. The cross of Jesus was hideous to the crowd, but it is not hideous to us. " In the cross of Christ I glory towering o'er the wrecks of time." To the multitude the day of the crucifixion was black Friday. It is Good Friday to all believers, for on that day a window was opened out upon the Infinite. A great war cannot quench our hope, or cool our love, or upset our plans. We know that where sin abounds, much more does grace abound. A world-devastating, and a world-shattering catastrophe cannot break down our confidence that all will still be well. We know that all things work to- gether for good to those who love God. We are sure that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. We know that a world war, vast and bloody, is not able to cripple permanently the mighty enterprise of saving men. Some day we shall find, long after the war is over, that in this day of crisis the work of foreign missions re- WORLD MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY 199 ceived a new baptism, and that a new era of missionary conquest was opened. Even though darkness broods on the face of the deep and many things are yet hidden from us, we who look carefully can already discern the working of forces which inspire hope. God moves in the darkness on the face of the deep. First of all the war is forcing upon us the fact that it is a small world we live in. We have known this before, but the world has constantly contracted since the war began. It was never so small as it is now. The map of it has been spread before us for nearly four years, and there are few regions with which we are not now familiar. At one time it was necessary for us every morning to take a new lesson in the geography of Asia; at another time we studied every day the Balkans; at another time we wrestled with the boundaries of the countries of Africa, and for months we have been com- pelled to devote ourselves daily to wide regions of Eastern and Western Europe. Recently we have had to master the topog- raphy of Picardy and Flanders as though we were General Foch. We now see the world as one vast plain, and it lies not far from our front door. The result is a 200 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS shrivelling of the word foreign. It is drying up, and may some day be blown away. It is doubtful if it survives the present war as a word which may properly be applied to missions. Heretofore we have spoken of " foreign missions." The word " foreign " has been a stumbling block to the cause. It has chilled the heart, and made people feel they were being inveigled into some- thing too far away from home. But the war has proved to us that nothing is very far from our home. We used to talk about the " Far East," but there is no East which is Far. The ends of the earth are at our door. Every week travellers from China and India and Japan alight from the train to tell us what they have just seen and heard. Hereafter we shall talk about world work. The expression " Foreign Missions " will in time, I venture to predict, become obsolete. Not only is the world small, but humanity is one. This is an old fact, but facts often sink only slowly into the mind. It was nearly two thousand years ago that Paul told a crowd in the city of Athens that God has made of one all the nations of the earth, but it was many a century before Europeans began to talk about the " solidarity " of WORLD MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY 20I mankind. The war is giving us revelations of what solidarity means. We are bound up together in a big bundle of life. We are linked together by innumerable bonds subtle and not to be escaped. The lives of races and nations are intertv^^ined and interwoven in a mystical way. Washington warned us against entangling alliances, but God has a way of taking things into His own hands, and suddenly we awake to discover that we are tied hand and foot by alliances that can- not be broken. When the first steamship crossed the Atlantic a new era of entangling alliances was opened, and the second epoch in that era was entered by the laying of the first Atlantic cable. These alliances are not the scheme of any statesman or cabinet, but the creation of science and commerce and travel and finance and art and industry and religion, the vast and complicated and multitudinous work of the workers of the world. Above the reach and power of political rulers and lawmakers, the threads of the world's life are woven into a great web, and we are startled one day to dis- cover that we are connected with the farthest away man on the planet. As soon as the war began, the effect of it made itself felt instantly in every capital of the world, 202 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS and this effect has rapidly worked its way down into the smallest town and hamlet. In the wilderness of South America, in the desert of Africa, and in Alaska and Pata- gonia, things are different because of this war. The war has its hand on everything we eat and on everything we wear, and no nation escapes the effect of the experiences through which distant nations are passing. We have come to see that mankind is one colossal man, and to realize that whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it. By one human spirit we are all baptized into one body, whether we be Europeans or Africans or Americans or Asiatics, we have been all made to drink into one spirit. Because the world is small and mankind is one, the law of mutual service becomes more obviously imperative. We are under bonds to bear one another's burdens, and to help one another in all the ways which are open. If the parable of the Good Samaritan is heaven's law for individuals, it must be heaven's law also for nations. If a nation falls into the clutches of a gang of bandits who rob it and beat it, and leave it bleeding and half dead, then neighbouring nations WORLD MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY 203 must come to its rescue. That is a law written in the human heart. When Belgium was crushed under the brutal feet of the military oHgarchy of Potsdam, Great Britain was constrained to rush to her assistance. Great Britain had no desire to enter the war. Her statesmen had done their utmost to ward off the unspeakable calamity, but when, in defiance of the laws of God and of nations, the Prussian cohorts thundered across the Belgian frontiers, British soldiers began to cross the channel. It seemed for a year or two as though European nations could be safely left to attend to the affairs of Europe. With Russia and France and Great Britain leagued together, it was assumed that the defeat of Germany was certain. But when it at last became ap- parent that still further resources were needed, then our own Republic snapped the traditions of a hundred years, and boldly flung herself into the arduous enterprise of creating a vast army to fight on European soil. Nothing but the lawlessness of the German war lords, and the atrocious brutal- ity with which they pushed forward their schemes, would ever have set on fire our peace-loving people, and consolidated all classes of our heterogeneous population into 204 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS a compact phalanx bent on breaking the fury and power of these mailed enemies of man- kind. Who would have supposed even two years ago that public sentiment in this coun- try would ever support so radical a departure from the traditional policy of our country, and enter enthusiastically upon the gigantic task of raising an army for trans-Atlantic service by the policy of universal conscrip- tion ! It was not because we love war, for we do not, nor was it because we had any- thing of a material nature to gain, but be- cause, as a people, we are full of Christian idealism, and as soon as it was made clear to us that without our assistance Great Britain and France could not curb and con- trol the arch-criminal Germany, then, not counting the cost either in men or in money, we began to prepare ourselves for battle. In doing this we acted on the impulse which has been the driving force in all the work which the Church has tried to do in distant lands. What is the missionary enter- prise but an organized effort to give relief to those who need it, to rescue those whose rights and liberties are jeopardized, and to break the power of false philosophies and degrading superstitions? Missionaries are nothing but soldiers of Jesus Christ ready to WORLD MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY 205 hazard their lives in an effort to snatch cap- tive peoples from the clutches of their despoilers. Ignorance and tradition and superstition and low ideals are as pitiless and cruel as the Teutonic ravagers of Serbia and Poland. Large sections of the human race have been for countless centuries in bondage, trampled under the feet of ideas born in brains which have not had the light, and the mission of the Christian Church is nothing more nor less than to set men free from despotic and degrading masters. We have recently encouraged our sons to go to France, and have invoked the divine blessing on them, because of our great pity for the French and Belgian women and children, and our compassion on the vast multitudes of human beings of all ages and both sexes for whom this fair earth has been converted into a hell by the pitiless cohorts of the German military staff. It is pity for suffer- ing women and children in non-Christian lands which has fired the hearts of us fol- lowers of Jesus, and it is because of the compassion which has filled our hearts when we have in our mind's eye seen the multi- tudes in far-off lands scattered and torn, like sheep not having a shepherd, that we have poured our money into the missionary 2o6 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS treasuries, and been glad to send thousands of our sons and daughters to dwell and labour among the belated populations of the earth. The driving force in our great war for the liberation of France and Belgium is also the driving force in that still greater war which the Christian Church is waging in every land against the vast hierarchy of the Empire of Evil. The crying need of Christian work lies revealed before us then with a vividness which it has never had before. We now see clearly that no section of the world can be safely left under the domination of un- christian principles. In the olden days, when nations were separated from one an- other by dividing mountains and estranging seas, it was possible for one nation to travel the downward path without jeopardizing the life of all the others. One nation could be a swamp without other nations suffering from the poisonous exhalations. But now all the nations breathe the same air, and no swamp anywhere can be tolerated. In olden times each nation was in a private room in the big \vorld hospital, and its disease w^as not readily communicated to its neighbours. But nowadays all nations are in a common ward, and every contagious disease spreads WORLD MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY 207 rapidly to all the company. Militarism, for instance, is one of the most contagious of all national diseases. No nation can be af- flicted with it without infecting all its neigh- bours. If one nation invests its money in the apparatus of human slaughter, and drills all its young men yearly in the art of war, then in self-defense all surrounding nations must adopt the same policy, and in time this will become the policy of the world. No nation lives to itself, and no nation dies to itself. Germany cannot have conscription without forcing conscription on France and Russia, on Switzerland and Holland. Ger- many cannot develop the gigantic gun factory of Krupp without causing similar factories in every country to spring up. Germany cannot surrender its soul to false ideals without it leading other nations into the ditch. All this is seen clearly in the light of the great fire. We must all go up together, or we shall all miserably perish. One nation cannot serve Caesar, and other nations serve Christ. One continent cannot worship Mars and another continent the God of love. America cannot remain Chris- tian if Asia is to remain Confucian. The Christian religion is for the whole world. If it does not claim the whole of it, then it 208 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS will find it impossible to hold any of it. The field is the world, and the Christians who, forgetting the instructions of the IMaster, imagine they can cultivate only one corner of it, will find soon or late that all their labour has been in vain. Go into my vine- yard, the Master says, and when we lift our eyes to see how far the vineyard extends, we find its outer boundary to be the horizon of the world. God so loved the world. We must love it too. Another fact has been uncovered, never again to be lost sight of; religion and only religion has in it the power sufiticient to save the world. Much has been said in recent years of science, and high claims have been made for its power to save. Clever men have written fascinating magazine articles setting forth the superior claims of science as the coming saviour of the world. Not a few have been deceived by these false prophets, and have vainly imagined that the day of Religion is passing, and that the day of Science is at the door. The great war has revealed to us the nature of Science, and has pointed out to us its serious limitations. Science is a neutral in the realm of morality. It never takes sides when right or wrong is at stake. It invariably goes with the side WORLD MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY 209 which can best use it. It cares nothing for falsehood or truth, for justice or wrong? It knows no ethical distinctions. It fs in- capable of moral discrimination. It is an unmoral force. And this awful fact has emerged from the war— that a nation can be well versed in science, and still be an un- mitigated curse to mankind. It can know biology and chemistry and all kinds of engineering, and be marvellously proficient in higher mathematics, and still drag the world back into barbarism. Science has in it no power to soften the human heart, no magic to make gentle the human soul, no potency to humanize the human spirit. Bernhardi is well versed in science, but his book, " Germany and the Next War," could not be more hellish if it had been written by a devil. Science has a mission on the earth. No one would care to dispute its usefulness or deny its power. We need all the sciences, for each one of them, when held in the grip of a high moral purpose, becomes the servant of the Most High God. Science is not to blame for the preposterous claims which have been put forth for it by sundry of its devotees. Science is a handmaid of religion. Religion cannot get on well with- out it. Science is the servant of the moral 2IO OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS life of mankind. But scientific instruments in the hands of men who have not sat at the feet of Jesus arc sharper than a two-edged sword and can be used for the assassination of civiHzation. Science has made it pos- sible for the human race to commit suicide. The war has demonstrated that without the spirit of Jesus we are lost. When men speak lightly of the next war they do not know what they are saying. The next war — if there be a next war — will be far worse than this. Invention is yet in its infancy. Chemistry has not revealed what it can do. The genius of man for making machines has been developed only a little. The sub- marine of to-day is a harmless toy com- pared with submarines which may yet be. The aeroplane is only in the chrysalis stage; it has not yet really learned how to fly. In the next war — if there be a next war — all the instruments of destruction will be developed to a power beyond our present dreams. Whole cities wall be blown to atoms by the pressing of a button, and civilization will end like a tale that is told. How shall we escape, then, if we neglect the salvation which has been offered? It is the calm statement of a scientific fact that there is no other name under heaven whereby we WORLD MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY 211 must be saved except the name of Jesus. Woe to us if we do not preach the Gospel, and if we do not preach it to the ends of the earth. Japan must become a Christian nation, for she has a peculiar aptitude for scientific knowledge, and she imitates easily the mechanical achievements of Western nations. She can readily become the Ger- many of the Far East. She will be a peril if she is not won for Christ. China is awakening from a long slumber. It was Napoleon who said that when China awoke she would shake the world. Everything depends on the ideals which are held before China's opening eyes. If China becomes Christian then the Orient is safe. At the beginning of the nineteenth century our fathers sent missionaries to the Far East because of their fear that the peoples there would after death sufifer things unspeakable in the fires of hell. We are moved by a different fear. We are not so much con- cerned about the hell of the world to come as we are about the hell which is sure to come in the world which now is, unless the nations surrender to the Son of God. So long as the Church used the fear of hell to stir men's generosity and interest, it was always possible for somebody to say: "I 212 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS am not sure about that hell you talk of on the other side of death, and not being" sure of it, I do not care to sacrifice greatly for the missionary cause." But of the hell in this world there can be no doubt. Dante never painted woes so awful as those which Poland and France, and Serbia and Ar- menia, and Belgium have known. War is hell ! No sane man disputes it. But the next war will plunge the world into still deeper depths of hell. We have the re- ligion which when obeyed puts out all the flames of hell. We are debtors to the whole world. Unless we pay our debt we stand everlastingly condemned. We owe the whole world the revelation of the character of God which has come to us through Christ. The war is giving- us valuable hints as to how our world work for Christ ought to be planned and carried on. We have long been plagued by narrowness of vision. We have not looked at our task in a broad way. We have confined the Gospel to limited areas of life. It is only recently that preachers in large numbers have given themselves with passion to the social applications of the Gospel. We have been too individualistic in our reading of the New Testament, and have been content if only the individual has WORLD MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY 213 felt himself to be saved. But the social ap- plications have never been carried as far as they ought to be, and as they are going to be through the coming generations. Chris- tianity is a religion whose field is the world. Its principles are applicable to all the provinces of human life. Every kingdom of thought and activity must be claimed boldly for Christ. The Golden Rule is for nations as well as individuals, and the law of forgiveness and patience and service is for Republics and Empires as well as for Bible teachers and missionaries. The pulpit has long wrapped the Gospel round the home, and here and there it has wrapped it round the town, but the time has come to wrap it round the nation, and round the entire globe. Diplomats and statesmen are servants of God, and all of His servants are under the laws announced by Christ. This war was caused by a refusal of the servants of the State to obey the laws taught by the servants of the Church. Statesmen have built their house upon the sand, and when the storm came the house fell, and great was the fall of it. We shall never have an abid- ing peace until all the kingdoms of this world become Christ's kingdom. We must put all the crowns upon His head. 214 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS For this mighty work we must mobilize all of our resources. The State is showing us how to do it. In time of war men reaUze that every ounce of energy is needed. War lays before the mind gigantic tasks, and without the forthputting of all the nation's strength these tasks cannot be accom- plished. Now the Church of Christ is al- ways engaged in war. It is a church mili- tant. Its business is pulling down the strongholds of evil, and freeing men from the bondage which destroys the joy which belongs to the children of God. The work is vast and arduous, and every man and every woman is needed, and also every child. The war has called into service every class of our population. The women are no less indispensable than the men. Without their aid the war could not be won. The children also do things which without them would remain undone. They are able to increase not only the sale of Liberty Bonds, but also the stock of the nation's food, and the number of garments which we ship abroad. The missionary enterprise for many years appealed largely to small groups of women. Women's missionary societies have for a long time flourished all over the land, but it was only a decade or two ago WORLD MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY 215 that laymen in large numbers began to think seriously of this work, and to organize them- selves for the doing of it. The boys and girls in many churches have not yet been fnvited to come in, and to share with their elders the great work of the world s redemp- tion But the war will accelerate this widening constituency of foreign missions. More women will come in, and stiU more men, and still more children, and the mis- sionary interest, instead of being confined to limited groups of the more faithful women, will take possession more and more of the entire Christian brotherhood, and to push forward Christ's work in distant lands w.U be considered as essential to the hfe of a congregation as the carrying out of its own local program. We are getting valuable side-lights upon the value and uses of money. We have been somewhat picayunish in our financial calculations. We have dealt too much m small figures. We have been intunHlated by the e.Kpensiveness of foreign missionary enterprises. We have hesitated to ask for still larger sums. But the State is showing what it means to open the mouth boldly m asking for money. War is an expensive undertaking. No one thinks of using sums 2l6 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS in two figures, or in three, or in four, not even in five or six or seven, nor in eight or nine. When we think of war we begin at once to think and talk in billions, and no one is affrighted by the big figures, because we know that the worth of justice and liberty is beyond price. What matters it what it costs to put down tyranny and cruelty, to make it possible for men to live in happiness and peace? After we have made tremen- dous sacrifices, we are still willing to say with Lowell : " What were our lives without thee ? What all our lives to save thee ? We reck not what we gave thee ; We will not dare to doubt Ihee, But ask whatever else, and we will dare." Shall a Christian say less to the Church than to the State? Shall the State be counted more worthy of being trusted than the Church of God? Shall the prosperity of the State be deemed of higher moment than the prosperity of the Church? Why, then, should we listen undaunted to the State asking for billions of dollars, and wince and rebel when the Church asks only for millions? Our rich Christians, as a rule, have never yet begun to give to world work WORLD MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY 21 7 as generously as they ought, and the poor people, on the whole, have never yet learned the joy of giving out of their poverty for the advancement of Christ's cause in far-aw^ay lands. Many a poor man feels it is an im- position for the Church to ask him to help foreign missions; and many a rich man ex- pends every year on luxuries ten times his annual contribution to the missionary cause. In time of war it is conceded to be a right principle that men shall contribute to the State according to their incomes. Why should they not give to the Church on the same principle? If the Church is at war with the hierarchy of evil, if it has gone forth to attack and lay low ideas and ideals which make havoc of the peace of human hearts and the happiness of homes, why should not every follower of Jesus give ac- cording to his income for the support of this momentous and costly work? It is those who count the nickels and dimes taken up in a collection for foreign missions who realize most keenly how niggardly many Christians are when it comes to making sacrifices for the greatest piece of work Christ has given us to do. If by our gifts we should make our foreign work more ex- tensive, the very size of it would thrill our 2l8 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS hearts and open up new fountains of generosity. During the war the Rocke- feller Foundation has been doing gigantic bits of Christian work. To see it spending now a million dollars in Serbia, and now a million in Poland, and now a million in Bel- gium, and now millions in other fields, meet- ing great needs in a great way, combating appalling situations with unstinted opulence, awes the heart and gives us revelations of what money is able to accomplish when used by hands which have been consecrated to the service of the Son of God. If the Church would spend more in doing the work of Christ, the people would be called upon by the State to give less in the attainment of its ends. On our South- western border lies a nation in sore need of missionary aid. For centuries its priests have been ignorant and its civil rulers tyrannical and corrupt. There is nothing IMexico needs so much as Christian knowl- edge. She needs a great army of teachers. Her people are for the most part ignorant of the laws of life. They need to be taught the principles of Jesus. But what through all these generations have we done for Mexico? Some of our capitalists have exploited diligently Mexican resources. Syndicates WORLD MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY 219 have gotten possession of many of her oil wells and mines. Our millionaires have raked out her coal and copper, her silver and her gold, making the United States richer year by year. Corporations owning prop- erty in Mexico have declared rich dividends for our American investors. What in re- turn have we done for Mexico? Pick up a book containing the record of missionary work in Mexico, carried on by representa- tives of our United States churches, and what a humiliating story ! Like Dives we have dressed in fine linen and fared sumptu- ously every day, and Lazarus has been allowed to lie uncared for at our gate. And the result is that at times Mexico has been exceedingly troublesome. Now and then she has become a peril. She has disturbed our peace, and vexed our patience, and not long ago it was necessary to send an army there to safeguard our rights. Because we had refused to send an army with ideas, it was necessary to send an army with guns. For a while, our army in Mexico cost us $177,000 a day, more in one day than doul)le the amount spent in an entire year by the two denominations of our country which are doing most for the moral uplift of Mexico. Congress voted a hundred and thirty million 220 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS dollars to cover our military expenses for six months in dealing with Mexico. A Chris- tian nation which is not willing to invest in Christian teachers will soon or late be com- pelled to invest its money in soldiers. If we refuse to build Mexicans up, then the time comes when we must use our treasure in shooting Mexicans down. The only way to banish the necessity for armies is to fill the minds and hearts of all nations with the ideas of Christ. He is our Peace. Another lesson is being forced upon us. We must grasp the principle of cooperation. Only by working together can we accom- plish the task before us. The State is teaching us the power of this neglected prin- ciple. All the newspapers dwell upon it constantly — the necessity of working to- gether. No department can be allowed to w^ork alone. No agency can be independent of all others. There must be a coordination of all our movements if the vast enterprise is not to crumple and break down. It is only a united nation which has any chance of victory in a war. Any manifestation of the spirit of schism is alarming, and is snufYed out by rigorous measures at the start. In time of war we must keep step to the music of the union. That is essential WORLD MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY 221 also in the fighting of our great world battle. The Christian Church has been rendered largely impotent for the accomplishment of many stupendous tasks by its lamentable and interminable divisions. It is time for the Christian army to close up its ranks. Christians of all names must come closer to one another. The days for mutual suspicion and antagonism are gone. The day for enthusiastic cooperation is at hand. Who knows what miracles of consolidation, what undreamed-of reunions are coming to the world out of this desolating and immeasur- able affliction? The war is teaching us to place physical comfort where it belongs and is giving us a more Christian estimate of death. We have always made too much of physical comfort, and we have given to death a place to which it is not entitled. Christianity makes light of comfort, and puts physical death under its feet. Christ, in sending out His disciples to preach, exhorted them not to be afraid of death. He told them that some of them would be called to lay down their lives, but He urged them never to run away from death. Any man can afiford to die if by his dying he makes the world better. This attitude has been accepted by the Christian 222 OLD TRUTHS AND NEW FACTS Church as the only attitude which is worthy of Jesus Christ. We have sent our mis- sionaries into all kinds of tribulations and dangers. We have allowed them to go to savage countries and to cannibal islands, well-nigh certain that some of them would never come back. But there have always been among us the timid hearted, and those who have made too great an ado about calamities which have overtaken workers in the foreign field. A Boxer insurrection in China, or a Mohammedan massacre in Ar- menia has been able to sow doubts in many a mind as to the wisdom of subjecting our brothers and sisters to such appalling risks. But the war is taking away the fear of death. The State has no hesitancy in asking men to die. It is not daunted when they die by the hundred or thousand or million. When great ends are at stake nobody thinks of death. Over the ground reddened by the blood of the slain other men will march for- ward to victory. It is inconceivable that any nation fighting for its liberty and life should ever be daunted by the sight of blood. The soldiers of Jesus must not be a whit less courageous than the soldiers of the State. Men must fight for the Church no less valiantly than for the Government. WORLD MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY 223 If the State is willing to sacrifice its tens of thousands and its millions, the Church must not draw back at the sight of sacrifices which must be made if Jesus is to become Lord of all. " The Son of God goes forth to war, A kingly crown to gain ; His blood red banner streams afar: Who follows in His train? " A noble army, men and boys, The matron and the maid. Around the throne of God rejoice, In robes of light arrayed. " They climbed the steep ascent of heaven Through peril, toil, and pain; O God, to us may grace be given To follow in their train." Printed in the United States of America Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date; ^ ^OOt DrooarwafinnTpr.hnoloaiG! LIBRARY OF CONGRESS