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THE STAFF METHOD

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
Presented by

REV. WILLIAM BREWSTER HUMPHREY
and
MRS. MARIE E. IVES HUMPHREY

THE STAFF METHOD

Samuel 8. Mitchell, D.D.

ftbe Presbyterian pulpit
 * 

The Staff Method

BY THE
REV. S. S. MITCHELL, D. D.
Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Buffalo, N. Y.

PHILADELPHIA
PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION
AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK
I904

Copyright, 1904, by the Trustees of
The Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath-School Work.
Published May, IQ04
N'i G °> 5"
no4-

CONTENTS
PAGE
I. The Staff Method  3
II. The Divine-Human Face  25
III. The Skepticism of Prominent People . 47
IV. Jesus' Royal Grant ... . . 69
V. The Biblical Species  87
VI. Spiritual Novelties  m
VII. The Sifting of the Sensuous Life . . .135
VIII. Two Great Deeps  159

THE STAFF METHOD

THE STAFF METHOD
I
THE STAFF METHOD
" The child is not awaked." — 2 Kings iv : 31.
Doing good by indirection, at arm's length,
through a substitute, by a check — the impersonal
staff method is in danger of being overworked in
our day.
Notice, I pray you, a familiar type of this imper-
sonalism upon the lower level, that you may be
prepared to recognize it upon the higher. When
the man first commenced business he was accus
tomed to see everyone who called. But with the
growth of his business, and the increase of his
power and fame, this simple and direct meeting
with his individual patrons came to an end. Now,
if you will call at the man's office, unless your
business is of the first importance and you your
self somebody in particular, you will see nothing
of the head of the firm. First the doorkeeper sifts ;
then the head clerk sifts ; then the junior partner
sifts ; and only the elect can penetrate to the inner
3

4 THE STAFF METHOD
sanctum, upon the closed door of which stare
the letters of the word " Private." Personality has
vanished from the public office, leaving an imper
sonal mechanism in its place. From the inner
office, three rooms deep from the street, the great
man sends his staff to do the work that comes
unto him.
Time was when the poor woman who brought
her child in her arms, or the laboring man who
could only get to the office after six o'clock in the
evening, was met by the doctor himself, who by a
personal interest in their cases, and by a personal
attention to their necessities, did them more good
than all his medicines. But now practice has
increased ; fame has come ; a sense of power and
greatness has waxed strong; and as a result all
ordinary cases must be turned over to the assist
ant. No doubt there is a necessity compelling
unto, this state of things. Brain-power, heart-
power, nerve-power, — no man can give without
limitation these precious and remedial forces to
those who have need. Let us then lift up no
voice of criticism or fault-finding. Instead, let
us quietly take our seat in the outer office
and wait our turn to see the assistant, and
then as quietly come away with the assurance
that we have received all we had a right to

THE STAFF METHOD 5
expect. To be sure, the man himself did not
see us, but the office did. We had the benefit
of the staff.
Now these common pictures to be seen upon
every side of us are not a bad representation of
that which has come to be a common occurrence
in the moral world. When he himself was weak
and unknown, the man kept his Sunday class in
the Mission School. But when success came and
prosperity ; when the man, through development,
became a power in the community, he withdrew
from the ranks of the Mission workers, compell
ing the drafting in of a new and weaker substi
tute. Now the man sends his check regularly
once a year, but he himself no longer knows the
way unto the Mission.
When the woman's time was as plentiful as it
was cheap, she used some of it in visits of per
sonal condolence and sympathy. Now, however,
since her husband has become wealthy and she
herself a leader in society, she has given up all
such personal service. Instead, now she sends a
bundle of clothing, or some jelly, or a gift of
money. Now it may have been something like this
which happened in the case of Elisha. Suddenly,
with the departure of Elijah, he had blossomed

6 THE STAFF METHOD
into a full-grown prophet, walking the earth as
if hand in hand with the Infinite One, and doing
wonderful works of mercy and of power. With
this new importance and with the great multiplica
tion of his daily cares and duties, it would not be
strange if the prophet came unto an undue sense
of the importance of his personality and unto the
conviction that he could not afford to give his
personal attention unto every case of need that
presented itself. So when the poor Shunammite
appeared before him, he cried out : " Her child is
sick, her child is sick ; run, Gehazi, with my staff."
Or he may have thought, as the great physician
seems sometimes to conclude concerning his
office, " Everything connected with me, every
thing belonging to the great prophet, is full of
virtue; run, Gehazi, with my staff." But what
ever was the feeling or conviction which led to
its use, the staff method did not prove a success
in Elisha's case.
"And Gehazi passed on before them, and laid
the staff upon the face of the child ; but there was
neither voice, nor hearing." Immediately the
prophet's proxy turns back unto his master with
this announcement of failure : " The child is not
awaked, the child is not awaked." Oh, Elisha!
great as thou art, thy staff is not yet sufficient to

THE STAFF METHOD 7
do thy work in the world. Thou thyself also art
needed. But let us turn from these introductory thoughts
unto the direct consideration of the subject thus
brought before us. I indicate two general lines
for the guidance of your thought : —
First. The faultiness of the staff method.
Secondly. The requisitions which evermore
issue for the presence of the person.
The first prominent fault of the staff method is
this : It is a withholding of that which is the
finest and grandest power of the human life. The
human mind or spirit possesses a mysterious
power of reaching the human mind and spirit.
So evident is this that some, as Sir William
Thomson, have gone so far as to call this power
the sixth sense. The living man wields a power
that his words do not possess and which his
agent cannot carry with him or exercise. When
Daniel Webster rose from his seat at the dinner-
table although frequently he said but little, and
that little commonplace, the whole company felt
his power. It was the force of his personality
which bore them down. Men act upon this
principle in all secular matters of first importance.
When a business transaction of great magnitude
is to be determined, the telegram is not sent, or

8 THE STAFF METHOD
the letter written, or the confidential clerk dis
patched, but the man goes himself. Yet not
always do men so act in the field of moral ser
vice. The banker says : " This is to be a busy
day with me. I wish you would send to the City
Missionary and have her call upon that poor
family of whom we were speaking, and tell her
if she will come to my office on her way I will
give her a check." The woman says : " Every
hour of my day is taken up. It will be impos
sible for me to make the visit to Mrs. A. that I
had purposed. I am sorry for this, for I hear the
poor woman is in great affliction over the loss of
her husband. Still, I will endeavor to send her
some articles of clothing, of which I hear she is
greatly in need."
So also the inferior life is sent as a substitute,
as well as the check or the bundle of clothing.
The man draws out of the charity board or the
mission when he is in the full bloom of his per
sonal power, saying, as he does so, " I must con
tent myself, for the future, to work by proxy in
those needy fields." So men and women send
the staff to do the Lord's work instead of going
themselves, and in so doing hold back from moral
service the finest power that they possess. It is
in man, what Jesus Christ had been guilty of if

THE STAFF METHOD 9
He had sent to our world a book, or a messenger,
instead of coming Himself.
Another fault inhering in the staff method is
its non-recognition of soul life in those who are
to be served. There is no law more fundamental
than this — " God has made of one blood all na
tions of men for to dwell upon all the face of the
earth." Or, as Jesus Christ puts it — " One is
your Master, and all ye are brethren." The igno
rant are so many darkened souls ; the hungry are
human souls in a starving body ; the human need
that cries out for help is the cry of a human spirit.
Now, the sending of the money-staff or the old-
clothes-staff is a non-recognition of these souls,
and by this fact the sending must be adjudged as
poor and imperfect. I remember very well that
the giving of money or of anything else is not so
impulsive, or widespread, or general as to render
necessary any words to be spoken against it.
Such words I am not speaking. All that I affirm
is that the giving of things cannot fill out the
measure of obligation that we owe to living souls.
Often what the unfortunates need more than
money is a new endowment of moral force. They
need the reestablishment of their self-respect; the
joy of a new hope; the tonic, the inspiration of a
new courage, and these necessities cannot be

io THE STAFF METHOD
passed to them in the shape of a check. Only
life in personal contact can beget life. Only love
can inspire love. Only souls can breathe new
life into souls.
But let us pass to the more important part of
our subject — the authoritative requisitions that
evermore issue for the presence, in the field of
human need, of the person.
The first of these issues in the name of charity.
Sweet Charity she is sometimes called, although
this pet name, it is to be feared, is sometimes given
her by those who strangely confound the odorless
character of her serene majesty with the more
earthly sweetness that diffuses itself throughout
the Ball which, without any very good authority,
is dedicated to her name. The requisition here
issues for the protection, for the defense, of
charity. Giving, from which personal knowledge
and personal administration are excluded, is apt
to do more harm than good. The Charity Or
ganization Society of New York, after the inves
tigation of thousands of cases, gives out the
conclusion that, of all applications for aid, less
than one in sixteen require continuous help, and
less than one in four needs even temporary aid.
Many a pauper, it adds, is found upon investiga
tion to be without the necessaries of life in the

THE STAFF METHOD n
public gaze, but privately in full possession of its
luxuries. The Rev. S. A. Barnett, founder of
Toynbee Hall, after a wide experience and ob
servation, declares that it is well-nigh impossi
ble to give to people what they ask for without
doing them a serious injury. The conclusion,
therefore, would seem to be inevitable that unless
we are willing that charity should be turned into
a failure and farce ; unless we are willing to
offer her gifts as a premium upon laziness and
lying ; unless we are ready to convert her heart
into a trough, into which the swine of hypocrisy
and dead-beatism shall thrust both feet and
snout; unless we are willing to have her fair
form pilloried before the eyes of the community
as an evil-doer, there must walk with her through
the field of human need the person who is to give
unto this need. It is sadly and evermore true
that many of the world's most necessitous lives,
those who are struggling against the direst
poverty, must be hunted out. These persons do
not parade their necessity, but make the most
ingenious and pathetic attempts to conceal it.
Many of them starve, or freeze, or commit suicide
rather than beg. Take the terrible truth here in
a single sentence as Henry George has written it
down : " In the richest city of the world the

12 THE STAFF METHOD
mortuary reports contain a column for deaths by
starvation." Now, such grim results are possible
in that city and other cites, not because of the
lack of human and Christian sympathy, but be
cause there is a lack of knowledge, and there is
this lack of knowledge because so few of the
liberal and the charitable make any personal in
vestigation in the field of human needs. There
fore charity sends forth in her own beautiful name
the requisition for the person of the giver. The
staff will not answer here. What is wanted is,
that the kindly, and loving, and giving soul, shall
itself go unto the discovery of the poverty which
it is so willing to receive. The result of this
shall be not only to protect charity from the
abuses which now discredit her fair fame and
spoil her usefulness, but will also quicken with
new enthusiasm her beautiful life. The first
requisition here issues in the name that is rever
enced" by all mankind, the name of charity, the
sweet daughter of God.
A second requisition for the person of the
good-doer issues in the name of faith, of faith
that through all the days of time walks our earth
as charity's twin sister. That men may see your
good works, and — what ? Do what ? Rejoice in
your benefactions ? Come unto comfort and con-

THE STAFF METHOD 13
fidence through your kindness and help ? Lift up
their praises to crown your head ? No ; not any of
these things. That " men . . . may see your good
works, and glorify your Father which is in
heaven " ; that men may see your goodness and
believe in the infinite goodness. This faith-pro
ducing power is the crowning glory of human
beneficence. To teach men God — to lead them
unto the belief of the divine — this is the finest
inspiration, and this the richest reward that waits
for and crowns the serving life. For consider
that the hungry body that is to-day fed, and the
naked one that is to-day clothed, will soon pass
beyond the possibility of these sensations — lie as
so much dust in a little grave, to be hungry or cold
no more. The mind that to-day wanders in dark
ness will soon break through its unfriendly barriers
into the eternal light. The heart that aches to
day and breaks to-day passes quickly forward
unto the end of its woe. " There the wicked
cease from troubling ; and there the weary are at
rest." The starving mother who, in the year 1 890,
with her baby in her arms threw herself off the
Hoboken dock, to-day can look back and say,
" It was a grim moment for baby and me, that
splash and clasp of the dark waters — but that was
all over long ago." No, not in any end bound up

14 THE STAFF METHOD
with the life of this mortal body, not in any mo
mentary relief from sentient suffering can be
found the highest motive and the enduring re
ward of human beneficence. This fact makes the
giving of self an indispensable condition of true
Christian service. The man of the world, after
he has grown enormously rich, writes out his
check for a Free Library, or a University Pro
fessorship, or a magnificent church edifice. But
this act of his has little power to convince a self
ish and unbelieving world. Men will say that this
is only so much restitution. They will scoff at the
act as an offered atonement — an attempt, through
the use of a moiety of selfishly acquired riches,
to purchase standing here and a place in heaven.
In the sense of which we are speaking no
money gift can reach unto the supreme end of
human service, for it does not certify the exist
ence of disinterested love. As James Russell
Lowell has strongly said, the only conclusive evi
dence of a man's sincerity is that he gives him
self. Words, money, all things else, are easily
given. But when a man makes a gift of himself
it is plain to all that the truth has taken posses
sion of him. When Governor Washburne, of
Massachusetts, found time in, or took time from,
his official duties weekly to visit the sick and the

THE STAFF METHOD 15
poor of his native village, kindly to speak to and
to pray with them, he thus brought the Divine
love into the sphere of their vision — he thus led
them in the direction of faith by the sweet per
suasion of a Power which human nature is unable
to resist.
We may as well recognize the fact, my fellow-
men, that a new day in the history of the world is
upon us. Do you say it is a very restless, selfish,
lawless, devilish day ? Yes, no doubt it is some
thing of all of these. Nevertheless it is with us this
day and we are in it — a day when the unfortunate
and the poor and the suffering can no longer be
persuaded nor charmed unto patience and content
ment by the promise of a future heaven. The
poor and the ignorant, the anarchistic and malig
nant, lift up their voice, and this voice is the roar
of the wild beast, crying out, " We demand a
portion of this world also." Now it is a vain
attempt to pacify the hunger of this fierce cry by
feeding out to it loaves of bread in the fashion of
ancient Rome, or bundles of secondhand cloth
ing, or even the checks of rich men. These will
be received, but while they are being used the
givers will be cursed with curses deep and bitter.
There is no God in this form of beneficence, no
God for those who need Him most. There is not

16 THE STAFF METHOD
the demonstration of disinterested love within it.
No, the staff of indirection, of arm's-length ser
vice, of proxy virtue meets not, serves not, the
great need of our day. The wild, restless, bitter
unbelief of this day calls for personal contact —
for the life and the hope which can be begotten in
the hearts of the embittered and despairing by
the breeding of personal interest and personal
service — by that personal presence in earth's
desolate field which shall illuminate the truth
that the served and the servants are brothers,
the children of a Father who is in heaven.
The second requisition issues in the name
of the lost faith which is humanity's supremest
need. A third requisition here issues in the name
of the spiritual necessity of the giving life. Upon
every side of us hundreds of human bodies are
suffering from the lack of exercise. So hundreds
of souls in the Christian communion are suffering
from the lack of that personal effort which is the
soul's best exercise. They hire the minister ; they
hire the missionary ; they hire the charity agent ;
they send a substitute for the Sunday-school, and
so attempt to take all their spiritual exercise by
proxy. The result of this is seen upon every side
of us, in an uninterested and uninfluential Chris-

THE STAFF METHOD i;
tian profession. How comparatively few of its
members retain a lively concern in the affairs
and the work of the church ! How few of them
are as strong in faith and as zealous of good
works and as well-informed concerning the mis
sionary work of the church as they were in the
first years of their Christian life ! One cause
of this anaemia and lassitude, it cannot be doubted,
is to be found in their attempt to take their spirit
ual exercise through the minister, through the
missionary, through the agent, and through the
check book. This proxy method empties the
heart of its interest, and so leaves the life an
easy prey for capture by the world. Now, per
sonal work in the moral field would prevent all
this. It would, first of all, widen the horizon
of the individual life, so ennobling it. It is
nothing less than a measureless pity that a wo
man who has been in discipleship to the Son of God
for ten, twenty, forty years should to-day have
nothing to talk about save her personal ailments
and the trouble she has with her domestics. It is a
great shame that a man who for one or two score
years has been a confessed follower of Jesus Christ
— of that Christ all of whose thoughts and words
were world-wide — should to-day have his conver
sation and his interest bounded bv his shop. Per,

1 8 THE STAFF METHOD
sonal effort in the service of human need will
prevent this narrowing and shallowing — this dwarf
ing of the human life. It will lead the individual
up into an exceeding high mountain, from which he
shall see that which is the only truly great entity of
time, and, it may be, of the created universe, the
flashing and the sweep and the roar of the great sea
of humanity. It will introduce him to a brother
hood in the presence of whose pitiful need and
tremendous interests the little ego shall cease
from its tiny self-consciousness. It will widen the
horizon of daily thought ; inspire with nobler
sympathies ; dignify with higher purposes ; and
so insure the individual development of the
worthier kind — prove the liberal education of the
spirit. This is a University Extension course
within the reach of the humblest human life.
The third requisition issues in the name of in
dividual need.
The fourth requisition issues in the name
of the personal God and of the personal Jesus,
God's manifestation in human form. The di
vine knowledge of all the creatures of His
hand is individual. When the Creator looks
over the heavens, the work of His hands, He
does not say, " Behold a field of flying worlds " ;
rather these are His words ; " Lift up your eyes

THE STAFF METHOD 19
on high, and behold who hath created these things,
that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth
them all by names . . for that He is strong
in power; not one faileth." And not other
wise is it in the field, the vast field, of human
life. We speak of classes and masses. The di
vine knowledge makes use of no such raw and
clumsy phrases. The Infinite Father knows the
swarming millions of humanity as His individual
children. He calls them by their name. He
numbers the hairs of their heads. He has a
bottle of remembrance for each one of their tears.
He does not simply say, " Behold two sparrows !"
but this rather, — one sparrow that shall fly and
one that shall fall. God manifest in the flesh,
behold how truly, how beautifully personal He
was in all His relations with the human life — how
He talked and blessed and saved by personal con
tact. The poor blind beggar's cry even He will
not answer by proxy or indirection. Not to any
one of his nearest attendants will He say, " Go
and see what it is that that beggar wants." Nay,
but He stops ; He Himself responds to the pitiful
cry ; with His own voice He asks, " What wilt
thou ?" Then listen to Him as He talks with
Peter. How well He knows the eccentric dis
ciple! How personal is His service of that dis-

20 THE STAFF METHOD
ciple's need ! Behold Him as He receives the
head of the loving John upon His bosom. How
true, how tender, His personal relations with this
individual man !
Now, shall any one essay to honor or to con
tinue this personal ministration of the Divine
Lord through and by means of impersonal ser
vice, by the staff method ? Will you hire a sub
stitute and send this substitute to take your
place by the side of such a Leader ? Will you
send a check as your only response, as your
recognition of this example of personal service
and personal love ? Oh ! if you do, it will be a
shame unto you — a shame that shall one day flush
your cheek with an intolerable burning. Oh, yes !
hire a substitute for the day when the life of your
fatherland hangs in the balance of the bloody
battle ; bid a servant answer the letter that has
come from your lover; send a check unto the
sorrow and loneliness of your mother ; but do not
think of putting off the Christ, who loved you and
gave Himself for you, with any form of response
that does not include your loyal, loving, personal
service. In the direction of this personal service lies,
believe me, your finest earthly opportunity ; your
superior joy, and your richest reward. Oh, ye

THE STAFF METHOD 21
self-complacent men of bank, of office, and of
store ; ye children also of ease, of fashion, and of
wealth, who vainly imagine that ye are dealing
with the great things of this world, while ye turn
over your Christ and your human brother to the
substitute and to the machine, brush the scales
from your eyes, unlearn your delusion before the
sun of your earthly opportunity goes down in the
night in which no man can work ! Oh, ye helpers,
ye teachers, ye missionaries, ye who are dealing
with souls, and sometimes discouraged with a
humility that disparages your work, this day also
do ye repent of your unworthy shame and take
unto your hearts the assurance that the mightiest
issues of earth are those which ye are daily hand
ling — that the highest form of man's earthly life is
that which is disclosed in the personal service of
the needy human soul !
" And Gehazi came back to his master, saying,
The child is not awaked. Master, the child is not
awaked." My fellow-men, the dead child before us is the
heart's lost faith, the world's lost hope. And this
machinery cannot give back. This the staff in
the hand of a servant cannot quicken. This
neither the written check nor the proxy hand can
re-bestow. This lies dead until life is breathed

22 THE STAFF METHOD
into it by the living and loving spirit of the serving
brother life.
My Christian friend, permit me to give you a
personal introduction to your human brother who
has need of you. Send him not your proxy, not
the agent, not the check, but go yourself. So you
will fill out the sweetest and the noblest obligation
resting upon your earthly life. The love of your
Father who is in heaven, and the need of your
fellow-man who is on the earth — these two,
through all the weary centuries of time, blend
their deepest significance and their truest pathos
in the words of this- one voice : We seek not yours,
but you.

II
THE DIVINE-HUMAN FACE

II
THE DIVINE-HUMAN FACE
" The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." — 2 Cor. iv : 6.
Glory is excellence in manifestation. The
glory of the sun is in his out-streaming rays.
The glory of nature is the beauty of the earth
shown in mountain and valley, in lake and river,
in forest and prairie. It is the gold of the flaming
sunset; it is the silver gleam of the glancing
river ; it is the spotless ermine of the everlasting
mountains. So the glory of God is the divine excellence
streaming forth in rays of moral splendor. The
heavens declare the glory of God ; and in the
text it is declared that this glory shines in the face
of Jesus Christ. Just as we might say the glory
of day is in the face of the sun, the glory of night
outrays from moon and star, so the Apostle,
enlightened by the Divine Spirit, looks upon the
face of Jesus of Nazareth and cries : " Behold the
25

26 THE STAFF METHOD
glory of God ! Behold the manifestation of the
Divine Excellence ! "
The face of a man differs from every other part
of the body in its superior power to express the
life which is within the man. I say superior
power, for every portion of the body possesses
this attribute in a greater or less degree. Put the
same garment successively on two different per
sons, and you will get widely different results.
The form, the carriage, the characteristics of the
body will strike through this covering. Leanness
and fleshiness, grace and awkwardness, energy
and languor, the stooping body and the erect
form, will be clearly seen through the garments
that shape themselves to the form which they
enrobe. So human bodies disclose their individ
uality despite the art of costumer and tailor.
Now going a little deeper into these concentric
layers that we call a human life, we come unto
the Kody which the spirit wears for its vesture,
even as the body wears the garments of which we
have spoken ; and no more than the outer does
this inner conceal the life which it covers.
Look at the Frenchman's shoulders ! His
inner life bubbles up through them, even as the
life of the boiling kettle bubbles up through the
palpitating lid. Then there are the foot, the wrist,

THE DIVINE-HUMAN FACE 27
the neck, the contour and pose of the head, all of
them voiceful of the inner life. Naturalists are
able, from a single tibia, to construct the whole
animal frame. Give them this one bone, and,
upon it and round it, they will build up the body
to which it belonged— to which it must have
belonged. So might the anthropologist well-
nigh construct the human mammal from the wrist
bone or the cervical anatomy, — so instinct with
individuality, so voiceful of the inner life, is every
part of the human body.
But none of them is so much so as the face.
When you would surely know whether a man is
angry you do not look upon his back, or his
hands, or his feet, but you look into his face.
This is where the anger flashes out; this is the
glass that is discolored by the vile breath of the
soul ; this is the shining disk over which moves
the dark shadow of the eclipse ; this is the limpid
fountain that is muddied with passion's precipitate.
So also with joy. This too leaps from the
heart into the face illuminating all its features.
So also with sorrow. What a difference there
is between the face of a sad, and the face of a
joyous spirit ! What two unlike pictures of a
soul are given us in the faces of a crying and a
laughing child! And states of the heart more

28 THE STAFF METHOD
permanent than the emotions find their expres
sions also in the face. Anxiety etches itself into
the features ; purity and impurity, benevolence and
scorn, humility and pride, peace and unrest grow
into engraver's lines upon its surface. So the
face changes with the changes that go on within
— now hardening, now softening, now laughing,
now crying as the April day. If only we had the
right kind of a microscope we might read in the
face the whole history of the life — spelling out
such words as these : success, failure, gentleness,
scorn, sorrow, joy, peace, unrest, hope, fear — the
very life of the soul. Hence, when we would
begin the study of a man, if we have the oppor
tunity, we always turn our eyes upon his face.
So let us at this time study the face that Jesus
Christ turned upon this world, the face in which
shone the glory of God. This let us do in order
that we, coming to know what is the true glory
of rational life, may be changed into the same
image, even as by the Spirit of the Lord, or if
not so much as this, yet at least that we may be
made ashamed of some of the faces that we have
turned upon the world, and which now, alas for
us, are hung up in the gallery of the universe — in
the rogue's gallery, some of them.
At the time in which Jesus lived, the publicans

THE DIVINE-HUMAN FACE 29
were so many outcasts, political and social. In
addition to being tax-collectors, they were the
collectors of the taxes that the Roman Govern
ment had imposed. So they were doubly odious
— odious because they were always raking in the
money, and abominably odious because they col
lected this money for a foreign and a hated power;
and being reckoned a degraded class, they
became degraded. For it is hard, as Robertson
has well said, for any man to live above the moral
standard assigned to him by the community.
The first step downward is to sink in the estima
tion of others ; the next and fatal step is to sink
in one's own estimation. The value of reputation
is, that it pledges a man to be what he is taken
for. It is indeed a fearful thing for a man to have
no character to support — nothing to fall back
upon in the hour of fierce assault, nothing to keep
him up to himself in the day when the deadly
simoom of temptation blows across his life.
Now the publicans had no character. They
were outcasts from Jewish society, looked upon
as vile and degraded by the community in which
they lived. The religious classes, especially the
Pharisees, particularly detested and avoided them.
Well, one day after Jesus had begun His walks
among men, it happened that His path led Him

30 THE STAFF METHOD
in the direction of one of these publicans who
was sitting at the receipt of custom, engaged in
his nefarious work of raking in the taxes.
The meeting is inevitable. Jesus and the pub
lican must see each other. What shall be the
nature of this congress, what the result ? With
what glance will Jesus regard, what face will He
turn upon the publican ? The moment is a
critical one, pent with an influence which shall
tell upon all the ages, for the new man, the Lord
from heaven, is walking toward the barrier set up
by human society. What shall be the issue ?
Will He stop before reaching it — cowardly re
versing His course? Will He gently and deftly
curve His pathway round it, as not many genera
tions ago some teachers of religion were accus
tomed to get round the slave pen and the human
auction block ? Or will He break through it ?
The moment is critical. Humanity's second
Head, the new man from heaven, is walking
toward the human life which this world has
stamped " outcast." Will Jesus dare to recognize
this life ? Will He deign to interest Himself in it
— to hope for it ? With your own eyes and ears
get the answer to these questions. For look !
Jesus continues straight forward. Now He is
even before the publican. See ! He stops. He

THE DIVINE-HUMAN FACE 31
turns His face upon the publican. He speaks
and the words that we hear are these : " Come,
follow me " ; and that same night Jesus accepts
an invitation to dine at the publican's house.
Such was the meeting of the new Life of the
new world with the outcast life of the old world.
Such was the face that Jesus turned upon the
man whom both society and the church had
excommunicated. It was a face of sympathy
and hope, of sympathy with and hope for a pub
lican. Such then, my fellow-men, is the glory of
God. What, do you ask ? Interest in a human
life though the world treats it as refuse. To see
manhood and divinity and hope in an outcast of
earth. To lift up into companionship with Him
self a social pariah — this is the glory of God,
this is the outraying excellence of Deity, this is
the outstreaming splendor of infinite Being, for
this is that which shone in the face that Jesus
turned that day upon the man who was a
publican. Take another incident — look upon another of
the faces which Jesus turned upon this world.
One day, during the press of His public duties,
among those who sought the presence of Jesus
were a number of parents who brought their

32 THE STAFF METHOD
children with them, that the Saviour might place
His hands, in blessing, upon the heads of the
little ones. The disciples of the Lord, imagining
themselves to have their Master in charge, and
not willing that His time should be taken up with
such petty cares, rebuked the solicitous parents.
" For shame," they cried, " do you not see that
the Master's time is all required for duties of the
largest and most important character? How
then can you be so thoughtless as thus to intrude
upon Him ? Would you have Jesus waste His
time upon children ?"
Jesus, listening, hears these words of His dis
ciples, and at once breaks in upon them with
this voice : " Suffer the little children to come
unto me, and forbid them not." Then turning to
the little ones, and reaching forth His arms He
cries, "Come," and as they run unto Him, He
takes them up in His arms, puts His hands upon
them* and blesses them.
My hearers, the picture is not dim unto this
day nor is its central figure indistinct. Across the
field of nineteen centuries, see it — Jesus holding a
little child in His arms. Some of us have known
hours when, with tear-filled eyes, we could see
nothing else save this picture — the Saviour lifting
up the little one from our arms unto His, Again,

THE DIVINE-HUMAN FACE 33
to-day, I would have you look upon it — for it is
beautiful. Behold that face which Jesus turns upon the
child within His arms! See you the light that
is in it? That is the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ.
Let me ask you, Who is your God ? What is
He ? The Being whose glory fills the heavens
above, whose majestic splendor is reflected from
those myriad suns, which along the paths of the
infinite field lead forth their glorious train ? Think
you of Him only as the mighty One, who upon
that far distant and shadowy throne executes the
purpose of an infinite will — electing unto life, re
probating unto death, stretching out over im
mensity the scepter of an unchangeable and
omnipotent decree ? The glory of God in your
eyes, is it only the resplendent shining of that
august and sovereign throne ? Or a thousandfold
worse is this phrase — the glory of God— only an
empty form of words, with which you have been
accustomed to round out the sentence in the
stereotyped prayer ? Ah ! I bid you see this
glory made real before your eyes, brought near
unto human vision, made plain and simple unto
human intelligence. The light in Jesus' face as
He looks upon the little child in His arms — that
3

34 THE STAFF METHOD
is the glory of God, and neither Orion nor the
Pleiades shows forth this glory better.
Cast your eyes over the world. Wherever you
see a human face beaming in gentleness and love
upon a little child — there is the glory of God
before your very eyes. Wherever you see a
human face scowling upon the child life, though
this face belongs to one who has been years here
praying that he might live to the glory of God, be
sure that this prayer has been of words only and
that it is yet unheard in the realms above.
But pass to another incident, to look upon
another face which Jesus turned upon this world
in which we live.
A certain Pharisee besought the Saviour to
dine with him, and Jesus went in and sat down to
meat. And when the Pharisee saw it he mar
veled that Jesus had not first washed before
dinner. And this was the face that Jesus turned
upon him : " Woe unto you, Pharisees ! for ye
tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and
pass over judgment and the love of God." " Woe
unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye
make clean the outside of the cup and of the
platter, but within they are full of extortion and
excess. . . . Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers,
how can ye escape the damnation of hell ? "

THE DIVINE-HUMAN FACE 35
Such was the terrible face that Jesus turned
upon Phariseeism ; and this is still before the
world and for our observation and study to-day.
The best that can be said of the God who is set
forth by many religious teachers of our day is
that He is a goodish old Father who loves all the
children of men. He would, it is true, prefer that
these children should obey Him ; but, if not, He
will make all necessary allowances, putting up
with whatever of recognition and loyalty they are
willing to bestow upon Him. Now, concerning
this sentimental Deity, this must be said first of
all. He is despicable even in the eyes of those
who have made Him. The Jove of the mythical
world was the thunderer; his hands were filled
with flaming bolts. He stood for strength, for
power, for grandeur of being. His name was
coherence for his mighty realm, and the roll of
his chariot wheels was the glory of his kingdom.
Mythology at least made its god respectable in
the eyes of his subjects. But the dilettantism of
some modern pulpits paints the great Jehovah as
an enthroned emotion, a doting old Father, a
King — if He can be called a King — who if placed
upon an earthly throne would nauseate His realm
and vex it with innumerable ills.
I tell you, my fellow-men, this old and wicked

36 THE STAFF METHOD
world, these vast cities upon its surface, raging
with iniquity and as impure as hell, demand a God
of justice and of strength, an actual ruler to sit
upon the throne of the heavens. Every virtuous
mind, too, craves such a God. Judgment and
justice, let these be the habitation of His throne;
terrible things in righteousness, let these be the
thunders of His mighty realm. So prays every
pure and noble spirit.
Again, it must be said of this God of the
modern amenities that He is not the One whose
glory shines in the face upon which we have just
looked. " Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers,
how can ye escape the damnation of hell ? " It is
the glory of the true God, that when there is need
He can shoot such thunderbolts as these. Against
Phariseeism and hypocrisy, and all falsehood, all
sham and cant, and lying formality, the glory of
Gpd (oh ! let the earth give thanks) shows as a
consuming fire. This face of Jesus Christ, I
beseech you, look well upon it. Its indignation
leaps forth as the lightning from the livid cloud !
Its words are the thunders of eternal righteous
ness, reverberating over the head of defiant and
shameless sin ! All this that you see and feel
— all this splendor of terribleness — is the glory

THE DIVINE-HUMAN FACE 37
of God raying forth upon the world, the glory
of God focused in a human face.
Yet once again I would have you look
upon the face of Jesus as it is turned upon our
world. A poor guilty woman — guilty as only
woman can be — lies crouching in the dust at the
Saviour's feet. Friend she has none ; hope she
has none. The angry crowd surges up to the
prostrate form, panting, ravenous for blood. Jesus
is silent. We cannot even see His face this
moment, for it is bent upon the ground upon
which He is writing with His finger. It is the face
of the new man, the Lord from heaven — what is in
it ? It is a face which shall never fade from earth's
vision — what is in it? It is the face in which
shines the glory of God — what shall we see in it
when it is raised ? Indifference? Disgust? Con
tempt? Anger? Wait a moment ! There now,
Jesus moves ; He lifts his head. Oh, see that
face ! How different from any face in the im
patient and ravening crowd ! How different from
any face which the world had ever seen before !
What tenderness is in it ! What love ! What
serene calmness ! What courage for pity and for
giveness ! Then, while we look, this face melts
into speech, and these are its words, " Neither do
I condemn thee : go, and sin no more." This

38 THE STAFF METHOD *
the glory of God ? Why, then, those holy
Pharisees had not known God ! This the glory
of God ? Why, then, there are self-styled wor
shipers of God upon every side of us who do
not know Him. This the glory of God ? Then
what must be said of many circles of earth's good
society ? Why, that their glory is the glory, not
of God, but of devils !
But look once more, and upon another face
which Jesus turned upon our world. For long
hours now He has been exposed to taunt and
ridicule. He has been buffeted, smitten in the
face, spit upon, and crowned in mockeiy with
thorns. And now the culmination has come.
Wicked hands have lifted Him to the Cross and
nailed Him there, and, their horrid task accom
plished, His executioners now sit down at the foot
of the Cross to divide His raiment among them.
It is at this juncture that Jesus turns His eyes
upon them. Behold this face, and scan it well !
for here again you shall behold the glory of God.
Remember, it is a face which out of its own mortal
agony looks down upon His executioners. What
is in the face ? Revenge ? Wrath ? Flaming
indignation? Let it speak its own meaning;
" Father, forgive them ; for they know not what
they do."

THE DIVINE-HUMAN FACE 39
The mad tragedy reels onward. Jesus has now
been for hours upon the Cross. The derisive
shout no longer falls upon His ears. The angry
crowd is tired, satiated. Jesus is dying; Jesus is
dying. But, as we stand waiting for the end, a
piteous entreaty falls upon our ears. It comes
not from the throng before the Cross, but from
one of the three crosses. It is from a dying thief,
who but a short time since had joined in the gen
eral reviling. Listen to his pitiful words : " Lord,
remember me when Thou comest into Thy king
dom." Jesus turns His eyes, rays of the divine
glory stream through His face and fall upon the
dying malefactor in this response : " To day shalt
thou be with Me in Paradise."
What is the lesson from it all ? Interest in man
as man apart from and independent of all external
circumstances — this is the glory of God. Interest
in and love for little children — this is the glory of
God. Burning wrath flaming out against all
hypocrisy — this is the glory of God. Pity and
forgiveness for the vilest outcast who will go and
sin no more — this is the glory of God. Mercy
and pardon ready to flow unto a dying criminal —
this is the glory of God. Look well, I pray you,
upon the faces ; live with them looking down
upon you — read the glory and learn your God.

40 THE STAFF METHOD
Only two or three brief inferences : —
First, the glory of God as it shines in the face
of Jesus Christ is excellence that approves itself
unto the human consciousness and which lies in
the path of human development. We are made
in the divine image, and there is not a face that
Jesus turned upon the world but we can easily
conceive of as belonging to a perfect man. Oh,
yes, it is true ! He is the model man, He is the
perfect man, He is the divine man, and He leads
in the direction of all true and beautiful develop
ment. Type and prophecy is He of the new race
which, in the regeneration, shall enter into ever
lasting possession of the new earth. Aye! the
day cometh — in God's Book it is written — when
every human face in the beautiful second order
shall shine with the glory that beamed from the
face of earth's Redeemer.
Second, the glory of God which many a
theological system and many a religious confes
sion exalts is only a caricature of the true glory.
Men have shut themselves up in monastic cells
for the glory of God. They have endured bodily
torture ; they have drunk the blood of heretics ;
they have reprobated earth's great majority, and
they themselves have professed a willingness to
be damned — and all for the glory of God ! And

THE DIVINE-HUMAN FACE 41
now ? Why proud faces, selfish and hard faces,
faces which are frowns at home and flints in the
world ; men who place money above conscience,
and women who would rather be society's elect
than heaven's — these all profess communion with
the Christ, and imagine they are showing forth
the glory of God !
Again, that shining face that we have looked
upon to-day is the goal which the Christian ought
to keep continually in view. By it he should test
his hope, and by it he should measure his prog
ress. We deal too much in abstractions. We
talk too much of a plan of salvation. We lay
too much stress upon one particular heart emo
tion or mental activity that we denominate faith,
and which on the principle of a quid pro quo is
in some mysterious way to avail for our future
welfare. Some Christians lift Jesus up out of
His own gospel — leaving only a "plan of salva
tion" behind. Some Christians lift up character
out of religion, leaving only churchmanship in its
place. My fellow-men, I warn you back this day
to the concrete. The only plan of salvation is the
loving, living Saviour, who is Jesus the Christ ;
and the only evidence that we have part or lot
in His salvation is found in our growing likeness
to Him.

42 THE STAFF METHOD
Therefore, I say, keep the face of Jesus daily
and distinctly before you. Let it be the ever-
shining goal of your hope and your endeavor.
But see to it that it is the face of the Jesus of the
Bible. Theology has pictured this face, but you
do not want her engraving — cold and hard.
Sentimentality has painted the face, but you do
not want her daub. What you need as your
inspiration, as your beacon light, as your shining
goal, is the original of the Bible gallery — the face
which was turned in sympathy and hope upon the
outcast publican ; which beamed with love upon
little children ; which beat down in blazing wrath
upon Phariseeism ; which looked love and spoke
forgiveness unto the dying thief — the original
face — this hang up before your life for its daily
rebuke and measureless inspiration.
But say you, " My heart is without admiration
for that face ! " Then woe are you in the universe
of God, for that face stands for divine beauty, is
the outraying of that character which alone is
blessed while eternity lasts. But say you : "It is
so far above me, I can never reach unto it; the
hard lines of my face I can never smooth and
round into those beautiful features." Ah ! I know
it. But a power is at hand to supplement your
weakness — the power of a divine regeneration.

THE DIVINE-HUMAN FACE 43
" For we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a
mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed
into the same image, from glory to glory, even
as from the Lord the Spirit."
Let us then study the face of Jesus Christ,
finding the correction of our errors of head, find
ing also all needed inspiration for the heart, in the
daily and diligent contemplation of that human
face in which shines the true glory of rational
being — through which God looks out upon us
and upon our world.
Now, I beg you, wait just a moment. Before
you go I desire to hang up these several faces
of Jesus in the room of your soul. The face
looking upon the degraded and outcast publican
I will hang yonder in the vestibule at the very
entrance. The face of Jesus looking upon the
little child which He holds in His arms I will
hang there above the mantel. The face of Jesus
turned upon Phariseeism I will hang opposite the
window yonder, in the strongest light of all. The
face of Jesus looking upon the woman who was
a sinner shall go in yonder quiet niche, that the
one who desires to study it may turn aside and
be alone. The face that Jesus from the cross
turned upon His executioners — this would better

44 THE STAFF METHOD
rest upon the easel, inviting daily and closest
examination. Now there is but one face left — the face with
which Jesus answered the prayer of the dying
criminal. Carry this, I pray you, in miniature
locket over your heart, for it is in strongest focus,
not only the glory, but the glory of the glory of
that God whose name is Love, and whose love is
the beautiful Hope of your soul.

Ill
THE SKEPTICISM OF PROMINENT
PEOPLE

Ill
THE SKEPTICISM OF PROMINENT PEOPLE
" Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little
child shall in no wise enter therein." — Luke xviii : 17.
Yet I think we are in danger of laying es
pecial emphasis upon their relation to religion,
of a mind and spirit in character the opposite, and
in position the antipodes of the child mind and
the child spirit. I refer to the importance which
is so generally attributed to the unbelief or skep
ticism of persons prominent in the world, promi
nent in letters, or science, or business, or society,
or politics. Now far be it from me to say that the
believing soul can remain altogether insensible
to the assaulting force of skepticism. I will not
even deny that there is much truth in honest
doubt, or that from this doubt there has not
broken forth much light for the service of the
world. All that I desire at this time to say unto
you, at the bidding of the text and for the reas
surance and comfort of your faith, is this : We
are in danger of attaching too much importance 47

48 THE STAFF METHOD
unto, and of laying too strong an emphasis upon,
the unbelief and irreligion of the world's promi
nent people.
I. Consider, first, that large knowledge in one
direction often exists with notorious ignorance
upon other subjects and along other lines of
thought. Yonder university has subdivided the
field of human knowledge into many sections,
assigning a specialist to each. Generally speak
ing, in his own particular branch too, the pro
fessor is somewhat of an authority. He is not
much, however, outside his own specialty. On a
question of Christian casuistry the opinion of the
mathematician has no especial value. This is be
cause he has not given attention to such matters ;
because he is not learned in this direction. On a
vexed question in the field of biology the astron
omer, however eminent, would not be taken as
authority. This is because he has not made bi
ology a study, because he has given little or no
attention to its mighty theories.
Humbler illustrations of this principle lie all
about us. There, side by side, are the offices
of lawyer and doctor. Both of these are now
called to the bedside of the dying man — the one
to make his will, the other to prescribe for his
suffering body. Suppose, now, that these two

SKEPTICISM OF PROMINENT PEOPLE 49
men, through some mistake, were made to change
places — the doctor being called on to construct the
legal paper and the lawyer to write out the Latin
prescription. Do you not see how ignorant and
how helpless the men would be, and this no
matter how proficient each of them may be in his
own calling ? This is because the men are out of
their spheres. The doctor can easily and confi
dently guide unto the condition where wills must
be made. That is his business. The lawyer can
take the man from the hand of the physician (not
his affair to know how he came there) and iron
clad his pleasure concerning the estate which he
is to leave behind him.
So it is through all the industrial and professional
callings. Human strength is weakness; human
skill is ignorance outside of the narrow range of
a very small circle.
In a wider view, the same truth appears. Phi
dias was a wonderful sculptor. He could make
marble speak, but he himself could never have
spoken the Oration on the Crown. It required
a Demosthenes to do this. Raphael is a master
for all time in painting, but Raphael could not
sing what Dante sang. Mozart and Mendels
sohn — we bow to them in music, but we accept
not their dicta in political economy, or archi-
4

50 THE STAFF METHOD
tecture, or law. In these matters the opinions
of Adam Smith, and Christopher Wren, and
Blackstone are a thousandfold more valuable.
This principle brought thus clearly into view
is sadly transgressed when men of literature,
or science, or public life open their mouths to
speak upon the laws and verities of the spiritual
kingdom. Learned in other directions, they may
be, and often are, but as often are they ignorant
of religion and of all that pertains to it, and their
criticisms and conclusions are of no particular
value. Suppose that the professor has literally and for
all his life peered through the microscope ; that
he is an authority, and the highest one, in this
important subdivision of the kingdom of knowl
edge. But what qualification is this for a critic
or a prophet in the spiritual realm ? None what
ever. The famous microscopist makes a fool of
himself if he opens his mouth authoritatively on
spiritual matters. The spirit, whether divine or
human, the Christ, the spores of moral evil, the
movements of the conscience and the will — these
never come into view under the eye of the micro
scope, however much its power may be magnified.
The same may be said with reference to all
these attainments of the human mind that go

SKEPTICISM OF PROMINENT PEOPLE 51
under the name of scientific. Spirit cannot be
resolved, cannot be analyzed in the crucible of
the chemist. The human soul cannot be placed
in a glass jar and its operations watched, as the
cocoon is scrutinized and the law of the butterfly
laid down. The laws of moral influence and
moral inspiration cannot be figured out and
formulated as are the orbits of the planets. So
it is very possible for a man to be learned in the
movements of the heavenly bodies and yet blind
to the radiant footsteps of their Creator. A pro
fessor may know much of light and heat and
motion, and yet be utterly ignorant of the laws of
spiritual influence. A man may be able to con
struct a profound essay, to sing a beautiful poem ;
but these, his power and performance, qualify him
not at all to speak with any especial significance
upon the subjects of inspiration and prayer and
faith. We do learning or culture entirely too
much honor when we grant to them any especial
authority within the spiritual realm. The simple
truth is this : it matters little what a mathema
tician, or a chemist, or a biologist, or a litterateur,
as such, may think or may say of God and of
Christ, of sin and of immortality. To use a
homely phrase — these things are not in their line.
To them they have given no especial attention,

52 THE STAFF METHOD
and upon them they have no right to speak dic-
tatorially. With a question of health I will not go to the
lawyer; with a question of conscience I will not
go to the politician ; with a question of taste I
will not go to the rich parvenu ; and with a ques
tion about God, or Christ, or my soul, I will not go
to the man who is color-blind to the light which
shines in the face of Jesus Christ, and who has
never lifted a prayer to the God of heaven. Wise
he may be in some things, learned along certain
lines where I am ignorant, but ignorant also is he
upon larger and grander subjects, concerning
which I am sure that I know something.
II. But again and in this same connection I
consider a second general fact, viz., that the con
stituent entities of religion lie quite outside the
sphere of human discovery and so cannot be
reached by the process of human reason.
The truth here I can lift up before you in the
form of a picture. No doubt the astronomer,
through the telescope of yonder observatory, can
see farther into the heavens than can you with
the unassisted eye. But suppose the problem is
to discover and tabulate the flora of Sirius. Now
which is better, your eye or the astronomer's lens ?
Why, both are equally worthless. You must ex-

SKEPTICISM OF PROMINENT PEOPLE S3
claim, " My eyes cannot reach unto such objects
through such a distance." And the astronomer
must reply, " The telescope was not made to dis
cover lichens upon the surface of a world so far
removed." But even this is not a sufficiently
strong representation of the case. Imagination
can conceive of a telescope of such wondrous
power as even to fasten upon these humble
growths upon the rocks of the distant star. But
deity, but spirit, but heaven — all the objects of the
spiritual world — are not so related to the possibil
ity of vision. Let therefore the illustration be
changed. Be the problem to discover a spirit
upon the far distant shores of the mighty sun.
Now let the astronomer raise his telescope to the
skies, and you, your unhelped eyes. Can he see
farther than you ? But what of this ? Farther !
what does this signify when infinity still lies be
yond ? Farther ! what an idle world when the
invisible is to be discovered !
Do you not see that as to the end proposed
you and the astronomer are on a level ? And let
human learning stand for the telescope, and our
illustration is transposed into the key of the text.
In many directions it is granted that the great
man will see farther than you. Into matter and
its laws, into heat and light and motion, into the

54 THE STAFF METHOD
strata that make up the crust of the earth, into
the fauna and flora that are distributed upon its
surface — in all these directions the vision of the
learned man will outstrip yours. But let the
problem be the discovery, the vision of God, of
spirit, of the post-mortem state, and what shall
the philosopher do above and beyond you ? Is
he not, with all his learning, on a level with you
and your ignorance ? Most surely he is. And
there is ever so good an explanation of his limi
tation. Learning counts for nothing, science
counts for nothing here, because their methods
and processes cannot be transferred to the spir
itual realm. Induction is an absurdity where
observation is an impossibility. And this is the
case in the moral world. " God is the one whom
no man hath seen nor can see." Why, then, shall
we allow ourselves to be troubled by the skep
ticism of human learning? It has seen noth
ing of God which we have not seen. Nay, more.
It cannot come unto the sight of anything in the
spiritual realm, the vision of which is forbidden
to us.
All the things which are sought here are known
only as they are revealed to the spirit of a man.
And have we not spirits ? Can we not go unto
the Great Spirit ? Must we forsooth have mastered

SKEPTICISM OF PROMINENT PEOPLE 55
a few theories as to the origin and laws of matter ?
Must we know a few facts about light and heat
and electricity in order that we may be favorably
introduced to the Father of our souls, in order
that we may be qualified to receive spiritual im
pressions, to respond to the great influence of the
moral world ?
The supposition is absurd. As well say that
we must know Greek, or have made a million of
dollars, before God will hear us, or before we can
read His word. I tell you, my fellow-Christians,
the truth is self-evident. With reference to the
knowledge that buttresses the religious life, we
are on a level with the most prominent and the
most cultured. Revelation is an absolute neces
sity to us both. Without this the greatest man
is left in ignorance, and with it we know easily
as much as he.
III. But still farther, and in the same direction,
I must ask you to consider that the habits of
intellectual culture often have a strong tendency
to disqualify for the attainment of spiritual
knowledge. Every department of human knowledge has its
own proper and necessary condition. In the
sphere of the artist this condition is the love of
the beautiful, the inborn sense and faculty of taste.

56 THE STAFF METHOD
A mathematician might gaze on the landscape as
long and as faithfully as the artist, but he would
not see its beauty. This would be hidden from
him, because he has not conformed to the condi
tion upon which this beauty is revealed. This
law runs, too, through all the knowledges. The
poet can never enter into the kingdom of the
fixed sciences. He is disqualified by his mental
habits and by the very nature of his being. The
empirical student can see no beauty in the sweetly
singing lines of poetry. He would need to be
reborn in order to hear and feel this melody.
Now in keeping with this general law and under
its sway is the spiritual kingdom. The reception
of its truth also calls for, demands, a certain pre
requisite in the life of the learner. This is laid
down by the highest authority in such words as
these : —
". The secret of the Lord is with them that fear
Him." " To this man will I look, even to him that
is of a poor and of a contrite spirit."
" If any man will do His will, he shall know of
the doctrine."
" Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall
see God."
We see thus what is the condition that obtains

SKEPTICISM OF PROMINENT PEOPLE 57
and governs in the sphere of religious truth. It
is, as we would expect to find it — a moral one.
The dictum is : Bring to the study of spiritual
things a pure heart and an obedient life, and you
shall have good success. But this condition the
man of science often neglects, ignores. He will
take into the spiritual realm the methods and proc
esses of science. Instead of a pure and loving
heart, he brings the faculty of trained observation ;
instead of the obedient life, he comes for the con
quest armed with a keen and vigorous intellect.
All knowledge he cries is induction from obser
vation. Let me see, let me reason, let me dem
onstrate; and with this contemptuous disregard
of spiritual method he goes to work. He, for
sooth, will discover immortality in the structure
of the body — in the seat of a gland, in the con
volution of a nerve, in the arrangement of the
bioplastic atoms.
Of course, his end is failure. God is not so
found; nor spirit, nor immortality so demonstrated.
But most justly, the failure here, and any un
belief arising from it, may be set down as the
result of an unauthorized and a vicious method.
The man has stalked rudely and coarsely into the
spiritual world, as rudely and coarsely as if with
blare of trumpet, and helmeted head, and leveled

58 THE STAFF METHOD
spear he should break into nature's beautiful
works, to conquer landscape effects — so to woo
the goddess of beauty !
Professing himself to be wise he has become
a fool. So it was in Corinth and at Athens of
old. Paul's preaching was to them foolishness,
because it could not be run into the syllogism or
into the philosophy of the schools. But their
boasted wisdom is cast-off rubbish to-day, while
Paul's foolishness seems good for generations yet
to come.
But without further dwelling upon this point, let
me stop to ask, " When is the necessity of attach
ing any especial emphasis to the unbelief of human
learning ? " It does not adhere to the spiritual
method. The fundamental condition of spiritual
certitude it ignores. Much learning has brought
upon it, if not madness, yet a manner quite repel
lent to all spiritual verity. Be so wise then as
to save your fear for another and an entirely dif
ferent case.
Wait till there comes to you a pure and rever
ent spirit — I care not how humble or unlearned —
that can say, " I have loved, I have obeyed, I
have prayed, I have laid my heart open in the
simplicity of a little child— and still your God,

SKEPTICISM OF PROMINENT PEOPLE 59
your Christ, your immortal hope are as myths and
fables to my soul."
Before such a case as this, when it shall appear,
let your faith fear and betake itself to a reexam
ination of its defenses. But before the man who
has studied in a newspaper office and graduated
from a clubroom ; before the Ishmaelite who
parades the country over, for five hundred dollars
a night, caricaturing all great and sacred things ;
before the politician whose success has come
through the debasement of his better self and
nobler being ; before the professor of physics who
has not discovered the eternal Spirit as he might
a new line in the solar spectrum — before such as
these, possess your soul in patience and your faith
in confidence. Spiritual truth and spiritual hopes
have never promised themselves unto such seekers.
Such have, such get, what they desire. They
have their reward, but this reward is not any one
of the things that God has prepared for them that
love Him. To every knowledge is its own fixed
condition. You cannot see the odor of a rose.
You cannot weigh the glories of a sunset in a
grocer's scale. You cannot analyze the beauty of
a lily or violet. You cannot mathematically dem
onstrate the winsomeness and the worthiness of
virtue. So the things of God are not the product

60 THE STAFF METHOD
of human cerebration, but are His revelation unto
the humble and reverent spirit of His human
child. IV. But I must add yet again that we ought
not to allow ourselves to be greatly troubled by
the skepticism of prominent people, for the reason
that this unbelief may be punitive in its nature —
the penalty of a false and bad life.
In many parts of the Bible it is written down in
plainest words that light is withdrawn from those
who will not walk in it; that the cataract of
unbelief gathers over the eyes which will not
look upon truth when she stands radiant before
them. Listen to these words from the lips of
Jesus : " Walk while ye have the light, that dark
ness overtake you not. . . While ye have the
light, believe on the light, that ye may become
sons of light ; " and these other ominous words :
" Because they received not the love of the truth
. . . God shall send them strong delusion, that
they should believe a lie."
We have no reason to conclude that this law
is inoperative in our day. Inoperative? Why,
have we not with our own eyes seen cultured and
learned men turn away from the great, broad
teachings of Jesus Christ unto table tippings and
the materialization of spirits ? Have we not seen

SKEPTICISM OF PROMINENT PEOPLE 6i
men, wearing the laurels of science on their brows,
close their eyes to the glory of a personal Creator
and turn unto matter as holding within it the
promise and potency of every form of life ? Do
we not in this present day have before our eyes
the spectacle of men prominent in the world of t
law and letters, in pitiful bondage to a coarsely-
shrewd, and grotesquely -pretentious woman?
What is the explanation of all this — this of
great men showing themselves so little, this of
the unbeliever having become so credulous as to
hug to his bosom the most puerile nonsense?
Read the explanation in the great law of the
moral world to which I have referred.
What then shall we do ? What shall be our
attitude toward such skepticism ? Shall we refuse
to look upon the sun, because there are those
who have chosen darkness rather than light and
lost their sight by so doing? Because moral
law has visited its penalty of the darkened under
standing upon those who walked not in the light
when it was given them, shall we therefore turn
from the same light ?
Rather is there not just here a measureless
admonition that we should cleave unto the truth
which we know, and hasten to embody it in our
lives ? Carlyle, in speaking upon the law and the

62 THE STAFF METHOD
penalty here, quotes from the Koran this incident
of certain dwellers by the Dead Sea to whom
Moses was sent : " They sniffed and sneered at
the prophet, saw no comeliness in him, and so he
withdrew. But nature and other rigorous vorac
ities did not withdraw. When next we find these
dwellers by the Dead Sea they are, according to
the Koran, all changed into apes. By not using
their souls they lost them, and now their only
employment is to sit there and look out into the
dreariest and most undecipherable sort of a uni
verse. Only once in seven days do they remem
ber that they once had souls." And to this inci
dent the stern prophet of reality appends these
quaint and penetrating words : " Have you never,
my reader, in your travels fallen in with parties of
the tribe ? Methinks they have grown quite
numerous of late."
Oh, yes, numerous surely ! The foolish wise
man,*the believing unbeliever, credulous of the
flimsiest speculations and the crudest guesses,
swallowing readily the baldest contradictions of
soul-consciousness and spiritual intuition, willing
to take up with any " ism," no matter how absurd
— he is upon every side of us.
But wherever he appears, he is the embodied
penalty of moral law : one who has lost his soul

SKEPTICISM OF PROMINENT PEOPLE 63
by not using it : a living illustration of the great
truth that light cannot be scorned with impunity :
a moving statue of one who professing himself to
be wise has become a fool, and who is now com
pelled to and fro throughout the earth, that with
garrulous lips he may warn the truth-respecting
and the self-respecting soul from his own pitiful
doom. My fellow-Christians, it is the characteristic of
every age and of individual life to imagine that its
experience is peculiar. So strong and general is
this tendency, that an inspired apostle deemed
its correction nothing less than a comfort and an
inspiration. " Think it not strange," writes he,
" concerning the fiery trial which is to try you as
though some strange thing happened unto you."
And again he writes, " There hath no temptation
taken you but such as is common to man." And
so I say unto you to-day, you who are fighting
the good fight of faith, no strange thing has hap
pened unto you. You may be saying within your
self, " Science is arraying itself against religion ;
everywhere the banner of infidelity is being lifted
up — there never was such a day." But in this you
are mistaken. Listen to this voice from out St.
Peter's day : " Where is the promise of His com
ing? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things

64 THE STAFF METHOD
continue as they were from the beginning of the
creation." That is, the natural, that which we can
see, is all that we can know of. So agnosticism
is at least eighteen centuries old. Listen again as
Paul gives voice to a special danger of his day :
"They teach things which they ought not, for
filthy lucre's sake." There is your infidel lecturer,
your skeptical professor in the first century. And
again the same apostle writes to Timothy : " Keep
that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding
profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of
science falsely so called." There is scientific
skepticism nineteen hundred years deep in the
past. I tell you that every generation of Christians,
since the Cross ran red upon Calvary, has held
to faith against the same assaults that you feel and
fear to-day. If you cannot triumph over these
assaults, if you cannot hold on to faith against
these oppositions, then are you no true descend
ants of those who have entered into rest, and now
hang above you as a great cloud of witnesses.
And I beseech you, if your faith is growing
weak, if you feel that it is trembling before the
assaults of skepticism, seek not to bolster it up by
counter arguments. Turn rather from the un
worthiness in your life. Repent of your dis-

SKEPTICISM OF PROMINENT PEOPLE 65
loyalty to truth already known. Seek the true ;
love the pure ; do the good. Live nearer to Him
who is the truth. Open your heart to the inflow
ing of the divine Spirit. Show all reverence to
your spiritual intuitions. Plead the promise, " If
any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, and it
shall be given him."
So shall the great things of the spiritual world
daily become more certain to your soul ; so shall
profane and vain babblings cease to trouble you ;
so shall the scraps of human learning fall upon
your great certitude and cause not a tremor within
it ; and so with peace in the heart, along the path
that shines brighter and brighter, shall you pass
forward until the veil drops from your eyes and
you stand face to face with the solved mystery of
the universe. Do not imagine that the condition
here is some wonderful spiritual elevation. The
water-drop reflects the glorious sun, and so a
thought of tender love, so an act of gentle kind
ness may reveal the Infinite Goodness, and make
the whole spiritual universe real unto your soul.
Ye who would come unto a stronger faith, re
member that the sublime verities of the moral
world are hidden from the "wise and prudent."
Remember that a man may be over-smart, over-
wise toward God — so wise and so smart that
s

66 THE STAFF METHOD
loving Omniscience must abandon the hope of
teaching him. Remember also that childhood is
nearest to truth, and love, and God, and that into
the kingdom of heaven, easily and forevermore,
enters the one who becomes as a little child.

IV
JESUS' ROYAL GRANT TO THE
HUMAN HEART

IV
JESUS' ROYAL GRANT TO THE HUMAN HEART
" Be not therefore anxious for the morrow." — Matt, vi : 34.
At the very outset, and with all confidence, we
may say that the Saviour does not issue this
injunction against prevision, against the anticipa
tion of the future by which man seems to be
distinguished from the brutes that perish. Faith,
which is fundamental in religion, is the substance
of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen. " By faith, Noah being warned of God of
things not seen as yet, prepared an ark." " By
faith, Abraham when he was called to go out into
a place which he should afterwards receive for an
inheritance, obeyed ; and he went out not know
ing whither he went." One of the most charac
teristic and general confessions of the Christian
centuries has its expression in these words, " We
walk by faith, not by sight." Jesus' own admoni
tions, and exhortations, and teachings, even the
solemnest of them, reach out unto and take hold
of the future, finding in this future both their
69

¦jo THE STAFF METHOD
justification and their emphasis. Yes, surely re
ligion is a dealing in moral futures ! And we can
not believe that the great Teacher, with one voice
fixes our attention upon the future, and with
another voice bids us forget that future. He does
not with one hand burn the morrow into our souls,
and with the other shut it out from our thoughts.
No ! the injunction of the text is not against pre
vision, not against the anticipation of the future,
but against anxiety, against gnawing, weakening,
distressing care.
This injunction also is issued only to a certain
kind or type of human life.
Will you go to the man who is giving way to
the passion for strong drink and say, " Be not
anxious for the morrow " ? To the man who is
living beyond his means and embezzling money
to keep up the vicious and pitiful display, will you
go and say, " Be not anxious for the morrow " ?
Why, both of these classes and all their kindred
ought to be full of anxiety for the future. So not
to the human life which is forgetting God and
restraining prayer and neglecting duty; not to
the one who is living the mere sense life, as if
there was no such thing as responsibility, or sin,
or judgment, or God, not to such a type of life
does Jesus ever say, " Be not anxious for the

ROYAL GRANT TO THE HUMAN HEART 71
future " ; but to the reverent, the thoughtful, the
conscientious, to the man who is doing the best
he knows, to the life which is purposely and
lovingly a child of the Great Father — to this one
the voice of Jesus comes evermore in the shape
of these beautiful words, " Be not anxious for the
morrow." But how shall we come to heed this injunction
of our Lord ? How shall we come to face, and
to make continual approach to the type of life
that its words disclose and authorize ? What is
the basis, standing upon which, we may intelli
gently and hopefully strive to come unto faith of
soul, calmness of life, and trust for the future ?
Some exclusions must be made here, and those
without hesitation.
First, will-power. It is vain to say, " I will not
worry." This for two reasons. The will has no
such power over the heart, and this power, what
ever its strength to-day, may itself be undermined
and fall into a pitiful weakness. Neither can we
successfully address ourselves to the life-lesson
set before us by the Saviour under the direction
of youth and health. The strength of to-day
may vanish in the sickness of to-morrow, and
youth is an unreliable confidence, an ally whose
forces are continually deserting us. Neither can

72 THE STAFF METHOD
earthly abundance help us greatly here. Money
cannot feed the heart with peace even when it is
with us, and we know that it cannot go with us
into many of the morrows which shall be most
prolific of anxiety. What power shall money
have to serve us in the morrow of sorrow? in
the morrow of pain? in the morrow of world-
leaving? in the morrow of judgment?
If then these exclusions and all similar ones
must be unhesitatingly made, what is left us as
preparation for obedience to the injunction of the
Saviour ?
Simply this : We must have in full and forceful
heart-possession the conviction which warrants
the banishment of anxiety. This is made up of
two parts — the one, a fact which we all do know
and which Jesus lifted up into unfading light, and
the other the truth which He came into the world
to reveal and to teach. This fact is the impotency
of man ; this truth is the love of God. Our hope
then, and our only hope, of coming unto the life,
the blessed life unto which Jesus calls, lies in our
realization of these two great laws :
First, the helplessness of man over the morrow.
Secondly, the love of God that embosoms this
morrow. Now let me serve you as best I may in this

ROYAL GRANT TO THE HUMAN HEART 73
hour, by echoing within your ears and hearts the
voices with which Jesus teaches these two great
conditions of the trustful and happy life.
Listen, first of all, to His voice as He sets forth
the pitiful impotency of man :
" Which of you by taking thought can add one
cubit unto his stature ? " " If ye then be not able
to do that thing which is least, why take ye
thought for the rest ? " Dwell, I pray you, for a
moment upon this declaration, if so be it may
sink into your heart with its blessed power of
emancipation and of trust.
The helplessness of the human life in relation
to the future is so complete as to be fairly pitiful.
It reaches even unto the extent of absolute igno
rance of this future. " For ye know not what
shall be on the morrow." How then can you
prepare for the unseen ? How can your anxiety
set in order that which is and must remain abso
lutely unknown? The curtain may rise upon a
scene of joy or upon a scene of sorrow : upon
health or upon sickness : upon the bountiful frui
tion of your dearest hopes or upon these hopes
withered and scattered as so many autumn leaves.
It may rise upon a scene in which success shall
sit at her ease while the golden horn of plenty
empties itself into her overflowing lap, or it may

74 THE STAFF METHOD
rise upon a scene of poverty, bare and bleak, swept
by biting winds and overhung with wrathful
clouds. What now ? Shall your soul consume
itself with anxiety over the to-morrow which
may come to mock all your anticipations ? Shall
you prepare for adversity, when in the book of
the future, prosperity is written over against your
name ? Shall you arrange a bottle for your tears,
when God intends that you shall laugh instead ?
Oh, how many human lives have prepared for a
future which they never were to see ; arranged
for the crossing of bridges unto which they never
were to come ; laboriously planned for the rolling
away of stones, which they were to find, when
they came up to them, already rolled away ! How
many have anticipated with anxiety the days and
the cares of old age when it was written in God's
book that they should die young ! How many
have fretted their souls over coming poverty, and
with fingers of borrowed care have raveled out
the beautiful garment of present happiness, when
heaven's voice had said of the future, Let it
bring them riches ! What a countless number
of parents have worried themselves over the fu
ture settlement of their children, have fed their
souls with increasing anxiety as to what their
children would do when bereft of parental love

ROYAL GRANT TO THE HUMAN HEART 75
and care, when it was God's purpose all the
while to take the children first ! What numbers
throughout the world have looked forward to and
laid their plans for the quiet evening of life when
business should be laid aside and all its rasping
cares dismissed, and then have dropped dead in
the harness, its galls and abrasions so many run
ning sores upon all their being !
It is surely one of the most solemn and pathetic
thoughts which can enter the mind of man that
a very large if not the greater part of the suffer
ing of human hearts has been over things that
never were to be — has been trouble borrowed in
view of imaginary days and imaginary dangers.
I can see him now — the rich fool as he starts
forth from the canvas of the Great Master. He
is in great perplexity of mind over what he shall
do with his ripening fruits and increasing goods.
Even his present abundance he could not enjoy,
so full was he of anxiety over the new barns that
were necessary for the garnering of his increasing
wealth. O fool, fool, — for such the world will
ever call thee, — thou art giving thyself trouble
over a future which thou shalt never see ! Thou
art saying what thou wilt do, how thou wilt meet
thy coming days when from the lips of Him in
whose hands thy breath is, there has already gone

76 THE STAFF METHOD
forth the word, " This night thy soul shall be re
quired of thee."
I see those others also — a moving, flying pict
ure of the same truth. As the train dashes on
ward, how many hearts within it are full of anxiety
for the morrow ! " If my health should continue to
grow worse," says one within his heart, " I shall be
obliged to give up my business, and then what will
my poor family do ? " Another is fearing and
troubled lest the sickness of his wife should prove
fatal and he be left with motherless children to care
for. Still another is in distress for fear the invest
ment which is all his fortune shall prove unsound
and he be left in poverty and want.
So throughout the train — anxiety for the mor
row fills human hearts, furrows human faces, when
suddenly a lurch, a plunge, a crash, a mass of
dying groans, and a score of these anxious human
souls, are flying Godward, all thoughts of earth's
to-morrow forever out of their minds.
This also is true. The future may be much
brighter than the anxiety of human hearts depicts.
You who fear an early death may see your four
score years. Health may be waiting for you who
fear a lifelong invalidism. The difficulties which
you think you see in your future pathway may be
only clumps of mist which will resolve themselves

ROYAL GRANT TO THE HUMAN HEART 77
and disappear as you draw closer. The lions may
be chained. You may find that everything is for
you instead of everything being against you. You
may come upon joy when you expect sorrow;
meet with success when you anticipate failure;
come out upon a broad, smooth current where
you have marked down the shooting rapids and
the fearful falls. At least this much is true : your
future is altogether unknown to you, and no
anxiety on your part can prepare you for it.
So Jesus reasons when to-day He speaks unto
you to say, " Be not anxious for the morrow." But
He does not stop with this argument ; He does
not rest His case with your heart upon this show
ing. Beyond this He goes into that which He
makes His great and characteristic argument with
the anxious soul of man — viz., the measureless
and unfailing love of the Father which is in
heaven. Without this, poor and weak would
have been His case. Our impotency, our igno
rance would be a poor schoolmaster to bring us
unto trust — poor comfort to wrap round our
fearing hearts unless they also were themselves
wrapped round about with the love which is quick
to pity and able to save.
The fundamental, the all-conditioning fact of our
world and of the universe is the existence of the

78 THE STAFF METHOD
infinite God, and the fundamental truth concern
ing this infinite God is that He is a benignant
power. He is the Father of all the children of
earth and time ; His highest, His all-inclusive
name is Love ; and this love throned in the heav
ens is the great, the unanswerable argument against
the anxiety that furrows the face and consumes
the heart of His human child. If this love did
not exist, if it might fail, vain would it be to plead
the ignorance and the helplessness of the human
life — vain the attempt to mention any other or all
other reasons for the dismission of anxiety and
fear. If the completeness of infinite love flowed
not out unto our incompleteness, then we might
well worry and fear all our earthly days. If a
frown might gather upon that face which is the
light of the universe, then would every human
heart have good reason for the apprehension of
evil, for at any moment this frown might fall as
night upon the joy and the hope of man. If a
malignant thought might lift its dark form upward
in that heart whose pulsations feed all life and
being, then might every creature life reach out
with fear and trembling for the future, for that
wrathful thought might at any moment drive as
a thunderbolt through the home and the joy of
the soul.

ROYAL GRANT TO THE HUMAN HEART 79
But this we know from Jesus' lips can never
be. Love it is that illumines the face that from
the depths looks out upon man and the world,
and love shall beautify its features forever. Love
it is that fills the heart that feeds the stream of
human hope, and this love in an endless current
shall flow forth unto all creature need. This, then,
is the great, the supreme argument against anx
iety which Jesus makes with you to-day — viz. :
Will you not trust your future in the hands of
the infinite Love ? Will you not, as a child,
calmly commit yourself unto the care of the
almighty and all-loving Father? Will you not,
as you look forth upon the long, long path by
which you go, let your heart have expression in
this triumph of faith ?
" I know not what the future hath
Of marvel or surprise ;
Assured alone, that life and death
His mercy underlies."
That you may be able to fill your heart with a
measure of this blessed confidence, Jesus asks you
to look forth upon the broad fields whereon in
illuminated characters is written the demonstration
of an overruling power and a Divine care. Listen
to His words and His argument : " Behold the

80 THE STAFF METHOD
fowls of the air : for they sow not, neither do they
reap. . . Yet your heavenly Father feedeth them."
Oh, ye anxious ones, can you not believe that
you are much better than the fowls, much
worthier of the Divine care, much surer of receiv
ing it ?
Look forth again, and, while you look, listen
still to the Saviour's voice of interpretation. " Con
sider the lilies of the field, how they grow ; they
toil not, neither do they spin : And yet I say unto
you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not
arrayed like one of these." Oh ! ye whose hearts
are filled with anxiety for the morrow, can you not
while you look and while you listen make your
own this sweet inference which Jesus voices for
you : " If, then, God so clothe the grass of the
field, . . . shall He not much more clothe you,
Oh ! ye of little faith ? "
Once more lift up your eyes upon the illumi
nated field, and may those eyes be opened that
you may see.
Behold Calvary's stark and bitter cross flowing
red with the blood of an infinite sacrifice ! Draw
closer to this Cross, that your eyes may be able
to spell out these words that are written upon it :
" If God spared not His own Son, but delivered
Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him

ROYAL GRANT TO THE HUMAN HEART 81
also freely give us all things ? " So we read
in letters each one of which is crimson with a
love that was unto death. So unto this glo
rious fullness rounds out the truth which the
Divine Teacher to-day gives unto you for the
rebuking and forbidding of your anxious heart.
Take it again, this divine argument, in all its com
pleteness. The Feeder of the fowls, the Limner
of the lilies, the Giver of the Saviour — the future,
your future, is in the hands of this loving One, of
this great Care-taker, of this ungrudging and un
ceasing Giver, and you may safely trust Him
with it.
But all this, I know, may be truth only for the
head. What power shall give it unto the heart,
shall make it the inspiration, the strength and the
joy of earth's passing days ? Many things seem
against us here, I know. Over the chamber door
of many of our hearts sits the raven form of in
herited melancholy. The dregs of poisoned lives
run in our veins, and the specters of unbelief,
these also a birthmark, flit through our minds !
Then, besides, we live in a world full of anxiety
and fear, with care upon every side of us forever-
more lifting up its horse-leech cry ! Then, to
crown all, we have behind us, many of us, years
of living, so poor, so superficial, so false, so self-
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82 THE STAFF METHOD
seeking and self-trusting as almost to disable the
power of beautiful faith. How can we, how can
such as we, come unto peace? In such a world,
and at the end of these selfish, restless, fearing,
profitless days, how can we trust ?
To all this I can reply only by saying that no
unworthiness of the past shackles and imprisons
our beautiful possibilities as children of the infinite
Father. To all this I can reply only by saying
there is a Divine Spirit whose office it is to take of
the things of God and show them unto men, whose
prerogative it is to shed abroad in human hearts
the knowledge of the power of the Divine Love.
To all this I can reply only by saying a man may
be born when he is old, so old — born into the
kingdom of God, born of the Spirit of God !
To this revealer of God and recreator of man,
I pray you turn. Upon bended knees, beseech
His inspiration, His interpretation of the Saviour's
argument, His revelation of the Divine Love, His
teaching of the lesson of the child's love and the
child's trust.
My fellow-men, I come to you — unto you
who believe in God as Father and Jesus Christ
as Saviour — with this word of invitation : Trust
God. Let the fowls of the air, always fed; let
the grass of the field, always clothed ; let the

ROYAL GRANT TO THE HUMAN HEART 83
fall of the sparrow, always noted ; let the cross
of the Saviour, always luminous ; let the sweet
name of Father brought by Jesus from the skies,
and now vocal in the air of earth, emphasize to
you the invitation : — Trust God with your future !
Oh, ye children of men whose flesh is often weak,
whose hearts are often fearing, there is no one
who loves you as God loves you, there is no one
who yearns for your confidence as God yearns for
it ! Oh, ye whose hearts hold a bitterness with
which a stranger may not intermeddle, and who
along so many solitary paths are making your
ways through life's darkness unto your little
graves, there is One on high who is touched with
the feeling of your infirmities, and to-day the min
ister plenipotentiary from this height of infinite
love stands by your side and, pointing you down
the long, long line of the morrows — the morrow
of loss, the morrow of sorrow, the morrow of
weakness, the morrow of pain, the morrow of
death, the morrow of judgment, the morrow of
immortality — speaks unto your heart to say: " Be
not anxious, for, though you are weak, God is
strong and good."
Be yours the answer of the helpless, loving,
trusting child, the answer of trust which shall sing
to sleep the doubts and the fears of your haunted

84 THE STAFF METHOD
and restless hearts with the voice of this sweet
confidence. The future — my future — is in God's
hand, and love shall make the gift !
And so beside the silent sea,
I wait the muffled oar ;
No harm from Him can come to me
On ocean or on shore.
I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air ;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care.

V
THE BIBLICAL SPECIES

V
THE BIBLICAL SPECIES
" The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." — Ps. liii : I.
The Bible does not argue the existence of God.
It takes this for granted, as it takes the being of
man for granted, as it takes the existence of the
material universe for granted. Its very first
words are : " In the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth."
Neither does the Bible ever stop to make ex
plicit and positive assertion of the existence of
God. This also it seems to regard as unneces
sary, an affront to human reason, and a shame to
the intuitions of the soul. But although it does
not argue nor categorically assert the being of
God, the Bible has now and then a word of irony
and scorn for the atheism which is whispered in
the heart or spoken by the life. The text is an
example of the former ; and I would have you at
this time look into some very common and crys
talline depths round about you, that so be, for the
87

88 THE STAFF METHOD
quickening of your faith, you may catch the glint
of its bitter and beautiful scorn.
First of all, I ask you to gaze into the depths
of the material universe.
This is unmeasured and immeasurable. It is
unbounded; it is boundless. Take your stand
upon the rounded surface of our globe and look
into the celestial depths. You perceive no line
of limitation; you can discover no outer edge;
you can conceive even of no circumference. As
far as the unassisted eye can reach, as far as the
eagle eye of the telescope can penetrate ; yea, as
far as imagination can soar, it is the same un
changing vista — world upon world, sun upon sun,
system upon system, in endless succession and
with ever-increasing glory ! Count the trees of
the forest — there is a world for every one ! Num
ber the flowers of the field — there is a sun for
every one ! Yea, count the millions of the human
race, and then behold in the separating clusters
of the Milky Way not only a sun, but a system
for every individual life ! Take the wings of the
morning, — your chariot, the swift-winged light
that girdles our globe eight times in a second, —
and forty centuries shall have swept by you be
fore you reach yon shining point which is nightly
telling to our earth the wondrous story of its

THE BIBLICAL SPECIES 89
birth. Make this jeweled stepping stone a new
starting point ; add four thousand years of more
than lightning speed, — eight thousand years you
have now traveled, new-darted with the light, —
where is the circumference, — where the outer
edge ? Ah ! if this is what you seek, you may as
well turn backward in your flight, for immensity
girts you in — that immensity of which every
point is equally the center! Such is the material
grandeur, the inconceivable vastness, the awful
depths into which the man must look who says
within his heart, " No God ! No God !"
Take another point. All these worlds, all these
suns, all these systems are swung in empty space,
are hung upon nothing. Listen to the challenge
as, breaking from the lips of an unseen speaker,
it rings its bold sublimity in the ears of the patri
arch of Uz : " Whereupon are the foundations of
the earth fastened? Declare, if thou hast under
standing!" Look about you! There is no un-
moving point, no ponderous staple to which our
earth is fastened. Momentarily transport your
self to the other hemisphere — there is no founda
tion upon which the world is builded ! " Yea, He
stretcheth the north over the empty place and
hangeth the earth upon nothing."
Take another fact still. These worlds innu-

90 THE STAFF METHOD
merable, these worlds hung all upon nothing,
are all in motion, all sweeping forward with
amazing velocity. Yet there is no collision, no
jar, no sense of motion even ! The whole uni
verse, with not an atom of it at rest, and its
motion music — upon this sublimely beautiful
thought let your mind rest for a moment.
The moon revolves round our earth, the earth
revolves upon its axis, while moon and earth
sweep onward round the sun. The sun itself
revolves, planet after planet wheel in well-ap
pointed courses round him as their center, while
at the same time earth, and heaven, and planets,
and sun are sweeping forward, through unknown
cycles, round a more sublime and imperious
center still ! Yet there is no collision, no jar,
no uncertainty. We ourselves are the subjects
of at least three well-defined and amazing mo
tions, and yet there is no uncertainty in our
steps, no ruffling of our garments, no disturb
ance of the most delicate machinery of our
threefold being.
But I can dwell no longer upon this point.
Upon this vast, immeasurable, baseless, whirring
universe it is that the man must look who says
within his heart, " No God ! No God ! " I appeal
to you : Is not the Psalmist right when he lifts

THE BIBLICAL SPECIES 91
his hand to brand the forehead of such an one
with the scorn of the text ? Does not the deep,
clear voice of the human spirit — does not the
instinct of the human mind reach forth to under
write the terrible verdict, and, with the living fire
of self-evident and necessary truth, to burn still
deeper the damnatory mark ? This infinite ex
panse that encircles us, and which in immeas
urable waves of insufferable splendor sweeps out
from us unto a circumference that is never
reached, — this mighty universe, in which our
earth is but an atom, — does it not take up the
declaration of the text and reecho it throughout
all its upper and nether depths ? This flying
immensity, whose flight is one unending song ;
these august worlds and blazing suns, whose mo
tion is a music that diadems the throne of law
with a corona of perpetual incense — do they not
catch up the reproach and, weaving it into their
never-ceasing watchword of glory to the Creator,
ring throughout all their infinite spaces the de
risive words, "Thou worm! Thou fool!"
But let us continue our endeavor, not to demon
strate the existence of Deity, but to realize the
justification of the Psalmist's verdict, while we
turn to catch the glint of the scorn of the text in
and from Him who is earth's most prominent

92 THE STAFF METHOD
object — at once its inhabitant, its possessor, and
its Lord.
Here also I will name but three points — lift up
before you but three capital truths.
First, man, " fearfully and wonderfully made."
Secondly, man, with a sense of dependence.
Thirdly, man, with a sense of accountability.
Enough there is in the first of these, even if I
should omit the other two.
The human frame — its beauty, its unity, its
complications ; the mutual subserviency of all its
members, their numberless adaptations and inter-
dependencies; its system of electric nerves; its
network of living channels ; its bands of tendon
and muscle ; its jmanifold eye ; its mysterious ear-
gate ; its organs of articulation, easily giving forth
the sounds that call for half a thousand different
adjustments with every passing moment; its
instrument of all work, the thumb — Man, the up
right, walking, talking, rational, ruling form of
earfli's creation is enough to justify unto reason's
ear forever the indignant scorn of the inspired
writer. But here we have only commenced. Think of
the union of spirit and body; of mind and matter;
of flesh and fire! Think of the immortal soul
living, hiding within this tabernacle of flesh —

THE BIBLICAL SPECIES 93
governing, guiding, inspiring this material frame;
now sending its imperial mandate along the tele
graphic nerve that a finger may be lifted; now
ordering the contraction and now the expansion
of a muscle ; suffering through the body's hurts;
joying through the body's health ; disposing of
all the physical forces as a general does of his
troops, and sometimes, as if turned traitor, infuri
ating the hand which clutches the dagger which
turns its frail companion to dust by the act of a
suicide. Centuries ago, a man whose eyes were opened
looked upon all this and gave out his conclusion
in these words : " I will praise Thee ; for I am
fearfully and wonderfully made." And while he
was so wondering and praising, he heard by his
side a human heart whispering into his ear the
words, " No God ! No God !" Was it strange
that in such a case the impressed and reverent
spirit should intermit its praises long enough to
turn and exclaim : " No God, and yet so fearfully
and wonderfully made — why, thou fool !"
But let us go farther.
There is a sense of dependence hidden within
the depths of man's being. Listen to it as it
breaks forth in the hour of sudden peril ! Hear
it as it mingles itself in sorrow's wail ! Catch its

94 THE STAFF METHOD
accents, as in minor tones it pours itself through
all languages and through all literatures ! It is
not peculiar to those who have received a relig
ious education, but belongs to man as man. With
all men, in all ranks, in all nationalities, in all
ages it is found. The prayers of all the genera
tions breathe it. The hymns of all the genera
tions sing it. Thus its universality proves that
this sense of consciousness is no artificial quality
that has been bred into human nature, but an
original endowment, a primal and necessary fac
tor of human nature.
Now, if there is no Infinite One upon whom
we may depend, what have we? Not a false
and vicious habit bred into man, but a mock
ing delusion as one of the original elements
of his being, a hideous lie woven into the very
texture of the human soul. We have the flower
turning its pale face as if sunward, and only a
cold, blank nothingness to answer its sweet voice
of worship and of trust. The tides lift up their
mighty masses, as if in the enthusiasm of their
loyalty they would pour out their very being
upon a mighty orb, and as their answer hear only a
thin and hollow voice calling out, " What do ye —
there is nothing here?" We have the homing
instinct of the bird, and no home ! — the faith of

THE BIBLICAL SPECIES 95
the child, and no father ! — the unescapable idea
of God, and no God ! Surely, if not worthy of a
harder name, he is a fool who thus deals with the
ineradicable consciousness of the human soul,
and stamps our moral constitution a contradiction
and a lie.
But further consider. All men have the idea
of moral quality. They distinguish between the
right and the wrong, and are compelled so to dis
tinguish. I say not that the standard of right is
uniform. It is not. What is right to one man or
a nation is not always so to another individual or
to a different race. But the sense of moral qual
ity is universal. All classes, all individuals have
their right and their wrong — divide human con
duct into two categories, that which ought, and
that which ought not to be done. And this is all
that is asked for here — this universal and neces
sary idea of Tightness, of obligation, of judgment
condemnatory or approving, upon the acts that
men perform. Consider, first, that this is uni
versal. Consider, secondly, that being something
which has not been bred into human nature, it is
also something which cannot be bred out of
human nature. A false education, the power of
a bad life, the influence of a vicious environment,
are able to oppose, to weaken, to silence this moral

96 THE STAFF METHOD
sense, but not to destroy it. Within the soul,
enfeebled and silent though it be, it continues its
existence, and in many ways gives evidence of its
readiness at any future moment to reassert itself.
This moral sense — natural, universal, appar
ently deathless — what can it be but the impress
of the infinite upon the finite ; the echo of a
divine voice within the human soul ; the sentence
of a great and final judge in ceaseless articulation ?
It is nonsense to cry out "superstition." As
well shout " parallelogram !" There is no expla
nation in this word superstition. The question
remains, How does it happen that human nature
always takes on this particular form of delusion?
Neither is it anything more than pompous ver
bosity to call this moral sense an eddy of the
great stream of tendency, or the correlate of law.
Law without a lawgiver is a misnomer and non
sense. There never was and there never can be
such* a law. Law is not force, but only a method
of force, having power neither to originate nor to
execute itself.
Look now at the matter as it stands. A sense
within man says, there is such a thing as right
and there is such a thing as wrong : the right
ought to be done, and the wrong ought not to be
done ; do the right and it shall be well with you ;

THE BIBLICAL SPECIES 97
do the wrong and you shall suffer. These
voices are coeval with the race of man, are un
ceasing, undying within the individual soul. What
then is the necessary conclusion ? What can it
be but this ? Man is under law, and this means
man responsible to a lawgiver; and this again
means, man accountable unto God. Yet within
the heart, in which echo these deathless voices,
there has been heard the whisper, " No God,
No God ! " Why this, surely, is man turning upon
himself! This is the free agent saying with his
own being — "Thou lie !" This is a manufactured
whisper, lifted up against the involuntary and con
tinuous testimony of all the moral powers, and
surely he must be a fool who, by an effort of the
will, gives birth and continuance and respect unto
such an unnatural, interjected, and evermore re
puted falsehood.
But again, you may catch the reflection of the
scorn of the text from the surface and from out
the depths of human history. Here also the ne
cessity of the sermon compels brevity. I mention,
first of all, the general progress of the realization
of righteousness — a state of Tightness — for earth
and man. Surely this gleams from the bosom
of the centuries. The march of what we know
as the forces of civilization has been an onward
7

98 THE STAFF METHOD
march. See this in the growth and spread of
civil and religious liberty; in the emancipation
of woman ; in the uplifting of the poor ; in the
enlargement of the common man ; in the count
less forms of charity, which, crystallizing in
most beautiful shapes, fairly bestud the crown
of earth, as stars the crown of night ; in the ten
thousand forms of merciful alleviation, which with
ever-increasing number and efficiency are work
ing for the amelioration of human suffering, and
for the righting of human wrong.
Slow, do you say ? I care not to argue over
this word "slow." We are but creatures of a day
— yesterday in our cradle and to-morrow in our
grave — and are not, perhaps, good judges of what
is slow and what is rapid, in the progress of the
forces of an infinite realm, and an eternal king
dom. All that I desire that you should recognize
and admit here, is the power which is working for
righteousness in this world — the tidal force which
is pushing the waters of a regenerating influence
farther and still farther into the continent of
human sorrow and of human sin. " Man " — do
you cry out ? Human agency, all this ? Why it
originated in a world that needed it, but which on
account of this need could not and did not desire
it. It has been carried forward in days and

THE BIBLICAL SPECIES 99
through centuries where no love of it, and no
purposeful cooperation with it, was to be found in
heart of man or power of earth.
I mention, secondly, remarkable interpositions
in human history — patent ab-extra and dominat
ing influences.
" To the Nile, with your fore-doomed child,"
spoke the voice of earth's mightiest Power to a
poor Hebrew mother, centuries ago. The slave-
mother obeyed, and in obeying placed her child
in the arms of Pharaoh's daughter, to be nourished
as Israel's deliverer. And this is but a typical
case. Frequently in the history of the world
have human wisdom and human power wrought
out the confusion and overthrow of their most
dearly cherished plans. Babels have been re
solved upon and never builded ; persecutors have
scattered the seeds of the life that was to be
stamped out; human slavery has been extin
guished by means resolved upon by the most
astute political wisdom for its extension and
defense ; the wrath of man has praised, not him
self, but an unseen power which stood in his
pathway with a flaming sword.
Besides the general progress of the world, and
this supernaturaUy adroit interposition into human
history, I mention one conspicuous, salient fact,

loo THE STAFF METHOD
viz., the Christian Church. This was founded by
one Jesus of Nazareth, a carpenter's son, born in
a stable in Bethlehem of Judaea, poor, despised,
absolutely destitute of every species of human
influence, and whose life was, at the last, swept
from the earth's surface by an ignominious death.
This religion was promulgated by a band of twelve
disciples, all but one of whom were illiterate men.
It has nothing in it, either in the duties that it
enjoins, or in the rewards that it promises, to
allure the ambition or to gratify the passions of
man. Yet it has lived, yet it has grown, shaping
civilizations, building nations, marshaling the
mightiest forces of time. Mohammedanism, that
flashed upon the world with the light of its
drawn sword, now grows paler and paler with the
increasing dimness of this sword, and even with
the hope of its sensual paradise is now able to
kindle but a feeble fire of loyalty within the earth.
But nineteen hundred years have passed, and now
no longer oriental, but occidental as well, the
Christian Church marches in the van of the
world's progress, and is incontestably the most
vital, the most extended, the most modern, the
most powerful of all the forces that to-day are
shaping the history of our globe.

THE BIBLICAL SPECIES 101
But here again I pause. What shall we say ?
That the past centuries cry aloud there is a God?
Yes, surely this. But this is a weak translation
of their testimony. Let us give the witness
nobler, worthier voice. As its gulf stream of
progress, distinctly visible through all the cur
rents and counter-currents of the past, cuts its
way onward with a force which no human power
may stay or divert; as its ten thousand mar
velous conjunctions and issues which no human
intelligence conceived and no human power
wrought out, lift themselves up in luminous
array, history, scorning to be set forth as the
proof of a necessary and self-evident truth, fairly
thunders forth this voice : " The man who, even in
his heart, dares to say, no God ! no God ! — let
him be called a fool and all the centuries shall
cry, Amen."
But once more.
Let us justify unto ourselves the bold language
of the text by a glance unto Him who is the cen
tral figure among all time's millions, the personal
ity round whom all time's centuries revolve —
Jesus of Nazareth.
Take the Sermon on the Mount. Was such
teaching current, was it possible, in the day and
nation in which Jesus lived ? The answer can-

102 THE STAFF METHOD
not be kept back or changed : " Never man spake
like this man." In method — its calm, undoubt-
ing, yet gentlest dogmatism ; in the elevation of
its tone — its moral sublimity ; in its majestic
breadth — its application to all days and to all men
— it was supernatural, something that was not
born of that age, but which descended upon it,
was let down into it.
Then look unto and mark the breadth of Jesus'
character and sympathies.
Remember that He belonged to the narrowest,
the most exclusive people on the face of the
earth ; yet in His sympathies and hopes He em
braced the world, and all His words and doctrines
are current coin in the twentieth century and in
the land of the setting sun. Jesus still leads in
the world's progress. The carpenter's Son is,
unto this day, facile princeps among the world's
great reformers. Can any thoughtful mind re
ceive this, and then say, " Man is at the head —
there is nothing above man "?
Consider further the surpernatural beauty of
His character. In that far-off, narrow, bigoted,
selfish, cruel day, behold Him walking unspotted,
stainless, loving — the Man of the seamless robe,
set not only above that day, but above all earth's
days and men. That light, that radiance, that

THE BIBLICAL SPECIES 103
unmatched beauty, that corona of unapproached
goodness, was it merely, only human ? As well
affirm that the unsufferable splendor of yonder
sun is but our earth's reflected light. Oh, no !
The eyes that look upon the Man of Palestine be
hold a brightness more than human, look upon a
light that has never gilded land or sea in all the
centuries of human evolution. He is the mani
festation of an unseen glory ; the outraying of
an infinite excellence, which would thus become
the light of the world, the light and the life of
men. The glance within, the glance without, meet
the glint of the text. The Psalmist was none too
bold, his scorn none too incisive. He but spoke
the plain and solemn truth when he said he is
a fool who says within his heart, No God, no
God. Here let me affirm, that the day for
calling things by their right names shall not al
ways be postponed. " This thing was not done
in a corner." A day of light has dawned upon
our world and human lives are passing forward
into it. Now is the judgment of this world, and
human lives are haled unto this judgment. It is
a day of God in which we live, and human souls
must meet Him in it. There is no escape from
this issue and from this demonstration. No hu-

104 THE STAFF METHOD
man mind may ignore or belittle the primal fact
and basal truth of the universe, and for long
pass as a profound thinker. The agnosticism
which is virtual atheism shall not always be re
garded as proof presumptive of mental breadth
and power. The living soul of the universe shall
break forth upon the human spirit. " A God ! "
the heavens shall cry. "A God !" the earth reply.
In this bursting light in the apocalypse of the one
all-inclusive Reality, in this blazing forth of the
Infinite, whither shall run or in what dark cor
ner hide, the puny, presuming creature-life, which
dared to wear as its crown that know-nothingism
which is the scorn of the mind's highest reach,
and the contempt of the soul's sweetest inspira
tion ? Wherever he may flee or wherever hide,
truth's living light shall dart after him to burn
deep, and still deeper into his forehead the words
of this merciless condemnation : " Professing him
self to be wise, this man became a fool."
Only one word more. If the scorn of the text
justly lies against the one who says in his heart,
" No God," must it not also apply and with cumu
lative force to the man who in and by his life says
" There is no God " ? This is a form of the athe
istic lie which is upon every side of us. Different
classes of human lives are continually crying it

THE BIBLICAL SPECIES i°S
into our ears. Let me mention some of these
classes. First, the sensual type — the intemperate, the
licentious. If there is a God, Pie must abhor this
human filth. Therefore, this class, the impure,
the dissolute, by their lives are shouting out the
words, " No God, no God."
Secondly, the irreverent type. Human lives
for twenty, forty, four score years walk the won
drous earth-path that takes its way over the
rounded surface of a flying world beneath the
mighty arch of the skies ; live all these years
girt in with inconceivable wonder on every
hand ; fairly deluged with evidences of supernal
power and immeasurable wisdom, and drop at
length into the darkness of the grave, non-wor
shipers, without once having bowed their souls
before the infinities of wisdom and power that
were blazoned forth before their eyes. Surely
this is living as if there was no God.
Thirdly, the self-centered, the utterly selfish
type. Men and women there are in every city,
by the score, to whom money has come by in
heritance, or through the talents bestowed upon
them, or the opportunities offered to them, who
are spending this money, and all this money,
upon themselves, and only upon themselves.

106 THE STAFF METHOD
They build the new and spacious mansion ;
they clothe themselves in gorgeous apparel ;
they take the summer voyage and the winter ex
cursion, and this year after year, just as if there
was no want or suffering within the world — just as
if they did not belong to a brotherhood many of
whose members are ignorant and poor and cold
and hungry. Surely again, if infinite Love de
lights in the service of her needy children, this
is living as if there was no God. Surely again,
life here is one bold, shameless word, thrust into
the ears of men, and into the face of heaven — this
one, bold, shameless word, " No God ! no God !"
So by actions, that speak louder than words, are
human lives shouting upon every side of us the
affirmation of the heart against which the text
directs its scorn. Men ignore duty. When the
call is unto worship, they do not bow. When the
command is for obedience, they lift up self-will as
their highest law. So are men everywhere, in the
light of this twentieth century of Christ, saying,
not in heart-whispers, but in the outspoken voice
of conduct, " No God — no God."
Here, by the deep, full heavens into which
men look ; by the sense of dependence and ac
countability that stirs within the human heart ; by
the luminous path of human progress that reaches

THE BIBLICAL SPECIES 107
through the centuries unto the present day ; and
by the beautiful Christ who evermore is lifted up
before human eyes, I protest against this atheism
of the life, and prophesy the breaking of a day,
which shall turn the blush of shame into its cheek,
and in the light of a demonstration which shall
justify the coronation, shall place upon its head a
blacker crown than that which, centuries ago, was
fashioned for the atheism of the heart.

VI
SPIRITUAL NOVELTIES

VI

SPIRITUAL NOVELTIES

" But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the
word which by the gospel is preached unto you." — I Peter I : 25.
Both those who applaud and those who deplore
it, will do well to remember that the mental rest
lessness of the present day is no new thing under
the sun. If you will turn back nineteen hundred
years, you will hear the apostle Paul exhorting
his spiritual son in these words : " Avoid opposi
tions of science, falsely so-called, which some pro
fessing have erred from the faith." Is not this a
very good photograph of many a twentieth-century
man, who in gaining a little science has lost all his
religion ? Behold also the same fact illustrated in
one of the freshest crazes of our day. This cult,
which announces itself as the incorporated unity
of science and religion, is shown to be very near of
kin to a strange first-century species, for we hear
the same great apostle warning against a certain
class of leaders and teachers in these words :
" For of this sort are they which creep into houses,
and lead captive silly women." Surely the adjec-

112 THE STAFF METHOD
tive here is not an inapt description of those in
our day who accept as Christian Science a jumble
that ignores the imperatives of both the great realms
whose names are invoked. I may add par
enthetically in passing, that the only reason,
doubtless, why the apostle made this character
ization of one sex only, was because the leisure
class was nonexistent among those to whom he
wrote, and that the men of that day avoided the
fate of some of their twentieth-century brothers
by being out at their daily tasks, saved, as so
many have been since that far-away time, by the
blessed necessity of work.
Then, if you look back into history as far as
unto Athen's pride and Athen's glory, you will
discover a large class who " spend their time in
nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some
new thing." Now beyond question this is an ac
curate description of a certain type of intellectual
life which in our day both delights and distresses
the souls of the children of men. If, therefore, the
passion or itching for novelty is a proof of intel
lectuality, then the first century was intellectual as
truly as the twentieth, and if this craze is the con
dition and the sign of progress, then those who lived
in Paul's day share with us the glory of furnishing
this condition and of lifting up this sign. So I say

SPIRITUAL NOVELTIES 113
unto you who are holding on to faith with a sad
and almost despairing courage, because of the
mental restlessness round about you, that this is no
new thing upon which you look ; no new power of
temptation that you feel ; neither does it betoken a
spiritual cataclysm or the end of faith in the earth.
I also say unto you who are congratulating
yourselves upon your participation in the present
skepticism, as if it were the crown of earth's last
and opening century, that the soil of every gener
ation beneath your feet is full of the dust of those
who, while in human form, were " ever learning,
and never able to come to the knowledge of the
truth." There has not been in the past centuries
such a wonderful unlikeness between the spirit of
earth's different days, the spirit that has breathed
upon human hearts and seduced human lives.
There are more minds of the skeptical type than
ever before, but this is only because there are
more people in the world. The proportion of
restless minds and unbelieving souls, I apprehend,
has not greatly changed.
But whatever the spirit of the day, the responsi
bility of the individual remains, for it is the spirit
of a man, and not of a day, that passes forward
unto judgment. If this man gulps down whatever
is offered him, he may swallow poison whether in

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the first or twentieth century. If he dances to
whatever tune is played, he may dance into hell
from the floor of any century or of any day.
I ask your attention to some of the false assump
tions bound up within the craze for novelty in the
spiritual realm — a craze, let me add, as old as
Athens and as young as Buffalo.
I. The first of these assumptions is this : Modern
progress has discredited the old things of Chris
tian faith.
The progress of our world within the last fifty
years is unspeakably marvelous. No human
tongue can overspeak or overpraise it. If only
we are careful to note the field in which it has
brought forth its wonders, we shall all do well to
join most enthusiastically with those who magnify
and glorify the present day. But this careful
marking of the field of modern-day wonders has
not always been done. From progress in one or
many directions, by a non sequitur progress in
every direction has been inferred. So it has
happened that even in the spiritual realm, the cry
of progress has been taken up and reechoed until
many have actually come to believe that this prog
ress has sounded the death knell of all the old
things of Christian faith. But indeed nothing is
plainer than that this marvelous and worthily

SPIRITUAL NOVELTIES 115
vaunted progress has not touched one of these
things. Let me prove this to you by a very simple
illustration. Suppose that to-day you should
be called to the bedside of a dying man. Let
churches and creeds and all formal religion
now drop out of sight. Let the case be simply
this. The dying man is a friend of yours, whom
you would kindly and faithfully serve. Now
as you stand in the shadows of the solemn hour,
with his hungry, appealing eyes upon you, what
new word of twentieth-century truth, what new
watchword of twentieth-century origin, have you
for your passing friend ? Will you tell him that
he is but meeting the inevitable ? Ah ! he knows
this without your saying it, and besides, any
heathen philosopher, thousands of years ago, could
have told him this much. Will you go further
and tell him that the power in whose hands he
lies is a power of love ? Is this all you have for
your friend ? Why, a John and a Paul centuries
ago were able to say this much and often did say
it. Will you go still further and say unto your
friend, " There is a divine Saviour who will walk
with you through the dark valley " ? Why, David,
centuries before the Christ, could and did say as
much as that. Where then is the proof of progress

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in the spiritual realm, if it has nothing new to offer,
if it is silent in the hour when human love would
fain serve human extremity?
Or let the form of the illustration be a little
changed. Suppose that with the deepening shad
ows of this holy day the angel of death should
suddenly appear beckoning to you. I will make
the most favorable supposition of your case.
You have, say, lived in a circle of the world's
most advanced thought. You have heard and read
much learnedly critical of the old faith, and elo
quently extolling the new and broader day unto
which humanity has come. As you have listened
to their words of glorification and repudiation,
you have often said within your heart — some
times with your lips — " Yes, it is a new and won
derful day ! The old things of Christian faith
have fled away before the rising and spreading
light !"
So you have lived and imagined and spoken.
Now, you and this much glorified day of prog
ress meet in what is to you an hour of sorest
need, when you feel the damp dews gathering on
your brow, and the human heart fainting within
your breast. Turn now to your new and broad
day of light to receive from its hand its especial
gift unto your necessity !

SPIRITUAL NOVELTIES 117
What is this gift ? A new God ? No. A new
map of the death-valley ? No. A new vision of
the land immortal ? No. A new watchword to
ring out cheer and courage in the black darkness
that is falling upon you ? No. What is then the
gift of the much glorified progress unto you who
have so often spoken its praises ? An interro
gation point — illuminated it may be by the hand
of culture — but still only an interrogation point.
This is the gift of modern progress unto your
sore need, this is the unction with which she
runs unto you — a dying man. If you were
called upon to die to-day, you would have
to die as the brute, without faith and without
thought, or you would be obliged to pillow
your fainting spirit upon the old truths of the
old Bible — upon the Father whom Jesus taught
in the first century, upon the grace of that
Saviour whose cross is nineteen hundred years
old. Where then is the glory or the fact of modern
progress in the spiritual realm, if it has nothing
new in the way of knowledge, or comfort, or
courage, or cheer for a man in the hour of his
supremest need ?
Yet human voices all about us go on shout
ing progress, as if all the old things of religion

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had been discredited and abolished. I pray
you in this hour put your fingers in your ears,
shut out the noisy and popular shouts of hu
manity's progress long enough to read and to
learn the exact truth of the case. There has
been no progress in the spiritual realm, save that
of word-emphasis. Not a light of all the thou
sands that sparkled in the great Columbian Expo
sition threw down a single new ray upon the path
by which a man goes out of this world. There
was not in all that forest of inventions a single
one to explain life, to set forth God, to make soft
the bed of death. Among all the exhibits by
which the French Capital celebrated the incoming
of the twentieth century, there was not one from
that world into which human lives are pouring at
the rate of one hundred thousand with every
passing day. In the third great Exposition,
the rainbow city — fair as the new Jerusalem de
scending out of heaven, which, as if at the wand
of some supernal power, sprang into illumined
and inimitable beauty upon the shores of Lake
Erie — the record was the same. Upon life, spirit,
God, the world to come, nothing new — no new ex
hibit. The secret and the spirit of Niagara blos
somed into ten thousand times ten thousand
lights, but the spirit and the secret of that world

SPIRITUAL NOVELTIES 119
unto which sweep the millions of earth made no
new showing of themselves.
The old things of religion, discredited, super
seded, abolished ! Why, not one of them has
been touched ! About God and soul-life, about
the first great cause and the end which waits ;
about evil, its entrance into the world and
its future history; concerning Jesus Christ and
His proffered aid to man ; concerning the future
life and the condition of human immortality —
about all these things we know no more than did
the disciples of Paul nineteen hundred years ago.
What Macaulay wrote years ago still remains
true — a first-century man with a Bible in his hand
is the equal of the nineteenth-century man, so far
as spiritual knowledge is concerned. All the
logomachies that have raged round religion's
great verities have left them just where they were
on the day that the Isle of Patmos saw the
venerable seer affix the memorable seal. There
have been speculations numberless, but no new
discoveries ; an endless succession of discussion
but no new knowledge. The intuition of God,
the origin and destiny of man, the vision of the
Christ, the consciousness of sin, the intimation
of immortality — these fundamentals remain as
they were in the days of Paul, and the assump-

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tion that modern progress has invalidated them,
or brought in any substitute for them, is a great
delusion wrought into the pride and folly of the
Athenian mind.
II. A second false assumption wrought into
the craze for spiritual novelty is this: Mental
restlessness is in itself so much progress.
There are many who seem to think that just be
cause they have cut loose from the old anchorage
of faith, therefore they have been thinking, and
thinking to a purpose. But is this true ? Is mo
tion necessarily progress ? Is activity necessarily
profitable activity ? Is drifting the same as mak
ing a voyage ? Haul up the anchor, cut the hawser,
and the vessel will begin to move, it is true.
But what of this? Such a vessel, as likely as
not, will whirl round and round in an eddy of
wave and foam ; she will float out with the tide or
in* with the tide ; but in either case there is no
progress, nothing but an idle swash and profitless
churning of the waters.
And the moral world holds many such crafts
within it. Derelicts they are, going nowhere
themselves and only endangering the progress of
the soul that is seeking some desired haven.
Lift a wagon wheel from the ground and you
may spin it round and round, but it will go no

SPIRITUAL NOVELTIES 121
whither. It may revolve with great demonstra
tion, and startle the onlookers with the smoke of
its heated axle, but all this means only so much
useless wear and tear. There is in it all neither
profit nor promise. So in the spiritual world,
when human minds are lifted up from the solid
ground of revealed truth. They may make a
great whirring with their " Lo ! here, lo ! there !"
but all the same they will make no progress. Air
plants they are, the victims of self-levitation, feeding
upon the thin nutriment of their own guesses;
windmills beating the air exhaled from their own
lungs; and their record in our day and in all days
makes it very clear that mental activity is not
necessarily profitable activity, that mental drifting
is not one and the same thing with spiritual
progress. Suppose a man has closed or thrown away the
Bible, or that under the influence of modern criti
cism has taken it down from its high and solitary
preeminence. But the Bible did not invent sin, or
sorrow, or suffering, or death, and after it has
been discarded these things will remain, and the
soul of man will still need some authoritative
voice upon them. Say that a human hand has put
away the Christ; but still the human life remains
consciously weak, with darkness all around it and

122 THE STAFF METHOD
greater darkness before it. Will not this life need
some hope, some helper to take the place of the
rejected Saviour ?
No, no ! Mental restlessness, spiritual drifting, —
these are not necessarily so much progress. Be
cause the old has been cast away, this does not
mean that something better has been found to
take its place, and the assumption that it does is
a baleful error hiding within the glorified inertia
of the Athenian mind.
III. A third false assumption bound up in the
passion for spiritual novelty is this : Skepticism is
the highest form of intellectual life. The word
culture — spelled with a big C — has proved itself
in our day and in all days a veritable Moloch
unto which many poor souls have passed both the
intuitions of their spirits and the precious word
of God which was within their hands. I can
not think that I overstate the truth when I
add, that the sensational demonstration that at
tends upon skepticism has had something to do
in bringing about this strange and sad state of
things. We live, you know, in a newspaper day.
The world has had its age of stone, and of brass,
and now it has its newspaper day — also one of
brass. You well know what prominence this
species of world activity gives to the unusual, the

SPIRITUAL NOVELTIES 123
abnormal. One mad dog running down the street,
snapping at everything in its way, is worth more
to a newspaper than a hundred beautiful and noble
specimens of the same species that are not rabid.
One runaway horse, smashing things as he goes,
is preferred above the thousands of the gentle
type, which in the beauty and quietness of useful
service do the work of the whole city. So one
professor, kicking over the traces and threatening
the safety of the whole theological establishment,
is given larger place in the daily press than all
the remaining members of the Faculty.
This sure expectation of fame, it cannot well
be doubted, has seduced a few at the front, and
these have drawn after them a large crowd of
the uneducated, the unstable, and the irreverent,
who cease not to split their throats with the cry,
"Bravo! bravo! great is he that cometh in the
name of the critic. What a scholar is this who is
not afraid to lay his hands upon that which all
the Christian centuries have regarded as sacred !
No back number this one, but an up-to-date man."
So the professor's egoism is gratified, and so
there flock to hear the preacher those who would
not go near him were he emphasizing instead of
criticizing the Bible. So it has come to pass
that you cannot throw a stone to-day without

124 THE STAFF METHOD
hitting some one, now an editor, now a pro
fessor, and now a preacher, whom the crowd of
the Adullamites have canonized for his free and
irreverent handling of the old things of faith and
hope. But criticism is always easy. Destruction is a
much simpler matter than construction. It took
a genius to rear the Ephesian dome, but any
fool could apply the torch to it. Rejection, too,
is not necessarily the sign of strength. When
the stomach throws up its food, this is not al
ways because it is strong, but as often because
it is weak. Neither is rejection always the sign
of benevolence. A soured, or envious, or cynical
soul, under the guise of liberality and public ser
vice, may do the throwing out here. Only a few
great souls — you can count them on your fingers
— have ever constructed any faith for mankind,
but the woods and the plains are full of com
moners, who have snapped at, and carped at, and
spit upon the priceless treasures of the soul's inspi
ration and the soul's hope. Only a small minority
of the world's millions have endured as seeing Him
who is invisible, but the crust of the earth is
thick with the ashes, and the surface of the earth is
black with the shadows, of those who have smirked
and grinned in the face of supernal reality, who, as

SPIRITUAL NOVELTIES 125
the browsing ox upon the glories of the sunset
sky, have turned their supercilious gaze upon the
immensities and the eternities, only to say, " I
see nothing there — there is nothing there." Be
lieve me, my fellow-men, it is the easiest thing in
the world to let go of supersensual realities. The
world laughs at the mental grasp here — sin be
numbs the fingers and the devil unclasps them.
There are few of the modern world's millionaires
who remain humble and spiritual ; there is not a
large proportion of politicians who see in the
Ten Commandments anything more than an iri
descent dream : there is not a surprisingly large
number of the children of leisure, of fashion, and
of wealth who walk before God in truth and
purity and simplicity. No ! such faith calls for
ceaseless vigilance : for a strenuous denial of the
lower forms of appetite and self-will, for unfail
ing spiritual aspiration, and the assumption that
the inertia of the human mind that spends all
its time in hearing or in telling some new thing
is a sure sign of mental strength and high cul
ture is one of the silliest delusions that the father
of lies has ever palmed off upon a human soul,
or with which he has ever befogged an earth-
born day.
IV. But there is a fourth false assumption that

126 THE STAFF METHOD
hides within the craze for novelty in the spiritual
realm, to which, in closing, I must briefly advert.
It is this : Man has so changed, the world has so
changed as to render the word of the old gos
pel insufficient, inapplicable, and obsolete.
The constituent thought here is, that Jesus did
not anticipate the character and extent of modern
progress. When He spoke to the world He did
not anticipate the scientific development that was
to come : did not foresee the day when men
would wing their words and propel their bodies
with the lightning of heaven : had no vision of
the coming man who was to be the possessor
of two hundred millions of dollars : had no pre
vision of the day of universal education, of the
multiform discoveries and the new knowledge
which were to crown in glory the twentieth cen
tury. He spoke a word true enough and good
enough for the then little world of man — but for
the* new and broader day unto which humanity
has come, there must be a new and a broader
gospel. This, you will note, is a very bold assumption.
It is nothing less than to charge Jesus the Christ
with provincialism; to affirm that He was the
creature of the day in which He lived, not
broader than this day, not seeing beyond it.

SPIRITUAL NOVELTIES 127
But bold as the insinuation is, it is as fallacious
as it is bold.
Man has not so greatly changed since the day
of Jesus and of Paul. Even his body has not
come unto any novelty of life-function. The cir
culation of the blood, the process of digestion, the
action of the nervous system, these are exactly
what they were nineteen centuries ago. The hu
man body now takes its food from a table very
unlike that which was spread in the first century,
but its nourishment and growth are by the same
laws, maturity comes in the same manner, and
death follows in the same old way. In the spir
itual man also there has been no deep or radical
change. Take the last and most characteristic product
here — the man of the twentieth century. A thor
ough-going man of the world let him be, a multi
millionaire, if you please, member of a dozen clubs
and of a hundred corporations, owner of a rail
road that spans a continent and of a steamship
line that bridges the great ocean, with material
relations and civic responsibilities and commu
nal functions of which the first century never
dreamed ! As you look upon this wonderful
product of to-day, maybe you are ready to ex
claim : " What a different being from the simple

128 THE STAFF METHOD
fisherman, from the rude shepherd to whom
Jesus spoke and with whom Jesus consorted!
The old gospel will not do for this new man."
But in reality the difference that amazes you
here is only in accidentals, only in evanescent
externals, only in the man's clothes, whether these
clothes be the garments that cover his body, or
the palace in which he lives, or the multitudinous
trappings of sense that jingle along his earthly
pathway. In a single hour all these distinguish
ing accidents shall drop from the twentieth-century
life, and it will show itself unto the world and
unto the universe as a weak, suffering, dying man!
Only this and nothing more. Only this, and in
this ultimate reduction and final analysis, the won
derful product of earth's last day will reproduce
without the change of a single feature the man of
the first century. He will draw out of a room of
greater money value than a whole province of
Palestine in Jesus' day, but he will draw out of
this palatial environment in as simple a form, as
empty-handed, as naked, as helpless as twenty
centuries ago the human life drew out of the
shepherd's tent or the fisherman's hut. How
superficial, how foolish then the assumption that
this modern twentieth-century conglomerate, in
the center of which is the unchanged human

SPIRITUAL NOVELTIES 129
spirit, needs any new word, any new gospel from
the unchanging God ! As if there must be a new
evangel for the larger pile of goods ; for the longer
bank account ; for the railway ; for the steamship
line ! As if these things were a part of the man !
Receive in conclusion, I pray you, these two
inferential and applicatory thoughts.
First, the pitiableness of the hysteric craze for
spiritual novelty. Pitiable for two reasons. First,
because it is the attempt of the human intellect,
usurping the prerogatives of intuition and of reve
lation, to make discovery in a realm which is
hopelessly beyond its reach. The man might as
well say, " I am looking into the fauna and flora
of Neptune," as to say " I am investigating the
problems of evil, of spirit, of God, of immortality."
Here also professing himself to be wise, the man
quickly becomes, and most sadly, a fool.
Pitiable also is this craze, for it is the denial to
the poor human heart amid the contradictions,
and troubles, and sorrows of the present life, of the
comfort and inspiration of accepted and unchang
ing truth.
The second application of this whole subject
is this : Reason's high obligation and faith's fine
opportunity. Our day confuses man's temporal functions
9

130 THE STAFF METHOD
with his immortal life. It is as if into the pres
ence of the sick man there should gather a com
pany of his friends to discuss what uniform he
shall wear, what business he shall take up, what
social or civic responsibilities he shall assume —
and in the meantime the man is dying ! So those
who are wise above that which is written, " the
foolish prophets, that follow their own spirit, and
have seen nothing," gather themselves into the
spiritual sanctuary to discuss social economics ;
to formulate theories concerning spiritual myster
ies ; to guess at what the world's crowd shall be
and do ! And this while the human life through
sorrow, through suffering, and through death is
moving forward unto judgment !
There is but one great question that spiritual
truth needs to answer in time's day, and this is
the redemption, the safety of time's one great
entity — the individual man. This secured, earth
will be cared for, and heaven will not lose its own.
The truth which conditions this great issue has
been given unto the world, and is as unchanging
as the immutable God or His eternal throne :
" This is life eternal, to know Thee, the only
true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast
sent." " The word of the Lord endureth forever. And

SPIRITUAL NOVELTIES 131
this is the word which by the gospel is preached
unto you."
My fellow-men, you who are immortal citizens
of the kingdom of God, if you have any respect
for yourselves, for your worthiness and your dig
nity; if you have any reverence for the beauty
and majesty and glory of the infinite realm, I
beseech you, that with a beautiful contempt you
spurn from you the foolish and ephemeral spiritual
novelties of the Athenian or the Yankee mind,
and bow with all reverence in the presence of the
unchanging word that conditions the redemption
of man and the regeneration of the world. So
preserving both self-respect and faith in Him
who is the God of things as they are, through
Him who is time's apocalypse of this reality, you
shall have cause to render thankful praises while
thought or being lasts or immortality endures.

VII
THE SIFTING OF THE SENSUOUS
LIFE

VII
THE SIFTING OF THE SENSUOUS LIFE
"And Jacob was left alone ; and there wrestled a man with him
until the breaking of the day." — Gen. xxxii : 24.
Jacob was a smart, shrewd, successful man. If
there had been newspapers in that far-off day, he
would have been referred to as our rising young
townsman, our eminent citizen. He was smart
enough, with the aid of his wily mother, to entrap
and to rob his brother Esau, and when driven
from home by this sharp practice he was shrewd
enough to so manage things as to increase his
own holdings at the expense of his trusting and
generous uncle. And now with all the property
that he had accumulated while in residence with
this uncle — with all his oxen and asses and flocks,
with his men-servants and women-servants — he
turns his face toward his old home, turns from the
scenes of his business success and fortune-getting,
to run into the hour which should thoroughly
sift his inward life, which should make him afraid
and ashamed of that which he had come to regard
as his success, his fortune, and his glory. *35

136 THE STAFF METHOD
Let us note how this crucial hour breaks upon
the head of such a life : First of all, in the revela
tion of the reality, the nearness, the overwhelming
importance of an unseen world to which the
human life most truly and everlastingly belongs.
We live upon the rounded surface of a flying ball,
out from which in any direction space sweeps
away in distances unmeasured and unmeasurable.
In a vast universe, to which even imagination can
set no bounds, is plunged and wheels forward the
world upon which we have our home and all that
we call ours. This rimless reservoir, these depths,
these heights, these stretches of space are but
as vacancy to many of the hours of the human
life. Men see nothing in them ; they feel nothing
from them. The channels of the senses flood the
mind and fill the heart, and outside of the territory
which these drain the human life penetrates not
at all.
The sensuous spirit, the fleshly life, walks in the
presence of the vast infinite, and knows no con
nection with it. Its world, its universe, is the
office, the shop, the home. The pleasure which
allures, the gain which is sought, the ambition
which dominates — the human lives that pass and
repass, that laugh and cry, that suffer and die —
this is reality, this is the all to many an hour of

THE SIFTING OF THE SENSUOUS LIFE 137
the human life. Ask the man in such an hour
what he sees in yonder depths, and your answer
shall be a stare, or a sneer, or a pitying smile.
Yes ! but over the head of this sensuous life may
at any time break an hour which shall bring the
sentient, thrilling spirit into vital connection with
that which now seems emptiness and void. A few
hours ago his family, his servants, his cattle seemed
to Jacob to fill the spaces by Jabbok's ford. Now
these all are gone, and yet they leave not emptiness
behind them. There is that remaining with which
Jacob may have communion — with which he may,
must, wrestle. Jabbok's ford is still tenanted. So
sweep away from the world-absorbed soul its
environment of the material, so isolate the sensu
ous spirit, and out of the desert of sense so created
reality shall speak unto the human life, and unseen
Being hold mysterious communion with the soli
tary human spirit.
The hour of danger even more surely and
more vividly than the hour of loneliness makes
the same revelation. Behold the supplanter by
Jabbok's ford ! It is an hour in which everything
that he holds dear — the safety of his family, the
lives of his dependents, the fruit of twenty years
of toil — all are at stake. Suddenly, as the sand-
cloud of the desert rises up in the path of the

138 THE STAFF METHOD
caravan, there is lifted up before Jacob the wrath
ful cloud of four hundred armed men, and in the
midst of this cloud, and glaring out upon him from
its blackness, the face of his wronged brother
Esau. What shall be the result ? Shall the angry
cloud tear a path of ruin through his possessions ?
Shall a cruel death sweep from before his very
eyes the forms of his loved ones ? The hour is
critical and the smart and successful man trembles
before it. No sooner is he alone in the presence
of his danger than the void about him grows
tremulous, palpitating with life, and he himself is
wrestling with that which to a lighter hour had
been vacancy and nothingness. So ever does the
hour of sudden and alarming peril breathe life
into the spaces round about the human spirit. It
strikes reality into emptiness ; form into void ;
and gives life unto that which an hour before
was a solitude.
It was but a moment ago when the man upon the
top of the ascending wall saw nothing but bricks
and mortar and human forms, heard nothing but
the shouts of the workmen, the ring of the trowels,
and the creaking of the derrick, when suddenly,
by the slip of his foot he falls, and between the
scaffold and the ground all this sense world dis
appears, and an unseen world becomes real and

THE SIFTING OF THE SENSUOUS LIFE 139
living, the only real and living world before the
eyes of the falling man. A single step has
taken him out of one world into another! A
moment of peril has made vacancy alive, con
verted void into fullness, nothingness into the
only reality !
The lights flash from the cabin, and music's
sweet sounds fill all its spaces. Here and there,
in groups of two and three, the passengers prom
enade the deck. Ask these moving forms con
cerning reality ! Old ocean's depths, the solid
vessel upon which they stand, yonder distant shore
and waiting friends — these things fill human minds,
these things move human hearts.
Interrogate these moving forms. What of
this vast concave that arches you in, these en
veloping spaces through which you drive onward ?
Empty stretches, vacancy, nothingness. So comes
your answer from the heart of the sense-life. But
hark ! The bell rings out the note of danger !
There is a sudden and terrible crash. The ship
reels backward, and through the awful gash of
the collision the black waters are pouring ! What
now, where now, is reality ? Ah ! yonder solid
shore, and waiting friends, and ocean's sweeping
waves, and iron rib, and oaken plank are seen, are
felt no longer, and human spirits are speaking

140 THE STAFF METHOD
into, actually praying into that which a half-hour
ago was emptiness and void.
So the hour of sudden danger waves its wand
over vacancy, and forthwith this vacancy lives and
is all that does live to the consciousness of the
changed man, and the vision of the thrilled human
spirit. When peril hangs above it, Jabbok's soli
tude begins to breathe, to assume form, and the
lonely Jacob, before he is aware, is wrestling
with it.
Oh ! ye who along what ye call your solid streets,
and underneath the shadow of your unyielding
brick and granite fronts, and before your iron
safes, do daily move and stand and bow ; Oh !
ye who imagine yourselves thus dealing with the
only realities of life — I beg you now to stop and
remember how soon all these things may become
as airy nothings before your changed vision. To
day stop to remember how quickly all reality may
be transferred to the realm of the invisible, filled
with that which to your present, shallow, sensuous
hour seems only so much empty space.
But advancing a step, let me say that the
crucial hour breaks upon the sensuous human life
in the revelation of a Power hitherto unseen and
unfelt — a Power who is King of the invisible
realm, Lord and Judge of the human soul.

THE SIFTING OF THE SENSUOUS LIFE 141
It is difficult to define personality in so many
words. Yet each of us knows what it means,
understands well enough how it is separated from
being of any other kind. Though the infant life
lies a helpless and half-formed thing in the
mother's arms, yet you start not back at the
sound of your voice, when to this humble, almost
inanimate, existence you apply the personal pro
noun. You say of the unmoving, scarcely breath
ing, life, he, she, and when in words to which you
expect no reply you make the direct address it is
still in the form and by means of the same per
sonal pronoun. But so you do not address
Niagara, or the shining star above your head, or
the mighty ocean, or the beautiful rose. To none
of these do you say, " Thou," as if an answer
might come from it to you. So in simplest defi
nition personality is that which we address with
the use of the personal pronoun. It is life of our
kind — that which may answer back to our voice
— a thinking, feeling entity, separated from all
other being by the individual consciousness and
presided over by the mysterious force of the free
and self-directing will.
And in this form, always and for evermore, does
the crucial hour of the sense, life photograph the
reality of the unseen world. With no wild, un-

142 THE STAFF METHOD
answering law, with no nameless unpersonal force
did Jacob wrestle by Jabbok's ford. Throughout
that long eventful night, throughout all the hours
of that mysterious and fateful conflict, it was per
son meeting with person. " There wrestled a
man with him until the breaking of the day."
" He said unto him, What is thy name ?" " Jacob
asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy
name." Thy name — thy name, so the wrestlers
spoke, so they asked of each other. Thou, me —
a meeting of persons, a battle of individual and
independent wills, a conflict of personal forces the
night through.
So ever is it in the crucial hour that breaks
over the head of the sense life.
The house is deathly still, and stealing out of
the room in which the mute forms of the broken
family circle sit together, you softly climb the
stairs and stand before the dead body of your
boy. If now you kneel by the side of the un
moving form, — and in such an hour the unseen
world will be so real to you and so near that you
will instinctively do this — if so you bow in wor
ship, the words of your heart will form themselves
in no address to impersonal law or force. By the
side of your dead child, before such an altar, you
will not speak to say, you will not cry out : " Oh,

THE SIFTING OF THE SENSUOUS LIFE 143
stream of tendency, have pity upon me. Oh,
power that makes for righteousness, comfort me !
Oh, Great First Cause, give me strength for my
weakness, light for my darkness and peace for
my aching heart." Not so will your soul speak in
such a presence and in such an hour, but instinc
tively it will break forth in the cry, " O God,
have pity, have pity. I did not recognize the
Christ Child in the one whom Thou didst send
until Thou hadst withdrawn Thy gift. Forgive,
forgive my blindness, my earthliness, my brutish
sensuousness, for now my heart aches with a
measureless grief, and I am Thy child."
So also in the hour of danger. Between the
masthead and the deck, between the crashing in
of the bullet and the outspeeding of the life, it is
unto a person that the human life cries out. All
hours of deepest conflict, all hours of danger, of
sorrow, and of loss, all hours that break in sifting
power upon the head of the sense-life show the
reality of the unseen world unto the human spirit
in the form of a person. The common, the in
stinctive ejaculation of the human soul the world
over and time through in critical and decisive
hours is in the words, " O my God !"
Are not such hours as these as profitable
for instruction in spiritual mystery; are they not

144 THE STAFF METHOD
as reliable in their teaching as are the hours of
mirthful jollity, or boastful pride, or over- weening
smartness, or festering sin ? Nay, are they not
better? Do they not stand nearer to, do they
not see deeper into, do not they give truer voice,
fuller expression to the unchanging and infinite
reality ?
What then, do you ask, shall be said of those
who from out the study, the laboratory, and the
philosophical hall give out periphrastic and
euphemistic abstractions to take the place of this
old concrete word, " God " ? This, I think, must be
said first of all. Skillful rhetoricians are these
men, who under the inspiration of literary taste
would fain produce some new and shining
phrases; effeminate sons of sturdy fathers often
assiduously devoting themselves to the high
potencies of a spiritual homeopathy; men play
ing with phrases ; intoxicated with a sense of their
own originality ; quite beside their true selves ;
artificial, childishly vain — unspiritual. No doubt
it is true that the class whose work it is to put
together words for the pages of the review, or for
the almost equally ephemeral page of the book,
do tire of the old nomenclature. There is, as the
great essayist, Foster, pointed out long ago, an
aversion on the part of men of literary taste to

THE SIFTING OF THE SENSUOUS LIFE 145
evangelical religion and if to the thing itself, then
of course and also an aversion to the stereotyped
phrases by which it is commonly expressed.
Then coupled with this aversion is a strange liking
for abstract generalities. These commit the writer
to nothing, and they have on account of their
very indistinctness an impressive echo that is
quite pleasing to the literary and philosophical
ear. Even Carlyle — rugged prophet as he was —
falls a victim to the power of this seduction, and
on his pages are found such sonorous phrases as
the " Silences," the " Immensities," the " Infinities,"
the " Eternities." But at the best, even taking in
their magniloquent echoes, these phrases are not
significant generalizations. At their best they are
only glittering generalities, which the human life
in its deeper hours puts from it, even as the starv
ing man might thrust from him shining beads
and colored glass, crying out, " What need have
I of such paltry things as these ! "
Behold this written out in letters of light and
fire in countless human experiences. The book
rests, dust-covered, on the library shelf; the yellow
pages of the magazine are going through the mill
again, while the author of them both is lying
upon the bed of his solitary and judging hour —
his heart sobbing out the words, " My God ! My

146 THE STAFF METHOD
God !" The magazine in the rag-picker's bag, the
book forgotten, and the man piteously crying out
unto that which he has proved again and again
can neither hear nor answer !
By the side of Jabbok's ford, underneath the
black cloud of danger, at the end of its power,
revealed unto itself, the solitary human spirit calls
not unto the Silences or the Eternities, wrestles
not with cause, or law, or potency. In the crucial
judging, sifting hour, when the unseen becomes
real and visible unto the human life, it ever strikes
itself into the form of a person, and for this per
sonal Entity there is no other name so good as the
old name God — the Infinite One — the Father
who is in heaven. Not only so, not only is there
no other word so good as this one, but this is also
true in the deep and trying hour, when the hu
man spirit, emancipated from the shallow and
make-believe conventions of earth, feels itself face
to face with Everlasting Reality, it never thinks
of naming this Reality by any other name than
religion's old word, God.
But again let me ask you to observe that
the hour which sifts the sensuous life breaks upon
the head of this life in the exposure of its false
beauty, in the withering of its false strength, and
in the blotting out of its false glory.

THE SIFTING OF THE SENSUOUS LIFE 147
"And there wrestled a Man with Jacob until
the breaking of the day. And He touched the
hollow of his thigh, and Jacob's thigh was out
of joint as he wrestled with Him."
Long years before this, in their wrestling match,
Jacob was able to throw his brother Esau. In his
conflict with Laban also he came off victorious.
In both of these encounters he won, as our world
uses this word. But now, at length, he has come
unto an hour when the glory of these successes
withers as the gorgeous sunflower might wither
under the breath of the blast furnace : when the
heretofore winning Jacob beholds his glory as so
much shame and all his meretricious strength in
a moment converted into unbeautiful and helpless
weakness. No chance for supplanting here. No
opportunity for trickery here. No possibility of
going in to win upon the low qualities of smart
ness and shrewdness and cunning. The very
qualities that before had been his confidence and
his success are now his weakness and his fear.
So, unto the hour of scorching and shriveling,
moves every life of sense, every life that has not
by thought and purpose penetrated unto that
within the veil, every life that has failed to con
nect its progress, its success and its hope with the
everlasting principle of the Divine righteousness.

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Take the wild Indian of the wigwam, and set
him in the Philosophical Hall : how helpless he
seems ! how pitiably deficient ! how despicably
deformed ! His fleetness of foot, his sharpness of
vision, his strength of limb — all his savage glory
are in a moment turned into the contemptible. His
glistening beads, his gaudy feathers, his girdle of
scalps — all these, his former crown and glory, are
now a shame unto him. He has been lifted up
into a light that makes a mock of these bar
baric ornaments. He stands judged, condemned,
in the presence of that which is better and nobler —
silenced and ashamed before the power of a higher
life. At the touch of this life, his strength
shrinks to weakness ; in the presence of its su
perior beauty, his glory withers into shame. So
Jacob the wily one, Jacob the supplanter, came
into contact with divine and beauteous reality,
and at once his strength is out of joint and such
an exposure and such a withering await every
human life which has not measured its success
by the standard of the wider and deeper and
eternal world, which is not in consciousness a
subject of the everlasting kingdom of God.
Imagine the red Indian before the philosophers.
Imagine the low-browed pugilist in the salon of
culture and beauty. Imagine the able, shrewd,

THE SIFTING OF THE SENSUOUS LIFE 149
cunning man of the world lifted up into the at
mosphere of holiness, into the presence of the
throne that is always white, into the face of the
beautiful God ! Oh, what shrinking will such an
hour witness ! How its white light will search
out and expose the false beauty ! How its dart
ing fires will scarify the brute strength and con
sume the shameful glory ! The man has been
shrewd, versatile, crafty unto the outer semblance
of success, and the world has glorified his
career. He has won in virtue of the lower qual
ities of his being, and he has heard himself
praised for these, as for a great success. Now
all at once he is plunged into an hour where all
these qualities show rather as the debasement
of his manhood, and all these victories as so
many defeats of the immortal life ! Hitherto he
has fought with his antagonists, using the weapons
of a brutish cunning or a devilish duplicity, and
now in a moment he faces an antagonist who is
Light and in whom is no darkness at all. He
has for long received the honor that cometh from
men. His neighbors have said, " First citizen,"
and taken off their hats ; the world has cried
" Millionaire," and bowed down ! He himself has
come to regard his life a great success. Now
suddenly he passes into an hour when his money

150 THE STAFF METHOD
lifts itself up as the price for which he has bar
tered things worth more than money, and when
his earthly honors disclose themselves as so many
weeds of mourning wrapped round a wizened
and deformed spirit.
So the hour of judgment breaks upon men ; so it
sifts the low smartness and the unworthy success.
Oh, what withering of the false bigness will there
be in this hour ! Self-revealed, ashamed, self-
contemning, the man will shrink into himself,
and as a hunted felon dart his terrified gaze
in every direction for the corner in which he may
hide from the apocalypse of the worthy life and
the true glory.
Read once more in the incident of the text
that the crucial hour as it breaks upon the head
of the sensuous life holds within it the possibility
of a new birth — the birth into a new and a higher
life. Out of his mysterious wrestling Jacob comes
limping, but he comes forth as a limping prince
— his name no longer Jacob, the supplanter, but
Israel, spiritual potentate in the kingdom of
God. Upon shrunken strength he leans, no
longer smart enough to steal from his brother, or
to circumvent his uncle, but all this shrinking
is of the false bigness, and it is into a weak-

THE SIFTING OF THE SENSUOUS LIFE 151
ness, which from the higher level shows as
strength. At last Jacob is a true man, at last
his life is real. All artifice, all sham, all duplic
ity, all low cunning have disappeared, consumed
by the fire of that awful and glorious hour in
which he met with God. Into this hour Jacob
went a smart, shrewd, successful commoner, and
out of it he comes a true, fair, nobleman. Pros
trate in the darkness at Jabbok's ford — conquered
by the might of his loving Antagonist — he has
heard the voice of this same Antagonist saying
unto him, " Stand up, Sir Knight," and he has
arisen into place and honor and glory in the
family of the great King. Forth from his cru
cial hour he comes limping — but with a royal
limp. So our world of sham and unreality is full of
princes, whose finest decoration is their limping
gait. Their outward life has been maimed, but
their inward life has been ennobled. On shrunken
sinew walk they for the remainder of their earthly
days, but from the high table land of immortality
God and angels behold in their gait the carriage
of the Prince. Into the dark night of fear and of
loss, into the darker hour of sorrow and bereave
ment they have gone, and, after long wrestling
hours with the living and the true One, they

152 THE STAFF METHOD
themselves have come forth true, and alive with
the life of God. The sifting hour of the deep
experience has smitten them down into the con
sciousness of weakness, into the consciousness
of shame, but their consternation and their suffer
ing have been the travail pains of a new birth.
Unto each one of them also has the great King
spoken to say, " Stand up, Sir Knight," and they
have stood up — out of their low smartness,
out of their shrewd self-seeking, out of their
self-complacency, out of the mire of their suc
cess — stood up new men and true ! Oh, ye who
have so won, even through your defeat, re
joice in this defeat. Oh, ye who have wrestled
in the dark hours unto your utter exhaustion,
give thanks for the surrender that was forced
upon you ! Oh, ye who with limping gait and
straitened outward life walk forward unto the
eternities, rejoice in this, that the inward life
has been purified, that the spirit has been en
nobled, and that in God's sight ye do now walk
as princes.
So, in outline, is drawn in the incident of the
text, the hour which is to sift the sensuous life.
Not altogether fascinating is it, I know, in many of
our earthly, animal days to contemplate it. We
are such creatures of flesh and blood, so wrapped

THE SIFTING OF THE SENSUOUS LIFE 153
round with the material and the sensuous, so
dominated by the conventions of a disordered
world that we shrink back from the nakedness, the
exposure threatened by unpitying reality and the
unveiled God. But since we do not stay here, but
move swiftly forward into the sifting hour, it would
seem the part of wisdom for us, as it is the gra
cious opportunity of the present day, to prepare
ourselves for it.
This can be done, first of all, by familiarizing
ourselves with the idea of the world to come.
Definite knowledge of facts, I know, is not possi
ble here, but spiritual impression is. If you
will walk with earth's new man from the hour
in which, as with the innocent wonder of child
hood, He lifts up the interrogation, " Wist ye not
that I must be about My Father's business ?"
until in the gloaming of His earthly day you shall
hear Him exclaim, " I have finished the work which
Thou gavest Me to do," you will have impressed
upon you the fact that this is not the only world
to which man belongs ; you will come to feel the
powers of an unseen world — to taste these powers,
even as the river tastes the saltness of the sea, far
up its earthly banks.
Then there is a second element of preparation
within your reach, even acquaintance with God.

154 THE STAFF METHOD
Here again I know human vision is blind and hu
man reason is impotent. But the Divine Man
here again is Helper and Saviour. " No man hath
seen God at any time ; the only begotten Son,
which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath de
clared Him." " In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God. . . And the Word was made flesh, and
dwelt among us." " He that hath seen Me hath
seen the Father."
So if you will become familiar with the Christ —
and this is your privilege — you will not be afraid
nor ashamed when you are swept forward into
the presence of Him, upon whose image, manifest
in human form, you have learned to look.
Then there remains for you this third step of
preparation, the keeping ever before you in
plainest view, the true standard of the real beauty
and the true glory of rational life. Here also
He, who is the Head of the new humanity, waits
upon your necessity, offers Himself unto you as
Saviour. The world has never found any " fault
in Him." He is the Model, the perfect Man. He
will show you, if you are willing to look, if you
wish to learn what you ought to be, and what you
may become.
These three ideas, Christ the revealer of God,

THE SIFTING OF THE SENSUOUS LIFE 155
Christ the minister plenipotentiary from the world
that is to come unto the world that now is, Christ
the image of the true man — by the power of these
great truths, faithfully used, you may fashion for
yourself a life which no night of earth's darkness,
and no hour of future surprise, shall have power
to terrify, to wound, or to rob.

VIII
TWO GREAT DEEPS

VIII
TWO GREAT DEEPS
" Thy judgments area great deep." — Psalm xxxvi : 6.
In the language of the Bible, the judgments
of God are the purposes of the Divine will taking
shape in human history, the self-manifestations of
the Infinite under the conditions of time and
space. The great deep, also another common
Bible phrase, is the wide blue sea, mightiest of
God's earthly creatures, that forever rolls and
tosses within the sight of man. So by the words
of the text are we to-day invited to take our stand
upon its beach, and, while we look out upon the
great ocean, learn something of Him of whom it
is declared, " Thy way is in the sea, and Thy
path in the great waters."
The first and most evident attribute of the great
deep is its unresting action, the never-ceasing
character of its motion. At times, when spending
the sacred day in the country, it has seemed to
me as if the quiet of earth's sweet rest day had
fallen upon nature as well as upon the souls of
iS9

160 THE STAFF METHOD
men. The breezes seemed to stir the leaves with
a gentler motion. The supporting accompani
ment of animate life, which, like the ticking of the
clock, is unheard in common hours, came into
notice, and seemed a special orchestra prepared
with tender and minor strains for the worship of
the solemn hours, and even the chattering brooks,
like noisy children who have been rebuked by the
falling of a sudden calm upon their elders about
them, seemed to moderate their joy and glide in
softer murmurs over the ripples in their gleaming
pathway. But the ocean knows no Sabbath, no
rest day, no hour of peaceful quiet. It is the
troubled sea that cannot rest. When you lay
yourself down upon your bed at night the plash
ing of the waves upon the beach tells you that
there is no sleep for them, and if you awaken at
dead of night the deep undertone of their motion
reports itself at once to your opening ears, and in
the morning, as you stand upon the new-made
beach, you read the proof that there is no period
of inaction in the life of the great deep ; that while
earth and man may rest and sleep, the wide blue
sea, like its great Creator, fainteth not, neither is
weary. Now, as summer suns have begun to
wheel their higher circles in the heavens, throwing
down their furnace flames upon the head of man

TWO GREAT DEEPS 161
and beast, there shall flock to old ocean's side a
great company of those who for another year have
worked and rested, have lain down and risen up,
and the first sight that they shall look upon as
the whitened beach lifts itself again into view will
be the advancing and receding waves, the same
unchanged motions, the same undiminished rest
lessness of the years before. Long after these
children of the summer excursion have visited the
ocean for the last time, and have laid themselves
down in the silence of the sleep that knows no
waking, the same waves that they are looking
upon to-day shall come and go, shall hurry in
and hurry out, shall toss and sport themselves in
the same unceasing and unwearied movements
with which they greeted and pleased the eyes and
the ears of visitors of other days and of past gen
erations. Turn now from the symbol unto that which is
symbolized, from the great deep unto Him who
holds its mighty masses in the hollow of His
hand. The Infinite mind and will are necessarily
and eternally active. In the realm of creation, of
providence, and of grace there is no resting of the
purpose of Deity, no slumbering of the judgments
of the Almighty. Individual development, world-
change, world-progress, the onsweeping life of

1 62 THE STAFF METHOD
universal nature, these all proclaim the ceaseless
activity, the continuous self-manifestation of Him,
who is in all, and through all, the alone fountain
of all force, the impulse of all movement, the soul
of all life. Consider this activity as it has been
revealed unto the children of men in this earth
province of the universal empire.
Under the brooding of the Divine Spirit upon
the formless waste, the waters that were under the
firmament drew themselves away from the waters
which were above the firmament — then earth's
fire-mist grew dense, then denser still ; then light
flashed in upon the darkness, order spoke unto
confusion — five mighty days lifted up their finished
work while they listened for the acceptance and
approval of the Divine Architect, given out in the
words, " It is very good " ; and then a sixth day
came — also one of the great thousand-year days
of the Lord, — and the earth rolled forth into space
the finished dwelling-place of man !
Since that far-off period of creation's power
there has been no stopping, no rest within this
earth of ours. By day and by night, around its
own axis, around the sun, and with sun and planet
and satellite forward around some far-off and mys
terious center, it has wheeled onward through the
centuries — through the centuries which are only

TWO GREAT DEEPS 163
so many pendulum beats of its mighty life, and
inconceivable orbit. Upon its surface, too, all is
motion, and change, and progress. Its seasons
flow onward in a current that knows no slacken
ing. Its rivers run to the sea with a music that-'
never intermits. Its clouds are yearly transformed
into bread for its millions of pilgrim-pensioners.
Its valleys are being filled ; its mountains leveled.
Men are multiplying upon its surface and
within its graves. Knowledge is increasing ; civil
ization is advancing ; art and science are conquer
ing new fields and winning new trophies — the past
is evermore forgotten, and under the superintend
ence of some mighty power, our earth and all that
it contains goes spinning down the grooves of
time, taking hold of an orbit that no human eye
may see and no human intelligence may measure.
So also and as wonderful are the activity and
progress of the moral realm. In the soundless
depths of a past eternity the purpose of redemption
was fashioned. Time brought forth the theater
of its manifestation, and the object of its won
drous power. Since the first day of human his
tory, where has there been shown any sign of end
or rest ? The gloaming of the morning has ever
been lifting itself up into the light of a more per
fect day. Promise has ripened into fulfillment ;

164 THE STAFF METHOD
type has been lost in anti-type. The church of a
family has widened into the church of a nation,
and this through centuries of discipline and of
growth has broadened into the church of a world,
»and this world-church, with the growth of cen
turies in her stature, lifts herself up before us to
day, the dew of youth sparkling upon her beauti
ful garments and the light of hope flushing her
fair face as she turns her eyes upon the misty
stretches of humanity's mighty future. There is
no weakening of her faith, no wasting of her power.
Daily is she laying the hand of her guidance upon
some new world-force, stirring the hearts of men
with the influence of some higher motive and some
sweeter hope ; by one incline after another lifting
the world up unto higher and yet higher table
lands of thought, of purpose, and of being.
Through the shaking of the nations, through and
over tjhe oppositions of men, by the sweet breath
of human love, by the harsh and strident gale
of human wrath, is the ever-enlarging hope
of the new humanity which is in and through
Christ Jesus, being swept forward, and of rest,
of harbor, of anchorage there is yet no sign.
What are all these movements, these changes,
this progress, but the self-manifestation of the
Infinite, the birth into time, and human history of | |

TWO GREAT DEEPS 165
the purposes of His immutable and omnipotent
will. Yet what is our earth? A point in infinite
space. What is time with its circling ages ? A
point in infinite duration. All the wonders, all the
changes, the multiplied, the progressive, the end
less movements of human history, what are these
all but the outworking, the manifestation of the
infinite purpose in a moment of eternity and in
point of immensity ? Oh, the glories which must
rise before the eye that can sweep the universe of
space and duration ! Oh, the waves which before
such a vision must lift themselves up and sweep
across the mighty expanse ! Oh, the sublime, the
awful gulf current which such observation must
note, setting its course toward, cutting its way
through the ages '" unto that far-off divine event to
which the whole creation moves " ! Oh, the over
whelming glory of the final end, forever unap-
proached, forever unapproachable ! Oh, the glory
of the ever-living God ! " Thy judgments are a
great deep."
But the ocean is not only unceasing in its
activity, but it is sublimely irresistible in the
mightiness of its power.
Even when the sea is placid, our minds instinc
tively clothe it with majestic and measureless

1 66 THE STAFF METHOD
force. In the low plash of the sunlit waves we
hear disguised the same voice that boomed artil
lery-like through the night time of fear. We
watch the ocean, even in its hours of play, with
much the same feeling that we look upon the
sporting of the wild beast, not knowing how soon
its sport may give place to rage, and its harmless
activity change to a superhuman destructiveness.
But while the ocean always and everywhere im
presses the human mind with the idea of unlim
ited power, there are times and seasons in its life
when its majestic force comes out in bolder form
and thrills us with a more awesome wonder.
When, for illustration, turning as some restless
monster from one side to the other, he begins to
push his mighty masses in upon the land, what
power can oppose his progress or bid back his on-
sweeping billows ? Slowly and majestically turn
his quickened depths toward the land; higher and
higher rises each successive wave; farther and
still farther up upon the shore he throws his tidal
fullness, and then, while we look, he reverses the
motion of his liquid masses, and with an energy
that none can hinder, and with a retreat that no
power may cut off, rolls them back again into the
hollow of the great deep.
The storm is even a grander exhibition of

TWO GREAT DEEPS 167
the ocean's power than the tide. When the
heavens grow black above his uneasy masses, and
lurid lightning cuts this blackness into horrible
gashes ; when the winds, as if let loose from the
gates of hell, whip into foam the sweeping billows
until one would think the deep were hoary; when
there succeeds to the momentary calm, which is
itself frightful, the first burst of the hurricane, and
to that low moaning and indistinct muttering of
mighty wrath, the thunder of the wild billows
coming forth rank after rank from their garrison
in the deep ; when these voices are all answered
back by the angry voices of the sky ; when the
deep below calls unto the deep above, then how
puny seems the noblest conception of human
power — how majestically terrible the aroused
might of the great ocean !
With this sight before your eyes, turn unto that
of which it is the symbol.
" The voice of the Lord is upon the waters . . .
which stilleth the noise of the seas, the noise of
their waves, and the tumult of the people."
The Divine purposes as they manifest them
selves in human history are not only irresistible,
but they move on to their end through the use of
the humblest instrumentalities, through agencies
and influences which seem contemptible to hu-

168 THE STAFF METHOD
man eyes. This is the grandest conceivable
exhibition of measureless force. When power
can afford to be parsimonious of her resources ;
when she can accomplish her ends through the
help of the most humble allies, then it is that she
arrays herself in her most glorious apparel and
lifts to her head her most resplendent crown.
Of such exhibitions of power the history of
our world is full. When their Divine Leader in
the olden day would, for His chosen people, con
quer the menacing host of the Midianites, He
sends against them, not the thirty thousand which
were at His command, but three hundred only;
He smites the giant of Gath with a pebble from a
stripling's sling ; scatters an army by the flash of
a lamp and the blare of a trumpet ; revolutionizes
the world by twelve fishermen ; reforms the
church by a single-handed monk as against the
power of pope and prince and emperor; and
through the centuries, by means of the " foolish
ness of preaching," carries forward a work over
which the celestial hierarchies bend in liveliest
interest, and by which are shaped the fate of na
tions and the history of the world. Pictures these,
all of them, of the ineffable ease with which the
purposes of the Divine administration work unto
their appointed end in the development of our

TWO GREAT DEEPS 169
race. Then even beyond this wondrous exhibition
reaches the resplendent fullness of their matchless
and measureless power. Not only do they em
ploy forces scorned of human judgment, but they
make readiest use of the oppositions of men to
accomplish their designs.
Look back upon old Babel. " Unto consolida
tion, unto centralization, unto unity let it work,
cried the voice of the human builders." He that
sitteth in the heavens heard, and from His throne
came forth this response unto the children of
men : " The Divine purpose is to scatter men over
the face of the earth, and your work will lend
itself readily to this end." And what did history
write down ? Why, Babel, — that is, dispersion.
So we read unto this day.
Cast a glance into ancient Egypt. Political
wisdom, the power of a despotic throne, declares
the decree and every man-child of the Israelites
is doomed. But the more the people were op
pressed, the more they multiplied and grew. Nay,
more ! The very measure that was designed to
render their slavery perpetual threw into the
court of Pharaoh, there to be trained in all the
wisdom of Egypt, the deliverer of the bondsmen.
As though it were not enough for the Divine
purpose to accomplish deliverance, it causes the

170 THE STAFF METHOD
taskmasters with their own hands to break the
fetters they had forged, compels the house of
Pharaoh to nourish and to educate a Moses.
" He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh."
Hear the echoes of this same laugh in the west
ern world and in our own day, where insatiate
ambition of American slavery for extension and
defense was turned into the great emancipation
measure of the nineteenth century. But take the
supreme illustration, and let it suffice for all.
With wicked hands men seized and crucified
heaven's well-beloved and earth's fairest Son.
Yes ! but Pilate, with a hand that he might not
stay, was obliged to reach forth and write the word
" King " over the head of the dying Jesus ; Joseph's
sepulcher gave up to the world an immortal name
and an endless power ; and even the dumb cross,
which had been unwittingly the agent of death,
became a thing of life, the standard of an ever-
increasing and invincible host. He who was cut
off out of the land without issue and without
generation, now counts His children by the thou
sands in every land that is visited by the sun.
The Man of sorrows and of death has become the
joy and the life of a world. " Thy judgments, O
God, are a great deep."
A third characteristic of the great deep is the

TWO GREAT DEEPS 171
order that controls all its unceasing movements,
that directs and tethers all the outreachings of its
mighty power. This would not appear to the ob
server who should for the first time stand upon its
shores. To such an one the rise and fall of its
mighty waves, the incoming and the outgoing of
its tidal masses would indicate no order and voice
no law. But if such an observer should return
day after day, and year after year, to look with
reason's eye upon the liquid continent, he would
surely be forced to the conclusion that underneath
the apparent lawlessness that first impressed him
there is some regulative force governing the seem
ingly capricious movements, and dictating both
certainty and uniformity to all the manifestations
of their mighty life. Such an one would be sure to
hear, breaking forth from the vast and weltering
plain before him, the words of this mysterious
voice : " Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther :
and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." As
a matter of fact, men have stood now for centuries
looking out from ocean's shore, and with what
result ? The table of the tidal movements can
now be written down years before their occur
rence ; the equatorial and polar currents can now
be mapped, and the racing gulf streams, and the
yearly tide- rises, and the mysterious undertows,

172 THE STAFF METHOD
these all can be charted for the guidance of the
adventurous voyager.
We who by the voice of the text to-day are
invited unto ocean's beach to learn our lesson,
are thus warranted in attributing a similar order
to the judgments of the Almighty, to the purposes
of the overruling Power, as these take hold of
and manifest themselves in the affairs of our dis
ordered world. I know that the philosophy of
history is yet but poorly understood and imper
fectly written. Historians stand upon the mighty
beach of our world's life, and in the activity of its
great forces see nothing but so much confused
and aimless motion ; so much result and effect of
human passion and human greed ; so much out-
writing of the uncontrolled desires of human
hearts and the ungoverned purposes of the human
will. Hence and through all the centuries they
have been lifting up this voice : " Where is the
promise of His coming ? for since the fathers fell
asleep, all things continue as they were from the
beginning of the creation."
But this is only because these observers have
not stood long enough upon the world-encircling
beach, or long enough with eyes opened by the
touch of the Divine Spirit, marked down the
movements upon which they looked. This is

TWO GREAT DEEPS 173
because the eye which sees here is the one that
opened in its little cradle but yesterday ; because
the human mind finite, and infantile, has here to
do with the infinite, with the great immeasurable
days of the Lord. So centuries ago, the astrono
mer, directing his gaze to yonder star, cried out,
" It does not move; the shining point is a fixed one
in the mighty star field." But now, to-day, the
astronomer directs his telescopic vision unto the
same star, and this is the voice that we hear :
"Ah, it has moved ! The glittering point was not a
fixed diamond pinned upon the bosom of the
night." The first observer was mistaken because
he looked upon a sun the seconds of whose
mighty orbit were so many of earth's centuries ;
he drew a false conclusion because there was not
time enough between his cradle and his grave for
him to learn the stupendous truth.
So are we bidden, by the analogy of the text,
to believe it is with the gulf stream of the Divine
purpose in the ocean of time. Through the ages
one increasing purpose runs, and with unresting
and invincible force is sweeping onward to the
end of universal order and everlasting righteous
ness. That the Divine purpose in human history
does more in this direction, that it has so moved,
this year of our Lord nineteen hundred and

174 THE STAFF METHOD
three bears unmistakable and convincing witness.
America is better than the republic whose ashes
are strewn on the banks of the Tiber — better as
Rome was better than the dynasties that rose and
fell to the music of the Euphrates and the Tigris.
The current of the overruling purpose has swept
our world forward — forward unto a larger knowl
edge and a wider wisdom — forward unto a nobler
freedom and a higher civilization — forward unto
a larger type of the individual man and a grander
form of the nation — forward unto a fuller under
standing and a more abounding enjoyment of the
teaching and the promise of the Cross.
No doubt there are isolated events, anomalous
plans, great crises and centuries in our world's
life which seem to be so many retrograde currents.
So there are in the arctic region and upon
the bosom of the current that is setting toward
the equator, surface waves which flow toward
the pole. There is upon the bosom of the in
coming tide a multitude of wavelets whose move
ment is away from the shore. Granted all this —
yet shall the equator bathe itself in the waters
that have poured from the northern sea and
the continent receive upon its majestic front
the far-resounding dash of the tidal wave. So,
taught by the intuition of the soul and by the

TWO GREAT DEEPS 175
past progress of the human race, as well as by the
declared analogy of the text, must we not say
that the current of human history shall yet lift
itself up into and break upon the front of the
great white throne in the exulting joy of this
millennial chorus : " The kingdoms of this world
are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His
Christ; and He shall reign forever and ever." So
shall order grow out of that which we now deem
confusion, and so shall the judgments of the In
finite One — now a great and weltering maze before
the eyes of men — stretch themselves out as a sea
of glass, mirrored in which the universe shall
read for evermore the grace and the glory, the
wisdom and the power of Him who is the Creator
of worlds, the Father of men, and the King of all
our earth.
Thus standing by invitation of the text upon the
beach of the deep blue sea, have we learned the
lesson given unto us, — unresting action, immeas
urable power, immutable order. And how won
derfully majestic and sublime is the creation of
the Almighty that to-day lifts up before us these
glorious attributes ! If you will open your eyes,
you will see the ocean in uniform of blue and
white flowing unto every shore ; if you will open
your ears, you will catch the music of its perpetual

176 THE STAFF METHOD
thunder as it girdles the globe, and rises in mighty
chorus to the skies. In its embrace the opposite
poles of earth are in contact ; great islands are
only so many phosphorescent atoms quivering in
its waters, and whole continents are but the jewels
that it wears upon its broad bosom.
But there is yet a mightier sea than earth's
great ocean. It is the great deep of the Divine
judgments, the great deep of the self-manifesta
tions of the Infinite. On its broad surface glit
tering constellations are the phosphorescent light,
and uncounted systems of suns and of worlds,
the jewels with which its raiment sparkles. Out
yonder to Sirius, from which the swift-darting
light comes wearily after the lapse of centuries —
out yonder to the unresolved star dust of the
Milky Way, where even imagination grows sick
with its awful flight — unto those distant shores I
can see the waters of this mighty deep flowing,
and While I listen I can hear their echoes as in
sublime doxology they rise to the Infinite Throne.
A sea whose waters lave every shore within this
boundless universe — this is the great deep of the
Divine judgments. A sea of infinity pouring
itself round immensity — this is the self-manifes
tation of the Infinite, this the propulsive energy
and the controlling force, of the Divine purpose,

TWO GREAT DEEPS 177
Upon this great deep you are embarked — a
voyager whether you will or no. Is not this
true? Are you not so embarked? By all the
power that you possess can you abrogate your
gift of life, or even reverse the motion of your
being ? Have you any hand of choice or might
to expunge or rewrite the decree which declares
that you shall go forward whither you know
not, try a course that you cannot map down ?
Surely you are embarked as a voyager whether
you will or no.
What shall be your preparations, your out
fit, for this mysterious and adventurous voyage ?
I can see the young man, resplendent in the
glory that his tailor has loaned him, turning his
feathery yacht, without compass or anchor, with
out strength of spar or width of beam, into the
mighty billows and raging storms of the broad
Atlantic. The sight is not a pleasant one. It is
such a mockery of reality. It is such a travesty
upon human wisdom and human strength.
So I can see a human life swept forward over a
deep that it cannot fathom, into storms that it can
not resist, unto a harbor that it cannot foresee, and
all the while self-confident, self-complacent, ir
reverent, prayerless, not even serious. This also
is a pitiful spectacle. It jars upon reason. It is
12

178 THE STAFF METHOD
so out of keeping with the nature of things. It
is such a pathetic and needless exposure of the
weak and fearing spirit of a man. Against this
sense-madness lovingly and earnestly I warn you
to-day. The outfit which you, my fellow-man, hepd for
your adventurous voyage is not the natty costume
of any one of this world's fashions, but the old
and simple garment of a reverent faith. That
which is consonant with your being, and suited
to your necessities beyond even the power of your
imagination to perfect it, is the child-heart within
you, taking hold of the Infinite Father above
you, reaching out unto Him who is wise to direct,
pitiful to succor, and almighty to save — director
of currents — ruler of waves — master of storms.
So equipped with this filial spirit, you will be
able to pass through all dark days in calmness
and wjth courage, and when the hour of storm
and stress shall break, you will be prepared to
sing your every fear to sleep with the sweet lullaby
of this beautiful and blessed trust : —
For, though from out our bourne of time and place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

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