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REVEREND

George Leon Walker, D.D.

1830-1900

HARTFORD, CONN.
1900
[PRIVATELY PRINTED]

The Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company, Printers.

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MEMORIAL SKETCH AND TRIBUTES.

From tbe Hartford Conrant of March 14, igoo.
[By Williston Walker.]
Dr. George Leon Walker passed peacefully away
at four o'clock this (Wednesday) morning at the
Walker home on Prospect street. There were gath
ered about the bedside when the end came the doctor's
son, Prof. Williston Walker, and his wife ; the doctor's
brother, Dr. Henry F. Walker of New York ; their
sister, Mrs. Boardman, and her husband, Professor
George N. Boardman. The immediate cause of death
was a severe attack of pneumonia, which had come as
a second attack after a previous illness, from which
he rallied.

The Rev. Dr. George Leon Walker, whose death
occurred this morning, came of sturdy New England
ancestry. He was eighth in descent from Richard
Walker, who settled at Lynn, Mass., in 1630, fought in
the early Indian wars, and was a member both of the
Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of London
and of its Boston namesake. His great-grandfather,
Phineas, of Woodstock, Conn., was a soldier in the Old
French and Revolutionary wars. His grandfather,
Leonard, like many another son of Connecticut, emi-

6 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
grated to Vermont just as the eighteenth century came
to a close, and settled at ' Strafford. His father,
Charles, born before the emigrant left the Woodstdck
home, graduated at Andover Theological Seminary
in 1 82 1, and married Lucretia Ambrose, daughter of
Stephen Ambrose of Concord, N. H., a woman of un
usual talents, whom the subject of this sketch was
markedly to resemble in character and features.
The Rev. Charles Walker was settled at Rutland in
the first pastorate of a ministry conspicuous for more
than half a century in Vermont when his second son,
George Leon, was born on April 30, 1830. The
changes frequently incident to ministerial service took
the father to Brattleboro when George was four years
old, and that town in which he was to live till his
seventeenth year was always dear to him as his boy
hood home. The early education of the boy was in
the schools of Brattleboro, and he was accustomed in
later life to recall with pleasure the inspiration he drew
from the teaching of a young master of the village
high school, afterward eminent as a librarian of the
Boston Public Library, the Hon. Mellen Chamberlain.
But the boy's home, with its intellectual and earnest
parents and its four keen-minded children — three
brothers and a sister — was the most fruitful early in
fluence that came to him. A pastorate of twelve years
duration at Brattleboro was followed by the removal of
the father to Pittsford, Vermont, which thenceforth
became the family residence.
It was the boy's ambition to go to college ; but even
before leaving Brattleboro, a spinal curvature from
which he was to suffer all his days had developed, and
his prospect of life seemed so precarious that the col-

MEMORIAL SKETCH AND TRIBUTES. 7
lege course had to be forborne. To one of Mr. Walk
er's energy and strength of will, however, such a de
privation was a challenge rather than a deterrent ; and
the studies which he would have pursued had he been
able to obtain the coveted college training were fol
lowed out alone, so that he acquired not merely a
knowledge of Greek and Latin, but a very thorough
acquaintance with philosophy, mathematics, and es
pecially with English literature, toward which his mind
was always strongly drawn. The classic English poets,
most of all, were the companionship and delight of his
youth and early manhood.
In 1850, an appointment as clerk in the Massachu
setts State House, procured by an uncle, the Hon.
Amasa Walker, brought the young man a change of
scene ; and the next three years were spent in Boston
in the duties of his office and in the vigorous study of
law during all leisure moments, for Mr. Walker* was
then determined to make the legal profession his own.
These plans were rudely interrupted. A change in the
political control of the state cost him his clerkship,
and a subsequent attack of typhoid fever deprived him
for some months of the use of his eyes and left a more
permanent witness of its inroads on his feeble frame
in a lameness that necessitated the use of crutches for
several years. The young student of law went back
to the Pittsford home, in broken health, his prospects
frustrated, and his friends discouraged. But he had
attained to one certainty in his own mind. He was
determined, if possible, to become a minister ; and, to
this end, as soon as strength permitted, he began
to study theology with the aid of his father's library.
His fondness for English literature also continued, and

8 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
he labored on a poem of considerable length. The
work, though too introspective and reflective of the
emotions of this trying epoch to make Mr. Walker ever
willing to have it published, showed an unusual skill in
the mastery of expression and a genuine poetic feel
ing. This lengthened period of feebleness and disap
pointment, though it failed to break Mr. Walker's
courage, left its impress in a sense of the seriousness
and the struggle of life, and of the nearness of its sor
rows to its joys, upon him always.
On August 31, 1857, Mr. Walker was licensed to
preach by the Rutland, Vermont, Association ; and,
soon after, entered Andover Theological Seminary as
a "resident licentiate," studying in that institution for
a year. A chance opportunity to take the place as
pulpit supply of a professor incapacitated by illness led
to a call to the pastorate of the State Street Church in
Portland, one of the most important in the common
wealth of Maine. On September 16, 1858, Mr. Walker
married Maria Williston, daughter of Nathan Birdseye
Williston of Brattleboro, Vt., and on the 13th of
the following October he was ordained to his new
charge. The time of his pastorate was eventful. Most ac
tively of any of the Portland ministers he espoused the
union and the anti-slavery causes in the discussions
preceding the civil war, and at the cost of considerable
criticism : but his remarkable power in the pulpit and
his ready sympathy and helpfulness with all in suffering
and bereavement speedily won him the affection of the
Portland congregation in a marked degree. Here two
sons were born to him, Williston on July 1, i860, and
Charles Ambrose, on September 27, 1861, the latter

MEMORIAL SKETCH AND TRIBUTES. g
dying on July 22, 1869; and here, on August 31, 1865,
he lost his wife by diphtheria. The death of his wife
and his own exertions in connection with the great
Portland fire of July 4, 1866, broke down his never
robust health. By the spring of 1867 he was once more
on crutches and compelled to return to his father's
home at Pittsford. It being evident that his ill-health
would be somewhat protracted, his people reluctantly
released him from the Portland pastorate on October
21, 1867.
A year later when somewhat improved in health,
but while still obliged to use crutches and to preach
sitting in a chair, Mr. Walker was invited to supply the
pulpit of the First Church in New Haven, Connecticut,
from which the Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon had then re
cently retired. As a consequence, he was settled over
his new charge on November 18, 1868. Here his min
istry met with great acceptance, as at Portland, — a
favor that was witnessed by the bestowal upon him of
the degree of Doctor of Divinity by Yale University
in 1870. On September 15, of the year last mentioned,
Dr. Walker married Amelia Read Larned of New Ha
ven, daughter of George Larned of Thompson, Con
necticut. But, though conspicuously successful in his chosen
vocation and greatly attached to the people of New
Haven, Dr. Walker soon found that he had been un
wise in assuming the burdens of the pastorate once
more before his health had been fully re-established,
and, on May 19, 1873, he had to relinquish the pulpit
for a second time. From October, 1873, to November,
1874, Dr. Walker sought renewed strength in Europe,
living chiefly at Stuttgart and Rome. At the close of

IO REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
the year 1874 he returned to Brattleboro, Vt. For the
next four years he dwelt with his father-in-law, Mr.
Williston, in the town of his boyhood home, in the
house in which he was accustomed to spend the sum
mer thereafter as long as he lived. During much of
these four years of continuous residence at Brattleboro,
from October, 1875, to January, 1878, he acted as
pastor of the Centre Congregational Church of that
place, without ever being formally inducted into its
pastorate. From Brattleboro Dr. Walker was called, early in
1 879, to the First Church of this city, and was installed
in its ministry on February 27. The time of his com
ing was one of considerable significance in the history
of this ancient Church. The shifting of the popula
tion which was to make its situation essentially "down
town " had begun to affect the congregation, a consid
erable debt rested upon the Society, and a strong and
moulding leadership was desirable. Under Dr. Walk
er's efforts the debt was speedily paid, the house of
worship renovated, a new organ procured by the gift
of a generous member of the Church, and a renewed
interest and pride awakened in its history especially
through the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth
anniversary of the installation of its first ministers in
October, 1883. In connection with that event Dr.
Walker prepared a most painstaking and valuable
" History of the First Church " that was published
in a volume of five hundred and fifteen pages in
1884. Assured early of the respect and affection of
his congregation, Dr. Walker grew to a position of
influence in the city, especially in what concerned
the preservation of its memories, illustrated, to specify

MEMORIAL SKETCH AND TRIBUTES. n
a single instance, in his interest in the rescue of the
ancient burying-ground and the associated Gold street
improvement. In the larger affairs of the Congregational body Dr.
Walker was a recognized leader. Thus, he served as
one of the commission of twenty-five that prepared what
has been generally known from the year of its publica
tion as the " Creed of 1883," now widely accepted as a
statement of Congregational belief. In 1885, at the
seventy-fifth anniversary of the American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions, he preached the
commemorative sermon. The doctrinal discussions
which turmoiled the Board aroused his interest and en
listed his participation as an advocate of moderation,
notably at the meetings of the board at Springfield in
1 887 and at New York in 1889; and led to his appoint
ment, in the year last mentioned, as chairman of the
"Committee of Nine " which formulated the altered
policy now pursued by the Board in making missionary
appointments. From 1887 to 1899 he was one of the
corporation of Yale University. In 1888 he became
a member of the " Board of Visitors " of Andover
Theological Seminary — an office which he held till his
complete disability compelled its relinquishment in
1 897, being during the latter part of his incumbency
the president of that Board. As a "Visitor" he had
to pass upon the concluding features of the trial of
President Egbert C. Smyth and the questions raised
by the Andover theology.
In all the controversies in which he was engaged
Dr. Walker showed himself a fearless, incisive debater;
but he carried a judicial mind and an irenic spirit, so
that his judgment was widely trusted and his wisdom

12 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
generally acknowledged. And, as he grew in age,
without abating a whit of his fire and energy of con
viction, his sympathies steadily broadened and his
spirit sweetened, so that those who were his sharpest
opponents in controversy were largely won to personal
friendship. Dr. Walker's Hartford pastorate, though a period of
health compared with his earlier ministry, was not with
out its serious physical disadvantages. In him the spirit
dominated over the flesh, as when just before preach
ing a discourse commemorative of the Rev. Dr. Leon
ard Bacon, at New Haven, in 1882, he broke his leg
by a fall on an icy pavement, yet insisted on performing
the appointed service seated in a chair. His disabil
ities interfered with his work less than similar impair
ments of strength might have with many ; but they
were always felt as a serious burden. A journey to
Carlsbad, Austria, in 1886, brought him some improve
ment ; but a tendency to attacks of angina pectoris at
length attained to such severity and frequency that
on June 12, 1892, he was compelled to lay down the
pastoral charge of the First Church altogether, though
retaining the title of pastor emeritus and performing
occasional service as strength permitted him. A year
before his resignation, in 1 891, he published a life of
Thomas Hooker ; and after his retirement he gave
himself more than ever to historical studies, especially
to the investigation of New England religious histoiy,
in which he had always had a deep interest. The
fruit of these labors was embodied in a series of lec
tures on "Aspects of the Religious Life of New
England," which he gave before the Hartford Theo
logical Seminary in the winter of 1896. These were

MEMORIAL SKETCH AND TRIBUTES. 13
published in 1897 in a volume that has met with
decided acceptance.
On August 22, 1896, at his summer home in Brat.
tleboro, Dr. Walker was stricken with apoplexy, result
ing in a complete deprivation of speech and an almost
total paralysis of his right side. These disabilities
continued to the end. His mental clearness was not
impaired. He continued to enjoy meeting his friends,
and the reading of books. He followed with keen in-
terest the course of public events as narrated in the
daily press. In his wheeled chair he has been a fa
miliar figure on our streets. A great blow came to
him in the death of his devoted wife on October 30,
1 898 ; but he bore his trials and limitations with sin
gular courage and patience, till he was set free from
his long imprisonment by the angel of death. In all
the vicissitudes of his lot he showed himself the strong,
brave, Christian man.
Dr. Walker was a man of a good deal of natural
shyness and reserve of manner. Forced to husband
his time and strength by reason of illness, especially
in early life, he had less inclination than many toward
the pleasures of social intercourse. But to any in anx
iety, sorrow, or personal suffering, his sympathies went
out in a full measure that made his ministrations always
welcomed, and rendered him beloved by those to whom
he thus showed himself. In his family he was a man
of warm affection. In all benevolent causes he was
interested and generous. His tastes were strongly at
tracted in several artistic directions. He had much ac
quaintance with engravings, and was, in a very modest
degree, a collector of prints. He knew much of colo
nial furniture, and loved to finish or repair an antique

I4 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
piece with his own hands. He was interested in colo
nial literature, especially that which bore on the history
of Congregationalism, and collected an excellent work
ing library on the theme. He wrote readily and well,
and published, besides the three volumes already indi
cated, a large number of sermons, papers, and articles.
Dr. Walker was undoubtedly at his best in the pul
pit. With few of the characteristic graces of the orator,
he had the rare faculty of being able always to make
men listen to what he had to say. His message inva
riably bore the stamp of earnestness, directness, and
conviction. Its form was fresh and striking, its devel
opment clear and convincing. And through the ser
mon there ran a vein of feeling, sometimes of pathos,
sometimes of entreaty, always of positive faith, which
touched the heart of the hearer no less than the matter
of the discourse appealed to the intellect.
Dr. Walker is survived by a son, Professor Williston
Walker of the Theological Seminary ; by a brother,
Henry F. Walker, M.D., a physician of prominence in
New York City, and by a sister, Mrs. Anne W. Board-
man, the wife of Professor George N. Boardman, long
the occupant of the chair of Systematic Theology in
Chicago Theological Seminary.

From the Hartford Courant of March ij, igoo.
The funeral of the Rev. Dr. George Leon Walker,
pastor emeritus of the Center Church, was held in that
church yesterday afternoon, at 3.30 o'clock, after
prayers by the Rev. Melancthon W. Jacobus, D.D.,
acting pastor, at his late home on Prospect street.
The service was characterized by a simple dignity, and

MEMORIAL SKETCH AND TRIBUTES. rg
was very impressive. The pulpit platform was heav
ily set with palms and ferns, and from the desk from
which Dr. Walker had preached so many times, there
depended an array of lilies, and just below a large
shower of white roses, while at the north entrance to
the pulpit stairs a large cluster wreath of pink roses
completed the floral setting. A large audience of
parishioners and many well-known public men of the
city were present.
The service opened with the processional, led by
the Rev. Dr. Jacobus, reciting the lines, " I am the
Resurrection and the Life," the choir chanting the
antiphonal responses. Following him were the Rev.
Dr. E. P. Parker of the South Congregational Church
and the Rev. Joseph H. Twichell of the Asylum Hill
Congregational Church, who assisted in the service ;
the ushers, J. Coolidge Hills and Frank G. Smith,
and the honorary bearers, Dr. Henry P. Stearns,
Rowland Swift, Daniel R. Howe, Dr. George R. Shep
herd, Wilbur F. Gordy, and Solon P. Davis. The
casket was covered with loose bouquets of ferns and
lilies of the valley, and was borne on the shoulders of
six colored porters, and following were the family,
friends, and representatives of the Center Church.
The Rev. Dr. E. P. Parker invoked the Divine bless
ing, the choir sang "O God, Our Help in Ages Past,"
Dr. Parker reading selected passages from the Scrip
tures. The choir sang " O Love Divine, That Stooped
to Share," and the Rev. Joseph H. Twichell offered
prayer, at the close of which the body was removed
from the church, the choir singing " For All the Saints
Who From Their Labors Rest." Benediction by the
Rev. Dr. Jacobus closed the church services.

r6 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
From the Hartford Telegram of March ij, igoo.
The funeral services of the Rev. Dr. George Leon
Walker began with prayers at the house, No. 46 Pros
pect street, at 3 o'clock yesterday afternoon, only rela
tives and intimate friends of the dead preacher being
present. Prayers were offered by Professor Jacobus,
acting pastor of the church, after which the remains
were taken to the Center Church for the public
funeral. The services at the church, which was filled with its
members and friends of the dead pastor, were begun
with the funeral chant given responsively by the choir
and Prof. Jacobus. The prayer of invocation was of
fered by the Rev. Dr. Parker of the South Church,
followed by the hymn, " O God, Our Help in Ages
Past," by the choir. The scriptural selections were
read by Dr. Parker. Dr. Holmes' hymn, " O Love
Divine, that Stooped to Share," was sung, followed
by the closing prayer by the Rev. J. H. Twichell of
the Asylum Hill Congregational Church. While the
last hymn, " For All the Saints Who From Their
Labors Rest," was sung, the remains were borne from
the church. The benediction was pronounced by Pro
fessor Jacobus.
The family and a delegation from the church will
accompany Dr. Walker's remains to Brattleboro, Vt.,
for interment, leaving on the 8.04 train, this morning.
Relatives who were present at the funeral were Dr.
Henry F. Walker of New York, the brother of the
doctor ; Professor and Mrs. George N. Boardman of
Chicago, Mrs. Boardman being the sister ; Miss Mary
M. Walker of Northampton, Mass., cousin ; Ambrose
Eastman, Esq., of Boston, cousin ; Colonel D. R.

MEMORIAL SKETCH AND TRIBUTES. i-j
Larned of Washington, D. C, brother of the late
Mrs. Walker; Mrs. Edgar Sherman and daughter,
Miss Mary R. Sherman, of New York, sister and niece
of Mrs. Walker ; William R. Howe, Esq., of Orange,
N. J., nephew of Mrs. Walker ; Mr. Robert Walker of
New York, the Hon. and Mrs. Francis Wayland of
New Haven.

An Editorial published in The Congregationalist of
March 22, igoo.
Probably the impression which Dr. Walker made upon
most people at first was that of positiveness of character.
No one could talk with him two minutes without com
prehending that he had definite convictions and was
accustomed to assert them frankly. He had the gift
of clearness also. Knowing exactly what he believed,
he uttered himself so lucidly that no one continued in
doubt unless he meant to leave uncertainty, and then
no doubt of that fact remained. He also seemed to
be, and was, intensely in earnest. To him life, duty,
and influence were serious things, responsibility for
which, although not an oppressive burden, none the
less was never to be forgotten or disregarded.
These characteristics, when they accompany such
signal, and in some respects unusual, natural ability as
his, inevitably render their possessor a leader among
men, and this he was conspicuously. Although re
markably free from the spirit of self-seeking, he ac
cepted readily such responsibilities as naturally fell to
him, and his sagacity and efficiency were so fruitful
that his services to the church and the world, great
and valuable although they were, doubtless would have
been multiplied largely had not his physical frailty pro-

!8 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
hibited. Indeed, it is surprising that one, much of
whose life was a prolonged fight for health, should
have left such a record of important and diversified
service. No one should think of Dr. Walker, however, as
lacking the more winning qualities. He could be
sharp and severe. He was not to be provoked with
impunity. Yet he was as tender and gentle as he was
fearless and outspoken. He won love as easily as
respect. Although his lack of robustness limited him
more than most men to domestic enjoyments, there
were few more companionable men, few who contrib
uted more to the genuine, appropriate pleasure of any
social occasion which he could attend. In this as in
everything else he had a high ideal, and for that very
reason he leaves a more precious memory. He was
notably considerate and helpful towards the young,
especially young ministers, to whom a few words out
of his long experience always gave courage, and rarely
failed to add illumination.
In his successive pastorates he won reputation as
among the freshest, most forcible, and successful of
preachers. In the wider field of denominational work
he was a conceded leader. He was concerned promi
nently in the leading controversies of our last twenty
years, but with no impairment of his repute for wis
dom, fairness, or kindliness. As a historical scholar
and author he also made an honorable name. Although
he has been withdrawn from active life for several
years, lingering in the twilight of life until his earthly
sun should set, he has not been, nor will he be, for
gotten. A great and good, an honored and beloved
leader has been called away from us.

MEMORIAL SKETCH AND TRIBUTES. Xg
A Letter of Rev. Dr. Edwin Pond Parker, of the Sec
ond Church, Hartford, to the Hartford Times of
March 14, igoo.
The departure of Dr. George Leon Walker from
these earthly scenes is another public bereavement
added to those which this community has recently sus
tained. Although his residence in Hartford had not
been of long duration, it had been long enough to en
able him to identify himself with our public interests,
to put himself at the head of his brethren in the Gos
pel ministry here, and to win the respect, the rever
ence, and the affection of our people generally. Al
though for the last four years he has been withdrawn
from all participation in public affairs, he has not been
withdrawn from the fond and tender regard which
his character and services had secured for himself,
but has been the object of an ever-deepening love and
sympathy. Perhaps no one now living in Hartford has so long
known him as I have. When I was a student in Bangor
Theological Seminary, he came to the pastorate of the
State Street Church in Portland, Me., and circum
stances which led me frequently to Portland at that
period, brought me also into some personal acquaint
ance with him. At that time his peculiar power as a
preacher was fully recognized, and no minister in
Maine stood higher in the estimation of his brethren
and of the churches. His solid, sound, sterling, intel
lectual qualities were then, as ever since, combined
with such a sincerity, depth, seriousness, and earnest
ness of character, as made all his public utterances
both interesting, engaging, instructive, and impressive.
It need not be said that, as he grew in years and in

20 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
experience, he grew in wisdom and grace and power,
broadening and ripening and mellowing through the
summer and autumn of his life ; but his distinguish
ing qualities of mind and character were as conspicu
ous in the earlier years of his public ministry as in the
later. He never attempted to live or act or speak up
to the convictions of other men, but up to his own
well-considered and settled convictions. He was
immovable in what seemed to him right and best.
He was courteous, but frank and courageous and
explicit in the expression of his opinions and beliefs.
I think he was particularly distinguished for the
clarity of his thought and of its expression. The
stream of his discourse was always perfectly pellucid.
Dr. Burton, who became very fond of Dr. Walker,
once said to me of him : " His thinking is as clear-cut
and definite as if stamped with a die."
His literary art always reminded me of fine etchings.
This, with just a touch here and there of soft color,
supplied from a chastened imagination, made his
thoughtful discourse or essay a thing of quiet beauty.
It was all so clear, pure, luminous, and instinct with
earnest feeling.
Just this clarity, this purity, this tenderness of feel
ing, this color of beauty, this severity of simplicity,
touched all the while with subdued emotion, which
were so noticeable in his writings, were no less notice
able in all his more private communications. They
were grounded in his nature and character. " The
style was the man." They who only saw and heard
Dr. Walker in the pulpit and only knew him as a
preacher, might have misjudged a prevailing serious
ness and even solemnity of aspect and manner. He

MEMORIAL SKETCH AND TRIBUTES. 2I
had a holy horror of the sort of wit with which some
ministers — usually destitute of real wit or humor —
endeavor to enliven their discourses. At an installa
tion service here in Hartford, when a brother minister
was lugging into his talk sundry vain endeavors after
jocosity, he said to me, groaning with pain, " Oh,
Parker, can we never be rid of these wretched
attempts to be witty on such occasions ! " But, at
the proper time and occasion, Dr. Walker could be
deliciously humorous. No one more quickly saw or
more cordially appreciated the humorous aspect of
things. He was delightful in conversation, genial,
suggestive, witty, and sympathetic.
Last November the General Conference of the Con
gregational churches of Connecticut was held in the
Park Church of this city. At the afternoon session,
Dr. Walker was present, for he dearly loved his pro
fessional brethren.
He was wheeled up the side aisle in the chair that
so many will remember, to a position not far from the
pulpit. When attention was called to his presence, at
a given signal, the whole congregation, chiefly com
posed of clergymen, rose together and stood for a few
moments, in token of their respect and love for the
dear, the pure, the good man, whom they all, I believe,
gladly and gratefully acknowledged as the "chief
among them."
In the long line of ministers who have served in the
pastorate of the First Church in this city, Thomas
Hooker stands first and foremost, I suppose. In my
opinion Dr. George Leon Walker stands next to him
in the rank of greatness.
It is with joy in his deliverance out of strangely-

22 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
ordered infirmities, but with deep sorrow that we shall
see his dear face no more here, that we bid him — a
brother greatly beloved — farewell ! e. p. p.

Extract from a Sermon by Dr. Parker published in
the Hartford Courant for March 26, igoo.
Dr. Parker's sermon at the South Church yesterday
morning was on the words in which St. Paul describes
himself, in his Roman captivity, as a " prisoner of the
Lord." The general thought of the discourse was
that Christian men and women are by no means cut
off from the possibility of service and usefulness by
the various disabilities which may befall them in the
course of faithful living — disabilities which are often
as great as if they were those of outward constraint.
Dr. Parker said :
" It may be pardonable to cite a case familiar to
many of you, which strikingly illustrates my interpre
tation of this phrase. It is now nearly four years
since Dr. Walker was suddenly and mysteriously
arrested, as by the touch of an unseen authority, and
imprisoned. His imprisonment was a strict and dis
abling one. There was a chain upon his limbs, there
were fetters upon his lips. His disabilities were, in
many respects, far greater than those of St. Paul.
" But was that dear man of God a useless Christian
through those years of restraint and limitation ? Was
he without influence and power in this community
during that period of confinement ? Just because he
was all the while 'the prisoner of the Lord,' believing
himself to be such, and behaving himself as such,
there was a dignity and distinction, as well as pathos,

MEMORIAL SKETCH AND TRIBUTES.

23

in his condition that effectually appealed to men and
women. Power was with him, and went forth from
him, and benediction. Light streamed forth from his
comparatively solitary life, and the influence of his
faith and courage and patience was continually and
widely felt in our city and elsewhere ; so that, when at
last he was released and removed, it was universally
felt that Hartford had sustained a distinct bereave
ment in his departure. He was continually saying,
inaudibly but effectually, ' I, the prisoner of the Lord,
beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation
wherewith ye are called ; ' and perhaps that mute,
pathetic, dignified ministration of his was as powerful
as any preaching of the word from any pulpit in this
city."

A Sketch entitled "George Leon Walker in Hartford," by
Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, of the Asylum Hill Congrega
tional Church, Hartford, in the Congregationalist of
March 29, 1900.
Within little more than half a year the ancient mother
church of Hartford has been bereaved of both its min
isters. August 8 died Dr. Lamson. On the 14th of
the present month Dr. Walker, pastor emeritus since
1 892, when failing health enforced his retirement from
active service, also fell asleep. By both events our
general community was affected with an unusual sorrow
and sense of loss. In the circumstances of the leave-
taking in the two cases there was, however, a great
contrast. Dr. Lamson's call hence was most sudden
and unprepared for. For four years Dr. Walker had
lain in a feeble and helpless condition expecting the

24 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
hour of his departure, which he and all knew could not
be far off.
When in a moment Dr. Lamson was gone, we woke
to consider, as, naturally, we had not done before, what
we thought of him, how large his worth in our esteem
and how high his deserved place in our affection.
But during the long period in which Dr. Walker, and
ourselves with him, were in waiting for his release, we
had time to reflect much upon him and to discover the
impression of himself — of his gifts, his character, his
work — which he had made upon us, and our feelings
about him altogether as the result of the previous
thirteen years of his fellowship with us.
One conclusion we reached in consequence, in which
we were united, was that declared by Dr. Parker, for
forty years honored pastor of our Second Church,
when, in a communication to the Hartford Times,
the day that Dr. Walker left us, he wrote : " In the
long line of ministers who have served in the pastorate
of the First Church in this city, Thomas Hooker
stands first and foremost, I suppose. In my opinion,
Dr. George Leon Walker stands next to him in the
rank of greatness." That was, indeed, saying a great
deal, but it was a judgment from a highly competent
source, soberly pronounced, and probably will stand.
From the time of his settlement in Hartford Dr.
Walker passed in a remarkable manner into sympathy
and communion with its historic memories, and particu
larly under fascination of the personality of his mighty
predecessor. No one beside had ever done so much to
illumine the work achieved by Hooker in his day and to
exalt his title to lasting renown as, incidentally to the
quarter-millennial of the old church in 1883, did he.

MEMORIAL SKETCH AND TRIBUTES.

2 5

For intellectual power and independence conjoined with
virile force of spirit, he was himself distinctly of the
masterful type.
In matters on which a course was to be taken, it
was eminently characteristic of him to think for him
self, to work out his own result, and in simple, uncon-
.scious courage to order his position accordingly. Of
this his memorable sermon at the seventy-fifth anni
versary of the American Board in 1885, and the part
he bore in the strenuous debates that occurred at some
of its subsequent meetings, were illustrations.
But here in Hartford we had already learned that he
was a strong man of just that sort, whose mind was his
own, and who, where his convictions were concerned,
did not shrink from the initiative. To be sure, he came
to us in his mature prime and as a man of established
reputation, yet, even so, it was extraordinary how soon
he obtained in our community at large the deference
accorded to those felt to be of competent judgment in
affairs and wise in counsel.
In a singularly graceful and appreciative published
tribute to Dr. Lamson at the time of his death, Dr.
Samuel Hart, an eminent Episcopal clergyman, then
professor in Trinity College, speaking of the place that,
in the brief period of his residence in the city, he had
won in the public regard, said :
" Dr. Lamson's predecessor in the pastorate had
gained an almost unique position among us. I think
that in some way we expect one who holds that pas
torate to be our first citizen, taking the lead in matters
which have to do with the religious and moral welfare
of the community, and holding for it a real connection
with all its past history  Dr. Walker is still

26 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
among us, and we hope that he knows how universally
he is recognized as a man of leading position and influ
ence among us, how gladly we recognize all that we
owe to him, and how strong a hold he has upon our
affections." Few, I am confident, will challenge the justice of the
statement that no minister of any Hartford church in.
modern times has carried the measure of weight
as a citizen that George Leon Walker did — - Horace
Bushnell alone excepted.
With this strong man came to us a strong preacher,
upon which fact there is small need to dwell, for the
knowledge of it is not confined to Hartford. Intel
lectually, his pulpit work was of a very rare order of
excellence. His sermons were abundantly mixed with
brains. There was always a thoughtfulness and an
ability in his handling of his subject that compelled the
respect of his hearer, whoever he might be. More
over, in point of literary art, his preaching was of a
quality equally rare. His style was marvelously lucid
and incisive, and exhaled the flavors of culture. Pro
fessor Lounsbury, Yale's most distinguished English
scholar, who was wont often to hear him during his
pastorate in New Haven, once told me that more than
any other preacher he had ever listened to he revealed
in his use of language intimacy of acquaintance with
the English classics ; that not infrequently he could
identify the very mine from which the choice gold of
his speech had been extracted.
But these things concern the secondary elements of
his pulpit power only. The principal secret of his
effect as a minister of the divine Word of course lay
deeper — in the intense conviction of the evangelical

MEMORIAL SKETCH AND TRIBUTES. 27
truth with which he was penetrated. He believed,
therefore he spoke. Regarding him, at least, it was
never by any surmised that he did not wholly mean
what he said, or that he was keeping back some part
of what he thought. His veracity was of the kind that
could be felt, and he was transparently fearless.
In the extract cited from the pen of Dr. Hart there
is reference to the hold Dr. Walker gained on our af
fections. A very strong hold indeed, it was, and, it
may be allowed, unexpectedly so. Whoever was
thrown in with him in the ways of life casually, or only
a few times, must probably have judged him rather
unlikely — less likely than most, perhaps — to inspire
attachment in private social relations. His manner
was uncommonly reserved and distant. While this
was, doubtless, to some extent due to the ill-health with
which from his youth he had contended, it must pre
sumably have been also of his constitutional make. He
was naturally undemonstrative. During the five years
of his New Haven pastorate, we of Hartford, though
we had not infrequently met him, had none of us grown
into anything more than half acquaintance with him.
And when he entered our circle we expected that,
though he was a great addition to us, we should find
him socially somewhat indigestible, which we did for a
time, but only for a time. It did not take us long to
discover that this inexpressive man was as full of the
milk of human kindness as he could hold. Little by
little, in ways fondly remembered but that it would be
difficult to describe, it leaked out that under that
severe seeming outside beat a heart of unbounded out
flowing good will and of most generous, appreciative
sympathy.

28 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
I can never forget how, going one day into the study
of the late Dr. Burton — ever and to this hour dearly
beloved — I was hailed with : " I'm glad you've come
in! I've got something to show you — a note from
Walker ! " Dr. Burton had just preached the sermon
at the funeral of our revered neighbor, Rev. Myron N.
Morris of West Hartford, and the note, which he pro
ceeded to read to me, was one Dr. Walker had written
to say how thankful to him he was for the manner in
which he had opened the theme of that good man's
virtues. It was extremely cordial in its tone, and it
ended thus : " What a pity there are so few of whom
such things can be said, and only one man who can
say them."
"Twichell!" exclaimed Dr. Burton, slapping the
note down upon the table, "a Frenchman couldn't
beat it!"
Well, in short, by one token and another, we were
presently made aware that in our new associate was a
plenitude of the paternal sentiment toward every one
of us, and we all fell in love with him — the more
deeply by reaction from our first impression of him.
And so it went on thenceforward, our love ever grow
ing, till at last, while he lingered stricken amongst us,
called of his Heavenly Father to endure the long,
weary trial of strange affliction, it mounted to an infi
nite, yearning tenderness. A soul wealthier by nature
and by grace in the tempers of gentleness and fellow
feeling and magnanimity than he had never been
vouchsafed to our companionship.
His sympathies and his compassions were wide-
ranging, and, though he confessedly had a peculiar
skill in ministering the consolations of the faith to

MEMORIAL SKETCH AND TRIBUTES.

29

broken hearts, were not confined to humanity. It
was a beautiful disclosure of his inward character
and life — of his religion, and as well a notable event
in the Christian annals of Hartford — his preaching,
as he did in 1891, a splendid sermon, full of pathos
and marked by all his felicities in discourse, on the
duties we owe to dumb animals. This sermon, Enti
tled by him Our Humble Associates, was afterward
published as a tract by our Connecticut Humane Soci
ety and has since been distributed by the thousand,
nor is it the least worthy monument of its author.
The quality of mercy was ingrained in his spirit. If
I may be permitted another personal reminiscence —
it was in June, 1895, (so my note-book tells me,) that I
went to him on the unwelcome errand of asking him
to give me the facts relative to a certain man's misdeed
in the somewhat remote past, with which fact, he, as
pastor, had been acquainted. I explained the reason
of my request — that it was not a private one, but offi
cial and compulsory. He heard me through, was silent
for a minute or two, and then, with more emotion than
I had ever seen him manifest before, answered : " Yes,
I know all about it, but, Twichell, I will not tell it to
you or to anybody. That wrong was repented of and
forgiven, and I will do nothing to impart the knowl
edge of it, or to keep the memory of it alive."
He, however, undertook himself to speak a word in
a certain quarter, whereby the object of my coming to
him would be served. As I was leaving and we stood
in the door, he said, in a softened but very earnest
tone : " What should you and I do if there wasn't any
forgiveness of sins ? "
What wonder that this scene, witness of the thoughts

30 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
in which he lived before God, has remained with me
from that time as representative of the man, and that
it came back to me when I looked on his dead face.

A tribute by Professor George Nye Boardman, of
Chicago Theological Seminary, published in the
Necrology of Andover Theological Seminary.
Dr. Walker was a person of marked individuality
from his youth. His tall, slender form, his flushed
cheeks and otherwise pallid face indicated physical
frailty not needing interpretation. From the age of
sixteen it seemed almost certain that pulmonary dis
ease had fastened upon him. It was really chronic
pleurisy, from which he was never wholly free. It
was at this time that he turned his attention to the
subject of religion, and in 1848 united with his father's
church at Pittsford. His religious experience was of
a somewhat melancholic hue, fostered by the Imitatio
Christi and such like books. Later, a typhoid fever
left him with a lameness that was never entirely over
come. In after times, on occasions of depressed health,
he was forced to resort to his crutches, and sometimes
in preaching, notably at New Haven, to occupy a seat
prepared for him in the pulpit. The four years suc
ceeding his stay in Boston were spent mostly at his
father's home. This was the period of his special in
tellectual culture. Continually threatened with lung
disease, often moving about with crutch and cane, he
delved year after year, reading the poets and acquiring
that mastery of the English language which enabled
him to marshal words in such a way as to make them
servants of his thought and will.

MEMORIAL SKETCH AND TRIBUTES.

31

Very soon after his settlement as a pastor he de
veloped qualities besides those of a preacher, which at
tracted attention. He was a citizen as well as a min
ister. He sent forth ringing utterances in the Civil
War, and took active part in questions concerning pub
lic schools. He was often called upon to take part in
important councils and in measures and movements
connected with home and foreign missions. . . .
On a review of his life, his character, as a whole,
stands out before the minds of his friends with great
distinctness. They are impressed with the power of
his intellect, especially its quick and accurate intui
tions ; with the power of his imagination, imparting
fervid life to historic scenes as well as natural objects;
with his acute aesthetic sensibility; with his persist
ency in purpose and effort; and with the dominant
good sense that controlled all his actions. But when
all things are considered — the illnesses of early life,
the interruptions because of physical infirmities in his
professional career, those last three and a half years of
disablement from locomotion and speech — his friends
are impressed most of all, perhaps, by his courageous
and patient endurance.

From a letter by its Hartford correspondent in tbe
Springfield Republican of March 18, igoo.
Dr. George Leon Walker, who died Wednesday
morning, was too large and fine an intellect to be
valued at his real worth by most of those with whom
he came in contact. Dr. Parker, in a really admirable
article on him, has spoken particularly of the clarity

32 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
of his thought. Fully sympathizing with that recog
nition of a distinguishing quality, I am inclined to
place his sanity even higher. He was judicious, in
the large sense, not always in trifles, because he
attached no more importance to them than the law
does to the things it includes in the phrase de mini
mis. He came very near to being Goethe's "self-
poised" man. Add that he was a genuinely good
man, and a kindly, with an intellect as acute as it was
solid, and you have the elements of a really remarka
ble character. That he gained the distinction he did
was merely incidental to his doing his own work in
his own way. Had he sought much more he would
have attained it, but he might not have been so large
a man.

II.

VERSES.

Dr. Walker, in early manhood, especially during his
sojourn in Boston and his years of convalescence and
study in his father's home at Pittsford, gave much
attention to writing verse — a form of expression
which he abandoned after entering on the exacting
labors of the pastorate. The following stanzas, all
written in the period from his twenty-second to his
twenty-eighth year, are here printed as illustrative of
his love of nature and of his Christian faith.

NOW THE DROWSY YEAR AWAKENS."

Once more earth's mighty enginery has roll'd
Round her far pathway, worn with ages old,
The wheeling sphere. Not with thundering sound,
Jarring discord, but through the vast profound
Of desert, void, illimitable space,
Pealing music, till on the dial face
Of time, the bounding Spring proclaims again
The glad resumption of her gentle reign.
Most lovely Spring, earth welcomes thee,
A greeting waves in every tree ;
From every hedgerow, far and near,
Tumultuous chorals, ringing clear,
Fling to each odorous gale,
From warbling hearts, their joyful hail.

36 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
The rustling leaves, with yellow breasts,
Impatient cast the armor crests
'Neath which, but little time ago,
They shrank from Winter's cold and snow.
Bursting buds their choice perfume,
Woodland flowers their brightest bloom,
Jocund brooks their gayest song,
Twitt'ring birds their merriest throng.
Dallying winds their gentlest sighs,
Morning clouds their richest dyes,
Liquid skies their deepest blue,
Flaunting fields their greenest hue,
Joy to give as homage due.
'Neath the hill-side's shelt'ring lee,
Where the violet springeth free,
Play-day bees on lazy wing
Gossip of the opening Spring,
Gaudy flies in perk attire,
Gold and green, and fring'd with fire,
Dart and flash, and circling wheel,
Humming low the joy they feel.
And joyous is the mountain now,
Though high upon its rocky brow
A gleaming coronet of snow
Sheds pearly drops to lakes below;
But round its wide and wooded sweep,
Where ancient firs and balsams weep
Their fragrant tears, the wild-flowers spring,
And wide the vines their tendrils fling,
Or clasp around the rugged form
Of some scarr'd wrestler with the storm.
And joyous are the vales below —
Their varied vestures brightly glow,
And seem like water's liquid flow,
So smoothly blend the gorgeous dyes
In which the flooded landscape lies.
In blushing morning's level beam,
In mellow evening's purple gleam,
Upwreathing in fantastic streams,

VERSES.
Vapory fragrance curling steams,
And wide around the landscape smokes
AVith incense ; while the hoary oaks,
Towering grim through the cloudy sea,
In nature's temple seem to be
The priests of some religion old,
When earth and man one creed did hold ;
But joining now in mystic rite
With winds and skies, and air and light,
From vales and groves and mossy dells,
From crystal lakes and rocky fells,
From all things joyful homage bring,
And rev'rent offer to the Spring.

INADEQUATENESS.

Many be the songs of Spring
Trilled by poets happy-hearted ;
Half they seem themselves to sing,
And, wakened by their caroling,
Tears of sudden joy are started.
But never deftest muse may find
Line so gently flowing
Soft to chime with April wind,
Through budding boughs of the wildwood blowing.

Lines there are so sweet, they seem
Summer-laden blossoms springing; —
Yellow cowslips' sunny gleam,
Or daisies by the shadowed stream
Brushed by wild-vine gently swinging.
But never subtlest art can frame ,
Words so fresh and glowing;
Fancy were not put to shame
By hare-bell blue, in the dingle growing.

37

38 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.

Haunt we then the hazel dell?
Tenderest rhymes be left behind us;
There do softer warblings dwell,
And ripe with fuller beauty swell,
And sweeter poets there will find us.
All praise to songs of Summer when
Winter eves are dying; —
Wakens Spring the woods again?
Then Merlin's song leaves us weary sighing !

DAWN.
The purple banners of the coming day
Waved broad above the ashen mountain's cone,
And flushed a shadowy halo up the gray
Of lonely heaven, deserted save where shone,
Wan with long vigil, weary, sad, alone,
One fainting star, with slowly-pulsing light,
Last patient watcher o'er the couch of night.
North, south, from peak to peak the glory rolled ;
A 'wildered cloud, far voyaged, caught up the glow,
And crowned the western height with rivalled gold,
The emulative lake displayed below
In ruby tides diffused, the gorgeous show ;
And, as redeemed from deluge waste anew,
Hill, valley, woodland, radiant rose to view.

VERSES.
AUTUMNAL SONNETS.
i.
Discrowned.
O'er banks of mossy mould how lightly strown
All the wan summer lies ! The heedless tread
Awakes no sound, and had not pale leaves fled
As soft it came, the low wind were not known.
How strange the sharp and long-drawn shadows thrown
From lank and shriveled branches overhead,
While from their withered glories spoiler-shed
The earthy autumn scents are faintly blown.
Ah ! reft and ravaged bowers, the garish day
Flaunts through the hidings of your dewy glooms : —
And though in leafy twilights wont to be,
Shy maid, sweet-thoughted Sadness, come away,
And here beneath this hemlock's drooping plumes,
With pensive Retrospection, muse with me.

ii.
The First Frost.
The hoar path sparkled in the level beam,
A frosty shimmer filled the silent air,
My quick breath curled in cloud lines faint and fair
As down the whitened field, along the stream,
Through the gray rushes flashing in the gleam,
Up the steep hillside-way I went, to where
With the dear wildwood I was wont to share
Each jay or pain, through all the Summer's dream.
A chill fell on my heart. How still on high
The rimey branches stood against the blue !
No voice for me, no motion, nor a breath !
And I stood dumb ; no pitying tear, no sigh
Of yearning hope, for deep I felt they knew
That cold and glittering silence told of Death.

39

40 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
HOPE.
Dear Beech, now that thy pale tops tipped with brown
Drink softer tints from Autumn's golden air,
And not a motion wakes save here and there
A lonely leaf comes wavering noiseless down,
I fain would seek why Winter's frosty frown
Alone can charm thee all thy state to wear,
Alone can light that smile, so dear and fair
That thy last hour is all the season's crown !
Is it that when on us the drear days press,
Some strength our hearts may glean with grief to cope
As memory brings again thy loveliness ;
Or that beneath those still, prophetic signs
The yearning of thy sudden joy divines
The truth and promise of a fadeless Hope !

FROM THEE COMETH HELP.

Dear Lord, this world which Thou hast wrought,
And with Thine own divineness fraught,
No fullness has for me ;
I pine within this fair abode,
Nor, glad howe'er, content can be,
Though from it to my heart has flowed
A beauty like the sea.

The narrow hopes of earthly days.
The little hum of human praise,
Leave hunger in my breast ;
Though by her promise oft beguiled
To follow in an eager quest,
Deceiving Hope a moment smiled,
Then left me void of rest.

VERSES. 41
III.
For but with phantoms side by side
Through things of time my footsteps glide,
And like to shadows flee;
And beauty that may fill the soul
Athirst for an Infinity,
Springs not where circling seasons roll,
But lives alone in Thee.

Ah then ! from out my strivings vain,
Thou Home of Rest, thou Peace from pain,
I come to Thee alone ;
O Fount of Life — O Life of Day —
O Fullness of Creation's zone —
Lift on my life the quick'ning ray
That makes me born Thine own.

DEDICATION HYMN.
At the opening of the tiew Cemetery at Pittsford, Vt.,
July 4, 1857.
O Thou to whose eternal years
No grief, or loss, or change is known,
We hallow here our place of tears
For death that dwells with us alone.
Here hearts that bleed will sadly turn,—
Here Pity fill the drooping eye,
And striken Hope with love will yearn
O'er us who fade away and die.
Yet we who weep, and they who rest,
Alike are known and dear to Thee;
And they are dearer to Thy breast
Than to our hearts they e'er can be.

42

REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
Bless then this spot, where years shall bring
Thy loved ones, Lord, to their repose ;
Spread o'er them here Thy sheltering wing,
And in Thy peace their dust enclose.
So shall this place of tears be made
The Hill of Hope, the Field of Peace;
Here calmly then can we be laid
To wait the hour when Time shall cease.
And when these bending skies have flown,
And all who sleep shall rise again,
Be this the garner of Thine own,
The harvest of the Precious Grain.
Take Thou this Hill : It first was thine :
From earthly use these bounds we free, —
To nobler sheaves its roods resign,
And give it, Lord, again to Thee.

III.

PRAYER-MEETING TALKS.

i£>

It was Dr. Walker's invariable habit to make elabo
rate preparation for the mid-week meeting, though
always speaking from a skeleton outline of his address.
These outlines often grew into sermons for Sunday
use. Those here presented were chosen because found
in his pocket-book at the time of his paralytic seizure.
They had evidently been selected by him for future
sermonic development. They were used at the prayer-
meetings of the First Church, Hartford, in the years
appended to each.

John VIII : 12. Not walk in darkness, etc.
Occasion of Christ's words.
Imagery on which founded.
Implication with regard to life.
Promise light, not darkness.

But now, as a matter of practical experience, there
is a great amount of doubtfulness. We believe, sup
pose, hope. A main reason for this : — we do not
follow Christ. Do not take Him as guide. Do not

46 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
bring all things to the test of His words and life. Or
we do these things imperfectly. Peter followed afar
off ; got into trouble.
Hqw to get light : — follow truth to its consequences.
I. Christ's loving presence and care. With you
always. Think of it. Make effort to realize it. It
will grow real and true. But many can't see. How
to make the effort.
II. Duty as a Christian, if perplexed.
Begin at the sensitive point of conscience. Attempt
something every day. Follow. Not all things at
once. Progress in Christian living. There is great
light in simple surrender to conscience and principle.
Grandeur in attitude of trust in God, where nothing
else can be had : Though He slay me, etc. But that
is not the general attitude of life. We need the light
of life. The unity which comes through loving obedi
ence, loving following. 0883.)

II.
Matthew X : 2-4. Now the names of the twelve apos
tles are these, etc.
The variety and sufficiency of Christ's adaptation to
men. ,
Christ might have done His work without any inti
mate companion ; or He might have had one only.
But He had many, and their traits are carefully recorded
with some distinctness.

PRAYER-MEETING TALKS. 47
Why ? One reason is that the Gospel might be vari
ously attested. Many witnesses. But a reason of no
less significance is, that the Gospel's adaptation to
many might be seen.
Who were they ? Some of them.
1. Matthew, the man of business cares.
2. Nicodemus, learned in the law.
3. Joseph of Arimathasa, the man of wealth.
4. Peter, the impulsive fisherman.
5. John, the spiritual-minded.
6. Thomas, the doubting man ; a type of char
acter now familiar.
7. Mary Magdalene.
Their mention shows : —
I. The variousness of Christ's sympathy. He
could reach different types of men. He had a real
interest in them all.
II. The variousness of Christ's power to win alle
giance and to satisfy need. The converse true. Un
like men loved Him. Their ideals all met in Him.
III. Encourages our trust in and approach to Him.
(1884.)
III.
11 Cor. IX : 8. God is able to make all grace abound
toward you, etc.
A passage for people in view of some of life's diffi
cult places.
A rich, full passage. It grew, as much of Scripture
did, out of local circumstances. Its special occasion
was the collection for the poor at Jerusalem.
It teaches that God is able to supply your need.

48 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
A general principle: — all grace needful for one's
case can be had.
I. All needful wisdom in religious things. If any
of you lack wisdom let him ask of God. A precious
promise, especially at such a time as the present. Di
versity of views, contradictions of opinion, meet us.
What is truth ? Where ? Perplexing to the young
Christian ; to the young minister. God is able to give
needful wisdom. He is willing.
II. All needful strength in bearing what God sends.
A precious promise to men in the midst of struggle ; —
to sufferers ; — to those who foresee coming trouble :
He will be with me. " He is able " to give strength.
III. All needful efficiency for work.
The idea of efficiency in all good works is sharply
expressed in the text. Often impressed by Scripture
writers. How can my work be most efficient ? This
one life I have to live. What a problem to any young
person ! To make the most of life.
Efficiency for special effort :
He is able to make His grace abound in the particu
lar responsibilities of young ministers ; — of Sunday-
School teachers ; — of parents ; — of all. (1885.)

IV
Matthew V : 48. Be ye therefore perfect, etc.
A controverted passage. Pelagians, Methodist Per
fectionists, etc.
My purpose does not take into the field of discussion
the question whether it is possible to be sinless or not.
A practical use of the text. Take a high aim. Set

PRAYER-MEETING TALKS.

49

God's perfectness as a standard. What Christ had
been saying. Ye have heard, etc. A low standard.
Christ calls His followers to rise above it. He exhorts
them: Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father which
is in heaven is perfect.
An exhortation and a standard like this is most im
portant, for there prevails very often and enervatingly
among men a hopeless view of the possibilities of
resistance to evil.
I. In self. We conclude evil must necessarily be
"temper," "weakness," "fault," "infirmity."
II. In the world. There always has been sin. We
conclude that there always must be great evils.
The result is a practical Manichasanism. Dual prin
ciples. Permanent.
Now the Christian doctrine is that evil can be over
come. The Son of God was manifested that he might
destroy the works of tlie devil.
Salvation has two aspects : — Forgiveness, cleansing.
Christ's work: He shall save His people from their
sins. The Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins
of the world. Titus II : 14. Its object is primarily
to overcome sin.
It makes a mighty difference in his struggle whether
the attitude of the Christian is one of hope or of doubt.
How can sin be overcome ? A suggestive passage
is Romans XII : 21 : Overcome evil with good. Dis
place it by something better.
(a) In self. Put yourself into other things. Get
interested in something more worthy. Make yourself
interested. (b) In the world. Set good in place of bad. Value
of high aims and of co-operative efforts. (1888.)
4

co REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
V.
Luke XVIII 141. What wilt thou that T shall do
unto thee ?
The blind man had precise knowledge of his need.
We all pray. We pray often. We use strong lan
guage of importunity. But suppose Christ should ask
of each one of us the question : What for thee ?
Liability to vagueness in prayer ; in confession ; in
supplication. I. Importance of a knowledge of what we need.
1. Of particular faults to be rectified.
Illustrate by drawing. Elocution.
2. Of particular deficiencies to be supplied.
Physical lacks are a subject of study and of
protracted efforts to remedy. Spiritual de
ficiencies should be no less so.
II. Importance of a desire for Spiritual blessings.
Hunger and thirst after righteousness.
III. Importance of co-operation with our prayers.
One great cause of their frustration is, that we pray
one way and go another. Live in accordance with our
prayers. IV. Importance of expectancy of results.
The true relation between means and ends. The
Gospel hopeful. (1892.)

IV.

SERMONS.

OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN.*
Ephesians iii: 14, 15.
" The Father, from whom every family [Greek fatherhood~\
in heaven and on earth is named. "
I am not certain whether I have ever, at Sunday
service, or Thursday lecture, taken these precise words
of Scripture as a text for remark or not. Possibly a
sufficient rummaging among old manuscripts would
enable me to determine. But the question is of very
little consequence. If I ever did use them it was well ;
if I never did I am sorry. If I were to use them a
dozen times it would not be too often. For these
words not only bring before us a truth of supremest
interest to us all, but they do it in a peculiarly striking
and effective manner.
The general truth that the apostle in this passage
affirms is God's Fatherhood of us and of all men. The
peculiar presentation he makes of the fact is that the
Fatherhood of God is the original type and pattern of
all other fatherhood that we know of anywhere. " The

* Preached on February 9, 1890, on recovery from a severe
illness.

54

REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.

Father from whom every fatherhood, in heaven and on
earth, is named." God, that is to say, is not simply
called the Father of men because there are traits in
Him somewhat like those in earthly parents, and be
cause relations exist between Him and us which have
an analogy to those which exist between us and our
children. Perhaps we have sometimes thought of the
matter in that way. If so, we have thought of it ex
actly the wrong way round. God's Fatherhood is the
original thing ; man's fatherhood is the derived and
imitative thing. The human parenthood is but a poor,
imperfect image of the Divine parenthood, even as man,
whom the Scriptures tell us was made "in God's
image," is but a sorry likeness of the being in whose
image he was made.
Now, my dear friends, I do not know exactly how it
may be with you, but I confess that for myself there
is no fact of this life of ours which grows so in signifi
cance and in value as I go onward in it, as the fact of
God's Fatherhood. There is no other truth I can
think of, so freighted with hope and comfort for this
troubled world, as this of which it seems to have been
so primal an object of Christ's mission upon earth to
convince men, the Fatherliness of God toward men.
How often that word "Father" was on His lips.
How continual His use of that tender name, not only
in His personal references to His own relationship to
God, but in those collective references which embraced
others than Himself, — nay, which embraced very sin
ful and imperfect men as well as Himself. When
twelve ignorant men, one of whom certainly was ulti
mately apostate, came to Him with the request, "Lord,
teach us to pray," what was the address with which

SERMONS.

55

He bade them draw nigh to the object of their adora
tion and supplication ?
Not, O infinite and unchangeable sovereign; not,
supreme and predetermining disposer, but, " Our
Father which art in heaven." When, in His conver
sation with the inquiring and scholarly Nicodemus on
the object and scope of His mission, Christ gave per
haps the most concise and explicit definition of the
origin and intent of His enterprise that He ever any
where expressed, this was what He declared it to be :
" God so loved the world, that He gave His only be
gotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should
not perish, but should have eternal life."
The writer to the Hebrews tells us that in old times
God spake " unto the fathers in the prophets by divers
portions and in divers manners," but that He "hath at
the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son."
And no fact is plainer in that Son's communication to
men than His importunity and reiteration in declaring
the Fatherly character of His God and ours.
And yet how slowly has this Fatherly, view of the
divine character grown among men ! How much more
ready have men been to fasten upon some adjunctive
and subsidiary feature of the revealed attributes of the
Being with whom we have to do — Plis kingly power,
His unchangeable wisdom, His sovereign purposes, His
righteous justice — rather than to reach up toward an
endeavor to comprehend something of that Infinite
Fatherliness in which, with a great deal beside, all
those separate characteristics coalesce and inhere !
It has always been an interesting fact to me that as
thoughtful men and women grow old in the Christian
life — I speak in a general way and with full recogni-

56 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
tion of the existence of exceptional people run in pecu
liarly dialectic or dogmatic moulds — a readier response
arises in their breasts to presentations of the divine
character and dealings which bring out the Fatherly
traits of the divine nature. I cannot think this is alto
gether the effect of the softening influence of age.
Not by any means is it to be wholly ascribed to that
increased tenderness of feeling which takes its softened
coloring from the eye that, as Wordsworth says : —
" hath kept watch over man's mortality.''
Some such increased leniency of judgment undoubt
edly there is which is the result of experience. Our
own failures and faults lead us to be more forbearing
toward the faults and failures of others. Our own
sense of the need for ourselves of some traits in the
divine character other than those of the justice before
which we have trembled, or the holiness before which
we have bowed ourselves in awful adoration, make us
more recognitive as we go on in life, of such character
istics as disclosed and actual in the being whom we
worship. Youth is proverbially peremptory and severe. Nar
row in self-knowledge, limited in observation of others,
it judges quickly and it judges hardly. It knows not
how to make allowances. It has little appreciation of
what is contained in that sweet saying of Scripture,
" He knoweth our frame, He remembereth that we are
dust." I had a sweet, bright boy once, lent me for seven years
before God took him. Brighter and more generous lit
tle soul never lighted up any household with his mirth
and jollity. But he had the peremptoriness and posi-

SERMONS.

57

tiveness which I have said was characteristic of youth.
A natural leader of others, his playmates would gather
in a group about him, and from the vantage ground of
a box or a chair he would preach them a sermon. I
confess that his sermons were of the denunciatory
rather than the consolatory kind. He told me once
with a voice like a silver bell that he had compiled a
code of laws; "fifty-three laws," said he, "and every
one of them hanging laws but two." Ah, me ! had he
lived a little longer the number of the hanging laws in
his code would have been smaller, and the sermons he
preached would have doubtless taken sometimes more
heed of men's need of forgiveness and consolation.
But though there is doubtless an influence, as I
have said, in increasing age and in widening experi
ence to soften men's judgment of others, and to make
them look, in their estimates of the divine character,
for those traits which bespeak His grace more than
His power, still I cannot believe that the increasing
tendency toward more filial thoughts of God, of which
I have spoken as belonging to aging piety, is mainly
attributable to these causes. On the contrary, it is, I
think, much more ascribable to the better understand
ing of God's character attained by growing more like
Him. And as it is with the individual, so also is it
with the perfecting experience of the Church as a
whole. A process goes on in the general Christian
mind of the race analogous to that which takes place
in the mind of the single disciple. The educated and
experienced consciousness of men feels the need and
recognizes the reality of traits in the divine character
which the ruder and more juvenile periods of human
life thought not about and cared not for. Put the con-

c 8 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
ception of God entertained by most of the old Hebrew
prophets beside that conception presented by Him
who spake as never man spake, and you will see the
contrast which I mean. Not that those old Hebrew
prophets spoke wrongly ; but they spoke comparatively
youthfully and imperfectly. Not but what there is a
true meaning in that which they said about God's
being "wroth," and "jealous," and His being "a man
of war," and of His "anger with the wicked every
day," and of His waiting to see their feet " slide in due
time." Far be it from me, either for the interests of
my own soul or of yours, my hearers, to disguise the
solemn truth metaphorically set forth in a hundred
such passages as those. But when such representa
tions are put beside the larger and riper disclosures of
the New Testament, and especially of Christ's own
utterances, wherein He sets God before us, not under
some such figure of kingship or judgeship as naturally
appeals to a ruder and more lawless period of human
experience, but under His own chosen figure of divine
Paternity, we feel if we cannot express, we know if we
do not quite dare to acknowledge, that there is a tre
mendous difference.
But my object at this time was not so much to argue
this fact of a fuller and riper conception of God's na
ture arising from the characteristic presentation of Him
to us by Christ as the Father of men, as to call brief
attention to some inferences from this conception
itself — inferences which it seems to me are full of in
struction and of comfort, while not wanting in sugges
tions of admonition also.
The necessary limitations of a single Sabbath ser
vice counsel me to say only a very little of what might

SERMONS.

59

be said on this subject ; and I shall speak of but two
of these apparently necessary deductions from the
Fatherliness of God's character of which we are think
ing at this time.
One of these inferences is the necessary kindliness
and generosity of God in dealing with all his creatures
— with all of them, I say. I did not say with a cer
tain favored and unalterable number of them, but with
all of them. If there is any significance in fatherhood
in these poor human lives of ours, it means patience,
kindliness, generosity, self-sacrifice, does it not ? When
we speak of a "fatherly act," the conception which
comes up to mind is one of affection and attempted
good doing, is it not ?
Now, this conception which we have borrowed from
these imperfect relationships of our earthly lives Christ
boldly takes hold of and applies to the relationship of
God to us. And He does not limit the application of
this conception — as some good men since He lived
have sometimes done — to such only as recognize and
yield to the reality of a heavenly tie. Nay, He expli
citly affirms the existence of the relationship, and its
manifestation, too, in the case of others. This is the
very ground of Christ's appeal to us in His great Ser
mon on the Mount to become like our Father in
heaven, that " He maketh His sun to rise on the evil
and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the
unjust." The conception of Fatherhood, therefore, in
Christ's use of it, as well as in our own poor imitative
use of it in these human relationships, which borrow
all their significance from that older and diviner rela
tionship from which " every fatherhood in heaven and
on earth is named," must involve at least this much —

60 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
kindness, generous estimate, willingness to do the ut
most possible to be done compatible with wisdom,
righteousness, and the interests of all, for the welfare
of each one, the very last and least, of all the creatures
— all the children, rather — He has made. No room
here for some awful doctrines which have found place
in certain theologies, as if there were a class of God's
children which never were His children; creatures
made for the very purpose of being renounced and cast
away. The Christian world, under the progressively educa
tive power of the Gospel of Christ's own life and words,
is not only passing through that corporate change
wherethrough I said the individual man passes from
the hastiness and severity of youth to the tenderness
and allowance of age ; but, beyond that, is, I think,
entering more truly into the deeper spirit of the Gos
pel itself and of Christ, the chief messenger of that
Gospel. It is drawing its formulating conceptions of
the divine character not so much, as it has done in the
past, from the ideas of sovereignty and judgeship and
power, but from that larger and more divine idea set
forth in the message and in the very name of the divine
Son — the Fatherliness of God.
Blessed and auspicious change! Change carrying
with it, as one of the two necessary inferences I said
were suggested, the kindness and liberality of God in
dealing with all his creatures.
The other inference from that divine Fatherliness
which our text assures us is the very type and origin
of all other conceptions of fatherliness among men, is
the inference that God will always in His dealings
with His creatures seek the highest good of each one,

SERMONS. 6l
and the largest welfare of all. He can forget neither
of these endeavors and yet retain that character of
Fatherliness which He has taught us to cherish and to
imitate in our relations with one another. He must
choose for the individual, not what is easiest, perhaps,
not what is most comfortable, not what is desirable,
judged by some temporary and material, perhaps some
earthly and sensual, standard ; but what is best. That
is to say, God's Fatherliness must make Him put that
supreme which is supreme, the moral and spiritual
welfare of each one of His children. Everything must
be subordinated to that. If that can be had and other
more or less comfortable things can be had also, why
then those more or less comfortable things may be
expected. But if that cannot be had except at the
loss of the lesser good, then the lesser good must go.
Nor can God forget, any more than an earthly father
can forget, the confederated character of His family.
He must have in view the welfare of His whole house
hold. He cannot overlook, He cannot disregard, what
threatens the common weal. It is not fatherliness
here in these little family groups we know about among
ourselves, to permit some turbulent and incorrigible
member to bring annoyance upon the whole compan
ionship and dishonor upon the entire family name by
the exercise of a weak and indiscriminating good nature,
and disregard of obduracy and wrong. That is some
times mistakenly called fatherliness. But it is not
fatherliness in men. Nor is it in God.
That God is the Father of men does not at all imply
that all government over them suffers lapse, that all
discipline of them is dropped into disuse, that all sever
ity, even, in dealing with them is abandoned. These

62 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
are not thoughts to be cast aside as belonging only to
a theory of the divine relationship to men which is
entertained no more. If any chance hearer in this
house to-day, unaccustomed to the general strain of
teachings from this desk, has seemed to gather from a
former portion of this discourse that the idea of the
divine Fatherhood now inculcated lets open the door to
a weak and sentimental view of God's claims and man's
responsibilities, the mistake may now be corrected.
Indeed, for myself, I can think of no more perfect ideal
of thorough, efficient government, of persuasive and
effectual penalties, than those existent in a true fam
ily. When I look back on that household group of
which I was in childhood the quick-tempered and
errant member, and recall the grand, regretful, some
times austere and averted countenance of my father at
knowledge of my wrong-doing, and the saddened, dis
appointed face of my patient, heroic mother, I bring
up to myself a picture more photographic than any I
can discover beside, of the pain there would be in the
withdrawment of the Heavenly Parent's smile, and the
shutting out from the companionship of the heavenly
family. It was not the chastising stroke — though
memory of such on some occasions still survives over
the lapse of so many years — but it was the sense of
fatherliness and motherliness, grieved, wounded, and
wronged, which was then, and is increasingly still, after
' nigh a half century has fled, the keenest factor in the
discipline of my trespass on the household weal and
law. Ah ! let no one think that the doctrine of the
divine Fatherliness is the door-opener to loose and
careless estimates of sin. Let it not be imagined that
taking Christ at His word and believing that we have

SERMONS.

"3

a Father in heaven is to make men indifferent to His
claims. It is not so. Speak of Him as judge and
men may seek to evade His sentence. Represent Him
as king and they may try to escape the reach of His
power. But let them really believe that God is their
Father, in the truest, most literal, most richly-freighted
meaning of that precious name, and they will — I do
not say that they will certainly turn to Him with con
trition and penitence, for I do not know the possible
strength of human sinfulness and perversity — but
they will at least feel an attractiveness in His charac
ter which those other titles alone do not suggest, and
they will feel a culpability in themselves which cannot
arise from the mere contemplation of some single attri
bute personifying Him, for example, as justice or
power. Certainly, whatever may be the fact in any
actual case as a practical result, nothing can be so
divinely suited to bring a sinner to a better mind as
the remembrance that all that he knows or can think
of in true Fatherliness belongs to and dwells forever
in that God from whom those conceptions were first
derived, and who teaches us, sinful as we are, to come
to Him with the cry, " Our Father which art in heaven."
If he refuses the overtures of a Father, what possible
rescue can there be for him ? If he conducts himself
so that a Father — for the household's sake — must
needs shut him out of the family door, what power can
ever bring him back again ?
Yet now, just before I close, it seems to me I hear
some one say, " But why, if God is our Father, does
the possibility exist that any child of His should ever
become alienated from Him ; that sin, trouble, or
pain should be found anywhere in a world of which

64 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
He is the Creator, and in a family of which He is the
parent ? "
My dear questioning friend, if such a questioner
there be here, I do not know. I have never under
taken to answer that problem. There are inquiries a
child may make which even a philosopher cannot
answer. And before this inquiry why sin and evil
were ever allowed to find their way, with all their train
of disastrous consequences to individuals and to the
race, into this family circle of which God is the Father,
the whole world has stood questioning and perplexed
from the beginning till now. It is a problem which
many a wise theologian has attempted to solve, but the
Bible does not make the effort, and the endeavors of
men have not had much success. How evil came into
this little world the Scriptures try to figure forth to us
on one of the Bible's earliest pages ; but why it was
permitted to come, I do not find that the Word of
God makes the least endeavor anywhere even to hint.
But it is here. And being here it does make some
difference, I think, whether we think of it as being,
with all its mystery, in a Father's family, or in the
ranks only of a companionship under the rule of mere
intelligence or power. Sin is here, and trouble is here,
and bereavement and suffering are here, but it does
matter something whether, spite of them all, I can
still believe the infinite power above me, whose ways I
cannot comprehend, is nevertheless my Father, and
not merely my Sovereign and my Judge.
Ah yes, what a difference ! I cannot understand all
my Father's ways, but if I can believe Him my Father
still, I can trust Him where I cannot understand.
He may frown upon me for my sin; but I shall know

SERMONS. 65
— not with less pain indeed on my part — that it is a
Father's frown. He may suffer me to be tried and
perplexed and bereaved, but while I remember that
not blind fate, not mere sovereign power, not justice
or holiness, even, apart from parental love, but that
Fatherly pity, Fatherly righteousness, Fatherly love
are concerned in my welfare I shall not despair. I
shall remember the name by which He calls Himself.
I shall think that all that I know of fatherliness in this
world is but a reflection of what is first of all in Him,
and I shall hold on to the belief that He will do for me
all that a wise and loving Father consistently can do,
till the time comes when, perhaps, some of the present
mystery of existing evil and of human trouble may be
cleared up, and the day break and the shadows flee
away. Meantime, dear friends, what can we better do to
gain strength for present duty, encouragement in pres
ent perplexity, comfort even in any present distress,
than to reinforce and confirm in ourselves the assur
ance — so often affirmed in the Word of God — that
we have a Father in Heaven to comfort us ; a Father
to whom in a truer, deeper, more abiding sense than
any we have ever known beside that blessed name
belongs, " Tlie Father from whom every fatherhood in
heaven and on earth is named ? "
- O Father-eye that hath so truly watched,
O Father-hand that hath so gently led,
O Father-heart that by my prayer is touched,
That loved me first when I was cold and dead ;
Still do Thou lead me on with tender care
Through narrow ways wherein I ought to go ;
And train me for that home I am to share,
Alike through love and loss, and weal and woe.''
5

66 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.

II.
DIVINE CALLS.*
Genesis xii : i.
Now the Lord had said unto Abra?n, Get thee out of thy coun
try, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto
a land that I will show thee.
I Samuel iii : 10.
A nd the Lord came, and stood, and called as at other times, Sam
uel, Samuel. Then Samuel answered, Speak; for thy ser
vant heareth. John x : 3.
And he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out.
Hebrews iii: i.
Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly caUing, con
sider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ
fesus.
It is not a merely arbitrary association which has
gathered these four verses of Scripture together from
the various and widely separated places in which they
are found in Holy Writ.
Not, indeed, but what a good many others might
properly have been associated with them, as equally
belonging in the same category and as teaching the
same truth. But I have selected these four as ade
quately illustrative specimens of their kind. As a
mineralogist might take up specimens of malachite

* Written in

SERMONS. 67
or of beryl and say, "This specimen came from Rus
sia ; this from Japan ; this from Alaska, and this from
Brazil ; but they all belong together, and belong to
multitudes of other specimens which might be associ
ated with them, because they have the same structural
character and component elements ; " so I take these
four wide-sundered passages of Scripture as one in
their moral import and instruction to us who read them
to-day. And what is that truth of which these various
Scriptures tell us ? It is a truth which I fear we have
some way come to think a kind of far-off, historical,
Scripture-time matter, instead of being, what indeed it
is, a matter of most immediate, personal, and practical
concern to us all : the truth, that is, of a Divine Call
to individual souls.
We read, for example, of God's call to Abram to
leave his country and go out into a strange land ; or of
God's call to Moses to leave his sheep-tending in Mid-
ian and to go into Pharaoh's palace and command him
to let his captive Israelites go; or of God's call to
Samuel, or David, or Solomon, or Isaiah, or John the
Apostle, or Paul, — and some way we think the majesty
of the fact fits in with the dignity of the circum
stances ; and therefore we vaguely assent to the real
ity of the alleged event. But when it comes to rec
ognizing the reality of Divine Calls as a part of indi
vidual, present experience ; when it comes to applying
the plain implications and statements of Scripture such
as "My sheep hear my voice," or " He calleth his own
sheep by name and leadeth them out," to the living
experiences of living men and women, in the midst of
the rush and bustle of our common affairs there is, I
fear, some hesitation about the matter.

68 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
Yet, my friends, if the door has ever been open be
tween heaven and earth, why should it not stay open ?
If God has ever made personal communications of His
will to men, why should He not make them now ?
Was life ever more perplexed than it often is still ?
Were souls ever more in need of heavenly leadership
than they are to-day ?
And it is not without its mighty and practical sig
nificance in encouraging and helping us to accept and
rely on this fact of Divine communications to men
which Scripture everywhere alleges and implies, that
the Word of God is so reserved in its statements about
the method of those communications of which it spe
cifically tells us in the past. For example, we read
concerning the call of Abram : " And the Lord said
unto Abram." What does that mean ? Did Abram
see a vision ? Did he hear an audible voice ? In what
way was that divine command impressed upon the
mind of the patriarch that he was to get out of his
country and his father's house ? We cannot tell.
How did God "talk" with Moses at the burning bush?
What is meant when it is said of the call to Samuel,
" The Lord came and stood as at other times " ? De
tails are in all cases suppressed. Had we had in these
cases definite, elaborate depictions of how it was that
God came to, and made Himself understood by, Abram
and Moses and Samuel and Isaiah, we should find our
selves continually trying to test the reality of any pres
ent experiences of heavenly suggestion and call by
their correspondence with the outward circumstances
and manner, — that is to say, the mere outward acci
dents, — of the historic calls of the past. Grant once
that heaven's door is open toward earth ; grant once

SERMONS.

69

that God has made communications of His will to men ;
and there is no improbability in supposing that His
summons come continually. There is no trouble about
the methods of their coming. All possible things may
become instruments and vehicles of suggestion and
teaching to beings whom God has once undertaken to
lead and bless.
The great trouble about the realization and appro
priation of Divine calls to men is owing to the low and
dull views of all spiritual relationships between heaven
and earth, between God and men, into which the
Church has permitted itself to fall. The great truth
underlying the movement in religious history repre
sented two centuries and more ago by the Quakers,
and which has been again and again championed by
some body of Christian people when the Church has
fixed its eyes too exclusively on the Bible as the source
of all its spiritual light, and on a historic Saviour as
the source of all its life, — the truth that God now
moves on human hearts, now breathes into and guides
His children, that Christ's sheep still hear His voice,
— is a truth which we ourselves need more vividly to
realize. It is a truth, however, not so much for intel
lectual assent as for practical appropriation. There
fore, turning away from any further argument about it
as a matter to be accepted or set in its proper place in
a religious system, let us see for a few practical mo
ments how we ourselves may reasonably expect to re
ceive, and how we ought to treat the calls of God to
us. How, then, may we expect to hear God's calls ?
If there were any necessity, in order that intimations
of the Divine will should be conveyed to us for our

7o

RF.VERirXD GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.

spiritual guidance, that a voice from heaven should
speak to us, or that a burning bush should attract our
notice, why then, I think, all we know of our Father in
Heaven and of His substantial interest in our concerns
might fairly encourage us to look for some such out
ward visibilities or audibilities as those. But God has
hundreds of ways of drawing near to us beside any
such. Indeed, it is not too much to say that methods
of divine communication to men which in the child
hood of time were best for the solitary patriarch on
the Chaldean plains, or for the prophetic child sleep
ing uneasily behind the Tabernacle veil would plainly
not be best now. Those were days when life was
comparatively solitary ; writing almost unknown ;
communication between even adjacent sections of
country slow, accidental, unnecessary. Religious events
were handed down in tradition ; by oral transit from
generation to generation ; or gathered slowly up in
some chronicle of Levite or seer, perhaps the only man
in a thousand who knew how to write his name. What
if, in our day of newspapers and the universal approxi
mation of all places to one another, methods of divine
communication we can easily conceive to be suited to
such an infancy of society, should be the only possible
methods, and the telegraph should tell us each morn
ing of some burning bush in Sumatra, South America,
or Italy ; some voice out of the skies heard at London,
Berlin, or Paris; some ascension of an Elijah at Mos
cow, Calcutta, or New York, what a Babel this world
would be, even supposing every thus narrated incident
were a veritable matter of divine interposal in human
affairs !
The fact seems to be that — apart from that volume

SERMONS.

71

of inspired truth which is in great degree a record of
God's dealings with men in the past ; and apart from
those occasional, personal, immediate persuasions or
illuminations of the Divine Spirit which Scripture
promises and the Christian experience of almost every
devout heart more or less fully confirms, — apart from
these things, I say, — the main instrument of God's
impression of His will upon men is the providential
occurrences of life. He brings Himself near to us in
the ordering of events concerning us. That tangled,
mysterious, ever-changeful web of " happenings "— as
we call them, — by which we are enveloped, and which
cannot be explained or unraveled except by the recog
nition of a heavenly hand in matters great or small, —
that is the commonest of the instrumentalities which
God employs to teach men of Himself. Doubtless He
adds (as I only a moment ago intimated) other and
more spiritual suggestions of His presence to those
who are sensitive to them or watchful for them. But
even without these, what a marvellously complex and
powerful instrumentality for coming near to men, and
making Himself felt by them, that is, which is found
in the providential occurrences of life ! Think of the
continual unexpectedness of these events of Provi
dence ; of the irresistibility of their power over us in
their coming ; of the infinite variety of their character !
They range all the way from our keenest joy to our
severest sorrow ; from our sweetest hope to our bitter
est disappointment. They lay their guiding or their
persuasive hands upon us at every turn, and give us at
every moment the opportunity of recognizing the
power which is dealing with us, and of considering,
at least, the purposes of that heavenly will.

72 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
Those of you, my friends, who look back over any
considerable pathway of experience, marked by life's
common changes and events, — its gains and its losses ;
its bestowals and its bereavements ; its births and its
burials ; its bridals and its funerals, — have you not
had reason to recognize the closeness of a divine
approach to you ? Did Matthew, sitting at his place
of toll, when a passing stranger said "follow me," or
Samuel, stirred at midnight by a voice calling him by
name, receive a more definite summons to a new and
different life, than some of you have met in the touch
on your souls of some of life's events which have
befallen you ? You have had your heavenly calls,
most of you. Not Moses or Jeremiah more surely,
however differently. When you buried your father or
your child ; when your husband's face was hid from
you forever ; when the pleasure or the business suc
cess you thought so close vanished in a moment ; when
you were brought into connection with some person
whose life gave you a glimpse of a nobler life than
yours ; when some flash of divine truth shot in upon
you with unwonted power, — then a call, sweet or sol
emn, but personal, immediate, meant for you and
intended for your good, sounded in your soul, and gave
assurance of One nigh to you as ever God was nigh to
prophet of old. Ah ! you have many of you felt this !
And when you — some of you certainly — are able to
add to this common general experience of the comings
nigh to us of God in His providence, His comings
nigh in some measure at least, with those inward sug
gestions of His Spirit, also, which illuminate His
Word, or prompt your prayer, what need you more
to assure you of a "heavenly call," as a part of your

SERMONS. 73
personal experience ? Would sights of a burning
bush, or of an axe that did not sink, or of a stick that
became a serpent, or the straightening of a palsied arm,
really add anything to the substantial persuasion of
your hearts that God had come nigh unto you ?
Convinced thus, I trust, of the reality of the calls of
God to us as a part of actual, and, indeed, in some de
gree of universal experience, the very important
further question arises : How are we to treat them ?
And here it seems to me, the records of old time
are exceedingly instructive. There was, (even the
meager chronicles of Biblical story show us that,) there
was a vast diversity in the way in which the old-time
calls came to men. But there was no diversity in the
moral action consequent upon their reception. Recog
nition and obedience, these were the responses of the
devout hearts of ancient story, whose co-operation with
the divine will, in some high enterprise of duty or of
blessing, has made their lives luminous with instruc
tion for all after times. When Abram on those far
Chaldean plains became once aware of the divine will
to get him out of his country and from his father's
house, he "obeyed and went out," albeit he "knew not
whither he went." When Moses received the com
mand to go into that Egypt from which he had fled in
peril of his life, he went. When the word of the
Lord concerning the captivity of Judah came to Jere
miah, he spoke that word in the ears of the king and
princes of Judah, albeit he knew that a dungeon and
abuse would be the reward of his fidelity. When the
voice came to Peter and Andrew by the Galilean sea,
" Come ye after me," they left their nets, and fol
lowed the Master. When the arresting light and

74 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
power of heaven struck down Paul on his way to
Damascus, he was "not disobedient unto the heavenly
vision," but asked in submission, " What shall I do ? "
Not but what, in some most conspicuous instances
recorded in Holy Writ, there was hesitation and some
degree of self distrust at first, in obeying the heavenly
summons. It is told us, and herein I think we have a
very tender and beautiful token of the divine consider
ation of us, that the fact is recorded, it is told us how
even Moses argued with the Lord his unfitness for the
work to which God called him ; and Isaiah protested
his insufficiency for the task laid upon him ; and Ana
nias tried to excuse himself from the duty of visiting
that blood-thirsty man Saul, whom God told him to
seek out and to comfort.
But the thing to be noticed is that, however any of
those old servants of God hesitated or questioned at
first, they obeyed. That was what gave them their
place in religious history. However conscious of per
sonal imperfection, however overwhelmed with the
sense of mighty and well-nigh annihilating responsi
bilities laid on them, when once really convinced of
the divine will they yielded to that will ; they made
that will their own ; they went forward doing it to
the immortality of earthly history and the immortality
of eternal life. Had they done otherwise, had they
declined even the seeming-impossible service, never
would their names have been recorded for our guid
ance, or written in the Book of Heaven to their own
everlasting joy. That they sometimes a moment fal
tered is told us for our consolation in our weakness.
That they consecratedly and fully obeyed is told us
also, as the condition of their and our welfare.

SERMONS.

75

All which, my friends, seems to me profoundly
instructive as to our treatment of our heavenly calls.
The voice of God in His providence does sometimes
seem to speak pretty trying things to hear. It directs
to duties hard to fulfill. It bids us bear burdens hard
to carry ; undertake labors difficult to perform ; endure
sorrows wearisome to sustain. To get out of one's
own familiar country to a strange land is not altogether
an easy matter, even if that familiar country should
happen to be Sodom.
Bunyan's " Christian " had a hard time of it getting
away even from the " City of Destruction " and the com
panionship of people who were very shortly to be alto
gether burned up. But, hard or easy, our safety and
our joy also is in yielding to the heavenly call. Recog
nition and obedience — these are the attitudes com
mended to us by all the examples recorded in Holy
Writ, and by all the scarcely less illustrious or author
itative examples of Christian history since the book of
Scripture closed.
" How can I bear this burden ? How can I take up
this responsibility ? How can I go forth on this enter
prise, not knowing whither I go ? " Language like
this has been the utterance of many a Christian suf
ferer, many a Christian laborer, to whom the call of
God has in some way come. But listening to that
voice, submitting to the will which appoints the sorrow,
imposes the task, directs the way, courage has come
for the enterprise, strength for the toil, patience for
the grief ; and the experience of Scripture prophets
and heroes has been repeated in thousands of our
common lives.
Which leads easily to one further and most impor-

76 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
tant suggestion concerning this matter of heavenly
calls. What a satisfaction it is, anyway, even if the provi
dential voice which speaks to us sometimes says things
which are hard to hear, that it does speak !
How infinitely preferable in that tangled web of cir
cumstance in which we are enveloped and of which
we sometimes seem to be only a helpless part, that
there should be tokens of a high and heavenly purpose
concerning us, even if manifested sometimes in severe
and painful ways, rather than that life should float
easily on with us with no proof of a recognizing will
above us, and no evidence of a Father's hand in our
affairs. There may, possibly, be persons so materialized in
heart, and so contented with what contents a mere
animal, that life has for them no hungers for anything
better. But for most of us, I am sure, the thing which
makes life a possession of worth and dignity to us, is
the tokens of divinity there are in it. It is the evi
dence that I can find in my life that my God is deal
ing with me ; caring for me ; has His gracious plans
concerning me, which keeps me in self-respect and sets
a value on my days. Leave me to myself, with no
Father above to care for me, and no Spirit of Grace
to deal with me, and no sequent and resultant future
to which all the present leads on, and what is life
worth ?
I may have my pleasures as the animals do, I may
accumulate my little store as do the squirrels and the
ants, I may form one of an insignificant confederacy
somewhat higher than the beaver or the ape, with
somewhat larger knowledge and somewhat more intelli-

SERMONS. 77
gent aims, but unless there is the infinite difference
of a moral relationship between me and God, — unless
God is my Father in such sense as He is not to them ;
unless He can touch me, and I can go to Him ; unless
I can feel that the door is open between me and Him,
and that He has purposes of power and grace which
He is working out with me and helping me to work
out with Him — then — however others feel, I care
not how soon the curtain of silence falls on this scene
of things. In the eclipse of that great elevating hope,
there is nothing that is not eclipsed. What is left of
life after that great joy and confidence is gone out of
it, is a thing of rags. What we want, my friends, is
not less but more of God-tokens in our lives ! The
thing we ought to pray for is not fewer but more of
the heavenly calls. It is those calls which keep us in
mind of our dignity and our destiny. It is by the fre
quent hearing of them that we are kept out of the
mire of our selfishness, our vanity, our mere animalism
and death.
More and more to remind us of our prerogative as
the children of God and of the high purposes of our
Father in heaven concerning us, should we be watch
ful for the voices of God's providence in our lives.
Realizing the importance to us, above all things beside,
of the consciousness of God's nearness to us, and of
His interest in our welfare, we may well make it our
prayer, as it was the Psalmist's of old : " Be not silent
to me," O God: "Be not silent to me: lest if Thou
be silent to me I become like them that go down into
the pit." " Speak to me Lord, Thyself reveal
While here on earth I rove ;
Speak Thou to me and let me feel
The kindling of Thy love."

7*

REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.

III.
CHRIST'S INVITATION.*
John vii : 37.
/// the last day, that great day of the feast, fesus stood and cried,
saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.
Call up a moment, as far as we can, through the
mists of eighteen centuries, the scene when these
words were spoken !
The place was Jerusalem. The time was the autumn
of the year. The occasion was the Feast of Taberna
cles. For seven days, now, the inhabitants of the city
and multitudes from the country had been living in lit
tle booths or huts made of the boughs of myrtle and
palm and olive trees. These huts were to be seen
everywhere. They were on housetops ; in the court
of the Temple ; along the street-sides ; wherever nes
tling-place could be found for them. The purpose of
the festival of Tabernacles was twofold : it was a
thanksgiving for harvest, and it was a memorial of the
time when the Israelites dwelt in tents, in their pas
sage through the wilderness. The feast was one of
special joyfulness. The people were dressed in their
holiday attire. Each carried in his hand the branch
of some plant attractive for its beauty or its fragrance.
* Written in 187 1, with large use of a sermon written in i860
on the same text.

SERMONS. 79
The altar in the Temple was dressed out with garlands
of willow, of which each worshiper was expected to
bring one. The offerings on the altar were more
abundant than those of any other festival of the year.
But the enthusiasm of the occasion seems to have
concentrated itself -mainly on two transactions, each of
them occurring daily. One of these was the pouring
out, every morning, in the Temple courts, in the pres
ence of the gathered multitude, of a golden ewer of
water brought from the Pool of Siloam, and which typ
ified the water miraculously supplied to their fathers,
in the desert, at the rock of Meribah.
The other was the lighting, in the evening, of some
great lamps, which, from their elevation on the Tem
ple-hill, cast their radiance over the whole city, and
were intended to symbolize the fiery pillar of the
ancient wilderness.
Both of these incidents, each day repeated, were
events preluded by the sound of trumpets, and fol
lowed by singing and general rejoicings.
It is, however, with only the first of these two cere
monies that we are now specially concerned. But this,
on this eighth morning, asks our notice.
Interest in the festival, and especially in this strik
ing incident of it, has been, as usual, deepening from
day to day. And now the last day — what the Evan
gelist calls emphatically the "great day" — of the cel
ebration has come. -
The crowds are gathered in the Temple area. The
morning sacrifice is smoking upon the altar. Presently
there is a sudden blast from a chorus of silver trum
pets ; and one of the priests advances bearing the
golden ewer. He ascends the brazen steps of the

8o REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
altar. In the sight of all the people he pours the lim
pid stream over the altar's edge, as fifteen centuries
before, in the thirsty wilderness, the flowing current
which had saved the people's life had trickled from
the smitten rock. As the water falls into the silver
basin at the altar's foot, the multitude breaks into
song. It is the one hundred and eighteenth Psalm
which they sing, — that Psalm whose constantly recur
ring burden is, " O give thanks unto the Lord ; for
He is good ; because His mercy endureth forever."
A hush follows the conclusion of the Psalm. The peo
ple's minds have been touched and raised by contem
plation of this memorial of their nation's old deliver
ance from death by thirst ; perhaps some of them have
been lifted to the thought of a supply of needs more
spiritual ; of wants common to their fathers and to
them. It is in the hush of this supreme moment, probably,
that a clear, sweet voice breaks the silence. It comes
not from the priests gathered near the altar. It is a
young man standing among the multitudes, on the
common floor of the Temple court, whose voice sounds
out over the hushed and astonished assembly. And
what is it that He says ? The words are as startling
as the occasion of their utterance.
" If any man thirst " — this is the strange cry which
peals over the astonished multitude — "If any man
thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink." More than
eighteen hundred years, my hearers, have passed since
this saying broke the silence of that autumnal festival.
But not a day since has gone which has not borne its
testimony to the truthfulness and the importance of
the announcement there made.

SERMONS. 8l
Some who heard it first, accepted it there and then.
And they said, This is indeed "the Christ." But ever
since, in every age of the world, the number has been
increasing of those who have heard the invitation and
have found its offer true. " Come unto Me and drink ; "
" whatever your want, look to Me for its supply " — that
was the utterance which sounded over the Temple
multitude. And it is an utterance which has never
died. From generation to generation it has sounded
still, — not merely in men's ears, but in the experience
of many of their hearts.
Christ has been found the supply of need. He has
met the deepest wants of men. The thirst of the soul,
— that old, spiritual thirst which has taken hold, at
times, on every thoughtful individual of our race, —
has been satisfied, and may still be satisfied by Christ,
as from no other source beside.
Glance with me a few minutes at some of those
common wants of men, — your wants, my wants, — to
which the offer of Christ has been found a supply.
Knowledge, then, is one of these common wants.
There is a thirst in the human soul for knowledge —
knowledge respecting its own destinies and the rela
tions in which it stands in the universe, which He who
said " Come unto Me " can alone satisfy.
I do not forget that there is a very wide range of
important knowledge, to which the faculties of men
are, in a sense, competent of themselves. I do not
disregard, nor do I underrate, the greatness of those
natural powers — divinely bestowed on man — by
which he grapples successfully with a thousand diffi
cult problems of the world in which he is. We live in
a period of time when the splendor of these native en-
6

82 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
dowments of the human intellect is receiving constant
illustration. We see it in those unfoldings of physical
science which are almost making this a new world, so
rich, so manifold are the wonders which are daily re
vealing to our eyes. We see it in that enthusiasm of
historic investigation which has shrunk at no toil in
order carefully to discriminate and bring before us of
this modern time the accurate reality of ages long gone
by. We see it in the marvelous dexterity of mechanic
art — which is but knowledge discovered and applied
to affairs — and whose triumphs of ingenuity are net
ting the earth over with telegraphs and railroads, and
dotting the whole globe with factories and laboratories
of every name. The power of the human mind to
search out knowledge in many of its departments, and
by that search wonderfully to enlighten and benefit the
race, is a power we need have no jealousy in acknowl
edging. But with equal freedom does it become us to admit
that there are other departments of knowledge, — and
of knowledge vastly more essential to personal welfare,
— to which our natural powers are not competent, and
concerning which understanding must come to us, if it
come at all, from another source. For the great prob
lems are not those of History or of Science or of Mech
anism.- Not to academies, however learned, is it given
to supply the deepest necessities of the soul. Science
may sound the seas, but it has no plummet to tell us
the depth of a man's spiritual want. History may re
veal to us something of the process of outward events
in ages past, — but my own future ? That is another
affair on which no History casts irradiating light.
God's ways with matter I may in a measure discover ;

SERMONS. 83
but His ways with me are of more account, and here
human speculation leaves me ignorant.
Where am I to be, a few fleeting years hence ?
What condition is to enfold me, and by what circum
stances is that condition to be modified, if by any? In
what relation do I stand to that Power by whom I was
brought hither, and by whom I am to be removed
hence ? How do these inward voices of fear and hope,
and these senses of desert or ill-desert, gain their an
swer ? Over against these undying longings or dreads
within me, what outward realities are there to justify
them ? What obligations, if any, rest on me ? What
perils, if any, environ me ? What hopes, if any, invite
me ? What destinies, if any, await me ?
These are the great questions. It is knowledge on
these matters that we most need to have. But on
these matters all mere human wisdom is dumb. Sci
ence may " charm her secret from the latest moon " ;
but to the inquiry, " What and where is he who died
yesterday?" it has nothing to reply. On all these
deepest questions of the soul, whatever real light shines
comes, not from History, Art, or Philosophy, but from
Revelation. And that Revelation is chiefly in Jesus.
It is at this point, therefore, that Christ meets us.
Here, where, if left to human wisdom, there is nothing
but conjecture and uncertainty, He calls to us, say
ing, " If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and
drink." It is on these personal problems of destiny and char
acter that He sheds light. Respecting obligation and
hope it is, that His are the words which quench our
thirst. The import of life, the reality of accountabil
ity, the merely incidental character of death, the cer-

84 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
tainty of a hereafter, and the alternative issues of sal
vation or perdition — these are the questions concern
ing which knowledge without Him is most inaccessi
ble, but upon which knowledge is all-important to
gain. In satisfying, therefore, as He has and ever will
satisfy, this great want of the soul, Christ vindicates
one claim of His invitation, " If any man thirst, let
him come unto Me and drink."
But man has another want beside knowledge. Eager
as is man's desire for understanding, his longing is still
more for love.
It is affection which makes about all the true bless
edness there is in this world. It is the heart more
than the head which attracts men to each other and
renders life worth the living. True it is, indeed, that
we occasionally encounter those in whom the loving
instincts seem almost dead. All intellect, or all con
science, or all selfishness, affection appears to be a
thing they neither need nor give. But it is doubtful
whether even such apparent exceptions to that gen
eral law which makes the interchange of kindly emo
tions a necessity to human happiness, are very often
absolute exceptions. There is hardly any one so ab
normally moulded but that some juncture of experience
reveals the yearning human heart. Nevertheless, even
a seeming lack pays its appropriate penalty. The man
who neither seems to crave nor give affection goes
through life, admired or feared, it may be, but uncared
for. Tears are not wasted on his grave. To human
nature in general, love is the daily food. Got from
some source, given to some object, it must be, or life
is emptied of its value.
How pathetic, sometimes, is the testimony borne to

SERMONS. 85
this fact in the affection which one frequently sees
lavished upon some dumb animal or some insensible
plant ! It is, of course, very easy to smile at the devo
tion with which the recluse from society cherishes the
dog which companions his wanderings, or the cat that
purrs by her chair. But this devotion is only a witness
that the human heart, frustrated of its natural objects
of love, will yet make channels somehow for its goings
forth. Something it must give and gain, even if the
natural objects of its giving and receiving fail.
Does not this thought very vividly remind us that
what we have called affection's "natural objects" are
always liable to fail ? Frustration takes hold on them.
Friends vanish. Parents die. Associations in life are
broken up. Society changes, so that one looks about
him, after a little while, and finds himself among stran
gers. Even the philanthropic cause, which one adopts
and makes the object of his care, some way seems to
shift its bearings and fails to afford an adequate out
going for the heart. Both in giving and receiving the
channels choke. It is here that Christ comes to us,
saying, " If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and
drink." " I can satisfy an infinite affection. You, I
love with an everlasting love. Your love I crave with
a longing which will not die."
Ah ! here is something more to me than knowledge.
Christ is truth, and He offers Himself to satisfy my
intellectual need. But there are hours when that is
not what I want. Little, comparatively — great
though the gift absolutely be — little, comparatively,
matters it to me that so much knowledge comes to me
through Him. What I want is not knowledge but
love. He opens to me the life that is to be, it is true,

86 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
as no one else can do ; but what just now concerns me
most is the life that is. Is there One who cares not
merely for my to-morrow, but cares also for my to-day ?
Is there One to stand by me in the hour of some
great earthly calamity, some wreck of life and hope ?
As I lay the little round head of my child in the silent
grave, or deposit in that last resting place the pale,
worn face of my mother or my sister, and feel the very
heartstrings break as the dust rattles down upon the
shut, forever-shut, casket ; or, as I stand paralyzed
amid the wreck of life-long business labors and hopes,
can I feel that there is a Love, which this great woe
cannot alter ; nay, of which this woe may be but an
evidence ?
My friends, it is just here where Christ's offer is
fullest. It speaks to our disappointments as well as
to our wants. It comes at the failing-point of all
affections beside. For, alas, all beside do fail ! I
utter no disparaging word of the might of human love.
Sublime, noble, precious ; it is the best man can give
to man. Yet, to a thoughtful mind, the reflection
must often sadly come, how small the place is, after
all, that we fill in our fellows' hearts. Even the great
and good who have conferred lasting benefits on their
kind, how quickly they are forgotten ! Statesman suc
ceeds to statesman. Pastor follows pastor. Friend
comes after friend. Time's tide sweeps everything
forward, and submerges the memorials of the proud
est or the dearest past.
How blessed, then, the remembrance that One
abides whose love for us changes never ! One who
forever gives and forever yearns to receive also ! One
who, whatever may fade or alter or die, abides the

SERMONS.

87

same. Nay, One who, in His infinite love for us, gar
ners up and keeps whatever is best in our human lives.
One who cherishes the objects we have purely cared
for, and makes them still dearer to us for His own
sake ! One in whom the lost is given back, and the
vanished is restored to sight ! Ah ! if ever word was
spoken in this world which loving hearts should rejoice
to hear, it is this : "If any man thirst, let him come
unto Me and drink."
But there is still one more want to which this offer
of Christ addresses itself.
It is holiness. Greatest of all, this want of the soul.
I have spoken of knowledge as one of man's chief
necessities. It is so, but it is not so necessary as
virtue. I have said that man needs affection. He
does, but not so much as righteousness. To be pure
is more important than to be wise ; to be worthy of
being loved is more essential than to be loved. True,
indeed, it is, — and deplorable as it is true, — that this
deepest need of man is not always man's deepest
desire. The thing which is most required, is not cer
tainly the thing most sought. Yet there is, at times,
probably, in almost every breast, some sense, though
it may be fitful and dim, of the necessity of holiness.
Alienated from God as man is, there still remains in
him a feeling of relationship ; and of the obligation
which it brings. There are chords in his heart which
vibrate yet to touches from above.
Indeed, looking over the world, there are few things
which have left deeper traces on the face of society, or
on the history of individuals, than the efforts men have
made to get into that moral state, which (under their
various forms of faith) they have been taught to sup-

88 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
pose a state of righteousness. It matters nothing to
our present purpose that these conceptions of what
such a state really is have been often greatly errone
ous. We are speaking now of the fact that a sense of
need has been in millions of hearts ; and that some
effort, at least, has been made for its supply. And
what efforts they have sometimes been ! How intense,
how agonized, how terrible have been the expedients
by which men have endeavored to solve this problem
of becoming right within. They have starved in des
ert caves ; they have swung on iron hooks ; they have
given their children to the fire ; they have shut them
selves in monastery cells. No suffering has been too
great to bear ; no self-denial too hard to sustain, by
multitudes, in the attempt to satisfy the want within.
Ah ! my hearers, sitting in this sanctuary to-day,
rejoicing in what we deem our better way, comes there
not even from many of the errors we condemn in such
as these, a voice of reproof and scorn ? Out even of
Africa's lowest idolatry, out of Christianity's extrem-
est perversion, sounds there not a cry which those who
are at ease in Zion would do well to hear ? Not cer
tain is it by any means, that we shall stand as well
(with all our light and privilege) in the day when
inquest for righteousness will be made, as do some of
these who groped so earnestly, but in such darkness,
after the answer to the question : " How shall a man
be right with God?" "How be right with God?"
That is the great, the awful problem of history.
Yet observe, how even at this late period of time,
and amid what is called the enlightenment of our age,
how powerless, even now, is science or philosophy to
answer this question ! Philosophy can discourse pro-

SERMONS. 89
foundly of the origin of ideas. But when I ask, "How
can I get rid of this sense of sin ? " she has not a
syllable to reply. Science can analyze for me the
ray of light which comes from one of Jupiter's
moons, but how to unravel the twining fibres of evil
that inmesh and make captive my trembling soul, she
cannot tell.
There is only One who can tell. He tells us who
stood in that Temple court at Jerusalem, on that
eighth day of the festival, and said, " If any man thirst
let him come unto Me." He answers the question,
always, who ever lives to teach men how to become
pure. " Come unto Me," He says. " I have the gift you
need. I forgive, and I also sanctify. In My death is
your absolution ; in My life is your recovery. By my
sacrifice I have atoned for you ; and by My rising
again, I restore you. Come to Me. My example has
in it healing. My holiness has in it purifying power.
Rest upon Me ; cling to Me ; trust in Me ; and the
purity you need will become yours. My Spirit shall
dwell in you. My grace shall transform you ; and the
great wants of your soul shall be satisfied ; you shall be
holy as I am holy." My friends, this is what that
voice said which spoke the invitation so long ago :
" Come unto Me and drink." This, nothing less than
this, is what it promised and what it has performed in
the experience of thousands.
Are there not those here who are athirst ?
Is there not some one in this assembly who, perplexed
by the conflicting voices of this jarring time, desires to
know the truth ? To him the invitation comes : "I
am the truth, come to Me."

9o

REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.

Are there those whose hearts' affections have been
rudely smitten ? Those who, wounded or bereaved,
or misinterpreted or alone, are reaching outward some
where for comfort and love ? Listen to Him who
says : " Come unto Me. Can a woman forget her
sucking child ? yea, they may forget ; yet will I not
forget thee."
Is a longing for holiness the desire of any heart
here ? More than knowledge or love, does purity seem
a precious thing ? Better than heaven does it seem
to be fit for heaven ? Dearer than salvation is does
the righteousness of salvation seem ? Come then
freely to Jesus. He cleanses the most sinful soul.
The holiness in Him He makes ours also. " We all
beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are
changed into the same image from glory to glory."
" When He shall appear we shall be like Him ; for we
shall see Him as He is."

SERMONS. 91

IV.
CHRIST'S HAPPINESS.*
HEBREWS XII : 2.
Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross,
despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of
the throne of God.
The Christ of the world's most frequent contempla
tion is a humiliated and suffering Christ. On the
walls of public galleries and private dwellings the eye
meets, at every turn, the depicted story of our Sav
iour's woes. In this picture you behold Him an infant,
for whom no room could be found in the inn, lying
among the oxen of the stall. In that one, He is a
man wearied with His pilgrimage, asking drink of a
stranger at a well. Here you see Him weeping beside
the grave of His friend Lazarus. There musing
sorrowfully from the side of Mount Olivet, upon the
fate of obdurate Jerusalem. Here He looks down
upon us wearing the crown which Herod's men of
war braided for Him ; its thorns lacerating His fore
head. There, pressed to the earth by the weight of
His cross, an imploring face appeals to us from the
rabble that throngs Him on the way to Calvary. In
scores of forms is the crucifixion scene, and the taking
down from the cross, and the depositing in the sepul-

* Written in 1866. Somewhat rewritten in 1879.

92 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
chre, presented to us. Ancient and modern art have
exhausted invention in setting forth, — by sculpture,
by painting, by engraving, by mosaic, by fresco, by
embroidery, — the narrative of the Redeemer's sorrow.
In like manner, religious literature has employed
itself to a very considerable extent in giving utterance
to the same plaintive tale. The ignominy and the
sufferings of Jesus are the frequent theme of sermons
in our sanctuaries, of volumes in our libraries, of
stories in our nurseries.
But it is not to the image of a suffering Christ that
I shall chiefly direct your attention to-day. Though
that image is, indeed, a very prominent one in Scrip
ture, and a most profitable one frequently to contem
plate, it is one from which, on this occasion, I invite
you to turn your eyes away. For it is not a suffering
Christ only, who is presented to us in the Book of
God. The countenance which looks out upon us very
commonly, indeed, from the Scripture page, is one
bearing indications of hardship. But there is a gleam
of light in its most pensive expression. There is a
forecast radiance of joy, even in its saddest hour. It
was not sorrow only, which was appointed Him ; there
was a "glory to follow." Though the Captain of our
salvation was to be " made perfect through suffer
ings," He was to be " made perfect." The day of
suffering was to be ended. And if He was to " endure
the cross " and submit to the "shame," there was a
"joy set before Him," so great that the shame could
be "despised" and the cross could be borne, as He
looked forward to the "recompense of the reward."
Let us contemplate Him to-day as entered into that
joy. Not, indeed, that the glory which was to follow

SERMONS.

93

our Saviour's days of humiliation is yet made full.
On the contrary, it is very far from being complete.
There are reserves of that glory of which He has yet
received no part. It is to later, to eternal days that
we must look if we would contemplate our Redeemer
made perfect in His blessedness. No ! it is not while
these old heavens endure, and this old earth holds yet
in its cold clasp the buried bodies of all His saints,
that the fruition of our Saviour's rejoicings will arrive.
The hour of that completed glory awaits the vanishing
skies, the awakening graves, the descending Jerusalem
of our Crowned King.
Nevertheless, though the day of His perfected bless
edness still delays, and may delay yet many a revolving
year, our Saviour has already begun to taste the " joy
that was set before Him." Already He begins to reap
the recompense of the reward. A happiness even
now vast enough to fill His soul with rejoicing, and
to task our feeble imagination to measure, is at every
moment His.
Let us try to contemplate that joy. Turning our
eyes away for awhile from a suffering, look we to a
rejoicing Christ. Let us forget ourselves, — our little
griefs, our petty cares, our earthly burdens, — and
lifting our eyes above this dim vale in which we so
often sit and weep, get a little vision, if we can, of the
happiness of Christ.
His, then, is the happiness of a finished atoning
work. There is a satisfaction in completed labor, however
humble that labor may be. The husbandman at the
close of autumn, and the sailor at the end of his voy
age, look back with gladness that the labors and

94 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
bufferings of another rounded period of their lives are
over. The mechanic rejoices to lay down his plane at
the end of his protracted work. With a kindred feel
ing of satisfaction the author writes " Finis " on his
concluding page. And just in the degree in which
any undertaking is high and difficult, in that degree
does he who bears its burden rejoice at its close.
How welcome to the heart of Washington must have
been the last scene of the revolutionary struggle, when
the capitulation of Cornwallis brought rest to the worn-
out land ! What joy, amid his anxieties, must have
come to the heart of the martyred Lincoln, in those
last few days which brought him tidings of Richmond's
fall and Lee's surrender; of the Union's established
triumph, and his completed work.
It is, indeed, a great step from matters like these up
to that achievement our Saviour wrought when He
atoned for human guilt. Yet even things like these
may help us to understand His joy when that task was
done. For, once, like any human undertaking, that
work lay before Him unaccomplished. There it was ;
a thing to be done. It was to be the mightiest enter
prise the world had ever witnessed ; and He, Christ
Jesus, was to be its fulfiller. The brunt and the strug
gle were to be His. All its comprehensible and in
comprehensible tasks of effort or endurance, He was
to accomplish. From Jordan's baptismal stream to
Golgotha's cross-topped hill was one untraversed path
way, overhung by mysteries of conflict and of suffer
ing. The things He was to do by the labors of His
hands, by the pleadings of His voice, by His body's
lacerated wounds, were to be only dim external signs
of the overcomings or endurings of His soul. There,

SERMONS.

95

within, where no eye could see, was the strain and
severity of His enterprise. The visible facts of His
sad story were significant mainly as tokens of the
invisible hardships of a work which once lay all before
Him. But it lies before Him no longer. Redemption is
not now any more a task to be accomplished. Behind
Him it lies ; a thing finished forever. There is Beth
lehem, where never again is He to be cradled in a
herdsman's stall. There is Nazareth, whose toilsome
years will nevermore acquaint His hands with the
hammer and the plane. There is Galilee, over whose
stony hills, footsore and weary, He journeys no
longer on errands of rejected love. Behind Him lies
Jerusalem, whose Hall of Judgment saw Him once a
prisoner condemned ; and Gethsemane, where He
fainted in His spiritual agony ; and Calvary, which
lifted Him expiring into the darkening air ; and the
sepulchre on its slope where was laid to its brief repose
the body of the murdered man.
There they are : but for Him they are no more.
Once, every day brought them nearer to Him ; now,
every day bears them farther off. Once, things of an
ticipation and foreboding ; now they are things of mem
ory and reckoning-points of success. He looks back
on the whole sad, toilsome, mysterious story, as a thing
done completely, victoriously, forever. And now, — if
we may compare small things with great, — as a con
queror rests when the field is won, as the swimmer re^-
poses when he reaches the hard-gained shore, as the
man of years' long endeavor gives over his toil when
the task is complete, so rests the Redeemer from His
finished work. A happy rest ! from labor mightily ac-

n6 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
complished ! A repose whose zest is proportioned to
the former pain. A gladness too great for us to meas
ure, who have never fathomed the sorrow, is, and for-
evermore will be, the inheritance of Christ.
Christ's, again, is the happiness of manifested char
acter. It is not an object of unworthy ambition for a
man, conscious of unusual capacity in affairs, or of a
noble integrity and largeness of soul, to desire opportu
nity to show of what stuff he is made. It surely was
not an unfortunate circumstance in the life of the
Duke of Wellington, that those five long hours of ter
rible suspense and dogged endurance, while Napoleon's
regiments swept down upon him, and Bliicher did not
come, gave England and the world a chance to see
what material God sometimes puts into a man. The
prisons and poorhouses of Europe were woes which
haunted the soul of Howard like ghosts which could
not be laid. But, had not those wrongs been, mankind
would never have known what a great heart lodged in
that feeble frame. Florence Nightingale would have
died unheard of, had it not been for the Crimean war.
And if the battles of Sadowa, Gravelotte, and Sedan
had not revealed it, who could have pronounced the
Prussian Moltke the first soldier of his age?
From the days of the primitive martyrdoms down to
the last sufferer for principle, whether on public or pri
vate stage, the disclosure of character is mainly the
office of adversity. As our great dramatist says, " In
the reproof of chance lies the true proof of men." For
not always is a man's life so cast that he can show
what is in him. There are other true souls than this
world always hears of. The plaintive words of the
author of the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, mourn-

SERMONS. 97
ing over those to whom life never gave the chance
that might have revealed what, if revealed, would never
have been let die, are truer than we always remember.
Yes, favoring opportunity is a privilege. The chance
to be manifested is one of life's best chances. It is
not, indeed, that he may be manifest, that the true
man works. It is a felicity which comes to him, if it
comes at all, rather in the retrospect than in the per
formance of his task. If he can look back on it from
the end, conscious of the integrity with which he has
wrought, the fact that his work has permitted him to
show that his heart was true, and his motives pure,
must be esteemed a happy circumstance. " I have
coveted no man's silver, or gold, or apparel. Yea, ye
yourselves know that these hands have ministered unto
my necessities, and to them that were with me," said
the aged tent-maker at Miletus. Would he have lightly
sold, or ought he to have lowly esteemed, the possibil
ity of making that humble boast ?
Yet all other manifestations of character beside, do
they not, even the brightest, ask for a veil of obli
vion forever to cover them, compared with Christ's?
Among the joys which fill His heart looking back on
His earthly history, must not this be one, that His
was a record in every emergency, from which nothing
needs to be taken, in which nothing needs to be de
plored, to which nothing can be added — the perfect
record of the Perfect Man. And this, remember, not
because it was passively and necessarily so. No ! un
less the temptations which assailed our Saviour were
illusive spectacles, and the hardships He sustained
were hollow make-believes, it was not inevitable that
the record He left behind Him should be that of the

98 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
only " spotless soul that ever breathed through human
clay." It was by effort He wrote that memorial which
blinds our eyes by its brightness. He was what He
was, by struggle and conflict. He was put to the proof
as no man beside was ever proved. Tried by humilia
tion, tried by suffering, tried by satanic wiles, tried by
desertions of His God, He stood steadfast. He proved
His character in the furnace flame. He won His char
acter by struggle.
Now, from the heavenly rest into which He has en
tered, He looks back on the only example earth can
show of a sinless character and a perfect life. Not a
virtue men prize, but it is there. Not a strength they
admire, but it is there. Not a heroism they honor, a
self-denial they revere, a beauty they cherish, a grace
they love, but it shines — tested to the uttermost — in
the character of Christ. To them forever it is an ex
ample too high to attain, but ceaselessly to emulate ;
to Him it is a joy the sweetness of which can never
die. Christ's again, is the happiness of the perpetual dis
pensation of good.
It was one of Christ's own utterances in the days of
His earthly experience, "It is more blessed to give
than to receive." Days of His "experience," I say,
for those were days when to minister to Christ's ur
gent and painful wants was a possible thing to do.
Undoubtedly he spoke out of His experience. To
Him it was a more blessed thing to give than to gain.
How oftener fell the word of gentle greeting from His
lips than it fell upon His ear! How more frequent
the stretching forth of His hands to minister to others
than theirs to comfort Him ! And yet He knew some-

SERMONS.

99

thing of benefits received. There were those who gave
Him shelter, food, and raiment. One there was who
washed His feet with tears and wiped them with her
hair. He knew enough of the satisfaction of being
helped to be able experimentally to say whether it is
better to give or to receive. And He has told us how
He found it. He haslet us know what, as He tested
life, was the best good in it. He has shown whether
it was the wiping of another's tears or the drying of
His own which was best to Him. The Son of Man,
He says, " came not to be ministered unto, but to min
ister, and to give his life a ransom for many."
And because that was the spirit in which He did
His work, and the law by which He died, now that He
has entered into His reward, He has become the dis
penser of perpetual good to all the inhabitants of
heaven. Not a ransomed soul in all the ranks of the
blest, but He is the giver of the joy. Not one of all
the innumerable host, but came to those happy seats
by Him. As He looks around Him on the throng, He
knows there is not one of them that His blood did not
buy, His sacrifice atone for, His grace redeem. Not
a foot treads the golden pavement which was not
guided thither by His care. Not a tongue lifts up the
song of praise, but it tells of salvation wrought by
Him. The garments of light in which the ransomed
stand, the harps of thanksgiving they hold, the inward
peace and sense of reconciliation they know, all are
His gift. He gives, and none can pay Him again. His
bestowals overpass all possibility of requital. Forever,
among the multitudes out of every tongue and clime,
He must remain the Man most perfectly blest, because
most perfect in making blest. Unspeakably, immeas-

IOO REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
urably happy, He lives the example which makes all
others dim, of the greater joy it is to give than to
receive. Once more, Christ's is the happiness of personal
fellowship with the spirits of His ransomed ones in
heaven. Just where that heaven is into which the Saviour
entered at His ascension, we cannot tell. Whether
the place — for a place it would appear to be since He
went thither in His proper body — is the same with
that which will be the final abode of the redeemed
after their bodies shall have been raised from the grave,
there is reason to doubt. Many things in the Word
of God would seem to indicate that the place of that
final abode of the saints may be this earth where we
now dwell, regenerated, transformed, made new by the
baptism of purifying fire. But, however that may be,
the Scripture seems also to give us intimations that in
that same place where Jesus now is, there His disem
bodied saints now are with Him. " To-day shalt thou
be with Me in paradise," said Christ to the dying com
panion of His crucifixion sufferings. "Father, I will
that they also whom thou hast given me, be with Me
where I am," said the Saviour in the same prayer in
which He also said, "And now I come to Thee."
Where Christ now is, there are the spirits of the
just. Joined with Him in happy fellowship, they await
the hour when the last trumpet shall summon the
grave to give up its charge, and the ransomed spirit
shall unite with its ransomed and transformed clay.
But even now the happiness of that fellowship to Him
and them, who shall measure ? Certainly it is immeas
urable to them. Many of them left happy homes to

SERMONS. I0I
enter there ; but not one so happy that the emanci
pated spirit has not learned that, sweet as were any
joys of earth, to "depart and be with Christ is far
better." But to Him also that fellowship is precious. These
are those He has redeemed. By His own blood He
has bought them. Every grace that shines in them is
the product of His care. With rejoicing inexpressible
He dwells among them and smiles on them. And
His, remember, is a fellowship which is every hour in
creasing. With every revolving day of earthly time,
the number of that blissful companionship multiplies.
Ransomed ones are welcomed home from every region
of the populated globe. Here is one from Syria, land
of the Saviour's birth and burial. Here is one from
Italy, land of the Roman power which crucified Him.
Here is one from Africa, country of the man who bore
the Saviour's cross on the way to Golgotha. Here
come those from China, Greenland, and America, re
gions unconjectured by even apostolic ken, but en
folded in the purpose of forgiving grace, and gathered
in the arms of atoning sacrifice. Every hour they
come. Old age and infancy. Wearied with care, or
called with all earth's joys before them. From pal
aces, from hovels. Of every color, lineage, tongue. A
thronging, multiplying, exultant host. And over them
all He sits welcoming, blessing, blessed.
Faint and inadequate is human speech to utter, even
that little the human thought can conjecture of a hap
piness so great ! His work accomplished, His charac
ter made gloriously manifest, the dispenser of infinite
good, the rejoicing companion of His redeemed, our
imagination falters in the attempt to conceive the

102 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
height and the depth of a joy no soul in the universe
but that of Christ could compass, as none but His
deserves. But, marvelous as is the happiness of Christ, forget
not, my hearers, that to every one of you the privilege
of adding to it is given. Yes ! blessed beyond concep
tion as is our Redeemer, you can increase that blessed
ness. Give yourself to Him, if you have never given.
Give yourself more unreservedly if you have ever made
a partial surrender, and an added joy will thrill through
His already rejoicing soul. You will lend a new ele
ment to even the happiness of Christ.

SERMONS.

103

v.*
AMBITION FOR NOBLE SERVICE.
II TIMOTHY II : 20, 21.
But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold ana of sil
ver, but also of wood and of earth j and some to honor and some
to dishonor. If a man, therefore, purge himself from these
he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the
Master's use, and prepared unto every good work.
One of the most powerful motives which has ever
influenced the minds of men is ambition. And it is
not one of the most powerful only, but one of the most
pervasive also. It is a motive which, to some extent,
affects all minds. The objects toward which this pas
sion is directed, are, indeed, almost infinitely various.
It ranges over the whole breadth of human life and
action. The distance from the ambition of a Bismarck
eager to raise Prussia to the position of dictator in the
affairs of Europe, to the ambition of Hanlon equally
eager to outrow any other champion of the boating
fraternity, only very imperfectly indicates the+scope of
the sentiment under consideration. For it is a senti
ment which has no limits inside the aims and occupa
tions of universal humanity. Newton's aspiration to
solve the mathematic problem of gravity, and the
Sioux Indian's ambition to shine in the superior hid-

* Written in 1869. Somewhat rewritten in 1877.

I04 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
eousness of his red paint, are both illustrations of the
same sentiment. Ambition to leave behind him a
poem of immortal memory prompted the lofty muse of
the blind singer of Paradise Lost. It is equally ambi
tion which incites the schoolboy on the lower bench to
conquer the abstruse perplexities of the multiplica
tion table.
Now this aspiring sentiment, so instinctive and uni
versal, derives its moral quality from the objects
toward which it is directed. In itself, and as an ab
stract matter, it is neither good nor bad. It is simply
one of the great natural impulses of man, which can
be made useful or harmful, right or wrong, by its
direction. Just as the physical capacity of moving
the arm may be made the instrument, in one case, of
an act of benevolence, and in another, of an act of
cruelty, so this sentiment of aspiration, equally neutral
in itself, derives its moral character from the result at
which it aims.
We are, indeed, very much accustomed to see this
impulse of man's nature directed toward questionable
or evil objects. Ambition is a motive power too often
subverted to Satan's uses. The very name has come
to have a kind of sinister sound. But there is noth
ing in the impulse of aspiration itself which involves
any necessity of evil direction. Satan has no claim
upon it, as belonging characteristically to him or his
service. It belongs to God. It is an agency in His
service. It has its scope and function in the aims and
occupations of piety, as truly as in those of worldliness.
The Gospel claims this agency. It is one to which
it makes continual appeal. Ambition has a place in
religion. The aspiration for something rich and high

SERMONS. 105
and distinctive is an aspiration encouraged in scores of
utterances of the Book of God. At the same time,
also, that Book defines the proper field, and regulates
the right exercise of this sentiment. It stimulates its
activity, and it guides its powers. It at once incites
and directs. Our text is an example in point :
But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of
silver, but also of wood and of earth ; and some to honor and
some to dishonor. If a man, therefore, purge himself from
these, he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet for
the Master's use, and prepared unto every good work.
Two things in this passage must at once strike the
attentive hearer.
One of them is the boldness with which the senti
ment of ambition is appealed to in it. The other is the
clearness with which it points out the sphere of that
sentiment's proper exercise. These two things, then,
let us a few moments contemplate. Christian ambi
tion : its object and obligation. And first of the
object. " In a great house " — the Apostle tells us, — there
are vessels of many substances and many uses. The
materials of some of them are precious and they sub
serve noble purposes. The materials of others are
common and they subserve inferior ends. But they
are all useful. Even the meanest of them in substance
and in intention has its utility. It has a function. Its
purpose is for service. So, too, however various the
specific aspirations of Christian ambition, they are all
shut up under the general requirement of utility.
The allowable objects of Christian aspiration are such
as relate to service. Personal enjoyment, even if it be
of a religious kind, is a thing which the Scriptures do

106 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
not give us much encouragement to make the direct
object of search. Mere happiness is a thing the Scrip
tures hold very cheap. Usefulness, efficiency, are the
things they prompt us to. Equipment and capacity
for spiritual service, — these are the objects of Chris
tian desire. Ambition for these is a sacred passion.
But there are differences in spiritual service. There
is the use which the earthen vessel may, perhaps, ade
quately serve ; and there is the use which can appro
priately be fulfilled only by the golden urn. In other
words, Christian usefulness is a most various matter.
It is a thing calling for very dissimilar capacity and
refinement in the instruments. There are spiritual
functions which can, in a manner, be discharged by the
possessors of only a relatively low and undeveloped
piety. But they are comparatively unimportant func
tions. While, on the other hand, the functions of
noblest utility and benignest benefits, can only be ful
filled by possessors of ardent piety and rich experience.
The sphere of Christian ambition, then, is in seek
ing these higher endowments to fit for higher service.
It is a legitimate object of desire to seek the largest
possible capability of use. The widened mind, the sym
pathetic heart, the persuasive tongue, the quick-discern
ing spiritual instinct, — these are to be sought, because
these fit their possessor for greater employment in
the Lord's work. We can none of us hope to be more
than instruments in the Spirit's hands.
But there is a choice in the instruments, as the
various works to be performed are of differing deli
cacy and difficulty. And Christian ambition finds
its proper object in fitness for those higher uses.
Meetness for the Lord's best work, adaptedness

SERMONS.

107

of mind and heart and will to the noblest service in
which God condescends to use men in this world,
this is a Christian's true and highest object of aspira
tion. Compared with this, desire for mere personal
religious comfort or security is ignoble. Measured by
this longing for endowment for the Lord's use, any
longing for simply individual happiness or hope is
selfish and mean. That it is religious, makes it none
the less so.
Such being, then, the true object of Christian ambi
tion, turn a moment to consider with equal brevity the
obligation of pursuing it.
The duty of seeking this object arises from the pos
sibility. It is argument enough to urge the obligation
of striving after a high endowment for the Lord's serv
ice that a man can strive and that striving has its re
sult. The whole question is settled by the simple fact
that equipment for the higher forms of Christian use
fulness is very much a matter of choice and endeavor.
Adaptedness of mind and heart to the nobler services
of the Gospel is a thing which, to a great extent, falls
within the scope of voluntary effort. Of this we have
an intimation in the text. " If a man, therefore, purge
himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor,
sanctified and meet for the Master's use, and prepared
unto every good work."
Preparation unto higher work, — sanctification unto
more honorable uses, — these are the rewards held out
to voluntary endeavor to purge one's self from defiling
influences, and to present one's self perfectly to the
Lord's service. It is a thing which can be done.
Fitness for better and worthier work is the prize of
effort and self-consecration. The vessels of the Lord's

io8 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
house are not like those of our own, unchangeably
ordained to high or to menial ends. These human ves
sels have a capacity of change. They can alter in
character and advance in use. The earthen may be
come golden ; the wood may turn to silver. And with
that progressive change will come, also, an enhancing
honorableness in the employment to which the Master
will put them.
What transformations Christian experience has seen !
What alterations of substance ! What exaltations in
use! Under the power of Divine grace and the high
ambition to serve increasingly sacred ends, what earthen
vessels have been made golden censers in the Temple
of God ! Saul of Tarsus, and Paul the Apostle ; Bun-
yan the wandering mender of kettles and pots, and
Bunyan the Pilgrim's guide to heaven ; Newton the
captain of a slave ship, and Newton the preacher of
the Gospel and singer of sweet songs of devotion; Chal
mers the formal unconsecrated minister, and Chalmers
the great modern Apostle of Scotland, — these illus
trate the marvel of that change by which the wood and
earth of our humanity may be fitted to services more
sacred than the shining bowls upon the altar of the
ancient tabernacle.
Nay, in the more familiar precincts of church and
of household life, how often have we seen this same
transformation wrought ! With what distinctness have
we beheld the alteration effected by the Divine Spirit
in the whole character of some one whom God has
touched with the high ambition to become useful in the
world. Under the influence of that endeavor, how have
intellect quickened, and emotion deepened, and capac
ity enlarged. How has the stammering utterance

SERMONS.

109

become eloquent, and the trembling step grown strong.
You behold the progressive change. Before your very
eyes the earthen bowl of some poor common human
spirit becomes a burnished vessel of God's altar, and
filled with fragrances of grace, sweeter than frankin
cense and myrrh. Changes like these are open to en
deavor. They are the result and the reward of effort.
Christian aspiration can attain to them, and the duty
of aspiration lies in that fact.
I call attention, therefore, in the practical enforce
ment of this theme, to one or two thoughts of a direct
and personal character. Especially do I invoke the
careful consideration of the young to suggestions suited,
I think, to the position of privilege in which they
stand. One of these suggestions is the duty resting on
every person to aim at high and worthy service. It is
a Christian privilege, and no less a Christian duty, also,
to be ambitious in this matter. The spirit of the Gos
pel encourages large anticipations. There is nothing
repressive and narrow about it. It begets a divine dis
content with low attainments and with successes
scantier than opportunity.
To be sure, in prompting to larger endeavors the
Gospel does not, as we are too apt to do, underesti
mate and despise little things. No ! it has a great rev
erence for little things, and it looks for an exact and
painstaking carefulness respecting them. It requires,
also, if one is, in the providence of God, rigidly shut
up to a trivial task and a narrow and unchangeable lot
in life, that he be content as well as faithful where he
is. Nay, more, that he do his work, however lowly,
with an assured confidence that it is accepted work : —

HO REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
work appointed, valued, and honored by Him in whose
service it is done.
But, on the other hand, the Gospel encourages the
aim, wherever it can find scope, — and few are the lives
wherein it cannot, — for higher endowment and fuller
service. It says, in effect, to all of its disciples " Do
better things ; do better things ! " Do not be content
with trifles. Be not satisfied with but little. Work
faithfully in your sphere, and widen it if you can. Go
forward steadfastly, and, if possible, go somewhat up
ward, too. Seek for higher labors ; and seek to be
qualified for them by being lifted up yourself. The
wider mind, the warmer heart, the stronger faith, the
more persuasive tongue, seek for these things, that
you may use them, on an ever heightening plane, and
in a continually widening sphere. And that you may
make this progress, use the gifts you now have.
Suppose they are small. They will grow by exer
cise. Do not be daunted out of your greatest privi
lege — the privilege of growing strong and equipped
in the Lord's service. The condition of that growth is
present endeavor. Use the gift, and the gift will in
crease. Surely it is not the vessel content to be for
ever the vessel of wood, that ever becomes the golden
censer " sanctified and meet for the Master's use."
There is another suggestion of a very serious char
acter, which arises from the subject now in hand.
This is a suggestion as to the danger of base uses of
that vessel of the human soul, which a man hopes to
present to the service of God. It is a matter of famil
iar observation among the neat-handed conductors of
household affairs, that the soundest utensil may become
permanently dishonored by the use to which it is, per-

SERMONS. Ill
haps, accidentally subjected. The firkin is ruined by its
contents. The earthen jar, despite whatever efforts at
cleansing, gives out the taint which has sunk into it
from what it has been made to hold. The casket, air
it ever so long, never loses the scent of the musk spilled
inadvertently upon it. And in many such cases, a per
manent degradation of function is the consequence.
The vessel, whatever it may be, can never again be
used for the highest services. Outwardly unchanged
and perfect, it is, nevertheless, lastingly unfitted for
the best uses. A secret debasement, from which it
can never recover, condemns it perpetually to a lower
employment and to more menial disposals.
Now something terribly like this, although the
parallel is of course not perfect, takes place also in the
spiritual vessels of human souls. There is a peril of
permanent degradation lying in too long and too willing
subjection to the influences of evil. Sinful habits and
appetites carry with them a tremendous and far-reach
ing peril. There is a danger, sad to contemplate, of a
lasting incapacity, if not, indeed, for some service, —
yet for the highest and best service in the work of the
Lord. Earthliness and frivolity are not matters of
transient influence. The loss which they sometimes
inflict is not limited to those days only in which the
individual yielded himself with apparent willingness to
their power. It reaches often far beyond. It takes
hold upon a time when a far different hope incites him,
and an altered spirit impels. So that, even then, when
the man, touched by the Spirit of Gpd, eagerly seeks
to be of service in God's work, when it has become his
ambition to be a vessel sanctified and meet for the
Master's use, even then how sadly, oftentimes, does he

II2 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
reap the consequences of his long enthralment to a
baser service. His soul gives out the scent of its older
associations. Cleansed never so earnestly, the taint of
the contents it has held so long is in it still. It cannot
be of the use it might have been. Not useless need
it be, but not a vessel to the highest service. It may
fulfil many an important function, but it cannot hold
the anointing oil.
O my hearers ! there is a solemn truth here, which
it becomes you to remember. These souls of ours are
not so simply wrought, that a moment's repenting, or
a determined resolve, nor even the direct operations of
divine grace, can wholly wipe out the influences of our
past, and enable us to enter on a new life untouched
by inheritances from the old. It is not so. What we
have been affects what we are to be. You cannot, my
hearers, spend a youthtime of idle vanity and then
come fitted and sanctified to a Christian's better serv
ice. However sincere your repenting, you must
inevitably bear something of the loss of your foolish
years. You cannot, O man of business, and I will
suppose, professor of religion, too, you cannot immerse
yourself in worldly things, and heap up your heart
overflowing full with material desires, and then come
clean and fit for the best uses of the Lord's altar.
Beware, then, of a permanent loss ! There are uses
from which the human spirit can never fully be
restored. The dishonored vessel can, in this life cer
tainly, never be cleansed to become fitted to the Mas
ter's highest use.
The word of entreaty comes to all, in whatever posi
tion you now stand. " Purge yourselves to nobler serv
ices!" The past, whatever its character, is unaltera-

SERMONS. 113
ble. The present, only, is your certain possession.
Cleanse yourselves for the best uses that remain. It
is no longer now a question what noble uses you might
have served. The only question left is, what uses can
you serve. And high services remain. There are
noble functions to be fulfilled. Aspire to them. Set
your mark high. Purify yourselves that you may be
fitted for them.
Ah ! my beloved hearer, especially my hearer in the
period of youth, there is a sacred encouragement for
you to do this. The alchemy of divine grace does
wondrous things. More marvelous are its changes
than those fabled of the magic workers of old. The
heart early and fully submitted to God can be fitted to
most sacred functions. A progressively refining influ
ence adapts it for higher and higher service. Nearer
and nearer to the altar it can come ; closer and closer
to the glory and the sacrifice. It may be made, among
the vessels of the sanctuary, like that which holds the
sacramental bread, or the chalice which conveys to
longing lips the redemptive drops of Calvary. I com
mend this sacred ambition to you. " If a man, there
fore, purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel
unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the Master's use
and prepared unto every good work."

II4 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.

VI.
YOKE WEARING.*
Matthew xi : 29.
" Take my yoke upon you''
Most men, when they seek to bring others to new
opinions or unfamiliar labors, are tempted a little to
conceal whatever displeasing aspects there may be
about those opinions or labors, and to bring promi
nently into the foreground only the agreeable matters.
If a man is attempting to sell you anything, you are
pretty sure that its merits rather than its defects will
have a full disclosure. It would be a somewhat novel
method of solicitation to put into the forefront of the
interview the dissuasives from compliance.
Yet something which seems very much like doing
this characterized Christ's way, not unfrequently, in
His appeals to men. Our text is an example in point.
"Take my yoke upon you," He says. The words are
immediately coupled, indeed, with one of the most
tender and persuasive of His promises : " Ye shall
find rest unto your souls." But that promise, sweet
and inviting as it is, is prefaced by this condition,
"Take my yoke upon you."
Christ invites us to Himself ; but He has no inten-

* Written in 1869.

SERMONS.

H5

tion of deceiving us into coming. He gives us fair
notice beforehand of our conditions of approach and
our treatment after we are arrived. He lets us plainly
know that it is not to any mere holiday acquaintance
that He summons us. Matchless as are the blessings
He has to give, and tender beyond conception as is
the love which prompts His proffer of them to us, He
yet never deludes us into mistaking the terms. With
perfect and translucent honesty He lets us know
the whole case. He prefaces His pledge with its
condition. He deals with us squarely, intelligibly.
He puts things as they are. " Take my yoke upon
you ; and ye shall find rest unto your souls."
And, after all, notwithstanding the general tendency
of men to put the best side out in dealing with their
fellowmen, they do like honesty in others. They are
glad to know just what they can depend upon. They
prefer to touch bottom, even if the bottom be ragged
and rocky, rather than to hang over uncertain depths.
And so it awakens a kind of confidence in itself, that
Christ's invitation comes just as it does. He puts, —
if I may say so, — the worst side out. He conceals
nothing. He does not use smooth phrases to gloss
over rough facts. He chooses plain words, which con
vey the unmistakable truth.
He tells us that He will give us "rest"; but the
condition of it is our bearing a "yoke." Not a badge,
not a necklace, not a ribbon, not an epaulet, — but a
yoke. Just that lowly, laborious, constraining thing
which we bind upon the unquestioning dumb creatures
which patiently turn the sward of our meadows and
drag home the heavy-loaded wagon of our harvest
fields. And yet He tells us that wearing this yoke

Il6 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
will bring us "rest." Notwithstanding it is a yoke,
we shall find it "easy."
Let us think of this matter a little. Let us con
sider a few moments just what this yoke-bearing does
symbolize and signify. Perhaps we shall find that He
who was accustomed to speak "as never man spake,"
did not depart from His custom even in this case.
Perhaps we may come to see how the shortest and the
surest way for any of us who are troubled and " weary,"
to find peace and "rest," is to do just this thing the
Master bids us, — put on the yoke of His true disciple-
ship. Notice as one thing, then, that the yoke of Christ
signifies submission.
True Christian experience has many points of varia
tion. The diversity of men's temperament and of
their histories lays the foundation for an almost end
less diversity of detail in the particular items of reli
gious feeling which may characterize equally sincere
Christians. But there are a few great points which
are substantially identical. Among them is this of
submission of self to Christ.
Inquirers after the religious life sometimes come
asking: "Must I have just such an experience as I
read of in such a memoir, or hear described by such a
brother or sister of the church, before I may regard
myself as a Christian ? " " No," I answer, " I have no
warrant to affirm that : nor have you any need to delay
your hope because your experience does not in all
points agree with that of any living soul. But there is
one thing you must have. Underneath all possible
diversities, true Christian experience does involve sub
mission to Christ. Surrender, — that cannot be dis-

SERMONS. 117
pensed with. However various may be other emo
tions, — the sense of guilt, for example, or the fear of
retribution, — this feeling, the soul truly taking hold
of Christ will have ; a feeling of its helpless need of
Him, and an utter giving up of self to Him. Sur
render, yielding, putting on His yoke, that is the one
central and essential fact of Christian experience.
I said " Christian experience," my hearers; but now
I say that human experience knows nothing more
blessed than just that experience of surrender. Christ
said it would bring "rest," and it does bring it. For
it is not self-assertion, victory, achievement, which
brings us our truest bliss. Our self is too mean, our
victories too small, our achievements too pitiable for
them ever to be a really contenting satisfaction. Our
best joy is in yielding to and reverencing something
nobler and better than ourselves. We get glimpses
of the blessedness of this submission in the relation
ships of the present. The really filial child is glad
der by far in yielding his ignorant will to the wiser
will of his parent, than in blindly asserting his own.
Our subtle poet, Tennyson, — writing of the relation
of friend to friend in the mere giving and receiving of
knowledge, — says : —
And what delights can equal those
That stir the spirit's inner deeps,
When one that loves, but knows not, reaps
A truth from one that loves and knows ?
So, too, — though on a vastly higher plane, and with
a self -surrender infinitely more complete, — there is no
one act of possible human experience so full of rest
and sweetness as the act of entire self-surrender to

Il8 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
Christ. Looking out of its weakness to His strength,
out of its sin to His holiness, out of its loss to His
plenitude of help, and utterly casting itself upon Him,
the soul of man is touched with an indescribable calm
and joy. The act is an exceeding humble one, but no
proud achievements ever brought such results.
Notice another point. The yoke of Christ signifies
restraint. The wearer of a yoke is one under control.
He has upon him the symbol of a government.
And Christ suffers no one who comes to Him to
evade this condition of discipleship. All who are His
are under His direction. Let no man make a mistake
on this point, and imagine that all that Christ requires
of him is some single act of submission, and that after
that he is free to make his own laws and go his own
way. Christ tells us plainly otherwise when He says :
"Take my yoke upon you." That direction means
not something transient, not something gone by, not
something which can be put off and taken on at choice.
It means the constant, life-long control and guidance
of a law supreme over personal will, of an authority
unquestioned and unquestionable in its claims.
Now just here, undoubtedly, it is not unfrequent to
see an obstinate will make a stand. If it were only a
question of momentary homage, of an act done once
under the pressure of an intense emotion, and then
things were to be as before, such a will perhaps would
be inclined to submit. But to enter into a compact of
eternal obedience, to enthrone an authority whose
legislation shall reach to all events of life, this it hesi
tates to do. And exceedingly stout, sometimes, are
the words one hears from that small mote in God's
universe called "man," in denunciation of such sub-

SERMONS. 119
jection to restraint, as " mean," " craven," " unworthy."
Yet is submission to rightful authority mean ? Is
obedience to wise law craven ? Is it an unworthy
thing to do, to yield to a command which withholds
merely from evil ? Is a government which constrains
a man only to his good, and restrains him only from
his harm, just the kind of government against which
peremptorily to rebel ?
It is not so ! It is obedience to wise rule which is
the noble thing. It is acquiescence in kind restraint
which is the thing of privilege. The freedom to obey
behests worthy to be obeyed is the freedom which one
needs. So when Christ comes to us saying " Take my yoke
upon you," He utters a command indeed, but a com
mand which is as sweet as any promise. It is a law
certainly. It has all the attributes of a statute. It
searches deep, it reaches wide, it is rigorous and
escapeless in its control. But it is a law which has a
heart. It seeks our welfare more tenderly than does a
mother, and not a behest it utters but has its motive
in our good.
And so it is that the man who wears the yoke of
Christ is the man at peace. Law, indeed, holds him ;
but holds him to the right. The rule of the Master
restrains him ; but it restrains him only from wrong.
And the more completely he knows himself the more
he sees his need of such a law. The main solicitude
he feels is to see, not on how few, but on how many of
the affairs of life, he may discern that Law of Christ,
exercising its restrictive and constraining sway.
But, as one point more, observe that the yoke of
Christ signifies employment.

120 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
The patient yoke-bearers of the ploughing time or
of the harvest-days are harnessed thus not to express
subjection, but to fulfil service. The end of yoke-
wearing is utility. And it is in Christian life as in
the tillage of the fields. Christ calls men to take His
yoke upon them that they may do His work. He has
use for His people. The vocation to which He sum
mons them is one of labor. So far, certainly, as the
earthly aspect of His calling of men is concerned, the
chief object He has in view is to gain, in every new
disciple of His Gospel, a new worker in His cause.
Here again, doubtless, we find men oftentimes mak
ing a stand. If a submission to Christ's yoke were
only a passive matter, — something that could be just
quietly experienced, something which interfered with
no other plans, and required no strenuous and outgoing
endeavors, — there are those who now decline it, who
might be not unwilling to put it on. But putting on
the yoke is not a matter like that. It is no thing of
mere passive experience or holiday pastime. It is
equipment for labor. It is a harnessing of the whole
man to earnest and lifelong employment. And Christ
leaves no room for doubt that it is just to that quality
and duration of service that He summons every dis
ciple. He entraps no one into an unexpected method
or intensity of occupation. His call is open and un
mistakable : " Take my yoke upon you."
But in requiring this does He frustrate men's hope
of happiness ? Does he make impossible the realiza
tion of the promise: "I will give you rest," which in
the self-same utterance He couples with His com
mand ? Oh ! how little they know of the blessedness
of Christian serving who think so ! How little that

SERMONS. 121
man can have entered into the secret of self-sacrifice,
and the sweet mystery of labor for Christ, who sup
poses that yoke-bearing in the Gospel is a sorrowful
and dejecting thing !
Ask the sun-browned toilers who have gone forth
from English and American homes to bear to equa
torial climes the better manners and the purer faith of
our Christian lands. Ask the earnest Gospel laborer
among ourselves whether in the public or the private
sphere, in the pulpit or in the market, in the home-circle,
or in the Sabbath-school. Ask your own heart, pro
fessed follower of the Lord Jesus, as you recall the bet
ter moments and the most satisfying actions of your life.
There is but one answer : " His yoke is easy and His
burden is light ! " The toil of the Lord is blessedness
and repose. Though in it the " outward man " may
" perish," the " inward man " is " renewed day by day."
And when, from the last confine and boundary of
mortal life, the departing soul looks backward to find
the best of its earthly hours, it will find it in that one
in which it bore most patiently and laboriously the
Saviour's yoke. Then it will not be the day of self-
pleasing and refusal of service which will be the day
of happy remembrance, nor will that day be remem
bered as having been the happiest in its passing flight.
That place will be filled in memory by the day, —
whatever its outward weariness or adversity, — in
which you did the truest and hardest service of your
life for Christ.
One practical inquiry comes to us before we end.
We have seen that the yoke of Christ signifies to us
submission, restraint, employment. These are three
important, and, as I have endeavored also to show,

122 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
three most happy experiences. But when ought they
to be experienced ? What time is the best time to
take on that yoke of submission, restraint, and em
ployment, to which the Saviour summons us ?
I will answer first for those of mature years in this
congregation. For them the answer is "at once."
Now is the time to do it ; and for this plain reason, if
for no other, that there is no other time in which it can
be done. Life has already largely gone. There is only
a narrow margin of earthly duration left. And if the
great experience of submission to Christ is yet unmet,
there is only a brief fragment of existence remaining
in which it possibly can be met. If His restraining
and transforming sway has not yet been felt upon the
soul, there are only a few more years, or it may be
months, in which it can be felt. If employment in His
service has never begun, the period of service can at
the utmost be but short. The shadow of sunset is
already slanting eastward. Therefore now is the time.
To the more aged of this assembly, the admonition
comes with the solemnity of an injunction which
knows no alternative and can admit of no delay. Take
the yoke of Christ upon you, and at once !
But for the young ? What is the time when the
young should come to those experiences of submission,
restraint, and employment, which are implied in a true
bearing of the yoke of Christ ? For a different reason
from that which has just been assigned in the case of
the old, but a reason almost equally cogent, the same
answer must be given. The time is "now." The
yoke of Christ, in all its completeness of meaning,
should be taken on at once.
For, my youthful hearers, if the bearing of the yoke

SERMONS. 123
of Christ is, as He asserts, a privilege, an honor, and a
satisfaction surpassing all others, then the sooner you
assume and the longer and more faithfully you wear
that symbol of a true discipleship, the better and hap
pier for you. And why should you delay ? Why
should some of you who stand outside the Church's
precincts, longer postpone the submission of yourselves
to the will of Christ and the yielding of your lives to
His guiding and restraining hand ? And why should
others of you who are numbered of the visible fellow
ship withhold yourselves from the active employments
of His service, and decline to press hard and patiently
against the yoke you already profess to wear ?
Why is it so ? Oh ! my friends, it makes a Chris
tian pastor sad and sick at heart to receive the answers
to this question which he frequently does receive from
the lips of some. You excuse yourselves because you
are young. It is offered as an apology for a declina
ture of active and consecrated yoke-bearing for Christ,
that you are yet in the morning of life. Of such, it is
urged, a full and earnest devotion is not to be expected-
To ask for sober and manly and unwavering consecra
tion to the service of Jesus is to expect too much of
those so young !
So young ! As if Christ's salvation were a salvation
for gray hairs alone ! As if Christ's love could enter
and fill an aged heart only ! As if Christ's grace was
not adapted to renew and empower a man or woman
till failing years had sapped the body's vigor and dulled
the appetites for earthly joy ! So young ! As if that
were not the very reason rather why you might with
most appropriateness and success devote yourselves to
the honor and the privilege of Christ's blessed service !

I24 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
As if, instead of being a hindrance, youth were not a
special argument to urge immediate entrance on a
labor so full of an undecaying happiness and reward !
Yet if it were possible to regard a certain extremity
of youthfulness as, indeed, affording a valid excuse
from earnest devotion to Christ's service, is this an
excuse which can avail for many of you ? What
tokens of devotion to Christ have been given by
younger souls than any numbered of this Church ?
Younger than any of this fellowship were scores of
either sex who won a martyr's crown and burned to
cinders at the stake. Younger than any among us
have been hundreds of Jesus's followers whose souls,
turning in childhood upward to God, have been like an
altar-flame of devotion, which no lapses of time or
seductions of the world could make dim. Younger
than any man of thirty-two in this congregation was
Henry Martyn, dying in distant Asia Minor outworn
in service in India and Persia, across and across which,
— like one incapable of rest, — he had borne the Gos
pel of Calvary. Younger than any man of twenty-
seven in this assembly was John Calvin when he
sketched the outlines of his immortal Institutes, the
fruit of years-long study into the deep things of God !
Younger than any youth of twenty-three in this house
was Harlan Page when he could give as one of the
reasons of his willingness to remove from one home to
another that he " had personally done his utmost, by
direct individual endeavor, for the salvation of every
person in the town where he lived." Younger than
any woman of twenty in this congregation was that
girl, dwelling once on the corner of New Haven's elm-
surrounded Green ; and afterward the wife of Amer-

SERMONS. 125
ica's greatest theologian, Jonathan Edwards, when she
walked with God, as one who "almost saw Him face
to face," and who dwelt in His presence as with a
familiar friend.
And as we look out on to the earnest ranks of men
and women in the world about us who are now, — in
Church, in Sunday-school, in mission fields, in prayer-
meetings, in the highway, at home, abroad, — carrying
on the work of the Lord and wearing the yoke of
Jesus, what a proportion of them are of youthful years.
From how many thousand such lives, to-day, comes a
word of solemn reproof and searching, though unin
tended condemnation, to any among us who, older in
years, seem not yet to have learned that existence is a
serious business ; and, longer within sound of the Mas
ter's call, have not yet put our shoulder to the yoke of
service !
Oh ! youthful members of this congregation, redeem
the time ! Live not as those who have no higher pur
pose than the frivolities of the hour. Youth-time is
precious. Early years are of exceeding worth.
Devoted to the Master's service they will be bright
with happy usefulness and deathless with eternal
rewards.

I26 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.

VII.
REDEEMING THE TIME.*
Ephesians v: 15. 16.
See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,
redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
The striking figure which Paul here employs con
cerning the treatment of time would be suited, I think,
at any period to arrest attention. But it has a par
ticular pertinence to us to-day, standing as we do within
a few fast-flying hours of the close of one of those
great subdivisions of duration which the order of
nature and the common usages of business and of
society make it habitual in us to recognize.
The figure Paul uses is taken from a transaction
familiar in all the market-places of the ancient world.
That was a world of war and slavery. After every
considerable territorial conquest by any successful
military power great multitudes of the inhabitants of
the conquered districts were seized upon as the chattel
property of the victors. The State claimed its share.
The commanding general had his apportionment.
Officers of less degree, each in his successive rank,
took, as a part of the spoils of war, a number, less or
more according to the total to be divided, of these

* Written in 1888, and preached on the last Sunday of the
year.

SERMONS.

127

human goods for their personal share. Such as they
chose to keep, they kept. Such as they chose to sell,
they sold. The great market centers once glutted,
the smaller towns over the whole empire were sup
plied with detachments, either on public or private
account, till the capacities of buyers or sellers were
temporarily exhausted. In such a provincial town as
Tarsus, for example, in Paul's boyhood and youth, the
spectacle must have been familiar almost as the com
ing of morning, of the exposure in the market-place of
the city of some group of sad-eyed captives, — men,
women, and children, — from Germany, successfully
swept by the armies of Germanicus ; from Thrace,
reduced, a little before Paul came of age, to the condi
tion of a Roman province ; or even (several years pre
vious to writing the words of our text) from Britain,
invaded, and in parts ravaged, by the troops of Aulus
Plautius and of Vespasian.
And there, on any one of those days, might have
been seen the transaction which gave Paul the strik
ing metaphor which has attracted our attention to-day.
Some one coming into the market-place beholds the
groups of bond- slaves there put on exhibition — a stal
wart dark-haired man from Thrace, a blue-eyed girl
from Northern Germany, or perhaps a child of that
Gallic blood whose gray eyes and dark lashes are the
beauty of an occasional modern Irish face. Moved by
whatever sentiment, pity, cupidity, or what not, the
visitor pays down the price and redeems the captive,
redeems him sometimes to liberty, redeems him oftener
only to another servitude, but anyway redeems him out
of the bondage in which he has hitherto been subjected
to a master whose helpless and utter chattel he was.

I28 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
So, says the Apostle to the Christians of Ephesus,
who must have been perfectly familiar with transac
tions like these, so deal with your time. Take it out
of the bondage in which it is, out of its place and con
dition of chattelhood ; and redeem it to its proper and
appointed uses. The illustration, borrowed from the
slave market, which the Apostle employed is, happily,
less familiar than it once was ; though quite within
the memory of the majority of us here present to-day
it could have been paralleled in a considerable part of
our so-called Christian land. But were Paul writing a
letter now, rather than eighteen centuries and a quar
ter ago, and to this First Church of Hartford instead of
to that prosperous Church of Asia Minor, could he
possibly describe the condition of time, as it is with
us, by a delineation more truthful than that which
depicts it as in bondage ? Could he point out a duty
more imperative or more worthy of consideration in
these flying moments of the closing year, than its
redemption to a Christian liberty ?
For, my hearers, is it not, in point of fact, the
great and common experience, — certainly of almost
all of us who are gathered here to-day, — that we our
selves find that this unique and priceless possession of
time is, in manifold ways, bound, mortgaged, capti
vated, — to use a word which has somewhat drifted
away from its former significance in its older and
etymological employment, — captivated to interests
and occupations from which we find it almost impossi
ble to rescue it ?
Ask the man of business to give you an hour to pre
sent the claims of some philanthropic enterprise, or
requests him to undertake some regularly recurrent

SERMONS.

129

service which will demand the setting apart to its use
of a small segment of one day of every week, and you
are, very probably, stopped on the threshold of your
plea by the declaration, — honestly enough made too, —
that he " hasn't time " for the hearing you solicit or for
the service you propose. Very likely he will give you
a contribution for the benevolent enterprise without
hearing about it, and will feel a certain pang of regret
at peremptorily putting aside your proposal for the
hour's weekly employment ; but he puts it aside all
the same, for the Philistines of business have him in
bondage and he has to grind in their mill, as blind as
Samson, almost, to anything beside.
Ask the busy woman of society for some coopera
tion in a Christian undertaking which cannot but
appeal to her both as a woman and a Christian, and
she finds the silken bands which the demands of con
ventional obligations have woven about her almost as
inexorable as the iron chains of a physical servitude,
in laying an embargo upon her assenting endeavor.
Propose to the appointed officers of a Christian
Church, — the illustration must be fresh in the memory
of at least ten men in this congregation, — a service
strenuously demanded by the fellowship of the
churches, or a work in behalf of the Church itself
whose officers they are, and observe how the declina
tion passes from lip to lip of as good men as can be
found in any Church membership of five hundred any
where because of the demands upon their time already
existing, and tasking them to the full.
Ah, yes, what a common experience this is ! How
fettered and captivated time is with almost all of us !
No wonder a brilliant woman of a name familiar to

tio REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
you all, engaged in a great, though quixotic, literary
enterprise, and whose heroic-pathetic story, known to
many of us long, is just now more publicly unveiled to
the general eye, sighed for a life in one of those tardier
moving planets — Jupiter or Saturn — whose slow-re
volving day would give supposedly longer time for
work ! For, indeed, when one really thinks of it, what
a scanty segment of duration it is between the cradle
and the grave that a man has to put into bonds to any
kind of continuous endeavor ! Deduct from the nar
row span the irresponsible years of infancy and early
childhood ; take out of it the great section continually
demanded by sleep ; subtract the large portion inevita
bly employed in whatever is necessary to keep the
machinery of existence itself going ; add yet further to
this discount side all that is snatched away by illness
or pilfered by accident, and then consider the portion
incapacitated by old age, and how small a fraction
there is left for direct and intentional employment in
any endeavor ! I think I have said once in this pulpit
before, but no matter, the statement is worth repeat
ing every twelvemonth at least, that a writer pro
foundly acquainted with the history of literary men,
Thomas DeQuincey, estimated that, after making the
deductions incident to every life, the sum total of
absolutely available time the most industrious literary
man of seventy can be supposed to have employed in
any voluntary literary enterprise is not more than
eleven solid years. Mercantile men commonly enter
on what may be called the real occupation of life at a
somewhat earlier age than do men of a literary pro
fession. But then, they do not generally practice so
fully that expedient for lengthening one's days of

SERMONS.

Ijt

which Charles Lamb wittily said that it was best
accomplished by taking them out of one's nights, so
that the practical span of actual endeavor is not much
longer. To what narrow compass does that shut up
one's history. And when that span is bound to the
tremendous, exacting labors of competitive business
or professional endeavor, or even of conventional society,
how hard it is to redeem any portion out of that servi
tude to any other employment how sacred or impera
tive whatsoever !
Nevertheless, the pressing necessity of some kind
of emancipatory process in behalf of at least a portion
of our time, and in view of interests now suffering by
its bondage, is a necessity which comes home occa
sionally, I suppose, to most of us. Very few people
look back from a point of advanced or even of middle
life over the track by which they have come, feeling
anything like complete satisfaction with the propor
tionate employment of their days. Even if the broad
outline of their past is reasonably contenting, and the
use which they have made of their time is that to
which, in great measure, they have been shut up by
the circumstances of their days, still the men and
women of mature years must be very few who do not
wish that they had ransomed and employed some
possible portions at least of that now irrecoverable
past to other and higher uses than have actually been
served. And this general and almost instinctive feeling that
some such redemptive rescue of time should have
marked our vanished days, which is felt by the least
considering of men and women, is emphasized for the
more thoughtful by remembrances that only increase

I32 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
in weight the more they are pondered. For the recol
lection comes home with the added testimony of per
sonal experience, to such a thoughtfully considering
mind, that of all possible possessions a man can ever
have, it is his possession of time which is most valua
ble. It is this which is the indispensable condition of
all others. It is that mysterious inheritance on which
all others depend, and on the continuance of which
everything else hinges. The highest purpose is fruit
less unless there is time to permit it to bear its
intended harvest. The most resolved endeavor and
impassioned action are alike frustrate does not time
afford them arena for their proper exercise. How full
is the memory of any thoughtful man fifty years old,
of instances which have occurred under his personal
observation, of noble purposes resultless, and high
attempts made vain for lack of time. " O my book, my
book" — said poor Buckle, dying at thirty-nine years
of age — "I shall never finish my book," — a book
the loss of which so competent a judge as Mr. Lecky
says is " one of the most serious misfortunes which
have ever befallen English literature." And in lesser
ways, and over smaller intended undertakings, that is
a lament which is forever sounding in the ears of
every man not stone deaf to what goes on in him and
about him in this world.
This indispensableness of time as the condition of
the fulfillment of any enterprise is just as true in
religious things as in any others. How strangely this
is sometimes forgotten ! Men seem to think that
spiritual welfares and acquisitions are some way exempt
from that general law which they recognize as pre
vailing elsewhere, the law that the possession of any-

SERMONS. 133
thing worth having is the fruit of endeavor (some one's
endeavor) through prolonged periods of time. The
attainment of knowledge is the result of the indus
trious employment of time. The accumulation of
wealth depends on time. But religion can be got in
a moment. Piety comes in a kind of instantaneous
cataclysm of the soul. The life of godliness in the
spirit can be adequately nourished on the scraps and
accidental waste bits of duration which fall from a
life-history devoted primarily to other employments, as
the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's
table. Oh ! what a low and disastrously erroneous
notion of the spiritual life this is. To what a pitiable
piece of quackery and magic does it reduce the divinest
experience and the highest acquirement possible to
man ! Religion, like everything else worth having,
demands time. The attainments of piety no more
than the attainments of knowledge can dispense with
time. Out of the inexorable conditions of the spirit
ual life, as much as out of those of the physical and
intellectual, sounds the urgent declaration that of all
possible possessions, none a man can have can be so
indispensable as time. Nowhere more than in refer
ence to the needs of the soul is the redemption of
time to distinct, purposeful employment, for definite
spiritual ends, a condition of the attainment of any
satisfying result.
Yet this worth of time which is so brought to mind
by a perception of its indispensability to the securing
of the objects which a religious life, as much as any
other life, has in view, has always been vividly brought
home to my own mind by a consideration of a char
acter somewhat different from that we have just

j 34 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
noted. This is a consideration of what the actual
period of duration which we ourselves have had, and
have used, — perhaps with a quality and intensity of
employment that does not altogether fill us with self-
gratulation to-day, — has done for some other men and
women in their spiritual histories. All along parallel
with our own, other lives have run. Through the same
identical moments which we have passed, they passed
also. And what lives some of them have been.
Marked by what achievements. Heroic with what
self-sacrifices. Beneficent with what Christlike deeds !
At the very time when we were idling away our days
in slothfulness, or grinding in the mill of a merely
material or private welfare, some men here and there
were solicitously redeeming those identical moments,
— for we had the same and an equal number of them,
— to a spiritual and eternal good. Some of them are
in heaven to-day, and surrounded there by souls won
thither by their endeavors, because of their employ
ment of the precise hours which we spent in pursuits
for which we have perhaps nothing now to show, and
certainly nothing to put in comparison with the results
of their endeavors. Right alongside of us, embar
rassed by all the difficulties which we encounter, against
all obstacles which stood in their path as much as in
ours, they redeemed the time, — the time that was
once our own, — to ends which will make rejoicings in
heaven forever. Ah me! is there anything which can
give us a more vivid sense of the possible worth which
may lie in the flying years of one short life, or a more
humiliating sense of our employment of those self
same years, than some simple biography of men or
women who lived through periods which were in

SERMONS.

!35

greater or less extent identically and consciously our
own ? What they were and did ! what we did and
were ! Time must be a priceless thing, since its
redemption, by these souls, can bring about such
glorious ends !
But now having perhaps vivified a little in our minds
the sense of that bondage wherein our time is held
captive, and having somewhat, I hope, quickened our
apprehension of the exceeding worth of that which we
are exhorted by the Apostle to redeem to nobler uses,
the question comes to us as a most practical one :
Can we do it ? How can it be done ? By what
means, notwithstanding all the difficulties in the way,
can we do something to redeem the time ?
I suggest as one most helpful means toward redeem
ing time, — the most helpful of any means, — that of
making religion absolutely (what we all account it
theoretically), absolutely, I say, the uppermost inter
est of life. There is a tremendous power in an
uppermost interest. Whatever it be, it swings every
thing round to itself. If a man's uppermost interest
is his business, all insensibly and even oftentimes
against his voluntary resolves and endeavors, his busi
ness subordinates everything in him and about him to
itself. His business goes with him to his bed, gets up
with him to every new sunrise, occupies the dreams of
his sleeping hours, sits with him at the table and
hurries him at his dinner, follows him to Church on
Sunday, holds him in a perpetual grip as its bond
slave and thrall. Is a man's uppermost interest the
prosecution of some scientific inquiry, or some literary
enterprise ? How quickly such an inquiry or such an
endeavor puts everything else underfoot. All things

136 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
seem tributary to that. He walks the streets and
encounters the most unlooked for confirmations of his
theory, or suggestions toward his enterprise. Para
graphs of the daily newspapers, which others read
unthinking, are full of significance to him. All winds
blow for his scheme, all roads lead toward it. Is a
woman's uppermost interest the successes and attain
ments of society ? What keen preternatural instincts
are developed as to what will or will not promote that
main end. How sensitive, as if every nerve were on
the outside, she is to what seems a slight or an over
looking on some one's part. What a mighty thing an
invitation or the lack of an invitation is. How trifles
become mountains ; and all things simple, natural
and deserving, are changed to something else when
seen through fashion's artificial eye.
A supreme interest, — good or bad, — commands the
field. It takes possession of the faculties and brings
everything under its control. It especially rules time ;
and by its constant vigilant watchfulness and uncon
scious alertness in being always intent on its supreme
concern, may almost be said to make time — so little
does it suffer to waste from the interests about which
it is really and supremely concerned.
Now, my friends, it is not otherwise with religion.
If religion is a man's chief interest, — as every pro
fessedly Christian man professes it to be, — it is master
of the situation. It swings everything round to itself.
It makes business, pleasure, knowledge, all tributary
and subordinate to a higher concern than themselves.
It uses every one of them as servants and tools to pro
mote its main concern. It does not discourage dili
gence in business, or attainment in knowledge or

SERMONS.

137

enjoyment in society. But with the natural supremacy
of an acknowledged master, it subjects them all to
that chief end, — the knowledge and service of God, —
in which religion consists. It is easy to see what a
redeemer of time such a supreme interest in religion
must inevitably be. In a profound and comprehensive
sense, it redeems all a man's time, — his hours of most
diligent business or of his most leisurely enjoyments,
— to itself. But besides this, it does in a particular
way, and just as any other supreme interest does,
redeem time in its subdivisions and particles. It
looks out for the fragments of duration. It gives
theme and occupation to accidental half-hours and
minutes. Minutes and half-hours, because they have
been under the supreme interest of scholarship,
have sometimes made scholars. Elihu Burritt, out in
New Britain, standing at his blacksmith forge, and
snatching now and then a glance at his Greek gram
mar, or his Legendre's Geometry, is a sufficiently con
spicuous and near at hand illustration of the truth of
that fact. And just so, — because under the power
of a supreme interest, — minutes and half -hours have
made saints of God. The commanding concern has
lent to and found in the small crumbs of duration a
value incalculable, and an opportunity for spiritual
growth continuous and blessed. I entreat you to
make actual that supreme interest in religion which
most of you, my hearers, even now profess, as one
exceedingly practical method in the redemption of
time. I conclude by the mention of only one more sugges
tion of a possible way of redeeming time to higher ends.
This is by habituating ourselves, — as I suppose we

138 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
shall all agree it would be wise in us to habituate our
selves, — to look upon time as provisional and prepara
tory in its character. Time has its main end and its
highest use in what comes after it. We are here
seventy years ; we are there seventy thousand. We
are here a little while ; we are there forever. The
bare putting of these facts beside one another is itself
a commentary, which hardly needs anything added to
it, on the significance of that provisional and prepara
tory character which must belong to time and what
ever time can do. Crowd time full as it may be with
interesting and significant events ; employ it grandly
as it can be employed in great and important matters ;
still the main interest and value of it, from the very
nature of the case, must be in what it leads on to and
prepares for. But once let a distinct and abiding per
ception of this fact really enter into a man's soul and
what a curious alteration it inevitably makes in the
whole perspective of affairs. What a shifting and
exchange of places and values immediately takes place
in the things he looks upon. Those things are worth
most — are they not ? — which most directly affect the
quality of one's own and others' future. That is the
most important matter, surely, which has the most
immediate and moulding influence on what is to be
bye-and-bye and forever. But if this is so, how unim
portant are some things generally regarded as very
important here ; how transcendently momentous are
some things, which are here deemed of little concern !
Let a man but come to measure all the occupatiofts
and interests of life, — I do not say with exclusive ref
erence, or with emotional and excited reference, but, —
with calm and reasonable reference, such as becomes

SERMONS.

!39

the facts in the case, to their bearing on the character
of that future to which he is moving on, and for which
everything here is fitting or unfitting him now. It
will be impossible for him not to sustain a profoundly
altered attitude toward the things of life and action
about him. A new standard of values will be his by
which all things will be measured. How they bear
on, or fail to bear, on the welfare which is abiding is a
question which, like the touch of aqua fortis on a
metal, will show the gold or the brass of moral things,
and rate them at their proper worth.
And time itself, which has in it this preparatory and
provisional character, must be, to the last grain of it,
a sacred thing. How can any one to whom its worth
is apparent permit it to be wasted in careless frivolities,
or misused in employments, which, however they may
be dignified by high-sounding names, contribute not
to the main end for which time was given, or to those
abiding welfares of ourselves or others, which will be
theirs and ours when "time shall be no more." Listen
again to the words of the Apostle, forever seasonable
and forever kind :
" See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as
wise ; redeeming the time, because the days are evil."

I40 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.

VIII.
IMPERFECT CHARACTERS OF SCRIPTURE.*
Hebrews xi: 13.
These all died in faith.
This eleventh chapter of the Hebrews is a kind of
muster-roll of ancient piety. Names which in the reg
ular narrative of Scripture stand separated from one
another by wide tracts of time and by many interven
ing generations, are here gathered in one company.
Perhaps the figure will be allowable, if it is said that
in this passage of his Epistle the writer undertakes to
conduct us through a portrait-gallery of the famous be
lieving dead. It is an august and venerable succession
that he bids us look upon. The long line reaches back
to a remote and almost shadowy antiquity ; yet the
moral lineaments of each of those who have been
deemed worthy of a place in this gallery of Faith stand
out in lifelike distinctness. Here seem to gaze down
upon us the sacred and the great, with whose names is
identified the very thought of religion (not alone in our
personal understanding of it with which they have
been associated from our childhood), but in the actual
development of religious history in the world. Here
is Abel, first martyr to the cause of pure worship, and

Written in 1864.

SERMONS.

141

Enoch, the man who has never died. Here are Abra
ham and Sarah, and Isaac the son of their old age.
Here, clothed in his Egyptian robes of authority, is
Joseph, the kidnapped child of Palestine ; and Moses,
cradled amid the flags of the Nile, to lead the children
of Joseph and his brethren back to Palestine once more.
Here is the venerable form of Samuel, last of the
Judges ; and the regal effigy of David, — not the first
king of Israel indeed, but the first kingly ancestor of
the prince Emmanuel. As we pass along the sacred
company we feel the gathering influence of their noble
histories ; we sympathize in the exclamation of the
writer of the Epistle, " Of whom the world was not wor
thy " ; and are impressed by the remembrance that we
are encompassed by "so great" and so majestic "a
cloud of witnesses."
But now, — while still pondering on the constancy of
Noah, or the self-denial of Moses, — our attention is
arrested by two or three figures in this Scripture gal
lery, respecting whom a half-felt wonder perhaps rises.
Why are these men here ? This is a gallery of
the saints. Those who are represented in it are set
forth as having "obtained a good report." It is testi
fied of them that they "all died in faith" ; that "God
is not ashamed to be called their God " ; that they
" wrought righteousness, obtained promises," and that
God "hath prepared for them a city." We read some
of these commendations perhaps with a little surprise.
Here, for example, looks down upon us the warrior
Gileadite Jephthah, the illegitimate child of a lawless
race, born and nurtured in the wild regions of chase
and freebooting beyond the Jordan. And while we
wonder at his place in this company, we seem to see

142 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
his hands reddening with the blood of his only child,
slain in fulfilment of his rash and ruthless vow. Sam
son, too, — devoted indeed from birth to the restraints
of a Nazarite's pledge of temperance, but in nearly all
other respects the most jovial, irregular, unlicensed of
men, — we start a little at seeing Samson depicted
among the worthies of Scripture. When we try to
think of him thus, it is not perhaps strange that his
mad expeditions down to Timnath, and the shaving of
his hair in the chamber in the valley of Sorek, disturb
a moment the reverence of our meditation. So, too,
in their degree, of Barak and Gideon ; and in lesser
measure even of Jacob, whose crafty supplanting of
his brother and base deception of his blind old father,
can scarcely fail to occur to us every time we think of
this "inheritor of the promises." These are not men
whom we should naturally select as devout characters
— examples of piety and God-serving. Had we been
enumerating the saints of old, and composing a volume
for the religious edification of men, it is doubtful
whether Rahab and Samson and Jephthah would have
found any place in it. Or, if we discovered here and
there a trait in the lives even of these which prevented
an entire denial of mention in our catalogue of the
good, we should at all events carefully suppress many
of the facts which now confront us, — sometimes per
haps we think a little uncomfortably, — in the Scrip
ture story.
Yet these persons are without hesitation ranked
among the saints and heroes. The Bible fearlessly
challenges for them a place in perpetual remembrance.
Their characters are drawn out in full detail. Their
imperfections, as well as their virtues, are impartially

SERMONS.

!43

set before us. The pen of Scripture photographs for
us the passionate violence of Ehud and Shamgar, as
well as the devotion of Daniel or the zeal of Jeremiah.
And then, after having done so, setting before us thus
a character in which good and evil are mixed in strong
and contrasting colors, the Word of God says respect
ing some of them, as in the text, "these all died in
faith"; these were "persuaded" of the promises;
these " confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims
on the earth" ; these all "obtained a good report."
The characteristic of Scripture which comes out so
distinctly in this famous eulogy pronounced on the
worthies of Old Testament history in this chapter of
the Epistle to the Hebrews, is a characteristic which
pervades to some extent the entire Bible. All through
the volume given by inspiration we are in the same way
presented with lives of men, — accepted and honored
servants of God, — who are marked by painful blem
ishes and imperfections. Characters are held up before
us in the most sacred of all associations, and the most
trusted of all stations, upon which we behold, without
the least attempt to hide the fact from us, the scars of
grievous infirmities and sometimes of sins. Where
should we look for blameless behavior if not among
the immediate disciples of our Lord ? To whom should
we turn for flawless correctness of conduct, if not to
those who were entrusted by Christ with the duty of
sharing His ministry while He was yet on earth, and
of recording the Scriptures and guiding His church
when He was gone? Yet even the best beloved dis
ciple sustains a severe rebuke at the Master's lips, for
his sinful desire to invoke "fire from heaven " to burn
up a whole village which had slighted Jesus and His

144 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
company. Peter lies and blasphemes and treacher
ously denies his Master, though he afterward deeply
repents of his wickedness. But repentant Peter is
not a perfect man. Paul " withstands him to the
face" on one occasion long subsequently, "because,"
as he says, "he was to be blamed," and was carried
away with an unworthy "dissimulation." But even
Paul is not without his weak point. On a certain mis
sionary journey with Barnabas, carrying the Gospel of
Peace, these two eminent men fall into a controversy,
and the " contention is so sharp between them " that
they cannot continue to work together, but separate,
each taking a different companion and a different field
of labor.
Now, it cannot be for nothing that such facts as these
are preserved to us in the biographies of the good men
of Scripture. It would have been very easy to have
suppressed them. There was no necessity that the
writer of the Epistle from which the text is taken,
should have added to his catalogue of Abel and Enoch
and Noah and Abraham and Moses, the names of Sam
son and Jephthah and Rahab. The catalogue would
have been grand and illustrious without these. And
yet Holy Scripture has carefully enumerated these
among the worthies of Old Testament history, and de
clares respecting them that God " is not ashamed to
be called their God." And with equal fearlessness do
the Gospels and the Epistles, — while claiming for the
Apostolic company an assured place among the re
deemed and the beloved of God, — set forth with im
partial distinctness the frailties of a John, a Barnabas,
a Peter, and a Paul. Nay, in the same spirit, are the
contentions and backslidings of the primitive Churches

SERMONS.

145

brought before us. Large portions of Apostolic letters
are devoted to redressing errors and flagrant abuses
which, in less than twenty years after their founding,
have crept into the Churches of Thessalonica, Corinth,
and Galatia.
Now all this must have its instructions for us. A
procedure so contrary to man's way of commending a
cause to favorable judgment cannot have been deliber
ately chosen by the Spirit of God, without a deep and
sufficient reason. This setting before us of mingled
evil and good in the lives of those whom Scripture
holds up as saints and heroes, this numbering of Rahab
and Samson among those "of whom the world was not
worthy," has certainly its uses or it would not have
been done. Let us endeavor, therefore, to gain some
of these lessons from the Imperfect Characters of
Scripture : or in other words, let us seek to know why
the faults of such men as David and Jacob find a care
ful record ; and Gideon and Barak are numbered
among those who "wrought righteousness" and
"obtained promises."
One reflection, of a somewhat general and prelimi
nary nature, which occurs to us, is this : The record of
these Imperfect Characters of Scripture imparts a life
like quality to Biblical history. The narratives of the
Book of God come to us wearing an aspect of natural
ness and authenticity derived from the presentation
before us of characters beset and often overcome by the
familiar passions and infirmities of our nature. As we
look around us among men we nowhere behold fault
less perfection. All whom we know are imperfect.
The best are but partly good. The most exempt from
infirmities are nevertheless only comparatively exempt,

146 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
It is a good thing therefore, on the mere ground of se
curing our confidence in its truthfulness, and in mak
ing Scripture biography real and living to us, that the
Bible presents the characters of the men of whom if
tells us with all their imperfections and failures. Not
like some volumes purporting to be truthful records of
the lives of eminent Christian saints is the Bible in this
particular. Not like a great deal of biographical litera
ture issued by our religious press, read in our Sunday-
schools, wept over by our firesides, is the Book of
God." These books of human begetting are rich in
tales of the unnaturally and impossibly good ; men and
women with fewer acknowledged faults than the im
patient, though beloved John; children riper for im
mortality than that arduous Apostle who was obliged
still to keep under his body and bring it into subjection
lest after all he should be "a castaway." It is not in
this manner that the narratives of Scripture are set be
fore us. These present us men placed in the midst of
life's common struggles. Men battered and scarred
with rough contact with affairs. Men of like passions
with ourselves. Men who find it hard work to do right,
and who often fail. Men who battle terribly to keep
their heads above water, and who, some of them, seem
at times well-nigh swept away and lost. Apostles fiery
tempered; Prophets melancholy, impatient, headstrong
and humble by turns ; Kings and Judges at once law
less and obedient, reckless and devout, — these are
the men who pass before us on the Scripture page.
And hence Scripture comes to us as a real record.
These are real lives we look upon. The stamp of
authenticity is on them. These are men of a kind that
we can understand. Biographies like these can help

SERMONS. 147
us, for our own lives tell us that they are true and their
struggles interpret to us our own.
Another lesson which comes to us from the Scripture
commendations of Imperfect Characters, is that re
sponsibility is proportioned to privilege. Men are
estimated according to the light they enjoy. Several
of the names mentioned with praise in this eleventh
chapter of the Hebrews, Gideon and Barak and Sam
son and Jephthah, belong to the darkest and most tur
bulent period of Jewish history, — that recorded in the
Book of Judges. This was undoubtedly the lowest
moral era of Hebrew story. As the book itself says,
repeating it several times to impress the fact upon us,
" In those days there was no king in Israel, [but] every
man did that which was right in his own eyes." There
was no fixed capital of the nation, no regular sanctuary,
no established government. No one tribe had an
acknowledged pre-eminence. The rulers which were
from time to time raised up to exercise authority, came
according to no recognized law, and belonged to no
hereditary family. Gideon was of the tribe of Ma-
nasseh ; Barak of Naphtali ; Samson of Dan ; Jephthah
came from the mixed race in the border country be
yond Jordan, his mother a concubine of the native tribes
of Canaan. In this turbulent, ungoverned time these
men lived. No public sanctuary gathered them. No
recognized law controlled them. The Jewish people
were mingled with the original inhabitants of the land,
their victory over them not yet established. It was a
period unparalleled in the annals of the Hebrew race
for its confusion, its dimness of moral perception, its
absence of civilization and control. Yet in the midst
of this disorder these men lived lives which secured for

!48 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
them the approbation of the Biblical historian. That
they were perfect men is not alleged. That they were
very imperfect men is plainly shown to us. No veil is
cast over their infirmities. Nevertheless Scripture
finds in them something which makes them venerable
and sacred. What that "something" was, we shall
have occasion speedily to notice. But at present we
are remarking on the fact that they were dealt with
and estimated, not according to the light they did not
have, but according to what they had. Scripture is
nowhere betrayed into any expression of apology for
their faults. It never defends or sympathizes with
their imperfections. It simply narrates them with an
impartial hand, and then claims that spite of them all,
these men, in view of the dim light that they enjoyed,
were good men. In other words, it applies to the
estimation of character that plain principle announced
by Christ : " To whom much is given, of him will much
be required ; " and the converse of it is equally true : To
whom little is given, of him will little be required. As
a consequence of this principle we see, therefore, as we
come down through Biblical story, that though the good
men of Scripture are all of them imperfect men, yet
their imperfections are continually narrower in range
and lighter in degree. As the light which shines around
them becomes brighter, they are required to attain, and
do attain, a higher moral standing ground, and to be
come more and more faultless. The Bible acknowl
edges the Apostle John to have been an imperfect
man ; but the impartial pen records no worse fault
against him than a high and imperious temper. And
the exhibition even of this fault is, so far as the nar
rative leaves us to infer, confined to his youthful days

SERMONS.

149

and the beginning period of his religious life. The
plain conclusion, therefore, results from the Scripture's
method of dealing with the imperfect characters of
which it tells us that accountability is proportioned to
light. Men are estimated by their opportunities. Re
ligious obligation advances as religious knowledge in
creases. We are bound to be better men than the
primitive Christians by the same law which bound them
to be more blameless than the Hebrews of the eras of
Deborah and Eli. What was but a fault in them, may
be a sin in us. The thing which was but a blemish
in them may be to us the ruin of the soul.
A further instruction afforded by the Imperfect
Characters of Scripture is the value of Faith as a prin
ciple of life.
I said there was something in these men of whom
Scripture tells us, in spite of all their faults, which
affords a true and sufficient ground for the glorious
commendation given them in the book of God. That
something was Faith. They believed in God. They
confided in Him to do what He promised. They
ventured everything on His pledges. He was a real
Being to them. And His word was a rock on which
they rested. They were accustomed in their hour
of need to look to Him, and believe that they were
heard. Take but one example, for time will not
suffice to mention more than one illustrious in
stance of these exhibitions of belief in God of
which the Bible is full. This instance shall be taken
from the troubled and morally-darkened epoch already
spoken of. The Israelites had been but just delivered
from long and exhausting conflicts with the Philistines
on the south, and Jabin and Sisera, who had invaded

IjO REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
from the north, when a new and greater peril threat
ened them. The Midianites and Amalekites came up
against them. Like their Arab posterity of modern
days they came dressed in scarlet, riding on drome
daries and camels. They drove before them their
cattle ; they covered the hills with their tents, an army
of conquest and occupation. In this juncture the
message of God came to Gideon, a man of a poor
household of Manasseh. And as we read in the
record, the Lord said unto him , " Surely I will be
with thee and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one
man." Summoned thus, Gideon assumed the under
taking. He sent messengers and gathered the people-
There were assembled to him thirty-two thousand men.
These were but as a handful to the host of the invad
ers, but even these were too many for the divine pur
pose. But would Gideon still confide in God if his
forces were lessened ? God tried him. He com
manded him to proclaim in the hearing of the trem
bling Israelites, " Whosoever is fearful and afraid let him
depart.". Was it not enough to discomfit the leader,
that he beheld twenty-two thousand men turn from
him and go ? But still he was not enough tried. Ten
thousand were too many. By a still farther process of
sifting and separation Gideon beheld his number
reduced to three hundred men. Would he still under
take the work ? The disparity of numbers was terri
ble, but still three hundred powerful warriors armed
with practiced weapons could do something. Nay, but
they were not allowed to be armed. The amazed, but
still confiding, leader obeyed the command which took
away even from the little company left to him their
spears and swords, and saw them accoutred for their

SERMONS. 151
perilous enterprise each with a trumpet in one hand,
and a pitcher containing a burning lamp in the other.
Did he falter at the strange injunction which bade him
undertake such a housewife-like mode of warfare ?
There is no sign of it. He believed the word which
had been spoken : " Surely I will be with thee, and
thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man." And
when the three hundred had blown their trumpets,
and clashed the breaking pitchers, and flashed forth
the fitful rays of the lamps upon the midnight dark
ness, and when the Midianites, astonished and fright
ened, had fallen upon one another, and fled hewing
each other down in their terror all along the road to
Zererath and the Jordan, a thing had been done, by
the power of steadfast faith in God, which entitled
Gideon to a place among the heroes of religious his
tory forever. We vindicate the writer to the Hebrews
as he holds this man up, all rude and imperfect as
other parts of his history show him to have been, as
an example of trust in God and a light of faith always.
So too of Samson, when blind and captive and made
to do ungainly sport for his oppressors, he felt after
the pillars of the temple, and in the earnestness of his
patriotism and devotion to his nation he prayed his
last prayer : " O Lord God remember me, I pray
Thee : and strengthen me, I pray Thee, only this
once." We forget his wild revels at Timnath, we for
get his shameful loss of his locks. This was a man
who believed in God, and knew how to utter the prayer
of faith.
The strong instruction comes to us thus even from
the most imperfect of the men whom the Scripture
enumerates among the saints, that Faith is the all-im-

152 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
portant principle of life. Belief in God ; belief that
God will do as He says ; will save and punish as He
affirms He will ; will bless those who confide in Him, —
a steadfast conviction of these things is the justifying
fact of a life whether it be lived in Palestine or New
England ; in the time of the Judges, or Apostles, or
now. Indeed, in some respects this lesson is taught
us by such lives as those of Samson and Gideon more
plainly than by those of Abraham or Paul. For the
fact stands more boldly out in their cases that true
faith will save very imperfect men. The thing which
justifies the soul is its simplicity of trust in God,
whatever be the object toward which that trust is sum
moned. It ought to be no harder for a man to believe
God is willing to forgive him if he repents, or will punish
him if he does not, than it was for the husbandman of
Manasseh to believe that his lamps and pitchers would
gain him victory. And just so long as a man cannot
believe this, Gideon and Samson and Rahab are his
instructors. And they are instructors all the more
convincing, because their own cases are so vivid illus
trations that faith can deliver very great and miserable
sinners. It is not the perfectness of the character
which gives the efficacy to the faith. It is faith which
blots out the imperfection, and saves Rahab and may
save me.
A still further lesson which comes to us from the
depicting before us of the imperfect good men of
Scripture is this : We are admonished against over
much fault-finding and severity in our judgments of
one another. The critical temper which is always
rasping at other people's shortcomings, which is always
uttering hard speeches if men do not fully meet some

SERMONS. 153
ideal standard of right conduct which we are pleased
to set up, does indeed, in many places in Scripture,
receive severe condemnation. " Judge not, that ye be
not judged," says the Master. " For with what judg
ment ye judge, ye shall be judged." That is a law,
the execution of which might well make many tremble
whose tongues are trained to be sharp swords, per
petually hacking and thrusting, and hewing at other
people's faults. " None is good but one," said Christ.
All beside Him have their infirmities and their sins.
And if a man expects everybody to be perfect he had
better move out of this world. But this lesson of for
bearance in our judgments, taught us in so many ways
beside, is in a very signal manner taught by the narra
tives of the good men of the Bible. It is a very
instructive remembrance that there is not one of these
good men, whose character is drawn out at any con
siderable length, who is not plainly revealed as having
his faults and weaknesses. If absolute perfection is
demanded as a safeguard against severe judgment then
neither Paul nor John can go free. Then every idle
tongue in Corinth is at liberty to twit Paul of his
quarrel with Barnabas ; and every garrulous member of
a congregation in which the saintly and beloved dis
ciple utters his oft repeated injunction : " Love one
another, Love one another," may remind his neighbor
of the time when the same lips passionately invoked
fire from heaven to consume a Samaritan village. The
Bible recognizes all their faults, but says nevertheless
of vastly more imperfect men than these : " God is not
ashamed to be called their God." If the heart is once
made humble and contrite ; if the man is once radically
and truly set in terms of acceptance with God and of

154 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
confession of wrong to his offended fellow men, Scrip
ture becomes a generous and kindly judge. Peter's
backsliding shall not be mentioned perpetually to his
confusion, nor even David's flagrant sin, openly con
fessed and agonized over, deny him a place among the
honored and the loved. Well would it be for us to pon
der this lesson who draw one another before the poor
tribunals of our own imperfect judgments, and perhaps
still more imperfect lives, and demand of all a con
formity to what, after all, maybe no behest of morality,
or justice or duty ; but possibly only a whim, a fancy,
an individual taste.
A final instruction which we may profitably reap
from the record of the Imperfect Characters of Scrip
ture, is a word of encouragement and comfort to
imperfect but struggling men.
I said, a little time ago, that responsibility is pro
portioned to privilege ; that religious obligations ad
vance with increase of knowledge ; that we are in duty
bound to be better Christians than those of the primi
tive age. It is so. I would have that lesson solemnly
rest upon us as an abiding truth. But, nevertheless,
it was not, I think, without its designs toward a right
ful encouragement of men, downcast and troubled
because of their shortcomings, that so many of the
saints of old are set before us in the posture of delin
quents, and in the manifest need of forgiveness. There
is a token of the tenderness of Christ toward the weak
and faltering of His flock in the fact that He caused it to
be recorded that, even amid the immediate circle of His
own disciples, there was a doubting Thomas, a backslid
ing Peter, an angry John. The frailties of the good men
of Scripture are no shelter for the man who makes them

SERMONS.

155

an excuse for remissness in the urgency of his own
endeavor. But the man who is with all his heart
striving to do the Master's will, and yet who comes
consciously very far short of doing what he would be
glad to do, — who does watch and agonize and labor,
but is yet sometimes overtaken in a fault, may draw
an inference of encouragement from the words that the
Book of God speaks of men, perhaps, some of them,
more imperfect than he. It should comfort us that
Christ did not cut off from His companionship a Peter
who thrice denied Him, and a Thomas who said
" Except I thrust my hand into His side I will not
believe." The infirmities of even the Apostolic com
pany were recorded for our cheer. They bid us look
up with hope to Him who like as a father pitieth his
children, pities them who fear Him. They call upon
us to remember that no sense of unworthiness however
deep, should bring despair into a soul that clings
steadfastly to Christ. An utter surrender of the soul
to Him, as the only hope, will hide a multitude of sins.
The man who rests on Him alone, and amid perplexi
ties and failures, still follows after Him, will not be
rejected. "Though he fall he shall not be utterly cast
down." The God who accepted a repentant David,
and the Christ who said to a doubting disciple, " Reach
hither thy finger and behold my hands," will pardon the
infirmities of God's children now, as those of old were
pardoned. Press on in labor and in faith, and of us as
of Samson, and Rahab, and Jephthah it shall at last
be said : God is not ashamed to be called our God.

156 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.

IX.
HEROD AND MANAEN.*
Acts xiii : i.
Now there were at Antioch, in the church that was there, prophets
and teachers, Barnabas, and Symeon that was called Niger,
and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen the foster-brother of
Herod the Tetrarch, and Saul.
This thirteenth chapter of the book of Acts marks
the great dividing point between the leaderships of
Peter and of Paul in the developing Church. Up to
this time Peter had been the foremost figure in the
Church's story. He led in the election of Matthias
to the Apostolate made vacant by Judas' s apostacy
and suicide. He was the preacher of the sermon on
the occasion when three thousand people were
"pricked in their hearts" on the day of Pentecost.
He pronounced judgment on Ananias and Sapphira
for lying to the Holy Ghost. He opened the door to
the admission of the Gentiles to the Church by the
baptism of Cornelius and his household.
Yet now through that thus opened door walked
another figure who during the rest of the Apostolic
narrative occupies the eye as the leading personage of
the new stage of events on which the Church was
about to enter. This figure is that of Paul, or as he
* Written in 1890.

SERMONS.

157

was still called, Saul. This new stage of activity is
the first great missionary movement of the Church
outside the borders of Palestine and outside the fellow
ship of Judaism. Converts here and there, like the
Greek proselytes who sought to see Christ Himself on
the last great day of the Passover before He died, like
the Ethiopian eunuch converted by Philip on the road
down to Gaza, like the household of Cornelius before
spoken of, there had, indeed, been previous to this
time. But now, for the first time, the experiment was
to be made of a direct missionizing endeavor to reach
the outside pagan world. There is a distinct pause in
the narrative as if of consciousness of the great event.
There is an enumeration of forces like that of a com
mander in view of a critical campaign. The scene is
Antioch, a city itself a little over the border of Pales
tine toward Asia Minor, whither a number of the
disciples of the new faith had fled for safety from the
persecution which arose about the killing of Stephen.
It was from this point of refuge and of Christian
activity that the new grand enterprise was to be
undertaken. It is impossible not to recognize a kind
of unspectacular but profound sense of the magnitude
of the issues involved in the transactions of that
memorable hour, in the simple, stately way in which
the inspired narrative pauses, as it were, to count up
the resources at the disposal of the Antioch Church,
and describes the solemn setting apart of two of its
teachers to the great enterprise before them. There
is no beating of drums or roll of Gospel-wagons to be
heard, but there is a simple, humble, consecrated
action which has left its impress, not on the Gospel
narrative alone, but on the history of the universal

1^8 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
Church forever. Let us read the eternally memorable
words which record this new departure in Christian
history : —
Now there were at Antioch, in the church that was there,
prophets and teachers, Barnabas and Symeon that was called
Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen the foster-brother of
Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. And as they ministered to the Lord,
and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and
Saul. The first-named and the last-named it will be noticed
of all the Antioch prophets or teachers.
Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I
have called them. Then, when they had fasted and prayed and
laid their hands on them, they sent them away.
Into the general results of this simply but solemnly
instituted missionary campaign, it is impossible at the
present time to enter. As I have intimated, all the
remaining fifteen chapters of the book of the Acts are
in effect but a story of the results of the action then
taken and of the call of Saul to a leadership in the
enterprise. The purpose for which I have brought this critical
moment of Gospel-history forward at this time, is to
call attention to the participation in it of one man
whose name is nowhere else mentioned in the Gospel-
story, but whose briefly-suggested experience and
whose cooperation in a transaction like this, is suited,
as it seems to me, to lead to some interesting and prac
tical suggestions. What a book the Bible is in thus
dropping by the way, almost unnoticed in our intent-
ness on the main drift of its teachings, suggestions of
the richest significance in these scarcely-regarded
clauses and expressions !

SERMONS.

159

We read that there was among these original
"Commissioners for Foreign Missions" in the Antioch
Church, a prophet or teacher called " Manaen the
foster-brother of Herod the tetrarch."
"Herod the tetrarch" — what ugly remembrances
that name brings up to mind! Herod j the tetrarch
was the son of Herod the murderer of the children in
all the vicinity of Bethlehem ; massacred in the hope
of frustrating the prophecy which spoke of the birth of
Jesus in David's town. He was that old Herod's son
by one of his, then living, nine wives, Malthace, a
Samaritan woman. He was the man who having been
appointed by his father's will tetrarch of " Peraea and
Galilee," and being married to a daughter of Aretas
King of Arabia, had taken a fancy to marry also his
sister-in-law, his own half-brother's wife, Herodias.
She had accepted his proposals, deserted her own hus
band, brought a war on between Herod and his father-
in-law Aretas, and as one indecent and memorable in
cident of this disgraceful episode on her part and her
husband's, had caused her daughter, in a drunken
revel, to dance before Herod and his boon associates ;
and, as there ward for this unwomanly behavior, had
secured the murder of John the Baptist, who had
objected to the unlawful marriage into which Herodias
had entered. Herod the tetrarch was the man, too,
who coming down to Jerusalem at the time of the
Passover, in the year thirty of our era, had been sent
to by Pilate to help him out of a dilemma in which
Pilate found himself. A prisoner, accused of rebellion
against the Roman authority, had been brought before
Pilate for judgment. Pilate could find no fault in
Him ; but as the governor had heard Him called

160 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
"Jesus of Nazareth " it occurred to him that he could
get out of his difficulty by sending the prisoner to
Herod, for Nazareth was a town in Herod's tetrarchy.
So to Herod he sent Him. We know how the experi
ment resulted. Jesus refused even to answer one of
Herod's questions. Whereupon Herod, having first
scourged Him, caused Him to be clothed in mock
raiments of royalty, with fastastic crown and sceptre,
and opprobrious ridicule and abuse, and sent Him back
to Pilate in derision and contempt. A few years after
this transaction, stirred up by the importunity of
Herodias, who wanted him to have the title of " King "
rather than that of "Tetrarch," Herod went to Rome
to endeavor to get that title conferred on him by the
Emperor Caligula, with whom he had had a boyhood
acquaintance. Here, however, he was met by accusa
tions of treasonable correspondence with the Parthians,
and instead of gaining the new title was deprived of his
old one and banished into Gaul, whence he subse
quently went into Spain, dying there in exile ; his wife
Herodias — this may be said for her — sticking by
him and sharing his downfall to the last.
This was the man to whom Manaen, a prophet or
teacher of the Antioch Church, stood in the relation of
foster-brother. The word avvTpo<$>o<i, which our new translators have
rendered " foster-brother," and which the translators
of King James's version rendered "brought up with,"
is, perhaps, capable of either significance. It may
mean, as the old version suggests, than Manaen had
been, according to a custom not unknown in the
Roman and oriental world, selected in childhood to be
the playmate and companion of young Herod ; being

SERMONS. l6l
brought up with him for the purpose of having at
hand always an associate of his own age. Or it may
mean in the stricter sense of the word that the infant
Herod and the infant Manaen both nursed at the same
breast, — the probability being in this case that
Manaen' s mother acted as nurse to old Herod's infant
child. The two views are not inconsistent with one another,
and there are some historic facts which give plausi
bility to the idea that they may both be true. Josephus
preserves an interesting story concerning an old
Manaen, a member of the sect of Essenes, and the old
Herod, — father of the Herod of whom we are now
speaking, — that may account for one or both of the
relationships which have been suggested between the
younger Manaen and the younger Herod. When the
old Herod, afterward known as Herod the Great, was
only about fifteen years of age, a member of the
Essene fraternity of religious recluses, some of whom
had families and some not, named Manaen, a man re
puted to be of unusual piety and prophetic insight,
had met the boy Herod, and predicted for him a great
future and the attainment of royal dignity. Herod
never forgot the augury, and always manifested, —
brutal and wicked man though he was, — a special
favor toward the sect of which the elder Manaen was
a member. Perfectly natural would it have been, therefore,
when the exigencies of his household required the
offices of a foster-mother for his young child, that the
elder Herod should have accepted the aid in this
capacity of the elder Manaen's wife ; and that so the
young tetrarch and the young prophet of the Church

j(,2 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
of Antioch should have been nursed in their infancy
by the wife of the man who a few years before had
foretold the elder Herod's greatness. Equally natural
would it be that a relationship so established should be
continued, so that the foster-brother connection of
babyhood should be succeeded by the childhood com
panionship of subsequent years, vindicating thus the
interpretation put by classic custom and by the trans
lators of our older version, upon the word avvTpocf)o<;,
— a child " brought up with " another. Either way, or
both ways, — and both ways seem on the whole the
most probable explanation of the matter, — we see
Manaen, one of the Christian teachers of the Antioch
Church and one of the founders of Christian missions,
standing in a relation which the Word of God has seen
fit everlastingly to put on record, to Herod Antipas,
the beheader of John the Baptist, the scourger and
mocker of the Lord Jesus, and the disgraced ex-
periencer of a Gallic prisoner's obscurity and a Spanish
exile's death.
Well, now, the facts hardly seem to need much
elaborateness of comment. The lessons of them, —
and we cannot but believe the divinely intended
lessons, — stand out with great distinctness on the
very surface of the story. And they involve not
merely biographical suggestions of wide application to
other lives than those two here spoken of, but moral
suggestions of deep and abiding importance. It is only
with a hasty and undeveloping brevity that we can glance
at two or three of the inevitably arising reflections of
this recorded association of Herod and Manaen.
I mention, then, first the lowest and least important
of these suggestions.

SERMONS. 163
How far apart two lives can go which seem once to
have been almost the same.
It is with these mental and moral beings of ours
much as it is with the drops of water which fall on the
high ridge-land of some great continental dividing
mountain range. A little deflection this way or that
way makes all the difference between their rolling
down the swift descent to the Pacific Ocean, or their
tracking all the thousand miles of Missouri's and
Mississippi's turbid waters to lose themselves in
Mexico's gulf and Atlantic's stormier waves. A drift
of cloud eastward or westward, a little accidental
barrier of snow, a tree fallen across a rivulet's path,
make all the difference between destinies so wide-
sundered ! How full human history is of these near
proximities ending in such wide asunderments !
From Cain and Abel born into the same primeval
household down to the younger Edwards and Aaron
Burr, cousins and schoolmates, or, speaking of less
sinister contrasts, down to Daniel Webster, the ex
pounder of the Constitution, and Thomas Merrill,
pastor of the Church in Middlebury, Vermont, who
took the valedictory away from his classmate Webster,
these contrasts and sunderments meet us on every side.
The poets have a hundred times found in this con
tact and separation of human lives some of the most
beautiful of their similes, sometimes among the most
pathetic of their strains.
Alexander Smith's figure of two lives meeting like
two ships upon the sea : —
One little hour, and then away they speed
On lonely paths, through mist and clouds and foam
To meet no more.

164 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
is familiar to us all. Arthur Hugh Clough has put
the same idea into more elaborate lines :
As ships, becalmed at eve, that lay
With canvas drooping, side by side,
Two towers of sail at dawn of day
Are scarce long leagues apart descried;
E'en so,' — but why the tale reveal
Of those whom, year by year unchanged,
Brief absence joined anew to feel
Astounded, soul from soul estranged.
And the still more familiar lines of Tennyson in
which he figures forth the divided lives of his departed
friend, Arthur Hallam, and himself, under the com
parison of the divided lives of two old playmates and
schoolmates of some country village, occur naturally
to our thoughts : —
Dost thou look back on what hath been,
As some divinely gifted man,
Whose life in low estate began,
And on a simple village green ;
Who breaks his birth's invidious bar,
And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
And breasts the blows of circumstance,
And grapples with his evil star ;
Who makes by force his merit known
And lives to clutch the golden keys,
To mould a mighty state's decrees,
And shape the whisper of the throne.
And moving up from high to higher,
Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope
The pillar of a people's hope,
The centre of a world's desire :

SERMONS. 165
Yet feels as in a pensive dream,
When all his active powers are still,
A distant dearness in the hill,
A secret sweetness in the stream,
The limit of his narrower fate,
While yet beside its vocal springs
He play'd at Counsellors and Kings,
With one that was his earliest mate ;
Who ploughs with pain his native lea
And reaps the labour of his hands,
Or in the furrow musing stands,
" Does my old friend remember me ? "
Yes ! this is one of life's commonest experiences.
And of this experience on all sides of its possible illus
tration, — social, moral, and eternal, — we could hardly
have a more vivid reminder than in these words con
cerning the teacher of the Antioch Church in this
first great missionary enterprise, that he was the
" foster-brother of Herod the tetrarch."
A suggestion coming somewhat closer to a distinctly
moral and practical principle, in this Scripture-noted
association between Herod and Manaen, is the
thought that what a man brings with him into the
world, brings with him when a helpless infant appa
rently no more self-determining or definite in moral
character than a jelly-fish, has a mighty influence in
determining what he is to become.
I used as an illustration a few minutes ago the figure
of a drop of water almost accidentally deflected this way
or that way in its course to the sea, as typical of the
course of human lives. The illustration is partly true,
— as I shall have occasion to emphasize further on, — ¦

166 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
but it is partly not true, as I am concerned to show
just now. Men bring with them into the world a good
deal of what determines their character in the world,
and their history in going out of it. Here lay these two
infants, Herod and Manaen, hardly more than a foot
long, drawing sustenance by turns from the same mater
nal or foster-maternal source. Who could tell of any
difference between them ? What microscope or dis
secting scalpel could have discovered in these two plastic
little bundles of physical being the future murderer of
John the Baptist and scourger of the meek prisoner of
Nazareth, and the future prophet of the Missionary
Church of Antioch ? No surgeon or bacteriologist
could possibly have discerned that invisible something
which, to so great an extent, made each what he was.
That something came with the little bundle of humanity
which we call a baby into the world. Herod was the
child of a bad father, — a father whose name has stood
these nineteen hundred years as a synonym for
brutality, cruelty, and hate, — by one of his nine
wives, a woman of the mixed and uncertain blood of
the Samaritans, one of the descendants of the people
with whom the Jews were taught to have no inter
course. Manaen was, it seems altogether probable,
the child of parents not only pure Jews, but Jews of a
particularly strict and ascetic religious order. Behind
both children lay histories diverse as their destinies.
The generations before which had gone to the making
of them had been as dissimilar as the pathways they
were themselves to tread. No most observant inves
tigator taking up those two little human midgets by
turns could say which was to be the prophet and
which was to be the murderer. Yet who can doubt

SERMONS. 167
that the solution of the question was even then very
largely hid somewhere in those two small lumps of
mortal clay ?
This is only analogous to what we find to be the
facts in relation to all other branches of life. You
want a good dog. You are not content to see that the
puppy which is offered to you is a very good looking
puppy. You want to know what sort of a father and
mother he had. A member of the sporting fraternity
wants a fast horse. It does not answer to tell him
that this colt has good points and has shown remark
able speed. He wants to know whether the colt
comes of a family in which speed is an inheritance. I
am not a horse-man myself, but my eye fell only a few
weeks ago on the account of a race whereof the inter
est, — - an interest that I have no doubt was felt by
more persons in this country than would be concerned
about the question of who was president of Yale
University, — the interest was whether the Mambrino
or the Hambletonian family, represented in the two
competitors, would beat in the contest.
To a great extent, it is so in the history of human
life. This is what gives a sweet, true, honest, godly
ancestry its priceless worth. That my father was or
was not a millionaire is a question almost insignificant
to me, save so far as it might express and cast light on
the quality of his character. But that he was a simple,
sincere, devout man, who served God and his genera
tion to the best of his powers, is a matter of infinite
concernment to me. That my mother wore or did not
wear the habiliments of a queen is absolutely beneath
consideration. That she was a queen radiant in the
light of a pure, true womanhood, and regnant, within

168 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
her sphere, by the divine right of a noble character —
that is something to the purpose. This is what makes
family feeling a justifiable feeling and a matter to be
solicitous about. This is what makes the question of
matrimonial alliances on the part of young people a
question of supremest concern. Are you marrying a
man or are you marrying a position, is the question
which comes home, if she only knew it aright, to every
young bride at the altar. Are you marrying a woman
or only a fortune or a fashion plate, is the question for
the bridegroom to ponder. Life's happiness for the
young people themselves depends on the answer to be
given to those questions. Life's result for their pos
terity, also, is largely involved in the reply. Wise and
happy are they who in the solution of this great prob
lem of youthful life put that first which is first, and
who choose above bonds and mortgages, or pretty face
and fashionable connections, character which is true,
and lineage which is without a blot on its scutcheon.
But having said this, which I think is not only
justified but compelled by the plain facts of human
life, I must suggest that there is, also, another side to
the matter which needs as well to be taken into view,
and in which the simile of the early deflected water-
drop or the early-bent twig has also a place.
We cannot doubt that however Manaen and Herod
may have been "brought up together" there were ex
ternal influences, none-the-less, which diversely co-ope
rated in making them what they became. Herod was
the son of Herod and Malthace, and however intimately
he was associated with Manaen, it is impossible not to
suppose that family instructions and influences had
their share in making the son of the slayer of Bethle-

SERMONS. 169
hem's children and of the mongrel-blooded Samaritan
woman what he became. On the other hand, however
closely associated with Herod Manaen may have been,
he was still the son of a devout Jew and Jewess, who
cannot be regarded as having forgotten their parental
obligations in any temporary lending of the mother or
of the child to the welfare of the Herodian family.
Manaen was not Malthace's son, and it is not possible
that his mother ever allowed him to be treated as if he
were. She had her own hold on him, body and soul.
And, though the details of the story are all lost to us,
we cannot doubt from the issue, — since figs do not
grow out of thistles, or corn grow even out of good
ground without culture, — that Manaen's mother was
as another Hannah in her training of her child. Aj^d
here is where an element of tremendous power and
encouragement appears in dealing with youthful life.
It is a good deal like the turning of the water-drop
westward to the Pacific or eastward to the Gulf. A
power stands at the fountain-head of childhood's being,
of incalculable potency in determining its direction and
quality. Even supposing there are original wrong tend
encies in a child's nature, — the inheritances of a bad
ancestry, — who can tell how far these can be cor
rected and neutralized by patience and fidelity in the
plastic days of early impression and of formation of
habit ? Habit is a tremendous educator. It will
accomplish marvelous results, even in the face of in
herited obstacles. And habits of right-doing, and to a
great extent of right feeling, are the part of parental
privilege to inculcate and secure. This is what lends
tremendous responsibility, but also not less measureless
privilege, to motherly and fatherly influence over youth-

!7o REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
ful life. That influence can never be calculated. It
can work wonders even against inherited odds. It is
a true saying: "As the twig is bent the tree inclines,"
and it is as true of the thorn as of the poplar.
And in this work of training human lives, if any
where in this world, divine aid may be sought and
expected. If God hears the ravens when they cry for
food for their nestlings, will He not hear parental
prayers for the welfare of children of immortality ?
Doubt we cannot, that, if in any undertaking to which
a man can set his hand in this universe the sympathy
of God is with him, it is in this work of making better,
purer, more honest, more Christian, a child's life. It
was this co-operant sympathy of God with parental
endeavor, may we not believe, which made the foster-
brother of Herod the tetrarch one of the teachers of
the Church of Antioch and one of the inaugurators of
that missionary enterprise which is yet to convert a
world to Christ.

SERMONS. 171

X.
FILLING UP THAT WHICH IS LACKING.*
Colossians 1: 24.
Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which
is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His
body's sake, which is the Church.
There are some passages of Scripture which are like
the world's great battle-fields. Contesting interpreta
tions have wrestled over them, as struggling armies
wrestled at Waterloo or Gettysburg. This passage is
one of them. Reading the words of our text, the
Church of Rome claims that she finds in them a sup
port for her doctrine of supererogatory and substitu
tive merit in the sufferings of the saints. She appeals
to this passage, among others, in defense of the idea
of an efficacy in the lives of good men to atone for at
least some kinds of guilt. While ascribing, indeed, to
Christ the work of atoning for original sin, she accords
to human merit and suffering a power to expiate many
actual transgressions. The blood of Christ blots out
the native and inherent guiltiness of the race ; but the
blood of martyrs and the tears of saints have also an
expiatory office. The lesser lapses of the faithful are
cleansed by them. The lighter faults are forgiven

* Written in 1869, about five months after the death of his
younger son.

172

REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.

for their sake. They constitute a reserve-fund ot
grace, supplemental to that afforded by the atonement
of Christ. This reserved fund of merit is at the
Church's disposal. The keys to it are hers. She can
apply it to whom she will. Paul, she asserts, was con
gratulating himself on a contribution that he was mak
ing to this fund of supplemental merit, when he wrote :
Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that
which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh, for his
body's sake, which is the Church.
But such a doctrine as this has not commended
itself to the judgment of men where the Bible has been
read in the light which the Reformation shed on its
pages. For nothing can be more repugnant to the
whole drift, or to the express statements, of Scripture
than the idea of any insufficiency, requiring to be sup
plied from any quarter, in the expiatory work of
Christ. On the contrary, that work is uniformly
represented as complete in itself. It wants nothing to
supplement it. There is nothing which can add to its
efficacy. Christ's life and death constitute in them
selves a perfect oblation and atonement for human sin.
They afford the only ground for its forgiveness. And
no apostle has more frequently or powerfully affirmed
this complete and all-sufficient character of Christ's
work than has Paul. To imagine any insufficiency in
Christ's sacrifice, to conceive of any other sacrifice as
needful to make up that deficiency, is not only com
pletely opposed to Scripture as a whole, but, if attributed
to Paul, places him in the grossest contradiction with
himself. Whatever, therefore, Paul did mean in this passage,

SERMONS. 173
certain it is that he did not mean to imply that his
sufferings, or any .one's sufferings, were supplemental
to the efficacy of Christ's sacrifice.
But in the recoil from this Roman interpretation of
the passage under consideration, another view of it has
been taken by many Protestant commentators which
seems to me in an equal degree erroneous. That in
terpretation is this.
Paul, it is said, is simply giving utterance to his
rejoicing that he is filling up that portion of suffering
which has been appointed to him to endure in the
cause of Christ. A certain number of trials and hard
ships had been divinely allotted to him to bear ; and
some of them were still unborne. They were yet
" behind." The measure was not yet full. But it was
filling. It would soon be complete. The last of the
trials it was appointed to him to endure in the Chris
tian service would soon be encountered ; and then the
work on his part would be done. He rejoiced, there
fore, in his sufferings, as completing that measure and
hastening his release.
This interpretation of the Apostle's meaning cer
tainly contains no heresy. It is quite true so far as it
is anything. If anyone can content himself with it, it
is quite optional to adopt it. But it is an interpreta
tion which simply empties the passage of all value. It
seems not accordant with the context, nor with the
great-thoughted man who uttered it, nor with the
grand Gospel of which he is here affirming one of the
grandest of truths.
A meaning far deeper and more wide-reaching than
this lies in the language of the Apostle. And this
meaning has been discerned in it by many of the

174 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
wisest of men whose studies have illuminated for us
the Gospel page. I need only refer to Calvin and
Melanchthon and Grotius and Bengel, among many
others, to indicate that the view of the passage I am
about to present is one which has commended itself to
some of the best interpreters of the sacred Word.
The view, then, which I present is this : —
And fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in
my flesh, for His body's sake, which is the Church.
What are those "afflictions " of Christ ? What is it
which "remains behind " unfulfilled? The reference
here is not to the sufferings which Christ endured in
His single person in His work of expiating human sin ;
but to the afflictions which He bears through the trials
of the Church which is His body, and by reason of
His unity with it. It is worthy of remark that the
Apostle does not say " what is behind of the iraQ^^ara,
the passion, of Christ ; but simply the tfA.A/rei?, the
afflictions, of Christ ; affliction being that common
term which is applicable to all human sufferings. In
other words, Paul, in this passage, contemplates Christ
in the same aspect in which he often elsewhere repre
sents Him, as one with His members. He is so
identified with His Church, that what affects it affects
Him. As elsewhere, this same Apostle, writing to
the Corinthians, sets forth the unity of Christ and His
Church under the figure of a human body, in which if
one member suffers the whole body suffers, so here he
contemplates the afflictions to be endured by the
Church identified with Christ as the yet-unfulfilled
afflictions of Christ Plimself. Nor can we forget, in
this connection, what a divine warrant, — a warrant

SERMONS.

175

even from the lips of Christ, — Paul had for this man
ner of speaking. We do not forget, and surely he
never forgot, that word which sounded to him out of
the skies above him as he was on his way to carry
bonds and imprisonment to the Christians at Damascus.
That voice had said to him : " Saul, Saul, why perse-
cutest thou Me ? " " Persecutest thou Me ! " His perse
cution of the disciples was persecution of the Master.
The woes he inflicted on them were woes inflicted on
Him, whose they were. And so was it with all their
calamities. Paul never forgot that lesson. He
remembered that in all the afflictions of Christ's peo
ple forever, Christ is afflicted. As He suffered once
in His own single person for the expiation of human
sin, so now He daily shares the sufferings of His
people. And much of this kind of affliction remains
"yet behind." The sorrows of Christ's members are
not complete.
But, on the other hand, these sufferings are not
limitless. They are fixed in quality and amount. The
measure of trouble which the whole Church is to
endure is determined. God has appointed the sum.
And every labor and sorrow undergone in the
Church's behalf, diminishes the amount. Each drop
of bitterness drained out lessens that which is to be
drained. Each trial of one, — such is the commission
of the saints ! — • takes away something from that which
is to be borne by all. It fills up a little of " that which
is behind of the afflictions of Christ," in " His body,
which is the Church." So the work will go on,
through the struggles and sorrows of God's people, till
there are wholly "filled up" those measures of trial
which are appointed to Christ's body by the eternal

!76 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
plan. Now comes this wonderful Apostle, this simple
great soul, and says: "I rejoice in my sufferings for
you. I am happy that I may fill up something of
what is behind of the sufferings of Christ," which else
must fall on some other of His members. Glad am I,
that I may thus myself drain some of the bitter drops,
which, if I drink not, will be left for other lips. I do
it for His body's sake. The more it is permitted me
to sustain, the less will be left behind to bear. Grand,
generous, wonderful Paul ! These are words worthy
of thee, and of the Gospel ! They fit thy character !
They express thy spirit ! They utter forth the truth !
Accepting the interpretation of the Apostle's lan
guage which has now been set forth, I turn to some
suggestions to which it is suited to give rise.
Glance a moment, as one of them, at the sort of life
which this conception of his relations to others, and of
the office of his sufferings, opened to Paul himself.
To him it opened the opportunity of a life of vast and
indeterminable benefits to the Church. The stream
of good which should flow forth from his labors and
sacrifices should flow wide and far. The whole
brotherhood, whether they recognized it or not, should
share in it. For the heavier the burden pressed on
him the lighter would be the load left " behind " to be
borne. Such was the solidarity of that companionship
created by unity with Christ the common Head, that
something should be done for each by the endeavor of
any. Paul's life was thus made, in a true sense, a
vicarious life. It took on the likeness of Christ's life,
in that it was a life by the sacrifices and sufferings of
which others were to be blessed. It became a life
exemplifying that fellowship with the Saviour, of

SERMONS. 177
which Christ spoke when He said to the sons of
Zebedee :
" Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of ; and with
the baptism I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized."
Yes ! there rose thus before the mind of the great
Apostle the conception of a life conformed to Christ's
in principle, and similar to His in its benefit to men.
And he embraced that conception. He seized upon it
with joy. He exulted that such a life was possible to
him. He permitted nothing to stand in the way of its
complete realization. Hear him as he tells us how he
strove after it :
" But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for
Christ. Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the
excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord ; for whom
I have suffered the loss of all things . . . that I may
know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship
of His sufferings, being made conformable unto [or sharing the
likeness of] His death !
How well he succeeded in the endeavor ! How real
was that identification ; how wide the benefits to
others which flowed from it ! Who is there, of all the
millions to whom the Gospel has ever come, who has
not been a partaker in them ? We sit here to-day, in
this Christian sanctuary, the wider in mind, the purer
in faith, because of the labors and sufferings of this
saint of old. The burden presses lighter on us here,
because he bore so much of it there. The thoughts of
that profound intellect, how they lighten up the Scrip
ture page ! What radiance they cast into the deep
places of divine truth ! Strike from the Bible the
Pauline epistles, strike from Christian history the

178 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
Pauline story, how vast, how irreparable, the loss, to
the Church and to every one of us, its members. We
owe a debt of thankfulness to that far-off, much-endur
ing soul, that we can hardly estimate and never pay.
That energy of self-sacrifice — it is our creditor to this
hour ! That heroism of courage — it holds a claim
against us now ! Those beatings with rods, those
bruisings with stones, they purchased something for
us, every one !
But I remark, as a second suggestion of the subject
before us, that the same principle of unity with Christ
and His people in the "afflictions which are behind,"
has lifted a conception of life, similar to that which
Paul had, before many who have preceded us in the
Christian service. The filling up of that which was
behind of the afflictions of Christ, for His Church's
sake, has been the significance of thousands of lives in
Christian history. It has been a hope and a glory to
them that they might, by their labors or pains, drain
out something of the bitterness of human trouble, and
make the pathway of Gospel-service easier to those
who should come after them. This hope animated the
primitive martyrs as they felt the rending fangs of
the lions in the amphitheater, or as they burned alive,
in pitchy wrappings, in Nero's gardens. It inspired
the courage of all that long line of confessors and
defenders of the faith, in those stern times when
Christianity was waging its battle with Paganism, and
so many of its noblest and best died in the conflict.
It prompted those who in later times stood up for the
simplicity of the Gospel against the corruptions of the
Papacy, and so stood at the cost of home and reputa
tion and life. It actuated the fathers of our American

SERMONS.

179

Christianity, who, for the sake of truth, and of those
who should come after them, left their- native land for
a wilderness, and the familiar haunts of cultivated life,
for the exile's loneliness, and the pioneer's hardship.
And it sustained, too, in every age, the patient, un
noticed efforts of thousands of lowly souls, doing no
great and memorable thing, but living loyally to Christ,
and trying to lift off whatever little burden they could
from the hearts of other men.
These all rejoiced amid their hardship that it was
permitted them to fill up something of what was be
hind of the afflictions of Christ. These exulted that
it was given them to endure a little, for His body's
sake. They were glad to think the Church would
have less to bear, since they had borne what they did.
They were rejoiced to feel that fewer strokes would
fall upon other members of the one body- because so
many fell on them.
And how true it is that we have less ! We assemble
in our free temples of worship. No manacles fetter
our limbs or edicts bind our consciences. We go and
come on the sweet ground. No lictor challenges our
purpose, no inquisitor dogs our steps. We read our
Bible in our households. We teach our children the
way to Jesus without the intervention of men. We
bury our dead in the acre of God, coveting no priestly
unction and dreading no priestly ban.
Why do we do so ? Why are we able so to do ? It
is because those who have gone before us have made
us able by the portion they have borne in the unful
filled afflictions of Christ. The price of these things
was paid by them. Trace back to whom we owe this
debt. You come to the wind-swept graves on Ply-

jSo REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
mouth hillside. You come to the discolored soil and
buried ashes where stood the stakes at Smithfield.
You come to the cell of Luther and to Wiclif's closet
at Lutterworth. You follow back the ascending line,
from one generation to another, from one witness or
martyr to another, till you find that not an age of
Christian history has passed since Paul said : " I fill
up something of what is behind of the afflictions of
Christ," which has not done something to make lighter
your burden, and to leave you in debt to its faithful
ness and self-sacrifice.
Yes ! we are in debt ! The benefits we have are
benefits for which we have not paid. We enjoy what
we do because other members of the same body have
suffered for us. It is because some were found willing
to fill up so much of "that which was behind of the
afflictions of Christ" that we walk under a load so
comparatively light.
But I remark, as a concluding suggestion of our
theme, N that the same conception of life which this
view of the unity of Christ and His people opened to
Paul, and to others who have gone before us, is open
also to ourselves. Our greatest privilege in living is
in " filling up that which is behind of the afflictions of
Christ." If we would but appreciate aright our calling
and opportunity, we should rejoice most of all, that we
can live "for His body's sake, which is the Church."
For the things "which are behind" are yet many.
Not yet, — notwithstanding all that He has undergone
in the person of His members, — not yet are His afflic
tions full. The Church has trials and conflicts still to
undergo. The individual membership numbers many
a son and daughter of trouble still.

SERMONS. l8l
On how many does sorrow press ! How many does
penury grip with cruel hand ! What darkness remains
to be lightened ; what woe to be comforted ; what
struggles to be aided ; what wanderings to be restored !
And we can alleviate some of that sorrow. Some of
that burden we can bear. Our efforts and self denials
and, if it need be, our afflictions and pains, can do at
least a little of it. This is a vicarious world. Its cen
tral fact is Calvary, and the great law of relationship
in it, is relationship through sacrifice.
Not, indeed, that we are, in any ascetic spirit, will
fully to invent and impose sufferings upon ourselves.
Not that suffering is an object in itself. But he that
will put his shoulder under the world's great load, —
he that will, in any department of labor for his kind,
fill up something of what is yet behind, — will do it,
must do it, at the cost of many a pain. This world
was not lifted to the possibility of salvation without
the agony and death of the Son of God ; and it cannot
be brought to the experience of salvation realized,
without the toils and anguish of many a saint. Re
demption was begotten in sacrifice, and it is perfected
only through struggle and pain. But every true
Christian effort, — yea, every real Christian tear, —
does something to bring that perfection nearer.
What a thought of cheer for many a humble un
noticed soul there is in this fact ! How much wider
was the reach of that soul's sufferings than it knew !
You thought, dear friend, perhaps that your agonized
prayer did nothing. You thought your quiet Chris
tian patience in bearing your trouble had no result.
When you endured sickness with submission, or be
reavement with quietude, or watched with Christlike

182 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
solicitude over a wayward son, or a sinning husband,
you had no thought your work reached beyond your
self, and perhaps the immediate object of your effort.
Ah ! but it did ! The fellowship of that body in which
Christ's members are joined makes it impossible for
one to stand alone. Your solitary, hidden grief is not
unknown to Him whose very member you are. Some
thing of what remains for Him to fill up, you have
been permitted to bear. You have a part in the great
fulfillment ! Do not think you are useless or alone.
The solidarity of the Christian union secures some
thing of benefit to the whole from the conflict or the
suffering of each.
This presents to us a conception of life we shall do
well to ponder. Oh ! not for Paul only, not for the
fathers dead, was this conception set before us in the
Great Exemplar, Jesus of Bethlehem and Golgotha.
That example was set that all might imitate. That
life was lived that it might forever inspire.
My friends, the true problem of life to a Christian
man is not how to get the most of ease and the least
of pain this world can give. The great object of ex
istence is not to surround oneself with the pleasures
of life and to ward off from us its pains. No ! the
true object, the Christlike object, is to lift the burden
from others' shoulders by taking it on our own, to
alleviate others' pains by bearing them ourselves.
This is to do as Paul did, and as He did whose example
inspired Paul. This is to fill up something of what is
behind of the afflictions of Christ.
And it seems to me, my hearers, that now is a time
when it is peculiarly fit that such a conception of the
object of life should be presented and thoughtfully

SERMONS. 183
considered. Wealth increases among us. Life is tak
ing on yearly more luxurious habits. We are sur
rounding ourselves more and more with appliances of
ease, and studying with increasing solicitude how to
make refined and beautiful our lot. Meanwhile around
us sighs the burdened world. Meanwhile hands are
held out to us from every side. There are mourners
to be comforted. There are ignorant to be taught.
There are poor to be clothed. There are hungry to be
fed. Meanwhile, too, the Church is maintaining her
struggle with the world. She needs the effort of every
member ; not the cold partial allegiance, but the full,
consecrated endeavor of every one who is reckoned of
her fold. For vast and arduous is the work yet to be
done. The afflictions of Christ are not yet full. Par
takers in His sufferings are needed still.
O my brothers ; O my sisters : shall we accept
the opportunity ? Is there anything in us to answer
to the call ? That which is yet " behind " is to be sup
plied. By the struggles of some it is surely to be
filled ! Who shall they be ? Who of this congrega
tion will make it henceforth the purpose of his life to
add something to that sum which at last shall be
accounted complete ?

184 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, I) D.

XI.
THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS.*
LUKE XIT : 57.
"And why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right? ''
It is a very interesting circumstance connected with
this appeal of Christ to the capacity of right judgment
in His hearers that it was not addressed to His
acknowledged disciples. Our Saviour had been saying
some exceedingly important and even mysterious
things, apparently in a mixed audience of His own
followers and of others. He had spoken of the provi
dential care of God as shown in His provision for the
ravens, His clothing of the lilies, and of His greater
care of men. And from that point of instruction He
had proceeded, after His customary manner, to rise to
the teaching of higher and more occult truths concern
ing the nature and near approach of the kingdom of
heaven, and the duty of constant readiness for the
coming of the Son of Man.
Peter seems to have been a little doubtful as to just
how far this discourse was intended for the public
generally, or only for him and his few associates. And
he asked the point-blank question, " Lord, speakest
thou this parable unto us, or even unto all?" The

* Written in December, 1891

SERMONS. 185
Lord answered, " Who then is the faithful and wise
steward, whom his Lord shall set over his household,
to give them their portion of food in due season ? "
His reply is, in effect : " I address whoever has the
ear to hear. I am stating facts and principles of uni
versal application and interest. Any man who dis
cerns their truthfulness, and especially who acts on
their truthfulness, is My accepted hearer. What I say
is reasonable as well as right, and blessed is the man
who hears and obeys." But that there might be left no
doubt in Peter's mind, or in anybody's mind, as to the
broad and inclusive character of His address He turned
distinctly to the "multitude" — the "people" who
were looking on with uncommitted, and some of them,
probably, inimical curiosity — and said to them, in
effect, Why do you not exercise your own reason
and instructed faculties about the truth or falsity of
what I have been telling you ?
" When ye see a cloud rising in the west, straightway ye say,
There cometh a shower ; and so it cometh to pass. And when
ye see a south wind blowing, ye say, There will be a scorching
heat ; and it cometh to pass. Ye hypocrites, ye know how to
interpret the face of the earth and the heaven ; but how is it
that ye know not how to interpret this time ? And why even of
yourselves judge ye not what is right ? "
Thus by the strongest of all possible forms of affir
mation, — a direct reproachful challenge for not using
faculties they had and could employ, — Christ affirmed
an existent power in the minds of even His opponents
and enemies to judge concerning the things of which
He told them. He appealed to faculties divinely im
planted in them to have some opinion about the truth
fulness of His words. As there were signs in nature

1 86 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
which the eye could recognize, and which answered to
the truth of things in the physical realm, so there were
signs in the spiritual world which might be discerned
by one intent and willing to discern them, which an
swered also to the truth of things in matters of that
domain. A man ought to recognize such signs. A
man could recognize such signs. A man was to blame
for not recognizing such signs. Even an opponent
might be appealed to with the reproachful and con
demnatory inquiry, — at once a testimony to his capa
city of in some measure judging of the truth in religious
things, and of his neglect to employ the capacity which
he had, — " Why even of yourselves judge ye not what
is right ? "
Now it seems to me, as I said at the outset, that this
utterance of Christ, addressed confessedly to hearers
not His disciples, is an extraordinarily interesting one.
It has a very direct bearing upon a question a good
deal agitated in theological circles to-day. It casts an
illuminating gleam upon one of the great party watch
words of our time. And the brief examination of the
Master's saying "to the multitude " which we have
now made may, I hope, have prepared the way for
some sober and reasonable consideration of what that
watchword suggests.
The party shibboleth of which I speak is what is
called the " Christian consciousness." It is used with
about equal frequency in both camps of current theo
logical partisanship, progressive and conservative alike.
But it is used, of course, with different accent. With
the one it is a word of honor; with the other it is a
word of reproach. When a writer or preacher, who is
understood to be of what is called the more advanced

SERMONS. 187
school of theology among us, makes reference to
" Christian consciousness " as one of the sources of
light on religious truth, he is at once, by some of his
more conservative brethren, accused of elevating human
authority to a co-ordinate place with divine revelation,
or a place even of superiority to it. When, on the
other hand, the phrase " Christian consciousness " is
referred to in the utterances of our more conservative
divines it is generally in terms which lead their oppo
nents to allege the disparagement or denial of some of
the plainest of historic facts, and some of the most
obvious of the apparently divinely intended operations
of the human intellect.
Now, is there any necessity of this warfare among
brethren ? Is there any unavoidable need of their mis
understanding and misinterpreting one another ? Is
there not some common, fair, middle-ground on which
they can stand and use the phrase in question, — which
seems to have gotten a pretty secure place in modern
religious literature, — in a mutually understood and
even mutually acceptable significance ? The question
seems to me important enough for me to do what I
seldom do in this pulpit, — that is, to call your atten
tion to a particular phase of current discussion in the
theological world.
Now it may, I think, be frankly admitted by those
who use this term most frequently that the term itself,
" Christian consciousness," is a very ambiguous one.
Strictly speaking, what is there which can possibly be
more individual and incommunicable than conscious
ness ? I am conscious of being hot or cold. I am
conscious of being right or wrong. But my conscious
ness of tljese things is not your consciousness. Yours

!88 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
is not mine. Consciousness is a thing not to be
confused, intermingled, generalized. When, therefore,
the word consciousness is employed, as in the phrase
" Christian consciousness," to signify something be
side individual experience ; something belonging rather
to collective convictions ; an only moderately strict
constructionist in the use of language is bound to
admit that the phrase is ambiguous, if not self-con
tradictory. But so are a score of phrases we use in
religion and in common life ambiguous. Half the
controversies which have ever risen in mental phi
losophy and theology are the result of the ambiguity
of the terms employed. Even in politics and general
affairs the differences of men largely result from the
diversity of interpretation put on the words they alike
use. Free-trader or protectionist, for example — how
vague and ambiguous the use of these terms in politi
cal affairs is ! Take a high protectionist newspaper,
and it calls every man a free-trader, however he may
advocate a tariff for revenue, unless he advocates one
also for the guardianship of what are called " infant
industries." Take an ultra free-trade newspaper, and
it calls every man a protectionist, notwithstanding he
may ever so carefully discriminate between a tariff for
necessary public expenses, and a tariff for support of
favored manufactures. And then they go on batting
away at each other, largely on a mere matter of ambi
guity of terms. Now I hold no commission to defend
the correctness of this phrase " Christian conscious
ness." I certainly did not invent it; nor do I in gen
eral belong to the school or party in recent religious
thinking which did invent it and by which it is chiefly
employed. But I hope I may be fair enough to try to

SERMONS. 189
understand what its users mean by it, and not, —
either because of the ambiguity of the word itself, or
because of dissent from any of the views of those who
mainly employ it, — insist that it must mean something
antagonistic to what is true.
What then, — the ambiguity of the phrase being
frankly admitted, — do those who speak of Christian
consciousness really understand by the term ? So far
as I am able to judge from a considerable reading of
the religious literature in which the phrase is employed,
it means that common concensus or conviction which,
under the protracted operation of divine influences
upon the minds of men, grows up in the general body
of believers. It is a conviction which may relate to
things more definitely or less definitely revealed in
Scripture, but respecting which, for one reason or an
other, such a general conviction and agreement is
arrived at that it may almost be called a common con
sciousness of its reality.
Now who does not see that in point of fact, — laying
aside any question of infelicity in the term by which
such a common conviction is called, — that such a com
mon conviction does exist in reference to many re
ligious truths, and exist in such a degree and measure
as to be spoken of as somethmg distinct from the
materials upon which it is founded ? For example,
there is a common conviction among religious people
that God is a loving being. It may be said to be an
affirmation of " Christian consciousness " that He is
so. And when you say that Christian consciousness
declares the loving character of God, you do not stop
to analyze the growth of that consciousness. You do
not say that it is built up from this or that text

I go REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
of Scripture ; from this or that recorded act of the
divine behavior. You appeal to it as something which
— grown however it may have done — now stands a
substantial commonly accepted conviction, real almost
as one's consciousness of life, that God is love.
But the growth, in this sense, of a common Chris
tian conviction or consciousness is not merely real and
powerful in relation to things which are clearly revealed
in Scripture ; it is to be discerned also in things
wherein the utterances of Scripture are either not clear
or are not so clear that they have not in point of fact
been capable of various interpretations by Christian
men. A most interesting example of the working of
this principle is just now held up to our notice in the
experience of our brethren of the Presbyterian Church
in this country. Our friends of that fellowship are
engaged in a struggle for the revision of their creed.
Not to mention other points in which they are dis
quieted about it — and there are several — one import
ant point in it which gives them uneasiness is the
utterance of the third section of the tenth chapter of
their Confession of Faith, which reads thus : " Elect
infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by
Christ." The Confession does not say what becomes
of non-elect infants, and does not even in positive
terms say that there are any. But language has no
significance if those words do not imply that there are
such non-elect infants ; nor can we doubt that the the
ological system generally formulated in that document
and generally held by its framers and by their prede
cessors, implies that there may be a great many. Why,
then, is the Presbyterian body trying to get rid of that
phrase to-day ? Why is it just as certain ultimately to

SERMONS. igr
be got rid of, by an expurgation from the creed or by
a supersedure of the old creed by a new confession, as
that to-morrow morning's sun will rise ?
Can anybody pretend that the change in that body
by which that obnoxious phrase and implication will
sooner or later disappear, — as it has disappeared from
the later doctrinal statements of our own body which
formerly held the same creed, — is simply and purely
owing to a correcter exegetical interpretation of the
passages of Scripture which bear on the matter of
God's dealings with infants ? It is due to no such
thing. The conviction which demands such an altera
tion in the creed did not arise in any such way. It
arose because of a growing assurance in the heart and
mind of the Church that the love and pity of God as
revealed generally in His Word and providence, and
grace, did not justify any such interpretation of
Scripture as requires such a declaration concerning
elect-infants, or allows such an implication concerning
non-elect ones. The revolution has been a silent
growth in Christian consciousness of the significance
of God's love and grace to men. It was not born in
the study of the grammarian, but by the cradle-side and
grave-side of infancy, where consecrated paternal and
maternal hearts, fathoming a little of the love of God
by the limited plummet line of their own love, revolted
from an interpretation of the ways of God with child
hood which did violence to all else that they knew of
Him, and which crowded Scripture to the wall in sup
port of a statement against which every instinct of the
human heart and every known attribute of the divine
protest. A somewhat similar illustration of the growth of

102 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
general convictions, — what some of our friends call of
a Christian consciousness, — may be found in another
quarter. It is not so very long ago since advocates of
missionary enterprise based their plea almost exclu
sively on the hopeless condition of men outside the
limits of Christian enlightenment and civilization.
When the American Board was formed eighty-two
years ago it was not felt to be an extravagant or abhor
rent statement to represent the whole heathen world
as flowing in an unbroken cataract of irremediable
doom into the abyss of eternal despair. Such repre
sentations, scarcely qualified by possible exceptions,
were common in pulpits and on missionary platforms.
Such representations are not made, or very seldom
made, now. Why are they, not ? For this reason
among others. We all know that Christian men and
women have sought relief from the terrible idea of the
hopeless loss of all the heathen world, in some way
compatible with the teachings of the word of God.
One of these ways, — and a way elaborately presented
in the annual sermon preached before the Board at
Detroit in 1 886, — is in a hoped-for greater inclusiveness
of the saving grace of God outside the reach of the
Gospel, through the light of nature and the operations
of the Spirit, than we have always supposed ; and an
other is by the idea, advocated in some quarters, of an
opportunity in another life of an offer of salvation for
those who never heard of Christ here.
Now without at all entering here into any argument,
as I have on some other occasions done, as to the rela
tive scripturalness of these two different ways in which
the difficulty is attempted to be solved, my present
point of inquiry is, why was resort had to either of

SERMONS.

193

these two views ? Why did not people just sit
down quietly under the conception, so long entertained,
of the utter and irremediable loss of everybody outside
the limits of historical Christianity ? Was it because
of the compellant power of an exacter exegesis ? Did
more hopeful views of the reach of God's grace grow
out, primarily, of a correcter use of. the grammar and
the lexicon of the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures ?
Not at all. They grew out of a softening of the minds
and hearts of men under the influence of the Gospel,
which led them to ask, " Is there not some way com
patible with the Scriptures which we have read so
long without discerning it, whereby the love of God for
sinful men and the adequacy of His grace for their
help shall not be so frustrated and denied as it is in
these views which we have entertained, without ques
tioning, so great a while ? The inquiry started in the
mind enlightened by Christian truth and warmed by
Christian love. The question was brought to the test
of consonancy with the general spirit of the Gospel.
It was tried by the Christian consciousness, if one
chooses to call it so ; and then Scripture was interro
gated more carefully for an answer. Not in grammar
and lexicography first, but in love and pity taught by
Christ, did the impelling power lie which put men on
interrogating anew the revealed Word, to see what the
truth on this matter is.
But the contrariety of these two answers, which I
have said have been given to the same question, con
ducts me to another suggestion respecting this matter
of Christian consciousness, so called, very important
to be considered. Christian consciousness, — by
which I mean, as has been explained, the general
13

194 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
consent of men under the light of the Gospel, — can
not any way supersede Scripture; perhaps cannot
always successfully arbitrate between obscure or
doubtful revelations of Scripture. Here, if anywhere,
is the danger which lies in admitting the enlightened
convictions of matured piety to any place in the con
sideration and determination of religious truth. There
is danger, constituted as men are, that the power
which, as I have tried to show, is divinely lodged in
them to judge of religious things, and which experience
in religious things certainly tends to make more per
fect in its exercise, should be abused. There is peril
lest it should arrogate to itself functions above its
proper place, and not merely judge where Scripture is
silent or obscure, but decide where Scripture speaks,
and sometimes decide against what Scripture says.
This danger is real. But what then ? Shall one
forego altogether the exercise of a power because it
can be abused ? What gift of God is there which
cannot be perverted to evil ? Because a grain of
calomel sometimes does a man good, are we to argue
that half a pound of it would be better ? Or because
an ounce of laudanum will kill, shall we say twenty
drops of it can in no case be used ? Do we need to be
told that faith is a saving grace, in spite of the fact
that some have made an alleged faith to be the shelter
for all unrighteousness ?
Christian consciousness, despite the infelicity of the
name, is something which has a real place in the dis
cernment of religious truth. The collective sentiment
of the minds of men under the operations of the Spirit
of God does not go for nothing. The practical and
important question is, What place has it ; and within

SERMONS.

195

what fixed boundaries only, if any, has it its proper
sphere ?
There should, I think, be no real doubt on this
matter. This is one of the questions which, under
somewhat different terminology indeed, came up in
the recent trial of Professor Briggs before the New
York Presbytery. In that trial, which, as you know,
resulted in a dismissal of the charges against the Pro
fessor, — though an appeal was indeed taken to the
Synod from the dismissal, — one charge which had
been brought against the Professor was that he had
declared that there were "three fountains of divine
authority [in religion], the Bible, the Church, and the
reason"; from which declaration made by him the in
ference was drawn by others that these three were
alike sufficient and equal sources of religious light.
This inference the Professor denied. He held that
while the Church was one source of religious authority,
reason and conscience was another ; but when the
Bible spoke definitely on any point its utterance was
decisive. This answer satisfied the majority of the
Presbytery on this point, — I am not now speaking of
any other point in what is called the Briggs case, —
and I think it ought to satisfy everybody.
And, similarly, as to what is meant in the term
which I have repeatedly spoken of as an infelicitous
one, "Christian consciousness." It is idle to deny
that the thing intended to be covered by that phrase
is a real thing, and that it has a real place and power
in the making up of religious opinions. But when the
question asked is, What place has it, and what
power belongs to it ? you come to the spot where the
danger about it first arises. You come substantially

196 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
to the place to which Dr. Briggs came when asked
what reason's function is in religious matters. And I
think among fair-minded men the answer which satis
fies us respecting the function of the reason ought to
satisfy us with respect to the Christian consciousness,
so-called. It has a place among the sources of religious
conviction. But, under the necessities of the case, it
is a subordinate place. It can speak corroboratively
of the things of which revelation distinctly tells ; and
this is, indeed, its most frequent utterance, and men
have loved to dwell on this phase of its affirmations
in all ages, as affording an interesting confirmation of
the truth of the written Word. It can speak with less
assurance, certainly, but still with a voice deserv
ing attention, in the silences of Scripture ; telling,
when revelation does not speak at all, what seems to
be accordant with the general trend of the Gospel on
any point considered. But it cannot contradict the
clearly revealed truth of God in Scripture. It has not
authority, and it ought not to be supposed to have, to
deny what inspiration has declared. Consciousness can
never surpass in its prerogative that Word of truth by
whose aid it is mainly that such a thing as Christian
consciousness has ever come to be at all. If any one
sets up this judge as one of co-ordinate and equal power
with the authentic Scriptures of divine truth, I, for one,
part company with him at that point. The divine
Word is the arbiter and final authority.
Yet simply because a man refers, even in infelici
tous terms, to Christian consciousness as a source of
Christian light, I do not find reason for denouncing
him as a heretic or an opponent of the Gospel. The
thing he may mean, — let us be fair, — the thing he

SERMONS. 197
probably does mean, is a real thing. In certain of its
manifestations we, and all the most orthodox of our
progenitors, have rejoiced always. The point to be
determined is, does he hold the idea in an exaggerated
way incompatible with the authority which must belong
of course supremely to any veritable "Thus saith the
Lord " ? If he does, why then we can have no fellow
ship with that error. Our roads must needs separate
at that point. But up to that point we can go in com
panionship ; and it is not kind or Christian to accuse
him of going beyond that point without clear evidence.
The probabilities are that the things he holds are the
things you hold on this matter; just as Dr. Briggs
and his Presbytery found themselves, on the question
of the place of reason in religion, nearer together than
some had suspected.
While, therefore, I think it is important, — ¦ and now,
because of the larger hearing given than sometimes
before to what Christian consciousness says, especially
important, — to emphasize the supreme authority in
religious things of the Word of God ; I still think it
equally important not to forget also the lessons which are
conveyed in such a saying of Christ's as we have been
considering to-day, " Why even of yourselves judge ye
not what is right?" Surely the instruction of the
Holy Spirit promised to the Church of God to " guide
into all truth " has not been eighteen hundred years in
vain ! Surely there ought to be an agreement of
Christian experience and a consensus of Christian
judgment on some points as the result of that tutelage
and guidance. And it is pleasant and impressive to
consider, both in our individual capacities and in our
collective associations, that the nearer we come to the

19S

REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.

Master, and the closer our fellowship is with Him, the
more likely it will be that our convictions will be true
and our conjectures, even in points not clearly revealed,
will be harmonious with the mind of Christ. It was
not any mere man who said it ; it was the Master Him
self who declared, " If any man will do His will, he
shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God."
May that good Spirit of light and truth guide us
into all truth ; keep us from all error ; open our hearts
to the reception of "every Scripture inspired of God";
nor leave us insensitive, either, to those less visible
and unrecorded suggestions of that " Spirit " which
"searcheth all things," the result whereof, on apostolic
testimony, is that " he that is spiritual judgeth all
things."

SERMONS. 199

XII.
FROM SCROOBY TO PLYMOUTH.*
Psalm cvn: 1, 2, 4, 5, 8.
[As quoted from Governor Bradford's History.]
" Let them therfore praise y° Lord, because he is good, & his
mercies endure for ever. Yea, let them which have been
redeemed of y" Lord, shew how he hath delivered them from
y° hand of y8 oppressour. When they wandered in ye des-
erte willdernes out of y" way, and found no citie to dwell in,
both hungrie, & thirstie, their sowle was overwhelmed in
them. Let them confess before y Lord his loving kindnes,
and his wonderfull works before ye sons of men."
This Sunday falls upon a memorable anniversary.
Two hundred and seventy years ago to-day some of
the sea-buffeted voyagers of a little ship which four
months and six days before had left the harbor of
Southampton in old England, set foot on the shore of
the harbor of Plymouth in New England. Boughs of
evergreen and running vines of prince's pine were visi
ble to their eyes, sick with sight of Atlantic waves,
as they are visible to our eyes to-day. f But under
how different conditions of visibility ! Very likely they
would not have approved these decorations we see
about us this morning. They would have been re-

* Preached December 21, 1890.
f The church was decorated for Christmas.

200 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
minded of experiences which gave them a right to their
opinions. If altered conditions of life make the thing
pleasant to us, which would have been in their day ob
noxious to them, let us remember it is mainly because
of their sturdy adherence to their convictions that it is
safe for us to indulge our tastes.
I intend, in memory of those good men and women
of two hundred and seventy years ago, to tell this
morning, as briefly as I can, the simple story of what
brought them on that December day to the barren
shores of Plymouth, and how they fared on the journey
and afterward. I do this, not for the benefit of the elders
of this congregation, who presumably have the story
in mind, but I remember that we have a good many
young people growing up among us ; and that young
people's time is taken up with a thousand matters, —
school, and amusements, and the numberless books of
current literature and travel, — and so I think it may
be well on this anniversary day to recall a little while
an event which had so much to do with the interests
of Christ's kingdom in this Western world ; and so
much also to do with making us what we personally
are who are gathered here to-day.
When James the First came to the throne of Eng
land, on the death of Queen Elizabeth, in 1603, a good
many Christian people in that country who had been
oppressed by the legislation enacted under Elizabeth to
secure uniformity in the Established, that is to say, the
Episcopal Church, hoped for a while that some relief
would be accorded to those whose consciences dis
sented from that way of worship, and especially from
what they regarded as the Papistic ceremonies con
nected with it. Jg.mes at home in Scotland was a

SERMONS. 201
Presbyterian; so that they thought that there was a
fair likelihood that dissenters from the Episcopal way
would at least be tolerated. But they were disap
pointed. James was a learned, conceited, pragmatic,
obstinate man, who thought himself a great theologian,
and whose head was turned by the sudden accession to
him of kingly power, not over the little and poor king
dom of Scotland, where he had for a considerable time
more or less comfortably ruled, but over the rich and
great kingdom of England. A request was made to
him, on his journey up from Edinburgh to London,
approved by above eight hundred ministers, and pre
sented by a distinguished company of Puritan scholars,
that a little more liberty in methods of worship might
be allowed. They were met only with taunts and offen
sive lecturings ; the king winding up the conference
with the command to "awaie with their snyvelings,"
and a declaration that he would " make them conform
or harrie them out of the land, or worse." Among
the people against whom these threats were uttered
were some of the chiefest men of piety and learning
in the whole country. There were masters of col
leges, ministers occupying some of the foremost pul
pits of the kingdom, learned and honorable laymen
in various professions and walks of business.
It is doubtful whether, in the consideration of these
more prominent dissenters from the requirements of
uniformity in worship, any very public attention was
turned to a little company of people up in the north
erly part of England near the junction of the counties
of York, Nottingham, and Lincoln, who had come to
adopt what we now call the Congregational way of
church fellowship and worship. They lived in various

202 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
little villages in that region, but held most of their
public services in the hall of an old manor-house, since
destroyed, at the little hamlet of Scrooby, about forty
miles west from the seaport town of Boston in Lin
colnshire. Belonging to this company were the two
ministers, Richard Clyfton and John Robinson. Wil
liam Brewster, who was postmaster at Scrooby, was
ruling elder of the church ; George Morton and young
William Bradford, afterward to be the chroniclers of
the enterprise, and the second of them Governor of the
Plymouth Colony, were with them.
The people had to come to the place of worship in
the old and somewhat dilapidated manor-house, leased
by Brewster, the postmaster, from a wide section of
country scattered around, where they were entertained
by him "at his greate charge." But neither the ob
scurity of the place nor the semi-official protection ac
corded them awhile by the postmaster could long hide
them from the persecution which had been determined
on against all Separatists from the Established Church.
So, in 1607, after being, as their historian, Bradford,
says, "hunted & persecuted on every side," and some
"taken & clapt up in prison," while others "had their
houses besett & wacht night and day," they concluded
to try to get out of the country to Holland. In their
first attempt to do so they were unsuccessful. The
captain of the ship which took them and their goods
aboard at old Boston betrayed them to the authorities,
who hurried them, as Bradford says, back to the shore,
and " rifled & ransaked them, searching them to their
shirts for money, yea even ye women furder then be
came modestie ; and then caried them back into ye
towne, & made them a spectackle & wonder to ye mul-

SERMONS. 203
titude." After a month's imprisonment most of them
were dismissed, but Brewster, Bradford, and five oth
ers were confined some time longer.
Their second attempt, in the spring of 1608, was
hardly better. The Dutch skipper who had been en
gaged to meet them at a secluded point of the coast to
take them to Holland was late in keeping his appoint
ment, and when only one large boat load had been got
aboard, was alarmed at the appearance of officers on
the shore, and straightway set sail with those he had,
leaving the distracted remainder — husbands separated
from wives, children from parents, in many cases
moneyless and clothingless — on Grimsby Beach, be
hind him. A better endeavor was made, however, in
August, and the conclusion of the year 1608 saw the
broken families and sundered congregation for the
most part reunited in Amsterdam. Here, as Bradford
says, "they heard a strange & uncouth language, and
beheld y" differente mafiers & customes of ye people,
with their strange fashons and attires ; all so farre dif
fering from y* of their plaine countrie villages, . . .
as it seemed they were come into a new world. But
these were not ye things they much looked on, or long
tooke up their thoughts ; for they had other work in
hand, & another kind of warr to wage & maintaine.
For though they saw faire & bewtifull cities, flowing
with abundance of all sorts of welth & riches, yet it
was not longe before they saw the grime & grisly face
of povertie coming upon them like an armed man, with
whom they must bukle & incounter, and from whom
they could not flye."
Finding their situation at Amsterdam for various
reasons undesirable, they moved next year — 1609 —

204 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
to Leyden ; where, in reply to their request for the
privilege of residence, they were answered by the
burghermasters that all " honest folks " were allowed
to live, on condition of submission to the " laws and
ordinances." Scattered at this time through Holland
were other English-congregations. But most of these
other congregations were not, like themselves, Sepa
ratists or Independents. They were Presbyterian,
either of the English or Scotch variety, and so were
in ecclesiastical fellowship with the Holland Presby
terian churches of that order. Hence these Presby
terian churches met a very different reception in
Holland from the authorities than did the Scrooby
company of Congregationalists. The Presbyterians
were accorded places of public worship ; their pastors
were generally admitted i to the privileges of the
universities ; in many instances aid was granted to
the exiled congregations from the public treasury.
The Separatist Church, under Robinson, fared far
differently. There is no evidence that any public
recognition was ever given them as a body during the
nearly twelve years of their residence there. They
worshiped in their own houses ; mainly in the house of
John Robinson, their pastor. It is true that after the
strife between the Calvinistic party and the Arminian
party in the Dutch churches themselves had got hot
and tempestuous, and Mr. Robinson had openly taken
the Calvinistic side in a public debate, he was tardily
— about six years after the beginning of his residence
in the city — admitted to the privileges of the uni
versity ; and that several years after the main body of
his Church had left for America he had the privilege of
being buried, at his own charges, in St. Peter's Church

SERMONS. 205
in that city. ^ But the^fear of offending King James
prevented any public recognition of the Separatist
Church by the Netherland authorities, even had they
been inclined otherwise to recognize them, of which
there is no evidence.
The sometimes boasted toleration existent in Holland
at that time was not the voluntary allowance of diverse
opinions in religious matters which we understand by
that word ; it was a suspension of hostilities between
sect and sect to a certain extent, and on the part of
the government against any one sect ; partly in a
canny view of the economic advantages of such sus
pended hostilities at a time when Holland needed the
full strength of all its inhabitants ; but mainly by the
pressure of a national fear of Spain, against whose
asserted and long fought-for supremacy over the
Netherlands all parties, — Catholics, Protestants, and
sects of all kinds, — were ready to combine.
Here, at Leyden, working at " such trads & imploy -
ments as they best could " ; living peaceably among
themselves ; growing old as to their leaders, and seeing
a new generation rising up amid the temptations of a
strange land, which never could be a home, the
Scrooby company lived between eleven and twelve
years. Slowly but strongly the conviction grew in
them that this could not last. They were, for the
most part, poor, hard-worked, and hopeless as to the
future of any prosperity for themselves or for the
cause they represented in that land. So a consider
able part of them determined to emigrate to Amer
ica, — that new, strange country which was then
attracting the wondering interest of so many.
They knew something of the hardships of the under-

206 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
taking. As their historian, Bradford, says, they
knew " they should be liable to famine, and nakednes,
& ye wante, in a maner, of all things. . . . And
also those which should escape or overcome these
difficulties, should yett be in continuall danger of y"
salvage people, who are cruell, barbarous, & moste
trecherous . . . not being contente only to kill,
& take away life, but delight to tormente men in ye
most bloodie maner that may be ; fleaing some alive
with y* shells of fishes; cutting of ye members & joynts
of others by peesmeale and broiling on ye coles, eate ye
collops of their flesh in their sight while they live,
with other cruelties horrible to be related." How
ever, none of these things moved them, and they
made up their minds to go. They offered to go to
the Dutch American settlements if they could be
assured of protection, but the Dutch declined.
Ultimately they made arrangements with a company
called " The Adventurers," holding a tract of land to
be selected by the planters somewhere in the vicinity
of the mouth of the Hudson.
In July, 1620, therefore; the Leyden congregation
held a fast, and had religious ceremonies in view of the
great event which was to witness the separation of one
part from another among them, and the setting out on
the long and perilous undertaking. It was probably
in the long summer evening of the same day that both
sections of the company were towed down the canal to
Delfthaven, fourteen miles away, where the Speedwell,
a little sixty-ton pinnace, was lying to take them
across to Southampton in England. The next morn
ing saw a fair wind pulling at the already loosened
Speedzvell's sails, and on the wharf beside her some-

SERMONS.

207

what over two hundred men, women, and children,
some to go, and some to stay, but all bound together
by the experiences of exile in a strange land, and of
faith in the same way of religious living for which they
had left one home, and were, most of them, about to
seek another. They kissed each other, and the pastor
prayed with them, and so tender was their parting that
even the Dutch wharf-loungers, who could not under
stand their speech, were moved to tears at sight of
their pathetic farewells.
They soon, and without special event, got across to
Southampton. Here was lying the Mayflower, a vessel
of about one and twenty tons, present mode of measure
ment, — -not half as large as some of the coal schooners
which come occasionally to our Hartford wharves, —
getting ready for the Atlantic voyage. The crowded
decks and cabins of the little Speedwell were relieved
of the majority of their passengers. Ninety were
assigned to the Mayflower, and thirty remained on the
smaller vessel. But they had difficulties about getting
away. Thomas Weston, the manager of the " Advent
urers' Company," not himself a Pilgrim, or even an
honest man, quarreled with them about the terms of
their agreement, which he had connived to have altered
without their assent, so that they had to pay the port
charges of the vessels, and to do so had to sell a part
of their provisions to meet the unlooked-for expense.
The money being however at last raised, on the 15th
of August the two vessels dropped down the tide at
Southampton, and, putting out against head winds,
which promised soon to be stormy, set sail for the
New World. But four clays out the master of the
Speedivell reported his little vessel to be leaking badly.

208 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
So both vessels bore up and entered Dartmouth harbor.
Here ten days were spent in discharging and relading
the Speedwell, and in examining her from stem to
stern, though no considerable occasion for the master's
allegations were found.
Once more the vessels started out in company.
Land's End had been sunk out of sight three hundred
miles behind them, when the Speedwell again signaled
her consort that she was in an almost sinking condi
tion. Again the disappointed voyagers put about, and
this time ran into Plymouth, on the southwest corner
of Devonshire. Here once more the Speedwell was
overhauled, but though no sufficient cause of appre
hension was found, the master and crew so strenuously
insisted on the vessel's unseaworthiness that it was
concluded to send her back to London. So her passen
gers were divided, — twelve joining the ninety already
aboard the Mayflower, and eighteen giving up the
enterprise. Bradford alleges that this complaint of
the Speedwell's unseaworthiness was a "stratagem"
of the master of the vessel. The ship was probably
somewhat strained by being over-masted. But its
master and crew had grown fearful over the prospect
of remaining the year, for which their contract called,
across the Atlantic. And it is not surprising, also,
that the courage of a few of the emigrants themselves
proved inadequate to further trials.
However, a third start was made, — this time Septem
ber 1 6th, — the Mayflozver riding over the waters alone.
But much time had been lost, and the equinoctial gales
had come. In one of these storms " one of the maine
beames in ye midd ships was bowed & craked, which
put them in some fear that y" shipe could not be able

SERMONS. 209
to performe yB vioage." They had to lie-to for days,
unable to carry sail. However, by the aid of a great
jack-screw, which some good carpenter of the Leyden
company had put aboard for its expected usefulness in
the new country, the big beam was straightened up
and supported by braces, and with quieter seas the
vessel was put on her devious course again. I cannot
pause to enlarge on the various experiences of the
crowded, weather-beaten company of men, women, and
little children in that long and stormy passage. One
"proud & very profane yonge man, one of y" sea-men,"
who, as Bradford says, " would allway be contemning
y poore people in their sicknes, & cursing them,"
and telling them " that he hoped to help to cast halfe
of them over board before they came to their jurneys
end," was himself struck with a "greeveous disease"
and " dyed in a desperate maner, and so was him selfe
ye first y* was throwne overbord." One of their own
company also succumbed to the hardships of the voy
age and was buried at sea. But at last, on the morn
ing of the sixty-fifth day after their third and last start
from the English shore, they caught welcome sight of
land, but not the land to which they were expecting to
go. Instead of being in the vicinity of Hudson River,
they found themselves off Cape Cod. The captain
stood off to sea again, about half a day, but managed
to fall " amongst deangerous shoulds and roring break
ers," so that they " thought them selves hapy to gett
out of those dangers " and back next day into " ye
Cape-harbor where they ridd in saftie." Here, then,
just inside the protecting finger of the Cape, the com
ing of November 21st found the vessel at anchor in
comparative safety.
14

2io REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
But here was a political dilemma as grave, almost,
as the physical ones they had before encountered.
The "Adventurers' Company," under whose auspices
they had nominally sailed, claimed some sort of right
under the Virginia patent. Now, landing up here to
the north of latitude 41", they stood on no definite
grant whatever, and outside of all established authority.
Yet they were equal to the emergency. They were
not law-breakers or freebooters and did not intend to
dispense with justice or rule. The adult male mem
bers of the company were assembled into the cabin and
the state of the case explained. As a result of the
conference the following document was drawn up and
signed : —
" In y" name of God, Amen. We whose names are under
writer the loyall subjects of our dread soveraigne Lord, King
James, by y" grace of God, of Great Britairie, Franc, & Ireland
king, defender of ye faith, &c. haveing undertaken, for y" glorie
of God, and advancemente of y8 Christian faith, and honour of
our king & countrie, a voyage to plant y° first colonie in y>
Northerne parts of Virginia, doe by these presents solemnly &
mutualy in y" presence of God, and one of another, covenant &
combine our selves togeather into a civill body politick, for our
better ordering & preservation & furtherance of ye ends afore
said ; and by vertue hearof to enacte, constitute, and frame such
just & equall lawes, ordinances, acts, constitutions, & offices,
from time to time, as shall be thought most meete & convenient
for y" generall good of y" Colonie, unto which we promise all
due submission and obedience."
This document was apparently signed by forty-one
names, the first six of which seem to have been John
Carver, — the governor of the new little commonwealth,
— William Bradford, Edward Winslow, William Brew
ster, Isaac Allerton, Myles Standish, and John Alden.

SERMONS. 211
Thus in an hour the Pilgrim company had become a
government. But the sandy point of Cape Cod was
no place for a colony. The next thirty of the shorten
ing wintry days were employed by the leaders of the
band in exploring in the little shallop brought by them
on the Mayflower, the Cape and the region of the main
land across the bay for a proper place for a settlement.
The explorers met in these expeditions many curious
adventures, and encountered many hardships. They
saw several groups of Indians, and had an encounter
with one of them, as the result of which they gathered
up quite a sheaf of arrows, but fortunately no one was
killed on either side. They discovered an Indian
mound with baskets of corn of different colors — yel
low, red, and blue — a part of which they took and
conscientiously paid for to the owner's entire satisfac
tion afterward, which was of inestimable value to them
the following spring when they came to plant their
crops. They found and entered some Indian dwellings,
temporarily deserted by their owners, and described
the contents. William Bradford, afterward the Gov
ernor and historian, got caught by the leg in a deer-
snare, but escaped without injury.
But I have not time to follow in detail the story of
the three expeditions of the little shallop in those short
and sometimes stormy days of late November and the
greater part of December. It must suffice to say that
a suitable place, in their opinion, being at last discov
ered, on Monday, December 21st, the shortest day of
the year, they sounded Plymouth harbor, " and founde
it," as Bradford says, "fitt for shipping; and marched
into ye land, & found diverse cornfeilds, & litle runing
brooks, a place (as they supposed) fitt for situation ;

212 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
at least it was ye best they could find, and ye season,
& their presente necessitie, made them glad to accepte
of it. So they returned to their shipp againe with this
news to y" rest of their people, which did much com-
forte their harts." This 21st day of December then,
the short winter-solstice day of the year, when the
Pilgrims explored Plymouth harbor and determined on
the site of their habitation there, is called the Landing
Day. It was not, however, till four days later that
the Mayflower sailed from what is now known as
Provincetown to the new harbor ; while it was not till
eight days later, on December 31st, that by formal
vote they determined to make Plymouth harbor their
home. Two days after that they set to work, as Brad
ford says, to " erecte ye first house for comone use to
receive them and their goods."
I cannot follow in further detail the story of the
settlement of the little colony on that bleak coast, in
the middle of winter, or of the terrible mortality which,
before the following autumn, had exactly halved the
little company. With April's coming the settlement
of the living by the town brook-side nearly equaled
the settlement of the dead hidden away on Cole's Hill.
Nor can I trace the subsequent story of the next few
years of continued struggle and varying fortunes in the
Plymouth colony. No sadder, no prouder, no more
pathetic or nobler story is written anywhere in history
than the story of the coming and the early experiences
of the Leyden Pilgrims to these inhospitable shores.
For various reasons, — mainly on account of the rela
tive inferiority of their numbers and the comparative
disadvantageousness of their geographical situation, —
the Plymouth colony played a comparatively incon-

SERMONS.

213

spicuous part in later New England history, when
measured by the Massachusetts Bay colony, which
came nine or ten years later and made its central
settlement at Boston. The larger numbers and greater
commercial advantages of this latter colony left the
Plymouth company in a manner side-tracked and out
of the line of main New England progress. But the
principles of the Pilgrim colony had nevertheless a
curious victory over those of the Bay. The Bay set
tlers were for the most part Puritans, not Separatists ;
— that is, they wished to purify the Episcopal Church
in which they had been brought up, and did not care
to separate from it. They did not, most of them at
least, intend to separate from it, — only from some of
its faults, — when they came over. But being over
here, and coming in contact with the leaders of the
Separatist Plymouth colony, who had been nine or ten
years on the ground, they adopted their principles,
and in the organization of the Salem and Charlestown
and Watertown Churches accepted their example and
subscribed to what was known as the Plymouth Way.
This fixed the pattern for all New England, practically,
for the next hundred years. A single Episcopal
Church was, indeed, organized in Boston in 1686, and
a few others slowly followed, here and there. But the
current of religious history was set for all New Eng
land into Congregational channels, and that current
was directed into those channels by the Separatist
fathers of Plymouth colony. Though that colony as a
political power waned and faded beside the growing
strength of the Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New
Haven colonies, as a religious power it stamped
its impress on them all ; and the Congregational

214 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
Churches of New England to-day, — nay the forty-six
hundred and eighty-nine Congregational Churches of
our whole land, from Plymouth Rock to California's
Golden Gate, as given in our last official returns, a
number, however, which every month sees increasing,
— stand a monument to the principles brought over in
the Mayflower to Plymouth, rather than to those which
came in the Talbot to Salem, or the Arbella to Boston.
The Scrooby exiles and the Leyden patient suffer
ers have had their vindication at the hands of impartial
history. The Congregationalist polity of our whole
land is their memorial. Baptized with the blood of
Coppin and Thacker and Penry and Greenwood and
Barrowe, its earliest martyrs ; consecrated by the faith
and sufferings of the twelve years of Holland hardship,
and lifted into all the world's view by the heroism of
the Plymouth forefathers' desperate enterprise and
self-sacrificing sufferings, it abides the hard-won trophy
of religious liberty and of the right of the people in
spiritual things. Into that liberty we have been born ;
but those who purchased it for us did it at how great
a cost. Shame on any descendant of the Plymouth
stock who forgets his father's sacrifice. Let us who
have entered into their labors estimate aright our debt
of gratitude to their memories. O, wind-swept burial-
hill of rocky Plymouth by this December sea, sacredly
guard the hallowed dust of those to whom we owe so
great a debt ! O, living men and women, youth and
maidens, forget not I pray you the exiles of Leyden
and the storm-tossed voyagers of the Mayflower who
did so much to make life to you what it is to-day ! O,
Son of Man, whom this Christmas season celebrates,
makes us in our time and place as faithful to conscience

SERMONS. 215
and to Thee as they were who, on the bleak coast of
this wild, strange land, stood two hundred and seventy
years ago, shivering and homeless, but true to God, to
their convictions, and to the Christ who was born for
our salvation in the manger at Bethlehem.

2l6 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.

XIII.
THE BREADTH, AND LENGTH, AND DEPTH,
AND HEIGHT.*
Ephesians iii: 17, 18, 19.
That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to com
prehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and
depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ which
passeth knowledge.
The most eminent of living theologians of New
England has remarked that if Jonathan Edwards had
not been the foremost of dogmatic divines he might
have been the foremost of imaginative poets. And
certainly there are in the midst of Edwards's argu
mentative pages passages, — sometimes of tender, al
most fanciful grace, and sometimes of gloomy and
Dantesque grandeur, — which go far to justify this es
timate of him. In a similar way we may speak of the
apostle Paul. If he had not been the foremost of Bib
lical logicians he might have been, — nay, we may bet
ter say, he was, — the foremost of Biblical rhapsodists.
For the truth is he was both. He was at once a great
reasoner and a great mystic. A large part of his writ
ing is cast in the moulds of a rigid argumentation ; but
every little while his fervid imagination and intense

* Preached on April 29, 16

SERMONS. 217
emotion burst all logical fetters and overflow in strains
of poetry, and even of fantasy. He loses sight of the
requirements of grammatical correctness. He does
not pause to complete his sentences. He goes off from
the track of a half-uttered thought, struck by the strong
impulse of a new conception suddenly rising upon him.
He takes you on the stream of his impassioned feeling
into regions where words are too inadequate to express
his idea, and stands himself, and leaves you to stand,
where he and you can only wonder and adore.
A good illustration of this trait is the passage from
which I have taken the text. This whole epistle to
the Ephesians is written in a strain of unwonted fervor
on Paul's part. It has a great many illustrations of
those characteristics of Paul's mind and manner of
which I have spoken. But this passage, from the third
chapter, beginning with the fourteenth verse, is a quite
conspicuous ¦ example of the kind. Read it again.
" For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ ; of whom the whole family in
heaven and earth is named " — see how the thought of
God's fatherhood of Jesus Christ sets him off into a
declaration of His universal fatherhood in earth and
heaven alike — "that He would grant you according
to the riches of His glory " — not, observe, the riches
of His power or the riches of His -wisdom, but the wide,
sounding, undefining measure, "the riches of His
glory" — whatever that may mean ; "to be strength
ened with might by His Spirit in the inner man ; that
Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith ; that ye,
being rooted " — like a tree — " and grounded " — like
a building — "in love, may be able to comprehend with
all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth,

2i8 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
and height," — the breadth and length and depth and
height of what ? He does not distinctly say what.
He leaves the clause unfinished. He may mean, at
least in part, what he calls the divine "mystery" un
known to the sons of men in other ages that God in
cludes the Gentiles in the plans of grace, of which he
had just been speaking in the fifth and sixth verses of
the chapter ; or he may more probably merge the
thought of that " mystery " in the still wider one of
which he speaks in the ninth and tenth verses, which
he declares had from the " beginning of the world been
hid in God " ; a mystery of the whole creation's rela
tion to Jesus Christ; a mystery which "principalities
and powers in heavenly places " were studying into,
and whose vast reaches of grace and glory were being
illustrated in the history of the ransomed Church.
This is what he hints, yet he does not complete the
clause ; but straightway moves on in his prayer that
his Ephesian friends might comprehend the length and
breadth and depth and height, and " know the love of
Christ" — concerning which love, however, he imme
diately asseverates that it "passeth knowledge" ; that
is, if we take the words literally, he prays that they
may know the unknowable ; and furthermore, as if this
were not hyperbole enough, "that ye may be filled " —
poor, ignorant, sinful Ephesian disciples might be
"filled" — bold, nay, impossible, though the concep
tion be — "be filled with all the fullness of God."
Now, it is very plain that language like this is not
to be held to the rigid terms with which you interpret
a sum in arithmetic, or a physician's prescription in
medicine. Great violence has been done to many pas
sages of Scripture by subjecting them to the hydraulic

SERMONS. 219
pressure of mere logic and grammar. Very considera
ble edifices of doctrine have been built up, like inverted
pyramids, on the small foundation of some one or two
proof-texts ; and these very possibly wrested from
proper connections, or occurring in the midst of some
impassioned and poetic bursts of prophecy or of
song. " In sin did my mother conceive me," for example.
How that fervid, imaginative saying of humbled and re
pentant David has been treated as a grave didactic state
ment of pre-natal sinfulness, in support of the Augus-
tinian view of original depravity! ' Augustine's view
may or may not be true ; but it is a wresting of Scrip
ture to quote David's prayer as a proof of it. The wise
and right way to deal with such a passage as David's
contrite utterance, or with this magnificent emotional
outburst of the apostle whose words we are consider
ing, is to throw ourselves into the current of the emo
tion to which they attempt to give expression ; to yield
to the strong impulse which throbs in the writer's
speech, and let him bear us, or rather let the Spirit
which speaks through him bear us, whithersoever he
will. If we do so, we shall often find our hearts mightily
stirred within us by the fervor of an ancient devotion
which kindles an answering emotion in our own breasts ;
and we shall sometimes be led to even wider concep
tions of the manifold wisdom and grace of God than
could possibly have been in the mind of psalmist,
prophet, or apostle who first spoke the words. This
wonderful saying of Paul's, for example, a small por
tion of which is our text to-day, if we give ourselves
to its leadership, behold to what reaches of apostolic,

220 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
and even more than apostolic, conception of God's gra
cious purposes it leads us on !
"That ye may be able to comprehend the breadth,"
says Paul. The vision Paul had of God's saving plans
for men was indeed a wide one. Not merely had he,
more than any one else of his day, discerned how the
whole story of God's dealings with Israel, — the expe
riences of the patriarchs, the legislation of Moses, the
sacrificial system of the priesthood, the teachings of
psalmists and prophets, — led up to and was fulfilled in
Christ ; but he discerned first of all the apostolic com
pany, and clearer than any other of them perhaps ever
did, that God's plans comprised not Israel alone, but
reached over boundaries of other languages and races
also. The little hints and suggestions which Isaiah
and Amos and some others of the old prophets and
singers caught of this truth became in Paul's clear eye
a distinct and open vision. He saw it with the dis
tinctness of noonday. Against the advice and remon
strance of his associates on the apostolic board he gave
himself to its guidance. He took his life in his hand
to promulgate the wider view of salvation for Gentiles
also. The " other sheep " not of the Jewish fold he
made it his mission to gather. But not only so.
Wrapped up, as it were, in a divine contemplation, he
saw not only that all men were concerned in the broad
manifestations of God's grace to the world, but that
the thing was so marvelous as to attract the attention
of higher intelligences than man, and that " principal
ities and powers in heavenly places " were wondering
over these manifestations and desiring through them
the better to understand the "manifold wisdom of
God." The vision was indeed an entrancing one. O

SERMONS. 221
the "breadth"! he exclaimed. "That ye may com
prehend the breadth."
Yet it is no irreverence to say that, wide as Paul's
view was, it was but narrow compared with that it is
our privilege to have. Other races and continents
than Paul ever heard of we see are subjects for, and
recipients of, the grace which he wondered over as he
beheld it reaching outside of Judaism to a few Roman
provinces. Lands and peoples sunk out of sight be
yond enveloping seas ; realms and tribes, of which no
conjecture, even, came to minds of voyagers or geog
raphers of old, were included, as we now know, though
even an apostle imagined it not then, in the scope
of the Gospel of Calvary.
Moreover, the number of the human family is a con
stantly increasing number. The population of the
world is computed to have doubled in the last hundred
years. Now, unless we believe in the total loss of all
these outlying and once utterly unknown races of the
human family, we must believe that He who " tasted
death for every man" has had some way of approach
to them in their needs ; has had some way of making
His sacrifice available for many, at least, among them ;
has gathered His "other sheep," is gathering them
still, on broader fields than prophet's eye or apostolic
vision ever looked upon. Furthermore, what was that
universe, as Paul conceived of it, and as it was alone
possible he could conceive of it, which was interested
in the " manifold wisdom of God " as illustrated here ?
It was the heavenly company surrounding this little
dot of earth, then thought central and chief of all the
creations of God, round which, for its benefit, the sun
revolved, the moon trod her nightly circle, and dimmer

222 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
lamps twinkled in remoter distances. Such a world
might well have its guardian intelligences ; angels and
ministrants of light might well wait upon its Creator,
and concern themselves about His doings here. But
to us who only just begin to fathom creation's vast
ness, who know our world to be, as it were, but a spark
among the blazing suns and rolling systems of a space
which every added telescopic power to penetrate shows
only to be more populous and unfathomable, — to us,
I say, what new significance comes in the thought that
what our Saviour is doing here will be of interest to
other solar systems and their multitudinous revolving
spheres, which may, each in its own way, be illustrat
ing some mighty drama of moral government, unlike,
indeed, but analogous to ours, and all destined some
time to display in modes apostles never dreamed, and
which we, even, can only conjecture and surmise, the
manifold wisdom and love of God. If, then, the apos
tle, how much more we, have reason to exclaim, Oh,
the breadth ! That we may comprehend the breadth
of the grace of God, what a prospect and endeavor !
"And the length." Paul loved to trace the develop
ment in history of the revelation of God's grace. He
had, in a high degree, what is called the historic sense.
If, as some suppose, he wrote the epistle to the He
brews, we have in that treatise an elaborate setting
forth, by his pen, of the long, slow, developing process
of the divine purposes in God's education and redemp
tion of men. If he did not write that epistle, we have,
nevertheless, in many another letter incontestably his,
plentiful indications of this habit of his mind to trace
backward to its beginnings, and forward to its end, the
long story of Christianity. Read the fifth chapter of

SERMONS. 223
Romans, or the fifteenth of First Corinthians, or the
fourth of Galatians, and see how accustomed he was
to follow the track of unfolding religious history from
Adam to Abraham, from Abraham to Moses, from
Moses to Christ, from Christ onward to the resurrec
tion and the consummation in the kingdom of God. It
was a grand and awe-enkindling sequence of events.
What a line of august personal characters ; of strik
ing and momentous historical occurrences ; of plain
and indicative divine interposals, marked that long,
evolving drama! Contemplating the persistency and
duration of that purpose which thus reached over gen
erations and epochs, how natural for him to exclaim in
admiration and wonder : O the length of God's plans !
But here, again, the revelations of history and the
discoveries of science have vastly enlarged our concep
tions of the application of such a phrase as the length
of the grace of God. No absolute chronology, meas
uring out the duration of human life upon this world
of ours, is deducible from the Bible. The Bible was
not written for this purpose. And the attempts which
good men have made to shut the record of this earth's
story, or of the story of human life upon it, up into the
more or less definite period of six thousand years can
not be accounted a success. The revelations of geol
ogy, and of ethnology, plainly indicate durations of
time and conditions of human life undescribed, and in
some cases unsuggested, in the narrative of that part
of the story of this world and its inhabitants of which
the Bible tells. But how about those undelineated
periods of human history of which evidence remains to
us in the relics of mound-builders, cave-dwellers, com
panions of mastodons, and extinct races of animal life ;

224 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
pre-occupants, some of them it is believed, of northern
Europe and America before the great glacial epoch of
geologic history ? Take up in the Smithsonian Insti
tute at Washington, or in any of a score of museums
in Europe, one of those rudely-fashioned stone imple
ments with which one of those cave-dwellers beat the
life out of the bear he was killing; broke its bones into
manageable morsels to handle ; rubbed, perhaps, his
firewood into flame ; and knocked out, very probably,
the brains of some one he accounted an enemy. Who
was that far-off wielder of that heavy stone mallet ? A
very low-down sort of man, certainly, but indubitably
a man. But if a man, then a being with some account
abilities ; a being with a soul somewhere inside of him ;
a being with some kind of relations to his Maker ; a
being with some sort of a hereafter ; a being with some
possibilities of gracious guidance. And are you going
to leave him out of all account because he did not know
how to read and write ; because he had never heard of
Abraham or Moses, or the Bible Society or the Sun
day-school ? Do you suppose God leaves him out of
His account ? Forgets him in his nakedness to re
member you in your fine clothes ? Ah ! if He is God,
He does no such thing.
" O the generations old,
Over whom no church-bell tolled ; " —
if God is God, He remembers them, and some way
fairly and divinely deals with them in procedures of
pity and of grace.
Or, look in the other direction. Paul apparently
supposed that the " great day of the Lord," the grand
consummation of the kingdom of God, was not very far

SERMONS. 225
off ; might possibly come in the lifetime of living read
ers of his letters. It is no disparagement of his wis
dom, or even of his inspiration, that he was not ac
quainted with what was really to be the fact, since our
Saviour Himself said, " Of that day and that hour
knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in
heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." So that
when we see that perhaps more than fifteen centuries
longer duration than ever entered into Paul's estimate
have already rolled away ; all freighted full with their
various experiences in the history of the Church and
the lives of individual men ; all bearing minute, com
prehensive, general, and particular tokens of providen
tial and gracious dealings of God in the world ; and the
same story still stretching onward, we know not how
far, we cannot tell how long, before the yet delayed
but certain consummation of the divine plan is fulfilled,
we are lost in an amazement profounder than Paul's
could have been, and can only cry out in an astonish
ment greater than his, Oh, the length, the measure
less length of God's grace among men !
But "the Depth," says the apostle.
In his famous first chapter of his letter to the Ro
mans, Paul paints a lurid picture of the sinfulness of
mankind. He sets forth the moral consequences over
all the earth of the rejection, by men, of the lights of
nature and of conscience. He delineates with graphic
and powerful strokes the blindness of mind, and the
corruptions of the body, to which such forgetfulness of
.the "eternal power and Godhead " naturally leads on.
It is an awful and repulsive portrayal of the results of
that unwillingness to " retain God in their knowledge"
which culminates in the " reprobate mind," whose pos-
15

226 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
sessors he describes as " being filled with all unright
eousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, mali
ciousness ; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malig
nity ; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful,
proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to
parents, without understanding, covenant breakers,
without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful."
Truly a fearful catalogue of moral delinquencies, and
one which requires an amazing downward reach of di
vine grace to get underneath, in order to lift men out
of such a quagmire of sin and uncleanness. Certainly,
in contemplating the adequacy of the heavenly provi
sion made to go down so low in the rescue of men,
Paul had reason to exclaim, Oh, the depth, the wonder
ful depth of the grace of God !
But it is observable that the picture Paul here draws
is a picture of sin, not against grace, but only against na
ture. He is speaking of the consequences of rejecting
that revelation of Himself which God has made, even
in the midst of darkest heathenism, through the crea
tive and providential works of His hands, and in the
sentiment or instinct of righteousness which He has
lodged even in pagan breasts. Now, it is one of the
plainest of moral principles, discovered by reason and
inculcated in Scripture, that the degree of wrong in
any act is not so much measured by the act itself, as
by the light the doer had in the performance of it.
Our Saviour sets this principle forth with the utmost
distinctness, when he speaks of the beating with "few"
or with "many stripes," according as the transgressor
knew or did not know with clearness the Master's will.
The application of this principle to human action con
ducts us to the inevitable conclusion that there are

SERMONS. 227
worse transgressors by far than those the apostle tells
us of in his epistle to the Romans. It is a deeper and
a darker sin to reject the light of revelation than na
ture's comparatively obscure and trembling ray. To
do despite unto the Spirit of grace, and to count the
blood of redemption of nothing worth, is a greater
transgression than for a child of nature, only, to steal, or
murder, or corrupt his body with vice. We are apt to put
a relative emphasis on bodily sins, an emphasis which
the Bible does not. The Scriptures do, indeed, con
demn them, but they condemn still more some spiritual
sins which we are apt to pass over with light reproof.
Pride, envy, ingratitude, unbelief, insensibility to di
vine love, carelessness about the provisions of heavenly
mercy for the help of men ; especially indifference to
a Saviour's work and offers in our behalf, how compar
atively easy our judgment of these things, when meas
ured by what we call sins of the body. Our Saviour
certainly did not judge so. He told certain outwardly
upright and respectable citizens and public instructors
in Jerusalem, that the publicans and harlots of that
city would go into the kingdom of God before them.
So that we who sit in the clear light of the Gospel
day ; we children of parents whose lives were a witness
to the Gospel's saving power ; we who are surrounded
by accumulating tokens of the truth and the infinite
tenderness of the grace of God, rejecting that grace,
or being careless about it, need a depth of mercy in
our behalf far more patient and profound than many a
cannibal father who has eaten his child, or felon who
has swung ' from a gallows-tree. Oh, the depth of
divine grace which we need, my hearers ! How often
and how long have we neglected light, and abused

228 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
privilege ! Charles Wesley was never what is called a
bad man ; but under the light of his opportunities and
his shortcomings he felt compelled to cry :
" Depth of Mercy, can there be
Mercy still reserved for me ?
I have long withstood His grace
Long provoked Him to His face
Would not hearken to His calls ;
Grieved Him by a thousand falls."
And we, if we understand our own needs, and espe
cially if we humbly hope that those needs have been
in some measure supplied by a love of infinite patience
and tenderness covering and forgetting all our sins,
will surely feel that we have like reason to exclaim, Oh,
the depth, the fathomless depth, of the grace of God !
" And the Height," the " Height," once more says
the Apostle.
To what lofty end does all this manifestation of the
love of God toward men lead on ? Paul has himself
spoken most inspiring and uplifting words on this
point. To the Galatian Christians he wrote concern
ing the purpose of this operation of heavenly grace
that its object was to make men "the sons of God."
In his Roman letter he still further elaborated this
thought. " And if children then heirs ; heirs of God,
and joint-heirs with Christ ; " a conception which he
yet more perfectly develops in his first Corinthian
epistle, when he says of the effect of this divine pur
pose, " All things are yours : whether Paul, or Apollos,
or Cephas, or the world, or life or death, or things
present or things to come, all are yours." Or still
more explicitly in the Ephesian letter and in close con
nection with our text : " But God who is rich in

SERMONS.

229

mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even
when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together
with Christ .... and hath raised us up to
gether, and made us sit together in heavenly places in
Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show
the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness
toward us through Christ Jesus." The adoption of
men into divine sonship, with vast and inalienable
privileges as God's children, and the manifestation
through this gracious work of His own character to
the universe, this is the end, as the apostle conceives
of it, of the amazing uplift of the plan of God. No
wonder he cries, Oh, the height !
But it is obvious that in whatever degree our con
ceptions of the greatness of that Being of whom we
are made sons is enlarged, the vastness of that inheri
tance of which heirship is promised is proportionately
increased; and the majesty of that universe to whose
powers and intelligences in heavenly places these
things are to be revealed is widened and exalted. In
the same proportion, also, the wonder rises that God's
grace is so high. Yet, in all these points, we have
light the apostle did not have. God is not only great,
He -is greater with every revolving year. His universe
widens every hour. Heirship in it ; sonship to its
Head, is a privilege it never was before.
" The fathers saw not all of Thee."
New births are in Thy grace ;
Thou God of light, to us reveal
Thy glory's hiding-place."
That prayer is answering every hour. More than
prophets, psalmists, or apostles of old, are we privileged

230 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
to see of the length, the breadth, the depth, the
height of the grace of God.
And now the single word in conclusion comes :
Brethren and sisters, keep this your glorious privilege
and calling in mind ! Let it have its proper effect
upon you. Live under its inspiration and its uplifting
power. Sons and daughters of God Almighty,
remember what are the riches of your inheritance in
Christ ! Let nothing deprive you of the comfort of
its recollection. Suffer nothing lower, more earthly
and trivial, to rival in your affections that which, great
est of all possible privileges in reality, should be great
est and most prized in your estimate of it. Let this
word of inspired exhortation abide with you, exercising
over you its proper stimulating, restraining, uplifting
power : Seeing then that ye look for these things,
"what manner of persons ought ye to be, in all holy
conversation and godliness."

SERMONS.

231

XIV.
THE SEPULCHRE IN THE GARDEN.*
John xix : 41.
"Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden,
and in the garden a new sepulchre."
I cannot believe it was mere fidelity to history which
led John to record that the place of our Saviour's cruci
fixion was in the immediate vicinity of a garden, or
that it was in a garden that He was buried. We can
none of us forget that more than one of the great
events of human sin and human redemption, of which
the burial of Christ was but a part, occurred in a
similar spot.
Biblical history commences in a garden. The open
ing chapter of all this world's experience narrates the
bliss and beauty of Eden. The Scripture record of
God's dealings with men preserves for us the memory
of a morning hour of human life spent amid the de
lights of a rural paradise. But a garden is not the
scene of human history's happy commencement alone.
It is the scene, also, of human nature's fatal temptation
and fall. It was in a garden that sin achieved its first
victory over our race, and that death received its first

* Written in 1863, rewritten in 1889, and preached on Easter
Sunday of that year.

232 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
power. It is to a primeval pleasure-ground, a place of
beauty and of joy, — of which every garden is a kind
of faded memorial, — that we look back to see where
guilt entered and all our woe.
There is, therefore, a kind of fitness, which we can
not think undesigned, in the fact that it is to a similar
spot, also, that we look back for the beginning of the
reversal of all this. Where sin and death gained their
great victory, there, too, they suffered their great
defeat. It was in a garden that Adam was ' tempted
and fell. It was in Gethsemane that Christ agonized
and overcame. It was in Eden that Adam received
the sentence : " Dust thou art, and to dust shalt thou
return." It was in a garden on the hillside of Calvary
that the second Adam rose from the grave " seeing no
corruption." Adam, the first opener of the tomb, dug
the burial place of a race in the garden soil of Paradise :
Christ, the "first fruits" of those who shall forever
live, fell to the ground like a grain of wheat and was
laid in a garden sepulchre. The happiest, saddest,
mightiest scenes of human story are thus disclosed as
having occurred in that spot which is to men a kind of
symbol of what is most beautiful and blest, — a garden.
The narrative which John gives of the crucifixion of
his Master introduces us to the garden-grounds of
Joseph of Arimathea. We know nothing of this man,
save what we learn from the few facts recorded of him
in connection with the burial of Christ. Where he
had met Christ ; whether he was, as seems probable,
one of the Sanhedrin before whom our Lord was
brought ; how far he had previously shown an interest
in the Saviour's person or teachings, — these are ques
tions there are no certain means for deciding. About

SERMONS. 233
all that can be definitely affirmed is that he was rich,
and that he stood in some official relation to the
government. This wealthy and influential man, avail
ing himself of his privilege as a person of station,
gained permission from Pilate to take down the body
of Christ from the cross and to deposit it in a tomb in
his garden, which lay in the immediate vicinity of the
place of crucifixion.
This garden of Joseph's we may reasonably suppose
partook of the characteristic features of such spots
among the Jews. Jewish gardens were often consid
erably remote from their possessors' dwelling-places.
They were not generally, as ours are, connected with
their owners''houses, but were more frequently outside
of the city walls, on some sunny hillside, or in some
spring-moistened valley. Such a spot the rich coun
sellor possessed on the gentle acclivity of a hill lying a
little to the northwest of Jerusalem. It was, probably,
after the usual Hebrew custom, a place made beautiful
by assiduous culture and care. To it, we may imagine,
Joseph and his household were wont to go, — as is still
the manner in Oriental towns, — in the morning hours,
before the sun had left the top of Olivet, or in the
softer light of setting day. It was the household's
pleasure-ground. It was a place set apart for happiness.
There age might lay aside its years, and manhood for
get its cares, and childhood rejoice as on its native
soil. The very end for which its walls were built, its
alleys graded, its borders set with fruit trees and with
flowers, was happiness. For business, the counsellor
could haunt the " dusky purlieus of the law " in some
Temple court or Jerusalem street : even for the routine
of life's common satisfactions a home within the city's

234 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
walls would do ; but for the free unbending of the
heart in its gayer moments, when it cast off business
and routine, the rich man had hedged about a garden
— the very name a sound of pleasure.
But for a place thus set apart for joy the spot had
one feature apparently inharmonious. In Joseph's
garden there was a sepulchre. Close by where flowers
bloomed and ripening figs and apricots blushed ; per
haps even clambered over by the grape and festooned
with its purpling clusters, rose the somber doorway of
a tomb. Whether built by the rich man in anticipation
of a need whereof possibly the slow advancing illness
of some member of his household had forewarned him,
or raised only in view of the grim certainty which lies
before every man of a want some time to be experi
enced which only a hiding-place for the tenantless
body can satisfy, there it stood, in the spot dedicated to
pleasure, a reminder of the hour which puts a period to
earthly joy, a silent but eloquent monitor of mortality.
And though it is said that it was a "new" sepulchre
" wherein was never man yet laid," yet a man of
Joseph's years could not have looked upon it without
being reminded, if not of friends laid there to rest, yet
of them as laid somewhere, gathered in other graves,
hidden from him by doors as massy and darkness as
silent as this "new sepulchre's." To him, therefore,
and his household, there was always in the midst of
the place devoted to happiness a memento of sorrow.
Bright as sun could shine, gay as flowers could blush,
there was, — and it could not be forgotten, — the
sepulchre. But what is thus told us of Joseph and his sepulchre
is not so strange after all. The like is true of almost

SERMONS. 235
every man. In almost all gardens there is a sepulchre.
Let life go with us gently as it may, it is not very long
generally before amid the very scene of our joy there is
some kind of a tomb. Ever since that day in the first
garden when man took of the " tree of knowledge of
good and evil," evil has mingled with all our good. It
was a sad choice for his posterity which the first father
of our race made for us ; but it was made, and we can
none of us escape the inheritance to which we are born.
Henceforth there was for man a bitter in every sweet,
a doubt in every hope, a shadow over every light.
Henceforth perfect happiness or peace were found
nowhere. In every "garden " came a " sepulchre."
These sepulchres in men's gardens are, however,
very diverse in character. In some lives, the sepul
chre is some form of bodily infirmity. The man is
rich, respected, surrounded by friends, but, with all
these things, lacks the common boon of health. And
so the coarse crust is sweeter to the day-laborer than
the dainties of every clime to him, and down is harsher
under his restless head than the bare floor to one who
sweeps the streets. In other lives, the sepulchre is
some form of inward unhappiness ; some memory of
sin or error in the past ; some mischance, bringing un
just suspicion on one's good name ; some anxiety of
the present or dread of the future, is like a tomb in
the garden, a dark spot in all the life.
Or that which imparts the sombre hue to existence
may be the character of a child or of a companion.
This is the discordant or tragic note in the household
joy. Or it may be a veritable sepulchre which is the
sad spot in our lives. Into the happiest of homes the
grim messenger who builds such sepulchres enters. It

236 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
is not absolutely true as our Longfellow says, but it
comes pretty near being true —
" There is no flock, however watched and tended,
But one dead lamb is there ;
There is no' fireside, howsoe'er defended,
But has its vacant chair."
The grave may be but a span long, only big enough
to hide a curly head and dimpled feet, or it may be
wide enough for manhood with hoary hairs to rest in ;
but, soon or late, some such are found in all the gardens
of our lives.
And so many and so hidden, oftentimes, from the
eyes of others are these sepulchres in the garden, that
a man must be either very bold or very foolish who
dares to covet another's lot. It is not always the out
ward aspect of a life which bespeaks it truly. It may
seem an unusually happy life, very honorable, very
enviable, very full of satisfactions ; but its possessor
might unfold another story about it. While you stand
admiring, and wishing such a lot your own, he whom
you look upon may be almost dying with some unsus
pected misery, and, if he would, could tell you a tale
which would warn you from ever envying any man
again till you have seen the sepulchre in his garden.
When the literary public of Great Britain, about the
year 1820, were alternately laughing and crying over
the mingled wit and pathos of the essays of Elia, then
publishing by an anonymous writer, little did the curi
ous public conjecture that those gems of tenderness
and of mirth came forth from the closet of an over
tasked East-India-House clerk, whose chief object in
life was to watch over and keep a home for a maniac

SERMONS. 237
sister, — a sister who had killed their common mother
with her own hand, and who was liable at any moment
to burst out in a similar assault against her brother
and only friend.
Few were they who rightly understood, during the
closing years of Edmund Burke, how much of the soft
ened splendor, the sweet sad majesty of his later elo
quence, was the fruit of the affliction which robbed
England's stateliest orator of his only son, and hid the
great man's heart in that grave from which ambition or
applause could never tempt it again.
Many of the jokes and repartees of Rev. Dr. Strong,
the witty and able pastor of this church, who died
seventy-three years ago, are still current among the
stories of this Hartford town. But nothing which I
have ever heard of him ever let me so much into his
heart as the inquiry he- made at the time of the build
ing of the bridge across the river to the East Hartford
side, as to just where the bridge was located. Why
did he not go and see, do you ask ? Because on one
September evening, his eighteen year old boy, just
graduated from Yale College, returning from a journey,
fell from the ferry-boat and was brought, some time in
the night, a lifeless body to the father's house, just
across this street opposite, and never after that day,
though years had gone, had the father been able to
visit that section of the town which came within sight
of that fatal spot.
In having a sad spot in it, Joseph's pleasure-ground
was not, therefore, an exceptional one. The incongru
ous feature is not unusual, after all. A sepulchre in
the garden is only what is very common in men's
lives.

238 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
But it is time to turn to another aspect of this mat
ter of the sepulchre in Joseph's garden. At first it
seemed strange to find it there. It was an unexpected
fellowship, — flowers and the grave, a pleasure-ground
and a tomb ; but a little reflection showed that the
same fellowship is in almost all lives. We are, there
fore, prepared, perhaps, to discover with less surprise
that the sepulchre in Joseph's garden was the best
thing there was in it. The happiest spot in the whole
ground was just that where was the tomb. Joseph
found it so. It was that spot which did more for him
than all the rest.
Joseph had come, spring after spring, to see the mys
tery of the awakening soil ; he had beheld the rising
of the lily from the mould, and the bursting of the
cerements wrapped about the buds on every bough.
But now it was the place of death which was to
quicken ; the spot set apart for human dust which was
to stir with a more wondrous rising again than ever
his garden knew. A crucified man had been laid three
days before in the tomb of the generous Arimathean.
The new sepulchre had its occupant. No longer a
monitor of mortality to be experienced, it was an in-
folder of death realized. Doubtless, something of a
deeper shadow crept over the garden for Joseph and
his household, now that the tomb had its inhabitant.
If, on that Friday evening, after the crucified man had
been laid in the new sepulchre, we may imagine the
family to have visited their garden-ground, we can well
believe, that though on that 9th of April, the tokens
of a Palestine springtime must have been visible every
where in the enclosure, still the suggestions of the
place must have been to them of death, more than of

SERMONS.

239

life ; dissolution, more than rising again. The sepul
chre never could have seemed so prominent in the
garden before. Never could it have appeared so incon
gruous with the spot.
But on the Sunday afternoon following ? On any
day subsequent to that third morning afterward, when
two angels sitting in the tomb, said : " He is not here,
but is risen " ? What was the place now to Joseph and
his household ? Words cannot tell the alteration of it.
Immeasurable the change for Joseph and all his, which
had come over their pleasure-ground. For him and
them what a book of revelation had been opened there !
To what a new and deeper range of emotion did the
spot now minister ! Problems had been there answered
over which their hearts and all the world's hearts had
ached in vain. The counsellor had prepared the place
to lend life a keener zest ; the event which had now
occurred spoke not of life but of immortality. He had
been wont to go thither to lay aside something of this
world's fret and weariness ; when now he went, it was
to behold a spot on which had been disclosed another
world's reality and blessedness. The sepulchre had
been once a reminder, filling him with pensive thoughts
of the hour when pleasure and business should alike be
over ; it spoke to him now of a time, when, in a better
world, every noble activity should be resumed. He
may have paused sometimes, in days gone by, beside
the tomb he had built for his last sleep, and have
asked himself, "What assurance have I that I shall
not sleep here forever ? " But, after that Sunday
morning, one imagines his step must have quickened
as he came near the spot, where, for him and for all
men, resurrection and life eternal had been brought to

240 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
light. No other nook of his garden had a lesson like
that. The sepulchre had become the garden's joy.
The bed of tulips and lilies was not so beautiful as the
stony niche in which the Son of Man was laid, but
from which he came forth, the " first-fruits " of all who
sleep. And as Joseph came, at last, to need the shelter of
the sepulchre's roof, and the protection of its close-
shut doors, one thinks his aged limbs composed them
selves to a willing rest, and all his mortal flesh re
joiced to lie down in a spot where He who had
" abolished death " and conquered the grave had lain
before him. Surely of all the garden's precincts that
was now the best. It was the hill of hope. It was
the haunt of peace. It was a spot making happier
every day of this life, with a gladness radiating from
the life to come.
Not unlike this is it oftentimes with the sepulchres
in other men's gardens. The careful observer of
God's dealings with men sees, frequently, that these
places of life's sorrow become the centers of life's
best joy. These words written of great, blind Mil
ton, — they might almost have been written by him,—
well express the not uncommon office of the afflictions
of our days :
" I am old and blind ;
Men point at me as smitten by God's frown ;
Afflicted and deserted of my kind,
Yet I am not cast down.
I am weak, yet strong,
I murmur not that I no longer see ;
Poor, old and helpless, I the more belong,
Father supreme, to Thee !

SERMONS.

241

Thy glorious face
Is leaning toward me, and its holy light
Shines in upon my dwelling place,
And there is no more night.
On my bended knee
' I recognize thy purpose clearly shown —
My vision hast thou dimmed that I may see
Thyself alone."
So, under the dark shadow of affliction, many
another soul than Milton's enters into truer communion
with itself than it ever had before. It strikes a juster
balance between life's seemings and life's substances.
It learns how empty and unimportant are many of the
objects, which, in the untroubled hours of existence,
appeared of great concern. It learns the great lesson,
that a garden of pleasure is not all a man wants ; he
wants a resurrection-spot for his soul. He wants a
place this side the grave where the things of the other
side may be seen ; where they may in a manner come
forward into the present, and exert the influence which
rightfully belongs to them. He wants a solemn re
minder that this life is but a small fraction of his
being ; this world ministers but to the smallest of his
needs ; and that the great wants as well as the great
destinies of the soul are otherwhere. These are
facts which are oftener effectually taught us by the
sepulchres in our gardens than by all the rest of our
lives ; and so they become the best part of life to us.
No other part does so much for us ; no other gives in
structions so needed and so profound. We cannot do
without the burial-places in our gardens. They give
us, — what without them we are slow to find, — a place
to unrobe ourselves of earth's vanities, and put on the
16

242 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
garments becoming heirs of immortality. It is not
the tulip-ground and the summer-house in our days
which generally give this ; it is the bereavement and
the sorrow.
Are there those of you, my hearers, in whose gar
dens has never yet been built any kind of sepulchre ?
I do not know whether to rejoice or grieve for you.
It may be you are learning all the lessons such a spot
is designed to teach in some other way. It may be
you are living so humble and faithful a Christian life
that God sees you do not need trouble. If it be so,
the unbroken flow of happiness in your life is an occa
sion for gladness. Happy the man who runs so un
falteringly up the shining way that he needs no spurs
of earthly trial to urge him on ! But if this is not the
case ? Then I do not know whether it would be true
kindness to congratulate you that your life has in it
no considerable sorrow, your garden no tomb. There
is one word of God, and a very gentle word it is too,
which might trouble such a man almost more than any
other word beside : " Whom the Lord loveth he chas-
teneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth."
And as such a person perceives the comparative free
dom from the heavenly chastisement which marks his
days, and discerns, too, that there is nothing in his
superior fidelity to the Lord's service which goes any
way toward lighting up the mysterious problem why it
is that he is exempt, he may well tremble between
these two fears ; the fear that he is one whom the
Lord loveth not, or the fear of those days, which, so
surely as he is beloved, will see the sepulchre in his
garden somewise built.
But many of you, — nay, most of you, my friends,

SERMONS. 243
here to-day, — know full well what it is to have a
sepulchre in the garden of your lives. You know the
shadow that it sheds over all the pleasant alleys and
the bordered paths. You need not be told how it
changes the place for you into something other than it
was. So it did for Joseph. The tenanted sepulchre
darkened all the ground.
But friends, there is another aspect of this matter.
Joseph found another. This Easter Sunday is a
memorial of it. Not a spot in all the enclosure
brought him so enduring joy as the very place which
he had builded for sorrow. And the sepulchre in your
garden may do the same for you. It may be a resur
rection-spot for your soul. Out of the sorrow which
wraps you round, you may rise into a purer and serener
day. The rolling of the " great stone " to the door
may mark the finishing and hiding-away of one por
tion of your Christian life. And the rolling of that
stone away on the third morning may be the com
mencement of a new and more consecrated life. And,
if this be the case, then the sepulchre spot in your
days will be the most blessed of all. Its joy will reach
farther, shine clearer, endure longer, than any belong
ing to the hours when your garden knew no tomb.
Using your sorrow aright it may teach you, as it
has taught many, how to say : —
" O deem not they are blest alone
Whose lives a peaceful tenor keep ;
For God, who pities man, hath shown
A blessing for the eyes that weep."

244 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.

XV.
THE MANY GATES.*
Revelation xxi: 13.
On the east three gates ; on the north three gates; on the south
three gates ; and on the west three gates.
The Scripture story begins in a garden and ends in
a metropolis. It is among the green bowers of Eden
that it commences ; it is within the shining walls of
the crowded " City of God " that it terminates. Two
happy, sinless, unclothed dwellers amid the vines and
flowers and trees and streams of Paradise, are the first
human beings of whom it tells us ; but it shows us, be
fore its record closes, a company " which no man can
number," " clad in white," and thronging the golden
streets of the " New Jerusalem."
Across the wide space from Genesis to the Apoca
lypse, Scripture conducts us in a devious and change
ful pathway. Sometimes the narrative flows forward
clear, consecutive ; marked by dates which we can cal
culate and names with which we are familiar. But
sometimes, also, there are great gaps and vacant spaces
in the story. It begins again, but does not seem to
begin just where it left off. Unrecorded intervals,
undetailed events, unremembered actors, must have

* Written in 1875.

SERMONS. 245
intervened, unnoticed in the meager outline of Biblical
chronicle. Yet, in spite of all imperfection of detail,
it is impossible not to recognize a purpose and a prog
ress. The narrative is fragmentary, it is true, but is a
narrative. The story is of something beginning, grow
ing, perfecting, consummating, after a definite and un
defeated plan. And that something is Humanity. It
is the history of Man, through the dealings of God with
him, of which the Bible is the chronicle.
The passage of which our text is a part brings be
fore us one of the latest scenes of this wonderful story.
It is a delineation of Humanity's perfected state. The
condition of the redeemed and glorified is set forth
under the emblem of a city, — -"the City of God," for
which all previous conditions of man's experience have
been preparing him, and in the complex and perfect
realization of which he will find his ultimate felicity.
For we must not forget, my hearers, that though man's
primitive and innocent condition is set forth in the
idyllic story of Eden with its bowers and solitudes, his
redeemed and perfected state is represented as one of
companionship and exalted society. There is a "City"
of God. The redeemed are not to be set apart from
one another in any solitary paradise, however beauti
ful. They are, rather, to be coordinated into that in
timate and wide-reaching relation to one another, of
which the complex and elaborately developed life of a
city stands, to us, as the completest type. True
enough, indeed, it is, that the idea of a city such as has
been realized by man on earth contains much incom
patible with perfectness. There are sights and sounds
which offend the delicate sense. There are woes and
crimes and squalors which pain the sensitive heart.

246 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that even in our poor
conceptions, colored necessarily by our often sad expe
rience, a great and beautiful city abides our highest
type of matured and perfected society ; ¦ — • a condition
of human existence wherein the greatest number of
welfares can best be secured ; the tastes of most easi
est gratified ; the largest privileges most readily at
tained ; most various activities afforded amplest room.
Now, it is this conception of a city, — a city glorious,
innocent, healthful, perfect, a "City of God," — which
the Scriptures employ to symbolize to us the final con
dition of redeemed Humanity. Hints of this concep
tion are dropped all through the Scriptures, even in
their older portions. Jerusalem the " City of the Great
King " stood an emblem of it to every devout Israelite
of old. When he uttered his prayer, " Who shall as
cend into the hill of the Lord ? or who shall stand in
His holy place ? " his thoughts looked beyond that City
of David to the City of David's King. When Zecha-
riah prophesied, " And the streets of the city shall be
full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof,"
the restored earthly Jerusalem in which he conceived
that pleasant sight was also a figure of Jerusalem to
come. But many and striking as are these intimations in
the Old Testament, they are still more numerous and
explicit in the New. Harmonious with them, nay, in
compatible with any interpretation beside, are those
words of Christ, " In My Father's house are many man
sions." "Many," various, adapted, numerous, as are
the dwellers there. " No continuing city" here, "but
we seek one to come," — that is the delineation, by the
writer to the Hebrews, of the very purpose in life

SERMONS.

247

which dominated the Christians to whom he wrote.
Such, he says, was the faith of the fathers, too.
They " looked for a city which hath foundations " ; and
they looked not in vain. Their fidelity had its reward :
— " God is not ashamed to be called their God," he
says, "And He hath prepared for them a city." This
is not the portion of the fathers of Old Testament his
tory alone. It is that of all the faithful as well. To
all such, wherever they are, he says : " Ye are come
unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God,
the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable com
pany of angels."
Still, undoubtedly frequent and plain as are these
references to a " City " as the type of the ultimate
state of redeemed Humanity, it is to the Apocalypse
that it is reserved most elaborately to delineate and
vividly to emphasize this conception. And how vividly
and elaborately it is done ! This whole twenty-first
chapter of Revelation, opulent and magnificent in its
imagery and language above almost any passage of
Scripture beside, is nothing but a description of this
City of God. And it is a description which does not
content itself with general phrases. It deals with par
ticulars and minute details. How the language labors
to bring its glory before us ! There is not a " City "
only, — but a "great City"; a "holy City"; a City
"lying foursquare," vast, commodious, magnificent.
There is not "awall" only, — emblem to the ancient
mind of security and defense, — but a wall " great and
high," towering upward a " hundred and forty and four
cubits," and built, tier on tier, on foundations of most
precious stones. There are "gates," but not three or
four. "Twelve" of them are there, and each gate

248 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
"one pearl." Streets are there, but they are paved
with "gold." "Light" is there, but it is a glorious
light which no sunset ever dims. Inhabitants are
there, but thousands do not number them, — "nations,"
saved, gather in it, and "kings" "bring their glory
and honor into it." Pure and salubrious, too, is that
City, for " there shall in no wise enter into it anything
that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination
or maketh a lie."
But now, in the midst of this glowing symbolic
delineation, we find a phrase interposed which possibly
we may have passed over almost unnoticed, but which,
rightly considered, is, I think, full of suggestiveness.
From the general consideration of the characteristics
of the heavenly City I shall turn your attention, there
fore, to this special particular. You will find it in the
text : " On the east three gates ; on the north three
gates ; on the south three gates ; and on the west
three gates." We have noticed already that there are
gates, — many of them; many and splendid in their
pearly radiance. But why this mention of the various
ness of their location ? Why this careful particulariza-
tion that they look northward and southward and
eastward and westward, and open on their golden
hinges to every point of the compass ? Perhaps some
suggestions lie only half hidden here worth our more
careful considering.
One such which I will mention is a suggestion as to
the variousness of men's manner of approach to the
heavenly City. The "gates" open in all directions
because an almost infinite variety of travelers, journey
ing from most dissimilar regions, are to be gathered
there. Said our Saviour to His disciples, whose narrow

SERMONS.

249

Jewish conceptions of the possibilities of salvation for
any beside Abraham's offspring needed to be widened,
"Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold."
The Gospel He proclaimed was not for one nation
only, but for the world. And so, too, the New Jeru
salem to which that Gospel points the way must be
accessible to men of all languages and lands. The
gates of it, which we are told are never " shut," open
northward and southward and eastward and westward,
for out of all regions of the inhabited earth some are
continually journeying thither. They come from polar
snows, and they come from equatorial plains. They
wear every garb the sun in all his circuit ever shines
upon. They draw nigh out of countries the most
opposite ; out of climates the most contrasted ; out of
languages the most contrarious.
But it is not this geographical variousness of
approach to the New Jerusalem alone which the four
fold aspect of the heavenly gates suggests to us.
There is a moral variousness still greater than any
geographical one. The people who gather are gathered
not only out of unlike regions, but out of unlike faiths,
ideas, habits, experiences. Those must needs be, in
many respects, very different pathways of approach,
intellectually and morally, which are traversed to the
heavenly City by one who comes thither out of African
ignorance, out of Oriental mysticism, out of Indian
savagery, and out of European refinement. That
Gospel must be an infinitely adaptable one which can
adjust itself to the innumerably diverse conceptions
and wants of men so dissimilar as the Caucasian in his
culture and the Mongolian in his backwardness. And
to gather men so unlike as these, and a hundred other

250 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
types as distinct and opposite, in one heavenly home,
there needs must be a vast variety of approach. The
gates are not too many, nor do they look in too many
ways. Nor are they too numerous if we consider only the
variousness of men's method of approach, even in the
same land and in the very midst of a Christian com
munity. How unlike, after all, are the dwellers who
live door to door in a city like this, or sit side by side
in this sanctuary. What diverse dispositions, inclina
tions, experiences, characters. How dissimilar are the
motives which constantly actuate them ; the arguments
which are likely to have weight with them ; the moral
actions they perform ! And in leading men and women
so variously constituted to the heavenly Jerusalem the
Spirit of God conducts them in most diverse ways.
Here is one who arrives thither through the throes
and agonies of an experience as stormy as that of
Luther or of Paul. He is struck down by a conviction
of sin heavy as that which smote the great Apostle
from his charger on his bloody errand to Damascus.
Here is another whose Christian experience is like that
of Fenelon or John. Almost natural it seemed for this
man, when he heard the words, " Behold the Lamb of
God ! " to turn and follow Him. Here are those on
whom in their journey Zionward the sun always seems
to smile. Their worldly business prospers ; their fami
lies walk unbroken by their side ; health remains stead
fast, and temptations appear never to assail. Others
come, but it is always under a stormy sky. Adversity
breaks their strength. They walk among graves.
They almost reckon their progress by the tombstones
of those they love. More and more alone as they go

SERMONS. 251
forward ; heavier and heavier weighted with suffering
and with care, they arrive at last spent and buffeted,
like a shipwrecked sailor smitten by a thousand seas,
stripped and exhausted at the heavenly refuge. Ah !
the gates are not too many, even for those who are to
go in from this congregation ! Well is it that they open
northward and eastward and southward and westward ;
for various indeed are men's methods of approach.
Another suggestion of this opposite-looking frontage
of the heavenly gates is the unexpectedness of the
arrival of many there. As many of the travelers to
the City were on their way thither they often seemed
to be journeying in different directions. Their path
ways sometimes ran not parallel, but crosswise and
even in contrary courses, according as each was led by
the good Spirit which guided him to one or another of
the opposite gates. And it would not be strange if,
while they thus crossed and traversed one another's
way, doubt should arise and even controversy as to the
probability of one another's arrival.
And this possibility of a misunderstanding and dis
pute we know has arisen. We know true pilgrims
•heavenward have often fallen out by the way. They
have impeached one another's chance of entrance.
They have denied that the road in which some of their
fellow travelers were earnestly going led there at all.
They have insisted that the only entrance w,as the
particular gate that they were going through. How
bitter and melancholy have been the controversies of
those who have all been going heavenward ! Some
times the road insisted on has been the road of a
particular church organization. Only members of that
special fellowship could hope to have any admission to

252 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
«
the New Jerusalem. Salvation out of that church was
impossible. Sometimes the prescribed pathway has
been a particular form of some Christian ordinance.
A pilgrim to Zion must, for example, be perfectly
immersed, or his title to a true baptism in the name of
the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, would be unfavor
ably scrutinized at the heavenly gate. Sometimes a
narrow and local type of Christian experience has been
regarded as the only road ; as when one section of our
New England theologians taught the doctrine that the
only valid evidence of a probability of being saved was
a willingness to be lost.
How reassuring, in view of an almost interminable
catalogue of controversies like these, to remember the
many and the opposite-looking gates of the heavenly
City ! How comforting to know that not one door,
but many doors lead thither !
What a suggestion this affords of the surprises
which will await those who finally enter : the unex
pectedness to multitudes of the arrival of multitudes
beside. Coming in through their different gates, and
meeting on the golden-floored space before the central
throne, how will they in a manner wonder at one
another as being alike there ! Godly Romanists who
on earth would have piously burned equally godly Pro
testants, greeting one another in that common home !
Armirdans and Calvinists, Quakers and Presbyterians,
Puritans and the Anglicans who drove them out, surely
something like a smile will be on some of their faces,
remembering the arguments against one another's
admission which they had sometimes used ! Toplady
and Wesley, — how they fought in their earthly days!
But they will both be there. Erasmus and Luther, —

SERMONS. 253
what bitter words the eager reformer uttered of his
scholastic and temporizing compeer. Yet Erasmus
did a good work, and we trust has entered into a good
reward. Calvin and Servetus, — Calvin conscientiously
furthered that trial which ended in burning Servetus
alive. But yet, notwithstanding that I am myself a
Calvinist, and fully believe that in the doctrinal warfare
he was waging Calvin was in the right, I still see no
sufficient reason to doubt that when the consumed
body of the restless, dogmatic, imprudent Servetus was
reduced to ashes there was one Christian less in the
world, or that up from those poor charred relics of
violence the resurrection morning will bring another
glorified form to meet Calvin's in the New Jerusalem.
Nay, these surprises will perhaps be wider still in
their reach. Out of pagan lands, where tidings of the
Gospel never went, may come sheep of the true fold,
led by ways we know not, and spiritually prepared to
greet the true Light of Life whenever it should arise.
Saved, not indeed without Christ ; but saved through
a working of the Divine Spirit fitting them to the
efficacies of an atonement as yet unknown.
And, — perhaps still harder for us to admit, — there
will be surprises from among ourselves. We shall, if
we ourselves ever enter that City, be astonished to
meet some whom we never expected to see there.
Men whose type of religious life we discredited because
we did not understand it. Some whom we denounced,
perhaps, because they followed not with us, but who
followed God through some one of the City's many
doors ; astonished themselves, perhaps, to find them
selves within.
Surprises, too, doubtless, there will be of another

254 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
kind. Unexpected vacancies of places we thought
certain to be filled. People looked for, but not found.
Men who professed the Gospel, but did not practice
the Gospel ; who said, " Lord, Lord," but never came
within the gate.
A further suggestion of this many-doored approach
to the New Jerusalem of heaven is the moral unity
there is, — notwithstanding much outward variousness,
— in all true pilgrims Zionward. There is, as has
been plainly indicated, a great deal of superficial dis
similarity in men's method of approach to the heavenly
City. Still, the getting there is no accident. It is
not a mere matter of happen so. Men do not stumble
into heaven by chance. They do sometimes fall, un-
considering, on bits of earthly good fortune, — or what
they call so, — into property or reputation or office.
But they do not get into heaven in that way. There
are, underneath whatever variousness of detail, certain
unchangeable identities which mark alike the pro
cedures and the characters of all those who ever
arrive there. There are certain distinct moral traits
which belong to them ; a temper of the spirit, a tone
of the feelings, an aim of the life, which appertains to
every one. So it has been always in the journeyers
Zionward. The eleven men of the Apostolic Company
were most dissimilar men, yet whoever in all Jerusalem
failed to see that they belonged together ? The great
guides of Christian history, how diverse they have
been ! Language has no terms of discrimination which
are not all needed to set forth the unlikeness in occu
pation, speech, and taste, of the leaders of the grand
pilgrim companies of every land and age.
Anthony lives a hermit in the desert. Athanasius

SERMONS. 255
sways the decisions of the Nicene Council and holds
the turbulent bishopric of Alexandria. Ulfilas goes a
missionary to the Goths and invents an alphabet to
give them the Bible. Columba carries the Gospel to
Scotland. Bernhard and Francis and Thomas Aquinas
each labors in his several way to imitate the life of
Christ and to set forth His truth to men. Arnold of
Brescia and John Huss try to purify a corrupted
Church and are burned for their efforts. Luther,
more successful, enters into their labors, and a Refor
mation comes. Laboring in it are men as wide apart
in character and history as Cranmer and Calvin and
Melanchthon and Zwingli. Rough John Knox follows
in this line, and gentle Richard Hooker also. And so
the bright succession runs, down through Pascal and
Milton and Butler and Fenelon and Robinson and
Wesley to Edwards and Payson of our own land and
day. Now here, surely, are great distinctions. But the
unity is greater than the distinctions. So in the
Jerusalem pilgrims it is ever. Unity is a matter of
the heart ; and it lives even against the actions of the
hand. And therefore there are certain moral traits which
make the heavenly journeyers really one. They are
men who while living in the present state are sedu
lously cultivating the characteristic qualities of the
life which is to come. They are men who, going up
and down in this earthly scene, garner up with infinite
relish and care whatever has the likeness of the City
to which they are going. Are purity, righteousness,
benevolence, piety, traits of that heavenly home ?
These are the things they hunger for here. Do the

256 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
inhabitants of the New Jerusalem abhor that which is
evil and cleave to that which is good ? So do they.
Are the dwellers within the City's walls loyal to the
City's King, and grateful above words to Him who
purchased their entrance there by His sufferings ?
So are these grateful and loyal also. Do the inhabit
ants of that City count it their highest privilege to be
employed in their Lord's service ? These, too, living
here, are eager to serve Him also, and attentive to His
commands. O ! there is no mystery about their get
ting into the City ! Their faces have been looking
that way a great while. They have made it a hope and
a purpose to be there. Repentant, humble, obedient,
trusting, they are now preparing for a heavenly habita
tion. I mention as a final suggestion of the four-fronted
gateways of the heavenly City, the amplitude of en
trance offered to all who will make the effort to enter.
" Twelve gates " — facing, some of them, every
quarter where men can dwell. "Twelve gates" —
looking off into all the regions where sinning humanity
can wander ; and always, from every place where any
repenting one " comes to himself," and longs to go to
his Father's house, a straight way thither and an open
door. None necessarily excluded ! None shut out for
want of entrance-way provided ! Doors many enough,
and wide enough, and adjacent enough for all. And
do not, my dear hearers, in the acknowledgment of
this general amplitude of the entrance-way provided,
forget your own case. A way opens over against each
one of you. A way leads just from where you stand
intellectually, morally, socially, experimentally, right
into the City's central square.

SERMONS. 257
Ah ! my hearers, are you all entering ? Are your
faces set toward that City as your home ? Do you
bear the marks of pilgrims Zionward ? Are you living
so that God is "not ashamed to be called" your
"God"; so that he cannot do otherwise than be "pre
paring for you a city" ?
Numbered, or yet unnumbered, of the pilgrim fel
lowship, walk henceforward only in the heavenly path
way. Set your faces Zionward ! So living we shall
enter where He is. So living some one of the City's
gates will open to us. Suddenly, or on slow hinges,
long-awaited, turning, it will open a way for us into
the City of God, in the Light of the Lamb.
In this faith let us labor and wait.

17

25 8 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.

XVI.
CHRIST THE LIGHT OF HEAVEN.*
Revelation xxi: 23.
And the Lamb is the Light thereof.
It is useless for us to attempt to read this twenty-
first chapter of the Revelation, with the eye of the
map-making geographer or of the date-fixing chro-
nologist. The Bible is a very sober book, but it takes
us sometimes in tremendous flights, and lands us in
regions where our quadrants and compasses are of
little service. This passage before us is an example.
No one need try to read it who insists on taking his
surveyor's chain along with him ; or who undertakes to
settle the period of every event by the Gregorian
calendar. For the strong wing of Inspiration in this passage
beats an atmosphere we have none of us ever yet
breathed. It bears us into realms no eye of man has
yet looked upon. It takes us beyond time, as time is
reckoned in these earthly years : beyond death,
beyond the resurrection, beyond the judgment. "The
old heavens," to which we have looked up, as the
very emblem of steadfastness, and the old earth on
which we have walked and built, are passed away;

* Written in 1S82.

SERMONS.

259

and the great rolling "sea" across which have gone
the navies of commerce and of war, is "no more."
There is a " new heaven and a new earth," but it must
be marvelously different from this ; for there is " no
night there"; and the inhabitants "hunger no more,
neither thirst any more ; neither shall the sun light on
them, nor any heat." There is "a City" there; but
it is a City where no one dies ; where no one pines in
pain ; where crying is unknown.
Marvelous too, unlike anything we have beheld, is
that City's aspect. The stones we gather here to
wear in necklace and ring, — jewels of brilliance and
rarity, — are that City's foundation walls. The pearl
we use as costly mounting for ornaments of luxury is
the fabric of its twelve-fold gates. The gold we hoard
as the symbol of value, or carefully work into objects
of most coveted art, is the very pavement of its streets.
Obviously we have got out of the region of broker's-
bonds, and land-speculator's measurements, and funeral
processions, and sick-beds and alms-houses and police
regulations, and of about everything with which we
are familiar. The sober volume of our devotions
is almost delirious in its rhapsodies. We are utterly
at a loss to run the line between what we call " real
ity" and "unreality," the literal and the emblematic,
here. To say that all this vision of orient streets and
opalescent walls, and sunless skies, and days without
night, is actual matter-of-fact description, may, per
haps, be absurdity ; but to say that it is symbol and
metaphor only, may be absurdity no less. The
literalistic spirit which goes through these pages in
the temper of an appraiser of an estate or auctioneer
of a choice lot of jewelry, may be, after all, very little

260 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
more out of the way than the spirit which says :
" Why this is figure and image, and nothing
more ! " I'd as soon take my chances of truth
and of happiness, too, with the man who expects to
drink from a literal " river " " proceeding out of the
throne of God," and to eat of the fruit of a literal
"tree of life" growing upon its banks; as to side
with the so-called spiritualizing interpreter who sub
limates the " City of God " into the conception of
some bodiless and vaporlike society of incorporeal
beings ; or who makes the " wiping away of tears
from the eyes," and the "tabernacling of God with
men," only a condition of the soul.
And so of this vivid and wonderful phrase of our
text — telling of the temple of the New Jerusalem,
unto which the nations of the saved shall gather, —
" the Lamb is the light thereof." I do not dare to say
that is symbol and type alone. I read in those words,
"the glory of God did lighten it," an obvious refer
ence, not to the abstract truth that God is glorious
everywhere, but to "the glory," the distinctive glory,
the Sheckinah of His visible presence, when the
Temple on Zion's Hill was flooded and ablaze with the
light of His entrance there. I do not know, nor does
any one know, but that in the New Jerusalem there
may shine and burn before all gazing eyes, a like
symbol of the Ineffable Presence ; and that this may be
what is expressed, or one of the things which is ex
pressed, when it is said : " And the Lamb is the light
thereof." It will be seen, therefore, that I have no disposi
tion to deny or even to diminish whatever of literal
significance may be set before us in this phrase :

SERMONS. 26l
"And the Lamb is the light thereof," if, — instead of
attempting any further to delineate what is confess
edly so entirely a matter of Revelation alone, — I turn
your attention now to a moral truthfulness of this
Scripture phrase, which is, in any aspect of it, of
exceeding preciousness. " And the Lamb is the
light thereof." Christ the Light of Heaven; that is
a truth which, whatever else this Scripture expresses,
is certainly expressed in it in the most vivid and
emphatic manner.
We are accustomed to speak of whatever makes
any portion of our life pleasant to us, as its light.
The light of our childhood, was it not for most of us,
the face of the dear mother whose love and patience
was the very sunshine in which we grew and by which
alone we seemed to live ? The light of our home ; was it
not the wife or the child whose presence there made all
things radiant, and whose departure from us cast all
things into cloudiness and eclipse ? The light on
some pathway of labor, was it not the great hope of an
honorable and useful success ; the zeal of a self-deny
ing consecration to another's good, which shone like a
sunbeam on every step of that pathway, however dusty
and long ?
Ah, yes ! we all know perfectly, by a manifold
variety of familiar experiences, what the Lamp of
any abode, the Light of any portion of life is !
And putting this utterance of Revelation on the
very lowest footing on which it can stand, it sets forth
this fact, surely, that the brightness and blessedness
of heaven is the presence and manifestation of Christ.
He is the centre of its pleasantness : " The lamp
thereof is the Lamb."

262 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
Now, my friends, although the full realization of this
fact is something we shall have to wait for till we get
over there, yet we have not to get there to know
something of it. There are things already known
which may teach us that it must be so. Far on this
side of the shining walls and the doors of pearl, —
while yet we tread this old earth which bears so many
a mark of sin and suffering, — we may begin to see,
and see very clearly, too, that in that City to which
we go, "the Lamb is the light thereof."
I ask you to notice that one thing which gives us
this assurance, even apart from this sweet declaration
of Holy Writ, is the fact that of about all of whatever
is best we see around us in the world even now, it may
be said, "the Lamp thereof is the Lamb."
Take for example the Christian Church. Probably
we should all agree that one of the most benign insti
tutions, regarded on the very lowest theory of its ori
gin or its authority, which has ever existed among
men, is the institution known as the Church. It is a
confederacy existing in many lands and in many
forms. In outward aspect, and, to a considerable
extent, in its inward ordering and action, it is various
and diverse. What a history it has been, the history
of the Christian Church ! The Christian Church was
twelve men sitting round a table in an upper chamber.
The Christian Church was three thousand men pricked
to the heart, and baptized on the day of Pentecost.
The Church was the congregation and elders at Jeru
salem. The Church was the household of Priscilla and
Aquila at Rome. The Church hid itself in subterranean
catacombs ; the Church ruled from the throne of the
Caesars ; the Church said, " Lord teach us to pray,"

SERMONS. 263
and learned, like a child, the formula: "Our Father
which art in heaven " : but, taught also of the Spirit,
the Church framed the Apostles' Creed, and wrote it
in a hundred languages, and lifted up its voice in the
majestic confessions of Nicaea, and Chalcedon, and
Trent, and Augsburg, and Heidelberg, and Dort, and
Westminster, and Savoy. The Church worshiped
once in the house of a soldier at Csesarea ; it wor
shiped often in caves and dens of the earth ; it wor
ships still in little cabins of turf or logs on frontier
missionary outposts of our own and of other lands ;
but it worships also, and has for century after century,
in the costliest edifices which human hands have ever
built ; and the architectural habitations of its prayers
have been made the chief wonders of the world.
Watching in behalf of individual souls, the Church
has reproved the erring, comforted the sorrowing,
spoken peace to the penitent, cheered the departing,
buried the dead. Rising to the height of her collect
ive charge, the Church has instituted missions for the
christianization of nations, and put the sayings of the
prophet of Nazareth into the mother-speech of almost
every tribe that wears the shape of man. How various;
how diverse ; how multiform a thing, the Christian
Church !
But of it all, what has been the Light ? Whether
looked at in the narrowest arena of its being, — as in
the twelve of the upper chamber, or the " two or three "
of the fulfilled promise met together in some Scotch
cave of the covenanters or mining camp of Dakota ;
or regarded in the hour of some great jubilee when the
vast cathedral trembles with Christmas or with Easter
strains, and the crowded aisles take up the burden of

264 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
some universal confession of faith : " I believe in
Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost ; the Holy Cath
olic Church ; the Communion of Saints ; the forgive
ness of sins ; the resurrection of the body, and life
everlasting"; — in either case what, what alone, and
what equally, is the light thereof ? The light of it is
the Lamb ! It is just the realized presence and power
of the Christ of human redemption, which gives all the
joy, nay, all the significance, to the whole. Take Him
away and the light has fled. The Church, with all its
ministers, creeds, and buildings, is but the lantern
through which He shines. Take out the lamp, which
is the Christ, and you have left only a dull framework,
whose use has utterly departed. Not a soul of man
could such a vacated lantern guide amid the bogs and
pitfalls of this sinning world. Not a glint across the
dark river, except, within, there shines the Light of the
Lamb. When we speak, therefore, of the Church, with
reverence for its history and gratitude for its work, —
and well may we speak of it thus, — let us remember
always, that what makes it thus an object of love and
loyalty is the Christ who is its light. From Him
comes its value. All its winsomeness and precious-
ness is His own. The lamp of it is the Lamb.
Similarly is it, — though I have not time to draw the
matter out in any detail, — in respect to that whole
grand movement pre-eminently characteristic of our
age of the world, which expresses itself in the mani
fold forms of organized philanthropy. This might
well be called the Hospital period of mankind, or the
Orphan Asylum period, or the Emancipation period,
or the Free Education period, or the Compassion-for-

SERMONS. 265
the-Poor period, were it not that no single name, how
ever comprehensive, can express all the various aspects
of its many-handed philanthropy. We live in a time,
brightened, as no previous time the world has known
has ever been brightened, by the zealous and combined
endeavors of thousands to lessen human woe and to
enlarge human welfare. This is the Lamp of this age.
The very Light of the period in which we live, is this
benign and radiant feature of it. It is not that this is
the age of railroads, and telegraphs, and electric lights,
and of floating palaces that throb from shore to shore,
with almost the regularity of pendulum beats, across
the Atlantic seas, that is the most eminent distinction of
our time. That primal distinction is that it is an age
of organized philanthropy.
But of this feature of our time, — the most lovely
thing in it, — what is the central light ? Of this bright
ness what is the kindling flame ? The figure of Him
who walked Galilee's ways comforting the troubled,
healing the sick, and opening the eyes of the blind, is
again passing before us. In the person of those whom
His example inspires, He is with us in a new appear
ing. Of all these manifold manifestations of human
brotherliness, and Christ-like sympathy of man with
man, it is only the literal truth to say : " The Lamb is
the light thereof."
But, turning from these outward matters, I ask you
to notice a more inward one, which shows even more
plainly still how it can be, nay, how it must be, that
Christ is the Light of Heaven. The thing which
teaches us this fact is this : — Christ is the Light of
whatever is best in personal experience.
The best experiences of these personal lives of ours, —

266 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
what are they ? I am not about to disparage, my
friends, those great interests of our human histories
which fill so large a place in the lives of each one of
us, and which relate to the successes, the hopes, the
joys, and the gains of this busy world. Not one word
of depreciation am I to speak of the pleasantness of
consciously merited applause ; of the satisfaction of
honestly acquired wealth ; of the delight of realized
ambition ; or the zest of large and scholarlike intelli
gence. Not a word in depreciation of youth's jocund
hours of buoyant health, and eager anticipation. Es
pecially, not a word do I suggest in derogation of those
best experiences of life, which grow out of the sacred
relationship of home, — the love of parents ; the sweet
companionship of brothers and sisters ; the unity of
marriage ; the mysterious wonder of fatherhood and
motherhood ; the love and watch of infancy ; the joy
and care of lives that would not have been but for
your own.
Of all these experiences, which reach deep into the
soul, and which, — some of them, — take hold on about
the best there is of us, too, I have nothing to say, but
in recognition of the reality of them all, and of the pro
found significance and worthiness of many of them as
well. How close to us do they some of them come !
Into what depths of intensest emotion do they lead us
often ! A man who has had the blessing of an hon
ored father and a gentle mother ; who has had a loving
wife and filial children ; who has had a reasonable
share of success in affairs, and is able, intelligently, to
read the books of Nature and of Man, has tasted about
as sweet a cup as this world can offer ; and, if having
them, he has lost them, about as bitter.

SERMONS. 267
But close, keen, deep, and sweet as any of these
experiences are, sweeter, deeper, keener, closer to the
soul, is another experience possible to all, and actual
to thousands. It is the experience of Christ's forgiv
ing love. It is the assurance which comes to a soul
convinced of sin, that its sin is washed away ; the con
fidence that comes to a soul filled with the sense of
need, that all its needs can be supplied ; the gladness of
a friendless spirit that it has a Friend who will forsake
vit never; the peace of one harassed by burdened
memory and foreboding anticipation, at rest, now, in a
Saviour's embrace.
Ah, yes ! we touch an experience here, which makes
all others comparatively of small scope and importance.
The realization of Christ as a personal possession and
an eternal Life in the soul, is a Light by which all else
grows dim. When this Light shines there is not much
which can be dark. If the Lamp of one's life, as he
journeys onward, is the Lamb, he may go through a
very darksome pathway, and yet keep a firm and
forward-looking road. The presence of Christ can
dispense with a great part of what the world calls
" needful " beside. If He is in the soul, He makes up
for a hundred losses otherwise hard to bear. Sick
ness is less difficult to endure, bereavement is easier
sustained, loss of property or of position is not so bit
ter a stroke, age and decrepitude not so forlorn and
sad, if the Light in which the soul sits and waits is
the Light of Christ's presence. There is a true sense
even here that there is " no need of the sun, neither of
the moon " to lighten such a life. The sun of this
world's prosperity may " be darkened " and the moon
of earthly comforts may not " give her light," and the

268 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
very " stars " of things familiar and seeming necessary,
may " be shaken," but substantial quietude and wel
fare cannot be taken away from the life, when the
Lamb is the Light thereof.
Now, my friends, if these things are true, — and
that they are true is witnessed to by the experience of
some of you before me, — if these things are true of this
realm of the temporal, where we now dwell, so far off
from the heaven where He dwells, how certainly and
in how much fuller a measure must they be true of
that place where He gathers His own, in His very
presence, and where they see Him face to face. If
now, and in this alien clime, Christ can be so much the
Lamp of one's being, not strange is it that there they
have " no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to
lighten it," for the " glory of God " is its brightness,
" and the Lamb is the Light thereof." Whatever else
there may be there of things answering to the Apos
tle's vision of the golden floors, and the pearly gates,
and the walls of precious stones, and the river from
out the throne, and the tree of life with its healing
leaves, and the eyes in which there are no tears, and
the day which has no night, sure are we that the cen
tral fact of that home of blessedness is the realized
presence and friendship of Christ ; and that the best
thing we can possibly know of the life we enter there, is
this, that the " Lamp thereof is the Lamb."
A natural, and I think a practical, suggestion now
arises that may well have its effect not only on a good
deal of the language that we use, but an effect, also, on
the conduct of life. We all want to " go to heaven,"
as we say. We all speak of heaven as an object of
forecast and desire. Very well. It is a good desire.

SERMONS. 269
It is told of the worthies of Old Testament history as
a very distinguishing feature of their experience and a
very auspicious trait of their character, that they
desired the same thing. These all desired " a better
country, that is, an heavenly," looked for it, greeted it
from afar, and " confessed that they were strangers
and pilgrims on the earth." Very well ! If we are
wise we shall do like them. We shall cultivate this
same longing for a country which is "better" ; and a
" city which hath foundations " that never will be
removed. But, let us remember that we can not merely go to
heaven, we can bring heaven to us. The characteristic
feature of that place is that the light of it is the real
ized presence and friendship of Christ ; and that is an
experience which can be translated into and made a
part of our present lives.
The most distinctive thing about heaven may become
a very distinctive thing about earth. The light in
which we expect to walk may be the light in which we
now walk. To an extent increasingly, and almost
without boundary, large, we may make the present life
a counterpart of the life to come. We may fit our
selves here for that ; nay, we may do vastly more
than that, we may practice ourselves in it. We may
make it simply impossible that we land anywhere else
at last, than in that place for which we are fitted, by
longing, by assimilation, by conformity, by anticipatory,
but real, experience. Things go where they belong.
Men go to their "own place." The Christian soul
gravitates to heaven, as a pebble gravitates to the
earth's center.
And if we learn thus how to bring heaven to us by

270 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
making the Lamp of our lives the Lamb, we shall
get a good deal of clearness on the best way to bless
and help this troubled world. O, the foolish and
crazy methods men sometimes try, — even earnest and
well-wishing men, — in the endeavor to right human
wrong and uplift human depression ! There is nothing
in the scope of all this universe which can so uplift a
down-trodden soul, and so right the wrongs of an in
jured one, as to bring Christ into contact with it. The
true adjustment ofthe relations of man to man, of cap
ital to labor, of wealth to poverty ; in short, the true
redress of all the disorders of society, attends on the
fuller illumination of these problems, not so much by
statesmanship as by Christianity, the study and treat
ment of them in the light of the example and the spirit
of Christ. As fellow-workers in this blessed enter
prise, let us come to the fountain both of knowledge
and of power !• We shall work better for our fellow-men
in proportion as we ourselves are filled with the life of
the Master. For our own sakes, for the sake of the
men whom we would help to better things here and to
come, let us seek to have it more and more true of the
lives we live, that " the Light thereof is the Lamb."

Dr. Lyman's Tribute at the Unveiling of a Com
memorative Tablet in the First Church,
Hartford, January 13, 1901.

DR. LYMAN S TRIBUTE.

273

From the Hartford Courant of January 14, igoi : —
Tablets were unveiled at the First Church yester
day morning in memory of Rev. Dr. George Leon
Walker and Rev. Dr. Charles M. Lamson, former pas
tors of the church, both of whom are now dead. The
dedicatory sermon was preached by Rev. Dr. Albert
J. Lyman of Brooklyn. He took for his text 1 Cor
inthians iii : 5, 6, and 8 : " Who then is Paul, and who
is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as
the Lord gave to every man ? I have planted, Apollos
watered ; but God gave the increase. Now he that
planteth and he that watereth are one."
The preacher set forth with great clearness and
wealth of illustration the central thought of the text,
that the vital heart and effective power in the church
and its ministry is of God rather than of man. The
minister is the agent of a higher spiritual energy than
his own. In the temple, under which figure the
Church is symbolized, the shaping force from founda
tion to finial is the spirit of Christ. In the army, by
which type the Church is set forth, Christ is the real
captain. In the tilled field, to which the apostle com
pares the Church in the text, Paul and Apollos are
only husbandmen, while the " increase " is of God.
Dr. Lyman then said : —
We render to-day a tribute to rare human genius.
Our eyes are wet as we recall the finished charm of
pastoral devotion, but above the genius and within the

274

REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.

devotion we see the face and feel the touch of the Son
of God. And yet all the more because Christ so or
dained the succession of these ministries, we do well
to honor them, to commemorate them, to crown those
living yonder, whom we sometimes call the dead. We
realize with a nameless thrill that the very power of
the Living Christ, invisible and immortal, was upon
them, and is among us still. We breathe the fragrance
of blooms that cannot fade. We feel the might of ar
dors that cannot die.
By the pious and reverent affection of this church
and of personal friends, two tablets of bronze have
been prepared and are now offered and placed upon
the walls of this historic sanctuary, bearing the names
and inscribed to the honor of two pastors who, in suc
cession, served this church, the former for thirteen
active years, the latter for five; so that ever your eyes
and those of your children shall see before them here
the revered and beloved names of George Leon Walker
and Charles Marion Lamson.
The nature of this occasion and its limitation of time
do not permit minute analysis of the record of the two
remarkable men whose life is thus outlined. But both
justice and love command that some word should be
spoken. May the present speaker set formalities aside
and out of his own heart lay his poor sprig of laurel
upon these tablets to-day.
Dr. Walker was my senior by fifteen years, Dr.
Lamson but two years older than myself. Dr. Walker
was the inspirer of my first efforts as a preacher when
he was pastor of the Center Church at New Haven,
and I a resident licentiate at the Divinity School. It
was he whose worn, tense, masterful face looked cour-

DR. LYMAN S TRIBUTE.

275

age into my timid eyes when I tried my boyish first
sermon in his great pulpit.
Dr. Walker, great-grandson of a Revolutionary sol
dier, eighth in descent from Richard Walker who set
tled at Lynn, Mass., and fought in the early Indian
wars, was himself martial to the core — a soldier of the
Truth and of Faith, a true knight of God. Born to
physical disability and pain, he was also born to spir
itual dauntlessness in spite of pain. He was a student
who steadily and victoriously measured his strength of
will against the bayonet's blade of insistent disease.
Weakened in frame, half blinded for a time by typhoid
fever, he climbed on his crutches the Mount Sion of
his vocation. A braver soul never breathed the New
England air. Just such a type of moral valor could
have been produced nowhere but in New England.
A sufferer always, yet always a wrestler, and always a
conqueror, the pain and the power over pain both en
tered, like a kind of mingled iron and fire, into the very
texture of his thinking, driving all weakness out, burn
ing all dross away — entered into his personal attitude,
his pulpit manner and message, entered into his ex
traordinary mastery of vivid and sinewy phrase. One
looked at him as at no other man, reverently, through
tears. cannot but regard him as one of the great pulpit
stylists of his time, though his style, as a minister's
should be, was more for the whole man in spokp a
utterance, than for the merely written page, and I ^an
imagine the half-stern, half-smiling way in which he
would put aside all such comment upon style, when he
simply felt himself to be standing between Sinai and
Calvary to speak to the people. But the union in him

276 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
of an intense, ancestral piety, and a classic sense of
perfection in literary form, together with this incessant
lash of suffering, and the heroic moral clench that con
quers suffering, produced a unique and vital energy in
expression, a strange fascination, an indescribably sub
duing note which I have never heard elsewhere, which
sought out your very soul's core and mastered you and
won you before you were aware.
With less of pain, there might have been more of
leisurely speculative range, certainly more of buoyancy,
but also probably less of spiritual vitality and subtle,
half-unearthly pathos. He came into New England
and the New England ministry by way of Horeb, the
Mount of God, and Gethsemane, the garden of tears
and the angels. One could not look at him and not
think of the Ten Commandments and the Eternal
Throne. When he spoke, you waited in spite of your
self for some Sinaitic flash, and sooner or later it came.
He spoke his soul. I thought of him as of a moving
pillar, with something of the cloud by day and the fire
by night — a living incarnation, beyond almost any
other man I ever knew, of the reality and the mastery
of the Unseen.
You know his public service. Independent, cogent,
keen, and strong, he exerted a most powerful influence
upon current and critical discussions in our denomina
tional life. He loved the heart of orthodoxy, yet loved
the freedom which alone gave to orthodoxy its ethical
value. He was a power in the church and in the land.
He was a wise counsellor as well as public leader,
touching nothing but to clarify it and strengthen it.
He was a very careful student, a lover of letters, a
lover of history. Through his local historical studies

DR. LYMAN S TRIBUTE.

277

and monographs, he became identified more and more
with Hartford.
When he came to this church he instantly compre
hended and mastered a critical and somewhat peril
ous situation. He created a fresh alignment of church
and civil forces, launched the society upon a renewed
career, kindled a light in this pulpit which shone like a
torch, far and wide, and furthered renovations and
works of improvement in the neighboring environ
ment, which, largely through the instrumentality of
the devoted hands of the women of the church and the
city, have been carried to a beautiful and complete
fulfillment. At length, in June of '92, he was forced by stress of
ill health to resign his pastoral charge. He was at
once, by spontaneous insistence of church and society,
made pastor emeritus. In '96 came the stroke which
left his body helpless, but could no more touch the
glowing and dauntless soul than the frost at the rim of
the fountain touches the springing splendor of the
fountain's jet.
New England has never seen a more nobly pathetic
picture than the emeritus pastorate of Dr. Walker.
Embosomed in a home devoted to him, in the midst of
a church and city that revered him, this gallant hero of
the Living God, deprived largely of physical power,
yet kept alive his eager and loving interest in his peo
ple and in the interests of the Kingdom of Christ on
earth, and with his strange inner spiritual fire all un-
cooled, waited for death as for an old servant whom in
other days he had resolutely bidden to bide his time
until sunset, till his master's work was fully finished.
Then came the sunset gun, and this valiant knight of

278 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
the New England pulpit smiled across and said his
" adsum " and was ready.
" Nothing is here for tears,
Nothing to wail, to knock the breast,
No weakness, no contempt, dispraise or blame ;
Nothing but well and fair,
And what may quiet us in a death so noble."

The Tablet.

TO THE MEMORY OF
GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.,
BORN 1830 — DIED I90O.
ORDAINED TO THE GOSPEL MINISTRY
1858.
PASTOR OF THE
STATE STREET CHURCH, PORTLAND, ME..
1858-1867.
PASTOR OF THE
FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST, NEW HAVEN, CONN..
1868-1873.
ACTING PASTOR OF THE
CENTER CHURCH, BRATTLEBORO, VT.,
1875-1878.
PASTOR OF THE
FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST, HARTFORD, CONN.,
1 879-1 892.
PASTOR EMERITUS
FROM 1892 UNTIL THE DAY OF HIS DEATH.
A SCHOLAR AMONG STUDENTS.
A COUNSELOR AMONG FRIENDS.
A LEADER AMONG ASSOCIATES.
A PREACHER OF COMMANDING POWER.
A CHRISTIAN OF CONSPICUOUS LIFE.
THIS TABLET IS PLACED BY THE PEOPLE OF
THIS CHURCH
WHOM HE SERVED AND BY WHOM HE WAS
REVERED.

VI.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. 28l

A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF DR. WALKER'S PUB
LICATIONS, EXCLUSIVE OF NEWSPAPER
ARTICLES.* I.
The Material and the Spiritual in our National Life, and
Their Present Mutual Relations: a Sermon preached in State
Street Church, Portland, Nov. 24, 1859. Portland, 1859, PP' 3°-
II.
Anniversary Sermon before Y. M. C. A., in Seventh Annual
Report of the Portland Y. M. C. A. Portland, i860, pp. 13-28.
III.
The Offered National Regeneration : a Sermon preached in
the State Street Church, Portland, Sept. 26, 1861.
Portland, 1861, pp. 24.
IV.
What the Year Has Done for Us : a Sermon preached in the
State Street Church, Portland, Nov. 21, 1861.
Portland, 1861, pp. 16.
V.
Ministers and Their Households : a Sermon preached before
the Maine Congregational Charitable Society, etc., June 21, 1864.
Portland, 1864, pp. 12.

* Dr. Walker kept no list of his publications. The present Biblio
graphy has, however, been compiled with a good deal of care and is
believed to be approximately complete.

282 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
VI.
Address : in " Annual Report presented by the Trustees of
the Massachusetts Bible Society, May 25, 1S65."
Boston, 1865, pp. 16-22.
VII.
A Look Back and Before : Thanksgiving Sermon, Portland,
1865. VIII.
The Sepulchre in the Garden. Boston, 1866, pp. 31.
2d ed. Hartford, 1889, pp. 32.
IX.
The Present Times Foretold. Yarmouth (no date), pp. 4.
X.
Charles Walker. A Memorial Sketch. Reprinted from the
Congregational Quarterly for July, 1871. Boston, 1871, pp. 21.
XI.
Sermon, in " Exercises at Dedication of the New Congrega
tional Church, Manchester, Vt., Aug. 23, 1871."
Manchester, 1871, pp. 3-12.
XII.
Sermons preached in the First Church of Christ in Hartford
by Rev. Leonard Bacon, D.D., LL.D., and Rev. George Leon
Walker, D.D., on the Occasion of the Settlement of the Latter in
the Ministry over that Church. (" The Church a Home.")
Hartford, 1879, PP- I9-36-
XIII.
A Just Balance and a Just Hin : a Sermon preached in First
Church, Hartford, April 11, 1880. Hartford, 1880, pp. 17.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. 283
XIV.
False Ideas of God : Three Sermons preached in the First
Church of Christ in Hartford. Hartford, 1881, pp. 54.
XV.
Discourses by Rev. Prof. Edwin E. Johnson, D.D., and Rev.
George L. Walker, D.D., delivered in the Center Church, Hart
ford, at the Seventy-first Anniversary of the Connecticut Bible
Society, May 3, 1881. Hartford, 1881, pp. 9-16.
XVI.
A Sermon on the Death of President Garfield, preached in
the First Church of Hartford, Sept. 25, 1881.
Hartford, 1881, pp. 21.
XVII.
Sermon Commemorative of Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon,
preached in the First Church, New Haven, Jan. 15, 1882, in
" Leonard Bacon : Pastor of the First Church in New Haven."
New Haven, 1882, pp. 167-186.
XVIII.
The Young Men's Christian Association : an Address deliv
ered in the First Church of Christ, Hartford, Nov. 2, 1882.
Hartford, 1882, pp. 12.
XIX.
Historical Address, in " Commemorative Exercises of the
First Church of Christ in Hartford at its 250th Anniversary,
Oct. 11 and 12, 1883.'' Hartford, 1883, pp. 37-99.
XX.
History of the First Church in Hartford, 1633 -1883.
Hartford, 1884, pp. xii, 503.

284 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
XXI.
Middle Walls Broken Down: a Sermon preached before the
American Missionary Association at Salem, Oct. 21, 1884.
New York, 1884, pp. 8.
XXII.
Men and Women of the Church, an Address, in Congrega
tional Church, Pittsford, Vt., " Centennial Observance."
Rutland, 1885, pp. 44-51.
XXIII.
The Witness to the Founders' Faith : a Sermon before the
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions at Bos
ton, Oct. 13, 1885. Boston, 1885, pp. 18.
XXIV.
The First Church. In the " Memorial History of Hartford
County." Boston, 1886, Vol. I : 277-287.
XXV.
Words of Comfort for the New Year, spoken in the First
Church of Christ in Hartford, Jan. 1, 1888. Hartford, 1888, pp. 14.
XXVI.
The Growth of the Kingdom : Address at Yale Theological
Anniversary, May 16, 1888. New Haven, 1888, pp. 15.
XXVII.
Things of Present Significance : a Sermon preached on the
Sixty-second Anniversary of the American Home Missionary
Society at Saratoga Springs, June 5, 18S8.
New York, 1888, pp. 16.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

2»5

XXVIII.
One Hundred and Seventeenth Anniversary Governor's Foot
Guard, Hartford, Conn., Oct. 19, 1888. Sermon.
Hartford, 1888, pp. 5-15.
XXIX.
Ten Years in the Life of a Church : a Sermon preached in
the First Church of Hartford, March 3, 1889.
Hartford, 1889, pp. 24.
XXX.
A Church's Thanksgiving : a Sermon preached in the First
Church in Hartford, Dec. 1, 1889. Hartford, 1889, pp. 30.
XXXI.
Our Father in Heaven : a Sermon preached in the First
Church in Hartford, Feb. 9, 1890. Hartford, 1890, pp. 32.
XXXII.
The Earth Teaches : a Sermon preached in the First Church
in Hartford, March 16, 1890. Hartford, 1890, pp. 33.
XXXIII.
The Open Door : a Sermon preached in the First Church in
Hartford, Sept. 28, 1890. Hartford, 1890, pp. 35.
XXXIV.
Thankfulness for Living Now : a Sermon preached in the
First Church in Hartford, Nov. 27, 1890. Hartford, 1890, pp. 43.
XXXV.
From Scrooby to Plymouth : a Sermon preached in the First
Church in Hartford, Dec. 21, 1890. Hartford, 1891, pp. 40.

286 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
XXXVI.
All them that Sail with Thee : a Sermon preached in the
First Church in Hartford, Jan. n, 1891. Hartford, 1891, pp. 30.
XXXVII.
Our Humble Associates : a Sermon preached in the First
Church in Hartford, May 3, 1891. Hartford, 1891, pp. 38.
XXXVIII.
As Much as in Me is : a Sermon preached in the First Church
in Hartford, June 21, 1891. Hartford, 1891, pp. 33.
XXXIX.
Remembrances from the Hill Mizar : a Sermon preached in
the First Church in Hartford, Sept. 20, 1891.
Hartford, 1891, pp. 34.
XL.
God's Promises Conditional : a Sermon preached in the First
Church in Hartford, Nov. 1, 1891. Hartford, 1891, pp. 35.
XLI.
Our City's Welfare : a Sermon preached in the First Church
in Hartford, Nov. 8, 1891. Hartford, 1891, pp. 35.
XLII.
Christian Consciousness : a Sermon preached in the First
Church in Hartford, Dec. 20, 1891. Hartford, 1891, pp. 36.
XLIII.
Thomas Hooker: Preacher, Founder, Democrat.
New York, 1891, pp. vii, 203.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. 287
XLIV
William Goodwin: In "The Goodwins of Hartford, Conn.''
Hartford, 1891, pp. 75-94.
XLV.
The Perfected Life : a Sermon preached in the First Church
in Hartford, Nov. 13, 1892. Hartford, 1892, pp. 30.
XLVI.
Francis Parkman : a Biographical and Critical Sketch. The
Nation, LVII : 365. New York, 1893.
XLVII.
Stephen Ambrose Walker: a Memorial Sketch. Privately
printed. Hartford, 1893, pp. 33.
XLVIII.
The Breadth, and Length, and Depth, and Height : a Ser
mon preached in the First Church in Hartford, April 29, 1894.
Hartford, 1894, pp. 35.
XLIX.
1 737-1 747, Diary of Rev. Daniel Wadsworth, Seventh Pastor
of the First Church of Christ in Hartford, with Notes by the
Fourteenth Pastor. Hartford, 1894, pp. 149.
L.
Brattleboro North End : in " Picturesque Brattleboro."
Northampton, 1894, pp. 70-81.
LI.
He Careth for You : a Sermon preached in the First Church
in Hartford, April 21, 1895. Hartford, 1895, pp. 32.

288 REVEREND GEORGE LEON WALKER, D.D.
LII.
The Capture of Louisbourg : Address before the Connecticut
Society of Colonial Wars, May I, 1895. New York, 1895, pp. 16.
LIII.
Town Loyalty : an Address at the Dedication of the Walker
Memorial Building, Pittsford, Vt., Sept. 11, 1895.
Hartford, 1895, pp. 9-24.
LIV.
The Old Hartford Burying-Ground : an Address before the
Ruth Wyllys Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution.
Hartford, 1895, pp. 32.
LV.
Some Aspects of the Religious Life of New England : Lec
tures Delivered on the Carew Foundation before Hartford Theo
logical Seminary in 1896. Boston, 1897, pp. 208.