9^MM I ■ * - Bl . i:y •» I * * ■H ■ ■H ■MB ■ ■■ n) IS BH ■ HWEi ■ Si RmBBHHH LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, Chap. Copyright IS T o. Skelt._Q.5_D 9 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. DWELLERS IN TENTS Dwellers in Tents AND OTHER SERMONS BY . FREDERIC E. DEWHURST Pastor of Plymouth Church indianapolis, indiana \+c\ v^ n INDIANAPOLIS AND KANSAS CITY THE BOWEN-MERR1LL COMPANY M DCCC XCV11 H- THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ,V ^> Copyright, 1897 BY THE BOWEN-MEERILL CO. l/ z, 3 TO MY WIFE WHOSE CONSTANT INSPIRATION AND COMPANIONSHIP OF SPIRIT HAVE MADE WHAT IS WORTHIEST IN THIS BOOK ALREADY HERS IT IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED CONTENTS i PAGE. Dwellers in Tents i II The Fountain of Life 21 III An Encounter with God 39 IV The Book that Could Not be Opened 57 V Unregarded Prophets 78 VI The Summum-Bonum 93 VII The Master Light of Our Seeing 109 VIII The Question that Could Not be Answered 124 IX The Reserves of Life 147 X Taking Time to Live 165 XI The Inexhaustible Christ 183 XII Finding Life 3 201 I DWELLERS IN TENTS Jer. xxxv. 7. — All your days ye shall dwell in tents. fHE life of the tent describes the no- madic and pastoral phase of human existence. It is that period of life when the balance between man and nature is on the side of nature. Environment is stronger than the spirit within man. He is dependent on nature and follows her about. The time comes at length when he masters nature, triumphs over her forces, asserts himself and makes nature come to him. Civilization begins when the scale tips in that direction ; when man, instead of nature, is master of the situation. But although the nomadic life is a pass- ing phase in the process of human history, although a wider civilization asserts itself against it and wipes it out, we can, never- 1 gwjelljetfs in Qznts theless, look back upon it, feel its beauty and realize its quiet strength. Its attrac- tion to us lies in its simplicity, its artless- ness, its lack of fevered anxiety and care. The tent is pitched where grass is fresh and sweet, and when the flocks and herds have cropped it close, the happy nomads know that in an hour they can put their transient city on the backs of camels and seek new pasturage beside the still waters where the herbage is yet fresh and tender ; and when the circle is complete the journey will begin again. It is a perpetually moving city ; the roots of life can not strike deep into the soil ; it is not a condition where the perma- nent arts of life can flourish ; nor amid such scenes can the heart of man be torn asunder over the social problems. The wants of man are few ; his passions and desires are elemental ; his aspirations are bounded by the circle which his herds are able to graze. The one word which de- scribes it all is " temporariness '' ; its watch- word is, — "We have here no continuing city." I have taken a text this morning out 2 ^wzXUvs in gjetxts of the nomadic life ; but the words were spoken at the time of a highly developed civilization ; they are words of protest and reaction. The prophet Jeremiah had brought certain representatives of the Rechabites before him, had set wine be- fore them and tried to persuade them to drink. But the Rechabites were total ab- stainers ; and their abstinence was only one element in their protest against civiliza- tion itself; for civilization in their eyes meant luxury, effeminateness and corrup- tion. They tell Jeremiah that they had always faithfully kept the commandment of the founder of their order, not only to drink no wine, but to " build no houses, nor sow seed, nor plant vineyards, nor have any" ; and to " dwell in tents all their days." They declared that they had obeyed all these di- rections except, when Nebuchadnezzar came conquering into the land, they had, through fear of the Chaldeans and Syrians, sought temporary refuge in Jerusalem. Then Jeremiah made their fidelity and obedience a text for reproof of the Jews, drunk with luxury and ease. He takes this 3 gwzlUxs in gmts reaction into a life of nomadic simplicity as a means of rebuking the lethargy and cor- ruption which he, in common with all the prophets, so keenly perceived in the life around him. As an incident of history this seems some- what remote from us. Even the Rechabites with their fidelity and abstinence seem a lit- tle beyond the pale of our immediate inter- ests. But there is one phrase which comes echoing down the years and is prophetic of our human experience beyond the immedi- ate intent of the words themselves, — "All your days ye shall dwell in tents." A thought is hidden in these words which haunts the mind as descriptive of human history and experience in some of their deeper meanings. Let us remind ourselves once more what is symbolized by dwelling in tents. It is the temporary as against the permanent aspect of life ; it is the picture of mankind on the eternal march, contrasted with the picture of mankind settled down to the ease and comfort of fixed habitations. The tent life is subject to the conditions which 4 ^wzlUxs in gjetxts surround it. The life of the "continuing city" has subjected those conditions to itself. The life of the tent contains within itself the initiative of movement; the life of the fixed habitation must first of all over- come the inertia of its own repose and per- manence. We shall try to see whether this de- scribes a truth of human experience ; but before doing so let us be sure that we do not confuse this thought with two other thoughts which have some kinship with it. There is, first of all, the despondent rejec- tion of life because it contains the elements of illusion and change. The spirit of melan- choly and despair has touched many of the finest souls of the present age, and has smitten the strings of their harps into silence or subdued them into minor strains. One can not truly interpret certain great phases of the art and literature of this age until he realizes that many have been profoundly touched with this sense of the transientness of life, of life not merely in the form of personal existence, but in its great ideals, its convictions and faiths. 5 " From scarped cliff and quarried stone She cries 'a thousand types are gone: I care for nothing, all shall go,' " is the lament of one ; while another takes up the mournful chant in a different strain : " Now he is dead! Far hence he lies In the lorn Syrian town; And on his grave, with shining eyes, The Syrian stars look down." The despondency of life which touches the finer spirits of the race sifts down at length into the general life. Lamentations over the disappointments and illusions of life are heard from many voices, from all sorts and conditions of life. ''This is just the trouble," many are saying always, ' 'there is nothing certain about this life ; nothing to be relied upon ; nothing fixed and permanent. Yes, it is the fact ; we do dwell in tents all our days. We are at the mercy of the piti- less forces of this strange and changing world. 5 ' Here, then, is one way of applying this doctrine to life ; the result is the paralysis of strength, the defeat of endeavor. 6 Another use of the doctrine is described by the word asceticism. Let us clearly un- derstand what asceticism is ; let us not con- fuse it with any past form in which it has expressed itself, such as monasticism. The root meaning of asceticism is discipline ; the Greek Askesis, from which the word is derived, was the discipline of the Greek athlete for the race. But in history and usage the fundamental idea of asceticism has been repression and privation ; it is the negative discipline of life ; it is the surren- der of some elements of life in order that the remaining elements may be saved and nourished the better. Now the ascetic ideal also rests upon the belief that we dwell in tents ; that we have here no continuing city. Its earlier expres- sions took the form of contempt for the flesh and for the world ; sought retirement and solitude in order that the soul might be trained through prayer and vigils, through fasts and discipline, for its celestial home. This is the picture brought most naturally before us when we think of asceticism ; it is gvozXUvs in gjetxts " other-worldliness " ; it is a refined and sublimated selfishness. But the ascetic spirit may linger after this individual form of saving one's own soul has been rejected ; it does survive in many forms of doing good to others, the motive to which is of the noblest and most unselfish character. The impulse of the old spirit is so strong upon the world that generous hearts, even after they have come to see that life is not for the purpose of get- ting one's own soul out of the world, but is for service, still imagine that there is a radical conflict between individual welfare and service of others ; sacrifice of self still means repression of self, means the belief that the good and beneficent use of life for one's self must be surrendered, if good is to come to other lives. This is indeed a strange survival of the ascetic ideal, but we can not fail to recognize it in many of the best meant and most devoted kinds of human service. There is, to be sure, oftentimes a tem- porary and superficial conflict between the individual and the general good, but there can be no radical and real conflict. Mr. Lowell stated the relation of these two things in terms of profound insight, when he thus summed up the meaning of the vision of Sir Launfal : " Not what we give bu-t what we share, For the gift without the giver is bare." "Not what we give, but what we share," that is the doctrine of the New Humanity, of the better philanthropy. The sacrifice of self which leaves self poorer, the rejec- tion of the wealth of beauty, light, knowl- edge, all the great gains of life through the ages, in order that other men may be pulled up into what is thought to be a saving of them, — this may be infinitely noble and generous, but it still has in it elements of the old ascetic ideal, the ideal of repression and contempt. It is what we share, not what we surrender, that uplifts the life of those whom we would help. The claiming of our birthright that we may have where- with to ennoble other life ; the glad accept- ance of every good gift that cometh down from the Father of light, but the acceptance 9 gw&XUvs in Qzntz of it as something to be held for all, — this is the real sacrifice, this is the final service. In that faith man may go forth with the re- juvenated watchword of the followers of Huss, — "The cup for all; the cup for all." Let us not misunderstand it. I do not mean that a generous soul, fired with the love of service, can live in a calculating spirit, or submit every deed to a quan- titative analysis to make sure that nothing goes out in service for which an equivalent to self is not seen on its way to take the place of the good deed ; but there can be no enduring motive for bringing light and beauty and enlargement of life to others, except upon thepre-supposition that what is good for others is good for ourselves ; Jesus was wise enough to plant his ethics upon the principle, which is echoed in Sir Laun- fal's vision, when He said: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." The word "as," the shortest word in the sentence, is the pivot upon which the doctrine of Christ hangs. "Thy neighbor as thyself." You are not to throw away any good ; but you are to claim all good as your own, and then that 10 QwzXUxs itx Jgjettls good, by God's grace and love, you shall share. Not repression and surrender, but expansion and self-realization ; the univer- sal hunger of heart and mind fed from the bounty of God's generous table and that bounty shared and the loaves distributed through the eternal miracle of generous hearts until the multitude is fed, — this is the second table of the law. The gentle and unassuming woman who told us the story of Hull House the other night, said one thing almost as an aside, so unostentatiously was it said, yet the whole significance of the Settlement idea is dis- closed in that remark, namely : that the people who went there did not leave behind them the acquisitions of knowledge, art, culture and refinement, but took these things with them in order that through a natural social intercourse they might share them. Is not this the key to a new and more ef- fective type of social service? The Settle- ment is not essential to it ; it is only an in- cidental illustration. Yet it is a revival of the principle of service laid down by Christ. ti §wz\Uic& in Qznts The ascetic ideal and practice are not his ; they are the perversion of his idea through the temporary triumph of oriental ideas of life. But let us now return to the main consid- eration. In what sense is the dwelling in tents symbolical of some of the deepest and most permanent conditions of our life ? To begin with what is most external and perhaps most apparent, the universe itself is the greatest nomad we know anything about ; not in the sense that the countless orbs of which it is composed are forever re- volving in closed cycles upon which they return and return again, but in the sense that the life of the universe from lowest to highest forms has been a constant forsak- ing of exhausted and imperfect conditions for those more fresh and significant. "A thousand types are gone," indeed, although the inference of despair is not the true in- ference to draw from that admitted fact. But how evident to us is this " unhasting, unresting " movement of the natural world since first the creative word was spoken that began to organize the void and form- 12 gwrjelljevs in getxts less waste into a universe ! What seeming prodigality and waste ! What laborious effort to create a type which at the mo- ment of its perfection is thrown aside, that a still better may be created ! It all seems like a fulfillment of the formula of the old Greek philosopher Heraclitus, — "All things are fleeting ; the devouring fire is their symbol ! " So it seems as if this primeval, nomadic impulse had been imparted to the universe itself, and that the law by which it has developed, by which its ceaseless develop- ment is still proceeding, were but one gigantic illustration of these words, — "Ye shall dwell in tents all your days." There is nothing static, nothing permanent in the forms which the universe has taken on ; the only permanent element is the unity of purpose which directs it to the far-off end. But to come within the circle of our hu- man experience, is it not evident that in the domain of our intellectual life, in our interpretation of the world in terms of thought, we and our fathers have dwelt in tents all the days of our lives? We arrive 13 giujelUvs in gjetxis at no final and inclusive interpretation of life. It almost seems as if we could hear nature saying again, " a thousand creeds are gone, I care for nothing, all shall go." There are two views of life which through the ages have struggled with each other for supremacy ; the two are skepticism and dogmatism. Skepticism, laying hold of this evident fact of the temporary ele- ment in life, of the constant overturning of opinion, change of view, reconstruction of philosophies and theologies, declares that nothing can be permanent ; that there is no abiding knowledge of anything ; that we must forever wander between two worlds " one dead, the other powerless to be born." It regards illusion as identical with delusion, and begs man to settle down con- tentedly into the narrow circle of the things that are positive, and live his life out among them. Dogmatism, on the other hand, in frantic effort to find some anchorage for the spirit, some permanent hold for the mind upon truth, drives down its own artificial stakes ; it creates an authority for man to tie him- H ^wzXlzxs in gjetxts self up to ; and always raises the cry of " No fair," when the validity of its self- constituted authority is called in question. If you ask what the world rests upon, it tells you confidently, — Upon the back of the tortoise ; and if you ask what the tor- toise rests upon, it as confidently replies, — Upon the back of the elephant. But if you ask what the elephant rests upon, dogma- tism retorts that this is an ultimate question and you have no right to ask it. Dogma- tism insists that we must have a permanent habitation, must dwell in a continuing city ; skepticism says, — Behold the ruins of all your cities ; they are all razed to the ground ; a thousand creeds are gone ; they all shall go. Now the answer to skepticism and dog- matism alike lies hidden in this symbolic fact of life. We dwell in tents ; for a tem- porary interpretation of life, a temporary formulation of truth does not mean the futil- ity of interpreting life or of seeking truth, any more than the scaffolding built about the rising walls of the cathedral implies that the cathedral is the flimsy structure of 15 gurjettjevs itt gents an hour. Our knowledge is temporary in- deed ; our religious and social creeds are conjectures of the truth, hints and surmises of what is ever greater than our power to formulate. It is as Paul said, "We know in part; we prophesy (or surmise) in part." Our knowledge is the scaffolding around the growing building which we must allow nei- ther skepticism to identify with the building itself, nor dogmatism to nail and rivet together as if the scaffolding itself were per- manent. The temporariness of our knowl- edge is in reality a witness to the perma- nence of that wmich knowledge tries to compass ; it is " a beam in darkness ; let it grow." The bread we eat to-day does not satisfy our hunger to-morrow. All food is temporary and must be renewed, but it is conclusive evidence of a permanent hunger which it has power to satisfy. When I look back on this bewildering, changing history of human thought, see creed displacing creed, opinion taking the place of opinion, faiths moving on, disap- pearing, emerging in transformed condi- tions, it seems to me the most inspiring 16 ^wzllzxz in gmts thing I know anything about. The very temporariness of it is itself the witness to the kinship between the spirit of man and the spirit of God ; it betokens man's hold upon the absolute and eternal ; he moves along with it, and as his spirit expands it casts off the shells which once provided an ample abode. " Dwelling in tents"! — that is no Pyr- rhonism ; no denial of the power to know and to have companionship with the In- finite. The ancient nomads were condi- tioned by their surroundings j but they were not fools ; they knew where pasturage was and they followed after it with their flocks. And the man who follows the Shepherd of the universe may be led in devious ways, follow along unknown regions, but he will be led into green pastures and beside the still waters. (t We know in part," that was the final word of Paul, the word of rever- ent Christian agnosticism ; for who can conceive this great world of matter or spirit in so small a way that he will not exclaim at every stage in his career, " His great- ness is unsearchable and his ways past 2 17 gwzlUxs in $tnts finding out " ! The bane of life, the poison of its secret fountains, is indeed a radical skepticism, such a skepticism as persuades man he can know absolutely nothing about the great and permanent realities ; but dog- matism is the stone offered in the place of bread, the scorpion for the fish. The sweet and satisfying bread which nourishes and strengthens is the spirit of teachableness, openness of mind and heart, willingness to disbelieve keeping faithful company with the desire to believe. Skepticism which denies that we can know anything of the great realities ; dog- matism, which is sure that we know it all ; teachableness which is eager to exchange its ignorance for knowledge, its partial knowledge for more complete, — these are the three possible attitudes to life ; but it is teachableness alone which dwells in tents all its days ; it has no continuing city, but it has continuing pasturage and its soul is satisfied. But finally there is an attitude to life which gives it the sense of stability and perma- nence, the permanence as of " a city which 18 gw&XUvs in gjetxts hath foundations ;" for after all is said man's search for truth is not the noblest thing about man's life ; it is very noble, but there is one thing that is nobler still. Did I say that Paul spoke his final word when he said: " We know in part? " No, it is not his final word, for he went on to say that there are three things which in the midst of all this change and movement of life do not change, they abide. These three are faith, hope and love. What does it teach us but this — that it is not the intellectual attitude to life but the practical attitude that is after all the main thing? Life is not an abstract prob- lem ; it is a throbbing and concrete reality. It is, therefore, to be solved not in terms of abstract knowledge, but of concrete faith and courage, hope and endurance and love. Will you have life clear and real to you? Will you have it a permanent and solid fact? Knowledge vanishes away, but faith, hope and love abide. The test of the permanence and assurance of life is in the attitude of our hearts to this great re- ality of life. Are we in sympathetic rela- r 9 gurcIUvs ixx Qmts tions with it? Are we meeting its experi- ences with courage, with patience and with hope? Does our love illumine what is dark and doubtful? These are the questions we need most often and most solemnty to ask. When a man makes the answer in the practical allegiance of his life with these triumphant forces the voices of fear and cynicism, of doubt and hesitation, are drowned out. Not by the knowledge that vanishes away, but by the love that abides through all change and all disaster our deepest spiritual problems are solved, and we learn at last that the final name for life and for the world and for God is love. It is the Christ-word and the Christ-solution. $foje ^jcrtttxtaitx of %ifz II THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE Psalm xxxvi. 9. — For with Thee is the fountain of life. In Thy light shall we see light. OpHE most of us, at one time or an- 4jLy other, become aware of the partial- 'uN^K ness of our views of life, the frac- tional, rather than the integral, way we have of looking at things, the fragmentary and unrelated character of many of our best judgments and opinions, This par- tialness is spread over the whole history of man, but does not always proceed from the same causes. We are prepared to find this lack in man's earliest history, when people knew actually so little about the world in which they lived, when there was no written history, no literature of the past, no tabulated knowledge of the passing life, no intercommunication of any sort. Just because man dwelt apart, each in his little section of the earth, and just because he must produce, in a rough and primitive 2 1 £K& ^oxxntKin of gif je way, nearly everything he had, it was not to be expected that his range would be very wide ; that his outlook would stretch very far beyond his tent door and the limited circle within which his flocks found pastur- age. "From sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth" gauged man's outlook at one time ; "as far as the Roman legions have pierced'' was the proud esti- mate of a later time, and when Columbus sailed the unknown seas, so small was the world that he expected, after not many days' sailing, to come around to the shores of India. But this limitation of outlook has passed away. Men do not dwell in solitude and separation ; they touch elbows, they con- gregate in cities, they move across the continent and traverse the seas with sur- passing swiftness. They have compassed the earth ; they know what is in it and under it, and are almost in possession of the object glass which shall bring into view the ships in the canals of Mars. But the very possibility of this greater life has brought on a new partialness and super- 22 gfoe ^onntKin of %it z ficialness, for, in order that all mankind may have the larger life, the enjoyment of more things, it is impossible for the indi- vidual members of mankind to do many things with efficiency and to the profit of the whole. So, as the old partialness and limitation grew out of the isolated life and the multiplicity of work, the modern par- tialness and limitation grow out of the or- ganization of life and the specialization of work. There is in our modern life a wealth of toil, of knowledge, of research, of accom- plishment that would astonish the ancient world ; but one feels so often about all this vast and bewildering array of things that it is unrelated and disorganized ; that al- though it is wealth in abundance, it does not find its unity in a commonwealth. There is a vast amount of what one might call a class or professional consciousness — a tendency to look at things from the stand- point of the special function through which one is serving the world, and a correspond- ing tendency to magnify that function out of all proportion. 23 gJxs gxrmtiaitt jof %ifz The different professions and arts develop their special techniques and create their special vocabularies, so that a stranger is debarred from an understanding of what goes on in the world outside his own small sphere. Each of us sees light in the light of his own torch, and in the opinion of each the world is just that part of it which re- flects the flickering light which he bears. The zealous churchman believes that the world will be redeemed when it comes finally to accept his doctrine of the church and its accompaniments. The zealous rad- ical believes that what mankind needs above everything else is emancipation from ignorance and superstitious folly. The man in whom the sense of law and organi- zation is strong thinks the world needs more and better legislation, the wider regulation of the details of life by the state ; his neighbor of the opposite temperament thinks we need less law and more liberty ; less organization and a stronger assertion of individual rights. The different kinds of consciousness ex- isting, the different attitudes to life proceed- 24 gfeje ^mmtaiix of gtfie ing from the different spheres of work, sug- gest the many colored lights which are flashed upon the stage to give variety of effect to its tableaux and scenes. So we get a variety of hue from the clerical con- sciousness and the legal consciousness, the medical, the journalistic, the pedagog- ical, the artistic and the literary. Each sees light in his own light and interprets life by the color of the medium through which his light is thrown. So whether the partial outlook on life comes from doing everything in a narrow environment, as the primitive man did, or from doing one thing in a wide and diver- sified environment, as the modern man does, it is still the partial outlook, it is still seeing light in our own light. So I think we shall understand why we have taken this text to-day from the ancient psalm. Let us turn to the words again for a moment. A portion of this psalm is full of poetic and religious feeling. It would be difficult for the thought and feeling of any age to surpass the dignity and rever- ence of its attitude to the One over all : 2 5 " Thy loving kindness, O Lord, is in the heavens ; Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the skies. Thy righteousness is like the mountains of God ; Thy judgments are a great deep. How precious is thy loving kindness, O God! And the children of men take refuge under the shadow of thy wings. For with thee is the fountain of life, In thy light shall we see light." Now, all this is cast in the poetic mold, and it is the expression of deep religious feeling, the feeling of reverence, depend- ence and trust. But all genuine religious feeling rests upon some basis of fact, of reality. There is some conviction out of which the feeling grows and blossoms. What then is the underlying conviction out of which this fine poetry grows? What is the standpoint of a man who believes that he and his fellow- man are to see light in the light of God? The answer is certainly obvious enough ; at any rate the conclusion which the beau- tiful metaphor brings before our own minds is obvious enough, for men can not see light in God's light unless this universe of God's is a great consistent whole, a single 26 thing, a garment woven entire throughout, a universe pervaded by one kind of intelli- gence, controlled by one kind of principle and idea, working toward one great pur- pose. If it is such a universe as that, if it is subject to such unity of thought and pur- pose as that, if there is a great idea march- ing through it, and the light of a clear and intelligent aim flashing upon it, then cer- tainly it is not irrational to believe that men dwelling in that universe, themselves capa- ble of thinking and of forming purposes, can get the clew to this universe in which they live, can come into touch with the thought and purpose running through it, and see light in the light that shines all about them. This is the bed rock of this poet's thought, as it is also the bed rock of all religion, of all philosophy, and of all science ; for these different pursuits and attitudes to life are ultimately but so many efforts of finding the universal bond which binds this scat- tered and fragmentary life together, of find- ing some principle which will give cohesion and consistency to things. 2 7 Let us suppose, then, that any man in search of the interpretation of life, in search of a real adjustment of his own life to the world around him, starts out with this rudi- mentary and almost amorphous idea, shape- less as the block dug out of the quarry, the idea, namely, that there is just one kind of law and purpose running through this universe ; that mind is mind and thought is thought wherever he runs across it ; that truth and goodness and right are universal, valid for all times and for all parts of the universe ; that he is just as sure of that validity as he is of the presence of certain chemical elements in the sun when their characteristic lines reveal themselves in the spectroscope. Can anything be more basal or more re- assuring than such a conviction as that? for although this great shapeless block which one digs out of the quarry of reality does not resemble any of the graven images of God which the various religions and the- ologies have formed, it is worth more than many of them. It were better to set up in the temple of our faith just this 28 Qhz ^ountzitx of %xfz rough block of an idea of God, if we knew it to be hewn out of the quarry of reality, than to bow before the daintiest and most perfect image of the craftsmen who know how to overlay with gold and silver the fabrications of their own far-fetched logic and speculations. If I know that the deep yellow line of the spectrum means the same thing for that far-away sun that it means for this bit of mineral dug out of the earth, I have linked the universe together with a mighty bond ; and if I know that this fragment of truth which I have gained in my own ex- perience has its counterpart in a greater truth running throughout the universe, I have come upon that which may indeed well be "the master light of all our seeing." Now let us see what it implies. In the first place, is it not the corrective and the denial of all real agnosticism? I say of all real agnosticism, for there are two kinds. The agnosticism which is the counterpart of the flippant dogmatism, of the cheap and tawdry things that pass current for devo- tion and faith and religion, or the swift and 29 Sfre |?0Uittairc of %itz merciless denunciation of those who can not repeat the shibboleth, of those who stand in awe and hesitation in the presence of life's sanctities, and who cherish the reverence that dares repeat with Paul, — "We know in part, we prophesy in part," — the agnos- ticism which is the answer to cant and to the caricature of all genuine religion, is, to say the very least, the sign of returning sanity and health. It is to no man's dis- honor to refuse to chatter like a magpie over the fundamental realities of life, when he hears a voice calling in his ear, — " Re- move thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." There is an agnosticism which is in the interest of faith and of all the reverences of life, such as Mr. Gilder voices in the familiar lines : " Thou God supreme, — I too, I too believe! But oh! forgive if this one human word, Binding the deep and breathless thought of thee And my own conscience with an iron band, Stick in my throat. I can not say it, thus, — This ' I believe ' that doth thyself obscure ; 30 gftje gjomtxtaitx fxt %lfz This rod to smite ; this barrier ; this blot On thy most unimaginable face And soul of majesty." But agnosticism of the real and radical sort is a different thing. A real agnosti- cism puts the force of permanent and uni- versal truth into the casual words of the old prophet and takes its stand upon this platform, — "My thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways, saith the Lord.'' A real agnosticism be- lieves that clouds and darkness are round about the Infinite Being, not as a tran- sient but as a permanent condition of his existence. It holds that our ignorance of the great verities is not merely the igno- rance of a limited experience, but the re- sult of an incapacity to know ; of the lack of any certainty that the laws of our present experience are also the laws of life lying beyond our present experience. There- fore we can not unify these present ex- periences of ours ; we can not give them universal validity. We can work along on the hypothesis that two and two are four, but we have no assurance that somewhere 3i there are not beings to whom two and two are five. When the dark line crosses the spectrum revealing in element after element the material identity of the members of the solar system, we exclaim almost spontane- ously : "The things that are not seen are present, they are the eternal things;" but if agnosticism is the final truth, then there is no spectrum line flashing upon us the as- surance of a fundamental identity between mind and mind, the assurance that truth is truth, and love is love, wherever in the vast spaces of the universe they find expression. Now, I do not know that there is any demonstration of these things*; I do not anticipate the time when it will be pos- sible to prove the existence of God, as one proves that the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. For almost un- consciously there lurks somewhere in the process of proof the very thing we set out to prove. Even if we proclaim with syllo- gistic assurance that the Infinite Being, " will not put us to permanent intellectual confusion," we somehow assume that this 32 gfeje gjcwtttaitx jcrf %ifz Infinite Being has the character which our great conclusion claims for him. It is al- most impossible to avoid reasoning in a circle when one is reasoning upon any of the ultimate things. But after all may it not be for the very reason that these ultimate things are so sim- ple in their character ; that the difficulties we raise over them are manufactured diffi- culties ; that when we try to prove we can after all do hardly more than assert, just as when we try to explain the light we can only declare it to be that by means of which we see ? And of all the fundamental simplicities none perhaps is either so fundamental or so simple as this conviction that the uni- verse is one, that God's ways are after all our ways and ours are his, that there is an unbroken identity connecting earth with heaven, the seen with the unseen, the daily round and the familiar experience with their eternal pattern. We may almost begin where In Memoriam concludes in the conviction that there is one God — 33 Igfoje ^omxtxin of |^if s " That God, which ever lives and loves, One God, one law, one element, And one far-off divine event To which the whole creation moves." 2. And now let us think of one more truth that is implied. If we see light in God's light because of the underlying unity, the identity of divine and human run- ning through all things, then this very unity becomes the means by which we cor- rect our individual estimates of life, the standard by which we judge all our thoughts and aims. Our thoughts and ways may in truth be very far from being the thoughts and ways of God, not because of a neces- sary disparity between them, nor because we fail to have the means of knowing that they are alike should they chance to be, but they may be different simply because through ignorance or intention we have failed to bring them up to the light and see them in his light. There was a time when men used to say, with a good deal of vehemence, that if there were a Supreme Being in the universe he must be too much absorbed in the man- 34 agement of his infinite domain to have par- ticular and constant interest in the affairs of finite men. That certainly is the con- clusion of a very barren philosophy, quite as barren as the religious philosophy which it opposes. Its conception of infiniteness is simply that of largeness ; it assumes that if one is actually great enough to create the worlds and hold them in their marvelous courses, individual men must dwindle into insignificance in his thought ; if God sits on the circles of the earth men must be as grasshoppers in his sight. With that idea of infinity the shepherd looks into the starry skies and he shrivels up to nothing and cries out, " What is man that thou art mindful of him? " If this assumption is right, the conclusion also is right ; if this idea of infiniteness is the true idea, it would seem well-nigh ab- surd to imagine the Infinite Being as inter- ested in the details of our individual or our collective life. When we look up into the starry skies and realize, as the ancient shepherd did not realize, that all we see is but an infinitesimal portion of the whole 35 universe, — does it not for the moment seem absurd to imagine God watching the flight of the sparrow, or giving us in any real sense our daily bread ? Does it not seem preposterous to talk about a divine destiny for the nation or to imagine the Infinite Be- ing giving even a passing thought to all the things which have kept this republic on the rack during its history ? Men have lived and died ; nations have sprung up, have flourished for a season and have passed away, even as the forest trees grow and flourish and rot again to fertilize the soil. What cares God who sits on the cir- cles of the earth and drives these count- less fiery steeds dashing eternally through space? This is the voice of the old barren phi- losophy to whom infinity is merely another name for bigness. But suppose infinity is instead another name for self-realization, for the fulfillment and revelation of the divine Self in all the onfaring of the finite life of man and of the world ! Suppose God, instead of being a passive spectator, a passionless and uninterested observer from 36 £1** ^onntuin of %ift the remote boundaries of the universe, is the very heart and passion and moving force of all this eager life as it develops and moves on ! Suppose that this political un- rest and strife is, in the deeper meaning of it, the presence of God himself, disclosing his thought and purpose in the very move- ment and vitality of human affairs ! Does it not give a new sense of the divine pres- ence as well as a new sanctity to these forms of life through which that presence manifests itself? There were some of the old Hebrew prophets who, in a somewhat rude and anthropomorphic way, got this idea of God as a man of war, fighting their battles with them, interested in the life of the common- wealth, and when we have stripped away the anthropomorphic symbolism and have given it the deeper spiritual setting, we have a vastly profounder and more rational idea of God than when we think of him as the vast, passive, absent-minded Arti- ficer, sitting on the remote borders of the boundless universe. It gives a new thrill of emotion, a new 37 She gountaitx of %ift touch of sincerity to our words when we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, for the peace of America, for the integrity and honor of the land we love ; it makes the words of Sidney Lanier seem more real and pertinent : " Long as thy God is God above, Thy brother every man below. So long, dear Land of all my love, Thy name shall shine, thy fame shall glow!" If inliniteness is, in truth, this sort of in- timacy with finiteness, then can we not discover how, in God's light, we surely shall see light ; for is not every impulse toward truth and honor, toward purity and justice, toward gentleness and love, toward magnanimity and brotherhood, every effort toward sweeter, saner, loftier life in the individual or the nation, a sign and proof to us that the heart of the Infinite God is beat- ing in all these pulses of our finite life? And the old words still ring in our ears with their new and profounder meaning : " With thee, O God, is the fountain of life In thv light shall we see light." 38 jut ittjcxrtttxfce* warn (&*a in AN ENCOUNTER WITH GOD Gen. xxxii. 24. — And Jacob was left alone ; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. (S|T seems incongruous and grotesque to p| portray a man wrestling bodily with c \_y God ; in the light of our present knowl- edge and feeling with regard to such rela- tions it may seem shocking to the moral sense. But we must remember in what conditions and in what stage of develop- ment these stories have their origin ; and we must not forget that they have their parallel in the history of nearly every peo- ple, in the record of nearly every religion. The Greeks were in a perpetual encounter with their divinities. The Hindoos re- garded it a part of the duty of their kings and heroes to " take the field with club and bow against the supernatural powers of evil." In the Scandinavian legends the god Thor is constantly challenged to fight by the giants of the people. The great 39 story of Prometheus is perhaps the pro- foundest of all those myths which portray man working out his destiny in combat with the forces that to his consciousness are organized as the supreme forces in the universe. Longfellow has given a version of a similar thought in the Indian lore, where Shingebis, the diver, comes out to wrestle naked upon the ice with the fierce North- wind, Kabibonokka, and Kabibonokka wrestles all night with the bold diver until the breaking of the day. " Till his panting breath grew fainter, Till his frozen grasp grew feebler, Till he reeled and staggered backward And retreated, baffled, beaten, To the kingdom of Wabasso, Hearing still the gusty laughter, Hearing Shingebis, the diver, Singing : " O Kabibonokka, You are but my fellow mortal." Man first came to the consciousness of his life in the midst of struggle with the elemental forces of nature. He found him- self contending with the fierce heat of the 40 sun, with the frost and ice of winter, with the blast of the north wind, with the earth- quake and the tempest, with the resistance of the soil and the Siren-like allurements of the sea. These forms and forces of nature were personified and worshiped. Man realized his dependence upon these mighty forces ; he was conscious of dread and fear, and yet his spirit rose up in resistance and he came to feel that his destiny was a destiny of perpetual conflict with those divinities of earth and sea and air which he could neither befriend nor cajole. I doubt if we can fully understand this story of Jacob wrestling with the angel un- til we view it in the light of the class of stories with which it belongs. It has its parallel in such myths and legends as these to which I have referred, and yet already it begins to difference itself from them in accordance with the controlling genius, the sublime mission of the Hebrew faith. Already in this story of Jacob, and perhaps almost without intention of the one who first gave it form, there begins to take shape the fact, than which there is none pro- 4 1 &n 'gncfixxxxUx Wiim mod founder or more radical in human life. Here is a man wrestling with God through the long night up to the breaking of the day. It is a personal encounter. He is triumphant but he comes off bearing the marks and the bruises of his conflict, and it ends in a transformation of character which was always represented in the He- brew thought by the change of name — "No longer shalt thou be called Jacob, but Is- rael, for thou hast striven with God and hast prevailed." The element which the story has in com- mon with similar stories and legends is the necessity for human struggle, the eternal need laid upon man to go into conflict with the elemental forces of the world and con- quer them ; but the step in advance in this legend is found in the hint and prophecy, shadowy though it be, of the ethical ele- ment in the struggle. Many of the le- gends which portray man's struggle with nature and with the forces of nature, which he has deified, are designed to show the superiority of man. He is the great being of the universe. He comes off victorious, 42 &u MnconnUx WCittx (&&& and his victory is tinged with contempt ; or if he is not victorious, but is still doomed to suffer, like Prometheus, he bears a brave heart, suffers like a hero, and still feels in his soul a contempt for the deity who has only power to show for his chief attribute. But we can not fail to detect another truth emerging from this Jacob legend. Man is still in conflict ; he wrestles with God ; but it is not a conflict for the sake of conquest and extermination ; it is not marked by contempt ; it is forced on by the resistless, eager question which Jacob voiced when he said, "Tell me, I pray thee, thy name." It is a struggle to get at the meaning of divinity, to penetrate the secret mystery of life, to unlock the doors to its hidden, inner experiences ; and the conflict issues in victory, yet not a victory in which man stands flushed and triumph- ant over his fallen foe, but triumphant be- cause through his struggle the might of the One with whom he fought has entered into him, though he come out of the conflict sore and bruised, bearing about in his body the marks of the dire encounter. 43 Jux gujcoxwlev WLith (&o& So in this far-off story, set in the shad- owy background of almost prehistoric con- ditions, we get glimpses of a law of the moral and spiritual achievements of man, a law which finds clearer expressions, higher manifestations as time goes on, but which is still truly prefigured in this long night- wrestle of a man with God in which the might of the immortal passed into the mor- tal man. And this law of spiritual achieve- ment, of spiritual revelation, I ask you to trace with me now a little further. We shall understand it better, perhaps, if we analyze it a little and think about one ele- ment in it at a time. First, there is the fact of the human struggle ; man has to wrestle for all he gets. He must fight with nature in some form for his daily bread. He must contend with the life and law within nature for the bread that satisfieth his soul. In all the thought and questioning of man from the beginning regarding the meaning and pos- sibility of revelation, there seems to be nothing more significant than the fact, dawning with some measure of clearness 44 Jw Igttjcjcrtmtje* WLitU &o& upon our time, that revelation is not a name for something apart from man and independent of him ; it is relative to man, dependent upon him. There is a pre- destined cooperation without which the knowledge of truth and the experience of life are impossible. Man's discovery of truth is the coun- terpart of God's revealing of it; the coun- terpart, I say, not the substitute for it. Yet, without this ceaseless activity and struggle of man how silent, how unrespon- sive, how meaningless the universe would be ! It might be likened to the warp in the loom ; it is there in long continuous threads. There is no fabric, no pattern, no solidity, no meaning. But the shuttle flies back and forth ; by incessant and re- peated effort the threads enter the embrace of the threads upon the loom ; color, pat- tern, solidity, fabric result. Can you say that the beautiful product belongs to the warp and not to the woof? Can you say that it belongs to the woof and not to the warp? It is the cooperation, the embrace, 45 J^tt gttcjcnmije* WLitU (&o& the firm union of the two which gives the finished result. So on this vast loom of the universe are arranged the endless threads of des- tiny, of truth, of experience, of life. There they are devoid of meaning, of achieve- ment, until the life of man in its end- less movement flies back and forth, and through the seeming antagonism, through the very oppositeness of nature and direc- tion, the unity of result is achieved. It in no wise detracts from the greatness, the wisdom, the absoluteness of God to find this cooperative necessity ; to learn that revelation has man's discovery as its count- erpart. But, after all, that is not the primary question ; the primary question is, — what is the fact? We must get our thought of the character of God from the nature of the facts we find. And we certainly know that this universe has ever been silent and speechless to man until he has himself given it an articulate voice ; he has been the interpreter of the silence ; the mute finger- speech of God, some man has read over 4 6 into vocal syllables for the instruction of his fellow-men. There is no thoughtful mind, no rever- ent heart, for whom this fact will for one moment banish the eternal reality of God. Can you not pray to-day and forever that God will give you your daily bread, al- though you are aware that God never di- rectly taught any man to bake bread, never taught him even how to sow wheat, how to grind it into flour? All this belongs to the infinite struggle, the ceaseless task. Can not your heart still respond to the old beautiful faith, "He healeth all our dis- eases " — although you have to remember, out of the very fullness of that faith, how step by step the knowledge of all healing processes and the staying of the ravages of disease and pestilence have been wrought by the wisdom, the skill, the profound pity and love of man for his fellow-man? Can you not plant yourself firmly upon the irrevoca- ble conviction that God is light, and that in him is no darkness at all, notwithstanding your added knowledge that all human lore and wisdom concerning the stars above us 47 Jitx gitcmttxte* WLxtft (&&& and the earth beneath us and the countless life that inhabits earth and sea, have been gathered, preserved, perpetuated by man himself? I can not conceive of these two things seeming contradictory except to the most superficial, the most indolent or the most irreverent soul. It is the cooperative law that is written all over life and that has found its working and its fulfillment ever since there was a man to see and consider. The universe is a storehouse of poten- tialities ; it is a great silent battery until man comes, touches the key and flashes the silent energy in forms of intelligence to a million souls. The first fact then is the fact of strug- gle ; the fact of co-operative activity, of wrestling with God in order that God may be revealed and understood. The next thought I want you to reflect upon is that it is man, it is your fellow-beings, who have achieved, and are still achiev- ing, the destiny of life through some form of struggle. It is the human, personal quality in all this infinite toil and task that I want you to think of. 4 8 There is a certain kind of struggle, of titanic effort, in the evolution of the universe itself, in what Paul called the groaning of creation waiting for the revealing of the sons of God. There is the sign of strug- gle in all this convulsive movement of nature from chaos to order, in all the throbs and age-long travailing before man ap- peared ; but after all the creation truly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. Creation, in the larger sense, begins with the advent of man, and the struggle that is significant, that is interpretative, that is re- vealing, is this long pathetic human strug- gle which has wrought out the spiritual achievements of mankind. Now it is just this human, personal ele- ment in the whole process that is so pre- cious, and that makes so powerful appeal to our sympathy and interest. We are not in a universe that is whirling along like some gigantic brainless engine upon the rails. The revelation of the personal heart of the universe is not interpreted in terms of the steam-gauge and the cyclometer. Person- ality is the key to life ; the heart of man 4 49 answereth to the heart of God. The strength of the Almighty comes down into the soul of the man who wrestles with him, though he bear the marks of the encoun- ter. Perhaps we are sometimes in danger of losing sight of this personal element in the universal struggle. We are accustomed to talk in impersonal terms about the evolu- tion of the universe, about the progress of thought and ideas. We get accustomed to the abstract view of it all, and thus we lose contact with the human significance of it ; forget how it has all been achieved through " the effort, the sorrow, the victory of hu- manity. " What really do we mean when we talk about the progress of science? There is no motor by the name of science that speeds along the pathway of life ringing its bell and blowing its whistle and running over heed- less men like some mighty juggernaut. But there are and there have been in almost every age lonely souls who above all things have loved the truth, have been devoted to it with undying fidelity, and have listened 5° to the mute finger-speech of God through all the spaces of the world. There is no science that reveals truth, but there are men of science, men who have loved the fact and the reality. There are men like Copernicus and Galileo, like Newton and Darwin, who have wrestled through the long night until the breaking of the day while their fellow-mortals, slum- bering late, waking at last with heavy eyes, will not believe that they have wrestled with God and prevailed. They can not as yet see the new name written in their fore- heads, the sign that through their fidelity they have prevailed and achieved. We have to put all these results of human thinking and suffering into algebraic formu- las for convenient use, but we need often to return from the formula to the throbbing life of which it is but the sign. We need to feel how great have been the pain, and the cost, and the sore struggle of these our fellow-men who have lived before us. We need to realize how we are blessed by their pain, and how through their poverty we are made rich. It is this thought that binds 51 our humanity together and makes us real- ize that there is something sacramental, something redeeming in this pathetic strug- gle, in this generous and forgetting sacri- fice. Therefore we must not lose sight of the element of intense personalism in all the struggle and achievement of the ages ; we must not dissociate the ideas and the truths from the heroic souls through whose pain and sorrow we possess them. And when we have thought to the very bottom of all the reasons, and have made due account of the lingering of supersti- tions, is not this after all the reason why mankind will not readily let go its faith, its love and devotion for Christ? Is it not because he is the person of persons ; the one whose name is rightly above every name ; because he so gathered up into him- self the spiritual struggles and the spiritual achievement of mankind? Is it not because the legendary struggle of Jacob with the angel comes to its highest spiritual reality in the experience of Jesus in Gethsemane? When all the spurious interpretations of 52 the truth have passed away, will not men still discover an abiding meaning in the ancient prophecy that by his stripes we are healed and that through his suffering he led many sons to repentance? The hopeful aspect of the spiritual movement of man is in its return to the concrete personal element in life ; to a deeper appreciation of the fact that the greatest thing in life is not a blind imper- sonal progress of ideas and principles, but the earnest, devoted effort of brave human souls to see the truth and do the divine deed. It is men who are the saviors of men ; it is the sons of men who for each other take upon themselves the sorrows and the sins of the world, who at last bear the world out of sin and sorrow into the everlasting light of God's face. Here then are two facts, the struggle ; the human element in the struggle. There is yet a third fact. It is through this strug- gle that transformation of character comes about. Man wrestles with God and at last he learns, it may be only at the break of 53 day, it may be when he is bruised and lame, but at last he learns, not what he asked, the name of God, for he does not get at the ultimate mystery of life ; but he learns that his name is changed ; he is no longer Jacob ; he is Israel, one who has prevailed with God. Spiritual achievement, development and strength of character are born out of all this infinite labor and sorrow. This is the pitiful, the tragic, but the noble and heroic aspect of our human life. I never look into the beautiful, inno- cent face of a child without some feel- ing of dread concern. Is there any of us who can ? One wants to ward off all this inevitable combat ; and } r et who would dare do it? and how soon it comes ! The little mind begins to struggle with the problems of character and at school with the prob- lems of knowledge. It is a solitary and personal encounter. To do the problem for the child, to settle the simple question of duty or right, to him so disturbing, without leaving room for the personal en- counter, may seem the easy way, to the thoughtless and the sentimental the best 54 way, but for the achievement of character always the wrong way. The duty of mak- ing oneself useless to child and pupil is ever as urgent as that of making oneself useful to him. And then the years go by. Life unfolds into many forms of experience. The greater part of human experience is the universal, common experience of the race, and yet it must be wrought out each time anew in each human life. And who can tell another how to live? who can interpret for another this common experience of labor and sorrow, of pain and death ? What can any of us do ex- cept to look with hope and say to each other — all this conflict, all this mystery of life, all these Gethsemanes and Calvaries shall work for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory ; they shall purify and ennoble you until you are able to wear the name Israel, the one who has so wres- tled with the divine meaning of life and penetrated so much of its secret that the name Prevailer with God is at last the name worthy to be borne ! We seem so dumb and helpless in the 55 presence of these common experiences of life which come laden with pain and sorrow ; we seem staggered afresh as one after another of our fellow-mortals comes for his baptism of fire ; yet, after all, is not the meaning hidden here in the law of spirit- ual achievement of which we have been thinking to-day? The fire that turns the iron into steel is the key to the iron's destiny : and if character is the final and worthy goal for man, then the struggle through which character is achieved and the great name is won is the key to human life. "To him that overcometh," runs the apocaryptic promise, " will I give to eat of the tree of life which is in the Paradise of God." 56 gfoje gjcrxrfc gtxat Gtatxttt Hart gs ©pjettjed IV THE BOOK THAT COULD NOT BE OPENED Isaiah xxix. 10-12. — For the Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes, the prophets ; and your heads, the seers, hath he covered. And all vision is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this I pray thee ; and he saith : I can not ; for it is sealed : and the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying : Read this I pray thee ; and he saith, I am not learned. QpWO creative influences are at work in v!v9 ^ e WOI "ld> shaping and developing ^^Tv it ; the power of knowledge and the power of will. Life in every form depends ultimately upon two things : the fact and the deed ; the idea and the realization of the idea. Conversely, there are two forms of weak- ness in the world, two things which hinder and thwart ; these two are ignorance and indifference. It is useless to ask which of 57 ghz |3ooK ghat ®o\iia got ge ®pmz& the two is better, knowledge or will ; which of the corresponding two is worse, igno- rance or indifference. Wherever there is zeal without knowledge, an irresponsible en- thusiasm rushing into life without regard to the wisdom of fact and experience, the only result is fanatical confusion. Wherever there is knowledge, the acquisition of facts and ideas without the transformation of them into life, the result is pedantry, dilet- tantism, scholastic pride. The point of deepest depression and degradation is man- ifestly reached where ignorance and indif- ference are combined ; correspondingly, the progress and development of all true and noble life are dependent ultimately upon the progress and development of both knowledge and will. This is, perhaps, a rendering in modern terms of the thought which was in the mind of the prophet Isaiah when he spoke to his contemporaries the words which I have read. Isaiah was one of the few men of his time who realized that the nation was fast drifting to political ruin. So far as the causes of peril were within the nation itself, 58 Six* Stfxrk glmt ®jOf»W §*t S* <$?***£ he tried to point them out and to have the people rectify them. But the current was too swift, too near the precipice and was bound to rush on. The prophet got the customary reward of the prophet from those who were too blind to see the danger and from those who were contented, well- to-do, indolent and easy-going. They wagged their heads in derision and mock- ingly said : "Who is this that teaches us line upon line, precept upon precept, as if we were children?" Then the prophet's answer was flung back in a spirit of denunciation and of bitter dis- appointment, as the tremendous incubus of the ignorance and indifference of his con- temporaries weighed upon him. " God hath poured out upon you the spirit of a deep sleep, and He hath shut your eyes the prophets, and He hath covered your heads the seers, and the vision of life which they see and tell is like a sealed book to you. Some of you can not interpret it be- cause you can not read, and some of you can not interpret it because the book is sealed and you have not interest and incli- 59 glue g00k gjmt WoxxXti %lot ge ®pznz& nation enough to break the seals. You say I can not read it, for I am not learned ; I can not read it, for it is sealed." Now, there is a remarkable modernness about all this. There is a modernness about it because there is a universality about it. What Isaiah said of his own time, a man like him in spirit would say of every time. For we must remember that a prophet of the first rank is never a cynic nor a satir- ist of his time. He is a seer, an idealist, and he measures the duty and opportunity of every age by a standard which exists in his own mind and conscience. He is the architect who insists that these earthly houses made with hands shall be modeled after the house not made with hands, shaped after the pattern shown him in the mount. So, I say, any man looking out on life and society with the eyes of Isaiah would feel as he did. He would feel that how- ever much mankind had progressed it was still recreant to existing opportunities and possible advances ; that it was still and con- stantly guilty of " the sin of the ungirt loin and the unlit lamp." And as he looked out 60 Slxje S*xrk gfeat ®