YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

From the Estate of
MARY E. DAY
Gift of
SHERMAN DAY '96
and
HARRY V. DAY '95 S
1939

SEEKING AFTER GOD

BOOKS BY LYMAN ABBOTT

Seeking after God
i2mo, cloth. By mail, $1.10

Christ's Secret of Happiness
izmo, limp leather. By mail, $/.jS

The Personality of God
Salvation from Sin
The Soul's Quest after God
The Supernatural
Booklets, " What is Worth While " Series
i2mo, white leatherette. By mail, 35c. each

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
New York

SEEKING AFTER GOD

BY
LYMAN ABBOTT
Author of " Christ's Secret of Happiness "

New York
thomas y. crowell & co.
publishers

copyright, i 910,
by thomas y. crowell & co.
Published September, 1910.
Second Edition

They seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after
him, and find him, though he be not far from
every one of us ; for in him vie live,
and move, and have our being

PREFACE
IN an interesting essay on America re
printed in " Littell's Living Age " for
February 12, 19 10, G. Lowe Dickinson
thus characterizes the American spirit :
" In all this continent, I thought, in all
the western world, there is not a human
soul whose will seeks any peace at all, least
of all the peace of God. All move, but
about no centre ; they move on, to more
power, to more wealth, to more motion.
There is not one of them who conceives
that he has a place, if only he could find
it, a rank and order fitted to his nature,
higher than some, lower than others, but
right and the only right for him, his true
position in the cosmic scheme, his ulti
mate relation to the Power whence it
proceeds." There is truth in this description, but
the description is not the whole truth.
[ vii 1

PREFACE
There are a great many Americans whom
this paragraph aptly describes. They are
seeking satisfaction, not in finding their
right place, but in finding a higher or what
they think is a better place. But it is not
true that " there is not one of them who
conceives that he has a place fitted to his
nature, right and the only right for him."
If this were true there would be no re
ligion in America ; for religion consists in
seeking to find our true relation to God
the centre of life, and so to our fellow-men.
The object of this book is to help those
who are, consciously or unconsciously,
seeking for this centre and for their
own true orbit and place, and so for
peace, — the peace of God that passeth
all understanding.
The chapters of this book were origi
nally delivered as addresses at different
times and without any purposed relation
to each other. They are here brought
together because a common theme con
nects them and a common spirit animates
them. Their independent origin accounts
for some repetitions, of thought if not of
[ viii ]

PREFACE
form, which, if they had been originally
written for publication in book form,
would probably have been avoided.
Lyman Abbott.
Cornwall on Hudson, N.Y.
March, 1910.

[ « ]

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. THE SOUL'S QUEST AFTER GOD ... I
II. GOD IN NATURE  39
III. GOD IN HUMANITY  89
IV. GOD IN JESUS CHRIST  II3
V. GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN . . . . 1 27

THE SOUL'S QUEST AFTER
GOD

I
THE SOUL'S QUEST AFTER
GOD1
THE experience of personal commun
ion with God is as universal as the
human race. Appreciation of the divine
presence is more common than apprecia
tion of art, music, or literature. Men
and women who do not respond to music,
see no beauty in pictures, never read, and
could not understand literature if it were
read to them, yet find comfort in sorrow,
strength in temptation, courage in danger,
and added joy in their enjoyments from
the sense of a Father's presence. In all
climates and countries, among all races
and in all epochs, under all creeds and
theologies, this experience of communion
with the Eternal is seen. He is addressed
by many names, many and inconsistent
conceptions of him are formed ; the lan-
1 Copyright, 1897, by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.
[3 1

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
guage is sometimes that of dread, some
times that of reverence, sometimes that of
hope and trust and love. But whatever
the language, whatever the phase of ex
perience, faith in the reality of the fellow
ship inspires the prayer. To believe that
there is no fellowship is to disbelieve in
the trustworthiness of a substantially uni
versal though multiform human con
sciousness. To deny the reality of such
fellowship is to deny the common witness
of mankind in all ages and of all types.
This little book assumes the trust
worthiness of universal human experience.
It assumes that God is, and that some
men have communion with him. It is
addressed to those who believe, or wish
to believe, in God, who believe, or wish
to believe, that the soul of man can have
communion with him, but who either
have no such communion themselves, or
in whose experience it is so broken, inter
rupted, and desultory as to leave them
a prey to doubts whether it is a reality
or a fantasy. This book is not written to
prove either that God is, or that the soul
[4]

THE SOUL'S QUEST AFTER GOD
can hold communion with him. It is
written to aid those who see, and desire to
see more clearly ; or who have seen, and
desire to renew their sight ; or who have
heard the testimony of those who see, and
wish to believe that testimony true, and
to enjoy a similar vision. It assumes in
the reader a desire to know God, or to
know him better; a desire like that of
Abraham when he followed a mystic voice
which called him out ofthe land of idolatry
to find God in a strange land he knew
nothing of; like that of Moses when in
the wilderness he cried out, " I beseech
thee, show me thy glory;" like that of
Job when in his darkness, tortured by the
injustice of his friends, the unfaith of his
wife, and his own doubts, he cried out,
" Oh, that I knew where I might find
him, that I might come even to his seat ;"
like that of Elijah when in despair he
looked upon the fire, tempest, and earth
quake at Mount Horeb, and so was pre
pared to hear the still, small voice within -,
like that of Philip saying to the Master,
" Show us the Father, and it sufficeth
[5]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
us ; " like that of the Athenians erecting
an altar to the unknown God, because all
idols, temples, and priests had failed to
satisfy their quest ; like that of Paul when
life and death, principalities and powers,
things present and things to come, had
vainly endeavored to turn him aside, and
who in his finding of God's love declared
himself victor over them all. For such,
by one who seeks to clarify and confirm
his own faith as well as that of others, this
book is written to point out, first, some of
the hindrances to be overcome ; second,
some of the aids which promote success
in the soul's quest after God.
I. HINDRANCES
If the consciousness of God is possible
to all healthful souls, why are so many
men and women without this conscious
ness ? There are men and women, not
a few, who do not want God. They
would be very glad to have God if he
were always on their side ; glad to have
God if he would always do what they
want him to do. But a supreme will,

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
a masterful will, a will to which they must
conform, they do not want. They do
not like to retain God in their knowledge,
says Paul ; they put God far from them,
says the Psalmist. The same spirit of
anarchism which leads some men to de
sire to be rid of human law leads other
men to desire to be rid of divine law.
Not long ago a body of anarchists in
Chicago passed a resolution saying in
effect, and very nearly in words, "We
have no use for God." So Bakunin, the
Russian anarchist, says substantially, " We
want no laws, either human or divine."
The first question of the soul, then, must
be this, Do I really want God to rule
over me? Do I want a supreme will in
the universe, to which my will must in
every respect be conformed ? Do I want
a will superior to my own, in the shop,
in the factory, in society, at the ballot-box,
in the home ?
There are many men, and a large
number, who, though they do not wish to
be rid of God, do not very much care to
have him. They are not opposed to
[7 ]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
God ; but neither are they anxious about
knowing him. The Psalmist speaks of
these when he says, " God is not in all
their thoughts." There are thousands of
men and women of whom that is true.
They live their lives without thought of
God. Sometimes God is forced into their
thoughts by his providence ; sometimes
he is flashed before their thoughts by a
sermon or a book ; but, for the most
part, they are living with thoughts fixed
on other things. The kingdom they are
working for is not the kingdom of God ;
the name they are hallowing is not the
name of God ; the will they are trying to
do is not the will of God. They are
busy about other things. One man is
busy after his wealth — he is a honey-
gatherer ; another after his pleasure ; an
other after his fame ; another about nothing
— and he is busiest of all. But neither is
taken up with God. They do not know
what is the meaning of the experience,
" As the hart panteth after the water
brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O
God." They are not eager to know God ;
[ 8 ]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
they are not anxious to be friends with
him. They lie awake at night over busi
ness anxieties, over earthly disappoint
ments, over the sundering of human friend
ships ; but they never lie awake at night
over the absence of God. That ploughs
no furrow on the brow, traces no line in
the cheek, brings no gray hair to the head.
On the whole, they are well satisfied with
out God.
Nor are these men all sensual self-
seekers. Some of them are what we call
good men, followers after truth, practisers
of righteousness. But the invisible and
the eternal world does not attract them ;
their thoughts do not run in that direc
tion. The spiritual vision may be lost by
non-use, as any other faculty may be lost.
They who have not looked for anything
back of phenomena, who have only been
searching the phenomena, and ticketing and
classifying them, will find only what they
look for. Such men sometimes feel the
sadness and the loneliness of a Godless
life ; sometimes the question arises in
their hearts whether it is worth while to
[9]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
know the stars, the flowers, the rocks, the
trees, the bones, the arteries, if there is no
Spirit behind them all, no God in them all,
no love using them all. Says one of these
men, Professor Clifford of England : —
" It cannot be doubted that theistic belief is a
comfort and a solace to those who hold it, and
that the loss of it is a very painful loss. It
cannot be doubted, at least, by many of us in
this generation, who either profess it now, or
received it in our childhood, and have parted
from it since with such searching trouble as only
cradle-faiths can cause. We have seen the
spring sun shine out of an empty heaven, to
light up a soulless earth ; we have felt with
utter loneliness that the Great Companion is
dead. Our children, it may be hoped, will
know that sorrow only by the reflex light of a
wondering compassion." *
Heartrending is this testimony of a
truly noble, genuine, pure-minded man
to the loss of the capacity to perceive the
Infinite in the finite, the Divine behind the
human, the Invisible behind the visible.
1 W. K. Clifford's Lectures and Essays, p. 389.
[ IO ]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
Sometimes this voluntary blindness, this
having eyes and seeing not, and having
ears and hearing not, is formulated into a
philosophy. The man who has lost the
power of vision declares that there is no
vision ; the man who has lost the power
of hearing declares that there is no hear
ing; the man whose heart does not throb
to the pulsation of music says that there
is no music ; the man whose eyes see no
beauty in a picture declares there is no
art ; the man who has lost, from non-use,
the capacity to perceive and recognize the
Divine and the Infinite declares that there
is not in man the capacity to perceive the
Divine and the Infinite. "Truly," says
Mr. Huxley, speaking of religious faith,
" on this topic silence is golden ; while
speech reaches not even the dignity of
sounding brass or tinkling cymbal, and is
but the weary clatter of an endless logom
achy."1 That is the philosophy of non-
use of faculty coined into a system. The
adequate answer to it is furnished by
Victor Hugo : —
1 Essay on Hume, p. 183.
[ " ]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
" There is, we are aware, a philosophy that
denies the infinite. There is also a philosophy,
classed pathologically, which denies the sun ;
this philosophy is called blindness. To set up
a sense we lack as a source of truth, is a fine
piece of blind man's assurance. And the rarity
of it consists in the haughty air of superiority
and compassion which is assumed towards the
philosophy that sees God, by this philosophy
that has to grope its way. It makes one think
of a mole exclaiming : ' How they excite my
pity with their prate about a sun \' " 1
This loss of vision from non-use, this
atrophy of the spiritual faculty, is a very
common hindrance to the perception of
God in our materialistic and scientific age.
For the man who does not want God of
course will not find him ; and the man
who is busy searching for something else
will not find God ; and certainly the man
who has coined the atrophy of faculty into
a philosophy that the Eternal and the In-
1 Les Miser ables, "Cosette," p. 133. — Victor Hugo.
Curiously, Mr. Huxley uses the same simile, though he
applies it only to men who do not see ethical laws, not to
men who do not see the invisible spirit in nature or in man.
See his Hume, pp. 239, 240.
[ 12 ]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
visible cannot be seen or known, cannot
see or know.
Besides these, are many men who be
lieve that there is a God, and yet live
without any companionship with God, be
cause they have taken in place of God
what is divinely intended only to bring
them to him. We think that we have
gotten rid of idolatry because we no longer
worship painted or carved images, as
though these were the only idols. Men
at first use a symbol as a means of enabling
them to apprehend the reality, and then
stop with the symbol, and accept it in lieu
of the reality. The image is put up as a
means of interpreting God to men ; then
men content themselves with the image,
and leave God unknown. Is there noth
ing analogous to that in Christian experi
ence ? In the same way, one generation
has constructed a creed, and another gen
eration has substituted belief in the creed
for a living faith in a living God. Belief
in the Apostle's Creed, in the Nicene
Creed, in the Westminster Confession of
Faith, in the Thirty-Nine Articles, has
[ 13 ]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
taken the place of faith in God and in his
Son Jesus Christ. Other men have gone
behind the creed, and said, " We believe
in the church which made the creed ; " or
behind the church to the Bible, and said,
" We are not sure whether we believe in
the creed, we are not quite sure whether
we believe in the church ; but one thing
we do know, we believe in " — what ?
God ? No — " we believe in the Bible ; "
and they stop there. Some men are con
tent with the creed ; other men are content
with the church ; other men are content
with the Book. But in either case they
stop at the eidolon, — the image, the sym
bol. So long as the creed is a window,
and we see God through it, it is good ; so
long as the church is a voice, and we hear
it saying, " Come to God," it is good ; so
long as the Bible is a collection of voices,
every one saying, " God tabernacles among
men," and we look in our own heart and
find God there, it is good. But when men
are content simply to believe in the creed,
or in the church, or in the Bible, they are
worshipping idols. It is not the Bible, it
[ H ]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
is not the church, it is not the creed ; it is
God — the living God, who spake in the
hearts of men of olden time. Why ? In
order that we might hear the same voice
speaking in our hearts to-day. But when
men stop with the eidolon, God slips out
of their thought. Gideon destroys the
idol that has been erected to the worship
of Baal, and puts up an altar without any
idol, that he may worship the spirit of Je
hovah. The people think him irreligious,
and would at first kill him. It has always
been so. This process of idol destruction
has gone on in all ages of the world, and
will go on until God has taught us that
only God can satisfy, — not a testimony
about God, not a report of God, not wit
nesses to God, not a belief concerning
God, but only God himself, can satisfy.
The creed has been allowed to take the
place of the living God; then prophets
have arisen to attack the creed; and or
thodoxy has thought faith was being de
stroyed, and has come to its rescue. But,
in reality, a mere symbol of faith was being
destroyed, that faith might be born again.
[ i5 1

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
Then the church has been allowed to take
the place of the living God ; and again
prophets have arisen to attack the church ;
and again orthodoxy has thought faith was
being destroyed, and has come to its res
cue. But, in fact, only the idol was being
destroyed, that faith, a living faith in a
living God, might rise again from the tomb
in which it was buried. Then gradually
an infallible Book has been substituted for
an infallible church ; and belief in an in
fallible Book has been made to take the
place of faith in a living God. And again
prophets have arisen with their message
that belief in the Book is no substitute
for a living faith in a living God ; that the
Book is but the testimony of fallible men
to the living God. And again we en
counter the fear that faith is being de
stroyed. It is the substitution of a Book
for the living God which is being destroyed.
We are learning that we must look, not to
the creed, but through the creed ; not to
the church, but through the church; and
not even to the Bible, but through the Bible,
to the living God, or we cannot see God.
[ 16 ]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
Men fail to find God because they cu
riously reverse the position — the natural,
legitimate, rightful position — between the
soul and God. There is a word common
in theology, though not very familiar in
ordinary intercourse, — theodicy, which
means justifying the ways of God to man.
When a man begins to justify the ways of
God to man, he has entered on a very
dangerous process. For example, it is
said, " If there is a God, he must be om
nipotent and omniscient ; and an omnip
otent and omniscient God could and would
make a world without sin and without
suffering ; but the world is not without
sin nor without suffering, therefore there
is no God." Such a man frames in his
own mind his notion of what a God must
be, and then brings God himself to that
standard, and measures him by it. The
odicy ! Justifying the ways of God to
man ! Sit, my soul, on the judgment
throne, and summon God to stand before
thee. " Now, Almighty One, I will see
whether thou art righteous. Why didst
thou allow famine in India ? What right
[ i7 ]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
hast thou to allow a deluge in Japan?
What right hast thou to allow man to go
to war with his fellow-man in Europe?
Justify thyself; explain thyself; answer
for thyself." No man will ever find his
way to the heart of God in that spirit.
Men who do want God, who are really
in earnest to find God, who do not live in
the outward world altogether, but have
some vision of the inner, who do not stop
at the creed or the church or the Book,
who do not call God to an account for the
way in which he conducts himself, still fail
to find God because they want God only
for what God will bring to them. This is
the most common cause of failing to find
God in the spiritual experience of men and
women. They do not want God for him
self. They want him for something he is
going to bring them. " I want peace,"
one cries, " and so I want God." " I
want prosperity," another cries, " and so
I want God." " I want joy," cries another,
" and therefore I want God." What man
can find his way to the heart of a woman
if he wants her for the fortune she will
[ 18]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
bring? Whether it be fortune of houses
and lots, or fortune of pleasures and joys,
if all his love for her is only the reflex of
love for himself, he will never find her.
She may marry him ; he may have her for
a wife ; but he will never know her. So
God will be loved for his own sake. The
fortune-hunter never finds him. We think
we want God. Do we ? If God brings
tears, humiliation, poverty, do we want
him ? Or do we want peace and joy and
prosperity ? Our question must be, not,
Can I have God's help in my business,
but, Can God have my help in his busi
ness ? Not whether we can get God on
our side, but whether we are willing to be
on God's side. Do we want God for his
own sake ? It is true that wisdom has
wealth in the one hand and pleasure in the
other, that her ways are ways of pleasant
ness, her paths are paths of peace ; but she
will never come to one who follows her
for the sake of the wealth in the one hand
or the pleasure in the other. No man
will find God unless he seeks after God
for God's own sake, loves him for him-
[ i9 ]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
self, and not for the gifts which he may
bestow. Devout seekers after God are not infre
quently separated from him by sorrow.
It is said that sorrow brings one to God.
So it sometimes does. But it sometimes
estranges, from God. Great sorrow often
makes it seem for the time as though life
were unjust, and there were no God ruling
in the universe. This is a very common
experience. It was the experience of Job
in his distress, of the Psalmist in his exile,
of Paul in his struggle with life and death,
and principalities and powers, and things
present and things to come. It was in
the experience ofthe Master himself when
he cried, " My God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me ? " If when we look
out upon life and see its travail of pain,
or when the anguish of life enters our own
soul and embitters it, the sun sometimes
seems blotted out of the heavens, and God
seems gone, we are not to chide ourselves ;
we are to remember that our experience of
temporary oblivion of the Almighty is
an experience which the devout in all
[ 20 ]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
ages have known. Wait thou his time.
Blessed is he who in such an hour of sor
row, when it seems as though God were
departing, still holds to him, and cries,
" My God ! my God ! "
Finally, God is infinite and we are finite ;
and, at the best, we can only know him
a very little. Many young people make
a mistake in this respect. They read
the story of devout souls in the Psalms,
or in biographies in the Bible or in
other literature, and say, " I have no
such experience as that; I cannot be a
Christian." It takes time to grow, and
the power of seeing God is a power that
must grow like any other power. We
cannot expect at fifteen all that we may
have at fifty ; nor at fifty all that we may
have in the glory of the future. One of
the best educated, one of the most spirit
ually developed, one of the richest natures
that God has ever given to the world, said
of himself, "We see in part, and we
prophesy in part," and " we see in a glass
darkly." If you do not care for God, if
you think you can get along without him,
[ 21 ]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
if you are satisfied to live as you are, then
you may very well question whether you
are living at all. If you think you have
all of God you need, if you are satisfied
with your vision of God, if you have all
the experience that your heart craves, then
you may doubt whether you are really
living. But if you know what it is to cry,
" As the hart panteth after the water
brooks, so my soul panteth after thee, O
God ! " if you know what it is to cry, " Oh,
that I knew where I might find him ! " if
every glimpse of God makes you long for
a better vision, and every imperfect and
tardy acquiescence in God's will makes you
long for the time when you will do his will
on earth as the angels do it in heaven,
— "Blessed are they that hunger and
thirst after righteousness, for they shall be
filled." I cannot take all the sunlight;
but shall I not bask in what sunlight I
can get on a spring morning ? I cannot
breathe all the oxygen ; but shall I not
stand at the open window, and take great
draughts of oxygen, as much as my lungs
will hold ? I cannot see all the floral
[ 22 ]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
beauty of this beautiful world ; but shall
I not look at this bunch of lilies, and en
joy them ? I cannot take in all of God ;
shall I not walk in such light as he gives,
breathe in such breath of life as he im
parts, rejoice in such beauty of love as he
affords ?
Look at these etchings as they stand,
my reader, and ask yourself the question,
Is your portrait here ? Do you really
want God? or would you rather be glad
to know there is no will superior to your
own ? Do you want him above everything
else, so that no wealth, nor power, nor
fame counts in comparison with the desire
for God ? Do you want God, and not an
intellectual opinion about him, or a testi
mony to him, or a church service of adora
tion of him, or even a Book written con
cerning him ? Do you want God for his
own sake, and not for the happiness you
think he will bring you either here or here
after? Do you want him as your com
forter in sorrow, your strength in tempta
tion, your guide in perplexity, your life,
your all and in all ? If you do not, the
[ 23 ]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
second part of this little book is not for
you. If you do, then will I try to tell
you, as well as a half-healed blind man
can tell other half-healed blind men, how
we can see something of God.
II. HELPS
We can form the habit of looking for
God in nature.
It is only a very superficial acquaintance
with scientific thought which leads to the
idea that there is no God in nature. The
old argument from designs has given place
to the modern argument from design.
The evidence of personal skill in nature
is by no man more strikingly witnessed to
than by such representatives of modern
scientific exploration as Darwin, Tyndall,
and Huxley. Read in Darwin's Life and
Letters his recognition of infinite design
in the great fabric of creation ; or Hux
ley's wonderfully graphic description in
his essay on " The Origin ofthe Species " 1
of the development of some common
1 Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews, p. 260.
[ 24]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
animal such as a salamander or a newt
from its egg, and his conclusion : " After
watching the process hour by hour, one is
almost involuntarily possessed by the no
tion, that some more subtle aid to vision
than an achromatic would show the hidden
artist, with his plan before him, striving
with skilful manipulation to perfect his
work." Or read Professor Tyndall's 1 tes
timony to his own experience : " I have
noticed during years of self-observation
that it is not in hours of clearness and
vigor that this doctrine [of material athe
ism] commends itself to my mind; that
in the presence of stronger and healthier
thought it ever dissolves and disappears,
as offering no solution of the mystery in
which we dwell, and of which we form a
part." He who does not care to find God
will not have God forced upon his atten
tion by nature. But he who does, may
learn to discern the infinite wisdom mani
festing itself in all natural phenomena.
" There are," says James Martineau,2
1 Fragments of Science, vol. ii. p. 204.
2 A Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 336.
[25]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
" but three forms under which it is possi
ble to think of the ultimate or immanent
principle of the universe, — Mind, Life,
Matter : given the first, it is intellectually
thought out : the second, it blindly grows :
the third, it mechanically shuffles into
equilibrium." Whatever intellectual, or
even moral, difficulties one may find in
volved in a theistic conception of the
universe, however unsatisfactory the old
mechanical conception of creation, and the
old semi-idolatrous conception of God as
a gigantic man, fulfilling the part now of
mechanic and now of engineer, no thought
ful student of nature can hesitate between
these alternatives : it is clear that nature
has been thought out. The object of
science is, or ought to be, not merely to
describe phenomena, and to label and as
sort them, but to perceive their intellec
tual relations ; and that is to perceive the
Infinite Intellect which has prearranged
them, and is revealed in and by them.
Science thinks the thoughts of God after
him. It is possible to form the habit of
looking for evidences of wisdom, skill,
[ 26 ]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
aesthetic love of beauty, general benefi
cence in the ordered phenomena of nature.
One will see what he looks for. In the
same field the farmer will see food for
cattle ; the artist flowers for his canvas ;
the scientist mechanical contrivances for his
analytical dissection ; the devout soul wit
nesses of a life greater, wiser, better than
his own. He may cultivate the habit ofthe
H ebrew Psal mist. I f he does, what he will
learn in time to see and hear in nature will
be what that Psalmist saw and heard : —
"The voice ofthe Lord is upon the waters :
The God of glory thundereth,
Even the Lord upon many waters.
The voice of the Lord is powerful ;
The voice ofthe Lord is full of majesty.
The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars ;
Yea, the Lord breaketh in pieces the cedars of
Lebanon.
He maketh them also to skip like a calf;
Lebanon and Sirion like a young wild-ox.
The voice of the Lord cleaveth the flames of fire.
The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness ;
The Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh.
The voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve,
And strippeth the forests bare :
And in his temple everything saith, Glory."
[ 27 ]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
We may form a similar habit of looking
for God in man. " He," says John,
"that loveth not his brother whom he
hath seen, how can he love God whom he
hath not seen ? " This would be a strange
non sequitur, if God were not to be seen
in men. There is a divine in humanity,
obscured, alloyed, corrupted ; but still it
is there. For where love is, there God is ;
and in all the revelations of love there is
a revelation of God, who is himself the
fountain of love. To this, Browning has
given beautiful expression, though his
enigmatic verse will not yield its meaning
to the mere careless reader : —
" Round us the wild creatures, overhead the trees,
Underfoot the moss-tracks, — life and love with these!
I to wear a fawn-skin, thou to dress in flowers:
All the long lone summer day, that greenwood life of
ours !
" Rich-pavilioned, rather, — still the world without, —
Inside — gold-roofed silk- walled silence round about!
Queen it thou on purple, — I, at watch and ward
Couched beneath the columns, gaze, thy slave,
love's guard!
[28 ]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
" So, for us no world ? Let throngs press thee to me!
Up and down amid men, heart by heart fare we!
Welcome squalid vesture, harsh voice, hateful face!
God is soul, souls I and thou: with souls should
souls have place."
Optimism and piety walk the world to
gether. This is but another way of saying
that hope and faith are kin. If to be
without God is to be without hope, it is
scarcely less true, to be without hope
is to be without God. He who looks
for the worst in men will not be without
belief in a personal devil ; he who looks
for the best in men will not be without
faith in a personal God. A wealthy lady,
who had a beautiful rural home in the
vicinity of one of our great cities, invited
to it one day the outcast of the neighbor
ing city. They roamed her lawns, visited
her conservatory, swarmed through her
gardens. At parting, a rough, raw-boned
Irishwoman said to her, in a voice which
for depth, but not for smoothness, would
have done credit to a basso, " Mrs.  ,
I guess the Lord Jesus put this into your
head, didn't he?" — "I think he did,"
[ 29 1

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
was the reply. " I thought so," was the
unconsciously humorous response ; " I
knew you could n't have thought of it
yourself." But humorous though it was,
it expressed a profound truth. The higher
thoughts come to us and to our fellows.
He who will look in life for its heroisms,
its self-denials, its unselfish services, - will
find faith in a personal God stealing into
his heart, he scarce knows how. He will
find himself saying to himself, all un
consciously, " God put this into your
heart; you couldn't have thought of it
yourself." In this quest after God, whether in the
world of nature or the world of men, most
of us need, as in other quests after knowl
edge, a guide, a teacher. Few men know
how to see accurately material things, fewer
still how to perceive spiritual realities, until
they have been shown. There are men
who have developed with patient assiduity
the capacity to examine the outer world,
for whose guidance we should be pro
foundly grateful, — Tyndall, Huxley, Dar
win, Agassiz, and hosts of others. There
[ 30 ]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
are other men who have developed the gift
of seeing the invisible world ; and when
we cannot see with our less-developed
vision, why should we not accept their
witness, and under their guidance learn
to see as they see ? The testimony ofthe
scientists to life is not to be discarded ;
but neither is the testimony of the poets.
Imagination is also a capacity to see ; and
the poet is also an explorer. Wordsworth
will tell us how to see God in nature ; and
Browning how to see God in men ; and
Whittier how to see God in our own souls.
There is in the autobiography of Charles
Darwin a pathetic passage in which, with
characteristic candor, he laments the
atrophy of his own imagination and his
spiritual nature, and accounts for it. He
says : x —
" Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry
of many kinds, such as the works of Milton,
Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and
Shelley, gave me great pleasure; and even as a
schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare,
1 Life and Letters of Darwin, vol. i. pp. 81, 82.
[ 31 ]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
especially in the historical plays. I have also
said that formerly pictures gave me considerable,
and music very great, delight. But now for
many years I cannot endure to read a line of
poetry ; I have tried lately to read Shakespeare,
and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated
me. I have also almost lost my taste for pic
tures and music. . . . My mind seems to have
become a kind of machine for grinding general
laws out of large collections of facts ; but why
this should have caused the atrophy of that part
of the brain alone on which the higher tastes
depend, I cannot conceive. A man with a
mind more highly organized or better consti
tuted than mine, would not, I suppose, have
thus suffered ; and if I had to live my life again,
I would have made a rule to read some poetry,
and listen to some music, at least once every
week ; for perhaps the parts of my brain now
atrophied would thus have been kept active
through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss
of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to
the intellect, and more probably to the moral
character, by enfeebling the emotional part of
our nature."
He who would see God must use the
faculty with which God is seen ; and if he
[32 ]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
would do this, he must let men who are
rich in the faculty which perceives the in
visible, — which looks not at the things
which are seen and are temporal, but at
the things which are not seen and are eter
nal, — guide, teach, inspire him. Paul has
given this counsel in four sentences, which
are not the disconnected aphorisms they
are sometimes taken to be : " Quench
not the spirit ; despise not prophesyings ;
prove all things ; hold fast that which is
good ! " Which may be liberally ren
dered thus : Do not extinguish the spirit
ual nature within you, by suffering that
part of your powers to be atrophied. De
spise not the men who live in the invisible
world, and bear testimony out of their ex
perience to the things which they have
seen and known. Yet take not all utter
ances of all prophets as of equal authority ;
test them. And such as prove in the
trial beneficent, by animating human life,
and making it nobler and better, to those
hold fast ; that is the test, — by their fruits
ye shall know them.
In this quest after God in human life
[33]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
we must, as I have said, seek for the divine
in the human ; for the gold in the ore ;
for the flowers among the weeds. But
there is one life in which that divine was
not corrupted by the human, though
dwelling in it. It would be foreign to
the purpose of this book to attempt to
afford a theological definition of Jesus
Christ. One may believe that he was
God and man dwelling together in a dual
personality ; or God in human flesh, the
divine spirit dwelling under the limitations
of bodily existence ; or God-in-man, the
divine Spirit so animating the man Christ
Jesus as to make him a God-filled man ;
or one may decline to define his faith,
believing that Christ transcends all defini
tion. But he can hardly read with un
prejudiced mind the story of that wonderful
life, and not find in it a marvellous reve
lation of the nature of God. He who
would find God will find him, as nowhere
else, in the earthly life of Jesus the Christ.
Let him for the purpose read and re-read
the story of that life, and think that the
Father is, in the infinite and eternal rela-
[ 34 ]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
tions, what Jesus Christ was in the tempo
rary and limited ones. Would he know
how God feels toward us in our sorrow,
let him read the story of Christ's visit to
the sisters of Lazarus ; toward the sceptic
in his unbelief, let him read the story of
Jesus and Thomas ; toward the recreant
disciple who has been unfaithful, let him
read the interview between Christ and
Peter by the Galilean Sea ; toward the
penitent sinner, outcast and despairing,
let him read the story of Christ's pardon
of the woman who was a sinner ; toward
the men who use religion as a cloak for
self-service, let him read Christ's denun
ciation of the Pharisees who devoured
widows' houses, and for a pretence made
long prayers. And then before a God
thus interpreted, let him come in his sor
row for comfort ; in his doubts for better,
clearer light ; in his penitence for pardon ;
in his despair for a new courage ; and in
his pride for condemnation. In doing
this we may take either one of the many
figures by which the New Testament writers
interpret Christ to us. We may think of
[ 35 ]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
him as the Christ of God, — that is, as the
One whom God has anointed and sent
into the world to reveal the unknown
and make Him known ; or as the Son of
God, — that is, as One who possesses the
Father's nature, and so discloses it to us
that we may become sons of God ; or as
the Image of God, — that is, a picture
of the Invisible and the Eternal cast upon
the sensitive-plate of a pure and holy life ;
or, laying aside all figures, we may simply
accept Christ's words, and build upon
them, " Believe that I am in the Father,
and the Father in me." The one thing
important for him who is seeking God is
to seek to find him in Jesus Christ, as he
has sought to find him in nature, in hu
manity, and in the experience of the pro
phetic and devout souls portrayed in
literature. He who thus seeks will find
him in Jesus Christ, with a clearness of
disclosure found nowhere else.
But we must look for God in Christ
not only by reading about Christ, but by
endeavoring to be like him. It is only
by participation in his life that we can
[ 36 ]

THE SOUL S QUEST AFTER GOD
come to an acquaintance with him. Not
so much by studying the life of Christ as
by endeavoring to live it, do we come into
fellowship with the Father, and with his
Son Jesus Christ. If it is true that we shall
be like him when we see him as he is, it is
also true that we can see him as he is, only
as we are like him. There is one utter
ance of Paul in which the two different
translations, that of the Old Version and
that ofthe Revised Version, bring out this
distinction very clearly : —
Old Version. — We all, with open face
beholding as in a glass the glory of the
Lord, are changed into the same image
from glory to glory.
Revised Version. — We all, with unveiled
face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the
Lord, are transformed into the same image
from glory to glory.
It is not by beholding as in a glass,
it is by reflecting as from a mirror, that
the transformation comes ; and with the
transformation, acquaintance, friendship.

[37 ]

II
GOD IN NATURE

II
GOD IN NATURE1
WE are to discriminate clearly be
tween theology and religion, be
tween life and the philosophy of life. My
object this morning is not to expound a
complete system of philosophy, but to
consider the effect of the change which is
taking place in philosophy upon the re
ligious life.
The object of the minister is not to ex
pound philosophy, but to promote life.
He is not a teacher of theology, but a
preacher of religion. He must be a theo
logian ; he must have a philosophy of the
life which he is imparting; nevertheless,
his object is not to impart the philosophy,
but to use the philosophy that he may
impart the life. " I have come that they
may have life, and that they may have it
1 Copyright, 1899, by Lyman Abbott. Copyright,
1900, by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.
[41 ]

GOD IN NATURE
more abundantly," says Christ. And then
he breathes upon his disciples and says,
" Receive ye the Holy Spirit. As my
Father hath sent me, even so send I you."
We who are ministers of his grace are to
be administers of his life. We are to im
part life. We are to do this through truth ;
nevertheless, for his ministers truth is not
an end, but a means to an end. Truth is
instrumental. The teacher in the medical school
teaches physiology and anatomy and hy
giene ; but when we get sick and send for
a doctor, we do not send in order that we
may receive a lecture on physiology or
anatomy or hygiene. We send for the
doctor that he may use his knowledge of
physiology or anatomy or hygiene to make
us well. You break a bone ; you do not
want the doctor to tell you about bones,
you want him to set the bone. So the
object of ministers is not to lecture us on
the philosophy of religion ; neither is it
to ignore the philosophy of religion ; it is
to use the philosophy of religion to help
men and women to live better, nobler,
[42]

GOD IN NATURE
diviner lives. " The truth," says Christ,
"shall make you free." "Sanctify them
through thy truth; thy word is truth."
Truth is, then, an instrument. The ob
ject of truth is to set men free ; it is to
sanctify men, to make them holy.
The minister who simply expounds the
truth does not understand his mission.
His mission is so to use truth that men
shall be made free; that men shall be
made holy. His ministry is, therefore, to
be determined by fruits in the life. That
is the best sermon, not which is a great
pulpit effort, but which is helpful. If,
young men, you have preached a sermon
and some one comes up to you and says
that was a great pulpit effort, hide your
head in shame and go home and never
write another like it. But if some one
comes to you, with a little quaver in the
voice and a little moisture in the eye, and
says, "Thank you; you have helped me
this morning," thank God and go home
and try to write another like it. That is
the end of preaching — to use theology to
help life. The test of the sermon is its
[43 1

GOD IN NATURE
fruitfulness in life ; and that is the test of
theology. We are not, however, to judge of a
truth beforehand by the fruit which we
think it will produce. It is the truth
which makes free, not any kind of error.
It is the truth which sanctifies men, not
any kind of falsehood. All truth is safe.
All error is dangerous. It is only the
truth that the minister is to use. He is
never to say, " This is the philosophy
that my people are used to and this is
the philosophy that I think will do better
service, and so, though I do not believe
it, I will preach it." Never ! It is only
the truth he is to use, but he is always
to use the truth. Truth is always an
instrument. He is to distinguish, too, between the
things he knows and the things he thinks,
between certainties and hypotheses. He
must have both, both certainties and hy
potheses, but he must distinguish in his
own mind between the two. It is abso
lutely certain that there is sunlight, and it
is absolutely certain that that sunlight pro-
[ 44 ]

GOD IN NATURE

duces certain vital effects on humanity
and vegetation ; and it is now the univer
sally accepted hypothesis that the whole
universe is filled with an invisible, impal
pable ether, and that sunlight is produced
by undulations of that ether. The ether
is a hypothesis. The sunlight is a cer
tainty. In science we all recognize this
distinction between the hypotheses and
the certainties. Unfortunately, we have
not yet learned in theology to distinguish
between the hypotheses and the certainties.
We generally quarrel about the hypotheses.
It is, for instance, a certainty, I hope
in the experience of all of us, — certainly
it must be a certainty in the experience
of every minister, or he has no right in
the pulpit, — that God is. God is not a
hypothesis which the minister has invented
to account for the phenomena of creation.
He knows that there is a " power not
ourselves that makes for righteousness,"
because when he has been weak that power
has strengthened him, when he has been
a coward that power has made him strong,
when he has been in sorrow that power
[ 45 ]

GOD IN NATURE
has comforted him, when he has been in
perplexity that power has counselled him,
and he has walked a different path, and
lived a different life, and been a different
man, because there is that power, — im
palpable, invisible, unknown, and yet best
and most truly known. But when he
comes to ask himself for a definition of
this power, for an account of its attributes,
and its relation to the phenomena about
him, he enters at once into the realm of
hypothesis. We know God in his per
sonal relation to ourselves. What he is
in himself and what he is in his relations
to the great universal phenomena, that is
matter of hypothesis.
It is about the effect of a new hypoth
esis on our religious life that I am going
to talk to you this morning. I am not
going to consider which of two hypotheses
is true ; I am going to try to describe two
hypotheses, and consider their respective
effects on the religious life. I will de
scribe them as matters of personal experi
ence ; because I find that when I attempt
to describe the old theology, some of my
[ 46 ]

GOD IN NATURE
friends, who still hold to it, think I am
describing it unjustly and unfairly ; I do
not wish to describe another man's opin
ion, because I find it so difficult for other
men to describe mine.
As I look back, I can remember some
thing of the view which it seems to me I
held when I was entering into the min
istry. It was something like this : There
is a great and good God. He is some
where in the centre of the universe —
whether in the body or out of the body
I knew not, and yet in my conception I
embodied him. He is the creator and
the ruler of the world. He had made the
world. I conceived of him as making the
world as an architect makes a building.
I rather think somewhere, in some of my
earlier sermons, that figure would be found
worked out — he had turned it in a lathe ;
he had erected the pillars ; he had woven
the carpet of grass ; he had ornamented
it with the flowers. You have heard that
from other ministers, and no doubt you
would have heard it from me when I was
a young man. And as I conceived of
[ 47 1

GOD IN NATURE

God creating the world as an engineer
creates an engine, so also I conceived of
him regulating this world as an engineer
regulates the engine. When men said to
me, " Do you believe in miracles ? Do
you believe that God has set aside natu
ral law ? " I said, " Oh, no, but he uses
natural law. As an engineer uses the
steam and the fire, or as an electric engi
neer uses the electricity, so God uses the
forces of nature. He is in his engine,
with his hand on the lever ; he can add to
its speed or he can diminish its speed, or
he can halt it, or he can make it go back
ward, or he can turn it in the one direc
tion or the other direction. He made the
engine and he rules the engine." Some
thing like that was my conception of God.
Similarly I conceived of him in his re
lation to men as a great king. He had
issued certain laws, and had attached cer
tain punishments to those laws. There
cannot be law without punishment ; a law
without a penalty attached is only advice,
not law. I conceived that God had issued
laws, and to them had attached penalties.
[ 48 ]

GOD IN NATURE
Those laws had come from his throne
like edicts from an imperial Czar. They
were righteous and just laws, and I had
broken them, and the whole human race
had broken them, and punishment was
denounced against the whole human race
for breaking them, and that punishment
must be executed. And yet God was
merciful and wished to spare men. And
so his Son had come into the world, and
had borne the punishment in order that
the law might be carried out and still man
might be forgiven. That God might both
be just and the justifier of him that be
lieveth, some one had to bear the penalty
which had been attached to the law. So
I conceived of God as sitting apart from
his creation which he had made and ruling
it, and apart from men whom he had
made and ruling them.
And when I entertained this conception
of God as sitting apart from the universe
which he had made and ruling it, and
apart from men whom he had made and
ruling them, it seemed to me that the
most fundamental question in theology
[ 49 ]

GOD IN NATURE

was, Do you believe in the supernatural ?
If a man did not believe in the super
natural, then all he believed in was the
machine ; he believed in the engine, but
he did not think there was any engi
neer to control it ; he believed in hu
manity, but he did not think there was
any king to govern men. And one who
believed simply in the engine without any
engineer, and in the community without
any king, was either an atheist or a deist ;
that is, either he believed there was no
God, or else he believed in an absentee
God, in a God who had nothing to do
with the world, a God who had nothing
to do with men. And it did not seem to
me then, and it does not seem to me now,
that there is much to choose between the
belief in no God and the belief in an
absentee God. For religion consists, I
recall to you again, not in a hypothesis
that there is a God, but in a life lived
under the inspiration of God ; and if God
is conceived as so far off that there is no
longer any intercommunication between
God and the soul, he is an absentee God,
[ 5o]

GOD IN NATURE
and life goes on without him. Under
that conception there cannot be any vital
religion, for religion is the inflowing of
God upon life.
" Religion," says Max Miiller, " con
sists in the perception of the infinite under
such manifestations as are able to influence
the moral character of man." If, then,
God is represented as absent from the
universe so that he does not produce any
influence on the conduct and character of
man, there is no religion.
Gradually my whole conception of the
relation of God to the universe has
changed. I am sure that I have not lost
my experience of God. I am far more
certain now than I was forty years ago
that God is, and that God is not an ab
sentee God. I am not quite so certain as
I once was about some of the manifesta
tions which I once thought he had made
of himself. I am a great deal more cer
tain than I once was of his personal rela
tion to me. My experience of God has
changed only to grow deeper, broader,
and stronger. But my conception of
[ 5i ]

GOD IN NATURE
God's relation to the universe has changed
radically. My hypothesis was — God an
engineer who had made an engine and
sat apart from it, ruling it; God a king
who had made the human race and sat
apart from men, ruling them. That was
my hypothesis ; now I have another hy
pothesis. And I think the change which
has come over my mind is coming and
has come over the minds of a great many.
I think that there is nothing original in
what I am going to say to you this morn
ing, for I am only going to interpret to
you a change, perhaps not altogether un
derstood, which is being wrought in the
mind of the whole Christian Church. I
think my change only reflects your change.
But whether that be true or not, I am
sure the change has taken place in me.
I now conceive of God as in his uni
verse. I conceive of creation as a growth.
I conceive of him as making the universe
somewhat as our spirit makes our body,
shaping and changing and developing it
by processes from within. The figures
from the finite to the infinite are imper-
[ 52 ]

GOD IN NATURE
feet and misleading, but this is the figure
which best represents to me my own
thought of God's relation to the universe :
Not that of an engineer who said one
morning, " Go to, I will make a world,"
and in six days, or six thousand years, or
six million thousand years, made one by
forming it from without, as a potter forms
the clay with skilful hand ; but that of a
Spirit who has been forever manifesting
himself in the works of creation and be
neficence in all the universe, one little
work of whose wisdom and beneficence
we are and we see.
I look out upon the universe and I see
that it is a universe, a variety in unity. I
see that there is a unity in all the phe
nomena of nature, and that science has
more and more made that unity clear, and
I see that there is one Infinite and Eter
nal Energy from which all things proceed.
And I see too, it seems to me very
clearly, that this Energy is an intellectual
Energy ; that is, that the physical phe
nomena of the universe are intellectually
related to one another. The scientist
[53]

GOD IN NATURE
does not create the relations ; he finds
them. They are; he discovers them.
All science is thinking the thoughts of
God after him. It is finding thought
where thought has done its intellectual
work ; it is learning what are those in
tellectual relationships which have been in
and are embodied in creation.
Matthew Arnold says : " There is a
power not ourselves that makes for right
eousness." The unity of physical phe
nomena is not more certain than the unity
of moral phenomena. It makes history
possible, moral philosophy possible, soci
ology possible, the study of literature and
human life possible. We are each one of
us an individual, and yet the nation has
its entity and the human race its entity,
and we are all one. The seventy millions
of people in these United States are not
seventy million separated grains of sand ;
we are an organic nation. These many
millions upon this globe, that have in
habited it we know not how long, and are
to inhabit it we know not how much
longer, are not like the grains of sand
[ 54 ]

GOD IN NATURE
lying upon the ocean beach; we are a
unit, with a beginning, with a progress,
with a history, with a development, with
a moral law that unites and makes us one.
As there is, therefore, one power that
makes for order in the natural universe,
so there is one power that makes for
righteousness in the moral universe ; and
if it makes for righteousness it is a right
eous power, as the power that makes for
order is an intellectual power. In other
words, I have come to believe that in the
world of nature and back of all its phe
nomena, and in the world of men and
back of all human phenomena, is one
great intellectual and righteous Power
manifesting himself in and through the
world of nature, manifesting himself in
and through the world of men.
Perhaps some one will ask me here,
" Do you believe in a personal God ? "
A reporter of one of the daily papers once
came to me ; he wanted to make a column
of copy for his paper, and he had a long
row of questions on the subject of theol
ogy. I was bowing him out of the room
[ 55 ]

GOD IN NATURE

with gentle declination when he stopped
me, saying : " Oh, but, Mr. Abbott, just
one question : Do you believe in a personal
God?" "Well," I said, "what do you
mean by a personal God ? " He said :
" I mean a great big man sitting up in the
inner circle of the universe, ruling things."
" No," I said, " I do not believe in that
kind of a personal God." " Oh, well,
then," he said, " you are a pantheist." I
have long since learned that, if fine words
butter no parsnips, hard words break no
bones. If my new conception of God were
pantheism, and I thought it were true, I
hope I should dare to say, I am a panthe
ist. But it is not pantheism. The differ
ence between saying that God is in all
nature, and God is nature — the difference
between saying that God is in all phe
nomena, and saying that God is simply
the sum of all phenomena, seems to me
plain enough — even for such a reporter
of a daily newspaper to understand. No.
I believe that I am in my body, equally
regnant in every part of it ; but I am sure
that I am something more than my body.
[ 56 ]

GOD IN NATURE
I believe that God is in all phenomena,
regnant in them all ; but I believe that he
is something more than the sum of all
phenomena. He is more than any mani
festation of himself. He is more, there
fore, than the sum of all the manifestations
of himself.1
I am not going this morning to argue
for one or the other of these conceptions.
I am not going to try to show you that
the one is true and the other erroneous.
I am going to try to consider with you the
difference which this change in conception
makes in the religious life. This is the
topic which I have been asked to speak
on : The relation of nature and the super
natural to the Christian thought of to-day ;
not to argue philosophically which is true,
but to consider practically what is the
effect of our changed conceptions on our
spiritual life.
1 A man is no less a person because he can speak in
New York and be heard in Chicago, or press a button in
Washington and set machinery in motion in Omaha.
Extension of power does not lessen the personality of him
who exercises it.
[57]

GOD IN NATURE
In the first place, then, I no longer rec
ognize a distinction between the natural
and the supernatural. When I thought
that God sat apart from nature, ruling
over it as an engineer rules over his en
gine, then it seemed to me to be of essen
tial importance that one should believe in
the supernatural, that is, in the One who
was apart from nature, and did rule over
it. But now that I believe that God is in
nature, ruling through it, and in humanity,
ruling in the hearts of men, all the natural
seems to me most supernatural, and all the
supernatural most natural. For not now
and then in special episodes and exceptional
interferences does the finger of God ap
pear ; not now and then, as when the en
gineer adds the steam or subtracts it, or
reverses his engine, does the will of God
show itself in life ; not now and then does
the King appear as King, by the issuance
of a new edict. God is in all of nature ;
all its forces are the forces of God ; all its
laws are the methods of God ; all its ac
tivities are the activities of God. And in
human nature the laws of God are the
[ 58 ]

GOD IN NATURE

beatific influences which proceed from
him, the spiritual forces projected from
him as the rays from the sun, and which
vivify the hearts of those who receive them.
Creation, therefore, is no longer the
manufacture of a globe by an architect or
a builder. It is not something that God
did six thousand years ago, and, ending,
stopped to rest. Creation is a continuous
process. It is always going on. The ge
ologists tell us that the same convulsions
that shook the solid world in the time of
its birth, that shot the mountains up and
dug the channels for the seas and the riv
ers, are going on even in historic times.
God is always creating. Every flower is
a new creation. Every day he separates
the waters that are under the firmament
from the waters that are above the firma
ments ; for he it is who daily and hourly
lifts the clouds from their ocean bed and
causes them to float in the air above.
Every spring is a new creation, and he
himself is the secret and the source and
the centre of all the life. Between the
philosophy that says there is no God or
[ 59 ]

GOD IN NATURE
there is only an absentee God, and the
philosophy that says that God is in all
phenomena and if there were no God there
would be no phenomena, there is certainly
nothing of kin. These are not extremes
that meet. The abolition of the distinc
tion between natural and supernatural for
the purpose of getting rid of the super
natural is one thing ; the abolition of the
distinction for the purpose of affirming
that the supernatural is in everything is
quite another.
A writer in the Interior, of Chicago,
said, in a criticism on one of my lectures,
some years ago, that Dr. Abbott held
that God created amoebae, and amoebae did
the rest. I do not know how it would be
possible in a sentence of equal length to
state more clearly what I exactly do not
believe. I hold that God is the secret
and the source and the centre of all life.
When your spirit departs from your body
the body crumbles into dust. If I could
conceive the Spirit of God departing from
nature I think all nature would crumble
to dust. No longer would the planets
[ 60]

GOD IN NATURE
circle around the sun ; no longer would
clouds float in the air ; no longer would
the sunbeams flood the earth ; no longer
would flowers bloom, or water run, or
rain fall, or men walk, or living creatures
breathe. God is himself the life of life.
All things are his breath ; literally, scien
tifically, absolutely, in him all things live
and move and have their being.
I have, therefore, for myself, practically
abandoned the distinction between general
providences and special providences. A
special providence is, in this new concep
tion of God's relation to the universe,
nothing but a general providence specially
perceived. It is a clearer perception of
the universal presence. God is in all the
phenomena ; sometimes we wake up and
see him ; then we say, " Behold, a special
providence." It is we who have opened
our eyes. This is what I think Christ
means when he says : Not a sparrow fall-
eth to the ground without your Father.
This is what he means when he bids us
pray day by day for our daily bread. The
children at the table do not realize that
[61 ]

GOD IN NATURE
the bread and milk which they have regu
larly for supper is the father's gift as well
as the box of candy which he brings home
on birthdays ; but the one is as much the
father's providence as the other, only the
children specialize the one and recognize
it. That is all.
Therefore, a miracle no longer seems to
me a manifestation of extraordinary power,
but an extraordinary manifestation of ordi
nary power. God is always showing him
self. Perhaps some of you may think this
is a new theology ; but this particular bit
of theology is as old as Augustine, and as
orthodox. It is Augustine who said, a
birth — I am not quoting his exact words,
but I am giving the spirit of them — a
birth is more miraculous than a resurrec
tion, because it is more wonderful that
something that never was should begin to
be, than that something which was and
ceased to be should begin again. The
difference between the birth and the resur
rection is that one is made palpable to our
senses every day, and the other in the one
great event of human history was made
[ 62 ]

GOD IN NATURE
palpable to the senses of a few witnesses
in years long gone by. The mere fact
that a miracle is an extraordinary event
seems to me to constitute no reason for
discrediting it. For the credibility of an
event does not depend upon the nature
of the event, but upon the nature of the
testimony which attests it. If the Old
Testament told the story of a naval en
gagement between the Jewish people and
a pagan people, in which all the ships of
the pagan people were absolutely de
stroyed, and not a single man killed among
the Jews, all the skeptics would have
scorned the narrative. Every one now
believes it — except those who live in
Spain. Do I, then, believe in miracles ? I be
lieve in some, and some events that have
been called miracles I do not believe, and
some I do not think were intended to be
regarded as miracles at all. The story of
the sun and the moon standing still I do
not think was intended to be taken as his
tory by the man who wrote the narrative.
It was poetry, and is quoted from an old
[ 63 ]

GOD IN NATURE
poetic legend. The story of the great fish
that swallowed a prophet I do not believe
was ever intended to be taken as history
by the man who wrote it. I think it is a
genial yet keen satire of Jewish narrow
ness, written for the purpose of making
clear that there is a wideness in God's
mercy like the wideness of the sea. Some
other of the strange events recorded in the
Bible seem to me story rather than his
tory ; I do not think them well authenti
cated; nor does their historical truthfulness
appear to me a matter of any importance.
The story that once upon a time an ax-
head dropped into a pool and sunk, and a
prophet threw in a branch and then the
ax-head swam again, to me carries a better
lesson if I think of it as an illustration of
the Hebrew folk-lore, the sort of stories
that mothers told their children in the
olden time, than it does if I try to make
myself think it happened — because I do
not succeed very well if I do try.1 The
Book of Ruth is clearly romance, though
1 In Bartlett and Peters' s edition of the Scriptures this
story is classed with Literature, not with History.
[ 64 ]

GOD IN NATURE
historical romance ; I see no reason for
doubting that the Samson story is so also.
The mere mechanical fact that one narra
tive is incorporated in the Book of Judges
and the other is separated from it does not
seem to me to affect the question either of
credibility or interpretation. On the other
hand, the resurrection of Jesus Christ
seems to me to be the best-attested fact of
ancient history ; attested by the witness
of disciples whose interest would not have
led them to attest it and whose prejudices
were all against their faith in it; attested
by the change of the day of rest from the
seventh day, which the Jewish nation had
up to that time kept, to the first day, ever
after celebrating the resurrection ; attested
by the growth and life of Christianity it
self, which, if Christ did not rise from the
dead, I must think was historically founded
on either a great folly or a great fraud,
and to believe that would be to believe
that there is no moral order in the uni
verse. That the disciples had ocular evi
dence which convinced them against all
their preconceptions that the Christ was
[ 65 ]

GOD IN NATURE
living whom they thought was dead ap
pears to me as certain as any fact in history
can be. Whether that ocular demonstra
tion was afforded by the return of the de
parted spirit to reanimate the crucified
body, or by the disciples' vision of the
spiritual and incorporeal body, appears to
me a question neither possible nor impor
tant to determine. The former hypothesis
presents, I think, the fewer difficulties ;
but the fact of continuous life is the one
and only important fact.
Surely this conception of God in all na
ture, all life, all epochs, is not carrying
God away from us. It is bringing him
nearer. If every springtime, as I see the
buds growing and the leaves putting them
selves forth, and the flowers beginning to
bloom, and the birds beginning to sing, I
look out and say, " God is creating a new
world;" if in every incident and accident,
so called, of my life, I look to see what the
voice of God is for me, what errand he
would send me on, what mission he would
give me, what he means ; if all events seem
to me to have God's voice in them, and I
[66 ]

GOD IN NATURE
seek to understand them all and follow
them all ; if every event is a manifestation
of his presence and power, and a miracle
only an unusual manifestation of a power
equally present at all times and in all eras
— surely my philosophy is not getting me
away from God, but nearer to him.
It is not easy to formulate in a sentence
that change which has come over my
thought, and, as I believe, the thought of
the present generation, respecting God's
relation to man. Shall I say we are com
ing to think of God as dwelling in man
rather than as operating on man from with
out ? This might be taken to imply a
denial or at least a doubt of God's person
ality, and of man's personality as distinct
and separate from God's, and this impli
cation I vigorously and energetically disa
vow. If I speak of God in man, it is as one
speaks of one soul working within another,
so that the two personalities intermingle,
the two lives are intertwined. Perhaps it
will be better to attempt no formal state
ment of the general principle ; rather to
illustrate it by special applications.
[67 ]

GOD IN NATURE

Revelation, then, appears to me less a
sudden disclosure to man of God, as some
one external and before hidden, than a
gradual awakening in man of that spiritual
life which alone can take cognizance of
God. Revelation is the unveiling of God.
There has been a great deal of discussion
about the nature of inspiration. Dr. Mc
Connell, formerly of Brooklyn, has called
attention to the fact that the word "in
spiration " occurs but twice in the Bible,1
and only once in such connection that
it can be deemed to refer to Scriptural
teaching. The claim of the Bible writers
for themselves is not that they were in
spired by God, but that they have made a
revelation of God. What does this mean ?
Revelation is unveiling, and discovery
is uncovering ; two words more nearly
synonymous I do not know where to find.
The revelation of God is simply the un
veiling or the uncovering or the discovery
of God. What the Bible writers claim
for themselves is this : " We have been
studying life, history, nature, our own
1 Job xxxii, 8 ; * Timothy iii, 16.
[ 68 ]

GOD IN NATURE
personal experiences ; and we have found
some truths about God, and we tell you
what they are." The word " discovery "
is used for science ; the word " revelation"
for theology ; but they mean substantially
the same thing — the unveiling of the
secret of life. Science goes a little way
in the search and stops ; the prophet goes
further, and discovers behind all the forces
and all the laws which science has dis
covered the Infinite and External Energy
from which all things proceed, the Power
not ourselves that makes for righteousness,
— in a word, God. Discovery is the reve
lation of the laws and forces operating in
nature. Revelation is the discovery of
Him who is the Lawgiver and the Force-
producer. Discovery is revelation in the
physical realm ; revelation is discovery in
the spiritual realm. The man of outsight,
with skill in the observation of the sensu
ous world, is a discoverer ; the man of in
sight, with skill in the perception of the
invisible world, is a revelator.
God has given to different nations
different missions.
[69 ]

GOD IN NATURE
He has given to Rome the mission of
teaching the world the meaning of law ; to
Greece the meaning of art and philosophy ;
to the Hebrew race the meaning of re
ligion. He has given this race this mes
sage : Tell the world what you can learn
of God and his relation to men. The
Hebrew people have added nothing to the
architecture, the art, the philosophy of
life ; but they have been a prophetic race
— discoverers of God. In this race there
were preeminently religious men, who saw
God more clearly than their fellows, and
God's relation to mankind more clearly,
and God's relation to human events more
clearly, and told their fellows what they
saw. And, from all their telling, natural
selection says the scientist, providence says
the theologian, — I say the two are the
same, — elected those that had in them
the most vital truth, the most enduring,
the most worthy to endure. Thus we
have in the Old Testament something
like two-score of writers, the most spirit
ually-minded of a spiritually-minded race,
telling us what they have discovered con-
[ 7° ]

GOD IN NATURE
cerning God. This is the Bible. It is
the gradual discovery of God in the hearts
and through the tongues of prophets who
were themselves members of a prophetic
race. God is always revealing himself, and
has always been revealing himself. He
has always been knocking at the door ; he
has always been standing at the window.
He has always been showing his charac
ter. They who have seen it best and most
clearly, and had power to tell us what
they have seen, are the world's prophets.
What is distinctive in respect to Hebrew
law is not its universal applicability to the
human race — there is a great deal in the
Hebrew law to which we no longer pay
any attention ; it is the recognition of the
fact that God is the great lawgiver. What
is peculiar in the Hebrew history is not
its narration of great battles, great states
men's endeavors and achievements ; it is
the history of the dealing of God with a
particular people. God is as truly with
the American race as he ever was with
the Hebrew race ; as truly with Abraham
[ 7i ] "

GOD IN NATURE
Lincoln as he was with Moses. The
difference between the Hebrew race and
the American race is the difference be
tween the Old Testament Scriptures and
the modern newspaper. The modern
newspaper is enterprising, and it gathers
news, and gathers gossip that is not news,
from the four quarters of the globe ; but
it fails to see God in human history. The
Old Testament prophets did not show the
same enterprise, did not have the same
wideness of view ; but they did see God in
human history, and have helped us to see
him. That vision of God is equally char
acteristic of the fiction of the Bible —
Ruth, Esther, Jonah, the parable of the
prodigal son (there are some people who
think it is irreverent to suggest that there
is any fiction in the Old Testament, but
quite right to find it in the words of Christ
in the New), and of the drama of the
Bible — the epic drama of Job, the love
drama of the Song of Songs. In these is
seen a manifestation, a revelation of good
ness and truth and righteousness, and,
above all, of a personal God dealing with
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GOD IN NATURE
men. This is the characteristic of the
Hebrew poetry. We find more beautiful
phrasing in Wordsworth, or in Tennyson,
or in Longfellow, or in Whittier, but no
where do you find in literature, ancient or
modern, such discoveries of God as in the
Hebrew Psalter. The " Eternal Good
ness " may seem to you more beautiful
than the One Hundred and Third Psalm ;
but would Whittier have written " Eternal
Goodness " if he had not read the One
Hundred and Third Psalm ?
But if this be so, and the Bible be a
revelation and disclosure of God, why not
new revelations ? Why not new disclos
ures ? Why not a new Bible ? If the
American continent was discovered by
Columbus, why does not some one dis
cover a new continent ? Because we have
discovered all the continents there are.
What is it that this Bible tells us about
God, the Infinite and the Eternal Energy
from which all things proceed, the Power
not ourselves that makes for righteousness ?
Sum it all up, put it in the briefest state
ment ; what does it tell us respecting God?
[ 73 ]

GOD IN NATURE
God is love. Love is service. The
highest manifestation of service is self-
sacrifice. The highest self-sacrifice is the
laying down of one's life for the sake of
the wholly undeserving.
Is there anything to be added to that
message ? Can you conceive of any state
ment respecting the Infinite and Eternal
Energy from which all things proceed, the
Power not ourselves that makes for right
eousness, beyond these four declarations
— first, this Infinite and Eternal Energy is
love ; second, this love shows itself in un
paid service ; third, this service runs be
yond all self-glorification into self-sacrifice ;
and, last of all, this self-sacrifice shows it
self in laying down life that the undeserving
may walk along the prostrate form up to
the eternal heights of glory ? If any one
has another revelation, let him bring it.
But there is opportunity, infinite op
portunity, for added disclosure of God,
added revelation of God, in the unfolding
and application of this truth to the experi
ences of the nation, the church, and the
individual. If it were not so, you and I
[74]

GOD IN NATURE

could not go on preaching upon this Bible.
If there were not revelations in the Bible
that the Bible writers themselves did not
fully comprehend ; if there were not reve
lations in the Bible that all the past has
not discovered ; if we were not continually
finding new meanings in old texts; if God
was not continually rewriting his Bible in
our experience, and giving us a new mes
sage to new generations, we might well
close our church doors and stop our
preaching. We preachers are not to stop
at the revelation which God has made of
himself to others ; we are to take that
revelation that he may be revealed to us
and by us. The Bible is a guide to reve
lation, not a substitute for it. Only as we
so use the Bible that we stop not at the
book, but go through the book to the
God who gave it forth, are we worthy to
be prophets and preachers in this nine
teenth century.
The forgiveness of sins is, in my think
ing of it, no longer an exceptional, epi
sodical manifestation of a supernatural
grace ; it is the revelation and effect of the
[ 75 ]

GOD IN NATURE
habit of mind ofthe Eternal Father toward
all his children. The laws of forgiveness
are a part of the laws of the Almighty and
the All-gracious. It is said that the vio
lation of natural law is never forgiven. It
is said that if you put your finger in the
candle, it will burn, pray as you will,
and if you fall from your horse, you will
break a bone, however pious you may be ;
whether the bone breaks or not depends,
not upon your piety, but upon your age.
Is it indeed true that there is no forgive
ness in natural law ? What a strange-
looking audience this would be if there
were none. The boy cuts his finger and
nature begins to heal it ; he breaks his
arm — nature begins to knit the bone ;
he burns his finger — - nature provides a
new skin. Nature, that is, God, implants
in man himself the help-giving powers
that remove disease; and, in addition,
stores the world full of remedies also, so
that specifics may be found for almost
every disease to which flesh is heir. The
laws of healing are wrought into the phys
ical realm ; they are a part of the divine
[ 76 ]

GOD IN NATURE
economy ; and shall we think that He
who helps the man to a new skin and to
a new bone cares nothing for his moral
nature, and will not help him when he has
fallen into sin ?
Forgiveness of sin is not remission of
penalty. It may include that, or it may
not; but it is not that. Redemption is
not letting a man out of one place and
putting him into another ; it is not barring
the doors of hell and throwing open the
doors of heaven. The phrase used in the
Greek Testament for the forgiveness of
sins is two Greek words meaning sending
away of sin ; and I believe I am right,
though I make the statement with some
hesitation, that that Greek phrase, the
sending away of sin, is never used in clas
sical Greek to signify forgiveness, and is
always used in the New Testament Greek
to signify forgiveness. Two men are ar
rested and are brought before a New
York court ; one is sent to Elmira Re
formatory, where he must stay until he is
cured ; one is sent to Sing Sing for ten
years. The one who is sent to Sing Sing
[ 77 ]

GOD IN NATURE
has political influence and gets a pardon
after he has been there three months, and
comes out to plunge into thievery again ;
the other man stays ten years in Elmira
Reformatory, and comes out an honest
man, to live an honest life. Which of
these men is redeemed ? — the man who
escapes the penalty and continues in the
sin, or the man who is delivered from the
sin and bears the penalty ? Forgiveness
is not remission of penalty, though it may
include that. Forgiveness is remission
of the sin itself; and God is always lifting
off the sins of the world. " Though your
sins be as scarlet, they " — the sins them
selves — -"shall be white as snow." "This
is my blood of the new testament, which
is shed for many for the remission of" —
penalty? No! — "the remission of sin."
I no longer believe that Christ died that
he might bear the penalty which a just
God must inflict because law required it ;
I believe he died that he might give life
by his death. — the remission, not of pen
alty, but ofthe sin itself. " Behold," says
John, " the Lamb of God which taketh
[78 ]

GOD IN NATURE
away the sin of the world." Oh, how we
belittle Scripture ! I used to think that
text meant, Behold, the Lamb of God
which takes away some sins from some
men, in some parts of the world. No !
He is the Lamb of God, who is taking
away the sin from the world, and when his
work is done the end will be a sinless
world. I no longer think of sacrifice as one act
done on man's behalf by the Son of God
to propitiate divine wrath or satisfy divine
law. I believe not less but more pro
foundly in sacrifice since I have come to
think of it as the law of spiritual life, and
of Christ as the Lamb of God slain from
the foundation of the world. For the
phrase " suffering love " appears to me to
be tautology. Love must suffer so long
as the loved one sins or suffers. So long
as God is love and his children sin and
suffer, God suffers with and for them.
The sacrifice of Christ is the revelation of
a sacrifice which will not end till sin and
suffering shall be no more. From the
hour when Eve looked with puzzled an-
[ 79 ]

GOD IN NATURE
guish into the unresponsive face of Abel,
marble-like in the mystery of death, and
then went out in the unutterable long
ings of a mother's heart after the fugitive
brother, down to this hour, love has suf
fered for the stricken and for the sinful,
and through anguished and broken hearts
has poured itself out in sacrifice to save.
Vicarious sacrifice is the law of life ; that
is, it is the law of God's own nature.
The divinest thing man ever does is to
suffer for another ; and the divinest form of
sacrifice is that suffered for the unworthy ;
and its greatest triumph is won when,
through sacrifice, the unworthy becomes
worthy. The long history of love's sac
rifices seems to me the history of God's
love dwelling in human hearts and in
spiring human lives to their highest and
divinest service ; and the sacrifice of Christ
seems to me the climacteric expression of
that love, the supreme revelation of God's
life, the supreme gift of God's life. The
sacrifice is offered not by nor on behalf
of man to God, but by God for the life
of man ; it is not the condition on which
[ 80 ]

GOD IN NATURE

God grants forgiveness, but the method
by which he forgives — that is, delivers
his children from the death of sin by im
parting to them the life of holiness. As
the truth of God is revealed in all the
teachings of prophets, as the benevolence
of God is revealed in all the philanthro
pies of the humane, so the deeper love of
God is revealed in all the sacrificial love
of earth's vicarious sufferers. And as
Christ is the consummation of the revela
tion of the truth of God by his teaching,
and of the benevolence of God by his ser
vice, so is he the consummation of the
deeper love of God by his suffering and
sacrifice. Incarnation: what is that? God was
in Christ. Why ? Christ said of himself,
" I am the door." A door is not to be
simply looked at; you push it open and
go in. Why was God in Christ ? Why
was Christ a door ? In order that through
Christ God might enter into the human
race and the human race might enter into
Christ. In my friend's house on the Hudson
[ 81 ]

GOD IN NATURE

River is a window framed in as though it
were a picture ; one opening the door and
coming into that room and looking, sees,
as though hanging on the wall, a picture,
including the mountains, the valley, the
river, the distant city. I imagine two
persons coming in and looking at that
picture ; one saying, " This is an image
ofthe landscape hand-painted; " the other,
" No, that is the real mountain, the real
valley, the real river, seen through a glass."
The one no less than the other thinks the
real is represented. That seems to me
fairly to represent the difference between
the liberal Congregationalist and the ortho
dox Unitarian. The orthodox Unitarian
looks at the picture on the wall, and says,
" That is not the image of God, but it
looks exactly like him." Now, I am
orthodox; I believe that through the
window I see God himself in Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ is the image of God, the re
flection of God, God manifest in the flesh ;
that is, such a manifestation of God as is
possible in a human life. I never say, I
never should say, Jesus Christ is God,
[82]

GOD IN NATURE
because what I said a few moments ago,
and you then agreed with me, I repeat
now, when some of you will not agree
with me : God is more than the sum
OF ALL HIS MANIFESTATIONS. JeSUS
Christ is one of the manifestations of
God, but God is more than the sum of
all his manifestations.1 You hear a great
preacher like Phillips Brooks, and you
say, " I have heard Phillips Brooks." I
beg your pardon — you have heard one
little bit of Phillips Brooks. He is a
great deal more than any sermon he ever
preached ; and if you gather all his ser
mons together and read them all, still there
are in him resources that you have not
seen. When I look at the one transcend
ent historical manifestation of God in
Jesus Christ tabernacling in the flesh,
1 The question of the tri-personality of God, — the
Trinity of Person as distinguished from the Trinity of
manifestation, — including the question of the conscious
preexistence of the Logos, it did not come within the
province of this address to discuss. Personally, I accept
the Trinitarian view of tri-personality ; that is, that the
Trinity of manifestation apparent to us has a basis in a
Trinity of Person necessarily hidden from us.
[83 ]

GOD IN NATURE
there is no praise I would give to the
Father that I will not give to him, no
prayer I will direct to the Father that I
will not direct to him, no reverence I will
show to the Father that I will not show
to him ; and yet, when I am asked of my
philosophy, Is Jesus Christ God ? I re
ply, God is more than the sum of all his
manifestations, and, therefore, God is more
than Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is God
manifest in the flesh, and God entering
into that flesh in order that he may enter
into the whole of humanity — God in
man. The question is sometimes asked —
it was asked, I remember, a few years
ago of a young theological student in the
State of Maine — "Do you think the
divinity of Jesus Christ differs in kind or
differs in degree from the divinity of man?"
He replied, " In degree." For that he was
sharply called to account by the " Ad
vance," and we asked in the " Outlook,"
" Will the ' Advance ' tell us how the
divinity in man differs in kind from the
divinity in God ? " and never got an
[ 84 ]

GOD IN NATURE
answer. There are not two kinds of di
vinity. If there are, then there are two
kinds of God. That is polytheism. There
is only one divine patience, righteousness,
one divine justice, one divine love, one
divine mercy. The divinity in man is the
same in kind as the divinity in Christ,
because it is the same in kind as the di
vinity in God. We are made in God's
image. That means that we are in kind
like God. It is sin, and only sin, which
makes us unlike him. We are children
of God. That means that our natures
are themselves begotten of him, flow forth
from him. A sinless man would be the
image of the Eternal Father, because the
child of the Eternal Father, begotten of
God. God has come into Christ and filled
that one life full of himself, so that when
you look at it you look through the glass
and see the Father ; and this he has done
in order that he may come into your life
and my life ; in order that he may dwell
in us and fill us full of himself.
If one objects to the statement that God
is incarnating himself in the human race I
[ 85 ]

GOD IN NATURE
will not use the phraseology, because I will
not shock people's minds needlessly ; but
I believe that God came into Christ and
filled Christ full of himself in order that
he might come unto us and fill us full of
himself. And so 1 dare to try to go where
he leads ; and when he climbs those moun
tain heights, stands so far above me, and
still beckons and calls down to me, and
says, " Lyman Abbott, follow me," I be
lieve I can, or he would not call me ; he
would not tell me to go if he would not
give me the power to go. And so I dare
to pray, though as with bated breath, the
prayer which Paul has taught us : " That
Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith ;
that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
may be able to comprehend with all saints
what is the breadth, and length, and depth,
and height; and to know the love of Christ,
which passeth knowledge, that ye might be
filled with all the fulness of God."
It seems to me, then, that the relation
of nature and the supernatural to Christian
thought has undergone a great change in
the last half century ; and that it is a
[ 86]

GOD IN NATURE
change which promotes Christian life, be
cause it brings God nearer to us in our
Christian thought, and makes religion
seem more natural and more real. In
the thought of to-day God is not apart
from nature and life, but in nature and
life ; creation is continuous ; all events
are providential ; revelation is progres
sive ; forgiveness is through law, not in
violation of it ; sacrifice is the divine
method of life-giving ; incarnation is not
consummated until God dwells in all hu
manity and Jesus Christ is seen to be the
first-born among many brethren. Then,
when God's work is done, and he is
everywhere, — as he is now everywhere
but in the hearts of those who will not
have him, — when he is in human hearts
and lives, as he has been in all nature and
in all history, then will come the end, and
God will be all and in all.

[87

Ill
GOD IN HUMANITY

Ill
GOD IN HUMANITY1
MANY converging tendencies have
operated to bring about a time
peculiarly adapted for great spiritual work
in and through the Christian Church. We
have already entered upon an epoch, in
tellectual, social, spiritual, which we can
make an epoch of the greatest spiritual
movement the world has ever seen.
When Christianity passed over into
Europe, it found Europe dominated by
a great imperialistic system. Caesar was
the supreme authority. His edicts were
absolute law — ecclesiastical, civil, political
law — throughout the empire. He was
represented by a host of subordinates,
who were simply the instruments to in
terpret and execute these laws. He was
absolutely inaccessible to the great multi
tude of the citizens of the Roman Em-
1 Copyright, 1905, by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.
[ 91 ]

GOD IN HUMANITY
pire ; they could come to him only through
his subordinates, who were mediators be
tween the people and the Emperor. Chris
tianity, entering into Europe and pervading
it, adopted, naturally, as its ecclesiastical
machinery, this framework of government.
The pagan Roman Empire was trans
formed, as Mr. Bryce has well shown us,
into the Holy Roman Empire. Cassar
became the Pope ; the prefects and sub-
prefects became bishops and archbishops
and rectors and curates ; but the essential
principle of the ecclesiastical system re
mained what the essential principle of the
political system had been — absolute im
perialism. The Pope was the vicar and
representative of Almighty God — the
supreme and absolute authority. The
decrees of the Vatican were the laws of
God. The bishops and archbishops and
curates and rectors were the representatives
of this Csesar. They were the mediators
between him and the people.
At the same time Christianity was modi
fied in its thinking, or rather was trans
formed in its thinking, by this imperialistic
[ 92 ]

GOD IN HUMANITY
system. The Hebrews were not philoso
phers. The Old Testament contains no
philosophy ; the New Testament contains
very little, except such as is to be found in
Paul's Epistles, and not a great deal even
there. But when Christianity passed over
into Europe it took on a philosophic form,
and in Rome the Roman and therefore
the imperialistic form. God was con
ceived of as a celestial Caesar, sitting in the
centre of the universe and ruling it. The
Church was the representative of this divine
Caesar. The laws of God were edicts issued
from him and handed down to men. This
God was inaccessible to the great majority
of men : they had no ears to hear him, no
capacity to reach him ; they must reach
him through mediators. First was Christ,
the divine Mediator. But Christ was too
holy and too remote. Next there was the
Mother of God, as the mediator through
whom to come to the Christ ; but she was
too holy and too remote. Then there were
saints to come to the Mother of God, and
priests to come to the saints. And so the
individual came to the priest, and the priest
[93]

GOD IN HUMANITY
to the saints, and the saints to the Mother
of God, and the Mother of God to Christ,
and Christ to the Eternal. The Eternal
was an absentee God, dwelling in a far-off
world. Law issued from him ; sin was
disobedience to that law ; forgiveness was
remission of the penalty for violating that
law ; access to him was only through a
throng of mediators.
The Reformation broke down the ec
clesiastical system for the Reformers and
the children of the Reformers. The Prot
estant world said, " The Pope is not the
vicar of God ; the Church is not the su
preme and final authority." The Church
had held to the sacredness of the Bible,
but to the Bible as the constitution of
the Church. It was not for the common
people; it was for the Church; and the
Church was to interpret it and to declare
its meaning. The Protestant Reformers
went back of the Church, of the priest
hood, of the human mediators, to the
Bible. They said, " Any man may take
this constitution ; any man may interpret
it." But still Protestantism accepted and
[ 94 ]

GOD IN HUMANITY
adopted — unconsciously, perhaps — the
notion of an absentee God. Still God
was conceived of as enthroned in the
centre of the universe, as the Moral Gov
ernor ; and laws as edicts issued from him ;
and sin as disobedience to those laws ; and
forgiveness as remission of a future pen
alty ; and the Bible as the book of his
laws, and an authoritative statement of
certain conditions precedent to obtaining
that forgiveness.
But presently there began to come an
other set of influences weakening the belief
that the Bible is an ultimate and supreme
authority. First came geology, with its
message that the world was not made in
six days. The Church replied, " Six days
does not mean six days ; it means six long
periods." Then came anthropology, with
its message that man was not created six
thousand years ago ; that he has been on
the earth at least ten or fifteen or twenty
thousand years. The Church replied,"The
Bible is not authority on matters of chro
nology." Then came evolutionary science,
with its message that man was not made per-
[ 95 ]

GOD IN HUMANITY
feet ; he has been developed gradually, like
all other animals, from a germ. And then
the Church replied — nothing. Then fol
lowed literary criticism. It analyzed this
Bible, and compared it with other litera
tures, and announced its conclusions :
These laws of Moses were not handed
down complete, once for all ; they are
composed of various elements which can
be distinguished ; this code of laws was
gradually produced, and the progress of
their gradual development can be traced.
Then came the study of comparative re
ligions, with its message : We can find the
Hebraic legends of creation and fall and
deluge in the older religions of Egypt, of
Phoenicia, and of Assyria. Little by little
the Protestant faith that the Bible is the
supreme and final authority was weakened,
and for some destroyed. Whether we like
it or not, that lessening ofthe authority of
the Book as a book must be recognized.
We have only to compare the sermons of
the great orthodox preachers of the past
and the present to see the difference of
appeal. [ 96 ]

GOD IN HUMANITY
While this process was going on within
the churches, there was going on a process
without, subtle, powerful, irresistible. Sci
ence was attacking the notion of an absentee
God, a God who can be defined, described,
analyzed, interpreted in creeds. Science,
which, first, showed how vast the universe
was ; which, secondly, showed how the
universe was all one ; which, third, showed
that the same forces were at work in this
world and in the remotest sun and in this
epoch and in the remotest epoch, so that
all days are equally creative, undermined
the notion of a celestial Caesar sitting on a
celestial throne afar off, creating matter and
force out of nothing, and laws to govern
them, and leaving them to their own oper
ation with occasional interventions on his
part. Then came history. History had
been mere annals, the mere story of events,
the mere record of lives. Voltaire, I think,
was the first one to portray history as a
development of life. He was followed
by others, — Mommsen, Curtis, Arnold,
Buckle, Macaulay, Green. All these men
differed from the old classical historians in
[97]

GOD IN HUMANITY
tracing history as a gradual process of de
velopment — the widening out and the
upbuilding of humanity — and in thus
showing a divine development in human
ity as science had shown it in nature. Then
came literature and the study of compara
tive literatures, the literatures of Greece
and Rome and Italy and England, and
last, but not least, of the Hebrew people,
and of the common life of man that ani
mates them all and underlies them all ;
and the discovery (for it was almost a dis
covery) that remorse is as universal as the
human race, and forgiveness as universal,
and love and pity and sympathy as uni
versal ; and that underneath all nations
and all races and in all eras there beats,
not merely one blood, but one human,
palpitating, emotive life. This process
has been resisted by some men in the
Church and feared by more ; but the re
sistance has been in vain and the fears
have been needless. For it has been a
divinely ordered process toward a pro-
founder faith, a larger hope, and a closer
and tenderer love.
[98 ]

GOD IN HUMANITY

Among the cartoons of Raphael is one
representing the creation. A venerable
gentleman is represented as seated cross-
legged upon the ground, with the various
portions of a child's Noah's Ark before
him, putting the different parts ofthe ani
mals together. It was a great artist's con
ception of a divine creation. That notion
of an absentee God — an imperial Caesar
sitting in the centre of the universe ruling
things, whose edicts are laws, who is ap
proached only from afar by men — that is
gone, or going. There are some of us
who still cling to it, and to whom the re
moval of that image seems like atheism;
some that are trying to cling to it, though
their grasp is loosening ; some that are
trying to make themselves believe that
they still believe in it ; but it has gone, or
is going. Not merely the final authority of
the Church is undermined ; not merely
the authority of the Book as an ultimate
court of appeal is lessened ; but the con
ception of a God sitting in the centre of
the universe ruling things, as an imperial
Caesar sits in Rome ruling things — that
[99]

GOD IN HUMANITY
also is growing dim or absolutely disap
pearing. What is coming in its place ?
I am not going to ask the theologians
what is coming in its place ; I will first
ask the scientists.
Herbert Spencer was not, in my opin
ion, a great philosopher ; but he was a
great interpreter of the philosophic ten
dency of his times; and this is Herbert
Spencer's answer to the question, what will
science put in the place of this conception
of a divine Caesar sitting in a celestial robe :
But one truth must ever grow clearer — the
truth that there is an Inscrutable Existence
everywhere manifested, to which we can neither
find nor conceive either beginning or end.
Amid the mysteries which become the more
mysterious the more they are thought about,
there will remain this one absolute certainty,
that we are ever in the presence of an In
finite and Eternal Energy, from which all things
proceed. What has science to offer ? This : that
we are ever in the presence of an Infinite
and Eternal Energy, from which all things
[ I0o ]

GOD IN HUMANITY

proceed. No longer an absentee God ;
no longer a Great First Cause, setting in
motion secondary causes which frame the
world ; no longer a divine mechanic, who
has built the world, stored it with forces,
launched it upon its course, and now and
again interferes with its operation if it goes
not right; but one great, eternal, under
lying Cause, as truly operative to-day as
he was in that first day when the morning
stars sang together — every day a creative
day. That is the word of science.
What is the word of history ? The his
torian tells us there is a progress in human
development, and that history illustrates
that progress, and that not only the indi
vidual man grows from babyhood to man
hood, but the whole race of men grow
from infantile beginnings to a future, we
know not what. Is there any meaning in
this? Is there any power behind it? And
what does this power mean ? And, again,
we turn to a historian, not a theologian, —
not even an orthodox historian, — to Mat
thew Arnold. He tells that the one thing
history makes sure is that there is a power
[ 101 ]

GOD IN HUMANITY
not ourselves that makes for righteous
ness ; a power to-day at work in the world
as truly and as efficaciously as ever in the
past ; that the evolutionary processes that
are going on are making for righteousness.
Finally, we turn to literature, and we
ask one of the great poets to tell us what
is to take the place of this Romanized
conception of an absentee God. What
has human experience to tell ? What word
have the men of vision to bring back to us
as the product of their insight into human
life ? And this is Tennyson's reply : —
" The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and
the plains,
Are not these, O soul, the vision of Him who reigns ?
Dark is the world to thee ; thyself art the reason
why ;
For is He not all but that which has power to feel,
I am I ?
Glory about thee, without thee ; and thou fulflllest
thy doom,
Making Him broken gleams, and a stifled splendor
and gloom.
Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and spirit with
spirit can meet ;
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands or
feet." [ 102 ]

GOD IN HUMANITY

The notion of a humanized God, sitting
in the centre of the universe ruling things,
is gone ; and in the place of it science has
brought us back this : " We are ever in
the presence ofthe Infinite ; " and history
has brought us back this : " There is a
power not ourselves that makes for right
eousness ; " and literature has brought us
back this : " Spirit with spirit can meet ;
closer is He than breathing, nearer than
hands or feet."
Am I then a pantheist ? Is this panthe
ism ? I suppose there are a great many
persons who do feel that this changed
conception of God is going to destroy
the personality of the Divine. Is it?
Go into a great cathedral, as St. Paul's
or St. Peter's. As you look on these
great pillars, on this great dome, this
splendid architecture, you say : I see here
the fruit of the personality of Wren or of
Michael Angelo ; I am looking on some
thing more than stones and mortar ; I am
looking on the work of a great mind and
a great heart. But now imagine for one
moment that as you stood there you could
[ i°3 ]

GOD IN HUMANITY
see stone reared upon stone, and column
upon column ; you could see some invisi
ble hand tracing the fretwork around the
columns and carving the beautiful forms;
as you looked, the cathedral grew into its
splendid proportions ; and then some in
visible force lifted the great dome and put
it like the dome of heaven on the columns
underneath. Would you think the per
sonality was gone because it was operative
before your eyes ? Am I to think that
there was a personal God six thousand
years ago, or sixty thousand years ago, or
six hundred thousand years ago, and that
to-day, when I can go out and see him
painting the leaves, and starting this fall
the beginnings for next year's spring — see
the love and life of the ever present God
at work before my eyes, can I think that
his personality is gone ? No; a thousand
times nearer, a thousand times closer. We
are in the presence of the great Divine
personality. What we mean by person
ality is this: The Infinite and Eternal
Energy, from which all things proceed, is
an energy that thinks, that feels, that pur-
[ 104 ]

GOD IN HUMANITY

poses and does ; and is thinking and feel
ing and purposing and doing as a conscious
life, of which ours is but a poor and
broken reflection.
The image which in my childhood I
formed of God as a great king sitting upon
a great white throne was really an idol,
though it was not formed of stone nor
painted upon a canvas. It is not to such
an imagination we are to go for a realiza
tion of the personality of God. God has
personified himself in human history.
He has entered into one human life, and
filled that life so full of himself that in
Jesus Christ we see the image of the
Invisible God. Christianity is not an
episode. The life of Christ is not a his
torical event completed in three short
years. Jesus Christ is the revelation of
an Eternal Fact, and the Eternal Fact is
the Ever Present God. I stood one night
on the top of Mount Washington. The
clouds were passing over the mountain all
the evening, and the moon was behind
them, and I stood in a diffused light,
sometimes brighter, sometimes less bright ;
[ 105 ]

GOD IN HUMANITY
but every now and then the moon would
seem to break through the clouds, and
bend down and rush toward the earth as
though it would kiss the very foreheads of
those of us who were looking at it, and
then as suddenly it would retire again, and
the clouds once more obscure it. But it
was always there. So the " Light that
lighteth every man that cometh into the
world " was always in the world, and al
ways will be in the world as long as God
is love and man has need of him. The
coming of Christ to the Church was in
order that we might know that God is.
It was the revelation of a perpetual incar
nation ; the revelation of an unseen but
eternal presence. Too long we have stood
at the foot of the cross or at the door of
the tomb, and not seen the stone rolled
away and the triumphant Saviour emerg
ing. Too long we have thought of the
life of Christ ending with his passion and
death. But the greatest part of his life is
his post-resurrection life.
For the message of the Gospel is not
merely that Jesus Christ lived and died
[ 106 ]

GOD IN HUMANITY

eighteen hundred years ago, teaching here
for three short years and then disappear
ing, to be an absentee Christ; it is that
God is always pouring out his life upon
men and into their hearts, lifting them up
out of their sins, succoring them from their
remorse, and making them live again.
Long before Christ lived the Psalmist
wrote : " Bless the Lord, O my soul, and
all that is within me, bless his holy name ;
who healeth all thy diseases ; who forgiv
eth all thine iniquities ; who redeemeth
thy life from destruction, who crowneth
thee with loving kindness and tender
mercies." Men said, " What does that
mean ? " And God said, " I will tell
you." And he came, and for a little while
he lived among men ; he forgave the
woman that was a sinner, and bade her go
in peace, and sin no more. This, he said,
is what I mean by forgiving iniquity.
He succored doubting Thomas from the
scepticism in which he was entangled, of
the unstable Peter he made a rock, and of
the ambitious John the beloved disciple
and the prophet of a spiritual life. This,
[ i°7 ]

GOD IN HUMANITY
he said, is what I mean by the healing of
diseases. He surrounded the traitor Ju
das Iscariot with love, and recovered the
denying Peter and sent him back, recon
secrated, to his ministry. This, he said,
is what I mean by saving men from their
own destruction.
Did he cease then ? He has been doing
this work of love ever since. The history
of the world has been simply this : man
sinning, God forgiving ; man diseased, God
healing ; man destroying himself, God re
deeming him from his self-destruction ;
man sordid and selling himself into slavery,
and God recovering him from slavery and
crowning him with lovingkindness and
tender mercies. And the message of the
Christian minister to-day to this sorrow
ing, sinful, troubled humanity is, " The
God that was in the world then is in the
world now." It is not Browning's mes
sage, " God 's in his heaven ; all 's right
with the world." If God were in his
heaven, all would not be right with the
world. He is in his world making it
right. [ 108 ]

GOD IN HUMANITY
I suppose there are some of you here to
night who will feel that this frank recog
nition of the overthrow of old forms of
faith is injurious. I wish you who hold
still to the sacredness of the Roman the
ology would consider this question one
moment. You remember how Gideon,
beating out the grapes in the wine-press,
was told by God to destroy the idol of
Baal and cut down the groves, and how,
when the people came out the next morn
ing and found their idol and their sacred
grove gone, they rose in wrath against him,
because he had destroyed their religion.
But he had not destroyed their religion ;
he had simply given it a wider scope and
a purer life. You remember how, when
Jesus Christ told the people at Jerusalem
that the temple would be destroyed, they
identified religion with that temple and
with those sacrifices and that priesthood,
and counted as an enemy of religion any
man who said that all those things were
to be destroyed. But he was not the
enemy of religion ; and the destruction
of that Jerusalem and of that priesthood
[ 109 ]

GOD IN HUMANITY
and the overthrow of those sacrifices were
only the opening out of a larger life. You
remember how, when Luther said, Pope,
you are no vicar of God ; Church, you
are no infallible representative of God,
men all over Europe — honest men, de
vout men, godly men, and godly women —
wrung their hands in despair and said, If
there is no Church to interpret God's law,
how shall we know what it is ? But to
this audience I need not argue that the
destruction of the notion of an infallible
Church only widened the scope and en
hanced the power of religion. May it not
perhaps be that the same God who de
stroyed the idol of Baal and the Jewish
temple, and for us Protestants the power
ofthe mediaeval Church, has destroyed this
idol that we have reared in our minds only
in order that he may bring us nearer to
himself? God is in all nature ; thank God for
the scientists, for they are thinking the
thoughts of God after him, whether they
know it or not. God is in all humanity,
and every man is a child of God whom
[ 11° ]

GOD IN HUMANITY

we are to endeavor to bring back to his
Father. God is in history, forgiving and
redeeming, as Christ was in Palestine, for
giving and redeeming. God is in human
experience, inspiring, uplifting, life-giving.
Our message to our congregations is not
a mere ethical law, not a mere philosophy
about God, not a mere reiteration of a
traditional creed, not a mere interpreta
tion of the Bible. But through ethics,
and philosophy, and the creed, and the
Bible, we are to bring this threefold mes
sage : the message of science — " We are
ever in the presence of an Infinite and
Eternal Energy, from which all things
proceed ; " the message of history —
" There is a power not ourselves that
makes for righteousness ; " the message
of literature — "Speak to him, for he
hears ; closer is he than breathing, nearer
than hands and feet." "We are all his
offspring ; he is not far from any one of
us ; in him we live and move and have
our being."

[ I" ]

IV
GOD IN JESUS CHRIST
Reprinted from " The Woman's Home Companion"
for December, igog.

IV
GOD IN JESUS CHRIST1
THE apostle Paul, going to Athens,
found himself in a city full of vari
ous idols, so full that an ancient satirist said
that in Athens it was easier to find a god
than a man. Among the altars was one
to The Unknown God. Paul made this
inscription the text of his sermon, which
may be summed up in the single sen
tence : " Whom therefore ye worship with
out knowing him, him declare I unto
you." This is the message of Christmas
to the world. What we celebrate on
Christmas is a new unveiling of God.
" God manifest in the flesh." What
do we mean by that ? What I think is
meant is the supremest manifestation of
God possible in human life. And that
is the supremest manifestation possible to
humanity. Or, to restate it in different
1 Copyright, 1909, by the Crowell Publishing Co.
[ »5 ]

GOD IN JESUS CHRIST
terms, what is meant is that what Jesus
Christ is seen to be in the three years of
his recorded life, the spirit of God is in the
history of the human race.
A mother sits down on the floor and
plays with her child with building-blocks.
If she is a woman of sympathetic imagina
tion she is herself a child for that hour.
She shares her child's joys in his brief suc
cesses and his disappointments in his brief
failures. God lives as a child with his children for
an hour that they may become acquainted
with him and know that he is always liv
ing with them, often most truly when they
see him least. There is much in the
mother which remains unknown to the
child. There is much in God which re
mains unknown to his children. But
the child knows the mother because the
mother has been a child with him. And
we children may know our Father because
he has been a child with us.
Three illustrations may help to make
the principle clear.
Jesus Christ is not a manifestation of
[ "6 ]

GOD IN JESUS CHRIST
certain attributes or qualities of God ; he
is God manifest in the flesh. He is not a
temporary manifestation of God's mercy
or pity, leaving his justice and his anger
to be revealed in the future. There is no
justice and no wrath in God which is not
manifested in Jesus Christ ; and there is
no pity and no mercy in Jesus Christ
which is not a reflection of the eternal
pity and mercy of God. " He that hath
seen me hath seen the Father." To un
derstand Jesus Christ is to understand God.
Jesus Christ began his ministry by at
tending a wedding-feast. His first miracle
was wrought to prolong its festivities. He
repeatedly compared the kingdom of God
to a great festival. He accepted all social
invitations ; declined none. He declared
himself that he came eating and drinking,
and this was so characteristic of him that
his enemies called him a glutton and
wine-bibber. He compared, himself to
a musician piping in the street for the
children to dance. Neither he nor his
disciples observed the customary fasts
of the church to which they belonged.
[u7]

GOD IN JESUS CHRIST
He was a favorite with the children, and
they clustered about him and were will
ing that he should take them in his
arms. His last meeting with his dis
ciples was at a social meal, and with such
a social meal he asked them ever to as
sociate his memory.
If Jesus Christ is God manifest in the
flesh, God is not the austere being he is
sometimes represented. There is much
more truth in the philosophy of the child
who said " God must have laughed when
he made a monkey " than in that of the
theologian who said " Jesus wept, but
never laughed." Prayer and play are not
incongruous. God is not the kind of
father who wishes his children to hush
their laughter when he enters the house.
" A merry heart doeth good like a medi
cine," says the inspired writer — a motto
which might well be put over the convent
gate or hung in the prayer-meeting room.
For to laugh is as religious as to weep ; and
smiles may bring us into the companion
ship ofthe Father no less than tears. Let
us get rid of this notion that we must
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GOD IN JESUS CHRIST
always associate the thoughts of God with
a spirit of great solemnity. Gayety and
God are not mutually exclusive.
But Jesus Christ was not all gayety.
"Woe unto you laughing ones," he said;
" for ye shall mourn and weep." He had
no sympathy for the jester who can take
nothing seriously, but tries to make of life
one huge protracted joke. He saw that
the whole world groaneth and travaileth
in pain, and he travailed with it. So did
he enter into the sorrows of the sorrowing,
so did he make them his own, that it was
prophetically said that he " was acquainted
with grief." The sorrows might be super
ficial and transient, they might be deep and
abiding. He was not indifferent to either.
When he had been preaching all day, and
evening came, and his loyal disciples de
siring for their Master some rest, asked
him to send the congregation away, he
would not do it until he had provided
for their hunger. When the brother had
died and the sisters were heartbroken, he
shared their grief with them and mingled
his tears with theirs.
[ "9]

GOD IN JESUS CHRIST
To some it seems a profanation to think
of God as suffering. To me it is a profa
nation to think of him as incapable of
suffering. Love suffers when the loved
one suffers. If God is love, God knows
the sorrows as well as the joys of love.
If Jesus Christ is God manifest in the
flesh, the tears shed at the grave of Lazarus
and at the prospective destructionof Jerusa
lem are divine tears. To me the greatness
of the infinite power and skill manifested
at the same moment in the most distant
star and in our globe by the forth-putting
of the same wisdom and power is not so
marvellous as the greatness of soul mani
fested in a sympathy which can share at
one and the same time the joys of the
wedding and the sorrows of the funeral.
But why should I believe his power and
his skill are infinite and refuse to believe
that his sympathies are infinite ? His chil
dren crowd about him, some with their
gratitude, some with their reproaches,
some exultant with victory, some humili
ated by their defeats, some joyous, some in
tears, some saints with songs and some
[ 120 ]

GOD IN JESUS CHRIST
sinners with hopeless penitence, and he
is not distraught. He hears all voices,
shares all experiences, ministers to all
needs. To Jesus Christ sin was a disease to
be cured rather than a crime to be pun
ished. It awakened his pity, not his
anger. Condemned for associating with
sinners, he replied on one occasion,
"They that be whole need not a phy
sician, but they that are sick." On an
other occasion he said that he had come
to seek and to save that which is lost.
And to him a lost soul was a soul not
yet found. He compared such a soul
to a coin mislaid, which the owner was
seeking ; to a sheep strayed from the
fold, which the shepherd was seeking ; to
a prodigal son, whose return the father
was awaiting. There is no one for whom
society has so little hope as a lost woman ;
but Jesus never despaired of the recovery
of even a lost woman. Even the Judas
who betrayed him he sought to rescue
with reproachful greeting : Friend, betray-
est thou the Son of man with a kiss ? There
[ 121 ]

GOD IN JESUS CHRIST
was only one character whose destiny he
seemed himself unable to avert ; the re
ligious man whose religion was a false pre
tence, who was pious, but not humane;
who devoured widows' homes and for a
pretence made long prayers. The offal
of Jerusalem was carried out of the city
into the valley of Gehenna and there
thrown upon fires always left burning,
and there it was consumed. " Alas ! for
you hypocrite," cried Jesus, in an outburst
of despairing pity, " how can you escape
Gehenna ? " To him such false pre
tences seemed like the offal of the uni
verse, doomed to destruction.
Jesus Christ, saviour of men, is the
revelation of God's perpetual presence
and perpetual power in the world. Holi
ness is health. Sin is disease. Forgiveness
is healing. God is the Great Physician.
We come before him, not as criminals
to be judged and punished, but as sick to
be cured. Those who do not know that
they are sick and need cure are the sickest
of all. He is the " Power not ourselves
that makes for righteousness." His life
[ J22 ]

GOD IN JESUS CHRIST
in the world is a continuation of the life of
Jesus Christ. It is the life which cen
turies before Christ David saw ; which
centuries after Christ so many of Christ's
disciples fail to see :
" Bless the Lord, O my soul,
And all that is within me, bless his holy name.
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
And forget not all his benefits :
Who forgiveth all thine iniquities ;
Who healeth all thy diseases ;
Who redeemeth thy life from destruction ;
Who crowneth thee with loving-kindness and tender
mercies ;
Who satisfieth thine age with good ;
So that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's."
There has been a great deal of discus
sion and far too much hot debate con
cerning the relation of Jesus Christ to the
Infinite and Eternal. We do not know
— at least I do not know — enough to
define that relation, but we do know
enough to define his relation to us.
That definition may be very briefly given
in the following words : The supremest
work of God is man, whom he has made
[ 123 ]

GOD IN JESUS CHRIST
in his own image. The supremest reve
lation of God is therefore that afforded
by the life and character of man. The
supremest ideal of humanity is Jesus
Christ. Therefore the supremest revel
ation of God to man is that to be found
in the life and character of Jesus Christ.
This is in my judgment the essence of
the theological teaching of Paul on this
subject. We celebrate on Christmas, not the
birth of Santa Claus, the patron saint of
the children ; not merely the birth of the
Christ-child, symbol of all innocent child
hood; nor yet alone the birth of the
martyr-hero, leader and type of all who
have lived and loved and suffered for
their race. We celebrate a new unveiling
of God to humanity, the dwelling of God
in humanity. We celebrate the day when
the love of God dawned on the world and
the fear of the gods began slowly and sul
lenly to give way before the coming of the
new day. Every year Christmas repeats
its message : Fear God no more. He
brings liberty to the enslaved, light to
[ 124 ]

GOD IN JESUS CHRIST
the despairing, purer joy to the glad.
He is the Comforter of the sorrowing,
the Physician of the sick, the Healer of
the sinful, the Friend and Companion of
man.

[ 125]

V
GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN

V
GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN1
WHEN I was a child — whether it
was my fault or the fault of my
teachers or of the Church I do not know
— I thought I ought to feel that I was a
lost and ruined sinner, and was worthy of
eternal punishment for my sins. Yet, as a
little boy, I could not realize that I had
committed sins that were worthy of eternal
punishment ; and I remember that I used
sometimes to shut myself up in my room
in the gloaming of the twilight, while the
frogs were croaking in the not distant
meadow and everything would tend to
gloom, and try to make myself as miser
able as I could, because I felt it necessary
that I should have a conviction of sin.
But I was also taught to think that if I
believed certain things or if I received
certain experiences, then I should be ex-
1 Copyright, 1 900, by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.
[ 129 ]

GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
empted from the punishment which had
been pronounced against me. And this
was my conception of salvation. If I be
lieved that Jesus Christ was the Son of
God and had come to earth and had suf
fered in my stead, and really believed it,
then the punishment which was pronounced
against me would be transferred to him and
I should be set free. I suspect something
like that is not uncommon as a conception
of salvation to this day. But the Gospel
declares something very different. " Thou
shalt call his name Jesus : for he shall save
his people from their sins." Sin is not the
same as punishment for sin. The New
Testament says very little about saving
men from punishment; it says a great
deal about saving men from sin.
Turn over the pages of this same Gos
pel of Matthew to the closing chapters.
Jesus Christ has brought the disciples
about him at the Paschal Supper. The
one traitor has gone out into the dark
ness ; the eleven remain. Christ breaks
the bread and passes it to them ; he fills
the cup and passes it to them ; and he
[ i3° ]

GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
says : " This cup is the new covenant in
my blood, which is shed for many for
the remission of sins." Remission means
"sending away," therefore: "This cup is
the new covenant in my blood for the
sending away of your sins." Turn to
Paul and see what is his conception of
salvation. " God, who is rich in mercy,
for the great love wherewith he loved us,
even when we were dead in sin, hath made
us alive together with Christ (by grace ye
are saved), and hath raised us up together
and made us sit together in heavenly places
in Christ Jesus." Observe it is in the
past tense, not in the future ; not he will
make us alive, will raise us up, will make
us sit together in heavenly places — he
hath made us alive, hath raised us up, hath
made us sit in heavenly places. Or turn
to John " The blood of Jesus Christ, his
Son, cleanseth us from all sin. If we say
that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves
and the truth is not in us. If we confess
our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive
us our sins and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness."
[ 131 ]

GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
Do you not see the difference between
these two conceptions ? The one thought
is : I am in danger of punishment — I
shall be saved from future penalty; the
other : I am struggling with sin — I can
be delivered from that. The one is —
Jesus Christ has borne my punishment ;
the other is — Jesus Christ is bearing
away my sin. He is " the Lamb of God
that taketh away the sin of the world."
The one is — the pain and sacrifice and
suffering of Christ is necessary because
the wrath or the justice or the law of God
requires that somebody should be pun
ished ; the other is — the sacrifice, the
blood, the suffering, the passion of Jesus
Christ is necessary that we should be
cleansed from sin. Jesus Christ has come
into the world to redeem us from sin : this
is the vital matter, not the other.
Exemption from penalty without de
liverance from sin would not be salvation.
If a good man were to go to hell and stay
there, he would be saved ; if a bad man
were to go to heaven and stay there, he
would be lost. Peter says that Jesus
[ 132 ]

GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
Christ preached to the spirits in prison.
Scholars differ somewhat in the interpre
tation of the passage ; but if it be true
that Jesus Christ did go to hell and in
hell preached, he was not a lost soul
while he preached there. To be lost is to
be in sin, not to be in hell ; to be saved
is to be in virtue, not to be in heaven.
Heaven must be in us — and hell is in
some. This is the first truth I want to put
before you. Salvation is character. Not
on our condition but on our character
does life depend. And although it is true
that under God's government penalty fol
lows sin ; although it is true that under
God's government happiness, the highest
type and form of happiness, follows vir
tue ; the virtue is not for the happiness,
but for its own sake. It were better to
be a righteous man and suffer eternally
than to be an ignoble man and be clothed
in fine linen and fare sumptuously eter
nally. Salvation is character ; it is de
liverance from sin ; it is lifting the man
out of the lower life and bringing him into
[ i33 ]

GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
the higher life ; it is making a man of one
who is only in semblance a man or only
half a man.
If this be true, then what is essential to
the salvation is a change in character, not
in external circumstance. If salvation is
a change in condition, then external causes
may change the condition and thus save ;
but if salvation is character, then the
change must be in the character. A mob
may tear down the Bastile and set free the
prisoners therein, but a mob cannot make
guilty men innocent. Guilty men can no
more be made innocent by being set free
from prison than innocent men can be
made guilty by being hanged without a
trial. If salvation is character, then the
condition of salvation is in the character it
self; something wrought within ; wrought
perhaps by an influence from without, but
wrought within. A man who is attempt
ing to commit suicide by drowning him
self in the surf may be rescued ; but no
man can be rescued from the life of infamy,
dishonor, pride, appetite, greed, selfishness,
in spite of himself. Character cannot be
[ '34]

GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
imputed. A guilty man may be treated
as though he were innocent, but he cannot
be made innocent unless he is transformed
from within.
This is what Jesus Christ came to do.
Not to show how we can escape hell and
get into heaven, but to show how we can
escape from ourselves and become other
selves ; to show how we may cease to be
what we are and become what we desire
to be. He came that he might teach us
and empower us to be the men we want
to be, the men we ought to be.
At least three things are necessary for
this salvation in character, this transfor
mation which alone is salvation : First, that
the man should appreciate goodness ; sec
ond, that he should have a purpose to at
tain it; and third, that he should have help
from one stronger than himself in attaining
it. And at least these three things Christ
has come to give ; he has come to show us
what manhood is, he has come to put
into us the hope of attaining it, and he
has come to give us help in accomplishing
that hope. [ i35 ]

GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
Eighteen centuries ago a babe was born
in Bethlehem and grew up to manhood —
we know not how. He saw the corrup
tion about him ; the vice that had entered
into society; the despotism in govern
ment ; the disunion and disruption of the
homes ; the ignorance and superstition,
the greed and selfishness and cruelty in
men's hearts ; and he set himself to de
liver men from themselves. He had
wonderful power ; he never used it for
himself. He might have been rich ; he
says of himself: "The birds of the air
have nests, and the foxes have holes ; the
Son of man hath not where to lay his
head." He might have selected his com
panions where he would ; he took them
from the humble, the lowly, and the ig
norant ; not only that, but often from the
dull-headed, the low-spirited, and the poor
in mind as well as in estate. He never
saw sorrow that he did not try to comfort
it ; or a need that he did not try to help
it. There was no physical condition so
disgusting that it barred men from his
sympathy. There was no sin that could
[ 136 ]

GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
separate men from his helpfulness. The
woman who was a sinner, whom other
men would not touch nor look at except
in scorn (whom they will not touch nor
look at even to-day except in scorn), he
looked at with pity, and said : " Go in
peace and sin no more." Men did not
understand it. He loved them, but they
did not love him. They applauded him
at times ; at other times they scoffed at
him. Three short years passed, and then
the men whom he loved, the men whom
he sought to save, hung him up on a cross
and put him to death.
All that love means is interpreted in
that unselfish life. And the first thing
that Christ says to us is this : Is that the
kind of life you want to live ? Is that the
kind of person you want to be ? Do you
want to live in this world to see what you
can get out of it, or do you want to live
in this world to see what you can put into
it ? Is your object self-service or the ser
vice of others ? Do you want to make
yourself rich or your neighbor rich ? Do
you want to make yourself famous, or are
[ 137 ]

GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
you willing to use all your powers only to
make others better and happier ? What
do you want? He has told us in one of
his sermons what are the conditions of
happiness. Blessed, he says, are the poor
in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven. Is that what we want? When
we read the story of this Christ, spit
upon, beaten, reviled, and answering not,
we think we must admire it because it is
the story of the Christ, and in church we
do ; but when, in public life, a man is
abused and vilified, what is it that we like
best — to see him suffer in silence and
make no answer, or to see him write a
keen letter to the newspaper and put his
enemy to flight ? " Blessed are the meek,
for they shall inherit the earth," — on
Sunday morning we believe in that, of
course, because it is in the New Testa
ment ; but how about to-morrow ? how
about next week ? how about struggling,
grasping, energetic enterprising America ?
Who is it that we really believe gets the
benefit of the earth ? If we wrote our
highest convictions, should we not write :
[ 138 ]

GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
"Blessed are the enterprising and not
over scrupulous, for they shall get the
earth " ? " Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they shall see God." Open the novel,
go to the theatre, listen to the latest
drama, and tell yourself whether, if what
men to-day want in the realm of imagina
tion be measured by what they buy and
pay for, they really are eager for that
which ministers only to purity of heart.
Faith in Christ is, first of all, this :
Such as he was I want to be ; his is the
kind of life I want to live ; his is the
kind of character I want to possess ; his
is the kind of blessedness I desire for my
self and for my children. A man may
believe what creed he will, and if this is
not in his heart, he has not faith in Christ.
He may be baptized with holy water
taken from the Jordan, blessed by the
priest, bishop, archbishop, and Pope ; and
if this desire is not in his heart, he has no
faith in Christ. He may have joined in
succession all the churches in Christen
dom, from the Quaker meeting to the
Roman Catholic hierarchy, and if in his
[ 139 ]

GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
heart there is not the faith that desires the
lowliness of spirit which suffers long and
is kind, the meekness which inherits the
earth as a gift, the purity of heart which
sees God, he has no faith in Christ.
Faith in Christ cannot find its interpreta
tion in any creed, however orthodox ; it
finds its interpretation in some hearts that
do not understand nor accept any recog
nized orthodox creed.
But necessary to this salvation, this
character, is not only a perception of the
ideal, but an eager purpose to attain it.
We do not make anything by dreaming :
neither a building, nor an empire, nor an
individual character. We cannot sit and
sing ourselves away to everlasting bliss ;
we have to go out and fight our way to
everlasting bliss. All life is a struggle.
The seventh chapter of Romans comes
before the eighth. A man must know
the experience which cries out, " I do the
things I would not do and I hate the
things that I do," before he can cry out,
" Thanks be to God which giveth us the
victory ! " No man can be free who does
[ Ho ]

GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
not desire freedom ; neither can any man
be free who is not willing to suffer for
freedom. The price of character is battle,
as the price of every victory is battle.
There must be not only the vision of this
beautiful character, that comes on Sunday
like a dissolving view, and on Sunday
night, like a dissolving view, disappears
again ; there must be also this faith :
That character is for me, I can be that
kind of a person, and, God helping me, I
will. The mere vision of a Christ, with
out the vigorous attempt to reproduce the
Christ, is sentimentality in religion, and
we are never saved by sentimentality.
We are not religious because we go to
church and heartily applaud an eloquent
sermon, any more than we are religious
because we heartily applaud beautiful
music. iEstheticism is not spirituality.
Life does not consist in seeing beautiful
pictures, but in struggling toward a splen
did result, and Jesus Christ has come not
only to put before men this vision, but to
put into the hearts of men this strong and
strenuous endeavor.
[ Hi ]

GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
But with this endeavor must be mingled
hope, anticipation, expectation, otherwise
the greater the endeavor the greater the
despair. And Christ not only puts before
us ideals of character to be pursued, not
only incites within us an ambitious purpose
to live his life and possess his character,
but by his inspiring presence, by his over
mastering personality confers on us the
power to live that life and possess that
character. If we ask ourselves what Christ
meant by salvation, we have but to read
the Gospel and see how he saved men
when he was on the earth. He came to a
tax-collector sitting at the receipt of cus
toms, — all tax-collectors in that day were
corrupt, — and he said to him, " Follow
me ! " and Matthew left his tax-collecting
to follow the new life. He came to some
fishermen, prosaic and common men, do
ing service in common ways, and he said
to them, " Follow me, and I will make
you fishers of men ; I will give you a
higher mission and a nobler opportunity,"
and they left their commonplace vocations
to follow him. He came into Jericho,
[ H2 ]

GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
and a corrupt politician of his time climbed
a tree to look at him — a man at whom
all men pointed the finger of scorn, the
man whom all men hated — the Jewish
" boss," who derived his power as a polit
ical leader, not from his own people, but
from a despotic foreigner. To him Christ
says, I will stay at your house to-night ;
and when he came, there was something in
Christ that put such higher purpose into
that man that the man said, " I have been
dishonest, but I will restore fourfold to
those from whom I stole, and as I cannot
find them all I will give half of what is
left to feed the poor." And Christ said,
" Salvation is come unto this house."
Salvation — why ? Because change of char
acter, new life, more than new vision —
new purpose, more than new purpose — a
purpose that costs something. When a
man says, I will hunt out every man I
have treated dishonestly and give him
back with compound interest what I have
taken, and then I will cut what is left of
my fortune in two and give it half away
— he has given better evidence of religion
[ H3 ]

GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
than is generally given to examining com
mittees in church.
This was the kind of salvation which,
as we read the story of his life, we see that
Jesus Christ commonly brought to men.
But this was not all. After he had put
this new motive, this new hope into men's
hearts, he put into them the power to ac
complish the purpose. One of his disci
ples was impetuous, impulsive, with no
strength of will, no stability of character ;
one who cried, " Bid me to walk on the
waves," but began to sink almost as soon
as his feet touched the waves and changed
his cry to " Save, Lord, save or I perish ; "
one who said to Christ, " Though all men
forsake thee, yet will I not deny thee,"
and yet before three hours had passed had
denied his Lord thrice with oaths. It was
to him Christ said, " Thou art a rock, and
on this rock will I build my church."
Faith in Christ made of him a rock, and
on men transformed as he was Christ has
built his church. John we think of as the
unworldly, unselfish, tender, loving disci
ple ; but you remember that when James
[ H4 ]

GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
and John first came to Jesus he called them
" Boanerges, Sons of Thunder.," It was
John who said, when a Samaritan village
refused to admit them, " Shall I call down
fire from heaven to destroy this village ? "
It was James and John at the time of the
triumphal entry into Jerusalem who with
their mother came to ask that they might
have the best places in the kingdom.
And yet when John had been transformed
by Christ he was preeminently the apostle
of love, so that we are told that in his old
age, when he could no longer preach, his
disciples brought him in a chair to the
churches and he repeated to the congre
gation simply, " Little children, love one
another." Whether this be fact or not,
it is true to his new character.
This is the kind of saving Christ did.
He did not say to men, "You are going
to hell, for you are wicked ; but I will
save you from hell if you will believe cer
tain theories." He never stated theories.
He said, "You are living a poor life ; fol
low me and I will show you how to live a
better life and enable you to live a better
[ H5]

GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
life. Follow me and I will take the con
sciousness, the pride, the ambition,the insta
bility, out of you, and will make you hum
ble and unselfish and strong." This is what
he did for men in his earthly ministry, and
this is what he has been doing for men ever
since his resurrection. He put a new am
bition, a new heart, a new purpose, a new
hope, into men. Men said, " We can
not ; " he said, " You can." The very
command of Christ ought to be inspiration.
A father goes out in the hill country to
walk with his boys, and while they stop to
pluck flowers and play, the father goes
steadily up the hill, and by and by he ap
pears far above on an out-jutting crag,
and calls " Follow me ! " The children
look up. How shall they follow him ?
how climb that great, steep precipice ?
But still the father calls, " Follow me ! "
And one says to himself and to his com
panions, " Father would not tell us to fol
low him if we could not follow. I do not
know the way and I do not see how we
can take it, but I will start, because if
father says ' Follow me,' I know I can
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GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
follow him and where he stands I can yet
stand." So when Christ, our Heavenly
Master, looks out of heaven and says to
us, "Follow me," I know, because he com
mands it, that I can ; when he says, " Be
like me," I know, because he says it, that
I can. Christ like ordinary men ? No ;
but ordinary men can become like Christ.
This bit of clay on the potter's table like
this beautiful vase ? No ; but this bit of
clay on the potter's table, if it submits it
self long enough to the hands that are
framing it and to the skill that is working
on it, will become like that vase upon the
shelf. There are some of you here this
morning who say, I can never become like
Christ. You can. I am prosaic and com
monplace ; these visions are not for me.
Are you more prosaic than Matthew? I am
ambitious and cannot keep my ambition
under control. Are you more ambitious
than James and John, who came to Christ
in the very hour before his Passion, seek
ing the best places in the coming kingdom ?
I am proud. Is your pride greater than
that of Paul, the Pharisee ? I am in de-
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GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
spair; all men despise me; I have sinned
away my opportunity; for me there is no
chance. Is your despair greater than that
of the woman to whom Christ said,
"Neither do I condemn thee; go in
peace"? I am superstitious, brought up
under a bad creed. I have thrown it away
and have nothing else ; for me there is no
chance ; if only I had had Christian par
ents, your education, the liberty of the
Gospel when I was a boy ! Were you
brought up in a more superstitious atmos
phere, under a worse creed, under more
disadvantageous circumstances than Lu
ther, the emancipator of Europe ? I have
an appetite which masters me ; I eat the
things I know I ought not to eat, and
I drink the things I know I ought not to
drink. There is no chance for me. Are
you worse off than John B. Gough, the
victim of delirium tremens, rescued by the
power and the hopefulness of Jesus Christ ?
In the old Anglo-Saxon Bible the word
rendered in our English Bible " Saviour "
is said to be rendered " Helper." I have
sometimes almost wished that we had had
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GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
in place of the Latin word " Saviour "
that plainer, simpler Anglo-Saxon word
" Helper." Christ's saving is helping and
Christ's helping is saving. Independence
is a much praised word in America, but
there is no such thing as independence.
No nation is independent of any other na
tion ; no community of other communi
ties ; no individual of other individuals.
We are knit together and depend on one
another, not merely for the material com
forts for the outer life, but for the inner
life as well. The child is born into the
family and is dependent upon the father
and mother for the beginnings of life.
He goes into school and becomes depend
ent upon his teachers, and yet more on his
companions, for such life as they can im
part to him. He learns from their exam
ples, he imbibes their spirit. He goes
into business, and not only from the part
ners who are working with him in the
store, but from the rivals who are compet
ing with him outside, he learns. He mar
ries, and his wife imparts life to him and
he imparts life to his wife, each dependent
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GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
upon the other. Children come and they
in turn become his teachers and his life-
givers. The mothers here know that !
Nothing that they have yet given to their
children can compare with what their chil
dren have given to them. Our children
are our great teachers, our great ministers,
for something of God's own life looks out
of their strange and mystic eyes. So we
go on giving our life to one another, help
ing or hindering one another in our high
est development. And above all and
inspiring us all is the great Help-Giver
— Christ.
We make a great mistake and we do
not understand the foundation of our
Christian faith, if we regard Christ's life as
spent in Palestine and lasting only three
short years. The very basis of our Chris
tian discipleship is this : That he rose from
the dead, is living, and that here to-day he
is doing for us what he did for those of
the olden time. He is still here, still
pouring into his followers the treasures of
his illimitable life. The question is not,
What can you do ? but, What can you and
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GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
God together do ? Not, What can you do
apart from him to win your way to his fa
vor ? but, What can you do as the recipient
of his favor ? Christ in us is the hope of
our glory.
This is the foundation, the heart, the
life of our life. He is still here, and all
that he says we can do — we can do be
cause he can do it in us and for us. This
is prayer. It is opening our heart to the
heart of God, laying our hands in the
hand of God, through Jesus Christ our
Lord, and asking and receiving life ! So
that we can live in poverty or in wealth,
in sorrow or in joy, so that we know both
how to be abased and how to abound, so
that we also can say as Paul said, " I can
do all things through him that strength-
eneth me."
Thus far I have been considering the
question, How does Christ save us ? How
are we to avail ourselves of this salvation :
this ideal of life, this inspiration to life ?
We make a great mistake if we sup
pose, as we often do, that we are to
try ourselves to build up our own char-
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GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
acter. To be saved is to attain Christlike
ness in life and character, and to do this
I am to do the work that God gives me
to do, and am to leave to God the mak
ing of my character. Let me illustrate.
I am sick — a little cold, nothing serious,
as it seems to me. I call the doctor, who
tells me to go to bed, and to bed I go.
He says, " To-night eat only gruel," and
gruel I eat, although I would rather have
beef-steak. If now I begin to worry
about myself, if I ask, " What do you
find my pulse to be ? What my temper
ature ? What is the matter with me ?
Am I going to be very sick? " the doctor
will laugh at me, or he will change the
topic, or sharply forbid the questioning,
or possibly even deceive me. No doctor
wants a patient to try to cure himself.
If a patient begins to study his own
symptoms, that he may help cure him
self, one of two things happens : either he
thinks, " I am not sick at all," or else he
thinks, "I am very sick," and in either
case the doctor's difficulties are increased.
Is the best type of pupil in a school the
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GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
pupil who is inquiring what her courses
are to be, what her marks are, what kind
of scholar she is, and whether she is doing
her work in the best way ; or the pupil
who takes the work given her to do and
does it faithfully and well, leaving the
shaping of the curriculum and the forma
tion of the courses and the general work
ing out of results to her teacher ? Which
is the kind of pupil of whom it is easiest
to make a scholar ?
What I understand Christ to say to us
is this : " Do not trouble yourself about
yourself. Leave yourself to me. I will
take care of you ; do you simply take care
of your duty. Do you say to me, I am
very vain ? I will carry you through ex
perience to take the vanity out of you.
Do you say, I am very selfish ? Seek for
the opportunity to render service, render
the service, but leave me to carry you
through experiences that will take the
selfishness out of you. If you are selfish
I will put another's burden on you and
make you bear it, and in the bearing of
another's burden you will learn unselfish
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GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
ness." I am not to set myself to make
a better man of myself. My work is to
be done without regard to myself, for the
sake of loyalty to Christ. One of the
most common and serious obstacles to
salvation, that is, to the natural and
healthful development of Christlikeness of
character, is the pernicious habit of self-
examination. The very passages often
quoted from the Bible in support of this
habit do really forbid it. " Search me, O
Lord, and know my heart, try me and
know my thoughts, look well if there be
any wicked way in me, and lead me in the
way everlasting." What does that mean?
Does it counsel me to search my own
heart and see if there be any wicked way
in me, and then the Lord will lead me
in the way everlasting ? No. I do not
know myself and cannot comprehend my
self, and cannot search myself. If I come
in the spirit of this text, I shall say to
him, " Do you search me, do you try me,
do you see if there be any wicked way in
me. I want you to know it all. Then
put me through such discipline in life as
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GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
will make me a better man. I will go
where you lead, I will do what you tell
me to do, but I will leave the examination
to you." The Armenians have a saying,
" No camel ever sees his own hump."
No one ever knows the evils that are in
himself. I do not want to know the
evils that are in me ; they would dis
hearten me. But I want God to know
them all, and I want to leave God to cure
them all. If I will, day by day, take
care of my duty he will take care of my
character. " With me," says Paul, " it is a very
small thing that I should be judged of
you or of man's judgment : yea, I judge
not mine own self. For I know nothing
against myself; yet am I not thereby
justified : but he that judgeth me is the
Lord." J If I examine myself and con
clude as the result of that examination
that I have done nothing wrong, nothing
that I need be ashamed of, that does not
satisfy me. I do not know. And if I
say, " I am all wrong and must be made
1 I Corinthians iv. 3, 4. Revised Version.
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GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
all over again," that certainly does not
satisfy me. And neither result helps me
to be better. So I put it all behind me,
take myself as I am, and say to him,
" Though I am as wavering as Peter, as
ambitious as John, as dishonest as Zac
cheus, as proud as Paul, as resolutely
sceptical as Thomas, I put myself in your
hands just as I am. If you will tell me
what to do, not to make myself a good
man, — that I am not engaged to do, —
but what to do to help other people,
what love to other men and women calls
on me to do, I will honestly try to do it,
and will leave you to make what you can
out of such a man as I am."
This little contribution to spiritual ex
perience would be sadly defective if it did
not at least recognize a truth which can
not be here more than merely recognized:
the fact that life-giving involves sacrifice.
When a young girl graduates from
college, and says, " I am going to teach,"
she fancies, notwithstanding her own col
lege experience, that all the pupils will
welcome her instruction and look upon
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GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
her as a benefactor. When the babe is
laid in the mother's arms, the mother,
notwithstanding the experience of other
mothers, says, " This dear child will repay
my love with love, and my service with
gratitude." The great leader is gradually,
by no force of his own, pushed up to take
a position of leadership ; and he thinks
that the men who follow will rejoice and
applaud and thank him for his leader
ship. But when the teacher goes to her
school-room she finds her scholars resist
ing her influence ; when the mother sees
her child growing up from the nursery
into the school, she finds herself called
some day by the little boy "the old
woman," and her own love ill paid in in
gratitude and carelessness ; the leader is
stoned and abused by the very men who
follow him, and do not know that they
are following him.
It costs something to give life. And
the great God above us — it has cost him
something to give his life. It has cost
him his Son ; or, if we transfer the figure,
it has cost the Son the crown of thorns
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GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
and the cross and all the Passion to give
himself. He is the example - — showing
what we may be ; he is hope — inspiring
us with the ambition to be ; he is still
with us, pouring his life unto us ; he is
the great sufferer and the great self-sacri-
ficer — pouring out his life-blood that he
may give his life-blood to us.
There are those who are satisfied with
their present life, who are content with the
life they have lived, and with the life they
are living, and with the character they
have attained; for such the Gospel has no
message. But for those who are not sat
isfied with the life that they have lived,
who are not satisfied with the character
they have attained, who want to be better
than they are, more than they are, larger
than they are, richer in character than they
are ; for those who see this life of Christ
and say, "I wish I had the power to live
that kind of life and be that kind of
man," for those the message of the Gos
pel is : The Christ who has shown you
the pattern inspires you with the hope,
pours into you the life, and, still crowned
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GOD A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
with thorns, waits for the time when he
shall see of the travail of his soul and be
satisfied, because you have awakened in
his likeness, and see him as he is, because
you are like him. Then, but not till
then, shall we know what salvation really
means.

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YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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