The more excellent sacrifice ; memorial-day sermons

Contents

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I. The More Excellent Sacrifice, 9

II. The Shibboleth of Humanity, - 36

II. The Shibboleth Of Humanity

"But the greatest of these is charity." — i Cor. xiii, 13.

When the Gileadites intercepted the Ephramites at the passage of the Jordan, the pronunciation of a single word served to detect the tribal affiliations of the fugitives. In the march of the world towards social perfection, a single principle separates the higher humanity from all the rest, and discloses at once the secret by which hearts have been brought into union and the better parts of our nature developed and adapted to the practical uses of the Gospel of love. The advancement of men from the lowest to the highest forms of civil life has often been marked by the most suggestive antithesis. Love has been born of hatred; order of confusion; freedom of tyranny; liberty of slavery, and peace of war. In all these opposites the watchword of the hour has ever been but the prophecy of the final outcome. These truths can all be traced along well de-

The Shibboi^Th of Humanity. 37

fined lines in the growth of our government and in the unfoldings of our wondrous national life. What means this gathering here to-day but an illustration of what I have just uttered ?

These uniforms speak of a strife that has long since ceased; of a war for principle, of fire and smoke and battle where many a brave and gallant life went down for the right, and where the right triumphed ; of a bitter and bloody contest, in which F'reedom was the watchword and where the outcome was three millions of enfranchised lives and as many unclasped shackles. In all these one principle alone embodied the objects of the issue; one battle-cry animated the contending hosts; one Shibboleth detected the enemy in the ranks or at the gates.

Out of that eventful war was born the noble body of true men who stand before me to-day — men who have for their object fraternity, their Shibboleth charity, their battle-cry loyalty — but the greatest of these is Charity. It is the great bugle-call to which we are marching to a higher and better life. In the aspiration of the soul toward heaven one single principle, above all others, forms the criterion of certainty by which we know that our feet are treading the straight and narrow way. More than a guiding star, charity (or love) is a sun that brightens all the world to us, and over the pathway of its rays our weary footsteps travel toward our eternal rest. Xo wonder that the Apostle Peter, in summing up the Christian graces, said that if we add to them charity we should be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For God Himself is love, and the commandment which Jesus gave to us that we should love the Lord our God with all our hearts, souls, and minds, and our neighbors as ourselves, was simply a concentration of the highest and most ennobling duties of life into that single word — Love.

The definition of charity covers a wide field of meaning. In its ordinary acceptation, and that which first presents itself to our minds, it is almsgiving. But that is only the narrowest ring of an ever-widening circle. In another sense it is benevolence, philanthropy, liberality in relief, kindly judgment of the action and motives of others. It is brotherly love, and, in its brightest sense, love to God. It is the Shibboleth of humanity, recognizing God as our Father and man as our brother. It is the greatest of all the virtues which make up the perfect man. It is the great harmonizer, bringing into accord all contrarieties of our nature and attuning life in this world to the life beyond the grave. The Christian

The Shibboleth o£ Humanity. 39

Church, in its early struggles against both Judaism and Paganism, found itself involved in unprofitable controversies. There were the differences of opinion of the representatives of the various sects whose conversion brought them under the influence of the new doctrine. There were the long-established jealousies among the many nationalities which the Gospel had brought together. There were peculiarities of customs, habits, and thoughts of the people whom the preaching of the Gospel was bringing under the dominion of Christ. The Jew came with all the narrowness of religious formality ; the Gentile with wide differences in methods of worship and with a skeptical philosophy difficult of reconciliation with that spirituality which reaches to the profoundest depths of the human heart. It was hard to get away from the temple of idolatry, from the altar of sacrifice, from superstitious reverence for the household gods, and from fear of the unseen power of the earth and air. These and a myriad of other mythical things which occupied the devout mind of the heathen world, still clustered around the domestic and public practices of the people. Christ had introduced a religion of love, and in this fundamental yet all-sufficient virtue the apostle recognized the cementing principle of all social and religious life. Hence-

40 The More £xceixent Sacrifice.

forth it was to be the battle cry of the Church Triumphant. It was to be the world's watchword towards heaven. It was to become the Shibboleth by which the true men should be distinguished from the false.

Long before Christ came and taught, Cleanthes said : "Love begins with the mother and father ; from the family it extends to the village, to the commonwealth, to the people, and it becomes the holy love of the world. From that time man, on account of being a man, is no longer a stranger to another man." His preceptor, Zeno, had said before him, "Love is the god that saves the city " These expressions are bright gleams of light through the clouds of that unsocial heathenism which always regarded the stranger as an enemy. It is evident that the world had never grasped the true idea of charity outside the influence and teachings of Jesus Christ. Look at the world before Christ, under the old dispensation. Look at it wherever imperial authority has swayed the might and power of the sword. Many a great and flourishing city has gone down under the storm of human passion. Many a country, beautiful and productive, has withered and become barren under the trampings of some conquering host. Attila, the scourge of God, said that the

The; Shibboi^Th o£ Humanity. 41

grass could not grow again where his horse had once trod, and, in the fearful destruction that he wrought, his words seemed but too true. Many a nation, reaching out toward power and aggrandizement, has perished in the whirlwinds of jealousy and hatred. Egypt is but the sepulcher of the buried hope of a dead past. Her monuments speak only of death, not life. Her pyramids, the world's wonder, are but the remains and reminders of past slavery and suffering. Every chisel mark speaks of tears and unrequited toil. The Nile, the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the Jordan now roll their waves through fields of desolation and ruin, where once proud cities with humming industries, and great nations with advanced civilizations, welcomed their overflowing waters.

Even Corinth — proud, beautiful Corinth, to whose people the apostle addressed the Epistle from which our text is taken — Corinth, once wealthy and flourishing; once looking proudly from her rocky heights upon her magnificent double harbors where floated a mighty commerce, her strong citadel frowning over the sea, her people haughty and defiant, had forgotten that the greatest of these was charity. Swallowed up in the vortex of contentions and greed, and worshiping at altars which turned all hearts to stone, she passed into the silence of forgetfulness, and is no more. A squalid village and a few sad ruins mark the site of her former glory. I look back four hundred years, and, turning my eyes towards the east, see three small vessels coming toward our shores bearing at their masthead the flag of Spain. It is the voyage of discovery. They come to open up a new world; they come for conquest and for spoil. They bring with them avarice and despotic cruelty; selfishness and greed mark their advent, while the same narrow spirit prevails in their descendants of to-day.

I look again, and further northward come other vessels, but now bearing the flag of England. Animated by a higher object, they come for commerce and for trade, but charity is not a part of their cargo. I still look and other vessels come, not for conquest and spoil, not for commerce or trade, but for a still nobler purpose, to worship God with untrammeled conscience ; but, alas ! to worship under a banner upon which "Charity" had not been inscribed. The world had learned a thousand good and valuable things, but it had not learned Christ's lesson of charity.

Love was to be evangel of the new world, the child of a free Church, nurtured in war and adopted by the Grand Army of the Republic. You will observe that in this connection I am using the term love as synonymous with charity. It was the apostle's meaning. It was the meaning Christ gave to it, and it was the great principle that He wished to instill into Christianity as a saving factor not only to the cause of religion, or in behalf of the human soul, but to all the temporal and political interests of the world. Love was the first lesson taught to man in Eden. It was repeated for him at Bethlehem by the angelic choir in the blessed song of peace on earth, and it was the final legacy left to him on Olivet when the ascending Christ returned to the throne and habitation of His Father.

It is not my intention, to-day, to enter into an analysis of the forces which the inspired apostle marshaled when he drew the climax upon charity and placed it as the capstone to all human virtues. I propose to use the word in its various significations as it may apply to the purposes of the text. So far, I have referred to it as a principle in social development and life, as fellowship, brotherhood, as the cementing influence which binds heart to heart, man to God, and makes God alone the saving element in social and national institutions. It is a little word, but with a world of meaning. It is a monosyllable, but it represents or expresses the power of God unto individual and national salvation.

Can you imagine what the world would have been, how truly lovely and beautiful, if charity in all its various forms of meaning had been universally practiced among men ; and love, like an angel's dream, had imbued man's life with holy joy ? How the desolating column of war would have been armed with the implements of peace and would have gone forth to beautify and not destroy! How the fields of carnage would have turned to blossoms and yielded grain to the harvest and ripened its fruit to the autumn and ever smiled at the coming of the springtime ! How the besom of destruction, which has so often swept the land with desolation, would instead have swept back to the pit the powers of the evil one and kept the earth sweet and clean as in that hour when "God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good !" How brotherly affection would have sanctified the events of each passing day, and, like sweet incense, would have ascended to the eternal throne ! But to-day earth is not a paradise. Since the hour that the flaming sword was placed at the east of the garden, no nation has ever reached the perfection of its ideal, for all have lacked the essential element of charity and

This Shibboi^th oj? Humanity. 45

all else has profited them nothing. "Charity never faileth ; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away."

I verily believe that the Christian world is tending toward this empire of universal love. As new avenues of knowledge are being opened the world is growing better. Some new revelation every day gives to us a clearer and higher conception of the teachings of the Master. Our souls expand with widening thought and the human mind ever stretches out further and further toward the Infinite. Once in the history of the nations every stranger was regarded as an enemy. Now Christ's kingdom reaches out the hand of fellowship to all the nations of the earth, and says to them : "Come and partake with us freely of the waters of life." Once punishment for crime meant human vengeance against the wrongdoer, but God said: "Vengeance is mine," and nations, enlightened by the Gospel, learned to temper mercy with justice. The Christian world has compassion for the guilty one, and Christ, through His blocd, offers redemption for his repentance. The prison door may be closed and securely locked, yet mercy holds open the wicket of hope and the prisoner may, if he will, look out into the waiting eyes of love. Love is the fulfilling of the law.

" 'T is humble love And not proud science keeps the door of heaven. Love finds admission where proud science fails."

It is this love or charity which brings us into living personal contact with each other. The world knows us and we know the world only by that personal touch which completes the electric current of the soul, and sends swelling and surging through the union of hearts that life current which vitalizes the moral and religious sympathies of the world. Our mutual sensibilities can not be learned from books. The knowledge of others — of human nature acquired only in the library — is not a living comprehension of the real man. It is but the effigy, the marble statuary of the sculpture gallery, beautiful, symmetrical, perfect in art, but stone — hard, cold, lifeless, a representation and not a reality. There is no soft flesh yielding to the touch, no nerves of sensation responding to the slightest contact, no warm blood flowing from a sympathetic heart carrying animation into every fiber, no soul looking out from the eyes or speaking from the tongue, no affections sending forth the electric spark of love to light the whole world with the glow and warmth of humanity. We can learn men only by associating with them, by exchanging thoughts with them, by securing their confidence in return for ours, by reaching out the helping hand in their needs or by grasping their stronger hold when we ourselves are sinking.

Charity is the inspiriting force which animates us in our intercourse with the world. We misunderstand our fellows because we do not know them. We misconstrue their motives because we do not understand them. We fail in our efforts to help or do them good because we do not bring ourselves into touch or accord with them. We deny to them the attributes of a God-given manhood, and then endeavor to bring their discord into harmony. If we would succeed with men we must find out and understand the good that is already in them. This goodness must be rendered purer by attuning it to the more perfect teachings of the Gospel : while, at the same time, all the unharmonious parts of character must be brought into accord with the principles of the higher life. Ruskin says that all one's life is a music if one touches the notes rightly and in time. Surely all our lives in this world may daily be made to vibrate to the music of heaven and to command the ear of the Father, if love shall be the key and charity the theme of all our personal ministrations. It would, if we had time, be curious to trace the evolution of charity from early patriarchal life along through the rise and fall of nations to the institution of our own nation, founded upon the advanced principles of civil and religious liberty, a system involving the most exalted conceptions of charity, love to God as our Father, and love to our fellow-man as our brother: This principle is bringing men nearer to each other and drawing humanity closer to God. It is this idea of liberty founded upon love which God seems to have made the special mission of the people of America to uphold.

How the great heart of the world yearned for this liberty. Through the centuries it appeared as but a little star in the vast firmament, yet something in the brightness of its beams always attracted the attention of men toward it. Still it rose higher and higher and shined brighter and brighter until the oppressed of the nations began to inquire, "Will it ever give light to all the earth?" Men affected to admire, but how little did Ihey comprehend that light, or understand the meaning of its brightness, or grasp the import of that word liberty! It was

The Shibboleth oe Humanity. 49

indeed to unshackle the captive and let the oppressed go free. It was to take the whip from the hands of the task-master and reward the laborer with the product of his own hands. It was to lift the oppression which ground out men's lives and give them freedom in the choice of occupation and of employer. Men did not stop or care to think that it was more than these; that it meant citizenship and individual sovereignty ; that it meant education for the masses and an equal chance in life for the man who honestly earned the bread he ate with him to whom accident or fortuitous circumstances had given wealth and who affected the inherited right to command and govern.

And yet it meant still more. It meant untrammeled manhood for those who would aspire to it. It meant God likeness to those who would comply with the conditions and receive it. Christ, with His new doctrine, brought yet a higher liberty to the oppressed — the liberty of love. This was the divine empire in which Christ asserted His dominion when He drove the money changers from the temple and declared that it was a house of prayer and not a den of thieves. He proved the majesty of that dominion in the course of His ministry, when, at His word, the dead came back to life, the sick were healed, and 4 the sinner was forgiven : when childhood was exalted to a share in the kingdom of heaven, and a whole code of ethics was embodied in the single injunction, "to do to others as we would have others do to us." Spiritual liberty came with Christ's preaching of the Gospel, but it flowed along in an oft-interrupted stream until the Reformation, when its swelling waves broadened and rolled onward until they touched the shores of the new world at Plymouth.

But spiritual liberty, founded upon the New Testament doctrine of charity, had never been and was not even then, fully understood and practiced by the Christian Church. Forms and ceremonies, human creeds, man-made doctrines and spiritual selfishness, all inconsistent with the spirit of love, served to separate the Church into discordant families, with some ties of relationship but few of direct brotherhood. We may never expect to conquer the world until we lay our differences by, and under the one banner of love combine our forces for effective and final work. There was much that was good in the Pilgrim faith, but the essential element — charity — was imperfectly developed. Still, the lesson was not lost. Liberty of soul, body, and thought became in time the watchword of the American Revolution. It fired the patriotism of the people and effectually

The Shibboi^th of Humanity. 51

separated the two classes, those that adhered to the old government and honored the king and obeyed the parliament of England from those who believed in both spiritual and political emancipation. It was love coming in the front, love which regarded all men as brothers. Although, as a nation, we recognized freedom as the underlying principle of all political perfection, we have not always kept in mind that the greatest principle of all in action, or of government, either human or divine, is charity.

Despite our splendid achievements in council and in field, we forgot that liberty was for the dark-hued sons of a proscribed race. We still cherished in our midst the curse of African slavery. Another forward step was needed and emancipation became the shibboleth of rebellion. Slavery had become a moral and political reproach. The spirit of our institutions said that all men were born politically equal and should be free. The South replied "Not so ; the children of Ham are born servants and have no political rights !" Charity seemed not for them. Slowly but surely the New Testament doctrine of love had taken deep root in the Northern heart, and that liberty, born of love, demanded that the evil should be removed. Hatred, maddened by selfishness and greed, made war upon principle, but in the conquest the right triumphed. The arbitrament of battle decided the momentous question, and over the Southland, as over the North, the banner of freedom waved protection to all alike. The distinction between master and slave was merged into individual emancipation and political equality before the law.

Out of that war came that great organization of loyal and true men, the Grand Army of the Republic, whose thirty-ninth anniversary we this year celebrate. From the storm and fire of the battlefield they came, with broken ranks and tattered banners, but came triumphant with undaunted hearts and determined purposes. The principles for which they fought were never to be forgotten. The nation which they had saved was still to be preserved. The memory of comrades who fell by their sides and died upon the field, were to be forever cherished. The widows of their honored dead were to be forever cared for, and their fatherless children were to be educated. The old companionships of camp and field were to be solidified into enduring form, and so they came together under the grand principles of Fraternity, Charity, and Loyalty, and throwing their standard to the breeze, have, for thirty-nine years, marched forward honoring their country and honored and beloved by their countrymen. How significant is their motto. Fraternity looks to the Postroom, and is the tie which binds them in union of heart and purpose. The ancients represented friendship as a young man in full vigor, bare-headed, and meanly attired. Upon the outside of his garments was written "To live and die;" upon his forehead, "In summer and winter;" his breast was open and with his finger he pointed to the inscription upon his throbbing heart, "Far and near." Such should be the character of our fraternity. Neither life nor death nor season nor distance should be able to change it. It should be deep and firm and widespread like the roots of the oak of a thousand years. Charity looks backward to their honored dead and to the graves over which the flowers never wither and to a memory that never fades. And then it looks forward to their families keeping want from the threshold and training their children to useful and honored lives. Loyalty looks to the country and its institutions, teaching to all a noble love for the old flag and making civil and religious liberty the watchword for all coming time.

But the greatest of these principles is charity. Fraternity is for to-day and to-morrow. It is the social bond of brotherhood. It is a chain, the links of which are one by one broken by death, and when the last link is severed, a life of precious memories will perish forever. We may be individually remembered for a short time by relatives and friends who have come to us since the recollections of the war were created, but they, too, will die and their remembrance of us will be buried with them in the grave. Our names may live in history, but that personal contact which makes fraternity holy will have passed away beyond recall. Loyalty is for the present and the future. It is patriotism crystallized into the solid duties of citizenship. It is that principle which holds the Constitution and the flag dearer than life. It is that which makes the patriot, the soldier, and the hero.

Loyalty is the great object of our solicitude and teaching. We look behind us and see danger encountered and overcome. We look around us and behold threatenings on every side. We look before us and see darkening clouds rising in the distance. But we still our hearts and say our example and our teachings are not forgotten. As long as the Grand Army of the Republic lives and its battle-scarred flags still hold together, the nation will not want a defender. We call our young men to us and say, "Behold a country worth fighting and worth dying fori" We point them to a hundred hard-

This Shibboi^th of Humanity. 55

fought fields with proud monuments of granite inscribed all over with the record of noble deeds, and say, "See what your fathers have done for republican institutions" and bid them emulate their virtues and their deeds ! We say to the children of our schools, "You belong to God and your country. Never permit a disloyal thought to enter your minds. Never let a spot from your hands stain the old flag. Never let the wrong triumph at the cost of the right. Give to your government an example of the purest loyalty. Throw your lives into the breach when necessary, and seal your devotion with your blood !"

Charity ! Ah, that is the glorious outcome of all our works. "The greatest of these is charity?" It comprises the devotion and love which give life to our fraternity. It is that which makes our union sweet and pure and holy. Without it we should close the doors of our Post-rooms and write upon them "Ichabod" — the glory is departed. Without charity, loyalty would be a shadow, a myth, for it means to all the nation love for the Stars and Stripes; love for the Constitution and laws; love for civil liberty and for God. To us it signifies exalted brotherhood, a fraternity as constant in storm as in sunshine, a confidence as strong under the blackest darkness as in the brightest light — a friendship that no calumny can weaken, no shadow tarnish, no evil or misfortune dissolve. With us it means a liberal hand always open to the wants of surviving comrades and to the needs of the widows of our dead, an ear sensitive to the cry of childhood, a heart responsive to the wail of woe or suffering.

Mohammed said: "Every good act is charity." Your smiling in your brother's face is charity. An exhortation to your fellow-man to virtuous deeds is equal to almsgiving. Your putting a wanderer in the right road is charity ; your assisting the blind is charity. A man's true wealth hereafter is the good he does in this world to his fellow-man. When he dies people will say, "What property has he left behind him ?" But the angels will ask what good deeds he has sent before him. Our mere professions may place the Grand Army before the world for what it is not. Our action, based upon love, will place us, both before the world and ourselves, for what we really are. If we have not love all else is vain, we are but a "sounding brass and tinkling cymbal." We should know ourselves as we desire that others should know us. Christ once asked His disciples, "What do the world say that I am?" and they answered, "Some say, John the Baptist ; some, Elias ; and others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets." The world did not know Him and misunderstood His ministry. But He asked the disciples who had lived with Him, who had been taught by Him and understood Him best, "But whom say ye that I am?" and Simon Peter answered, "Thou art Christ, the Son of God." Ah, blessed knowledge ! received through the revelation of the Father.

Shall we be so understood by the nations? The world will and often does misunderstand us, and those near to us will also misunderstand us unless by our works we make ourselves known to them. But if we would be known by others we must first strive correctly to estimate ourselves. Whatever in our lives or character or works we can not commend to others we will surely find detrimental to ourselves. Our mission to the nation is that of loyalty. Our mission to the people is that of love. When the nation is asked who we are let our lives bring out the response, "They are the loyal sons of the Government." When the people are asked who we are, let a million of loving hearts answer, "They are our truest friends," and when the stranger inquires of us, who we are, let us point to our noble works of charity and say, "These speak for us !"

And yet another step must be taken before our duty is complete. We must extend our love to God and learn to know Him as He is, so that when He may put the question of our knowledge of Him to our hearts, we may be able to answer, "Thou art my Lord and my God !