The meaning of service

Front matter

T7Qm

Return this book on or before the L Latest Date stamped below. A charge is made on all overdue books.

U. of I. Library

Preface

This little book completes a trilogy which it has long been my hope to write. ‘The Meaning of Prayer” is a study in the Christian’s inward experience of fellowship with God; “The Meaning of Faith” is a study in the reasonable ideas on which the Christian, life is based; and now “The Meaning of Service” is a study in the practical overflow of the Chris¬ tian life in useful ministry.

This last book has been written at a time when its theme is most congenial with the crucial need of the world and the dominant mood of thoughtful folk. The overturn of human society in the Great War has inevitably brought to the top those elements of Christian life and thought which center about service. The task to be accomplished on earth is so immense, the cheap optimisms which once contented us are so impossible, the enemies against whom the Christian pro¬ gram must win its way are so formidable, and the need of un¬ selfishness, public-mindedness, and sacrificial love is so urgent, that anyone who thinks at all about humanity’s condition must think about service, its meaning, motives, and aims. I have not tried to keep these immediate and pressing conditions of our time from showing themselves in this book. One can write more timelessly about prayer and faith than he can about service. Yet I trust that I have not altogether lost the accent of those universal Christian truths and principles which make service, in any age, the indispensable expression of dis'cipleship to the Master.

To many books and many friends, beyond the possibility of individual acknowledgment, I am indebted for the inspira¬ tion of these studies. In particular I am once more under ' heavy obligation to my friend and colleague. Professor George Albert Coe, Ph. D., for his careful reading of the manuscript, and to my publishers for their unfailing kindness and painstaking care in preparing it for the press.

Vll

Vlll

PREFACE

Acknowledgments

Special acknowledgment is gladly made to the following : to E. P. Dutton & Company for permission to use prayers from “A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages”; to the Rev. Samuel McComb and the publishers for permission to quote from “Prayers for Today,” Copyright, 1918, Harper & Brothers ; to the Pilgrim Press for permission to make selec¬ tions from “Prayers of the Social Awakening” by Walter Rauschenbusch and “The Original Plymouth Pulpit” by Henry Ward Beecher; to Little, Brown & Company for permission to quote one prayer from “Prayers, Ancient and Modern” by Mary W. Tileston; to George H. Doran Company for per¬ mission to use one prayer from “Pulpit Prayers” by Alexander Maclaren; to Jarrolds (London) Ltd. for permission to make quotations from “The Communion of Prayer” by William Boyd Carpenter, Bishop of Ripon ; and to Longmans, Green & Company for permission to quote from “Prayers for the City of God,” by Gilbert Clive Binyon.

None of the above material should be reprinted without securing permission.

Contents

Chapter Page

Preface . vii

I. Service and Christianity... . i

Chapter I

One of the most inveterate and ruinous ideas in the history of human thought is that neither service to man nor any moral rightness whatsoever is essential to religion. In wide areas of religious life, to satisfy God has been one thing, to live in righteous and helpful human relations has been another. As Professor Rauschenbusch put it : “Religion in the past has - always spent a large proportion of its force on doings that were apart from the real business of life, on sacrificing, on endless prayers, on traveling to Mecca, Jerusalem, or Rome, on kissing sacred stones, bathing in sacred rivers, climbing sacred stairs, and a thousand things that had at best only an indirect bearing on the practical social relations between men and their fellows.”

The conviction that a man who is not living in just and helpful relations with his fellows by no means whatever can be on right terms with God, is one of man’s greatest spiritual illuminations, the understanding of which cost long centuries of slow and painful progress out of darkness into light. Note in the daily readings some old, pre-Christian attitudes toward this matter. They are still in evidence, for even yet we have on the one side appalling human need, and on the other an immense amount of religious motive power and zeal, which are not harnessed to the problems of human welfare. Even yet one of mankind's most insistent needs is the interpretation of religion in terms of service and the attachment of religion’s enormous driving power to the tasks of service.

First Week, First Day

How much of the latent moral energy of religious faith is wasted because many people, even yet, have only a partially righteous God! We still need to go back for instruction to a Hebrew prophet like Micah.

I

[1-2]

Wherewith shall I come before Jehovah, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves a year old? will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God? — Micah 6: 6-8.

Translate that into modern terms: Wherewith shall I come before the Father of Jesus, and bow myself before the God who is love? Shall I come before him with gorgeous cere¬ monies, with elaborate rituals? Will the Father of all mercies be pleased with thousands of repeated credos or with ten thou¬ sands of eloquent sermons? Shall I give the bending of the knee for my transgression, the offering of my purse for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Father require of thee, but to do justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God? How many of us need such instruction yet in the utterly righteous character of God, and his demands on men ! Raymond Lull, who, after a life of splendid usefulness, was stoned to death by Muhammadans in North Africa in 1315, urging his “sweet and reasonable appeal” for Christ, put a primary truth into worthy words : “He who would find Thee, O Lord, let him go forth to seek Thee in love, loyalty, devotion, faith, hope, jus¬ tice, mercy, and truth ; for in every place where these are, there art Thou.”

O Father of Light and God of all Truth, purge the world from all errors, abuses, corruptions, and sins. Beat down the standard of Satan, and set up everywhere the standard of Christ. Abolish the reign of sin, and establish the kingdom of grace in all hearts; let humility triumph over pride and ambi¬ tion; charity over hatred, envy, and malice; purity and temper¬ ance over lust and excess; meekness over passion; disinterest¬ edness and poverty of spirit over covetousness and the love of this perishable world. Let the Gospel of Christ in faith and practice prevail throughout the world. — French Coronation Order.

First Week, Second Day

Another reason why so much of religion’s driving power

[1-2]

is unharnessed to the tasks of service is man’s curious ability to keep divine relationships in one compartment of life and human relationships in another. Are we yet beyond the reach of Isaiah’s swift and terrible indictment?

What unto me is the multitude of your sacrifices? saith Jehovah: I have had enough of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to trample my courts? Bring no more vain obla¬ tions; incense is an abomination unto me; new moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies, — I cannot away with iniquity and the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth; they are a trouble unto me; I am weary of bearing them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek justice, relieve the op¬ pressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. — Isa. 1 : 11-17.

Here are people who are religious, but their piety does not involve goodness, nor their' faith justice, nor their worship humaneness. Their life with God has no connection with their daily relationships ; it does not make them better home-folk, friends, neighbors, or citizens. Are not plenty of such cases in the Christian churches? How many folk believe in God’s good purpose for mankind with the religious side of their minds, but never order their practical ambitions as though there were such a purpose in the world ! Or with the religious part of their nature they believe that God loves all men, while with the practical side they themselves neglect, mistreat, and contemn men. We still need the advice which was given to David Livingstone by an aged Scotchman : “Now, lad, make religion the everyday business of your life, and not a thing of fits and starts.”

Lord! Our Light and our Salvation, help us, we beseech Thee, to enter into, and abide in, the secret place of the Most High; and may the shadow of the Almighty be our covering defense. Help each of us to set his love upon Thee, to bring thoughts and affections and purposes to Thyself, to think as Thou dost teach us, to love as Thou hast loved us, to do and

[1-3]

will as Thou dost command us. So may we live in union with Thyself, and our ivord-worship in this place be in harmony with our consecration of life in our daily work. — Alexander Maclaren.

First Week, Third Day

Unmoral religion such as we are considering is often caused by a preoccupying interest in the subordinate and trivial corol¬ laries of religion, its external expressions, its accidental accom¬ paniments. Still the thunder of Amos is needed to clear our air !

I hate, I despise your feasts, and I will take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Yea, though ye offer me your burnt-offerings and meal-offerings, I will not accept them; neither will I regard the peace-offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. But let justice roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream. — Amos 5: 21-24.

How impatiently the prophet contrasts the etiquette of reli¬ gious ritual with the importance of human justice! Many a man needs so to take his religion out of doors from the suffo¬ cating narrowness of small rubrics and petty rules, and to see it in terms not of “mint and anise and cummin,” but of “jus¬ tice and mercy and faith.” Quentin Hogg poured out his life m Christian service for the poor boys of London. In a letter to one of the reclaimed lads, he wrote: “I do not care a rush what denomination you belong to, I do not very much care what special creed you profess, but I do care beyond all expres¬ sion that the result of that creed in your daily life should be to make you a power for good amongst your fellowmen. . . . We hear much talk about creeds, professions of faith and the like; but I want you to remember that when God started to write a creed for us. He did it, not in words that might change their meaning, but He set before us a life, as though to teach us that whereas theology was a science which could be argued about, religion was a life and could only be lived.”

Guide me, teach me, strengthen me, till I become such a per¬ son as Thou wouldst have me be; pure and gentle, truthful and high-minded, brave and able, courteous and generous, duti¬ ful and useful. — Charles Kingsley.

[1-4]

First Week, Fourth Day

Still another familiar source of a religious life divorced from practical goodness and daily usefulness is the segregation of the Church, setting it apart from life, as though God dwelt in a tem'ple instead of living in the struggles of humanity. So, of old time, Hosea cried :

O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee? for your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the dew that goeth early away. Therefore have I hewed them by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth: and thy judgments are as the light that goeth forth. For I desire goodness, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt-offerings. — Hos. 6:4-6.

When the Master, for service’s sake, ate with the cere¬ monially unclean (Matt. 9:13) and again when for human helpfulness he transgressed the Sabbath rules (Matt. 12:7), and in both cases was denounced as an enemy of God, he fell back upon this passage from Hosea: “Go ye and learn what this meaneth, I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” He felt as General Booth did, of whom it was said that, in comparison with the importance of helping men, “every canon of society appeared in his ,eyes as the trivial and pitiful etiquette of a child’s doll’s house.” The Master could not patiently see his Father treated as old fire-worshipers might have treated their sacred fire, keeping it aloof in their shrine and refusing it to the people to warm their houses, cook their food, and illumine their darkness. For, in Jesus’ eyes, God was not primarily in church ; God was in the midst of needy, sinning, aspiring, failing humanity. And religion was not professional piety. As Henry Ward Beecher said: “Religion means work. Religion means work in a dirty world. Religion means peril ; blows given, but blows taken as well. Religion means trans¬ formation. The world is to be cleaned by somebody and you are not called of God if you are ashamed to scour and scrub.”

Almighty God, Fountain of Life and Light, who didst raise up prophets in ancient times to warn and instruct, and whose Son Jesus Christ did send abroad into the world apostles, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, we beseech Thee to raise up in these days an increasing number of zvise and faithful men, filled with the old prophetic fire and apostolic seal, by whose

[1-5]

labours Thy Church may be greatly blessed, and Thy Kingdom come and Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven. — John Hunter.

First Week, Fifth Day

Still another reason for the great quantity of religious motive power not yet belted into human service is defective ideas of what is morally right. Religious zeal does not neces¬ sarily argue ethical enlightenment. We are shocked to read of an ancient temple in Mexico, surrounded by 136,000 human skulls symmetrically piled ; we wince at the thought of serving God, as some cults do, by murder and prostitution. But one need only read the prophets to see what a struggle it cost to be rid of such abominations in our own religious heritage. Are we yet rid of the heavy incubus of ethical blindness on religious life? Is “zeal without knowledge” a past problem? Rather Jeremiah might still hurl his invective at Christendom:

Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place. Trust ye not in lying words, saying. The temple of Jehovah, the temple of Jehovah, the temple of Jehovah, are these. For if ye thoroughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye thoroughly execute justice between a man and his neighbor; if ye oppress not the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your own hurt: then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, from of old even for evermore.

Behold, ye trust in lying words, that cannot profit. Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods that ye have not known, and come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say. We are delivered; that ye may do all these abominations? Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of rob¬ bers in your eyes? Behold, I, even I, have seen it, saith Jehovah. — Jer. 7:3-11.

* 3

Here were people who were zealous in their religious life. Feel the ardent intensity with which they cry up “the Temple.” But they had not learned that simple lesson which Sir Wilfred Grenfell, from his practical service on the Labrador Coast, . has put into wholesome words : “Whether we, our neighbor,

[1-6]

or God is the judge, absolutely the only value of our ‘reli¬ gious’ life to ourselves or to anyone is what it fits us for and enables us to do.”

My Father and My God ... let the fire of Thy love consume the false shoivs whereivith my weaker self has deceived me. Make me real as Thou art real. Inspire me with a passion for righteousness and likeness to the Man of Nazareth, that I may love as He loved, and find my joy as He found His joy in being and doing good. Dwell Thou within me to give me His courage, His tenderness. His simplicity, to transform my own poor shadow-self into the likeness of His truth and strength. Amen. — Samuel McComb.

First Week, Sixth Day

And as for thee, son of man, the children of thy people talk of thee by the walls and in the doors of the houses, and speak one to another, every one to his brother, saying. Come, I pray you, and hear what is the word that cometh forth from Jehovah. And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but do them not; for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goeth after their gain. And, lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument; for they hear thy words, but they do them not. — Ezek. 33:30-32.

Ezekiel here has run upon unmoral religion in a common form. See how amiable the spirit of these people was, how ingratiating their manners, how ready their responsiveness ! They loved to hear about God’s will, but they did not do it. So aspen leaves, tremulous, sensitive, quivering, sway with agitated responsiveness in every breath of wind. Endlessly stirring, the night finds them just where they were in the morning. They move continuously but they move nowhere. Many a man’s religion is emotional responsiveness zvithout practical issue. He substitutes delight in hearing the Gospel for diligence in living it. He does not see that religion is “action, not diction.”

From infirmity of purpose, from want of earnest care and interest, from the sluggishness of indolence, and the slackness of indifference', and from all spiritual deadness of heart, save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord.

11-7]

From dullness of conscience, from feeble sense of duty, from thoughtless disregard of others, from a low ideal of the obli¬ gations of our position, and from all half-heartedness in our work, save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord. — Bishop Ridding.

First Week, Seventh Day

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he is become so, ye make him twofold more a son of hell than yourselves.

Woe unto you, ye blind guides, that say. Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor. Ye fools and blind: for which is greater, the gold, or the temple that hath sanctified the gold? And, Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gift that is upon it, he is a debtor. Ye blind: for which is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift? ...

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye tithe mint and anise and cummin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and faith: but these ye ought to have done, and not to have left the other undone. Ye blind guides, that strain out the gnat, and swallow the camel! — Matt. 23:15-19, 23, 24.

The greatest single contribution of the Hebrew prophets to human thought was their vision of the righteous nature of God and of his demands on men. Their supreme abhorrence was unmoral religion. In all our study we shall see the Master sharing their conviction, elevating it to heights they never dreamed, stating it in terms that flash and pierce and burn as theirs could not. The Master, too, hated unmoral religion. He pilloried the Pharisees in everlasting scorn. Their pettiness, their quibbling, their false emphases, their bigotry, their uncharitableness, their lack of forthright hon¬ esty, aroused his indignation. Their religion made them worse, not better ; one feels that they would have been im¬ proved without it ; their religion was the most unlovely thing about them. What should have made them large had made them little ; what should have made them generous had made them mean. But to the Master religion meant gracious¬ ness and magnanimity, self-forgetfulness and self-denial, high purpose and deep joy in ministry, boundless brotherhood and a love balked by no ingratitude or sin. The heights of his faith in God conspired to send service pouring down to men in inexhaustible good will. He was sure that the good God can be content with nothing less than goodness in his children, and that the crown of goodness is a positive life of outgoing service to all mankind.

O Lord, grant to me so to love Thee, with all my heart, with all my mind, and with all my soul, and my neighbor for Thy sake, that the grace of charity and brotherly love may dwell in me, and all envy, harshness, and ill will may die in me; and fill my heart with feelings of love, kindness, and com¬ passion, so that, by constantly rejoicing in the happiness and good success of others, by sympathizing with them in their sorrows, and putting away all harsh judgments and envious thoughts, I may follozv Thee, who art Thyself the true and perfect Love. Amen.

I

No one can doubt the central place which service held in the life and teaching of the Master. Consider the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37), or that other more solemn utterance, where the standing of the dead before the throne of God depended on whether they had fed the hungry, clothed the naked, given drink to the thirsty, and visited the impris¬ oned and sick (Matt. 25:31-46). Consider his sayings, sparks from the anvil where he hammered out the purpose of his life: “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matt. 20: 28) ; “He that is greatest among you shall be your servant” (Matt. 23:11); “I am in the midst of you as he that serveth” (Luke 22:27). Consider even more his life itself. In devoted love to individuals, so that, with the whole Kingdom of God upon his heart, he yet poured out his care on a blind Bartimeus, or a discouraged prodigal, or an evilly entreated widow crying for her rights ; in the revealing of great truths that bless and redeem human life; in the starting of a movement that with all its faults has flowed like a river down from Nazareth to revive man’s character; in the possession of a radiant spirit that throws out light on every side as naturally as the sun shines, so that his very personality has been man’s greatest benediction; in that ultimate test of serv¬ ice, vicarious sacrifice, that gives up life itself for the sake of others ; everywhere one sees that the characteristic expression of the Master’s spirit was ministry. Nor was this ministry expended first upon the amiable and the great. Who can read Rabindranath Tagore’s lines and not think of Jesus?

“Here is thy footstool and there rest thy feet where live the poorest and lowliest and lost.

When I try to bow to thee, my obeisance cannot reach down to the depth where thy feet rest among the poorest £lnd lowliest and lost.

Pride can never approach to where thou walkest in the clothes of the humble among the poorest and lowliest and lost.

My heart can never find its way to where thou keepest com¬ pany with the companionless among the poorest, the low¬ liest, and the lost.”

Surely there is little use in any man’s calling himself the dis¬ ciple of such a Master if he does not possess the spirit and know the meaning of service.

It is evident, however, that plenty of professed Christians have not interpreted their religion in such terms as these. Consider those social evils — war, poverty, disease, ignorance, vice — the endless tragedy of which is the commonplace of the modern world ! One sees that, with one third of the popula¬ tion of the globe nominally Christian, there must have been some misunderstanding as to what Christianity is all about to allow so many professed disciples of Jesus to live side by side for so long a time with such dire need. Christianity has been content, in wide areas of its life, with some other interpreta¬ tion of its own meaning than that which at first kindled the passion for service in the hearts of its disciples and sent them out from the shadow of the Cross, the spirit of the Cross within them. “I promise you,” cried Hugh Latimer, preaching in Cambridge in 1529, “if you build one hundred churches, give as rnuch as you can make to gilding of saints and hon¬ ouring of the Church ; and if thou go on as many pilgrimages as thy body can well suffer and offer as great candles as oaks; if thou leave the works of mercy and the commandments undone, these works shall nothing avail thee. ... If you list to gild and paint Christ in your churches and honour Him in vestments, see that before your eyes the 'poor people die not for lack of meat, drink, and clothing.” One catches there the authentic accent of the Christian spirit. Surely our world would be a far more decent and fraternal place if such an interpretation of the will of Christ in terms of practical serv¬ ice had been deeply apprehended and faithfully obeyed by the great body of his professed disciples.

At the beginning of our study, therefore, we well may exam¬ ine some of the partial and perverted ways in which we Chris¬ tians are tempted to misconceive our faith and so to mistake the message of- the Master.

II

For one thing, Christianity to many people zvho profess it is no more than a formality. It is one of life’s decent conventions. They were taught it in youth ; they have never doubted its theoretical validity; they perceive that its profession is a mark of respectability ; and they would no more be thought atheists than anarchists. But Christ’s love for all sorts and conditions of men has never become the daily motive of their lives, and Christ’s sacrificial faith in the possibility of a redeemed earth has never captured their imagination and their purpose.

The story of the religious experience of too many folk runs , like this : they take the heavy lumber of their lives and build the secular dwelling in which habitually they abide ; there they live and move and have their being in family and social life, in business and politics and sports ; but because religion is a part of every conventionally well-furnished life they build as well, with what lumber may remain, an appended shrine, and there at times they slip away and pay their respects to the Almighty. Their religion is an isolated and uninfiuential afterthought. Especially on Sundays when the banks are shut, the shops are closed, the rush of life is still, and finer forces stir within them, they go in company with their fellows to the church for formal worship. And when it is over they close tW door on that experience and go back to their ordi¬ nary life again. So Bliss Carman sings :

“They’re praising God on Sunday.

They’ll be all right on Monday.

It’s just a little habit they’ve acquired.”

II

When, in the midst of their customary lives, this isolated reli¬ gious experience rises in their memory, it seems vague, unreal, like a sonata of Beethoven heard long ago or a poem once listened to and half remembered. They recall it as one thinks of his summer home beside the sea, when in the galloping tur¬ moil of the city a chance recollection strays to it. It is a long way off in another kind of world.