The exceeding worth of joining the church

Contents

Chapter Page

I This Little Book is Introduced to the Reader 5

II Human Need Brings the Church Into

Chapter I This Little Book Is Introduced To The Reader

This little book is put into the reader's hands through the interest of several men, acting as they believe upon a prompting of God. For God still lives, and still works. So true is it that God's part in our lives is one of the most significant things about them, that our good intentions, and good feelings, and good deeds, coming to being in us — like some great teacher's knowledge coming to being in his pupils — are of his prompting. If then, for example, men in common life convey a message to other men by means of letters and booklets, it is not likely that God be so stupid a manager as not to use the chance there is in some little book He has caused to be written and put into the hands of one whose heart He has opened. If in business affairs, men are moved to action by even an advertisement — great businesses being built up through the use of print — it would seem as if God could not be so stupid as not to know what business men know so well, nor knowing it, that He would be so careless as not to use it. No, reader, doubt not that God working his purpose through men, has put this book into your hands.

If there came into your hands a booklet claiming to be from some great business corporation with a message of financial gain, you would give it attention and time, weigh its claim and its message. There is asked for this little book the same candid consideration. You ma}^ be inclined to put it aside unread and unconsidered. But you would stand condemned if you had to acknowledge to yourself that you who give sincere and eager attention to a proposition concerning making money, had given short unheeding shrift to the message of those claiming to speak for God. More likely however, is it, that the same Mind that has brought this message into your hands will prompt you to consider the message and weigh the claims of those bearing it, and there be given by that decision to deal candidly with the matter, proof both that God is speaking to you, and that you are giving an honest answer.

The matter brought to you with this high

The Book Introduced to the Reader claim has to do with your becoming a member of the Church. For consider that God,

He would deserve utmost contempt, who, giving all needed time and serious attention to proposals for making money, had given short unheeding shrift to the proposals of those claiming to speak for God.

should He speak to you, would be likely to concern Himself with something like this. The character of the message brought, therefore, favors the claim with which the book is introduced to you, and bespeaks from you a serious welcome.

It may perchance be that you do not care to know what God desires to speak to you about this. You may have no interest in the matter, nor care to be reminded of duty. But surely if there be a God at all, the great thing is not so much what you want to hear, as what He wants to speak. He speaks to many a man who would rather not hear Him, as responsibility holds fast many a man who has tried to escape it. To do what one would like to do and not what one ought to do, would be as if in a great business, the office boy should boss the manager. No; to order life rightly is greater business than to have what is pleasant, and no man, without disaster, can turn the management of his life over to the mere liking in him. For somehow this sense of ought in us fits in with all the things of life and of the world, just as that other sense which we know as sanity fits in without confusion with all things. What God has to say always answers to something that is deep in us. It never violates our reason or our conscience. If this little book speaks to your conscience and to your intelligence, that too, is proof that it is from God.

You may of course now close the book and deliberately avoid the consideration of the

The Book Introduced to the Reader whole matter. That, however, does not change anything. It is only as if one closed

"To do what one would like to do, and not what one ought to

do, would he as if in a great business, the office boy should

boss the manager."

his eyes to things. The things would not change. We can avoid the consideration of the advice of the doctors, and the laws of the State, and the laws of health, and the word of the Bible, and the claims of the Church, and that we are in debt, and the judgment of God. But to live in disregard of these things

That we keep ourselves from knowing the facts is no escape from them. By tying our eyes shut we can keep things from being seen, but it does not change them, nor blot them out. Better a thousand times, a square look at things as they are, than any ignoring them.

does not blot them out of existence; it is only to keep them out of sight. That the adulterer does not look within does not make him less an adulterer — it only keeps him from seeing himself. The mariner by ignoring the compass and chart, removes no rocks from the sea. To avoid thinking about death

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The Book Introduced to the Reader

does not prevent its approach. Not to consider the claims of the Church is to prove none of them untrue — it is only to keep one from seeing things as they are. For things are as they are and not what anyone in his unthinking v^ants them to be. Thus, the only safety lies in squarely facing them and honestly considering them.

[ II ]

Chapter II Human Need Brings The Church Into Being

The Church is simply a group of Christian persons organized for work. God has a purpose that He wants fulfilled in the world. He is not a stupid manager who cannot see what effort will do — organized effort; can see it quite as well as our captains of industry see it. The Church is here by the same necessity for those careful adjustments of each person to the whole, that exists in the army, in business, in the family, and in the State. Whether it be building a railroad, or founding a State, or overcoming an invader, the prime necessity is that men merge individual effort, get together, and give each other loyalty. The more intensely men feel the passion to get something done, the more do they feel the necessity of getting together. Men do not go their separate, unrelated ways in an industry, nor in an army, nor in a family, nor in" a State. The manager of a mill marshals every man, gives him his place, and his

Need Brings the Church into Being

responsibility, relates his effort to the whole purpose, and sees that he is productive. In time of war, the State is all the closer organized for effectiveness, every man being given his station and his work. On the farm, the "hands" do not carry on each a separate and unrelated enterprise, but order their labor to the common end. So amply vindicated on every hand, it would seem that this same necessity for organization would be likely to be insisted upon all the more positively in the Church of God. God asks not only that we serve Him, but that in our loyalty we serve Him in the manner in which we may accomplish the most.

Chapter III Public Confession Is Required In Other Relations

It is likely that you, reader, are already trying to serve God. It may be however, that you are trying to serve Him secretly and individually. You attend church services, you associate with God's people, you have a purpose to do good works, you contribute to the support of the Church, you maintain, it may be, the habit of prayer, and you are trying to be loyal to Christ. But the Church has never countenanced secret discipleship. It has always insisted upon public confession. Christ himself insisted upon it, and for the best reasons. If one really desires to work for Christ — and without this desire one cannot be a Christian — he will be impelled to join the Church with the same inevitableness with which men with a common purpose come together in a partnership, lovers in marriage, pupils in a school, and soldiers in an army. And if in a community without a Church, there were a number of persons with a common purpose to serve Christ, a Church would inevitably come to be. The Church is here with the same inevitableness with which the State is here; it is here with the same inevitableness with which the family is here; it is here with the same inevitableness with which organized business is here; it is here with the same inevitableness with which the school is here. A Church is the partnership of those in a community who are in earnest in doing something for Christ.

First the Christian and then the Church. Just as first the love and then the marriage. Marriage does not make two persons love. No; their loving makes them be married. Marriage is the expression of their love, not its cause. Marriage is an expression of love, but why does the State insist upon a public expression of it? Why may it not be a private and secret matter between the two persons chiefly concerned ? Because secret marriages do not hold. The fidelity that is only secretly promised, to begin with, is not hearty — else it would not ask concealment — slips into weakness, and then ceases to be. The mere intention, if not made definite and a matter of deed, grows hazy and vague. We understand this perfectly in business, where in practice, — though a man's intention and word are perfectly honorable — that secret, intangible intention and word are for his own better keeping, made to become formal and concrete. Better that the agreement be put into writing, and become as we say, "a bond," that is, something that binds; or a ''deed," that is, something done. Suppose for a moment, two persons loving each other, only secretly took the vows of marriage, and secretly became man and wife. Now that secrecy means, to begin with, that rather than brave some obstacle, they will give up their love. There is thus no real faithfulness to begin with. And when this love grows cold, and disagreements strain this secret bond, this love does not hold. The purpose of two such persons, even though clear and strong at first, under the desire for freedom, grows shadowy and vague. Yows thus made, even with elect persons, become much as none at all.

Publicity in marriage, on the other hand, is proof of utmost fidelity to begin with, tends to keep marriage sacred and to make the

[ i6 J bond secure. The State knows this, and compels publicity in marriage. Secret marriage would mean not marriage, but free love. A man's own wavering purpose is in fact established by the expectation of the public. His own dulled conscience is sharpened by the conscience of the public. Even our laws with their penalties, add their wholesome restraint. Many a man sorely tempted to break his marriage vows, has thus been steadied in the day of temptation, who but for the restraint inseparable from a public conscience, would have done what would have been to his everlasting shame. Save for something broader than individual whim, something realer than secret intention, society would not hold together. In publicity we put behind us the stronger and realer consciousness of the community. The strong bear the burdens of the weak.

Even our rationality, or sanity, is a common standard, and is not a thing isolated and individual. It is something public, communal, and conjoint. Cutting loose from this, in that extreme individuality which is more than queerness, one comes to the insane asylum. Conscience too, according to its name (con — together; science — knowledge) is the standard of a group. It is not individual, but joint knowledge. "No man liveth unto himself, and no man dieth unto himself." Together we stand, apart each falls. Many a man in the Church has recovered himself after the evil day, who had he been living as a secret disciple, would have permanently fallen away. In the Church, the expectation and the faith of others make the wheels of purpose and love go round, when the power within us for the time has failed. We recover ourselves, and live in future time, to give, like Peter of old, good proof of our fidelity.

Alone, a man's own purpose as a matter of fact, becomes vagrant and feeble. The necessity of making public one's purpose to follow Christ, lies in the fact that alone and in secret a man cannot hold fast his faith.

Belonging to an army, many a soldier has endured every travail, ^even weakness been glorified by high loyalty, who had he been fighting alone would have forsaken the cause. In some evil day, his heart and his flesh would have failed. In actual experience even veteran soldiers are enrolled and are not left to the perils of their own timorous caprice. Great is the soldier who is caught up in the established

"Great is the soldier who is caught up in the established and

common loyalty of his corps — a bigger and an intenser thing

than his own vacillating weakness."

and common loyalty of his corps, a bigger and an intenser thing than his own vacillating weakness. Save for this, few soldiers would stand. If a nation should engage in war on the basis of secret and individual soldiering, it by this course would doom its most righteous cause and all its agony of sacrifice to failure, while by united action it might bring even a base purpose to triumph. The Church, in insisting upon open and definite identification with it, does just what the army does. It has the the same serious earnestness, it knows the same secret, has shared the same experience, and has for insistence upon publicity the same reasons.

This is the secret of all glorified life. In the family we put behind the individual, the loyalty and love of the group, and rest back upon a common strength. Children are guided by a wisdom and will greater than their own, and but for these they would fall into the ways of folly. Blessed is the husband to whose strength is added the faith and expectation of his wife, and blessed is the father who in his children, has high motive to do valiantly. In turn they hope for him when he cannot hope for himself, and when he of himself would fall, they enable him to stand. In the school no one pupil makes the atmosphere that broods the place and creates in the coldest a desire for knowledge.

The Church finds its power in this same mutual momentum. Here the pull and the push of a surer body is with us. We get upon the mighty current of that faith and hope and love which is the presence of Christ in the Church. We require in the Church for its success just what we require elsewhere, and for the same reasons. ''Where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God," and by the same inevitableness where the Spirit of God is, there the Church will come into being. It comes into being with the same certainty withwhich love brings the family into being, and a common loyalty the army. We tie ourselves up to a purpose and strength greater than our own. We close ourselves in by the seal of a will that is not wholly our own; a will as mighty as God's.

It is much as shepherds do with their sheep. Sheep are weak and silly creatures, quite unable to choose for and to protect themselves. So shepherds put them into the fold. There they are safe. In like manner do we give ourselves over under the will that is not wholly at the mercy of our foolish and vagrant caprice. In a day of vision and resolve, we make the future secure by deliberately putting up bars against our shortsighted and foolish desires. We choose for ourselves what the shepherd in his wisdom chooses for his sheep. A sheep with the shepherd is greater than the sheep without

He who is seriously in earnest, in a day of wise discerning,

puts up harriers against any desire to go back to the way he

has condemned.

him. And a man in the Church is greater than the man outside of it. Just as a soldier in the army is greater than the soldier outside of it. Just as a boy in a school is greater than the boy outside of it.

Serious minded and earnest persons will not refuse to put their safety above their selfwill and pride, nor hesitate to take the great step that will put them upon a current, which, mighty where their own good motives are but weak, will carry them to God. This is just what becoming a member of the Church secures one in, just as becoming a soldier in an army lifts one into a man greater than otherwise he could be.

Chapter IV

JOINING THE CHURCH EXALTS A DELIBER- ATE CONCLUSION AS OVER AGAINST MERE CIRCUMSTANCE OR CAPRICE

The restraint involved in this absorption into a firmer w^ill is good, and is no greater in the Church than it is elsew^here. Restraint is the necessary good thing in every relation. By it we shift from the basis of what we want to do, to the basis of what we ought to do, and from the basis of mere caprice to the basis of deliberate and far-sighted purpose. We put ourselves under it in school, and take as the pupil's greatest privilege the restraint the teacher is to us. To do there as we please would annul the value of the school, place us at the mercy of our ignorance and caprice, and set us adrift in lawless ways. When you do not rob a man you have but put restraint upon yourself, and done, not what you might prefer to do, but what you ought to do. Restraint is the bar we put up in marriage against our wayward affections, and by it we are kept in the evil day. In all govern-

Exalts Purpose Over Mere Caprice ment we voluntarily put restraint upon ourselves, and hedge ourselves about by con-

"When you do not rob a man you have but put restraint upon

yourself, and done, not what you might prefer to do, but

what you ought to do."

stitution and law^. Indeed, the v^hole progress of the race is measured by its self-imposed restrictions.

Restraint at any rate is laid upon us by the will of God, and whether or not we allow His will to be ours, His sway is over us. We have no right to a freedom that is larger than the freedom that is ours when we come into fellowship with Christ and enter into the fold of the Church. Anything taken that this disallows is taken in license and is not lawful, and is here the same crazy will that licentiousness is elsewhere. When we are rich in wisdom and faith, on that high day when the glory of God's purpose for us shines within us — a day whose clear brightness does not always shine — on that great day, by a public profession of our purpose of loyalty, we bind ourselves under the restraint of the common conscience, and are drawn up by the pull of it to a personal conscious fellowship with God. Just as the child takes with gladness the parent's love, and the soldier takes the spirit and discipline of the army, and the husband the restraint it is even his delight to feel; and just as even the colt, surrendering its wild will to its master, lives to know higher delights than any offered by its untamed nature, — just so everywhere the laying restraint upon our affections and wills in accord with the Christian conscience and our own deliberate purpose, is the way to greatness.

It is a great day when the child is born under that love, and a great day when the

Exalts Purpose Over Mere Caprice

pupil enters the school, and a great day when the man vows his faithfulness in marriage, and a great day when the outlaw becomes a citizen, and a great day when whosoever will comes to Christ and into the Church of Christ. He is in real earnest in the great business of life, and will not shrink from the step that binds him under the good purpose that today is begot in him. It will seem to him only real wisdom, if having got across into this good country, he burn, against the danger of disgraceful retreat, all bridges behind him. That man can hardly be in earnest, who taking up the cross of Christ, will make sure that there be for him a way by which he can back out if such vagrant desire should tempt him, like the man in the Gospel, who, putting his hand to the plough, looks back where his heart is. A man who is as divided as that, however he may say his secret purpose to himself, is simply not fit for the Kingdom of God. He is not fit, because being divided and not loyal, he is not in earnest, is insincere and counterfeit, and will not endure. He who will not let his marriage be known is doubtless thinking he may want the release to which publicity will stand in the way. His love is not entire, not genuine, and is not love. He who wants to fight as an independent soldier, is doubtless thinking he may want to desert the cause and go home. He is putting something before love of country. The really earnest disciple will bind himself with a thousand bonds if only thereby his wayward, uncertain self can be bound fast. The true lover will pledge his troth "in the sight of God and in the face of this company," if only that will establish his heart against the thought of evil. Just so in business, a really honest man in the day of his calm intention, puts a bond as a barrier in the way of any persuasion to dishonesty in the evil day. When a man openly confesses Christ, and by uniting with the Church, binds himself fast to a stronger purpose and love than his own, we know that he means something. Undivided, and the whole way through loyal to Christ, he, by the faith that holds when his own fails, will endure through all trial and to the end.

Once taken, such a firm decided stand is of immense value to one in dealing with himself. Save for some such decisive step,

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Exalts Purpose Over Mere Caprice

sealing the purpose once for all and setting the momentum of high action going, one raises again and again the question of "which side?", goes again and again in debate over the same ground, fights the same unslain enemies again and again, and in vacillation is at the mercy of whatever caprice can prevail. Taking no open decisive stand, we do not stay put in one place, do not belong to either side, vacillate back and forth in indecision, put off and put off the taking that first and open step which making an end of wavering, starts one under mighty impulse, at the real beginning of the way to God. We easily fall away from the choice we have not openly expressed and sealed. Made only mentally, a choice is so lightly made as to leave little or no trace of its having been made at all. Our secret vows are lightly kept. Private, secret promises, proclaim their futility in all the unredeemed hidden pledges with which many a past is full. On the contrary in joining the Church, we have had not a mere emotion for a beautiful deed — we have instead done a deed, and under circumstances of such high moment, that an actual rut, with depth and length, is made on the brain. The purpose is now committed to even a physical basis. It is on the brain as truly as a rut is in a road. A secret, private resolve, on the other hand, having no such advantage, fades quickly out of the memory. It has made no impression, has left no trace of itself — is much as if it had not been at all.

Does Not Create Obligation

Chapter V

JOINING THE CHURCH DOES NOT CREATE OBLIGATIONS— IT RECOGNIZES THE OB- LIGATIONS THAT ALREADY EXIST

It is however the strictness of obligation inseparable from an open identification with the Church, that is to some the objection to membership in it. Many persons feel that outside of the membership of the Church they have a right to do what they could not do if they were members of it.

It is of course a fallacy. No man's acknowledging a thing to be obligatory is what makes it obligatory. Duty is not made by recognizing it any more than the sun is made by beholding it. The laws of health, for example, are bars put up against us, and much as we desire to have it otherwise, we have here no liberty to claim. The Ten Commandments are laws just as much to those who reject them as to those who acknowledge them, just as poison acts with the same deadliness upon those who do not know that it will kill, as it does upon those who do.

Gravitation is not made operative by our knowing the lav^ of its working. Fire burns whether the child knows it or not; its burning does not depend upon his knowing. Those who do not promise to follow Christ are under obligation to follow Him. Is a citizen free to break law if only he does not promise not to break law? He who has not promised not to steal, is he free to steal? His promising to keep himself pure, is this what obliges a man to be pure? Is a man free to get drunk if only he has not signed the pledge? Ah no. Signing a pledge is a recognition of the obligation of temperance already existing; it is not what creates the obligation. And breaking a pledge is not the only sin. Indeed to break it may be no more wicked than not to take it.

Let us not be deceived about this. The promises we make when we come into the Church are not what create obligation. These promises are a recognition of and a confession of obligations that already exist. They exist even if they are not recognized. For obligation is made not by promises given, but by benefits, talents, capacities, powers, received. If you can show the court that the

Does Not Create Obligation complainant gave you nothing in exchange for the note he claims is your promise to pay, no court will give him judgment against you. If in your absence from your house, another moves in and occupies it, even though he has never agreed to pay you anything, you can collect from him according to reasonable equity, a just and fair rent. Agreeing to pay is not what makes financial obligatioUc It is a fair presumption of one's having received value. But if you lose your debtor's note, and no promise of his to pay can be proved, you can without doubt get judgment, if it can be proved that the claim covers services you rendered.

Accepting responsibility is not what makes responsibility. Promising to do right is not what puts one under obligation to do right. Men are not free to do as they please, if only they have not named the name of Christ. Do you think that Herod, by setting Christ at naught, freed himself of all responsibility?

Does God, do you think, have to wait till we acknowledge His law to have authority over us ? Will He judge only those who confess Him ? Or will he rather judge the whole world? Will He judge the Church by a different standard from that by which he judges the world? If wishing could do so much, it might be expected that it could make the scales weigh as we would. But they weigh according to great gravitation, and not according to our wishing. Do you think Peter was more guilty for denying Christ after he became a disciple, than Pilate was for denying Him once for all by not becoming a disciple? Is a son who sometimes grieves his father at home, more guilty than a son who once for all, denies his father by running away? Surely the pupil's willingness that the teacher rule is not what invests the teacher with his authority. Surely in the former time it was not the slave's consent that gave the master ownership. Indeed we are so little our own that about many things we have nothing to say; in spite of our protest death comes and takes us. All alike are under the law of Christ, they who do not believe on Him as surely as those who do. Unbelief, — the denial of responsibility — so far from setting us free from obligation, is the sin that includes all other sins. He who by one deliberate denial once for all rejects Christ, is by that unbelief, chief of sinners.