Magnetism of the cross ; sermons preached in Wesley Methodist Episcopal church, Chicago

Contents

Chapter Page

I. The Magnetism of the Cross, - 9

II. Living Waters, - - - 31

II. Living Waters

"And everything shall live whither the river cometh." — Ezek. xlvii, 9.

One: of God's angels in human form had been conducting Ezekiel the prophet about the holy city for special observations of the Lord's house. Finally in their wandering they came to the door of the temple. There the prophet saw a tiny stream, which was hardly worthy the name of stream, oozing in drops from underneath the threshold. Investigation revealed the fact that this small beginning of a river made its way upward through the soft earth at the south side of the altar. Accompanied by the angel Ezekiel started on a pilgrimage of exploration. He perceived that the tiny beck was a growing stream, for, as he accompanied the angel a thousand cubits from the city, he found that it had become a respectable rivulet whose waters surged about his ankles as he attempted to cross. At a fording place a thousand cubits farther on he found that the waters had risen to the knees. A thousand cubits beyond that point the waters were waist deep, and when they had journeyed still another thousand cubits, and attempted to ford the stream, they found a great river that was impassable. The stream had grown to be a mighty flood.

And as the prophet walked on the banks he saw a wonderful sight. The stream turned toward the desert and, lo! the barren waste became a garden. Rich harvests waved their crowns of gold upon the plain where desolation had reigned before. Bright flowers studded the green sward, and lifted their smiling faces toward a kind and beneficent sky. Luscious fruits ripened for the hungry on the trees which grew on the banks of the river. Sweet voiced birds sang the praise of the Creator and Transformer in the branches, and everywhere there was life, joy and beauty. Nor did the wonder end here. The river turned again and flowed into the Dead Sea. You know what that sea was, and the secret of its name. It was a sheet of water in which no living thing was to be found. No fish sported in its waves. No water fowl floated on its surface. That sea was a grave. Ruined cities lay buried beneath its briny billows. The curse of God was upon it. The traveler found on its shores only barrenness and desolation. But as the river that came forth from the Lord's house ran into the sea the waters of death were healed. A wonderful transformation took place. Life camped in the domain of death. The sea was full of fish, and a band of fishermen built their huts on its shores and pulled their nets in its sparkling waters. The prophet saw that everywhere the river went there was life, business activity, fruitfulness and beauty. This was the vision of the man of God, and he leaves us to interpret it for ourselves.

What does the stream symbolize? Doubtless this life-giving- river is the stream of God's grace. It is the tide of the Christ-life at work in the world. It is the flood of the supernatural with which God has visited the race for its inspiration.

The stream of the prophet's vision that brought healing, activity, commerce, life, beauty, and song, issued from the Lord's house. It bubbled up through the soft soil from beneath the altar of the living God. This is significant. The stream for the world's healing has a divine origin. It is for man, but it is not from man.

A liberal preacher once said, "If the race has ever fallen it has fallen upward." As we read his- 3 tory and seek to discover the philosophy of human progress we are persuaded that man has never fallen upward, marched upward, or climbed upward, except under the inspiration of a divine idea. Civilization is the result of centuries of upward climbing under the leadership of the Almighty. You will find a hundred illustrations of this great truth as you study the records of the past and search for the philosophy of human development.

Two thousand years before Christ came the deadly drift of polytheism was sweeping over humanity, as the sands of the desert, propelled by the wind, encroach upon, and finally bury the oasis. Man felt that there must be some power behind the varied phenomena of nature and life. But these phenomena were so diversified and complex that he was confused and lost his grasp on the great truth of unity, even if he had ever comprehended that idea. Man felt that there must be some power above nature, but feared that such power was consequent upon the existence, not of one being, but of many; one of whom might love and another hate; one of whom might bless with prosperity and another curse with adversity; one of whom might bring the wealth of light and another the darkness of despair. Thus the drift of polytheism set in. It brought confusion in thought and a growth of superstition. It rolled eastward over the mountains and across the fertile plains and produced in the land of the Ganges thousands of gods and godesses ; not one of whom, nor all of whom, had power to save the race from the darkness of immorality and despair. It rolled Westward and left its blight on the civilization that had been developed in the valley of the Nile ; and, finally, worked the same curse on the northern shore of the Mediterranean. In every land where the influence of that drift was felt there came, ultimately, the death of hope.

Then God spake to Abraham. He was a plain Bedouin of Ur in the land of the Chaldees; but, somehow, it was given to him to see what his ancestors had never seen. He apprehended the great truth that God was one, in nature and yet above it, the source of all, the life and inspiration of all. That was a divine idea given to man. How it worked for the uplifting of the race! It separated Abraham from his people, and made of his descendants a nation by whom this idea was prized, and among whom it was incarnated; and which stood against the prevailing drift as a great rock stands up against the shifting sands of the desert. That idea flamed out in the magnificent revelations of the Pentateuch as well as in the Ten Commandments. That idea ultimated, gave us the Old Testament, and was the inspiration and fountain-head of Hebrew civilization. Its idea was reflected by, and constitutes the sole religious power of the Mohammedan movement, which in after years came out of Arabia, dominated the Levant, swept with the impetuosity of an avalanche along the southern shore of the Mediterranean and at one time threatened with complete destruction the Christian civilization of Europe. That divine idea was carried over into the system of Christian thought, and became one of the grand elements of power which produced the new civilization that is blessing the world to-day with a better hope and a more glorious light. There can be no question about it. The stream of Hebrew civilization poured forth out of the fountain of that divine idea which was somehow communicated to Abraham as he worshiped Jehovah beneath the brilliant sky of his far-off Eastern home.

Two thousand years after Abraham we come to a new crisis in the life of the race. Hebrew civilization had been tested and had failed. The scepter had departed from Judah, and the lawgiver from between his feet. The children of the chosen seed had failed to grasp the idea that they had been blessed that they might become a blessing to others. They fancied that God loved them for themselves alone, and hated all other peoples. The truth of God had been buried beneath the sands of rabbinical criticism and human opinion. Hebrew civilization had failed to secure the sublime purpose for which it had been brought into existence by the Almighty. Grecian civilization had failed quite as signally. The little country which had given art, literature, and philosophy to the world, had played an important part on the stage of human history. Her wise men had developed a most profound and brilliant philosophy. Her poets had sung so as to charm the centuries. Her artists had so worked as to give the sublimest ideals to the ages. But in spite of all these splendid achievements her civilization had failed. The speculations of her great philosophers were far above the grasp of the people, and had been powerless to prevent a corrupted, enervated civilization from going down into the darkness. The faith of the masses in the supernatural had degenerated into mere debasing superstitions. That civilization had been brilliant, suggestive, and educational. But it had possessed no power to redeem the race and lead man to the goal of the best. As a moral force in the world, it had been tested and had failed.

Roman civilization had succeeded no better. The affairs of the empire were in a state of chaos. The republic had perished in the throes of that revolution out of which the empire had come. The simple manners and customs of the age of morality and faith had disappeared. The religion of Rome was a political rather than a moral force. The emperor was high priest in the days when men as vile as Tiberius and Nero sat upon the throne. The gods of the conquered nations had been transferred to the capital, where they had lost their divinity as their devotees had lost their liberty. The Coliseum became the center of life in the imperial city and the air above Rome smelled of blood. You have a picture of the heathen morality of that day in the first chapter of Romans. It is a very dark picture, and drawn by a master hand. But there is an abundance of contemporaneous testimony to prove that the darkness is not unreal. Life had lost its noble purpose. The poor were little better than slaves and slaves were little better than cattle. The rights of the weak were ignored. Labor was despised. Suicide was praised. Patriotism was dying. Popular skepticism prevailed in all quarters and darkness was settling down upon humanity. Roman civilization had been tested and had failed.

Then a child was born in a manger at Bethlehem. He grew to manhood. He went down to the Jordan and was baptized by John, that he might fulfill before the eyes of men the law of righteousness. When that service was over, the people who had witnessed it were amazed as they saw the heavens open and beheld a mysterious presence in the form of a dove descending from the cloven sky upon the Son of man. And as they gazed upon this strange manifestation, and wondered what it might mean, they heard a voice speaking through the rifted blue and saying, "This is My beloved Son." This was God's testimony concerning Jesus of Nazareth. In process of time he taught men to pray "Our Father who art in heaven." He spake as never man spake. He went through life sacrificing Himself to bring consolation to the weary and the heaven-laden, as well as to lift up the unfortunate and save the weak. He entered Gethsemane and suffered more than mortal agony beneath the shadow of its great trees. He stood before Pilate, by whom he had been scourged, and declared Himself monarch of the kingdom which is not of this world. He climbed the rugged slope of Calvary bearing His own cross, where He hung nailed to the instrument of torture in the shadows of a gloom that was supernatural.

4o Magnetism otf the; Cross.

He was taken from that blood-stained beam limp and lifeless, and was laid away to rest in a borrowed tomb from whose door the stone was rolled away on the morning of the third day, when He came forth from the dark domain victorious over death and the grave.

In that hour of the world's crisis some great truths and some divine ideas came to be the property of the race. Since that hour men have been able to see that there is such a thing as the "Fatherhood of God" and the "brotherhood of man." From that hour man has known that there is a life beyond the tomb. He has believed in the resurrection of the dead, and dared to hope that there is forgiveness of sin and a divine power at work in the world that will transform, transfigure, perfect, and glorify life. These great truths came to man with mighty power. They gave a new purpose to human life. They created the stream of Christian influence. They called into being the Church of Jesus Christ, which, though it has not always been what it should have been, has exerted a mighty power for the uplifting of humanity. These divine ideas permeated the empire which they could not save, and went down into the chaos when at last it fell. But chaos can not destroy truth. Out of the chaos they came to mold the new elements into European civilization. They inspired the Reformation in Germany, Switzerland, Holland, France, England, and Scotland. They unsealed the fountains of civil and religious liberty. They drove men across the stormy Atlantic to rear in the wilderness of the New World a new temple of hope. They have wrought for the liberation of slaves, the developement of the philanthropic spirit, and the production of the thousand and one agencies of applied Christianity which characterize modern civilization. It is from these divine ideas that the power has come which has lifted the race to a higher plane of life, and which has inspired a grander civilization. The stream of the world's healing is of divine origin. Only as man apprehends and appropriates spiritual forces and eternal truths will he find power for the uplifting of the race. Man is forever searching for some cleansing fountain. We are ever on the outlook for some force or agency that will bless and transform. Some are looking toward education; some toward sociology; some toward art; some toward music; and some toward literature. These are all great words. They stand for potent forces which have exerted a splendid influence in the world. I do not underestimate science or philosophy, literature or education, art or music. They have been potent forces, but they have been potent only as they have taken hold upon great truths and divine ideas. These factors, divorced from supernatural truths, bereft of divine ideas, have always proven, not only powerless for good, but powerful for evil. The Master said : "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." Humanity will be redeemed, transformed, transfigured and glorified only as we can touch it with the power of the Christ-life.

Here, also, we come face to face with a truth that concerns us as individuals. You can be saved to a new life, only by the power of the divine. As the power that leads nations to the best is from above ; so the force that works for individual salvation, uplifting and final glorification, is from above. "There is none other name given under heaven among men whereby we must be saved." If life is unsatisfactory ; if it is fuller of failure than of success; if you look toward the past with regret and toward the future with dread ; if you carry the burden of a guilty conscience ; if your hands are stained with wrong so that you have been unable to wash them clean again; if the highlands of a noble life seem to be a long way above you ; if it is, apparently, impossible that you should be what you know you ought to be, and what you really long to be ; if you fear that the gates of pearl will never swing open at your coming, then be assured that there is only one source of help for you; but be assured that there is help. Whence? From above. You must see Jesus Christ. You must experience the throbbings of divine life. You must let God into your soul. You must make Jesus your friend. You must lift your face toward the sky. The forces that transform life are from above.

The stream of the prophet's vision was an evergrowing stream. At first it was a little thing whose waters might have been held in the hand of a child. Then it became a brook, then a broad river, and, finally, it poured its waters into the sea.

We have in this growing stream a symbol of God's method of operation. He works from the less to the greater, from germs toward complex life, from infinitesimals toward the infinite, from possibilities toward the perfect.

When the Infinite would build the world He began with material in the state of emptiness and desolation. Then he breathed on the face of chaos, and brought order out of confusion, and a bare world rounded into being. But it was a bare world. It must be clothed with beauty. It must be peopled with innumerable specimens of animal life, and, at last, man must come to work out his destiny and climb to the goal of the best. How did God accomplish this work? By the process of advancement from the lower to the higher, from germs to complex life, from the infinitesimal to the infinite. The student of geology reads the story as it has been written upon the rocks through the long ages of the earth's history. He tells us that God began with the lowest forms of life. The waters of the Silurian sea swarmed with creatures of the lowest type. These were followed by radiates, mollusks, articulates and fishes which made their appearance at long intervals during the uncounted centuries of that age. Slowly the Devonian wore away with a steady upward climb in the march of life and was succeeded by the Carboniferous. Here we find the huge amphibians and mammoth reptiles, which stalked over the land and sported in the waters. Then the birds appeared. Finally, in the Tertiary period we have mammals possessed of more complex life ; and, after ages had worn away in which there was a steady march toward higher types and better forms, man appeared, the last and noblest of God's creation. It had been a climb for countless ages from the lower to the higher, from the simple to the complex.

The story of man's life on the earth reveals the same sort of history. It is written : "In the beginning, God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." Because he was a living soul he was possessed of infinite possibilities. But these possibilities were not realized in a generation, a century, or a millennium. Progress has been gradual. Language, literature, philosophy and art, have come only after centuries of waiting and toiling. The printing press, the steamship, the railroad train, the sewing machine, the telegraph, the ocean cable, electric lights, and a thousand other things that one might name, are all modern affairs. Science is in its infancy. The enjoyment of civil liberty by the people had its very beginning not many centuries ago. The reign of conscience has hardly begun. The great truth of the brotherhood of man, revealed to the world by Jesus of Nazareth, is barely beginning to make itself felt, after centuries of struggle with the prejudices and passions of the race. How slowly the light has conquered the darkness ! How slowly the Christian law of social life has marched on, while men have forgotten that they had ever heard the Light of the world say, "Whatsoever ye would that others should do to you, do ye even so to them ; for this is the law and the prophets/' Surely man has reached his present position only after centuries of upward climbing under the inspiration of a heavenly influence that has been breathed upon him by the Almighty.

This is God's method of action in every realm. When he wants an oak-tree he does not speak it into being and place it full grown in the forest. He imprisons the possibility of that oak-tree in a tiny germ which has its home in the acorn. This falls into the soft soil. God baptizes it with the rain drops, and warms it with the radiant energy of the sun. The sunbeams break through the walls of its dark prison house and whisper to the first mysterious beginnings of life, "Come out into the sunlight;" and the germ hears, and crowds its way through the open windows of its dreary prison^ up through the cool earth, out into the sunlight, and begins its long career of a hundred, two hundred, five hundred years ; at the end of which it is a great oak-tree. This law of growth holds in the realm of the supernatural as in the realm of the natural.

God did not give you at conversion all He intended you to have. The stream of grace- is an ever-increasing, constantly widening stream, and it leads at last to the ocean of the Infinite. If you have not an experience that is richer and sweeter, fuller and more glorious than it was on that day when you knelt at the feet of Jesus Christ and dedicated your life to His service, there is something radically wrong somewhere. You have not been true to God and His law of progress. If you are not a better Christian than you were a year ago ; if you do not see more in the Bible ; if there are not clearer visions of truth; if there is not more of Christlikeness in thought and life ; if you do not live more in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, there is something wrong with your religion. You have been walking up stream toward the fountain and not downward toward the sea. My brother, there is something better for you than to live at a poor, dying rate. God meant that we should grow in grace and in the knowledge of the truth. He has planned and purposed that there should be continual advancement, day by day, as the months and years come and go.

The revelation of this sublime truth brings a vision of the possibilities that reach out before us into the ageless life. There is something infinitely more glorious ahead. Like the river of God's grace the ageless life will be one of endless progress.

The march of life is forever and forever over an ascending path, and the Bible teaches, if it teaches anything, the sublime doctrine of the continuity of life beyond the river. O soul of mine, thou art discouraged at times. It seems as though there was more of failure than victory; more of retreat than advance; more of ebb than flow of the tide. The ideal is far above thee. But lift up thine eyes ! There is something infinitely better ahead, and the life of the hereafter will reveal an ever-expanding, ever-increasing glory. The stream of God's grace may be to thee now only as a tiny beck. But by and by it will bathe thine ankles. If thou wilt only trust and obey, it will erelong sweep about thy loins; and later on, if thou wilt be true to the truth, thou shalt find thyself upborne by the boundless waves of the sea of infinite love. God gives to everything a chance and time to come to full maturity. The soul of man is the breath of God, and God is infinite. That means progress forever and forever.

" Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll.

Leave thy low-vaulted past, Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee out from heaven with a dome more vast Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell By Life's unresting sea. "

As we study further the vision of Ezekiel we note the fact that this stream of divine origin had power to work a wonderful transformation. It was necessary that this should be wrought. The grace of God introduces one by a transfigured life to the path that will lead at last to the perfect. The waters of that mysterious river were waters of healing. They ran into the desert and it became a garden. They poured into the Dead Sea and the power of death was taken away. The curse was lifted and the waters swarmed with life. Wonderful, wonderful transformation ! prophecy and symbol of that more wonderful transformation which has been accomplished again and again by the stream of divine grace, the flood of heavenly influence, and the waters of the Christ-life.

This stream of divine origin has in it the power of living waters. "Everything shall live whither the river cometh." Jesus said, "I am come that they might have life." He came not to found an empire, to promulgate a philosophy, to elaborate a theology, nor, primarily, to give the world a new code of ethics. He came for the one supreme purpose that man might have life; and that he might have it in the glorious abundance that only the divine could bring. 4

"Everything shall live whither the river Cometh." The Christ-life has everywhere been the inspiration of the best. It is in Christian lands that we find the noblest intellectual life. The school and the college, the quickened intellectuality that manifests itself in popular intelligence, the printing press, the great libraries, and the reading millions are an evidence of the life-giving power of this divine stream. Unselfishness lives whither the river Cometh. It is in Christian lands that we find a blessed spirit of Altruism. There the strong sacrifice themselves that the weak may become strong. There men are the more touched with a feeling of human infirmities. There are found numberless agencies and institutions which are designed to alleviate suffering. There the Golden Rule is realized as nowhere else in the world.

"Everything shall live whither the river cometh." Conversion is the implanting of the germs of a divine life in the soul of man. The soul that was dead in trespasses and sins shall live again, The power of the divine life means growth and the ability to resist the forces and the foes that would drag men down. It means progress and the final attainment of the perfect. Peace shall live. The soul away from God is full of unrest. Men have longed for rest as they have longed for nothing else. When Christ comes there is peace. Jesus said, "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you." When he comes there will be harmony between desire and choice, knowledge and action, the human will and the divine will. That means peace like a river. He can give peace, for he has it. When Jesus speaks the soul will be filled with a heavenly calm. Joy will live. There is a vast difference between happiness and joy. Happiness is like the waves of the sea. They move in harmony with the varying winds. Happiness depends on environment or the happenstances of life. Joy is like the Gulf Stream. It depends on the eternal nature of this world of ours and moves on forever in spite of wind and weather. To know Jesus Christ, and to be filled with his spirit, is to have the calm of the green pastures and still waters no matter what the happenstances of life may be.

"Everything shall live whither the river cometh." Hope shall live. Before Jesus came hope died. After He arose from the dead stars filled the sky. When we see Jesus Christ, the soul throbs with a hope that is big with immortality. We shall live again. We shall have and know the loved ones in the land beyond the shadow. We shall see the

King in His beauty and be like Him. The Quaker poet has breathed forth not a few of these immense and soul-satisfying hopes in one of his latest poems which he calls "At last."

" When on my day of life the night is falling,

And, in the winds from unsunned spaces blown, I hear far voices out of darkness calling My feet to paths unknown,

Thou who hast made my home of life so pleasant, Leave not its tenant when its walls decay ;

0 Love divine, O Helper ever present, Be thou my strength and stay !

Be near me when all else is from me drifting :

Earth, sky, home's pictures, days of shade and shine,

And kindly faces to my own uplifting The love which answers mine.

1 have but Thee, my Father! Let Thy Spirit Be with me then to comfort and uphold ;

No gate of pearl, no branch of palm I merit, Nor street of shining gold.

Suffice it if — my good and ill unreckoned,

And both forgiven through thy abounding grace —

I find myself by hands familiar beckoned Unto my fitting place, —

Some humble door among Thy many mansions,

Some sheltering shade where sin and striving cease,

And flows forever through heaven's green expansions The river of Thy peace.

There, from the music round about me stealing, I fain would learn the new and holy song,

And find at last, beneath Thy trees of healing, The life for which I long."

III. Wild Grapes In The Vineyard Of

MAN'S SOUL.

"And he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth mid grapes." — Isa. v, 2.

Wd have in this chapter a parable wonderfully rich in truths of inspiration and warning. It takes the form of a song of the Well-beloved concerning His vineyard. The Well-beloved is Jehovah, who is speaking through the prophet. The house of Israel and the men of Judah are the vines of the Master's planting. But the parable is certainly capable of a wider application. Truth is vital. It makes its appeal to every age. The wider vision reveals the truth that the world is the vineyard, and that human souls are the tender plants.