The motherhood of God; a series of discourses

Contents

Page.

I. The Motherhood of God, 9

II. Christ's ''Do n't Worry Club," ... 17

II Christ's "Den't Worry Club"

*' Take therefore no thought for the morrow : for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." — Matthew vi, 34.

The;re: have been organized in New York City and in some other parts of the country what are known as "Do n't Worry clubs." But these are by no means original. Christ organized the first Do n't Worry club, when he gathered his circle of friends and disciples together, and began to teach them his own trustful spirit. One of the marvelous things about Jesus Christ is that he was never under any circumstances fretful, or peevish, or worried. The story of his life is very comprehensively told by four biographers, who had a great deal of interest in personal detail where it affected his character in any way; but there is not a single place that even suggests such a thing as Christ giving way to worry. There can be no doubt that he expects his disciples to follow his example in this very important matter, and the Christian Church, wherever organized, is a Do n't Worry club. If its members fail to live up to that ideal they fail of the noblest and best Christian influence.

I wish to speak specially at this time' about worry- 17 i8 ing concerning the future. The text does not mean carelessness or recklessness about the future; but it is a caution against anxiety. We are to take no thought for the morrow which will in any way burden and dishearten us in the work of to-day. Worry is a very painful experience, and God made us to be happy. I grow more sure of that as I grow older. In spite of all the disappointments and defeats and hurts of life, I become surer every day that the keynote of human life is happiness, and that we have no right to give ourselves over to be' the bond slaves of painful worry and anxiety. There is perhaps no bad habit that grows more rapidly in power than a habit of worrying and foreboding evil for the future. Worry develops in us the brooding spirit, and Paul says that such people become vain m their imaginations, and their foolish heart is darkened, so that it does not perceive things clearly or in their true relation.

Dr. George H. Hepworth comments aptly on the fact that one may brood over a very little matter until what was only an ant-hill swells to the size of a mountain. Dwelling upon a present annoyance, or unduly upon a threatened trouble, you magnify it, so that it assumes proportions which do not rightly belong to it. Your logical faculty is set aside, is banished to the background ; you are no longer a reasoning being, but one who imagines facts, and then acts as though they were real. This is a dangerous thing to do, because you erect a false standard of measurement, and your life gets to be all out of joint. The friendship which has been very dear

Chrises ''Don't Worry Club''

to you dwindles until it becomes a mere suspicion, and suspicion is no basis on which to build any sweet or lasting relationship.

One may brood over a physical ailment until all the forces of nature sweep in that direction, and it becomes far more serious than it would otherwise have been. Christian Science, so-called, mental healing, and all such kindred fads have deceived so many people because they have at the starting-point a certain vein of truth, though it is lost in the fancies and errors gathered about them. But it remains true that one may think of a pain until it doubles its force and becomes almost unbearable, whereas in point of fact it is not at all serious; or any one may ignore many small ills until they are forgotten.

A man may nurse an injury, or a supposed injury, until it grows to be the one' overwhelming thing in his experience, dominating his whole being and setting his worst passions in motion ; or he can curb his imagination, allow reason to come to the front, and reach the conclusion nine times out of ten that after all it is an insignificant afifair, not worth any particular notice'.

Worrying about the future is especially a folly, because it is proverbial that it is the unexpected that happens. No man can have the forces of life so well in hand that he can take the disposing of them out of the hands of God. If you watch the afternoon sky you will see that the Divine Artist can paint a thousand cloud-pictures in one afternoon, and dissolve' them all at last, and let the sun go down in a cloudless sky. So God can deal with human life by our aid ; but we' may reverently say, what is certainly true, that even God can not banish the clouds from our sky unless we are willing.

One of the sad things about this worrying habit is, that it is contagious. There are some diseases which a man may have, and though his being sick may annoy his friends, they are in no danger of catching the sickness from him; but there are other diseases so contagious that the victim not only suffers himself, but brings everybody who comes near him into danger. The man who worries has that kind of disease. He breeds anxiety in other people. His anxious face, his depressed spirits, his cynical attitude toward life, his despairing, hopeless outlook on the future' communicates itself to some extent to others, to their great sorrow. It is a serious thing to have that kind of an effect on people.

Major Waddell has been traveling in the Himalayas, and tells an interesting story of the leeches that he met with in the damp forest of the Teesta Valley. When a leech is famishing he is only about as thick as a knitting-needle'. In that condition he is the hungry enemy of every two- or four-footed creature that crosses his path. In this valley the leeches were everywhere. They stood alert on every twig of the brushwood that overhung the track of the travelers, and on every dead leaf on the path. And as the explorers drew near the creatures lashed themselves vigorously to and fro in a wild endeavor to seize hold of them. The instant they touch their victim they fix themselves firmly, and then mount nimbly up by a series of rapid somersaults till they

Chrisrs ''Don't Worry Club''

reach a vulnerable point; and then they lose not an instant in beginning their surgical operations. The servants in Major Waddell's company, who walked barefooted, had little streams of blood trickling down from their ankle's all day long, and at every few steps they had to stop and pick off these horrid little pests, and it was often difficult to dislodge them.

The influence of a man who has the worrying habit bad is like that. Spiritual leeches wriggle in his conversation, stand up and swing to and fro from his countenance, and seize with hungry, leech-like avidity upon every unfortunate friend or acquaintance who comes near enough to be bitten. Not only for our own sakes, but for the sake of the people' we love, for the sake of our influence on others, we ought to dodge the worrying habit as we would the plague.

Worrying about the future not only unfits us to meet the duties of to-morrow, but it unfits us for the work of to-day. To-day is the' time about which we ought to take most thought. And we all know there is no need of being anxious about to-day. One of the best characterizations Henry Ward Beecher ever made was this : "The past belongs to gratitude' and regret; the present to contentment and work; the future to hope and trust." And that surely is the Christian's attitude. The time and place for earnest thought and action on our part is the living present. "To-day is the day of salvation" in everything important concerning us.

Fritter away to-day, or brood it away in fooHsh anxiety about to-morrow, and to-morrow is already doomed to failure. But do your duty to-day, and to-day's faithfulness will stand sponsor for to-morrow's success. I was interested recently, looking out from my study window, to watch some men working on the iron frame of a new business block. They were fastening the frame together with large rivets. On one floor a man had a fire, and in this he was heating the rivets red-hot, and every minute or so he tossed one of these heated rivets through the air, and a man standing on the floor above him caught it in a tin can, and another man took it with a pair of pincers, and while it was still red as flame drove it into its place and flattened a he'ad on the soft iron on the other side. I said to myself, Life is Hke that; to make things hold you must drive the red-hot rivets of to-day's duty into their place. Opportunities will not keep hot over into to-morrow. No hammer will beat the point of a cold rivet into a shape that wifl hold. And to do your duty to-day as it ought to be done, you must stop worrying about to-morrow.

Christ's Do n't Worry club is founded on the great fact that God cares for us, knows what we need, means that if we do our duty we shall have it, and if we trust him we have a right to look on the sunshiny side of life. There is always a bright side to life, and it is wonderful how quick you can find it when you really start out to seek it. This is vastly important from the fact that the best growths of the human heart demand the sunshine of good cheer and hope in order to come to their best.

A man once planted two rose-trees, one on either side of his house. The trees were' equally strong and healthy; but after a time the one grew and pros-

Christ's ''Don't Worry Qub'' 23 pered, and the other withered and died. Then the man discovered that the living rose-tree was on the sunny side of the house. The best manhood and womanhood can only be developed in the sunshine of Christian faith and hope. Rest assured that the best things in your life will be stunted and dwarfed forever if you give yourself over to anxiety and worry. The best things in the human heart can not live and prosper without cheerfulness. A little child was often observed playing by itself, and laughing and singing with delight. They asked the child what it was playing with, and the little' one answered, "I am playing with the sunbeams." It would be better for some of us to quit dabbling with the clouds, and learn how to play with the sunbeams instead.

Christ gives another great reason for not worrying in that concluding sentence', "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." That is, there is no necessity for us to carry any burdens which do not belong to to-day. One of the rules of Christ's Do n't Worry club is, that we shall set this sunset Hmit to the carrying of each day's burdens. Any of us can get through, by God's help and by aid of the friendship and sympathy of our loved ones, with the cares of to-day, and we have no right to load ourselves up with to-morrow until it comes.

John Newton used to compare the trials and troubles which come to one in the' course of a year to a bundle of fagots, far too large for us to lift. But God does not require us to carry the whole at once. He mercifully unties the bundle, and gives us first one stick, which we are' to carry to-day, and then another, which we are to carry to-morrow, and so on. Any of us are strong enough with the Divine help to go bravely through if we live in that spirit. Let us heed the message of the poet :

"Be master of the clouds,

Let them not master thee ; Compel the sunshine to thy soul, However rough the sea.

Be not as those who own

Nor hope nor glow of faith ; Beyond the clouds the light remains

And true life conquers death.

Be thou of good cheer yet.

Though dark and drear the way ; The longest night wears on to dawn,

And dawn to perfect day.

Possess thy soul in calm.

Let patience rule thy heart, And in gray shades of clouded times

Bear thou the hero's part.

Then shalt thou know the flush

Of happy, radiant days : For he who trusts God in the dark

Is taught new songs of praise."

Ill

The Best Wealth Open for All

"And is not rich toward God." — Luke xii, 21.

This is the conclusion of the story of a man whom God judged to be a fool. He was a very prosperous man in his own time and way. He was a good farmer, raised great crops, and gave his whole attention to the acquiring of riches. He' had such remarkable success that his greatest trouble was the embarrassment of riches. Some farmers are troubled to find enough to put in their barns, but his chief perplexity was to keep the' barns up to the increase in his crops. The Lord did not call this man a fool because he had a good farm, or because he was careful in taking care of his crops, but because he seemed to regard this as the chief end of his life, and imagined that a barn full of oats and hay and a crib full of corn were sufficient to make a man happy.

God did not call him a fool for laying up riches for himself ; but his folly consisted in the fact that on the heavenward side of his nature he was a pauper. He had stored up an abundance for this world, but nothing for the next. He had piled up goods to feed the body, but he was not rich toward God. To be rich toward God is to be rich in one's inner self, to have wealth which does not depend on the body or the present life or the present world.

If a man had a chance to pick up diamonds, and instead he filled his pockets with marbles, you would all agree he was a fool ; but here is a man who has a chance to enrich himself in his character, in his real self, with the deep joy and happiness which come from goodness and from appreciation of Divine things, that clothe the spirit with love, hope, and faith, that endure forever; and instead of treasuring up these diamonds that will shine and brighten through all eternity, he devotes himself exclusively to the temporary af¥airs of the present life in a body which can at best last but a little while. The world, looking on, calls him rich, because he has abundance of physical goods ; but God, looking down upon his great blunder, calls him a fool.

Now, the thought I wish to lay special emphasis on is that the best wealth, that which is most enduring, that which we can keep as a permanent investment and draw interest on under all circumstances, is open for everybody on the same terms. Nobody has a corner on it, and no trust or syndicate or promoter can ever get exclusive control of it so as to shut out the poorest of God's children.

One important element of this wealth is a contented mind. If a man has made up his mind to do his best and leave the result to God, so that he goes along about his work with confidence that all things work together for good to them that love God, and therefore has a right to plead God's promise, then he is a rich man in the truest sense. He

The Best Wealth Open for Alt may succeed largely in his business, or he may have a very small measure of riches, but he will have all the revenue that comes from riches as he goes along. If riches signify anything, they signify ease and comfort and happiness. The people who are' longing to get wealth in this world want it because they think it will give them ease and comfort and happiness. The contented man or woman has these as he' or she goes along in the struggle of life.

The story is told of Pyrrhus, an ancient king, that, elated by victory, he was detaihng to Cineas, his prime minister, all his projected triumphs. "I will conquer Sicily."

"What then?"

"Then I will make myself master of Spain." "And what then?"

"Why, then," said the monarch, "we can take our ease and be happy."

"And why," replied Cineas, "can not we' do that now ?"

And the monarch was silenced at the question of his prime minister. A contented spirit draws happiness out of the simple things of life, and thus enjoys the reve'nue of wealth; but no matter how much prosperity a man has, if he is not rich in this spirit of contentment, he is poor, even in the midst of his successes.

One of the most fabulously wealthy men who lived in New York some years ago, a man worth a great many millions of dollars, used to be heard by his servants as he tossed, night after night, on his bed: "O God! I wonder when it will be morning!"

The Motherhood of Goo

He could have commanded, the next day, twenty milHons of dollars ; but he was a pauper in spirit. He was a poor, miserable snag of humanity, with the eyes and feelings of a hawk, forever pouncing on what promised to yield back money to his claws, and up to the very last he was sagacious and shrewd and cunning about money; but he was a povertystricken wretch in all that peace and comfort and happiness which money is supposed to bring. He loved nobody, and nobody love'd him; and he went about gritting his teeth when he remembered how his heirs were cursing and swearing because he lived so long. His heart was a perfect desert, utterly barren of everything that was comfortable or luxurious or deHghtful. No wonder God calls such a man a fool. But a man does not need to have twenty millions of dollars in order to be a fool. You and I see men every day who are wilHng to be fools for less money.

I saw a man the other day in a hotel. He sat at the same table with me, and was bragging and boasting about his business success ; but he was so fretful and peevish and discontented in his spirit that he made the waiters and everybody about the place hate the sight of him. He may have told the truth about his financial prosperity; but one' thing is certain, he was living a fool's life, and his spirit was that of a pauper. His money brought him no comfort ; and if you were to give him a thousand dollars for one it would still bring him no comfort. He carries a hell of selfishness and discontent in his own breast, and no amount of success will bring

The Best Wealth Open for AU him happiness so long as he is thus a pauper in his relation to God.

Another important element of this better wealth is in its treasures of sympathy and love. A great nobleman died, and his executors, on looking through his safe, found an iron chest, all locked up, but marked, ''To be' removed first in case of fire." The lawyers supposed that it contained some valuable document or deed of property, rich jewelry, or costly plate, or a bag of coin ; and they were greatly astonished at what they found. They found the toys of his Httle child that had died many years before. Richer to him were they than all this world's wealth, richer than his ducal coronet, brighter than all the jewels that sparkled on its crest. Not his estate, not his jewels, not his equipage, nothing great or glorious in this world — ^but the de'arest objects to him were the toys of his little child. I suppose some people would call that man a fool. They would say it was all sentiment ; but the priceless treasures of the soul lie' in that glorious realm of sentiment. Take that away, and man is only a money-grubber with a muck-rake.

Henry Ward Beecher used to tell of a man who lived on the Big Miami bottoms in Mr. Beecher's younger AVestern days. This farmer was supposed to be worth half a million dollars, which was an enormous fortune at that time'. He lived in the upper story of a rattling old log cabin (the first story being given up to his hogs) ; and when, of a winter's night, their squealing and quarreling would interrupt him, he would kick away a board that 3 covered a hole in the loose floor and hallo down to the'm, and sometimes throw things at them. Then, w^hen a momentary quiet had been restored, he would push back the board, and eat or sleep, as the case might be. There are a great many people who live like that in the higher sense. The whole under story of life — the ground level — is filled with swine. And when they make an uproar that disturbs the occupant in the' upper story, they are checked a little; but they are never changed, and they are swine still.

It is an awful thing for a man capable of loving, capable of entering into sympathy and fellowship with his kind, capable of exerting himself to bring blessing to immortal spirits, to come down to herding with the swine like that. Yet how many there are who live in just such poverty when the diviner wealth is so easily within their reach.

Another element of this divine wealth is the investment which we get in the souls of those whom, by self-denial and holy living, we are able to snatch as gems from the mire.

Chicago has recently been entertaining a very remarkable woman. Henry Justin Smith tells how she came' sailing down through the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes in November, 1899, with a message of love for almost every city on her way. Then her little yacht was moored for months in a spot where the' Chicago River runs blackest and the smoke hangs densest. It was a refuge for thousands of men, many of whom might have perished from hunger and cold; and the owner, who was

The Best Wealth Open for AU 31

Countess Adeline Schimme'lmann, of Denmark, preached Jesus Christ to them while she supplied their physical wants. And so Chicago was treated to an example of self-sacrifice and love which will not soon fade' from the memory of that city.

The Countess Schimmelmann is an eager little lady, with a sensitive, affectionate face. One thought possesses her, is constantly voiced in her conversation, and is carried into all her relations with others: "the simple love of Christ." Her story is very interesting. Yonder in Denmark, where stands the grand castle of her fathers — a line reaching back to the very beginning of Danish history — they still think that her obedience to the command, *'Go, sell that thou hast, and give to the poor," has brought disgrace upon the name of Schimmelmann. She' gave up a brilHant career at court to become a practical philanthropist. Born in 1854, she was presented at court at the age of eighteen, serving as chief maid of honor until 1886, admired of nobles and of statesmen. Then came the great shadow, when her relatives, scandalized because she was giving her fortune and her jewels to get funds to carry on her mission work on the Baltic Sea, caused her to be confined in a madhouse, and seized her property. But after a few weeks of the horrible expe- ' rience she was released through the influence of powerful friends, and permitted to continue her work of feeding the hungry and of proclaiming Christ. But to this day she' can hardly speak of that awful time in the madhouse without a shade coming on her radiant face.

For years this countess has been giving not only her money but her time and her young life and soul to the very poorest of men and women, rejoicing in winning the worst to know and love her Savior. Many people say that she is a fool; but she, with a face as kind and sweet as an angel's, and radiant with joy, declares that it is the best investment she ever made, and that her happiness is infinitely multiplied since she began to be rich toward God.

These are some of the jewels she wears now. She was preaching on day in a little' Canada town, in the open air, and after she had done, a man stood up at the back of the crowd, flung his hands above his head, and cried, "1 believe in Christ, who saves me from sin." He was the leading man in the town, and had been a savage atheist; but the charm of this noble lady's presence and the sincerity evidenced by her self-sacrifice broke down his unbelief, and the little countess counts him as one of her jewels among her riches toward God.

She went into a prison in Detroit, and there saw two colored girls behind the bars. They were wild from confinement, and climbed up on their cage like panthers, shrieking and showing their teeth. But the countess went into the cage with them, and gave herself to them in such sympathy and tenderness that she won their hearts and won them both from their sins to a Christian life, and she holds them as precious black diamonds of the heavenly wealth.

She once held a meeting among the men who

The Best Wealth Open for Alt sell liquor to sailors on the Baltic Sea. Naturally they were wicked, desperate characters. She went about among them, personally inviting them to her meetings. She said, ''Won't you come and learn how to make your business more profitable?" A great crowd of them came together, and she said to them : "J^st give up selling liquor, and give your hearts to Christ. That 's the way to make your business profitable." The miracle of it is that the Holy Spirit so blessed her consecration to the salvation of men that a large number of these desperate men did give up their iniquitous business, and became earnest and happy Christians.

When she was in the Thousand Islands, there was to be a great ball at one of the fine club-houses there. Very naturally, these fashionable people were' desirous of having a live countess present at their ball ; and so they urged her to come. At first she declined ; and then a bright thought came to her, and she said, "If you will let me speak for Christ, I will come." That ball was turned into a gospel service, and she spoke with faithfulness for her Lord.

Now this woman, to whom following Christ has meant so much, is receiving, from all over the world, letters from men and women who tell her that they have found Christ through her. And she declares that she' only knew what wealth was and what happiness was when she began to use her earthly riches in such a way as to convert them into the wealth that takes hold upon God and eternity.

We are not all countesses, and we' do not all have fortunes to give; but the mind of humanity is open for every one of us ; and, after all, the richest treasure she gives is her sympathy, her kindness, herself; and all of us may enter into that fellowship and may be thus gathering treasures that v/ill rejoice our hearts forever.

IV The Palmistry of the Saints

*'A11 his saints are in thy hand." — Deut. xxxiil, 3.

Dr. Alexander Maclarkn has said that this ancient Hebrew singer, who knew nothing about the incarnation or the cross, rose, in the song of which this is a fragment, to the height which the last of the apostles reached in the last of his writings, and in his own dialect says, with John, "We love him because he first loved us ;" that, like an orchid growing on a bit of dry wood, and yet putting forth a gorgeous bloom, this man, with so little to feed his faith in comparison with what nourishes ours, yet bore this fair flower of deep insight into the secret of things and the heart of God.

The entire paragraph is striking. It gives a majestic picture of God. "And this is the blessing wherewith Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel before his death. And he said. The Lord came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them ; he shined forth from Mount Paran, and he came with ten thousands of saints : from his right hand went a fiery law for them. Yea, he loved the people ; all his saints are in thy hand : and they sat down at thy feet ; every one shall receive of thy words."