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THE MIND OF CHRIST
IN HIS MINISTERS

ORDINATION SERMON
PREACHED IN THE CRYPT OF THE CATHEDRAL
OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE, NEW YORK
ON THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT, DECEMBER 22d, 1907

By GEORGE WILLIAM DOUGLAS, D.D., S.T.D.
CANON OF THE CATHEDRAL
WITH A PREFATORY LETTER FROM
THE BISHOP COADJUTOR OF THE DIOCESE

NEW YORK
EDWIN S. GORHAM, Publisher
TWENTIETH STREET AND FOURTH AVENUE

THE MIND OF CHRIST
IN HIS MINISTERS

ORDINATION SERMON
PREACHED IN THE CRYPT OF THE CATHEDRAL
OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE, NEW YORK
ON THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT, DECEMBER 22d, I907

By GEORGE WILLIAM DOUGLAS, D.D., S.T.D.
CANON OF THE CATHEDRAL
WITH A PREFATORY LETTER FROM
THE BISHOP COADJUTOR OF THE DIOCESE

NEW YORK
EDWIN S. GORHAM, Publisher
TWENTIETH STREET AND FOURTH AVENUE

PREFATORY NOTE.
THIS SERMON IS PRINTED IN RESPONSE TO THE FOLLOW
ING LETTER FROM THE BISHOP COADJUTOR OF NEW YORK.

Diocese of New York,
Office of the Bishop Coadjutor,
7 Gramercy Park.
December 24, 1907.
My dear Dr. Douglas:
It would be a great gratification not only to me
but to the young men who were ordained last
Sunday, and to the whole congregation present
at the Service, if you would consent to print, and
so to put in more permanent form, the admirable
and instructive sermon which you preached upon
that interesting and impressive occasion.
Hoping that you will comply with this request
and in so doing give a wider circulation to your
message, believe me
Very sincerely yours,
David H. Greer.

The Reverend
Dr. George William Douglas.

THE MIND OF CHRIST
IN HIS MINISTERS.
We have the mind of Christ.— I Corinthians ii: 16.
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ
Jesus. — Philippians ii: 5.
We are engaged to-day in a special
business. These men before you have
been brought to the Bishop to be set apart
for the Christian ministry — not to be set
apart from you, brethren ; not to be set
apart from the Christian laity — God for
bid ! The Church, as one body with many
members, moves all together if it moves
at all. The Bishop will separate these
men, or will ask them to separate them
selves by God's help, not from you, the
body of the faithful, but from the world.
In his address to them he will charge
them of many things which they must be
and do ; but he will say only one word as
to what they must forsake and set aside —
all worldly cares and studies.
Time was when the Church of Christ
made, temporarily, a mistake about this.

In an episode of history, which it is
needless now to tell, the laity pushed the
clergy away from themselves, with some
thing of the same superstition as that
wherewith the heathen stand off from their
priests and their supposed magic powers —
a superstition which, when we analyze it,
is not unlike that with which we all stand
off from a man who is handling a live
electric wire. And when they had become
thus isolated, and were tempted by their
isolation, the clergy arrogated to them
selves exclusive privileges even as mem
bers of society. They were tried in special
courts, according to special laws, applied
by themselves. Hereby the clergy often
became imbued with an artificial con
science ; sometimes even with a perverted
conscience, so that, as it was said of kings,
" The king can do no wrong," in effect it
was said also of the clergy, " The clergy
can do no wrong ; or, if they do, it hardly
matters to laymen. The common law is
for the laity." The interests of the
Church were supposed to be different from
the interests of the society that it serves.
That baleful episode of ecclesiastical his-

tory is passing everywhere. Among us
the clergyman has now little or no special
social prestige. He is subject to the same
laws as the layman, and to the same tests
of citizenship, and even of social etiquette.
It does not help him much socially to be
a clergyman. So much the better. Like
his Master in Pilate's judgment hall, he
has been stripped of his scarlet robe, and
left to show himself simply for what he
is ; and if by and by there be thorns for
his brow and stripes for his back, did not
the Lord Jesus say beforehand, "It is
enough for the disciple that he be as his
Master"?* And in that experience also
there shall be no setting apart of clergy
men from laymen. To our own Master
we shall all stand together in this uncer
tain world.
It is then, men and brethren, as mem
bers of the one Body of Christ, in a
common spirit, for a common cause, that
we address ourselves to this Ordination
of Priests and Deacons. The Minister is
the representative and the servant, at one
and the same time, of the Master Christ
and of the whole company of faithful
* Matt, x: 25.

Christians : " Ourselves your servants, for
Jesus' sake," says St. Paul.* My theme
must be something which shall hold us
on this common ground ; so I shall speak
of what Paul the Apostle spoke constantly,
whether to clergymen or laymen, as in
the texts which I have just read to you:
of the mind of Christ. If we clergymen
know our business, we can hardly put it
better in one word than to say that our
business is to be possessed of Christ's
mind, and to convey it to all mankind.
And if we have that, the question of our
fulfilling our promise to set aside all
worldly cares and studies will settle itself ;
as our Master declared when He said,
"They are not of the world, even as I am
not of the world." f It has been truly said
that the decisive events of human history
take place in the mind. The acts that
produce history follow on the minds of
the actors. If you have a master, and
would serve him well, you must know his
mind ; and we Christians fail in our mis
sion unless we have, as Paul said he had,

* II Corinthians iv: 5.
f John xvii: 14.

the mind of Christ. One of the most en
couraging characteristics of the world at
large to-day is the desire of earnest men
everywhere to ascertain this mind. The
theological interest and the philanthropic
and social interest of the modern layman
and clergyman centres more and more at
this point. There is little life left in the
theological controversies of the past, ex
cept in so far as they bear on this matter.
The professional theologian may fix his
attention on the old dogmatics, abstractly
considered, in the seclusion of his study ;
but when he opens his windows and goes
out of doors, one cry comes to him : "Who
hath known the mind of the Lord?" * and
who can help us to share it? When we
speak of a person's mind, we mean the
decisive, comprehensive expression of his
personality — the disclosure of his per
sonal consciousness as he walks the ways
of this world— the disclosure of that from
which all that he says and does springs
as from a fountain. And when we speak
of Christ's mind, we mean His attitude as
a spiritual Person towards life and death,
towards Himself, towards other persons
* Rom. ii: 34.

6
and things and institutions in this world,
and towards Almighty God. This world
is full of mysteries ; but to men all the
other mysteries are focussed -in the con
sciousness of the man himself. And it is
the disclosure of the personal conscious
ness of Jesus Christ in the Gospel narra
tive which most interests the world to-day
in the New Testament. This is why the
historic life of Christ occupies so large a
place in the thoughts of earnest men, and
is being studied from so many points of
view. People used to discuss Sin, or
Predestination, or the Atonement, or
Absolution, or the Real Presence, or the
Last Things, or the Golden Rule, as sep
arate abstract themes, to be dealt with by
the theologian's ratiocination almost apart
from Jesus Himself. Now we feel that
we can say nothing of them without get
ting back to Christ and keeping a close
impression of Him. In the New Testa
ment, Christ shows Himself in various
ways ; He moves among various persons,
in various circumstances ; and He acts
and speaks accordingly. Sometimes the
disclosure bears upon ourselves : what

Christ thinks of persons like us ; how He
feels towards us ; what He desires for us
and for all men. Sometimes the disclos
ure bears upon Almighty God : what
Christ knows of God ; how He feels to
wards God; how God is to Him. And
hereby Christ tells us always something
also about His own Person : what He
knows of Himself; how He feels about
Himself; what He desires and expects
for Himself ; how He conducts Himself
towards man and towards God. All that
Christ proposes for mankind depends on
what He declares Himself to be in Him
self. Upon isolated acts and single sen
tences of Jesus conflicting systems of
thought and action may easily be built ;
but on the total Christ, as He thus dis
closes Himself all round, — it is on this
that we ministers of the Gospel must
plant our faith. For it is not exactly
unbelief that is our usual obstacle ; rather
it is the loose credulity of men : the relig
ious emotion gone wrong, or gone mad ;
some wild form of faith, or else faith be
fogged and bewildered. And our busi
ness is to show men the real, historic

10
Christ, as the proper living object of our
faith, to steady it and make it sane and
salutary as a sane person impresses those
of unsettled mind. And by our life we
must convince men that we clergymen
believe what professionally we preach.
" O Lord, increase our faith." *
There have come into the life of modern
men a greater variety and volume of
sound than assailed the ears of our fore
fathers. Our city is resonant with the
strife of tongues, and it taxes our vitality.
We must make zones of silence around
ourselves some part of every day, and in
the silence we must allow the whole mind
of Jesus Christ, as He discloses it in the
Gospel, to rectify and concentrate our
scattered minds and wills. We are living
in a period of uncertainty, intellectual
and social, such as history has no record
of hitherto. Science has bewildered us
with more facts than ever ; but as to the
inferences from the facts science feels less
sure than ever. Lord Kelvin died the
other day — probably the greatest scientist
of our time : great in grappling with the
* Luke xvii: 5.

11
most abstract problems and in prosecuting
the most difficult experiments and the
most refined calculations of the higher
mathematics and physics ; yet great also
in the application of science to the com
mon life of men. Nevertheless, after a
brilliant life, his last word was this : *
" One word characterizes the most strenu
ous of the efforts for the advancement of
science that I have made perseveringly in
the last fifty-five years. That word is
failure. I know no more of electrical and
magnetic force, of the relation between
ether, electricity and ponderable matter,
or of chemical affinity, than I knew and
tried to teach my students fifty years ago."
In religion rationalism has led nowhere,
and materialism has no hopes ; whereas
our vigorous civilization is based on hopes ;
it must nope, and will hope. In politics
the machinery of parties seems to be
breaking down ; for even liberalism is
bankrupt, and there is danger that trades-
unionism, whether of the employers or
the employed, may be little else than des-

* Quotation from the New York Sun, Wednesday,
December 18, 1907," page 3.

12
potism in a new guise. In international
affairs, Japan has upset the nations, and
no nation has a clear idea of its own line
of progress. Statesmen are at their wits'
end ; and hence, trying to stave off dan
gerous combinations that they cannot
withstand alone, they are forming one
with another "ententes cordiales." Every
one is conscious of forces that he cannot
control, of instincts and impulses rising
out of the past and hardly controllable by
any arguments or inducements which the
present has ready to hand. And in the
midst of it all, more universally than ever
before, rises throughout the world, heathen
and Christian, the earnest appeal: Who
knows the mind of the Lord ? For there
has appeared in the historic Person, Jesus
Christ, one consciousness alone so certain
in itself that the world is compelled to in
quire whether this Person is only human,
or whether He is in a class by Himself,
at once human and Divine, and therefore
better able than our ordinary conscious
ness to guide and console and elevate us,
and to illuminate our destiny. That con
sciousness of Jesus, like ours, speaks for

13
itself. There it is. Such it is. And in
our uncertainty, the conscious certainty
of Jesus is most impressive. Its influence
on others depends on their proximity to
it, and their sympathy with it. We min
isters of Christ, at our Ordination, engage,
by the help of God, to keep in sympathy
with that consciousness of Christ as the
Scriptures reveal it ; and so to convey it
to our flock, and let it speak for itself as
it has always spoken. All our ministra
tions and our organizations and our char
ities, and our prayers and sermons and
Sacraments are to be focussed there, per
meated and controlled by what is there —
" the light shining in a dark place." * As
I just said, there are many aspects to it.
Like light, it radiates all round. We
must pass with our dim eyes from aspect
to aspect of it, turning constantly to the
focus from which the radiation spreads.
And by way of leading up to the solemn
Ordination service which is to follow, I
will, by the help of the Holy Spirit, speak
to you, my brothers, of the manifestation
of our Master's consciousness in the mat-

* II Peter i: 19.

14
ter of human sin. That is, of course, one
matter of which we clergymen, at Ordina
tion and ever afterward, are, or ought to
be, most keenly sensible : the sin in us
and in all the world, which we believe that
Jesus taketh away. " My sins, my sins,
my Saviour ! " There is among modern
men a certain callousness to sin, not as to
the fact so much as to the idea of sin.
Ah me! What is the mind of Christ
about it ? What He did and said about
sin fills the Gospel story ; but what He
did and said depended on His inner mind.
How does sin appear in the personal con
sciousness of Jesus Christ? Our whole
ministry, my brothers, will be modified
by what we know of this.
By common consent, Jesus Christ is a
solitary and astounding exception to a
universal law of the inner life of religious
men in every nation under heaven, — a
solitary exception as to the way in which
sin appears in personal consciousness.
From nowhere else has the world received,
on the one hand, such an intense and
appalling revelation of the power and the
shame and the unhappiness of sin as from

15
the calm, clear, penetrating mind of our
Lord. Christ does not theorize about sin,
like St. Paul ; He simply sees it, — sees it
through and through, and carries it. Yet,
wonderful to tell, He carries it as a bur
den that is not His own : it does not sully,
or enter into, His own will. His heart
and will are pure : one with the just and
holy God, His Father. He knows what
sin is as no one else; but no man con
vinces Him of it. His way with God is not
the way of repentance and conversion ; He
is already in Heaven,* I AM THAT I
AM, equal with the Father. Once when
the Pharisees f tried to corner Him in this
very matter of sin, asking for His au
thority to break the Sabbath and heal a
man at Bethesda, Christ, when thus chal
lenged, offered an apology, out of the
heart of His personal consciousness ; and
what an apology it is ! In tone and man
ner, indeed, He speaks as if He were the
lowliest man in the crowd : very much as,
afterward in the upper chamber, J to His

* John iii: 13.
f John v; cp. Mark ii; Matthew xii.
% John xiv: 28; cp. x: 29-30.

16
apostles, when He said "My Father is
greater than I." But just as then, when,
after saying that apparently self-depre
ciatory word about Himself in comparison
with the Father, He went on to pray * in
words of absolute equality with the Father
in dignity and power and sympathy, and
in essential being too, with this one differ
ence, that He, as the Eternal Son, derives
his identical Being eternally from the
Father — just as then, so here, when you
take Christ's words in a totality of im
pression, you find that the Jews under
stood Him right, precisely as He meant
to be understood — that He was conscious
both of sinlessness and of perfect equality
with God the Father. There is no snatch
ing, f The equality is there, in the mutual
consciousness of the Son with the Father.
It is a unique combination of conscious
dependence and conscious equality and
sinlessness, Father and Son together.
Why, these Pharisees to whom Christ is
speaking, mere men as they are, do not
feel themselves in such dependence on the

* John xvii; cp. John viii.
t Philip ii: 6.

17
Divine Father as Jesus feels. The Phari
see, even when he goes to the Temple to
put himself into the presence of God, still
rests upon himself and brags in prayer,
even in prayer, of his excellency; as if he
had got it himself and could keep it for
himself, without man's help or God's
either. Whereas Christ (I wish I had
time to quote the passages) in every phrase
acknowledges with filial zest the eternal
indebtedness of the Son to the Father.
Yet for what does he feel indebted? For
absolute Godhead and power and sinless
ness,. for unison from all eternity in vital
Being and sympathy with very God Him
self. Here in this sinful, transitory world,
such is the mind of "the Son of man
which is in Heaven."* And this oneness
of the Divine life, of which Christ is con
scious in Himself, is the co-operation of
three Persons f each and all together ; and
it is the perfection of it, the absence of
all jar or sin, which reveals it as Divine.
Out of his own consciousness Christ re-

* John iii: 13.
tjohn xvi: 7-15; xiv: 16, 26; iii: 34, 35; xii: 28;
Matthew xvii: 27; Lukex: 22.

18
veals to us how the Father and the Son
and the Spirit feel and behave one towards
the other, as Person behaves with Person.
It is an active Trinity, Godward and man-
ward ; active but sinless, whereas men are
never active without sin one towards an
other ; and it is this example of the eternal
harmony of mind between the Father and
the Son which Paul in the passage of our
text holds up to the Philippians for them
to imitate, man to man. " Be of one mind,"
he says, as Jesus and the Father have been
from all eternity. It is sometimes inferred
that by the mind of Christ is intended
simply His humblemindedness, His will
ingness to take on the form of a servant or
slave ; but the very passage of St. Paul's
epistle to the Philippians, from which this
is inferred, shows that the act of humilia
tion is prompted by Christ's conscious
Divinity; and St. John's account of the
Last Supper also brings this out, where
he tells of Christ washing the disciples'
feet. It is Christ's God-consciousness
that inspires and enables Him to bear the
cross. And the climax of this conscious.
ness comes when Christ prays. We men

19
humble ourselves in prayer, if we feel
God's presence; but Christ exalts Him
self. It is the sinless I AM addressing
the I AM. "Father, the hour is come.
Glorify Thou Me with Thine own self,
with the glory which I had with Thee be
fore the world was." * Never man spoke
like this Man.
Conscious of such Godhead in Himself,
Christ turns upon the world, confronting
its sin with mercy. He can be, and is,
merciful because He is God, and God is
Love. We sometimes speak as if it , is
human to be merciful. But human his
tory meets that notion with a flat contra
diction, and our own knowledge of our
selves supports that contradiction. There
is no mercy of sinners with sinners, any
more than of one conscious sinner with
himself. It is the lack of mercy, where
sin is segregated, that makes hell. There
is no mercy apart from God ; and all the
mercy that man attempts to show to man,
detected in his guilt, springs from Divine
impulse and from man's darkling hopes

* John xvii: 5.

20
of God. " There is mercy with Thee." *
It is Christ the righteous Who hath power
on earth to forgive sins. It is the influ
ence of His Spirit that moves us to try to
be merciful to others as we hope for mercy
ourselves. It is the Peace of God. In
this, as in all else, "No one knoweth the
Father, save the Son, and he to whomso
ever the Sonwilleth to reveal Him."f It
is superhuman peace. Perfect forgiveness
is the miracle of the New Testament, and
it belongs to Christ because there was in
His self-consciousness alone nothing to be
forgiven. He does not forgive in order to
be forgiven ; He forgives because He is
Love — Eternal Love, Love Divine, all love
excelling. That is what Christ is con
scious of. And that is why the Pharisees,
who were familiar with the idea of official
absolution, accused Christ of blasphemy :
there was no alternative for them, unless
they would worship Him, as being what
He declared Himself to be, God. Here it
stands in recorded human history, this
unique personal consciousness of Jesus
* Psalm cxxx : 4, P. B. Version ; Luke xv.
t Matthew xi: 27.

21
Christ, Godward and manward : this mind
of Christ ; this will, alone, apart, without
sin yet alive to it ; this heart at one with
God and merciful towards men. Can any
one, who knows what human nature is,
suppose that the system of things which
we call human nature — mere human na
ture, out of which are born all the other
minds and wills that we know — can we
suppose that human nature produced that
will, that mind of Christ ? And, believe
me, whatever revival of religion there is
to be among the earnest, questioning,
uncertain thinkers of our day, will be, and
must be begun by the direct impression
of the singular certainty of the historic
Christ — by the impact of His mind as to
the felt fact of sin. That will help us to
withstand the modern tendency to avoid
mental verdicts. In Christ there is first
the Divine verdict, absolute and clear ; and
then Divine forgiveness, if man agrees.
Bring men to Jesus ! to the living
Lord. My brothers in the Christian ministry,
it is our privilege to have, and to declare,
that mind to men. To some of you the

22
Bishop will say, " Receive the Holy Ghost
'for the office and work of a Priest in the
Church of God, now committed unto thee
by the imposition of our hands. Whose
sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven."
At the altar steps let us enter, then, into
the mind of Christ. Do you remember
how, in Newman's "Dream of Gerontius,"
when the soul that has passed to paradise
enters into the presence of Jesus, in the
keen light of Him the soul shrivels up as
in fire, and yet praises and is glad ? So
may it be with you and me ; and may the
marvel of that sinless Presence diffuse
itself through -and in us as a consuming
fire.

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