STEPS:; 
 
 G CHRISTIAN? 
 
 1EN BR1DGMAN 
 
Class JB^Z.4J&3lI 
 Book E7S 
 
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 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT, 
 
Steps Christward 
 
 Counsels for Young Christians 
 
 By 
 HOWARD ALLEN BRIDGMAN 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 Ubc flMlarfm press 
 
 CHICAGO 
 

 
 
 
 
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 Copyright, 1903 
 By Howard A. Bridgman 
 
 J, J. Arakelyan, Printer, 2S5 Congress Street, Boston. 
 
TO MY WIFE 
 
PREFACE 
 
 For over ten years it has been a duty and privi- 
 lege to furnish each week through the columns of 
 The Congregationalist a few suggestions concern- 
 ing the current topic for the Christian Endeavor 
 prayer-meeting. During this period the broad field 
 of Christian truth and Christian service has been 
 traversed, not in a consecutive and systematic 
 fashion, but most of the subjects which engage 
 the mind of the disciple of Jesus, or appeal to 
 his heart, have been considered. The treatment 
 of the themes, though fragmentary and inadequate, 
 has received such an undeserved measure of favor 
 as to encourage the preparation of a little book 
 which may interest a wider audience than that 
 originally addressed. 
 
 The material at command has been totally re- 
 shaped and a classification made under compre- 
 hensive captions with a few sub-topics from page 
 to page. A considerable portion of the book is 
 altogether new. The author hopes that in its pres- 
 ent form it may help fellow travelers in the good 
 way -and serve the need of some who would enter 
 upon and continue in the life which is life indeed. 
 
 5 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. THE START 
 
 The First Step. What is Life For ? Repenting. De- 
 ciding. Confessing. Trusting and Obeying. 
 Abiding ....... 9 
 
 II. THE FOES 
 
 The Ceaseless Struggle. Temptation. When the 
 
 Battle is On. Drifting. Dead to Sin . -35 
 
 III. HELPS BY THE WAY 
 How Ideals Are Realized. The Daily Discipline. 
 The Bible. Prayer. The Church. The Lord's 
 Day. The Lord's Supper. Giving. The Help- 
 ful Ordering of Life 53 
 
 IV. THE WAYMARKS 
 The Worth of Our Days. The Backward Look. The 
 Fresh Chance. Signs of Progress. Holding On. 
 Inward Assurance. To-day, To-morrow, and 
 Then What 89 
 
 V. THE REWARDS 
 Joy. Peace. Hope. Guidance. The Presence of 
 
 God. The Graces of the Spirit . . .109 
 
 7 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 VI. WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 
 Our Real Business. Ability Imposes Responsibility. 
 Times and Seasons. Ways and Means. Sticking 
 to It. Working with Others. The Hopeful 
 Attitude. The Reach of Influence . . . 131 
 
 VII. THE GUIDE AND THE GOAL 
 Our Own Christ. Lord and Leader. Comrade. 
 Brother. High Priest. Saviour. Judge. What 
 We Owe to Him. Why We Love Him . . 1 55 
 
 %* 
 
THE START 
 
Life is big and demands big ventures. 
 
 — F. W. Tomkins. 
 
 Do not draw back from any way because you have 
 never passed there before. — Phillips Brooks. 
 
 There is a great deal that is hidden away in a 
 Christian life before we are through with it, but as 
 with everything else its beginning stands out in the 
 clear. You can set your face Godwards and Christ- 
 wards, you can leave off waiting and start, and take 
 a step to-day and then you will be in readiness to 
 take the next step to-morrow. — C. H. Parkhurst. 
 
THE START 
 
 There will be many steps after the 7^, 
 first, some long, some short ; some firm, First 
 some halting; but none of them more Ste P 
 important than step number one. To 
 go anywhere one must start from where 
 he is, and to walk in the way of Christ 
 one must, on some forever memorable 
 day, call into action all the forces of his 
 nature and begin. Impulses from with- 
 out may cooperate — a mother's prayers, 
 a friend's tender word, a book casually 
 encountered, the state of feeling in the 
 community, but it is the man him- 
 self in his solitary and splendid indi- 
 viduality who shakes off his inertia and 
 his indifference, and rises up to follow 
 Jesus. 
 
 Dr. Pentecost tells about a sleeping- 
 car porter whom he once approached 
 regarding the matter of personal religion. 
 
 11 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 The " You are going to be a Christian some- 
 First time, are n't you ? " he asked, when the 
 ™ man seemed inclined to postpone a de- 
 cision. " Oh, yes, doctor," was the ready 
 reply, " but I dreads de process." How 
 many persons have kept themselves out 
 of the kingdom because they " dread the 
 process." I can distinctly remember 
 thinking when a lad that I never could 
 be a Christian until I had paced the floor 
 for a whole night in an agony of spiritual 
 unrest. It was an idea derived, presum- 
 ably, from the biography of some saint. 
 That experience never came, and I do not 
 believe that we can lay down in advance 
 a certain course of procedure by means 
 of which we shall enter the kingdom, 
 nor can any one lay it down for us. 
 Christian impulses and convictions steal 
 in upon us when least expected. It 
 may be as we listen to a sermon, or as 
 we walk alone under the quiet stars, or 
 as we address ourselves to the hard work 
 of life. The question with us is not how, 
 or when, or where the Spirit of God 
 shall overtake us, but what shall be our 
 response. 
 12 
 
THE START 
 
 The solemn truth of the matter is that What 
 we are going somewhere. Our days ts 
 bear us swiftly along to a different out- p or 
 ward environment. The inner man is 
 changing too. What are they all for — 
 these human years ? What ought we to 
 do with time and talents, with health and 
 reason, with influence and opportunities ? 
 What ought we to cast out of our lives ? 
 To what should we open the doors of 
 our hearts ? Here comes religion with 
 its simple, direct answer : There is 
 a way that is known as the Christian 
 way. It proposes certain definite ideals. 
 It calls for a certain attitude of mind 
 and will. It imposes certain great gov- 
 erning principles of conduct. It prom- 
 ises certain rich and satisfying rewards. 
 All you need to do at the present mo- 
 ment in order to know more about it is 
 to start. 
 
 With or without great emotion, with 
 or without large knowledge, with or with- 
 out much confidence, the start is effected. 
 Suffice it for the present that the first 
 step is to be made. More feeling will 
 come by and by, and a keener under- 
 
 13 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 What standing too. But the look is already 
 " forward and little by little the step which 
 ■p or seems so simple, which really is so 
 simple, is seen to have large relationships 
 and to involve certain definite acts and 
 processes. So we go on to analyze even 
 our first venture and to take hold one by 
 one of the different elements, using the 
 terms familiar to Christian ears, but seek- 
 ing to pierce through conventional lan- 
 guage to the reality within. 
 
 Repenting Why is it that those few simple words, 
 " I am sorry," come so hard to us ? In 
 our childhood how many parental per- 
 suasions and entreaties, how much ad- 
 monition on the part of our teachers, it 
 required to bring us to the point where 
 we would own to ourselves and to others 
 that we had done wrong. Such a con- 
 fession, good as it is to the soul in early 
 or in later life, knifes our pride. It re- 
 duces us to the level of men whom we in 
 our pharisaism have denominated sin- 
 ners. But it touches the very springs of 
 righteous living. A man must go lower 
 before he can mount higher. Until a 
 14 
 
THE START 
 
 man senses and hates his sin God can do Repenting 
 very little for him. The prodigal who at 
 last comes to himself in the far country 
 and loathes his rags and his company is 
 nearer the kingdom of heaven than the 
 cultivated, faultless, unbelieving society 
 man, who thinks that he has 
 
 No tear to wipe, no good to crave, 
 No fear to quell, no soul to save. 
 
 But penitence involves another step. 
 And just as we are all prone to attribute 
 to others the cause of our downfall, so 
 we are disposed to offer to God some 
 other penitential gift than that which he 
 desires. Some, like the " Penitentes " of 
 New Mexico, lacerate themselves and 
 wail like madmen. Some, like the saints 
 of the middle ages, put on hair shirts and 
 keep long vigils. The Jews, abusing a 
 system which was meant to train them in 
 righteousness, brought the blood of bulls 
 and goats to God, until he cried out that 
 he was wearied with such sacrifices and 
 his prophet thundered forth, "What 
 doth the Lord require of thee, but to do 
 justly, and to love mercy, and to walk 
 humbly with thy God ? " 
 
 15 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Repenting We fall into the same blunder. We 
 think to atone for injustice to one person 
 by stricter justice or even by generosity 
 to another. We will make up for being 
 faithless to one duty by being over-zeal- 
 ous in the performance of another. 
 This is to make a farce of penitence. 
 God wants us to clean up our lives at 
 those precise points where we have been 
 remiss. The sin which you realize and 
 which, from the bottom of your heart, 
 you spurn, that is the sin which God 
 wants you forever to renounce, and the 
 offering which he yearns for is a com- 
 plete and immediate right-about-face. 
 
 One may delude himself for a little 
 while with the idea that some big ob- 
 stacle for which he is not responsible 
 lies right athwart his path into the king- 
 dom of God, but others know and God 
 knows that it is nothing but his own 
 pride and self-sufficiency. 
 
 Deciding Two things are involved in the decision 
 to be a Christian. One is the intrusting 
 to Jesus Christ of our intellectual ques- 
 tionings and strivings. We do not aban- 
 16 
 
THE START 
 
 don the exercise of rational thought, nay, Deciding 
 Jesus himself bade us to love God with 
 all our mind. But we do agree, when 
 we become Christians, to leave with 
 Christ the great intellectual problems 
 that often perplex and battle our faith. 
 We say, Here is a man who knows, and 
 we accept his testimony regarding God 
 and heaven and the meaning of all the 
 discipline of these human years. We 
 adopt a certain intellectual attitude to- 
 ward truth ; we obtain a certain philoso- 
 phy. We call these the Christian atti- 
 tude, the Christian philosophy. By it 
 we mean that we look out upon this 
 universe through the eyes of Christ and 
 accept his judgment and his estimate of 
 values. 
 
 In the second place, we adopt Christ's 
 program of life. We say that, instead 
 of presuming to order our own way, 
 choose our own tasks, work our own 
 pleasure, we will receive from Christ the 
 practical guidance of all our doing from 
 day to day ; we will live for the same 
 ends for which Christ lived and died. 
 Like him, we will make it our aim 
 
 17 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Deciding always to be well pleasing to the 
 Father. 
 
 What an immense difference this two- 
 fold commitment of the whole self to 
 Christ makes ! There is a vast gulf be- 
 tween those who are in the kingdom of 
 God and those outside. It is not for us 
 to draw a line and determine on which 
 side this or that man stands, or to pro- 
 claim ostentatiously that all the virtue of 
 the world is within the kingdom and all 
 the vice outside. But this much is true 
 — those within have made one honest 
 step toward the kingdom and are trying, 
 even though they fail repeatedly, to think 
 the thoughts of Jesus and to do his works. 
 A decision ought to be made in the 
 interests of honesty. Jesus never was 
 content and never will be with a certain 
 indefinite friendly attitude toward him. 
 His word is, « Follow thou me." He is 
 seeking, not men in the mass, but John 
 and James and Andrew. Is it quite fair 
 to evade the simple, searching test which 
 he has always laid down as a condition 
 of entrance into his service ? At heart 
 you are not quite honest when you take 
 18 
 
THE START 
 
 refuge in your kindly instincts toward Deciding 
 him and never once actually make that 
 definite, personal surrender which he de- 
 mands. 
 
 The decision should also be made in 
 the interest of peace. Perplexed Pilate 
 moaned, " What shall I do with Jesus ? " 
 " Try Herod," his cowardly nature sug- 
 gested, " try the instincts of the mob, 
 appeal to Jewish pride, do anything that 
 will make it unnecessary for you to pass 
 the final judgment." At last he had 
 to settle the question himself. So it 
 will ever be. No lasting peace will 
 come until like a man you have faced 
 the issue. There is a time for delibera- 
 tion, but after every possible aspect of 
 the case has been thought through there 
 comes the time to act. You may be in 
 doubt up to the morning of election for 
 which candidate you will vote, but if you 
 are going to do your duty as a citizen 
 you must decide, and in making the de- 
 cision touching Jesus Christ, as in mak- 
 ing every other decision in life, it is well 
 to remember that no question is ever 
 settled until it is settled right. 
 
 19 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Deciding If the rejection of Christ to-day be 
 only a deliberate refusal to have any- 
 thing to do with him — a sharp decision 
 against his claims and his cause — then 
 the number of those who reject him is 
 relatively small. Not many men have 
 dared to drive from their hearts all 
 thought of Christ, or to declare to them- 
 selves or others that they would have 
 naught to do with him. Indifference, 
 absorption in other things, the dispo- 
 sition to wait for a more convenient 
 season — these are things which keep 
 most men from openly allying them- 
 selves with Christ. We cannot believe 
 that men taken in the mass are so de- 
 praved, so hostile to the Christ of history, 
 as to commit the terrible sin which has 
 lain like a shadow on the Jewish race 
 ever since the cry, " Crucify him. His 
 blood be on us and our children," rang 
 through the streets of Jerusalem. 
 
 But the sad thing about this matter is 
 that indifference, indecision, amount 
 practically to a rejection. Sooner or 
 later Jesus comes to close quarters with 
 every human soul. There is this differ- 
 
THE START 
 
 ence between him and other spiritual Deciding 
 leaders. They put forth their teachings, 
 but did not emphasize a personal rela- 
 tionship to themselves. Socrates never 
 said, " Come unto me, all ye that labor 
 and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
 rest." Ralph Waldo Emerson never 
 said, " Except ye believe that I am he, 
 ye shall die in your sins." Browning 
 never said, " He that eateth my flesh 
 and drinketh my blood hath eternal life." 
 Many men drift along for years without 
 the nerve to decide this great question, 
 but every true man has times when the 
 personal Christ presses in upon his life. 
 Through some messenger — a yearning 
 mother, a devoted teacher, a loving 
 friend, a pastor, a pleading evangelist, or 
 through one's own reading of the New 
 Testament — comes the simple, strenuous 
 command, " Follow thou me." 
 
 If the answer is, " Not yet," God in 
 his mercy repeats the invitation over and 
 over again. Jesus Christ is the most in- 
 evitable being who has ever walked this 
 earth. We cannot escape him. He is 
 continually confronting us in the best 
 
 21 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Deciding literature, the noblest poems, the finest 
 statuary and the most beautiful paintings 
 of the world. If you reject him in early 
 years or do what is equivalent to rejection, 
 that is, postpone action with reference 
 to him, you are likely, suddenly, in some 
 distant corner of the earth, it may be, to 
 see the marred face of the Son of man 
 as he bends his yearning look on you 
 alone. The pathos of life is that while 
 the appeal of Christ is no less tender, 
 the human heart, as it goes on in sin or 
 in indifference, loses its earlier suscepti- 
 bility. And the evil effects of one re- 
 jection after another accumulate until 
 character is undermined, and he who 
 was made capable of fellowship with 
 God becomes more fit to associate with 
 brutes. 
 
 But who can measure the joy and sig- 
 nificance of that moment when religion 
 as a matter of personal experience really 
 grips our hearts ? Is there anything 
 more marvelous than that a man hith- 
 erto absorbed in self and earthly things 
 should suddenly awake to the conscious- 
 ness, not only that there is a God some- 
 22 
 
THE START 
 
 where far out in space, but a power close Deciding 
 at hand exercising a Father's care and 
 pouring out a Father's love ? It is not 
 strange that when Christ thus arouses a 
 man to a sense of his divine capacities 
 and possibilities the world becomes new 
 to him and he dates all future events 
 from that moment. " It was about the 
 tenth hour," said John, many years 
 afterwards, as he recalled his first meet- 
 ing with Jesus. « It was ten years, six 
 months and a half ago last week Thurs- 
 day," says the man who bears testimony 
 in the Rescue Mission. 
 
 Saints, martyrs, confessors — these have Confessing 
 always been linked in the thought of the 
 Christian Church and have constituted 
 its roll of honor. It is significant that 
 those who were outspoken in their faith 
 came to be classified by themselves. 
 Hunted down by the persecutor, brought 
 to bay before kings and councils, they 
 recalled the words of their Master about 
 confessing him before men. Secret dis- 
 cipleship had to be abjured forever. 
 The test had come. The line of demar- 
 
 23 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Confessing cation between them and others — some 
 of them possibly at heart followers of the 
 Nazarene — had to be drawn. They 
 must tell it out to the world that they 
 believed in Christ. It was, after all, 
 only what he had foreseen would come to 
 them, and because they stood up like 
 men and showed their colors our faith 
 has been preserved to us with the radi- 
 ance of their testimony upon it. 
 
 Whether a man will confess Christ by 
 joining his church is a secondary al- 
 though very important question. De- 
 cide, first, whether you will confess 
 Christ daily as you go to your business, 
 not by mumbling his name every few 
 minutes nor by making the sign of the 
 cross, but by imitating his example. 
 After your policy in this respect has 
 been determined, the question of joining 
 the church will assume a different phase 
 and you will be very exceptional if it 
 does not seem to you the natural and al- 
 most necessary outcome of the other 
 decision. 
 
 " But I am not good enough ! " Oh, 
 how men misconceive this matter of 
 24 
 
THE START 
 
 confessing Christ ! If you were to stand Confessing 
 before a congregation and assert that 
 you had made an end of all perfection, 
 that you were henceforth to be an ex- 
 ample of all the virtues, you might well 
 shrink from such pretensions. But it is 
 not the good people who confess Christ, 
 but the people who want to be good — 
 the people broken with the shame of 
 their repeated failings and misdeeds, the 
 people yearning for a way out of the 
 prison house of self into the light and 
 liberty of the sons of God. 
 
 " But I am not quite sure whether 
 Jesus is divine ! " Does he ask you to 
 exhaust the mystery of his being, or 
 to estimate his place in the scale of crea- 
 tion ? He simply asks you to take him 
 for what he himself says he is — the Way, 
 the Truth, the Life, the Light of the 
 World, the Good Shepherd of the sheep. 
 
 What is this universal instinct that Trusting 
 impels one life to commit itself to the and 
 care and guidance of another ? We ex- obeying 
 pect it in the child as the most natural 
 and beautiful trait of childhood, indeed, 
 
 25 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Trusting as the indispensable factor in its growth. 
 and -pj^ t - me w jjj C ome when the little 
 Ubeyinp 
 
 one, if it hopes to be a man by and by, 
 
 must abandon creeping and must totter 
 towards the loving arms outstretched so 
 near, but far enough away to call for 
 some enterprise on the child's part, in 
 this the first great venture of his life. In 
 the growing youth we see the same 
 trait when the home circle is exchanged 
 for the boarding-school or college and 
 hitherto untried opportunities of educa- 
 tion are first made use of. And when 
 manhood is reached, and a scientific 
 or professional career is entered upon, 
 are there not many moments when even 
 the wisdom of the wise must wait upon 
 the faith element ? 
 
 When the chemist in the laboratory 
 institutes certain processes, he trusts that 
 the elements with which he is dealing 
 will combine and produce certain results. 
 Life in all its grades and periods is more 
 or less of an experiment. The religious 
 word used to describe these ventures 
 of the soul and mind is " trust." When 
 analyzed it is found to consist of two ele- 
 26 
 
THE START 
 
 ments — first, the letting go of something Trusting 
 
 which had proved fairly sufficient ; and, 
 second, the taking hold of something 
 stronger and more satisfactory. " Trust " 
 means going forward before you are alto- 
 gether certain. 
 
 From this point of view, becoming a 
 Christian is not anything less rational or 
 more difficult than moving forward in any 
 department of life. When the child lets 
 go the chair and moves unsteadily to- 
 wards its mother, it is exercising trust for 
 the first time. When a man lets go of 
 self, ceases to rely on his own wisdom, 
 courage and sufficiency, and moves out 
 towards the larger wisdom and power of 
 Jesus Christ, he is exercising the supreme 
 trust of his life. But there is really no 
 more risk in the one step than the other. 
 Who ever knew any one who had actu- 
 ally exercised this trust in Christ and 
 maintained it from day to day confess 
 that he made a great mistake? The 
 experience of nineteen centuries can be 
 taken as guaranty that no man who 
 really gives the keeping of his life to 
 Christ and complies with the conditions 
 
 27 
 
 and 
 Obeying 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Trusting f fellowship with him is destined to 
 
 „. an be either sorry or ashamed. Men talk 
 
 Obeying J 
 
 sometimes as if Christ were a vague, un- 
 certain figure in ancient history, whereas 
 he is the most potent personality of the 
 ages, and in dealing with him we deal 
 with a fact which cannot be gainsaid or 
 overthrown. 
 
 And the object of all this trust, let us 
 not forget, is to obtain strength to do 
 the things which he would have us do. 
 It is to no dreamy, mystic, rhapsodic ex- 
 perience that we are called when we be- 
 come Christians, but to put our lives 
 alongside the mightiest source of strength 
 available for use. It is the " Strong Son 
 of God," as Tennyson calls him, with 
 whom we have to do, and he has the 
 power of communicating strength to all 
 who trust him. John recognized it when 
 he said, " I have written unto you, young 
 men, because ye are strong." Trust is 
 not simply a beautiful disposition of the 
 soul ; it is the alliance of ourselves with 
 a person by whom our weakness is 
 turned to strength and our ignorance 
 transmuted to knowledge. 
 28 
 
THE START 
 
 Jesus, by common consent, was the Trusting 
 
 wisest and best of men — too wise to be 
 mistaken and too good to deceive. 
 
 This is why we put confidence in 
 Jesus. Others through the nineteen 
 centuries before us have trusted him 
 and we rely on their witness. The 
 noblest souls in all the ages have testi- 
 fied that he deserved and rewarded their 
 confidence. 
 
 To trust in him means to believe what 
 he says and to do what he bids. When 
 he declares that the life is more than 
 meat, that we must be born again in 
 order to enter his kingdom, that he has 
 gone to prepare a place for us, that he 
 who sees him has seen the Father, we 
 must believe that he knew about what 
 he was talking. Then when he outlines 
 a course of action for us, orders us to take 
 up our cross daily and follow him, sends 
 us out into the highways or hedges, 
 bids us be pure and peaceable and mer- 
 ciful, we must obey. 
 
 The step from a mere interest in Christ 
 or an admiration for him to unhesitating 
 confidence in him is a logical step but 
 
 29 
 
 and 
 Obeying 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Trusting one not always taken. When it is taken 
 
 and 
 
 it admits a man into the real blessedness 
 
 ■^ of the Christian life. There will come 
 times after that great step when the 
 darkness shuts down upon one. Then if 
 one trusts Christ unhesitatingly he must 
 be willing to go with him up the rough 
 slopes and into the fiery furnace. But 
 even there he is sure to be cheered by a 
 sense of the presence of the Son of man, 
 and in due time he will emerge again 
 into the sunshine, his hand more firmly 
 clasped than before in his Saviour's. 
 
 Abiding Jesus staked his kingdom upon the 
 ability and desire of men to enter into a 
 personal relation with him even though 
 out of the range of their earthly vision. 
 It was a tremendous venture. These 
 were strange words to speak to unlet- 
 tered fishermen. You would expect the 
 master of a group of disciples to say 
 when parting with them, " Remember 
 me, follow the truth, trust God, do your 
 duty." But Jesus says something more, 
 and let us remember that he is not talk- 
 ing to mystics or dabblers in occult 
 30 
 
THE START 
 
 sciences, but to every-day persons like Abiding 
 ourselves. In so saying he differentiates 
 his religion from every other. He gave 
 his followers no creed to recite daily to 
 themselves and to pass on to others. 
 No set and indispensable forms of wor- 
 ship did he devise nor did he specify 
 just how they should carry on his work 
 when he was gone. But one thing on 
 this last night of their earthly fellowship 
 he does insist upon, and illustrates his 
 thought by allusion to the vines which 
 may have been climbing up to the very 
 window of the room where they were 
 assembled. Henceforth he and his men 
 were to be as closely united as branches 
 and vine. 
 
 The supreme question then for a man 
 who wants to lead the Christian life is, 
 " Can I establish and maintain a personal 
 relation with Jesus Christ?" This in- 
 volves remembrance of him, imitation, 
 loyalty, service in his name and some- 
 thing more, difficult to define or de- 
 scribe but intelligible to any one who 
 has let his whole being go forth to an- 
 other soul. I cannot think that to" be 
 
 31 
 
STEPS CHRIS TWARD 
 
 Abiding on terms of friendship with Christ, to be 
 united to him, to have his life coursing 
 through our veins is so very different 
 from the best experience we have of 
 human love. I have a friend more than 
 half-way across this great continent. I 
 see him rarely, but he is as much of an 
 inspiration and blessing to me as he was 
 in the days when we were often comrades 
 from morn till eve. I have a Friend 
 whom I have never seen. He lived long 
 ago in Palestine, but every noble im- 
 pulse and conviction of my nature some- 
 how relates itself to him. I am sure that 
 it is perfectly possible to keep up a hearty, 
 wholesome friendship with him if I do 
 my part. It is easy to let it cool, but to 
 maintain it is worth all the pains it costs. 
 " But this is all mysticism," some one 
 says* Yes, but it is the most sensible 
 and rational kind of mysticism that the 
 world has ever known. The simple fact 
 is that Jesus Christ is the best known 
 man of history. We know far more 
 about him than we possibly can about 
 Julius Caesar, Charlemagne or Napoleon. 
 One reason is that he has been the sub- 
 32 
 
THE START 
 
 ject of the minutest and the hardest 
 study that any character ever received. 
 Every new life of Christ adds to the 
 world's understanding of Jesus. The 
 other reason is that the Christ life has 
 been relived so many times before our 
 eyes, in our homes, on our streets, not 
 perfectly, to be sure, but genuinely, that 
 we have had and shall have countless 
 human interpretations of the historical 
 Jesus. Therefore we too may have per- 
 sonal union with this clear-cut, real, 
 heroic figure of history. 
 
 This is the best and also the simplest 
 way of maintaining the Christian life 
 and developing a Christian experience. 
 Books on morality say, " Keep your 
 courage up, do n't whine, be pure, love 
 your neighbor as yourself." It all 
 sounds very fine and it is just what we 
 ought to do. Yet we cannot always 
 abide in fortitude, in purity, in love as 
 abstract virtues. But we can abide in 
 Christ, the source and example of them 
 all ; we can join our lives to his so that 
 what was in him shall be little by little 
 transferred to us. 
 
 33 
 
THE FOES 
 
When the fight begins within himself 
 A man's worth something. 
 
 — Robert Browning. 
 
 Battle I know so long as life remaineth — 
 Battle for all, but these have overcome. 
 
 — F. W. H. Myers. 
 
 O thou for whom the strife was strong, 
 Thou who hast sung the conqueror's song, 
 Uphold me through the holy war, 
 Make me a smiling conqueror. 
 
 — Thomas H. Gill. 
 
II 
 
 THE FOES 
 
 When Mr. Moody was holding large The 
 meetings in New York City on his first re- Ceaseless 
 turn from England a number of years ago ** 
 he was going back to his lodgings late 
 at night accompanied by a friend or two. 
 As they passed along the little group 
 noticed that they were being followed by 
 a man, and one of Mr. Moody's friends, 
 aware of the opposition to him among 
 the rumsellers of the city, warned him 
 to be on his guard ; but the evangelist, 
 raising his voice a little, said, " What 
 would you say if a man should ask you 
 how to get free from sin ? " The words 
 were hardly out of his lips when the un- 
 known man in the rear darted forward, 
 crying, " That is just what I want to 
 know." 
 
 It is singular how this sense of sin 
 survives from age to age, even though 
 
 37 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 The people become better housed and better 
 Ceaseless educated and various theories are ad- 
 rtt ii e vanced to explain sin entirely away. 
 But it will last as long as high ideals of 
 character survive, as long as men com- 
 mit themselves to the moral struggle 
 with any degree of earnestness and per- 
 sistence ; for there can be no morality 
 or spirituality without their opposites, 
 and the fight is an eternal one between 
 the things that make for man's over- 
 throw and ruin and the things that make 
 for his salvation. 
 
 If we had lived in the early Christian 
 centuries or at the time of the Crusades, 
 or had served with Cromwell or Miles 
 Standish or other stalwart representatives 
 of muscular Christianity, it might have 
 been easier for us to appreciate the fact 
 that our religion has its fighting side. In 
 these latter times we are, perhaps, in dan- 
 ger of becoming what some one terms 
 " carpet- slipper Christians." But if we 
 read our New Testaments faithfully, and 
 if we follow the careers of Jesus and Paul, 
 we shall discover that the only reason why 
 we do not encounter more opposition and 
 38 
 
THE FOES 
 
 do not have our righting qualities called The 
 into exercise is that we have too little Cease Isss 
 genuine religion. The highest type of ru ^ e 
 religion in any age is sure to come into 
 collision with worldly standards. It must 
 suffer. It must show the scars of battle. 
 What have we ever done, what did we do 
 to-day or last week, that may prove to the 
 world that we are loyal soldiers of the 
 great Captain of our salvation ? 
 
 One does have to fight to maintain his 
 habits of secret prayer, to do justice to 
 his Bible daily, to perform patiently the 
 routine Christian duties and to overcome 
 the thousand and one little foes that con- 
 front us at every turn. We think we have 
 won the battle, but the months go by and 
 the enemy shows a strong front again. 
 And even when you have thoroughly 
 overcome one bad habit, or finally tri- 
 umphed over some terrible foe to society, 
 you need not think you can lay your 
 armor by, for some other besetting sin 
 will at once disclose itself to you, or some 
 kindred giant to that one just slain will 
 challenge you to combat. Said Charles 
 Kingsley : " Some say the age of chivalry 
 
 39 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 is past. The age of chivalry is never 
 past so long as one wrong remains unre- 
 dressed." 
 
 Temptation I should like sometime to read a care- 
 fully written book on the psychology of 
 temptation, prepared from actual inves- 
 tigation of the way it works. There 
 is nothing in the world more subtle and 
 deceitful. There was once a small boy 
 who had been forbidden from going in 
 swimming too often. He returned home 
 one day with unmistakable signs that he 
 had been in the water. When his mother 
 remonstrated with him he replied, " Yes, 
 I know, mamma, I did wrong, but I was 
 tempted." " But how did you happen 
 to have your bathing-suit with you?" 
 " Well, I took it along, thinking I might 
 be tempted." How often we capitulate in 
 advance to a temptation ! Then, too, we 
 delude ourselves with the idea that we may 
 be the exceptional person for whom God 
 will relax his punishment. While his laws 
 work generally in the universe, we think 
 we may be granted a special permit to do 
 what we please and special exemption 
 40 
 
THE FOES 
 
 from the consequences. Still more devil- Temptation 
 
 ish, because it touches us on the higher 
 
 side of our natures, is the suggestion that, 
 
 even if we do wrong, God is so fatherly 
 
 and we know him so well that if we 
 
 go to him penitently he will forgive us. 
 
 So again, before the battle is on, we 
 
 strike our colors in the most cowardly 
 
 fashion. 
 
 When the word temptation is uttered 
 it suggests to most persons the wine-cup 
 or the gaming-table, or some well recog- 
 nized and flagrant form of sin; but we 
 who are real Christians ought soon to 
 be beyond the power of these grosser 
 temptations. Not that we should proudly 
 think ourselves invulnerable, or despise 
 those who are beset by them, but rather 
 that we should be the more vigilant to 
 conquer our finer, but no less real, tempta- 
 tions. Not many persons who may read 
 these lines are tempted to profanity, but 
 how about envy, pride, dilatoriness, slov- 
 enliness of person, rudeness of action, 
 hypocrisy, gossip, anger, discontent, de- 
 spair ? These are the little foxes that are 
 all the time preying upon our vines. It 
 
 41 
 
STEPS CHRIST WARD 
 
 Temptatio?i is too bad that we cannot sit down quietly 
 by our own fireside or kneel meekly in 
 church without being pursued by the 
 tempter, but lo, sin lieth at the door. 
 
 He who orders our lives has, however, 
 made ample provision for our deliverance. 
 Jesus Christ is never of more value to us 
 than when he comes to reinforce our 
 weak will in its strife with evil. The 
 Bible is explicit on this point, and when 
 it says that he was tempted in all points 
 like as we are, we should take the state- 
 ment on its face value. " But," says the 
 conductor of an electric car, " Jesus Christ 
 never stood on the back platform and 
 endured what I have to stand from the 
 company and the public." " But," says 
 a woman in the midst of the pressing de- 
 mands of modern society life, " Jesus 
 Christ, that simple Galilaean peasant, was 
 never situated just as I am." " But," says 
 some person isolated among the hills, hun- 
 gering for the stir and the opportunities 
 of the city, " Jesus Christ never passed 
 through this experience." Yes he did, or 
 its equivalent. Sometime, perhaps, I can 
 explain it better, but I believe with all my 
 42 
 
THE FOES 
 
 heart that this many-sided, universal man Temptation 
 met and conquered the equivalent of all 
 of the world's temptations, not those of 
 ancient time alone, or of Eastern lands, 
 but those of modern times and of Occi- 
 dental countries as well. And when we 
 reflect that he mastered not a few tempta- 
 tions, but all, how his sinlessness glistens 
 and glows before our eyes ! 
 
 Realizing then how seamed and scarred When 
 our natures are, how responsive to evil f ^ e 
 suggestions and downward tendencies, . q 
 what next ? The fight, to be sure. But 
 we pause a moment before we draw the 
 sword, since penitence, contrition of 
 heart, commitment of ourselves to God's 
 mercy, must precede any effort of ours 
 to get rid of our sins. As President 
 Tucker says, " God can do little for a 
 man until he has forgiven him." The 
 experience of Christians through the 
 ages, voicing itself in such hymns as " I 
 lay my sins on Jesus " and " There is a 
 fountain filled with blood," can be cited 
 as proof that a disordered human heart, 
 conscious of inherited tendencies down- 
 
 43 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 When ward and its own frequent lapses from 
 the virtue, requires first of all God's healing 
 
 is On toucn - Yet we are not to forget that 
 Jesus bade us ask that our debts be for- 
 given as we forgive our debtors. No 
 full and gladdening forgiveness can come 
 to a man who approaches the mercy- 
 seat with resentment burning in his heart 
 toward his brother. 
 
 Once forgiven by our heavenly Father, 
 once rid of the stain and shame of our 
 sins, we can begin open warfare upon 
 them. The late President Seelye of 
 Amherst used to say that the more 
 specific the battle against our sins the 
 more likelihood of success. Sin in the 
 abstract is so large and so deeply rooted 
 that we almost despair of overcoming it, 
 but the concrete sins that reside in the 
 temper, the feeling, the imagination, the 
 will — these little foxes that spoil the 
 vines — cowardice, avarice, impatience, 
 uncharitableness, irritability, impurity — 
 these foes we can face and vanquish. 
 How exhilarating, after all, it is, when 
 one has sought and found forgiveness 
 and has come into possession of God's 
 44 
 
THE FOES 
 
 powerful aid, to sally forth and make war When 
 to the knife upon these enemies of our ^ 
 souls ! No crusader of old, starting out is Q n 
 to rescue the Saviour's grave from the 
 Saracen, could feel any greater enthusi- 
 asm than it is possible for us to have as 
 we fight to-day and here the nobler 
 battle against spiritual enemies. 
 
 The possibility of a flank movement is 
 also to be considered. Some sins can 
 best be overcome by the indirect method. 
 That apostle had this line of attack in 
 mind when he wrote, " Who is he that 
 will harm you, if ye be zealous of that 
 which is good?" And his brother 
 apostle cherished the same thought 
 when he told his converts not to be 
 overcome of evil, but to overcome evil 
 by good. There is great latent fighting 
 capacity in the " expulsive power of a 
 new affection." Satan finds little en- 
 trance into the heart that is daily set on 
 achieving righteousness, that is eager to 
 fill life full of unselfish service. The 
 blows of the antagonist fall with no 
 effect upon the man encased in the whole 
 armor of God. Fill life up with noble 
 
 45 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 acts, and the battle against sins will be 
 more than half won. 
 
 Drifting But life may be figured as a voyage as 
 well as a battle. Certainly those who 
 have once set their faces toward God 
 and goodness are no more in danger 
 of conscious and wilful departure from 
 the right course than of a quiet, imper- 
 ceptible backward movement. The man 
 in the boat hardly realizes that he is go- 
 ing down stream. He has only been 
 idly rocking or resting on his oars, with 
 the purpose by and by of again bending 
 to them, but suddenly he looks up and 
 notes that he is considerably farther 
 away from certain points on the bank 
 than he was only a short while before. 
 The Christian youth, full of good inten- 
 tions, but allowing himself to take a little 
 vacation as respects religious testimony 
 and service, encounters this same sensa- 
 tion of surprise when something occurs 
 to turn his thought in upon himself. He 
 has not been doing anything very bad, 
 but he has been drifting, and, if he will 
 be honest with himself, he will confess 
 46 
 
THE FOES 
 
 that his spiritual condition is far less Drifting 
 satisfactory than it was. 
 
 What are some of the things from 
 which we are in danger of drifting? 
 First, from our early ideals. Longfel- 
 low's sweet poem, The Castle Builder, 
 pictures a little boy putting one block 
 upon another, and the great poet en- 
 courages him by saying : 
 
 Build on, and make thy towers high and fair, 
 Rising and reaching upward to the skies, 
 
 Listen to voices in the upper air, 
 
 Lose not thy simple faith in mysteries. 
 
 Many of us have drifted far from our 
 childhood's faith in mysteries, from our 
 ideals of what we would be and do in the 
 world. Once we thought we might be 
 foreign missionaries or do some heroic 
 service for Christ in some hard or dark 
 corner of the earth. Life has moved on 
 with us and we now smile a little at those 
 childish notions. But if we cannot now 
 hear " the voices in the upper air," if we 
 are not moved by those high ideals of 
 duty which once thrilled us, we have 
 drifted far and sadly. 
 
 47 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Drifting We are likely to drift from our faith 
 in men. As we rub against them in the 
 world and see their weaknesses, as we 
 may suffer injustice or betrayal at their 
 hands, or as we simply look at them in 
 the mass and notice how animal many 
 of the faces are, we find it hard to be- 
 lieve Christ's words, " How much then is 
 a man of more value than a sheep ! " But 
 we must cling to the divine estimate of 
 our poor humanity. We cannot serve 
 men as we ought unless we see in them 
 divine possibilities. 
 
 We need, too, to guard against the 
 drift away from a personal comradeship 
 with Jesus Christ. Most of us have had 
 in our experience what Phillips Brooks 
 used to call " Jesus moments," when he 
 seemed near and dear. But it is hard in 
 the stress of the world to maintain that 
 intimacy. Yet the strength and use- 
 fulness of our Christian life depend 
 upon it. 
 
 Dead It was a splendid conception of their 
 to Sin new ijf e j n th e world and of their posi- 
 tion in the sight of God which Paul 
 
 48 
 
THE FOES 
 
 set forth when he counseled those who Dead 
 had only recently emerged from a t0 Sin 
 heathen state to count themselves as 
 if they were forever rid of the old 
 nature, and instead of being dead in 
 trespasses and sins as now dead to sin. 
 
 That is the way a man should now 
 and then look at himself. It is not 
 a mere temporary burst of enthusiasm 
 growing out of revulsion from the old 
 life and the first great charm of the new ; 
 it is the status to which every redeemed 
 man is moving and which God in his 
 compassion looks upon as already 
 achieved, provided the will has once 
 been steadily set toward that goal. As 
 Canon Gore says in his Incarnation of 
 the Son of God : " God deals with us 
 by anticipation." So Paul's eye, that 
 pierces the future, sees the Christian 
 man as already complete in Christ. 
 Over and again in his writings he insists 
 upon the necessity of putting down an 
 impassable barrier between the old life 
 of sin and the new life of faith. 
 
 Of course this idea is not to be toler- 
 ated for an instant apart from the other 
 
 49 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Dead great idea of Paul, that we are continually 
 t0 Stn working out our own salvation, but it is 
 a simple fact that as men go on in their 
 Christian life they do become dead to 
 particular sins. You cannot possibly 
 associate drunkenness or gambling with 
 certain men. Perhaps they have always 
 been dead to them, but certainly they 
 have reached a point now when it is im- 
 possible to conceive of their falling away 
 in these particulars. Their whole moral 
 nature is set in the opposite direction. 
 
 Oh, if this could only be said regard- 
 ing the entire circle of sins that do so 
 easily beset us ! How many a man 
 would give half of what he possesses 
 if the faults and failings which he has 
 been fighting more or less earnestly all 
 his life could forever be sloughed off! 
 Among the subjects which Phillips 
 Brooks once jotted down in his note- 
 book for future uses in the pulpit was 
 this : " A sermon on a man's discover- 
 ing a meanness in himself from which 
 he thought he was free, coming from 
 new circumstances, e. g., traveling." Is 
 not this a frequent experience with us 
 50 
 
THE FOES 
 
 all ? Yet Paul says that even these old Dead 
 and persistent foes can be mastered, but t0 Sin 
 the new principle alone will do it. 
 One's nature must flower out on the 
 side toward Christ before the weeds 
 in the garden can be completely up- 
 rooted. Christ alone furnishes a new in- 
 terest and a new motive and a new 
 ideal ; most of all his own life steals into 
 ours and subtly transforms it. The oak- 
 tree keeps its leaves throughout all the 
 wintry storms and no blast of the north 
 wind can detach them ; but let the new 
 sap of the springtime begin to creep up 
 through trunk and branches and the 
 faded leaves fall off of themselves. 
 
 51 
 
HELPS BY THE WAY 
 
Did we in our own strength confide, 
 Our striving would be losing. 
 
 — Luther. 
 
 I believe there is no means of preserving recti- 
 tude of conduct and nobleness of aim but the grace 
 of God obtained daily, almost hourly waiting upon 
 him and continual faith in his immediate presence. — 
 John Ruskin. 
 
 Prayer is the greatest power in the world. My 
 own prayer has been weak, wavering, inconstant, yet 
 it has been the best thing I have ever done. — S. C. 
 Armstrong. 
 
 Lord, this morning I read a chapter in the Bible 
 and therein observed a memorable passage whereof 
 I never took notice before. — Fuller. 
 
/// 
 
 HELPS BY THE WAY 
 
 A man may live near an excellent How 
 
 gymnasium and still be round-shouldered Ideals 
 
 and spindle-shanked, because of his fail- a ™ ,. , 
 ,. ,1 , , Realtzed 
 
 ure to realize how undeveloped he is 
 
 physically. A youth may spend a 
 winter at Berlin or in Dresden and get 
 no musical or artistic uplift. Little can 
 be done for one who does not realize 
 that he is put into this world to grow. 
 Christian life for many of us is arrested 
 or recedes simply because we think that 
 joining the church or the Young People's 
 Society is the end of the whole matter. 
 We have lost sight of our ideals. Look 
 again at Jesus Christ. How are we 
 poor, stunted, one-sided, selfish speci- 
 mens of humanity ever to resemble that 
 beautiful, glorious One? Do we think 
 that our souls can emerge from the dark 
 and sordid places where they grovel 
 
 55 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 How and deteriorate, into the light and liberty 
 Ideals f children of God, if we do nothing 
 Realized ours elves? Are we so foolish as to 
 believe that by living in a so-called 
 Christian community we shall somehow 
 or other be propelled along into the 
 kingdom of heaven ? Said Bushnell, in 
 his incisive way, " The injunction to 
 abide in Christ does n't mean to bask in 
 Christ." The will must assert itself, 
 must command all our faculties, mental 
 and spiritual, to fall into line with the 
 Christian ideals. 
 
 Spiritual growth is dependent upon 
 the use of the forces which make for 
 that end. As well might the sailor 
 undertake to cross the ocean without 
 adjusting his canvas to the winds as for 
 the spiritually-minded man to expect to 
 make steady advance in the holy life 
 without having every chamber of his 
 soul open to the breezes that bring 
 to him the ozone and the impulse of the 
 spiritual world. It is hard work trying 
 to pull one's self up by one's boot-straps. 
 If the Bible makes anything clear it 
 is the truth that the man who really 
 56 
 
HELPS BY THE WAY 
 
 wants to be better can command the aid How 
 of mighty supernatural forces, and by ldeals 
 them be lifted to higher levels. Let us ji ea n ze j 
 not think that any multiplication of ma- 
 chinery, any new methods, any patent 
 devices, can take the place of daily 
 reliance upon those spiritual forces with 
 which the busy world in which we move 
 is crowded, even though they are not 
 visible to mortal eyes. 
 
 When a practice becomes a part of our > 
 
 daily routine it influences us powerfully 7^ 
 thenceforth. What we do every day Daily 
 comes soon to stamp itself upon our Discipline 
 characters and upon our faces, too. 
 What we do once in a while, when we 
 feel like doing it and when there is noth- 
 ing more interesting to do, makes only a 
 little ripple on the swiftly flowing stream. 
 If I observe that at a certain time every 
 day an acquaintance of mine walks into 
 a saloon, I draw some natural, and prob- 
 ably just, inferences respecting him. The 
 youth who sets apart an hour a day for 
 practice on the piano or violin, and per- 
 severes in the habit, is bound, provided 
 
 57 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 The he possesses any talent whatever, to 
 £. . a ,?y attain to some degree of proficiency. 
 What wonders can be accomplished by 
 one who reads systematically, devot- 
 ing perhaps only fifteen minutes a day 
 to some good book ! Whole libraries 
 are thereby mastered in the course of 
 years. 
 
 Our religious habits need to be estab- 
 lished in precisely this same fashion. It 
 would be an immense gain if we could 
 overcome our fitfulness in religious 
 things. We dabble with this matter of 
 personal piety. Our Christian progress 
 is subject to many periods of retrogres- 
 sion simply because we rely on transient 
 enthusiasms and passing moods. Let us 
 get our religion into the thick of our 
 day's work. Let us consider it as much 
 a part of our regimen as our daily bath. 
 We do not wait for that until we feel 
 particularly enthusiastic about it. We 
 take it as a matter of course, as an essen- 
 tial to healthful living. 
 
 The Every soldier has his book of tactics, 
 Bttk to which he constantly refers. The 
 58 
 
HELPS BY THE WAY 
 
 Christian's chief reliance as he under- The 
 takes to master the fine art of noble Sible 
 living is the Bible. No amount of 
 higher criticism can make the Bible any 
 less essential to spiritual growth than our 
 fathers found it to be. It tells us, as no 
 other book ever does or can, what it is to be 
 good and, best of all, how we can attain 
 goodness. Is not such a book as that 
 to be taken in our hands and pondered 
 every day we live? I should not insist 
 upon mere rigidity of rules. There may 
 be circumstances that justify an occa- 
 sional omission, but at the end of a 
 month or the end of a week a man 
 should bring himself before the bar of 
 his conscience and ask if, during that 
 time, he has bestowed upon his Bible the 
 time and attention he would have given 
 it had he set apart, say, ten minutes a 
 day to its perusal. 
 
 System is secondary, provided the de- 
 sire to learn and to grow through perusal 
 of Scripture exists. The trouble with 
 most of us is not a lack of effective sys- 
 tems, but a lack of determination to 
 persevere in carrying out one system. 
 
 59 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 The There is an abundance of good plans for 
 
 J3 '7 7 
 
 1 Bible reading and study. ,The Chris- 
 tian Endeavor organization furnishes 
 one, the Y. M. C. A. suggests another, 
 the Sunday-school Quarterlies outline 
 still another. Almost every week wit- 
 nesses the printing of some book or 
 pamphlet which, if rightly used, will aid 
 in opening up the Scriptures. Professor 
 Walter F. Adeney's How to Read the 
 Bible, is an admirable guide. The series 
 of handbooks entitled The Modern 
 Reader's Bible, edited by Professor 
 Moulton of Chicago University, has 
 made many of the books of the Bible 
 new to those already familiar with 
 them. Surely we ought to be thankful 
 that we live in an age not of heavy, 
 bulky and abstruse commentaries, but 
 of cheap, attractive and scholarly 
 manuals on Bible study and Bible 
 reading. 
 
 It does not, to be sure, require a large 
 supply of even such excellent helps as 
 these in order to find out what the Bible 
 teaches. One could get along fairly 
 well, as respects the New Testament. 
 60 
 
HELPS BY THE WAY 
 
 with Marcus Dods' Introduction. We The 
 surely do not want to substitute books ^Me 
 about the Bible for the Bible itself, but 
 we may make profitable use of the re- 
 sults reached by men who have grown 
 gray in bending over the pages of Holy 
 Writ. While the Bible is simple enough 
 to be understood by an ordinary mind, 
 it is also true that we do not get at its 
 richest lessons and inspirations unless we 
 are willing to use our mental faculties 
 upon it in the same way in which we ap- 
 ply them to the study of general history 
 or literature. 
 
 What the average young person needs 
 most is an actual knowledge of the con- 
 tents of a given passage. How few can 
 narrate accurately such familiar stories as 
 that of the prodigal son or of the good 
 Samaritan! We glide over the surface 
 of Scripture. Frequent reading of it in 
 the house of God secures from us only a 
 mechanical attention. Study your Bible 
 until you actually know how, in its broad 
 outlines, the gospel of Luke differs from 
 the gospel of John ; what Paul is trying 
 to teach in Galatians as over against his 
 
 61 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 The instructions to Timothy ; what the book 
 Bible Q f j os hua actually tells about the con- 
 quest of the Holy Land. It is little 
 short of a disgrace that intelligent Chris- 
 tians know so little of what the Bible 
 sets forth in the way of historical fact. 
 Any kind of criticism is better than such 
 dense ignorance as to what the pages of 
 the Bible contain. There are seventeen 
 books in the New Testament, any one 
 of which can be read through in from 
 seventeen to twenty minutes. 
 
 We are to study the Bible to obtain 
 food for our spiritual lives. No Chris- 
 tian can be strong for service who does 
 not keep in constant contact with God's 
 revelation of himself through the Scrip- 
 tures. Intellectual mastery of the argu- 
 ment in Romans for justification by faith 
 is worth much, but a simple, childlike 
 surrender to Christ is worth more. A 
 discernment of the overruling Providence 
 which guided the steps of the children of 
 Israel is important, but of still more con- 
 sequence is it to obtain a sure sense that 
 as God was with the fathers so is he 
 with us. 
 
 62 
 
HELPS BY THE WAY 
 
 Suppose each person in a parlor com- Prayer 
 pany undertakes to write on paper what 
 he or she considers to be the absolute 
 necessities of life. There would be some 
 amusing differences and some surprising 
 resemblances in the lists. And when 
 one thinks the matter through he is 
 likely to come to the unexpected con- 
 clusion that, after all, for the average 
 person, only two or three things are ab- 
 solutely necessary. We all must have 
 some one to love and something to do. 
 Silk hats, beautiful gowns, handsome 
 equipages, delicate viands — we can get 
 along without any or all of these. But 
 we must have friends and we must have 
 work. These were the two great neces- 
 sities of Jesus' life. He could not possi- 
 bly dispense with his friends or with his 
 work. They were two of the forces that 
 brought his nature to its completion. 
 
 One more force explains Jesus Christ 
 and that is equally important for our de- 
 velopment, too. Prayer was the back- 
 ground and atmosphere of Christ's hu- 
 man years. He never could have done 
 his work well or loved his friends wisely 
 
 63 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Prayer unless there had been those vigils on the 
 mountainside, that wrestling in Geth- 
 semane. There is no other alternative 
 for us, either. The order of the universe 
 is such that only he who comes into 
 personal fellowship with God through 
 prayer renders the fullest service of 
 which he is capable and loves his own 
 and the world wisely and beneficently. 
 
 This is not theory but fact. Look 
 over the shining list of the men and 
 women whom the world honors as its 
 greatest moral and spiritual leaders. 
 You will find that almost without excep- 
 tion they were men and women of prayer. 
 If we want to get results in our work 
 and in our love, we must come into ac- 
 cord with the method by which this uni- 
 verse is ordered. Stop speculating about 
 prayer, or, if you will, the existence of 
 a God, but put yourself every day in a 
 humble, reverent, receptive attitude. 
 Talk out into space as if there were a 
 God there, and as day follows night you 
 will find hope and power stealing into 
 your life. Availing yourself of the ma- 
 chinery at hand, it operates in your be- 
 64 
 
HELPS BY THE WAY 
 
 half as it has invariably in behalf of peni- Prayer 
 tent, aspiring souls since the world began. 
 
 And there is something more to prayer 
 than a reflex influence on mood and 
 temper. It is our business to pray even 
 when our only hope is by that means to 
 change the current of our thought and 
 feeling. But he who persists finds sooner 
 or later a living, personal God. One 
 who habituates himself to prayer, who 
 makes it as much a part of his daily 
 routine as his meals or sleep or exercise, 
 soon obtains precious tokens of God's in- 
 terest and care. He does not say so 
 much about them perhaps to others, but 
 he learns to watch for the answers to his 
 petitions and they come in the most sur- 
 prising and delightful ways. 
 
 Yes, prayer is absolutely necessary if 
 one is seeking to be a religious person 
 at all. Is there a problem touching our 
 spiritual growth and service which prayer 
 cannot solve ? In the beautiful words of 
 Archbishop Trench : 
 
 We kneel, how weak, we rise, how full of power ! 
 Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, 
 Or others — that we are not always strong ; 
 
 65 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Prayer That we should ever weak or heartless be, 
 That we are ever overborne with care, 
 Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, 
 And joy and strength and courage, are with thee ? 
 
 And from Robertson of Brighton let us 
 take this solemn injunction : " Go not, 
 my friend, into the dangerous world 
 without it. . . . We may get experi- 
 ence, but we cannot get back the rich 
 freshness and strength which were 
 wrapped up in those moments." 
 
 Prayer ought to become as fixed a 
 habit as that of going to the table for 
 our food and drink. It is not something 
 unnatural and mysterious — it is the most 
 simple and sensible procedure in the 
 world. As Professor George P. Fisher 
 says in substance : " A man is never 
 more of a man than when he enters into 
 his closet and shuts the door in order 
 to commune with his Father in secret." 
 Let us divest the function of prayer of 
 its abnormal and remote character. 
 That a man should talk with his God 
 and Redeemer day by day — is this any- 
 thing to wonder at or be ashamed of? 
 The mystery is that men with divine in- 
 66 
 
HELPS BY THE WAY 
 
 fluences within them should hermetically Prayer 
 seal their lives against God by neglecting 
 prayer. To be sure, there may come 
 times, as in the case of any other habit, 
 when we do not feel in the need of 
 prayer, but do we never go to the table 
 when our appetites are not keen ? The 
 working man realizes that he must eat 
 if he is to perform his daily toil. Are 
 there never times when those who love 
 each other deeply do not feel demonstra- 
 tive, but on that account do they cease 
 from uttering a civil good-morning or 
 good-night, or do they refrain from all 
 communication with each other ? Prayer 
 is the medium through which our love 
 and zeal are kindled, and we ought to 
 pray more earnestly when we are least 
 disposed to seek God. 
 
 Yet it is a comfort to think in the 
 midst of our busy days that God does 
 not ask for lengthy petitions or insist 
 upon any prescribed method. The great 
 German scholar Bengel had the reputa- 
 tion of being gifted in prayer, and one 
 night some people assembled under his 
 window to overhear, if they might, his 
 
 67 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Prayer petitions. But he toiled late over his 
 books, and when bedtime came he 
 dropped on his knees a moment merely 
 to say, " Lord Jesus, I thank thee that 
 we are on the same old terms." Happy 
 the man who knows the way to the 
 throne of grace sufficiently well to em- 
 ploy such language ! 
 
 Certainly a variation both in language 
 and in method is beneficial. In the 
 summer-time pray in the open air. Use 
 occasionally for your own petitions some 
 of the great collects of the church or 
 other printed prayers. Pray with some 
 one else. How seldom does one Chris- 
 tian seek another saying, " Brother, I 
 should like to have a word of prayer 
 with you with regard to some one dear 
 to me, or with regard to the church 
 which we both attend, or with regard to 
 this place where we live." 
 
 To want to know how to pray indicates 
 that one is growing spiritually. How the 
 Saviour's heart must have thrilled when 
 his disciples approached him, not with a 
 speculative question, like that put by 
 Nicodemus or the woman of Samaria, 
 
HELPS BY THE WAY 
 
 not with a request for some outward good, Prayer 
 as when later he was asked to grant to 
 James and Joh-n special places of honor, 
 but possessed with a sincere longing to 
 know how to approach God in prayer! 
 Their words represent the yearning of 
 humanity at its best all through the ages. 
 " How shall I come and appear before 
 God ? " One who honestly takes this 
 petition on his lips, whether he be living 
 in the midst of pagan darkness or in a 
 Christian environment, is headed toward 
 the kingdom of God ; nay, is already in 
 it, because at last he has awakened to 
 that restlessness of heart which can never 
 be stilled until one rests in the bosom of 
 God. 
 
 It is a great step in advance when we 
 realize that in a certain sense prayer is an 
 art, that it must be learned as other arts 
 are, that one has not really learned to 
 pray simply because, in the stress of a 
 great fear, as on the deck of a sinking 
 vessel, he cries out for deliverance from 
 drowning to a God whom he never really 
 sought before. That single utterance is 
 tinctured with superstition. It repre- 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Prayer sents a stage of life only one remove from 
 heathenism. To pray as a child of God, 
 as a disciple of Jesus ought to pray re- 
 quires months and years of practice. Not 
 that the little child does not truly pray 
 when it offers its evening prayer at its 
 mother's knee, but that as life goes-on a 
 man must give time and thought and his 
 best energy to the act of prayer. It is 
 no easy business. There must be at times 
 the wrestle with God. Only sheer de- 
 termination and perseverance can over- 
 come apathy and indifference and the ebb- 
 tide of faith. Prayer is the sublimest 
 exercise in which a man can indulge and 
 at the same time the most strenuous. 
 
 Christ helps his inquiring disciples by 
 prescribing a form. We shall never out- 
 grow it and never find its equal. But as 
 we employ it so constantly we do well to 
 enrich our petitions and stimulate the 
 prayerful spirit by availing ourselves of 
 language accredited by long usage, 
 through which devout hearts have ex- 
 pressed their sense of need and their long- 
 ing for pardon, peace and joy in believ- 
 ing. There are standard works of devotion 
 70 
 
HELPS BY THE WAY 
 
 to which fresh compilations are constantly Prayer 
 being added and they may be made of 
 immense value in quickening the flow of 
 feeling and in furnishing us with words, 
 which, better than any we might be able 
 ourselves to choose, voice the desires 
 of our hearts. Such meditation on the 
 great things of God, on the reality of his 
 fatherly relation, helps us to find him 
 near when we kneel before him and 
 helps us also to frame our desires in 
 language. 
 
 Connection with an organization be- 7-^ 
 comes a joy only when one is in thorough Church 
 sympathy with its principles and aims. 
 No amount of- argument can convince 
 me that it is my duty to join, or that I 
 should find any pleasure in belonging to, 
 a fire-engine company or to the state 
 militia or to a farmer's grange. For 
 such organizations, when properly con- 
 ducted, I have a great respect, but just 
 at present I have other and more absorb- 
 ing interests. It is just as vain to labor 
 with a man with reference to church 
 membership, unless he cares in a hearty 
 
 71 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 The way for Christianity. And if he has be- 
 Church C ome a Christian he ought not to need 
 much urging. 
 
 If his Christian life be at all deep and 
 purposeful, he will go where he belongs. 
 What Christ, his Master, wants him to 
 do will weigh considerably with him. 
 What most of his fellow believers have 
 done will also have its influence. He 
 will reason about it in the same sensible 
 fashion which he has used in settling 
 other relations. He has allied himself 
 with a certain political party, not because 
 its opinions as expressed in its platforms 
 are in every minute particular his own, 
 not because the party is absolutely free 
 from men whom he dislikes and distrusts, 
 but because, on the whole, he wishes to 
 be counted among those who are known 
 as believers in certain political doctrines, 
 and because he thinks that through such 
 an alliance he will be better able to fulfil 
 the duties of a patriotic citizen. In 
 short, the true disciple of Christ does not 
 usually hide behind excuses which are 
 simply pretexts. He is too manly and 
 straightforward to indulge in a specious 
 
 72 
 
HELPS BY THE WAY 
 
 kind of reasoning, which if applied to The 
 other human relations would cut him c ^ urc ^ 
 off entirely from all formal association 
 with his fellow men. 
 
 Now and then, let us frankly admit, 
 we find exceptions — men who are 
 humble and sincere Christians and yet 
 not connected with any church. But 
 what is the most frequent and the best 
 excuse which these friends of ours have 
 to offer ? Is it not this, that they think 
 they can be just as good Christians with- 
 out joining the church ? Possibly they 
 may be so different from the rest of 
 their kind that this claim of theirs is 
 true. Perhaps they are superior to the 
 help and inspiration of the church — its 
 noble worship, its stately hymns, its 
 blessed sacraments, its history and tradi- 
 tions. The thought of all its saints and 
 martyrs may carry no appeal to such a 
 one ; but if he cannot be persuaded by 
 considerations of his own need of the 
 church, will he not remember that others 
 weaker than he are by his example de- 
 prived of the strength which might 
 come through church membership? 
 
 73 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 The And the better the man is who stays 
 Church ou tside the more harmful is his influence, 
 for others point to him as one who is 
 "just as good as your church members 
 and a good sight better than many of 
 them." If we look upon church mem- 
 bership as one of the most sacred and 
 precious relationships of our lives, we 
 shall find it yielding greater and more 
 solid satisfactions day by day. 
 
 The i n considering what benefit he may de- 
 Lord's 
 Day 
 
 rive from an established and accredited 
 institution the Christian is toound to have 
 regard to its historical standing and use. 
 He finds that the nations and individuals 
 whose lives have been purest and most 
 influential in the world have kept Sunday. 
 A little deeper study tells him that the 
 need of such a day is rooted deep in the 
 constitution of man. God knew when he 
 appointed it that the physical nature of 
 man could not endure uninterrupted toil, 
 and experimentation by at least one nation 
 —the French — has proved that it is dif- 
 ficult to improve on the divine plan of 
 one day in seven. God knew also that 
 74 
 
HELPS BY THE WAY 
 
 Day 
 
 man's spiritual nature as well demanded The 
 the relief and the uplift of a periodic 7^" 
 breaking away from the daily routine in 
 order to give the soul a better chance to 
 develop its powers. This, then, is the 
 twofold object of the day, rest and worship, 
 and its providential design is defeated 
 just as much when the day is entirely 
 given to exhausting work, even Christian 
 work, as when no regard is paid to the 
 claims of the sanctuary. 
 
 When it comes to practical matters the 
 Christian must be guided in his decisions 
 by the effort to make the day in his case 
 serve these two ends. With due deference 
 to the opinion of others older and wiser 
 than himself and to Christian public senti- 
 ment in the community where he is, and 
 without forgetting that a method to secure 
 even these desirable ends is itself ques- 
 tionable when it interferes with another 
 man's right and opportunity to keep the 
 Sabbath, we are to decide, each for him- 
 self and each in the light of Christ's 
 teachings and example, what we may do 
 and what we may not do on Sunday. 
 
 Should our Sabbaths be different from 
 
 75 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 The other days ? Yes. " The world is too 
 Lord's muc h with us." We do not want the 
 * news of the universe dumped on break- 
 fast-tables Sunday morning. Politics and 
 business and fashions and amusements 
 have a sufficiently long term of supremacy 
 when they hold sway six days out of the 
 seven. What we need to purify and in- 
 vigorate our Christian lives is a Sunday 
 marked by a different kind of reading, con- 
 versation and by a different atmosphere. 
 Most people have to spend the waking 
 hours from Monday morning to Satur- 
 day night in facing and solving the prob- 
 lem of daily bread. When God ordained 
 one day out of seven for a special pur- 
 pose he knew how weighed down the 
 great majority of mankind would be 
 with earthly interests. And to a certain 
 extent, by changing our clothing, by 
 altering our diet, we all recognize that 
 Sunday is a different day. But the real 
 difference ought to come in the direction 
 which our thoughts take, in the general 
 tone and atmosphere of the home. Jesus 
 and Paul took issue with the Pharisees 
 on the Sunday question because the 
 76 
 
Day 
 
 HELPS BY THE WAY 
 
 difference which they made between The 
 Sunday and week-days was one of ex- *£rd s 
 ternals only. They were no more open 
 to God, they were no more just and 
 merciful on the Sabbath than on Mon- 
 day and Tuesday. They were just as 
 crafty, domineering and hypocritical. 
 Let us change the current of our thinking 
 and of our desires if we would keep Sun- 
 day rightly. 
 
 It ought also to be a divine day. 
 Three elements — rest, worship and serv- 
 ice — combine to secure this. How 
 to proportion them is the problem for 
 the individual, but make sure that you 
 are getting the real things and not any 
 substitutes for them. As respects wor- 
 ship, for instance, do not delude yourself 
 by thinking that you are drawing near 
 to God merely because you are lying 
 prone in a field of daisies or idly holding 
 a rod over a running stream. The ap- 
 proved method through all the centuries 
 for finding and worshiping God has been 
 to seek him in his sanctuary. There is 
 where most men are filled with a sense 
 of God's greatness and nearness. There 
 
 77 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 The is where they bow upon their knees and 
 Lord's as k him to have mercy upon them, con- 
 ^ trite sinners. Perhaps you are different 
 from most of your kind, and then again 
 perhaps you are not. Another common 
 mistake is to substitute sociability for the 
 kind of service of needy men and women 
 which the Bible enjoins upon the Sab- 
 bath Day. It might be better for us to 
 decline an invitation to dine with con- 
 genial friends on the Lord's Day, and 
 spend the time that would be consumed 
 thereby in visiting the poor and the sick. 
 As another has said : " The only liberty 
 which Christ permits on Sunday is the 
 liberty to do good and to grow better 
 yourself." Make the day different, make 
 it divine by longer prayers, more atten- 
 tive reading of the Bible and of the 
 books that feed the spiritual life and by 
 ministering to those who need your help, 
 and your Sunday is sure to be full of 
 profit. 
 
 The Apparently Jesus did not care much 
 Lord's for forms. He saw too much formalism 
 Supper a |3 0u t hj mj too many whited sepulchers, 
 
 78 
 
HELPS BY THE WAY 
 
 too many institutions of religion out of The 
 which had gone the faith and hope and Lord's 
 love which constitute the eternal ele- u ^ er 
 ments of religion. He never gave his 
 disciples any formula through which 
 they should invariably express their faith 
 in him. He seemed to prefer to trust to 
 that phrasing of it which would be the 
 natural outcome of the divine life which 
 he implanted. He only prescribed one 
 form of prayer, and that was in response 
 to their request for it. So when he does 
 institute a certain definite outward action 
 and bids his followers observe it for his 
 sake it possesses all the greater signifi- 
 cance. 
 
 The Christian man, then, must needs 
 ask himself if the Lord's Supper means 
 as much to him as his Lord intended it 
 should. If a dying friend says : " Now 
 no matter about going to my grave in 
 the cemetery, no matter about a notice 
 in the newspapers, no matter about put- 
 ting on crape, but the next time you are 
 in those quiet woods where we used to 
 walk together I want you particularly to 
 remember me, or every Sunday evening 
 
 79 
 
Supper 
 
 STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 The in your room just at sunset call my face 
 Lord's to mind," we should be very sure to 
 heed his wishes. Jesus knew that we 
 needed some special season, some defi- 
 nite place, some concrete act in con- 
 nection with which we should specially 
 remember him. Not that we forget him 
 elsewhere, but none of us are so spiritual 
 yet that we can dispense with times and 
 ways of particular and more tender com- 
 memoration. 
 
 Certainly the associations that gather 
 about the table of our Lord ought them- 
 selves to bring spiritual quickening. 
 Those emblems there are the definite 
 material proof that Christ was once in 
 the world. We need no better evidence 
 of the reality of Christianity than the 
 persistence of this rite through nineteen 
 hundred years. And it has gathered into 
 itself the penitence and the consecration, 
 the toils and the sacrifices of countless 
 multitudes who, in stately cathedrals or 
 in plain Puritan meeting-houses, in the 
 catacombs and the mountain fastnesses 
 whither the rage of their persecutors had 
 driven them, or in great gatherings which 
 80 
 
H EL PS BY THE WAY 
 
 commanded the world's attention and The 
 respect, have partaken of the bread and Lord's 
 the wine that spoke of forgiveness and u ^ er 
 peace. Surely some sense of what this 
 supper has meant to the Christian world 
 should steal into our hearts as we sit at 
 the same table of the Lord. 
 
 But we gather there chiefly to remem- 
 ber him. Some there are who are made 
 fearful by the words of the apostle with 
 reference to eating and drinking un- 
 worthily, and to them the communion 
 hour is one of mourning over their sins. 
 Contrition there should be, but it is our 
 Saviour rather than our own stained and 
 marred selves of whom we should think. 
 Others dwell upon the shortcomings and 
 inconsistencies of their fellow Christians, 
 but it is not in remembrance of other 
 people's sins that we are to partake of 
 the supper. He who bore them and 
 ours, too, in his own body on the tree, 
 whose compassion is wide enough and 
 whose power great enough to redeem a 
 universe, should be the chief object of 
 thought and devotion as we linger about 
 the table which bears his name. 
 
 81 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Giving It is singular how loath we Christians 
 are to trust the working of a spiritual 
 law. We order our lives in sure reliance 
 upon physical law. We are confident 
 that if we plant the seed and keep the 
 weeds away the sunshine and the rain will 
 bring it to maturity. But we shrink 
 from testing the law found on so many 
 pages of the Bible, to the effect that 
 one's growth and usefulness depend 
 upon the policy of liberality. " The 
 liberal soul shall be made fat," declares 
 the Old Testament. Jesus echoes the as- 
 sertion more than once in such sentences 
 as these : " Give, and it shall be given 
 unto you." " Whosoever shall lose his 
 life shall find it." I like that old illustra- 
 tion of the way in which it is possible to 
 retain a portion of grain. Just as soon 
 as one clenches his fist the shining meal 
 escapes through every crevice, but pour 
 it on the open palm and it remains 
 there. You cannot in the long run hold 
 anything simply by hanging on to it. 
 You must be willing to put it out in the 
 open where it can be available to others 
 as well as to yourself. 
 82 
 
HELPS BY THE WAY 
 
 As respects dollars and cents this law Giving 
 holds. In the long run men are pros- 
 pered according to their willingness to 
 share their returns from business. If we 
 could get at the exact statistics, I think 
 we should find that Christian people who 
 have some definite convictions about de- 
 voting a portion of their income to the 
 needs of the kingdom of heaven register 
 as large a measure of outward success as 
 do their neighbors whose contributions 
 to charity consist in dimes and pennies 
 tossed to the beggar by the wayside. 
 Within a short while several striking 
 instances have come to me of men re- 
 markably prospered in business who 
 have made it their rule for many years 
 to give a tithe of their income to the 
 church and to philanthropy. They be- 
 gan this practice when it was hard for 
 them to spare that amount from small 
 salaries, but they persevered then and 
 God has brought them to the point 
 where they can easily give more than a 
 tithe. 
 
 But no one, at any rate, can gainsay 
 the spiritual returns from a liberal policy. 
 
 83 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Giving Nothing after all develops the finer 
 qualities so much as to give to another 
 of that which represents toil and sacri- 
 fice. It seems as if the noblest instincts 
 of our hearts demand some such outlet 
 quite as much for our own sake as for 
 the sake of those to whom our offering 
 goes. When a little child labors hour 
 after hour just before Christmas to make 
 something for father and then succeeds 
 only in presenting him with a pin- 
 cushion in which the clumsy stitches are 
 evident, he values it more than the most 
 expensive gift, and the child itself has 
 taken a distinct step forward. Into its 
 own heart have come impulses of love 
 and tenderness never before cherished. 
 We may dare even to apply this prin- 
 ciple to God himself. The demands of 
 his own nature require that he should 
 give his Son. He could not be a re- 
 deeming Father of mankind until he had 
 furnished a crowning proof of his love. 
 
 Is not this the key to many of our 
 problems? If we could only take this 
 simple law and trust it, our doubts and 
 questioning would disappear, our cold- 
 84 
 
HELPS BY THE WAY 
 
 ness and apathy would give way to a Giving 
 genuine interest in men, to a real sense 
 of fellowship with God. You confess 
 sadly that you have no interest in 
 missions. How much money have you 
 invested in them within the last year? 
 Put twenty dollars into the training of an 
 Indian orphan, or send ten dollars for a 
 college in distant China ; connect your- 
 self personally with some worker in 
 Turkey or Africa ; deny yourself some 
 luxury in order to help equip that 
 worker — and see if you do not have a 
 deeper interest in missions. The early 
 Christians to whom Paul wrote believed 
 in this law and practiced it, and that 
 is why there was such a sturdy type 
 of Christianity in the first century. Our 
 converts on missionary soil to-day, who 
 more nearly resemble in their giving the 
 widow whom Jesus commended than do 
 most Christians in America, show in 
 their own strong and daring lives the re- 
 active influence of that same law. It is 
 forever true, as another has well said, 
 that the secret of success is to be lavish 
 of one's personality. 
 
 85 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 The Prayer, the Bible, the church, the 
 Helpful L or d's Day, the Lord's Supper, the liberal 
 f* hand, — these are the substantial and en- 
 Life during helps as we step toward Christ. 
 But the wayfarer will not wall himself off 
 from other sources of invigoration. His 
 Creator has so fitted out this universe, so 
 ordered the play of life upon life that as 
 we tread the way of righteousness many a 
 benign influence may steal into our hearts. 
 The beauty of a summer day, the glory of 
 a winter landscape, the serene and stately 
 onmoving of the universe — breed in us 
 peace and strength. Our daily tasks, 
 whose grip upon us is so relentless and 
 sometimes so wearying, may after all 
 prove one of the chief agencies for put- 
 ting granite into our characters. Whole- 
 some books, beautiful pictures, statuary 
 and music minister to every fluttering 
 aspiration after truth and goodness. The 
 warm and delicate hand of human friend- 
 ship leads us forth upon high places 
 whence we see our lives as they are meant 
 to be. The family relationship, while it 
 imposes restraints and obligations, strikes 
 at the beast and the demon in us and 
 86 
 
HELPS BY THE WAY 
 
 challenges us to every-day heroism and The 
 saintship. Helpful 
 
 Thus for the obedient, high-minded J 
 and purposeful man the path Christward Life 
 is safeguarded and illumined during every 
 stage of the journey. 
 
 87 
 
THE WATMARKS 
 
First the blade, then the ear, 
 Then the full corn in the ear. 
 
 — Jesus. 
 
 Heaven is not reached at a single bound ; 
 But we build the ladder by which we rise 
 From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, 
 
 And we mount to its summit round by round. 
 —John Gilbert Holland. 
 
 Do not seek to change the order of God's spiritual 
 year. Do not seek to put the fruits of one season 
 into " the lap " of another. — George Matheson. 
 
 There is no better means of progress in the spirit- 
 ual life than to be continually beginning afresh and 
 never to think that we have done enough. — Francis 
 De Sales. 
 
IF 
 
 THE WATMARKS 
 
 Did you ever on a Saturday night or The 
 a Sunday morning look back over the Worth 
 vanished week with a view to determin- Q ur 
 ing the worth of each day to you ? Why Days 
 not make the effort some time to mark 
 them on the scale of ioo? If you mark 
 one seventy-five and the other ninety, on 
 what ground would you make the differ- 
 ence ? Perhaps some great and unusual 
 pleasure is associated with Monday or 
 Wednesday; perhaps on Friday you 
 passed an excellent examination in one 
 of your studies ; perhaps Sunday brought 
 you a new sense of the goodness of God 
 and the love of Christ ; perhaps on Thurs- 
 day you recall going out of your way to 
 help some one else. At all events, our 
 fleeting days will lend themselves to such 
 marking, and if we are true disciples of 
 Jesus we shall find ourselves more and 
 
 91 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 The more prone to rank high on the scale 
 
 Worth those days when we have been conscious 
 
 °* of some growth of character, some real 
 
 D a y S usefulness in the world. It would be a 
 
 shame to mark a day ioo simply because 
 
 from sunrise to sunset our own cup of 
 
 happiness had been full and we had no 
 
 regard as to whether those about us 
 
 might or might not be weary or sad. 
 
 In some such way we number our 
 years. Mr. Joseph Cook, not long be- 
 fore his death, characterized human dec- 
 ades in this striking fashion : " Man's 
 life means tender teens, teachable twen- 
 ties, tireless thirties, fiery forties, forcible 
 fifties, serious sixties, sacred seventies, 
 aching eighties." Of course no one ad- 
 jective can sum up ail the characteris- 
 tics of ten years, but we are reminded 
 that our lives do move on from period 
 to period, and that each decade may wit- 
 ness some addition to our working equip- 
 ment, some tighter grasp of the problems 
 set us to solve, a larger influence in behalf 
 of things true and beautiful and of good 
 report. 
 
 The only glory that can rest upon 
 92 
 
THE WAYMARKS 
 
 these human years arises from the fact The 
 that we frail and transient creatures of Worth 
 the dust may rest in the mighty embrace °-L 
 of the Eternal, may link our weakness j) a y S 
 with his strength, our short-sightedness 
 with his foreknowledge, our fleeting 
 threescore years and ten with that life 
 which knows no beginning and no end. 
 Only as we realize that God is the back- 
 ground of our existence does it seem 
 worth while even to breathe, and over 
 against that background how puerile 
 seem our petty rivalries, our selfish am- 
 bitions, our absorption in material things ! 
 
 God's judgments are not man's judg- The 
 ments, and as at the end of a year we Backward 
 
 T h 
 
 cast our eyes back it may be that God 
 takes note of things in our pathway 
 which to us seem apparently trivial. 
 His interest in the record is not unlike 
 that of a Christian mother who keeps in- 
 formed about the progress of her boy 
 away at school. He writes that he is on 
 the football team, that he is president of 
 his class, that he has taken a prize for 
 declamation, that he is among the first 
 
 93 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 The six scholars of his class. Such tidings 
 Backward re joice her heart, but if she is keeping a 
 private book wherein she has recorded 
 the notable things in his life since the 
 unspeakable moment when he was first 
 placed in her arms, what will give her 
 the most satisfaction to write down? 
 Surely what he told her about his decid- 
 ing to be a Christian, about his effort to 
 promote a higher standard of honor in 
 the classroom and on the playground. 
 
 So God's eye, as it scans our record, 
 rests with loving approbation on things 
 which mark us as disciples of his Son — 
 that day when we met and conquered a 
 great temptation, those times when we 
 were unselfish and loving when it would 
 have been far more natural and easy to 
 be the opposite, the hand which we 
 stretched out one day to a weaker 
 brother, the good cheer which radiated 
 from us when the clouds were settling 
 upon us and those about us. 
 
 The Does it pay to spend a great deal of 
 Fresh strength and time in bemoaning the 
 past ? Gordon of Khartum used to say 
 94 
 
THE WAYMARKS 
 
 that he regarded past events not as his- The 
 tory but as providence. We need for *i 
 our comfort and relief the power to rise 
 above the depression and heartburning 
 occasioned by a backward look, and to 
 grasp the great Christian truth that all 
 things, even slips and shortcomings, may 
 somehow in the wonderful movements 
 of God's providence work out his own 
 blessed designs and be for our ultimate 
 good. Let us never forget the inspiring 
 words of the general who, when he met 
 a detachment of his troops fleeing from 
 the enemy, their captain crying out, 
 " The battle is lost," rallied them and 
 turned their faces again to the foe by 
 saying, " This battle may be lost, but 
 there is yet time to win another." 
 
 The only way to make a new year 
 better is to make ourselves better. Just 
 in proportion as we become more de- 
 voted to duty, more open to the truth, 
 braver in asserting it, truer and more 
 constant in our affections, purer and 
 more unselfish in daily living shall we be 
 conferring upon the passing days a value 
 and a glory which will make them worth 
 
 95 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 The living in the experience and worth re- 
 Fresh membering hereafter. And the time to 
 begin is now ! A year slips away from 
 us before we are aware of its flight. The 
 difference between most of us and Jesus 
 Christ is that he never postponed until 
 next year or next week the thing he 
 ought to do. We are continually de- 
 luding ourselves with the notion that 
 pretty soon we will begin to carry out 
 our high impulses; that day after to- 
 morrow, perhaps, we will attack that bad 
 habit ; but any year will be a good year 
 to us only as we strive to make January 
 first and January second, and all the 
 successive three hundred and sixty- 
 three days, just as good as we can, by 
 beautifying our own characters and by 
 brightening the lot of those about us. 
 
 Signs If we examine ourselves to discover 
 
 °f tokens of growth, we ought not to look 
 
 rogress Qn ^ ^ or conven ti ona l s jg ns Q f progress. 
 
 Every sincere soul may fairly take com- 
 fort to himself from every proper sign 
 of advance, even though he may have 
 been trained to exact of himself certain 
 96 
 
THE WAYMARKS 
 
 prescribed feelings. A man is growing Signs 
 spiritually if he is growing morally, °f 
 if he finds an increasing hatred in his ro & ress 
 heart of sham and cant, if his eth- 
 ical standard for himself and others is 
 constantly advancing, if he loves justice 
 and • does mercy, and tries to walk 
 humbly before his God from day to day. 
 Moreover, one of the truest tokens of 
 growth is discontent with present attain- 
 ments. If that be absent, it is a ques- 
 tion whether one is growing at all. 
 
 When a great edifice is being erected 
 the sound of hammer and saw is loudly 
 heard ; but when nature weaves her 
 carpet of green for the fields, sends the 
 sap coursing through trunk and bough 
 and impels the flowers to send up their 
 fragile stems through the dark earth the 
 wondrous transformations do not adver- 
 tise themselves to the ear. So the 
 Christian grows. A man who is living 
 near to his Lord, entering more fully 
 each day into his spirit of service and 
 sacrifice, taking on more of his likeness, 
 does not need to bluster or brag about 
 it ; nay, he shrinks from any proclama- 
 
 97 
 
STEPS CHRIST WARD 
 
 Signs tion of his bettering state. But little by 
 °f little his friends become aware of it, in 
 the gentler tones of his voice, in his 
 softer judgments of his fellows, in his 
 deepening humility of spirit, in his 
 mastery of his passions and his mean- 
 nesses. 
 
 The growth is orderly; it is not 
 spasmodic; it is not aimless. There is 
 the logical, progressive unfolding of the 
 new life. We have seen some sad cases 
 of men who followed Jesus on the hop, 
 skip and jump principle. But the life 
 that is really keyed to his is steady and 
 moves evenly and quietly to a distant 
 goal. It does not make so much differ- 
 ence if the progress is slow. Dr. A. B. 
 Bruce says in his helpful volume, The 
 Moral Order of the World, " The one 
 valid distinction between men is one of 
 tendency and momentum." Only let us 
 make sure that there is some movement. 
 
 Holding Sometimes simply to hold one's ground 
 
 On i s to make progress. The man rowing 
 
 against the current deserves some praise 
 
 for not letting his boat go down the 
 
THE WAYMARKS 
 
 stream. The reformed drunkard does Holding 
 well if he simply holds on, even if he 0n 
 does not develop all the Christian graces 
 at once. Some one asked Sieyes just 
 after the Reign of Terror what he did 
 during that stormy period. His simple 
 answer was, " I lived." Just to live out 
 a single day firmly, uncomplainingly, 
 may be all that is sometimes required of 
 us. 
 
 This is an age of transition, and it is 
 difficult to adjust the truths we learned 
 in childhood to the new discoveries of 
 science and of Biblical studies, but shame 
 on the man who, because his knowledge 
 increases and widens, surrenders his 
 faith ! Learn Principal Shairp's beauti- 
 ful poem of two stanzas, beginning : 
 
 I have a life in Christ to live, 
 
 And ere I live it must I wait 
 Till science shall full answer give 
 
 Of this or that book's date ? 
 
 The Son of man still finds faith on the 
 earth, despite the fact that creeds made a 
 century ago or fifteen centuries ago do 
 not adequately express our own convic- 
 tions. Genuine, vital, animating faith is 
 
 s L.ofC** " 
 
STEPS C.HRISTWARD 
 
 Holding as possible to-day as it ever was ; nay, 
 ® n even more so to the reverent, serious, 
 teachable soul. Hold on to what you 
 have, and it will gather to itself more. 
 
 We ought to hold on, too, to courage. 
 There are problems enough, personal 
 and social, there are lions in the way, but 
 " why should the children of the King 
 go mourning all their days ? " We ought 
 to present a brave front to the world. 
 Courage, too, grows by being exercised. 
 When we come to the narrow places 
 and our foes seem hemming us in, let us 
 spur us on to battle by the thought of 
 the forces on our side. 
 
 No one has any business to let go his 
 grip on duty. It is in this region of life 
 that endurance tells most. I was im- 
 pressed once with the reply which Dr. 
 Sheldon made to a question regarding 
 his attitude toward his critics. " Oh," 
 said he, as if it were a most trivial matter, 
 " I go right along." A great point has 
 been scored when we can learn to go 
 right along with our work, sticking to 
 the duty that is hard or disagreeable, 
 carrying it through to the end. 
 100 
 
THE WAYMARKS 
 
 The natural heart craves signs and Inward 
 wonders. So a multitude of artificial -Assurance 
 tests of personal salvation has grown 
 up. Christians have demanded of them- 
 selves much more than Jesus Christ ever 
 demanded of them. Some mystical in- 
 ward witness has been sought, some 
 mighty attestation of the Spirit to the 
 fact that they were accepted children of 
 God. Some of the sweetest, purest souls 
 this world has ever known have subjected 
 themselves to seasons of introspection 
 and self-discipline that have frequently 
 ended in gloom and despair. We of this 
 generation, to whom such words of de- 
 spondency and self-upbraiding seldom 
 come, do not begin to realize how 
 other generations of Christians have 
 faced it with quivering personal anx- 
 iety. What would they not have given 
 to receive the assurance that they were 
 safe as respects this life and partic- 
 ularly as respects that which is to 
 come? 
 
 The inquiry might have been justifia- 
 ble if it had confined itself to a few sim- 
 ple Biblical tests. John, for instance, 
 
 101 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Inward says, " We know that we have passed 
 Assurance out of death into life, because we love 
 the brethren," " He that saith he abideth 
 in him ought himself also to walk even 
 as he walked." It is not a question of 
 ecstatic feeling, or of enjoyment of 
 prayer, or of utter indifference to earthly 
 things, but it is a question primarily of 
 love. A man knows whether or not he 
 is trying to live in the atmosphere of the 
 thirteenth chapter of first Corinthians 
 and to walk along the pathway outlined 
 by the Sermon on the Mount. A saved 
 man is a loving man. The love begins 
 with the circle of those for whom he is 
 most responsible and with whom he is 
 most constantly thrown and them he 
 tries to love to the best of his ability. 
 Then his sympathy widens to those in 
 the neighborhood, the community, the 
 nation, the world. So if genuine, im- 
 pulsive love is welling up in his heart he 
 will not be likely to trouble himself with 
 this question, or if he does the answer 
 will be ready at hand. 
 
 There are practical tests, too. Bishop 
 Hannington, when a young man, said 
 102 
 
THE WAYMARKS 
 
 that one reason why he thought he was Inward 
 a Christian was that he liked to go to Assurance 
 prayer-meeting better than he used to. 
 This is by no means a conclusive evi- 
 dence of salvation, or the absence of the 
 fondness any sure sign of moral degen- 
 eracy. It depends upon the prayer- 
 meeting. But it is one of several prac- 
 tical tests. Does a man like the company 
 of Christian people, does he like to hear 
 about the progress of the kingdom of 
 God, does he yearn for peace in the in- 
 dustrial world, does he have a growing 
 disposition to perform the simple routine 
 acts of every-day helpfulness ? 
 
 We would not bring back the days of 
 our fathers, when the demands of a harsh 
 theology made men morbid, but we are 
 foolish when we go to the other extreme 
 and forget that we have a soul to save. 
 Horace Bushnell once said to a young 
 woman in the most natural way imagina- 
 ble, " Have you found your place ? " 
 We should ask ourselves, now and then, 
 if we have found our place in God's uni- 
 verse, if we are cooperating with his laws 
 and seeking above everything else to 
 
 103 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 glorify him. A man may know whether 
 or not he is in his proper place, and he 
 may have the joy and peace arising from 
 this consciousness. 
 
 To-day Where am I going to-day ? To my 
 
 ^'^Znd W ° rk ' ° f COUrSe > first ° f all > and to d ° lt 
 q-fr en better, if possible, than yesterday. But, 
 
 What before I go to it, is there not one other 
 
 spot to which I should resort, there 
 
 to gird myself for the struggles and 
 
 responsibilities of the day? The great 
 
 preacher Chalmers used to express the 
 
 fear that he would be " bustled out of 
 
 his spirituality." Any one whose life is 
 
 beset with many cares is in danger of 
 
 this misfortune. Let me forfend it then 
 
 this day, if possible. And then, as I go 
 
 to my work, and after I get there, may 
 
 there not be some other path of quiet 
 
 service which I can and ought to tread ? 
 
 Is there any home of a poor man, any 
 
 shop or factory where oaths and bad 
 
 talk befoul the air into which I may go 
 
 this day carrying the fresh ozone of the 
 
 Christ life ? 
 
 Where am I going to-morrow, and 
 
 104 
 
THE WAYMARKS 
 
 during all the to-morrows of my earthly To-day 
 life? What single purpose have I in To-morrozv 
 view ? " Rome was not built in a day." q-^ en 
 The great books and the great paintings What 
 are not the outcome of a momentary 
 impulse that led their makers to toil 
 fiercely for a day or two. These won- 
 derful achievements represent the steady, 
 patient labor of many years, or even of a 
 lifetime, and from the start these work- 
 ers kept their goal in sight. Paul be- 
 longed to this company of purposeful 
 souls. He took the long look into the 
 future and then set his teeth firmly and 
 said : " This one thing I do." We 
 cannot, it is true, entirely settle in our 
 youthful days, or even in maturer life, 
 just where we shall go when the immedi- 
 ate task is done, when we are through 
 with this school, when we shall have 
 served our time here and there. But 
 it pays the growing boy to ask himself 
 now and then, " At what am I aiming in 
 life?" 
 
 Where am I going, not to-day or 
 to-morrow, perhaps, but by and by when 
 I die? I know not just how much I 
 
 105 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 To-day shall be able to travel over this beautiful 
 To-morrow worldj but of one thing j am certa i n . 
 
 q-j im in due time I shall have to take alone 
 What that journey from which no mortal has 
 ever returned. Shall I when I come 
 down to that dark river be able to say, 
 as Frances Willard did, " How beautiful 
 God is " ? And how about my destina- 
 tion after I have quitted these earthly 
 scenes ? I shall go somewhere when 
 I die. Religious people talk about a 
 place called heaven and another called 
 hell, and while I cannot understand all 
 that some affirm about these places or 
 states I really do not think that I shall 
 go to heaven until I am in some measure 
 fit to associate with those pure and un- 
 selfish souls who have washed their robes 
 and made them white. If I live like 
 a brute here, or even if I do not live like 
 a brute but live quite decently, and yet 
 am utterly oblivious of the life and 
 sacrifice of Jesus Christ and of the love 
 of God to which they bore witness, then 
 I will not be so presumptuous as to 
 expect God to take me to his heaven in 
 spite of myself. I once met a man, 
 106 
 
THE WAYMARKS 
 
 a very respectable business man, who To-day 
 was honest enough to tell me that he be- To-morrow 
 lieved that if he should die that night he y» 
 would go to hell. A man is a coward What 
 who professes religion in the hope that 
 he may escape hell. On the other hand 
 a man is a fool who ignores the here- 
 after, who never asks himself this great 
 question, " Where am I going when 
 I die ? " 
 
 107 
 
THE REWARDS 
 
O wealth of life beyond all bound, 
 Eternity each moment given ! 
 
 — David Wasson. 
 
 If there be joy in the world, surely a man of pure 
 heart possesseth it. — Thomas a Kempis. 
 
 Very great is the peace of obedience. When a man 
 has his lot fixed and his mind made up and his des- 
 tiny before him, and he quietly acquiesces in that, 
 his spirit is at rest.— F. W. Robertson. 
 
 I have been thinking much lately of the Lord's 
 loving kindness in giving us so many wayside enjoy- 
 ments and so much present reward in all our work 
 for him. . . . For over and above the great gifts, 
 the blessed hope set before us and the quiet peace 
 with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, what num- 
 bers of bits and drops of pleasure and delight one 
 gets which simply would not exist for us if we were 
 not his children ! — Frances R. Havergal. 
 
 In the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while sev- 
 eral persons are at the same time calling for different 
 things, I possess God in as great tranquillity as if I 
 were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament. — 
 Brother Lawrence. 
 
THE REWARDS 
 
 There is a famous picture of Holman Joy 
 Hunt's illustrating the words, " Behold, I 
 stand at the door and knock," and repre- 
 senting the Saviour as a pleading sup- 
 pliant for admission. That is one great 
 aspect of our religion, but I like to 
 match it with the thought of Christ as a 
 King, distributing royal bounties. This 
 was in Paul's mind when he penned 
 those glowing words, " All are yours," 
 and in John's when he wanted others to 
 share what he had seen and heard and 
 felt, to the end that his own joy and 
 theirs might be fulfilled* Religion does 
 not always go through the world as 
 a beggar. It has its splendors and its 
 exceeding great rewards. In the beauti- 
 ful, richly furnished mansion which 
 stands on yonder hill the feast is spread. 
 There is an abundance of everything 
 
 111 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Joy that may delight the heart of man. 
 " Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye 
 to the waters." 
 
 God meant man to be happy. To 
 that end he arched the heavens above 
 him and spread out the smiling earth be- 
 fore him and charged the air with sun- 
 shine and ozone and gave to the robin 
 his song and tinted the eye of the violet. 
 As you go out into the open on a morn- 
 ing when the thrill of the springtime 
 makes every nerve quiver with delight, 
 you pour out your appreciation in Long- 
 fellow's language and say : 
 
 O gift of God, O perfect day, 
 Wherein no man shall work, but play, 
 Wherein it is enough for me 
 Not to be doing, but to be. 
 
 Human relations, too, are so ordered 
 by our heavenly Father as to be the 
 source of measureless joy. Despite all 
 the friction and misunderstanding that 
 arise between man and man, an immense 
 amount of pleasure and profit is derived 
 from association with others. Life would 
 be insipid indeed if we did not have the 
 112 
 
THE REWARDS 
 
 cheer and tonic of our family, school and Joy 
 business companionships. The solitary 
 man is likely to be a gloomy man. 
 
 If, then, notwithstanding all the misery 
 of the world) happiness is man's natural 
 portion, it ought not to be thought that 
 religion lacks this element of joy. It 
 would be contrary to all the movement 
 of life if after a boy or girl has exulted 
 in the fresh winds of heaven and frolicked 
 with his mates and tasted a hundred in- 
 nocent delights he or she should at the 
 moment of becoming a Christian put on 
 a long face and carry about ever after- 
 ward an atmosphere of gloom. Not 
 unto such a service does God call any 
 hopeful, ambitious youth. The nature 
 of his kingdom is often misunderstood. 
 There is the sacrificial element, to be 
 sure, but it is self first of all and forever 
 that we are to renounce, not the whole- 
 some joys of God's good world. The 
 Christian's pleasures are the pleasures 
 which belong to the world's life so far 
 as these are innocent and wholesome. 
 He will exercise wisdom in the choice of 
 them, and self-control in the use of them, 
 
 113 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Joy but no one has a better right to a " good 
 time " than he. He may relish just as 
 keenly a glass of soda water or a trip to 
 Europe as the man who never thinks of 
 Jesus Christ or tries to follow him. This 
 is our Father's world, and he has fitted it 
 up with many things to minister to our 
 physical and esthetic senses. We can 
 have access to any and all of them so 
 long as indulgence does not compromise 
 our Christian principles or dull our 
 spiritual vision. 
 
 But the Christian has certain pleasures 
 about which the world knows little or 
 nothing. They divide themselves into 
 two classes. First, those arising from the 
 service of others. To be sure one does 
 not need to be a Christian in order to be 
 kind and helpful, and we bless God that 
 to-day so many Christlike deeds are per- 
 formed by those who do not own that 
 they are disciples of the Master. But 
 the enduring motive for such service of 
 our fellows lies in the remembrance of 
 Him who though he was rich yet for our 
 sake became poor, and every form of 
 ministration to others which stops short 
 114 
 
THE REWARDS 
 
 of a regard for their spiritual needs fails, Joy 
 by just so much, of being the noblest 
 service. Pleasant as is the sense of hav- 
 ing furnished coal and bread to the 
 needy, one does not taste the keenest 
 joy until the spiritual part of him has 
 gone out in sympathy and help to a 
 fellow man. 
 
 The other class of pleasures belongs to 
 the inner life. There is such a thing as 
 Christian experience. Not the mystics 
 alone, absorbed in devotion, have felt the 
 thrill of a holy rapture, but plain, hard- 
 working men and women in the midst 
 of life's battles have over and again felt 
 the exquisite joy of communion with 
 God. We do not have to wait until we 
 reach the heavenly life to know the re- 
 ality and blessedness of such experi- 
 ences : 
 
 The hill of Zion yields 
 ♦ A thousand sacred sweets, 
 Before we reach the heavenly fields, 
 Or walk the golden streets. 
 
 But only one key unlocks this door of 
 joy. The service must be unselfish and 
 complete. What joy does the soldier 
 
 115 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Joy find who has no enthusiasm for the cam- 
 paign, who does not trust his commander, 
 who would desert if he got a chance, 
 who shirks his assignments, who goes to 
 sleep on picket duty, whose heart never 
 responds to the call to make a desperate 
 charge, to sustain a forlorn hope ? If we 
 serve God bravely and well, he will see 
 to it that our cup of joy is kept con- 
 stantly full. 
 
 Peace " Why are your Christian missionaries 
 forever talking about peace ? " said a 
 Hindu teacher to one of my college 
 mates in India not long ago, " and you 
 not only talk about it but seem to be 
 able to realize it too." Thus did a dev- 
 otee of another religion pay tribute to 
 one of the distinctive qualities of Chris- 
 tianity, and at the same time tacitly 
 admit that his own faith was unable to 
 produce anything like the Christian's 
 peace. 
 
 Is this all a delusion ? Have men and 
 women for nineteen centuries been the 
 victims of a vivid imagination ? Have 
 they calmly endured martyrdom, or have 
 
 116 
 
THE REWARDS 
 
 they carried bravely and uncomplainingly Peace 
 the routine tasks and burdens of every 
 day, which in some cases are the equiva- 
 lent of martyrdom, sustained by a trust 
 which had no basis in reality ? I do not 
 believe it. There is such a thing as 
 Christian experience, as real to the man 
 who passes through it as the explorer's 
 joy at discovering a new continent is to 
 him, or as the scientist's satisfaction in 
 penetrating a little farther the secrets of 
 this universe. 
 
 It would be all a delusion if peace were 
 a product of our own manufacture. The 
 only guaranty of peace arises from sur- 
 render to the divine power and love. By 
 no process of self-realization, by no mere 
 discipline of an untamed nature, by no 
 strenuous and persistent endeavor alone, 
 can a man secure the Christian's peace. 
 It is God who must keep us in this 
 peace. It is Christ who bestows his own 
 peace upon us. On the one hand, he 
 said to his disciples, was the world and 
 its tribulations, on the other was himself 
 and his peace. Their lives would be 
 passed in both spheres. They would not 
 
 117 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Peace escape the tribulation, but in Christ they 
 would always have peace. 
 
 There is no magic about this. Of 
 course there is first the supreme surren- 
 der of one's self to God. Man looks out 
 upon the universe and decides that, all 
 things considered, he will accept for him- 
 self the Christian theory of its meaning 
 and conform his life thereto. So we all 
 go on from year to year, holding on to 
 Christ because that trust seems to us the 
 most sensible and rational course of 
 action. But along with this trust is the 
 constant effort to mold our life according 
 to the ideals which he has put before us. 
 It is impossible for him to bestow his 
 peace upon a soul that is not seeking to 
 be saturated with the spirit of Christ and 
 to do the greater works which he said his 
 followers would do. 
 
 Hope Hope has never fled from the human 
 family even in the most wretched periods 
 of its history. Many a man on the brink 
 of suicide even, has recoiled from the 
 dark deed because of the fluttering of a 
 vague hope in his heart. Such stirrings 
 118 
 
THE REWARDS 
 
 of soul are proof that all the children of Hope 
 men are the children of God. But when 
 the Christian hope takes hold of a man 
 it seems so utterly different from what 
 he has known before, so satisfying and 
 so beautiful, that he seems to himself to 
 have experienced a second birth, to have 
 passed into a world in which all things 
 have become new. 
 
 This living hope, this Christian hope, 
 this Easter hope is not based on a fond 
 fancy that to-morrow is to be better than 
 to-day, upon a willingness to gamble on 
 the chances of life which we trust will 
 soon put an end to our run of bad luck 
 and clear our sky of clouds. The lively 
 hope into which we are begotten again 
 by the resurrection of Christ from the 
 dead is grounded on what God has al- 
 ready done for the world through our 
 Lord's ministry to it and conquest of it. 
 In him we see one who has upon him no 
 mark of its defilement, whose mightiest 
 forces — those of waste and decay and 
 death — he has utterly vanquished. The 
 vital and the vitalizing Jesus is our reser- 
 voir of hope. So long as we see his 
 
 119 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Hope majestic figure in the forefront of the 
 fight we will not cease to believe that 
 victory is coming also to us, provided 
 we wield the sword of the Spirit with all 
 our might. 
 
 The Christian's hope is of countless 
 worth in the presence of discouragement 
 and depression. We need it when we 
 face the poverty and the intermittent 
 character of our own spiritual life. Our 
 sins trouble us and they ought to trouble 
 us, but they ought not to trouble us so 
 much that we lose sight of the promise : 
 " If, while we were enemies, we were rec- 
 onciled to God through the death of his 
 Son, much more, being reconciled, shall 
 we be saved by his life." We may al- 
 ways hope and expect that the power 
 which has already wrought in us a par- 
 tial salvation will bring its work to per- 
 fection. Then again, we falter and grow 
 faint-hearted in the presence of the woe 
 of the world. It is so vast and it presses 
 so continuously upon us. Wordsworth 
 felt it when he wrote of 
 
 The heavy and the weary weight 
 Of all this unintelligible world. 
 120 
 
THE REWARDS 
 
 The injustices and the oppressions, the Hope 
 crimes and the vices and the sufferings of 
 the world would make cynics and pessi- 
 mists of us did we not believe that Christ 
 is the hope of the world, and that it is a 
 vastly better world to-day because his 
 spirit for so many years has been trans- 
 forming individuals and reconstructing 
 society. And he will surely accomplish 
 that whereto he was sent. 
 
 We often have to get one or two Guidance 
 knock-down blows before we realize the 
 desirability of a guiding force stronger 
 and wiser that ourselves. In that little 
 book, Ships than Pass in the Night, one 
 of the characters is pictured thus : " She 
 had come through a great fever into a 
 great calm." Only those who have been 
 tempest-tossed and buffeted by contrary 
 winds, and who have outridden the 
 impetuosity and wilfulness of youthful 
 days, possess that serenity of soul which 
 comes from surrender to the leadership 
 of a higher power. It is one of the 
 compensations of advancing years that 
 as we grow riper the sense of God's 
 
 121 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Guidance guidance becomes more clear. Professor 
 Austin Phelps near the close of his life 
 said that the one word which seemed to 
 sum up his whole history more than any 
 other was the single word " led." 
 
 But even the flight of time and the 
 hard knocks of life do not breed the 
 sense of being led in those who never 
 bow the knee to God or think about 
 spiritual realities. We must turn the 
 eye inward away from petty and sordid 
 things. We must find and foster the 
 spiritual qualities that are a part of our 
 birthright in order to discover any plan 
 for our lives and any divine care and 
 leadership. The reason why life is such 
 a puzzle and tangle to so many persons 
 is that they have never found the great 
 Leader of life, the great interpreter of 
 these human years. Life was a terribly 
 mixed-up affair to the apostle Paul until 
 he found Christ. Life is painfully empty 
 and meaningless to thousands of our 
 fellow creatures as the days succeed one 
 another, but bring no sense of continuity 
 or of any divine plan being worked out 
 in their behalf. If you want to be led 
 122 
 
THE REWARDS 
 
 by God, you must go where God is and Guidance 
 stay with him and obey him. 
 
 Yes, says one, the leadership is plain 
 enough when we saunter by quiet 
 streams and in flowery meadows, but 
 when the path grows rough and thorny, 
 when it carries us straight down into the 
 valley of the shadow of death, ah, then 
 it is hard to believe that our Shepherd is 
 by our side. In such seasons of doubt 
 remember the time when as a little child 
 you placed your hand in your father's or 
 mother's. Happy as our recollections 
 of childhood are, there were hours when 
 we had to take our parents' word, to 
 obey them when our preference was 
 otherwise, to wait before we could see 
 that all was coming out well with us. 
 Ah, but they were after all blessed 
 periods to us, for in the end we came to 
 know and love our parents better, and as 
 grown men and women we thank them 
 that sometimes they led us in paths where 
 our feet at first refused to go, and in 
 which when we did walk it was with 
 tear-stained faces and loud protestations. 
 
 On the day that they crucified the Son 
 
 123 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Guidance of man outside the city wall it looked 
 to all the world as if God had forsaken 
 his well-beloved Son. " He trusteth on 
 God; let him deliver him." Yet the 
 terrible day went by without any inter- 
 vention from the skies. But now that 
 for nineteen centuries Jesus Christ has 
 been receiving the homage of mankind, 
 and through his spirit has been lifting 
 the nations, can we think that God for a 
 single instant withdrew his care? At 
 the very moment when we murmur and 
 feel most desolate the love of God is 
 flowing about us like the exhaustless 
 sea. 
 
 q-fo The Scotch have the expression " Far 
 Presence ben," which they apply to a man who 
 of God has gone far into the mysteries of Chris- 
 tian thought and Christian life. Lachlan 
 Campbell, the Highland mystic, whom 
 Ian Maclaren portrays so vividly, was 
 such a man. Paul, when he wrote his 
 later letters, had penetrated far into the 
 heart of Christianity. He who in earlier 
 epistles had set forth with such force and 
 such variety of illustration Christ's work 
 
 124 
 
THE REWARDS 
 
 for men then strove to make his converts The 
 see the equal importance and value of Presence 
 Christ's work in men. The new truth ^ ° 
 was not meant to supersede the other 
 but to supplement it, in order that relig- 
 ion might be full-orbed. 
 
 Paul's language is that of a mystic. 
 It is as if an outside force had come in, 
 to which he had abdicated his personal 
 sovereignty. A verse in Galatians points 
 to a blending of identities. He seems 
 hardly to know who was in control, him- 
 self or his Lord. Yet Paul is not so far 
 away from the best modern philosophy. 
 Every reverent philosopher and scientist 
 to-day is reiterating the truth that God 
 is in every part of his world, in the life- 
 less stick as well as in the shining star. 
 Why, then, should he not be in the finest 
 product of his hand, even in man ? 
 
 Yes, this indwelling Presence is uni- 
 versal, but God is in man as he is not and 
 cannot be in the block of wood. And 
 he is in the Christian man as he is not 
 and cannot be in the man who ignores 
 the divine Presence. Given the response 
 to God and the life blossoms out with 
 
 125 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 The tokens of his indwelling as the trees in 
 Presence ^ e spring are clothed with beauty and 
 _ ° thus declare the glory of the immanent 
 God. But when a man crowds his life 
 full of business and pleasure and self- 
 indulgence he is to all intents and pur- 
 poses hermetically sealed against God. 
 He can get in, for he is God, but he can- 
 not become the inspiring power of the 
 life. 
 
 There are two moods when we need 
 the comfort and incentive of the indwell- 
 ing Presence. When we are impatient, 
 fretful and discouraged, dissatisfied with 
 our lives and our lot in life, with our 
 achievements and our prospects, then to 
 know that there is a calm, strong pres- 
 ence " closer to us than breathing, nearer 
 than hands and feet," is to be made 
 steady and hopeful again. The little 
 child may weary of its blocks, but in the 
 same room sits the mother sewing or 
 reading quietly. The child knows that 
 she is resourceful and willing to help it. 
 The very fact that she is within the same 
 four walls is reassuring. Frederick Mau- 
 rice was forever trying to teach himself 
 126 
 
THE REWARDS 
 
 and others the lessons that one's change- The 
 able moods do not affect, in the slightest, P ™" n J e 
 spiritual realities, that religion is not the ? 
 product of one's fancies and emotions, 
 but the response of the soul to a reality 
 already and forever present there. So 
 when the tide of faith ebbs God is still 
 real and still the one unfailing source of 
 spiritual life. 
 
 The other mood obtains when we sink 
 to lower levels and are tempted to base- 
 ness and uncharitableness, revenge and 
 cowardice. But how can we admit to 
 our minds that foul imagination, how 
 can we plan to get the better of our 
 brother, how give away to passion and 
 selfishness when the indwelling Presence 
 is aware of every secret thought and mo- 
 tive ? Honored with such a Guest, can 
 we wrong or grieve him ? Helen Hunt's 
 sweet poem, addressed to a human host, 
 applies also to this divine being : 
 
 'Twere like a breach 
 
 Of reverence in a temple, could I dare 
 
 Here speak untruth, here wrong my inmost thought. 
 
 Here I grow strong and pure ; here I may yield 
 
 Without shamefacedness the little brought 
 
 127 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 From out my poor life and stand revealed 
 And glad and trusting in the sweet and rare 
 And tender presence which hath filled this air. 
 
 The And why may not a man stepping 
 
 Graces Christward take a proper satisfaction in 
 
 % ? f those elements of strength and worth 
 Spirit & 
 
 which little by little are added to his 
 
 nature and come to be assets of his 
 character just as much as machinery and 
 warehouses are assets of his business? 
 Peace and joy, hope and divine leader- 
 ship — these are the fundamental rewards 
 of the Christian life, but, besides them, a 
 man acquires also, slowly but surely, 
 other definite virtues and graces. They 
 are the natural out-flowering of the inner 
 life of peace and hope and joy. Hu- 
 mility comes and lodges with a man — 
 not the false humility which sings, " Oh, 
 to be nothing, nothing," but still seeks 
 the chief seats in the synagogues and 
 craves honors at the hands of others, but 
 genuine humility divested of every trait 
 of conceit and self-sufficiency, and grow- 
 ing out of complete surrender to the pur- 
 poses of God. Gentleness and meekness 
 blossom forth. Pagan religions neither 
 128 
 
THE REWARDS 
 
 commend nor produce such qualities. The 
 
 The Christian also acquires in time a Graces 
 
 ir 4. of the 
 
 purity, a courage, a self-mastery, a pa- Spirit 
 
 tience, a fortitude, a tenderness, an all- 
 embracing charity worth more to him 
 than silver and gold. We may call them 
 if we please the by-products of Chris- 
 tianity or, to change the figure, the har- 
 vestings of the pilgrimage as one moves 
 on from stage to stage in the path 
 Christward. Characters with granite in 
 them, characters that stand serene and 
 strong amid all the shocks of temptation, 
 characters that have about them the 
 savor of Jesus Christ, characters marked 
 by beauty, symmetry and force are the 
 sure portion and the exceeding great re- 
 ward of the men who sincerely follow 
 Jesus. 
 
 129 
 
WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 
 
We are not angels, but we may 
 Down in earth's corners kneel, 
 
 And multiply sweet acts of love, 
 And murmur what we feel. 
 
 — Longfellow. 
 
 The world waits to be loved. 
 
 — Robert E. Speer. 
 
 Not for an instant does Jesus stand bewildered 
 between the vision of God and the need of man. — 
 F. W. Gunsaulus. 
 
 Hunger, thirst of body or spirit, strangerhood, 
 nakedness, sickness, some kind of bondage or danger 
 or distress, these are your opportunities. — F. D. 
 Huntington. 
 
 The humblest Christian worker who is really 
 pained with the sins of men and rejoices in their 
 salvation is feeling, in his degree, the very passion 
 which bore the Saviour of the world through his 
 sufferings and which has throbbed from eternity in 
 the heart of God. — James Stalker. 
 
VI 
 WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 
 
 The final purpose for which Christ Our 
 calls us into his discipleship is not what R ea ? 
 we may gain from him but what we may Bustness 
 do for him. When he said to his early 
 disciples, " I will make you fishers of 
 men," the promise must have sounded 
 strangely to them. If he had declared 
 that he would make them renowned for 
 all time, or make them sharers of his 
 throne in the coming kingdom, he would 
 have extended an expectation that might 
 well have kindled their ambition. But 
 what use had they for men, even if they 
 should catch them? What kind of a 
 mission anyway was it to discharge 
 which he was asking them to leave their 
 nets and their homes ? 
 
 But Jesus saw far, not alone into the 
 future, but into the very genius of his 
 kingdom. He wanted men then as he 
 
 133 
 
STEPS CHRIST WARD 
 
 Our wants men now, first that they may be 
 , a . with him long enough to imbibe his 
 spirit, and then that they may go forth 
 teaching, healing, saving the world. 
 Would that the thousands among us who 
 think Christianity means simply mem- 
 bership in an orthodox church, and who 
 have little idea of its real nature and 
 scope, would hear and heed this first 
 great promise, " I will make you fishers 
 of men." 
 
 Zeal is kindled by an appreciation of 
 the need of the world. When we move 
 out of our habitual and comfortable 
 spheres and see something of the sorrow 
 and woe of others, the desire stirs within 
 us to do something in the way of relief 
 and rescue. No man can be lukewarm 
 — at least no Christian man can — who 
 walks up and down the highways and 
 lanes of this world with open eyes and 
 a responsive heart. The other great 
 kindler of zeal is the cross of Christ — 
 not the painted crucifix, not any single 
 theory about the atonement, but the 
 actual outpouring of the life of the Son 
 of God in behalf of men. When we fully 
 134 
 
WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 
 
 realize what that transaction meant out- Our 
 side the city wall nineteen hundred years ^ ea { 
 ago — not in its external aspect merely, 
 but in what it signifies touching the 
 eternal principle of sacrifice — then we 
 grow tender and loving and become 
 sharers of the passion of our Lord. 
 
 " Go in anywhere — there is good fight- 
 ing all along the line ! " said the com- 
 manding officer to a subordinate, who 
 dashed up with his battalion and asked 
 where he should locate his troops. Any 
 idler or loafer in the kingdom of God 
 who is at last roused from his sloth, or 
 who desires to cease criticizing others 
 and to find his own place in the vineyard 
 will not have to look far to discover it. 
 Has he money ? A dozen needy and 
 worthy causes are stretching out implor- 
 ing hands. Has he time? Some neg- 
 lected boy or girl will cross his path be- 
 fore sundown to whom he may give 
 something better than money. Has he 
 brains? No Sunday-school has a full 
 quota of competent teachers, no charita- 
 ble or philanthropic enterprise has a 
 plethora of valuable helpers. 
 
 135 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Our The cobbler, William Carey, as he 
 Real s titched away at his bench, fed his life 
 with God and his missionary impulses 
 by frequently looking up at a large map 
 of the world, on which was roughly 
 sketched the condition of heathendom. 
 It is an interesting fact that the tales of 
 Captain Cook's voyage round the world 
 were also serviceable in broadening 
 Carey's vision and bringing him to the 
 point of consecration to the foreign field. 
 We might easily be quickened if we 
 would use the simple, natural sources of 
 life and power within our daily reach. 
 Read carefully, for instance, the story of 
 present day activities in any single im- 
 portant mission station in the world, and 
 see if it does not kindle your zeal and 
 make you want to have some sort of 
 a share in it. 
 
 Ability Somewhere back in an early Latin 
 Imposes text-book we remember the sentence: 
 * bility " They are able because they think they 
 are able." I went one day into a class- 
 mate's room and saw in conspicuous let- 
 ters a little card in his handwriting, on 
 136 
 
WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 
 
 which were Kant's famous words : " I Ability 
 can because I ought." It was his way I™P oses 
 of reminding himself every day that the ^f 
 simple fact that he was called upon to do 
 certain things qualified him to accom- 
 plish them. Every one has more ability 
 than he puts to use ; even those who 
 mourn because they have no talent at all 
 probably have at least two or three done 
 up in napkins or buried in the ground. 
 Tremendous power resides in the money 
 kings of the world, in the social leaders, 
 in the great inventors and discoverers, 
 but in every humble, sincere follower of 
 Christ is far more ability for good service 
 in the world than he dare dream of. 
 Was it not Mr. Moody who said : " The 
 world has yet to see what God can ac- 
 complish through a man wholly conse- 
 crated to him" ? 
 
 We may all profitably cultivate the 
 resolute spirit of that group of boys who 
 once banded themselves into an organi- 
 zation with this ambitious program of 
 action : 
 
 " Resolved : That the world is upside 
 down. 
 
 137 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Ability " Resolved : That the world must be 
 Imposes turne d r i gnt s [^ e up> 
 
 biliu " R es °l ve d : That we are the ones to 
 do it." 
 
 After all, a vast deal of good work for 
 Christ is going on in the world, and 
 against this background of Christian ac- 
 tivity the figure of the loafer shows in 
 the most unattractive light. There is a 
 time and place in which to loaf. A man 
 is none the less manly who, having done 
 his year's work with fidelity, loiters be- 
 side a running stream or throws himself 
 in utter abandonment on some velvet 
 greensward. But a loafer in the midst 
 of the market-place, where traffic is go- 
 ing on from morn till night, ought to 
 be drummed out of the company and 
 made to move on. So a Christian who, 
 in the first years of this century of oppor- 
 tunity, shirks his Christian task should 
 be ordered to the rear. 
 
 A real Christian cannot keep his relig- 
 ion to himself; it must escape from him 
 somewhere, somehow, and it must be 
 made evident to others. It might do a 
 man good personally to go out into the 
 138 
 
WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 
 
 wilderness, beyond earshot of his fellows, Ability 
 and shout, " I believe in Jesus Christ, the I m P oses 
 only begotten Son of God." Such pri- ^.T w 
 vate confession is no doubt well pleasing 
 to the Master, but it must be quickly fol- 
 lowed up by something more public. In 
 one form and another he is continually 
 saying this in the Gospels : " Get your 
 religion at work. Do not bury it in the 
 ground or fold it up in a napkin or put it 
 under a bushel. Display it where men 
 can see it and be cheered and braced 
 thereby." Christianity was never meant 
 to be a cloistered affair. It was designed 
 to be brought constantly to the attention 
 of mankind, and Jesus expects that the 
 men who believe in it shall do with it 
 what they do with everything else in 
 which they heartily believe. Tell others 
 about it, commend it, be enthusiastic 
 about it, be frank and open in champion- 
 ing it. 
 
 There are times and seasons, to be Times 
 sure. There are foolish and there are and 
 wise ways. We should respect our 
 brother's personality. We should avoid 
 
 139 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Times the ostentatious buttonholing process. 
 and -yy e sho^d no i ma k e ourselves, as we 
 seek to bring others to Christ, bores or 
 gain the reputation of being cranks. 
 The good fisherman chooses his bait care- 
 fully and selects streams where he will be 
 most likely to find his fish. The fishing 
 habit — or in some cases the fishing pas- 
 sion — itself dictates the instrument to be 
 used. Let us get lodged in our souls the 
 yearning to save men and the form of its 
 expression will take care of itself. 
 
 These are not days when men wear 
 their hearts on their sleeves. They must 
 be sought patiently, tenderly, persistently. 
 " The Son of man came to seek and to 
 save that which was lost." The divine 
 search preceded the divine sacrifice. 
 Men ought to understand that we are 
 after their souls. We ought not to be 
 afraid to avow our steady intention to 
 win them for Christ. 
 
 Some souls are shy. They evade the 
 gaze of the public. They have gotten 
 into out-of-the-way places ; they may 
 have wandered thither, as did the witless 
 sheep, through no fault of theirs. They 
 140 
 
WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 
 
 may have slipped into a corner out of the Times 
 view of every one. We need to be cir- a ** 
 cumspect as well as zealous, delicate as 
 well as persistent, in our search after 
 these shy, shrinking souls. We shall 
 have to go more than halfway in order 
 to find them. We may have to over- 
 come many an obstacle, to light every 
 lamp whose gleam we can bring to bear 
 upon the darkness. But the souls are 
 still precious ; they have the stamp of the 
 divine valuation upon them. But it is 
 our task to approach them so lovingly 
 and persuasively that they shall be glad 
 to be borne back on our shoulders to the 
 safe lodging and never again to stray 
 away from their home in God. 
 
 " Under whose preaching were you Way 
 converted? " asked some one of a young and 
 man who had recently found the Saviour. Means 
 He replied, " Under no one's preaching ; 
 I was converted by my aunt's practicing." 
 A similar statement was made by a young 
 minister at the time of his ordination. 
 At one period in his life he was almost 
 an infidel, but he said, " There was one 
 
 141 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Ways argument in favor of Christianity which 
 an d I could never refute— the consistent con- 
 duct of my father." In these two testi- 
 monies is illustrated one effective method 
 for bringing others to Christ. Let your 
 life be a continual invitation to come to 
 him. Mr. Moody said, " A man may 
 preach with the eloquence of an angel, 
 but if he does n't live what he preaches 
 and act out in his home and in his 
 business what he professes, his teaching 
 goes for naught, and people will say it is 
 all a sham." 
 
 Another method is that adopted by 
 Andrew on a certain memorable after- 
 noon when he sought " his own brother 
 Simon " and " brought him unto Jesus " ; 
 by Philip when he brought Nathanael ; 
 by the woman of Samaria who hastened 
 back to the city, forgetting her water pot 
 in the joy of finding a well, and told the 
 story of her discovery in such a con- 
 vincing manner that many believed on 
 the Christ simply through her eager evi- 
 dence. It would be hard to improve 
 upon this old-fashioned method which 
 our Lord himself instituted by saying to 
 142 
 
WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 
 
 individual men, " Follow me." He did Ways 
 not at first issue a general call to every- an d 
 body but selected his disciples one by 
 one. 
 
 If really in earnest in our desire to win 
 souls we will never give up the effort. 
 We will keep such a grip upon them as 
 did the young medical student of whom 
 Professor Drummond tells, who found 
 another fellow that was fast drinking 
 himself to death. The friend took him 
 to his own home and watched over him 
 day and night. One evening the fellow 
 threw down his book and said he wanted 
 to " bust." " All right," was the reply, 
 " bust here." His friend stood by him in 
 the extremity of his temptation and finally 
 had the joy of seeing him emerge into a 
 useful Christian life. 
 
 The providence of God puts us in 
 neighborly relations in bur offices, our 
 school life, our clubs, our journeys. 
 Without intruding upon others or be- 
 coming meddlesome, we can be their 
 good Samaritans spiritually. We can 
 open our eyes and see what they need, 
 our purses and relieve their destitution, 
 
 143 
 
and 
 Means 
 
 STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Ways our hearts and comfort them. If we are 
 swayed with Christ's own passion for 
 helpfulness, we need not fear that we 
 shall blunder. Old Father Vassar once 
 approached a very worldly woman on 
 the subject of her soul's salvation. At 
 the dinner table that evening, as she re- 
 lated the interview to her husband, he 
 said, " Why did n't you tell him to go 
 about his business ? " " Husband, if you 
 had been there you would have thought 
 that he was about his business." If we 
 make it our Christian business to be 
 helpful, to be neighborly, other souls 
 will rise up and bless us, just as we to- 
 day thank God for the good neighbors 
 who have touched our lives. 
 
 Sticking This is an age in which impulses to 
 t0 ** service take root and flourish for a time in 
 many hearts. We are all touched more or 
 less by the altruistic spirit abroad in the 
 earth. It is encouraging to find as we 
 move abroad in the world so many per- 
 sons who want to do good — society girls 
 wearied of the round of parties and re- 
 ceptions, young business men who have 
 144 
 
WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 
 
 come to see that the amassing of wealth Sticking 
 is not the noblest end of activity, long- t0 ** 
 time members of churches who are com- 
 ing to their pastors asking to be set at 
 work. Such an attitude on the part of 
 so many is one of the signs that Christ is 
 more and more touching the hearts of 
 God's children and making them restless 
 unless they are speeding on his errands. 
 But, after all, it is also an age of dab- 
 bling in well-doing. How many wrecks 
 of good resolutions, how many intermit- 
 tent and fruitless endeavors in behalf of 
 others we see as we look back over the 
 track of the years. That raw but rather 
 attractive youth whom we first met as a 
 waiter in a city restaurant and whom we 
 tried to induce to attend church — what 
 has become of him now ? We tried at 
 least four times to do him good, and he 
 responded for a while, but before long 
 we lost our grip on him. That shiftless 
 woman whom you undertook to teach 
 the first principles of good housekeeping 
 and to instruct in the rudiments of plain 
 sewing — with what enthusiasm you en- 
 tered upon this effort, but how it all 
 
 145 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Sticking ebbed away as you found how hard it 
 t0 h was to accomplish your purpose. That 
 determination, made the first of last Jan- 
 uary, to be more faithful to our prayer- 
 meeting and bear our part there regu- 
 larly — we really meant to carry it out, 
 but a famous lecturer came along the 
 second week in January and on the third 
 week a concert which we could not af- 
 ford to miss, and the following week we 
 were invited out to supper, and now, 
 somehow, we have gotten out of the way 
 of going at all. Oh, how many such chap- 
 ters have been written, over and over 
 again, in the modern history of Christian 
 men and women ! 
 
 I have always admired the good Sa- 
 maritan, not only for his kindly impulses, 
 but for the thoroughness with which he 
 did his benevolent work. He not only 
 got down from his beast and bound up 
 the wounds of the man by the wayside, 
 but carried him to the inn and actually 
 left money enough to pay his board until 
 he himself should return to find out 
 whether there was anything more to be 
 done in behalf of his needy brother. To 
 
 146 
 
WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 
 
 do just one such thorough piece of Sticking 
 worthy, Christlike ministration in the t0 If 
 course of a year, to carry out one's good 
 impulses to the very end, no matter how 
 unlovely and unappreciative the person 
 served is, no matter how much toil and 
 sacrifice the work involves — this is the 
 kind of patience in well-doing which 
 Jesus and the apostles commended and 
 illustrated. 
 
 Fellowship does for a man just the Working 
 
 with 
 Others 
 
 thing which he needs. If his portion of w 
 
 the wall seems to get on slowly, if it is 
 all he can do to lift one stone upon an- 
 other, let him stand off for a moment and 
 look down the long line of workers and 
 see how their united activities are slowly, 
 but surely, accomplishing the common 
 task. Or if he thinks he is getting ahead 
 of his colaborers, that his church is more 
 prosperous, his Endeavor Society more 
 active, his Christian service more widely 
 beneficial, let him take a broad view of 
 the various splendid agencies for good at 
 work throughout the land and he will be 
 humbled in spirit, and gratitude for what 
 
 147 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Working he may have already accomplished will 
 w *t" be mingled with a quiet determination 
 to do more and better work. Again, if 
 he is failing to get his stones in line or 
 to build solidly, if he will but examine 
 the labor of others, and learn from them 
 how they are doing it, he will go back to 
 rectify his mistake and build in such a 
 way that his work will endure the judg- 
 ment of the Master Builder. 
 
 God uses workmen of different types. 
 Dr. Vance, in his book, The College of 
 the Apostles, has worked out sugges- 
 tively the thought that when Jesus sent 
 out his disciples two by two he divided 
 them into pairs, not only that they might 
 be company each for the other, but that 
 one might supplement the other's lack. 
 Simon, the radical, was yoked with An- 
 drew, the conservative, Philip, the dullard, 
 with Bartholomew, the sage, the doubt- 
 ing Thomas with the dogmatic Matthew. 
 There is force in this analysis of the 
 qualities of that apostolic circle, even if 
 we do not find sufficient evidence in the 
 New Testament for all that is affirmed 
 by Dr. Vance concerning each individual. 
 148 
 
WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 
 
 It helps us to come in contact with Chris- Working 
 tian workers whose personal character- **'* 
 istics differ widely from ours and who are 
 engaged in different work. If the pastor 
 of a fashionable metropolitan church 
 would take supper once a month with a 
 man running a rescue mission in the 
 slums, good would accrue to both. 
 
 Thus fellowship becomes a test of our 
 Christian love. It is easy enough to 
 have delightful relations with congenial 
 spirits, but we are often placed in situa- 
 tions where to carry on the work of our 
 church or our Endeavor Society we must 
 cooperate with those to whom we are 
 not particularly drawn. A missionary 
 to China when asked what his worst 
 trial in missionary work was, responded, 
 " My fellow missionaries." But it is a 
 part of our Christian discipline that we 
 have to learn to labor with those who 
 may try us and whom, doubtless, we try. 
 
 Much is gained by cherishing a hope- The 
 ful outlook upon the world. We cannot Hopeful 
 do much for humanity unless we have 
 faith in it, unless we hold firmly to the con- 
 
 149 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 The viction that it is worth redeeming. It is 
 Hopeful harci^ in the face of ingratitude and cold- 
 ness and the falling away of those whom 
 we try to help, to maintain this optimistic 
 attitude, but Jesus did it, and it was one 
 great secret of his success. Those are 
 sad lines in which a man confesses how 
 the estimate of others dragged him down : 
 
 They thought me what I said I was ; 
 I became what they thought I was. 
 
 To better the world begin right where 
 you are. Most of us must serve our 
 God in that " station of life whereunto 
 we are called." Take hold of the han- 
 dles and levers and sources of influence 
 and uplift that are just within your reach. 
 They seem so small as hardly to be visi- 
 ble, but look at them with the eyes of 
 Christ and they will greaten before you, 
 and the little ways of serving him will 
 become large and radiant. 
 
 q-fo The joy in finding the lost arises in 
 
 Reach part from feeling that we have brought 
 
 °f the thing that was astray back to where 
 
 •^ it belongs. The proper place for the 
 
 piece of silver was the woman's purse 
 
 150 
 
WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 
 
 , . i 
 
 and not an obscure corner of the room. The 
 Ian Maclaren, in the touching story, Like R * ach 
 as a Father, tells how when Flora Camp- j n fl uence 
 bell returned from her wanderings in 
 London, a penitent and heart-sick girl, 
 her father, Lachlan, whose pride had led 
 him when she ran away to erase her 
 name from the family Bible, made this 
 fresh entry : 
 
 Flora Campbell, 
 
 Missed, April, 1873. 
 
 Found, September, 1873. 
 
 When we bring another soul back to his 
 Father and ours we are restoring that 
 which has been missed and yearned 
 over, but not forgotten, and in the joy of 
 the reconciliation we may have a share. 
 
 To set a train of influences at work 
 which shall operate when we are for- 
 gotten — is there any keener joy than 
 this? But when we bring a man to 
 Christ we may be furnishing him with 
 one who shall shine like a jewel as he 
 turns many to righteousness, who shall 
 do a much better work for God and men 
 than we with our limited abilities would 
 ever be able to accomplish. What a joy 
 
 151 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 "The in after years it must have been to An- 
 Reacn d rew to see the important place which 
 Influence ^ s brother Peter, whom he introduced to 
 Christ, took in his discipleship and service! 
 Individual work yields the greatest 
 satisfaction. Henry Clay Trumbull de- 
 clares, as he nears the later years of his 
 long, eventful and productive life as 
 chaplain, editor and author, that he has 
 derived more real joy from personal con- 
 versation with strangers touching Christ 
 and Christian things than from any other 
 form of Christian service which he has so 
 nobly rendered. It was Mr. Moody's 
 Sunday-school teacher who brought him 
 to Christ. There was one year in which 
 only a single addition by confession was 
 recorded in the church in the little Scot- 
 tish village of Blantyre, but that convert 
 was David Livingstone, and the minister 
 or Sunday-school teacher or friend who 
 brought him to Christ must have felt to 
 his dying day the thrill of satisfaction at 
 such an achievement. Years ago a min- 
 ister had a preaching appointment on a 
 rainy Sunday evening in a college town. 
 He came and went, having discharged 
 152 
 
WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 
 
 his duty, wearied and disappointed. The The 
 congregation was small, and no notable ^ ach 
 token was given him that his words had j n fl uence 
 gone home to any heart. A score of 
 years later a book was published which 
 because of its insight into spiritual things 
 commended itself widely to the Christian 
 world. The minister, who had then be- 
 come a bishop, wrote to the author 
 thanking him for the profit derived from 
 the book. A reply came swiftly back to 
 this effect. " Do you remember preach- 
 ing one Sunday evening at Williams 
 College twenty years ago ? I was in the 
 audience, and what you said quickened 
 within me impulses which have fruited 
 into this book." 
 
 We might multiply instances of this 
 sort. Christian annals abound in them. 
 You never can begin to calculate the 
 ultimate results flowing from the effort 
 to win men from selfishness and to estab- 
 lish them in the righteous life. It is our 
 unspeakable privilege, as we move for- 
 ward along the Christian way, to stretch 
 out helping hands to many a weak and 
 needy brother. 
 
 153 
 
THE GUIDE 
 AND THE GOAL 
 
The chief want in life is somebody who shall make 
 us do the best we can. — Emerson. 
 
 The heart of our age clings to the Christ. — G. S. 
 Coe. 
 
 They who long after God will be ever turning 
 their eyes thitherward. — Horace Bushnell. 
 
 I know men and tell you that Jesus is not a man. 
 He is truly a being by himself. — Napoleon. 
 
 Sweetest thoughts shall fail and learning falter, 
 
 Churches change, forms perish, systems go, 
 But our human needs, they will not alter, 
 
 Christ no after age shall e'er outgrow. 
 Yea, Amen ! O changeless One, thou only 
 
 Art life's guide and spiritual goal, 
 Thou the light across the dark vale lonely, 
 
 Thou the eternal haven of the soul ! 
 
 — John Campbell Shairp. 
 
VII 
 
 THE GUIDE AND THE 
 GOAL 
 
 We must get our own thought of Our 
 Christ. The world is full of books in °™ 
 which the thoughts of others about him 
 are expressed in beautiful language. 
 Raphael and Fra Angelico have put 
 their thought of him into pictures that 
 are the admiration of the world. Poets 
 have sung their sweetest strains when 
 their inspiration has been the thought of 
 Christ. It is not so important that your 
 thought of Christ should harmonize ex- 
 actly with some one else's or with the 
 accepted standard around you as it is 
 that it shall be your own personal 
 possession — something which you prize 
 because you have wrought it out, some- 
 thing that occupies a high and solitary 
 place like the thought of your mother, 
 or the thought of your happy and inno- 
 
 157 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 cent childhood, or the thought of the 
 richest and most joyous experience of 
 later years. 
 
 Lord The appeal of Christ to modern life 
 and g ets - ts strength in great part because 
 our age is looking for a spiritual master, 
 a social leader and deliverer. Christ 
 comes to youth, conscious of power, 
 burning with ambition, capable of doing 
 great and chivalrous things, and says : 
 " Here are ideals ample and alluring ; 
 here is the true center and point of 
 departure for your activities ; here is 
 guidance which will never fail you ; here 
 is control which need never grow irk- 
 some ; here is that mastery of life under 
 which your powers may unfold normally, 
 beautifully, effectively; here is an in- 
 fluence yielding to which you shall 
 become noble." Many of us begin thus 
 with Christ as Master, as the one who 
 respects our ambition to be up and 
 doing, nay, who plants in us that im- 
 pulse. He has shed so much inspiration 
 over life that we cannot help yielding to 
 his charm and his sway. And having 
 
 158 
 
THE GUIDE AND THE GOAL 
 
 begun by enrolling ourselves among his 
 followers we go on perhaps quickly, 
 perhaps gradually, to realize other re- 
 lationships which he sustains to us be- 
 sides that of Lord and Master. 
 
 We learn in time that he is our com- Comrade 
 rade also. True it is that he never con- 
 ditioned loyalty to him on one's ability 
 constantly to realize intimacy of fellow- 
 ship with him. The sufficient test of 
 discipleship is the steadfast purpose to 
 follow in his steps. We must not re- 
 proach ourselves too much when we 
 find it difficult to grasp the great truth 
 that the unseen Jesus is as truly with us 
 as the man who works at the same bench 
 or who sits by our side in the street car. 
 We are subject to physical weariness and 
 mental depression, and in certain moods 
 and under certain conditions it is almost 
 impossible to realize the verities of the 
 spiritual world. 
 
 If we keep on obeying our Master 
 there will surely come to us what Phillips 
 Brooks so aptly calls " Jesus moments," 
 when we shall be thrilled by a sense of 
 
 159 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Comrade his nearness. Sometimes as we wander 
 on the seacoast at night, we see in the 
 distance the intermittent flashing of a 
 light, succeeded by regular periods of 
 darkness. But we know that if we look 
 long enough the bright rays will stream 
 out again over the ocean. So if in the 
 dark places of our lives we keep looking 
 at Christ he will surely manifest himself to 
 us. Meanwhile we can rejoice that he is 
 shining upon some other needy voyager. 
 The best companionship does not de- 
 pend on neighborhood in space. Per- 
 haps some one halfway across the conti- 
 nent is more truly your comrade than a 
 person who eats three meals a day at the 
 same table with you. Love bridges great 
 distances. Fondness for the same things 
 annihilates space. There is no more ante- 
 cedent improbability that you cannot have 
 fellowship with the great being whom we 
 call Christ, than there is that you cannot 
 truly keep in touch with the friend who 
 is leaving you to-day for a journey around 
 the world. 
 
 But we must use the natural means of 
 promoting companionship. We must 
 
 160 
 
THE GUIDE AND THE GOAL 
 
 know the earthly Jesus well in order to Comrade 
 walk with the heavenly Jesus. Do you 
 ponder the gospel story, do you some- 
 times at the beginning of the day take a 
 single incident in Jesus' career, or a 
 parable or a miracle, and bear it always 
 in your mind to be thought of when 
 there comes a lull in your busy hours, 
 when you are looking aimlessly out of a 
 car window, when you are waiting for a 
 friend ? This is one of the best methods 
 for securing a sense of his constant com- 
 panionship. Better than mountain rhap- 
 sodies is the consciousness of Christ's 
 friendship along each day's dusty high- 
 way. 
 
 " Can two work together except they 
 be agreed?" Only as we think the 
 thoughts of Jesus, cherish his ambitions, 
 cultivate his charitable and loving tem- 
 per towards all men, practice his deeds 
 of kindness and mercy, can we have this 
 intimate fellowship. It is almost an 
 affront to him to conceive of daily inti- 
 macy with him simply that it may pro- 
 duce for us a certain pleasurable emo- 
 tional glow. He wants companions of 
 
 161 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Comrade his cross, of his solitary way, men and 
 women who share his intense yearning 
 in behalf of the suffering and the lost. 
 
 The world is more and more sensing 
 the practicability of such a relationship 
 to Jesus Christ. We are seeing that 
 Christianity, if it means anything, must 
 touch and color all our thinking, all our 
 living. So this great, central truth of 
 the New Testament, on which mystics 
 throughout the ages have lived, which 
 has sometimes seemed altogether out of 
 reach for the ordinary man, becomes 
 practical, becomes the truth on which 
 we every-day people may live. I once 
 asked Dr. Grenfell how, in his busy life 
 as a sailor, a physician and a missionary 
 up and down the Labrador coast, he 
 could find time for prayer. In his sim- 
 ple, straightforward way he replied, " It 
 doesn't make so much difference how 
 much time you spend in prayer, pro- 
 vided you are constantly thinking of 
 Christ as right at hand." He did not 
 mean to disparage prayer, but only to 
 bring out a living truth, a fact of daily 
 experience to which not only he, but 
 162 
 
THE GUIDE AND THE GOAL 
 
 hundreds of Christians who are obeying 
 Christ in all parts of the world to-day- 
 can bear witness. 
 
 An interesting passage in the life of Brother 
 Dr. R. W. Dale tells of the comfort he 
 derived when his little child died, from 
 the thought of Christ as his brother. 
 That single phase of the Saviour's rela- 
 tion to him seemed to fit his immediate 
 need best. Sooner or later every one 
 finds himself wanting just this special 
 ministration from the Son of man. His 
 Saviourship, his Mastership, his Kingship, 
 his friendship — each has its own value 
 and importance for the Christian life, but 
 times arise when we like to think of 
 Jesus, not as some compassionate person 
 from another and different realm of life, 
 but as the closest of blood relations, as 
 bound up with our personal identity as 
 no outsider, however dear as a friend, 
 can be. It is the same feeling which a 
 man has when his brother has earned a 
 fortune while he himself has remained 
 poor, or become the idol of a nation 
 while he continues in his old-time ob- 
 
 163 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Brother scurity. But he knows, and he rejoices 
 to know, that his successful and famous 
 brother cannot, will not, would not dis- 
 own the one who played by his side in 
 childhood and partook of the same 
 parental care. 
 
 If Jesus be our brother indeed, it 
 means that he understands the forces of 
 our nature. Who better than a brother or 
 a sister can realize the power of inherited 
 passions, or of a moody disposition, or 
 of a weak and vacillating will? The 
 same blood which flows in his veins 
 flows in yours. You may have gotten a 
 little better mastery of your pride or 
 your avarice, but the seeds of it are still 
 in your nature as in his. Therefore you 
 know how to be pitiful, to be merciful, 
 as the man of alien blood, however natu- 
 rally sympathetic, cannot be. " Where- 
 fore it behooved him in all things to be 
 made like unto his brethren." That 
 means also that no sorrow, no bereave- 
 ment can come to us which is not 
 actually Jesus' sorrow too. It hurts him 
 in the same way that it hurts us. " In 
 all their affliction he was afflicted." 
 164 
 
THE GUIDE AND THE GOAL 
 
 But if he shares our nature we share Brother 
 his: 
 
 And every virtue we possess, 
 
 And every victory won, 
 And every thought of holiness, 
 
 Are his and his alone. 
 
 We share with him those impulses which 
 sweep one along toward holiness and 
 God. The humble painter who gazed 
 upon the works of Raphael and Murillo 
 said, reverently but resolutely, " And I, 
 too, am a painter." Conscious though 
 we are of blemish and stain, we are justi- 
 fied in saying, as we look upon the spot- 
 less character of our elder Brother, " We, 
 too, are children of the same Father." 
 The secret of his exaltation was his love 
 and pursuit of goodness, simple good- 
 ness, and in proportion as we share our 
 royal Brother's passion for righteousness 
 will he not be ashamed to call us brethren. 
 
 We think oftener of Christ as Brother, High 
 Leader, Friend than as High Priest. Priest 
 When Christianity was new in the world, 
 and a teacher of the first century was try- 
 
 165 
 
STEPS CHRI'STWARD 
 
 High ing to explain to the Hebrew people its 
 Priest SU p er iority over their own faith, he natu- 
 rally emphasized the priestly functions 
 of Jesus and proved that the new system 
 was better because its representative was 
 better. The idea of a priest was wrought 
 into the heart of the Jewish faith. If 
 Christianity were to take the place of the 
 old religion it must supply that w r hich 
 was central to it. So, if one to-day were 
 trying to bring a Roman Catholic into 
 personal relations with Jesus, it might be 
 the very best way of approach to declare 
 that he takes the place of the elaborate 
 priestly and sacramental system to which 
 this Romanist has probably been accus- 
 tomed from youth. 
 
 With us modern Protestants this 
 phase of the service of Christ to human- 
 ity does not assume primary importance, 
 and we are not to condemn ourselves 
 because the book of Hebrews does not 
 at the first reading interest us so much 
 as most of the other books of the New 
 Testament. We ought to get at Christ 
 naturally, simply, through ways of ap- 
 proach that lead easily from us to him, 
 
 166 
 
THE GUIDE AND THE GOAL 
 
 On the other hand, we should not rashly High 
 affirm that the priestly side of Christ's P rtest 
 character means nothing to us. There 
 must be something in the old Hebrew 
 economy and in the stately ritual of the 
 Roman Catholic Church that answers 
 the eternal need of the human heart, 
 and as our religious life deepens we shall 
 have a growing appreciation of that in 
 Christ which corresponds to the priestly 
 functions in other religions. 
 
 Who has not at some time longed for 
 some middle man between himself and 
 the pure and infinite God ? Instinctively 
 we shield ourselves behind the superior 
 virtue of another, some saintly mother, 
 some high-minded friend. We think 
 that they can represent our case to God 
 better than we can. Every now and 
 then some human figure towers up above 
 its contemporaries and to it men look 
 for support and inspiration, just as 
 through all the years of his ministerial 
 life frail, tempted humanity clung to 
 Phillips Brooks. But Jesus for all time 
 and for all men has pierced the veil be- 
 tween mankind and the infinite and un- 
 
 167 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 High seen One. In him, blended perfectly and 
 Priest altogether uniquely, are the two qualities 
 that make the priest : first, he was like 
 unto his brethren; they have always 
 known him as akin to them from the 
 point of view of temptation, struggle 
 and suffering. In the second place he 
 was " separate from sinners." He had 
 points of affinity to God, nay, he was 
 God manifested in the flesh. So we see 
 him at one moment as our human 
 Brother, sharing our nature, and at the 
 next moment illuminated and glorified 
 by the coursing through him of the 
 very life of God. Therefore we are 
 willing, nay, we yearn, to put our hand 
 in his and let him present us to the 
 Father. 
 
 And when we have thus been saved 
 and shrived by our great High Priest, 
 does not the impulse come to seek to be 
 to others in this particular what Jesus 
 has been to us? Our priestly service 
 will always be partial — only Christ can 
 complete it — but we may help him to 
 present all men perfect before the Fa- 
 ther. 
 
 168 
 
THE GUIDE AND THE GOAL 
 
 » Thou shalt call his name Jesus ; for it Saviour 
 is he that shall save his people from their 
 sins." Christ may seem to be more to 
 us in other relations, but we need his 
 Saviourship too. I should like to see 
 the man who can fight his battle through 
 to victory without in some way availing 
 himself of Jesus Christ's power to forgive 
 and to save. He who takes him as 
 Master will soon find that he needs him 
 as a Saviour too in order that what is 
 lacking, and always will be lacking, may 
 be completed by one so thoroughly 
 identified with us that he can stand for 
 us as the type of what we ought to be. 
 Have your own theory of the atonement, 
 or have no theory at all, but think long 
 and live long before you declare that you 
 have no need of the Saviourship of Christ. 
 
 Whether we want it to be so or not, Judge 
 the fact remains that Christ is judging us 
 daily and will be the judge of our finished 
 lives. It is within our power to reject 
 his friendship and his saving power, but 
 his judgment we cannot escape, for his 
 own words affirm, " The Father . . . hath 
 
 169 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Judge given all judgment unto the Son." 
 There is nothing strange or arbitrary 
 about this, for the ultimate verdict which 
 history puts upon laws and institutions 
 and customs and men conforms to the 
 standards of Jesus Christ. The white 
 light of his character shines through all 
 disguises and reveals the reality. Prac- 
 tically, we often act as if there were some 
 other and lower standards. We are 
 anxious to know what others think of 
 this or that policy ; we are satisfied if 
 our behavior tallies fairly well with the 
 ideas as to propriety prevalent within 
 " our set." How many of us hold up 
 before Christ's pure eyes our actions, our 
 words, our thoughts, our desires ? How 
 can we call him Friend and Master un- 
 less we are also willing to own him as 
 Judge ? 
 
 It is the thought of his searching and 
 testing us constantly which lifts our lives 
 to a high plane and detaches them from 
 petty, mean and selfish standards of judg- 
 ment. It creates a desire to be some- 
 thing more than " as good as other peo- 
 ple." With the apostle we become 
 
 170 
 
THE GUIDE AND THE GOAL 
 
 ambitious, whether present or absent, to Judge 
 be well-pleasing unto him. " But," in- 
 terposes somebody, "this makes life 
 altogether too solemn and momentous. 
 Must every little thing be referred to the 
 standards of living which Christ exalted 
 and exemplified ? That is making too 
 severe a demand." But did he not say to 
 fishermen, " Ye therefore shall be perfect, 
 as your heavenly Father is perfect " ? 
 
 Sobering, almost alarming, to some of 
 us is the thought of Christ as Judge. On 
 the other hand, what judgment could be 
 kinder or fairer? We are to face the 
 judgment seat, but let us never forget that 
 it is the judgment seat of Christ — the 
 Christ who knows man, who sees and 
 sympathizes with every individual, who, 
 having himself suffered, being tempted, 
 is prepared to make allowance for human 
 infirmities, who judges us not so much by 
 what we are as by what we want and 
 strive to be. 
 
 There is no place where earth's sorrows 
 
 Are more felt than up in heaven. 
 There is no place where earth's failings 
 
 Have such kindly judgment given. 
 
 171 
 
Him 
 
 STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 What What sort of a world should we have 
 We had if Christ had never been present in 
 its life? This speculation has been 
 worked out pleasingly in fiction once 
 or twice, notably in the delightful Christ- 
 mas brochure entitled If Christ Had not 
 Come, by Rev. J. D. Jones of Bourne- 
 mouth, Eng. Any man who will stop 
 and think can easily discover that, were 
 Christ extracted from the world, it would 
 be to hosts of human beings a barren and 
 desolate place. We may even doubt 
 whether the natural human impulses 
 towards goodness, on which the ethical 
 writers descant so volubly, would have 
 sufficed to prevent this whole world from 
 lapsing into disorder and perpetual strife. 
 
 We owe to Jesus our idea of God. 
 The assumptions behind all that Jesus 
 said — most of all Jesus himself — answer 
 our hearts' deepest yearnings to be as- 
 sured of the fact of God's existence. 
 More than that, the witness of Christ re- 
 veals to us the kind of God in whom we 
 can believe as our Creator and our Judge. 
 
 We owe to Jesus our assurance of im- 
 mortal life. Arguments can be cited 
 
 172 
 
urn 
 
 THE GUIDE AND THE GOAL 
 
 growing out of the analogy of nature, of What 
 the seed, out of the evolutionary process *^ e 
 itself, out of the fact that men have al- ^ 
 ways, to a greater or less degree, believed 
 in a future life. But all these carry no 
 such assurance as the words of the Mas- 
 ter, " Whosoever liveth and believeth on 
 me shall never die." 
 
 We owe to Christ a new conception of 
 our duty and the power wherewith to 
 perform it. He, as no other, has re- 
 vealed the glory of the common task and 
 daily round. He has broadened our 
 thought of duty. Best of all, he furnishes 
 power wherewith to go on doing our 
 duty, perhaps a little better to-day than 
 yesterday. 
 
 God, immortality, duty — these three 
 great postulates of Kant to which George 
 Eliot clung even when faith grew feeble — 
 are they not certified to us and illumined 
 by Jesus Christ ? Is there any one so 
 fully conscious of God, so sure of his 
 hope of another life, so wise as to his 
 duty and so strong in the performance 
 of it that he can dispense with what 
 Christ has to give us concerning them ? 
 
 173 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 What The Christian heart owes its debt to 
 ™ e Christ for a new sense of forgiveness and 
 Hi peace with God. How our debts in- 
 crease to him as we reflect ! And here is 
 a simple test of the depth and genuine- 
 ness of our Christian life. How much, 
 after all, do we owe to Christ ; could we 
 get along without him ? How much in 
 our thinking, in our feeling, in our ac- 
 tions proceeds from him ? 
 
 Why It matters little if changes take place 
 in the region of our thought and emo- 
 
 fli m tion, provided the one great force for 
 righteousness in our lives endures, and 
 Jesus Christ remains the same, yesterday, 
 to-day and forever. We may of course 
 know him better and realize more fully 
 his many-sidedness, but the change in 
 our thought of him always tends to 
 greaten him as he becomes the one es- 
 sential element of our spiritual nutriment, 
 the minister of the life of God to us, the 
 interpreter of dark problems, the Friend 
 and Brother, the Lord and Saviour. 
 
 This is what he meant by his plain, 
 bold statement, " I am the bread of life." 
 174 
 
THE GUIDE AND THE GOAL 
 
 It means nothing to him who will not Why 
 recognize any other life than the self- *T e 
 centered one, who drowns his heaven- ^- m 
 ward aspirations as he plunges into the 
 current of this world's interests. But any 
 one who realizes that God meant him to 
 live, not as the brutes that perish, but as 
 his own child, soon sees that what he 
 needs in his effort to lift himself above 
 the things of earth is not an abstract sys- 
 tem of ethics, not cold, distant ideals, but 
 a living, loving, radiant presence, yet not 
 so exalted as to be above " human na- 
 ture's daily food." 
 
 Religion is an affair between persons. 
 It is not going through a certain routine. 
 It is not assent to a series of intellectual 
 propositions. It is the response of heart 
 to heart. It is personal love and loyalty 
 to a personal Lord. We are made to 
 love Christ ; Christ is worthy of our love. 
 That is all. We cannot analyze the re- 
 lation. We may not want to talk much 
 about it, but we know that our hearts 
 turn toward that majestic figure who 
 stands with outstretched arms. Said 
 Frederick Robertson, " There is one 
 
 175 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Why thing in regard to which I refuse to per- 
 J^ e mit discussion, and that is the love the 
 jjj m Christian soul bears to its Redeemer." 
 
 Jesus' own loveliness is the primary 
 ground of our affection for him. We 
 see in him a being worthy of our utmost 
 powers of loving. He realizes to us the 
 ideal of manhood. We have known 
 persons, and we have met them in 
 books, who have fascinated us and have 
 aroused and still hold our deepest affec- 
 tion, but Jesus in the full roundness of 
 his character so far surpasses them that 
 the language of the mystical hymn- 
 writers of the middle ages seems none 
 too strong to take upon our lips : 
 
 Jesus, name all names above, 
 Jesus, best and dearest ! 
 
 Jesus, fount of perfect love, 
 Holiest, tenderest, nearest. 
 
 Add to this inherent loveliness of 
 Jesus' character the fact that he loves us 
 and it becomes impossible to do any- 
 thing else but love him. Fairest as he is 
 among men, unless we knew that he 
 loved us the affection roused by the 
 176 
 
THE GUIDE AND THE GOAL 
 
 beauty of his character might, in time, Why 
 languish. Now, however, we know, as W~ e 
 every man who has trusted and tried to g- 
 follow Jesus knows, that he has done 
 what no other influence could accom- 
 plish for us. He has interpreted life's 
 mysteries and problems. He has fur- 
 nished help over the hard places. He 
 has kindled again and again hope and 
 courage when they were disappearing 
 under the strain of the daily burden. He 
 has opened a new world of thought and 
 feeling. He has stood near when earthly 
 comforts and satisfactions were powerless 
 to console. Best of all, he has, we dare 
 to hope, taken some of the selfishness, 
 meanness and badness out of us, saved 
 us from our worst selves, and made us 
 more worthy to be called the sons of God. 
 
 And so the Christian life looms large 
 before us, as we think of it in successive 
 stages. From start to goal there is 
 orderly progressive movement. The foes 
 are never, in these mortal years at least, 
 completely vanquished, but we learn day 
 by day to lean more heavily on the 
 
 177 
 
STEPS CHRISTWARD 
 
 Why helps by the way. As the journey 
 ]^ e lengthens we can look back upon many 
 jj im a waymark that tells of conquest and of 
 progress. The rewards, as we persevere, 
 grow more ample and satisfying. The 
 opportunities for wayside ministry are 
 more quickly discerned and more eagerly 
 embraced. And ever before us, not so 
 far away as to be out of the range of 
 vision but distant enough to call forth 
 our supreme endeavors to follow after, 
 rises the glorious figure of our Guide 
 and Leader. Always to be stepping 
 Christward — is there any life so rich, so 
 deep, any life whose appeal to youth is 
 so commanding, so irresistible ? 
 
 178 
 
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