The perfection of beauty

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Preface

The voice of the preacher still lingers in our ear, and as memory brings him before us in his pulpit, erect, commanding, thrilled with his message, and thrilling all who heard, we are still longing for "the sound of the voice that is still." To the very close of his fifty-four years of service in the one pulpit, Dr. Hoge was so intent upon the work which his hand found to do, that he could not be persuaded to go aside, and prepare the volumes so many desired, sermons, addresses, memoirs.

The sermons embraced in this volume were taken, not from his pen, but from his lips, by a stenographer, and when written out, were only in two or three cases revised by him. They are, therefore, almost entirely word for word as they were delivered from the pulpit. Some of them were preached in a number of places, and were heard by great congregations. They are still remembered by a great company, and are all the more desired in this printed form.

The selection has been made with a view, not only of preserving examples of the method and style of the preacher, but with a desire to give to many that which will be profitable to the spirit and effective in the life, and so perpetuate the fruitful ministry of the preacher.

It is a profound regret with many, that with these sermons there have not been preserved the prayers which

4 PREFACE.

accompanied them. Oftentimes the prayers seemed even more marvellous than the sermons, as he bore the silent assembly, with all its wants and desires, to the presence chamber of the God of Israel, who waited to be inquired of. They were made with preparation and with prayer. They were uttered with a voice, reverent, distinct, exquisitely expressive, which held the ear and moved the heart. They were scriptural in phrase, appropriate to the occasion, comprehensive of the whole assembly and its various needs, and led the worshipping congregation to the gate which leads up to the mercy seat.

We have added to this selection of sermons, the lecture at the Virginia University on "The Success of Christianity, an Evidence of its Divine Origin," a discourse of marked power and eloquence. It is an argument that has not lost, but gained in strength since it was presented in the masterly address. Other addresses, and some prayers offered on certain notable occasions have been published in the Life of Moses D. Hoge, by his nephew, the Rev. Dr. Peyton H. Hoge, an unsurpassed example of religious biography.

Contents

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I. The Perfection of Beauty, n

44 Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, hath God shined." — Psalm

II. "not Of This World."

"My kingdom is not of this world." — John xviii. 36.

IT seems the longer educated men live who believe in the Christian system, and whose hearts are filled with the sweet hopes of the gospel of Christ, the more they are impressed, not only with the number, but with the great variety of evidences by which the truth of our holy religion is demonstrated. These evidences are not only numerous, but they are drawn from sources so widely different. They come from departments that have no connection with each other; indeed, we may say the whole physical universe, the whole world may be levied upon for illustrations and for confirmations of the truth of Holy Writ.

We begin at the beginning ; the Bible is the only book that has given the world a picture, a definition of a God that is entitled to human respect, to human veneration, to human love and obedience. What a wonderful fact that is ! There was not one of all the gods of Olympus, there was not one of the thirty thousand deities that were represented in the city of Athens whose character and life was not blemished or blackened by some vice; whereas the God revealed to us in these holy Scriptures, with perfect unanimity by all the sacred writers, is represented in the same august and adorable light, worthy of the homage and supremest affection of all intelligent creatures. How wonderful it is that a system of miraculous evidences running through fifteen hundred years should have ever been constructed — miracles that seem to contravene the natural and established laws of nature, and so well authenticated that their reality was not denied even by those most acute, ingenious and virulently bitter enemies of Christianity that wrote against it in the early centuries. They admitted that the miracles were wrought; they only denied that they were accomplished by a divine power. They ascribed them to human agencies, but as for the reality of the miracles it could not be contradicted in many instances. How wonderful it is that a system of prophecy that begins, I may say, with the beginning of man's history — that a system of prophecy should have been delineated the first sentence of which was whispered in the ears of our first parents in the garden of Eden, and that prophecy from this germinal commencement has been unfolding through all the centuries, so that every century that passes brings a new confirmation of the truth of the Bible, because it witnesses the fulfilment of some prophecy.

History is, after all, the greatest witness ; the world's history as it moves on is the great demonstration of the truth of prophecy, and, therefore, as the centuries are added one to another the evidences of the truth, of the fulfilment of these prophecies will be cumulative with the progressive ages. And then, my friends, is it not most wonderful that men living in different climates, under different social and political and moral influences, that men who are different from each other in their natural and in their spiritual endowments, should have uniformly taught that the beauty of man's character, in its highest development, is the beauty of holiness. O that I had time to enlarge upon that theme with which my soul kindles when I think of it, that every writer in the New Testament, in some way or other, makes his contribution to the effect that man attains to his greatest dignity, and his only true dignity, just as the expulsive power of the heavenly affection expels from his soul everything that is dark and defiling, and fills him with light and truth and hope and love and peace.

The most wonderful of all the demonstrable evidences of the truth of Scripture, after all, is the picture that it presents of the only perfect ideal that the world ever saw. All men's ideas of virtue and of perfection are fragmentary; here is one that is complete, here is one that is absolutely faultless, here is one before which even the skeptic and the scoffer has been compelled to bow — the matchless beauty of the Son of Mary. I do not know what forms of beauty the heaven of heavens contains ; I do know that the heaven of heavens contains nothing more beautiful than my glorified Jesus. And so, my friends, we have the privilege and the happiness of embracing a religion of certainties, a religion the proofs of which are always growing stronger and more convincing. Can we recollect without devoutest gratitude that we were born in a Christian land, and that perhaps our first teacher was a pious mother ?

What a privilege it is to be in connection with this kingdom of which Jesus speaks, the kingdom of which he is the founder, the kingdom of which he is to-day the loving protector. It is a great mistake to suppose that Christ's work was completed with his resurrection and with his ascension. In one sense it was only the beginning of his work. Ever since that ascension to glory he has been superintending the affairs of his church, and it is because of his perpetual and loving counsel that the church is perpetuated, and that our hearts are thrilled with the prospect of its ultimate victory.

A most interesting question here arises as to the relations between this church and the outlying world, the relation between the church and the governments, the different kingdoms and republics in which the church is planted. Our Lord very briefly says, "My kingdom is not of this world." That is a statement that has been controverted, practically, for the last fifteen hundred years by a large proportion of those who claim preeminence in that kingdom ; it has been virtually denied by thousands of those who think that the only way of maintaining the permanency of the church, of increasing its power and of securing its universal supremacy, is by an alliance with the State. And this brings me to that epoch of ecclesiastical history to which I wish to direct 3'Our attention, because it is the beginning of that alliance and the beginning of that system of union and cooperation between church and state which has continued for fourteen or fifteen centuries.

It is often said that when Constantine ascended the throne and made Christianity the established religion of the empire, Christianity prospered because the Emperor patronized it ; on the contrary, my friends, the Emperor patronized it because Christianity had prospered. It was not the church coming humbly to a Gesar and seeking the hand of the state, it was the state that wooed the church. Constantine had the sagacity to see that the church had already become the greatest power in the world, and it was on this account that he adopted the plan of strengthening the state and of accomplishing his own ambitious schemes through an alliance with the church.

The history of this man is one of great fascination, and marks an era in church history. He was born, as many of you know, in the kingdom of Dacia, on the northern bank of the Rhine, the kingdom that embraces modern Waldachia, and parts of that section of the eastern portion of Europe which is included in Hungary and Moldavia. There were six emperors contending for the government of the world — three of them in the eastern part of the Roman Empire and three in the western part — six emperors contending for universal rule. When the father of Constantine invaded Great Britain, the young man hastened to him, having been separated very early from his father, and living in a distant part of the country. He overtook his father upon the banks of the English Channel, crossed the Channel with him, and partook of the easy victory that was achieved over the Britons. Many persons do not know that the father of Constantine died in the venerable city of York, within sight of that magnificent cathedral that so many of you have visited and admired. It was in that ancient city of York that Constantine himself was crowned, and became king of Britain and of Gaul and of Spain. On his return to the Continent, the constant conflicts between these rival emperors had reduced the number to four, and presently to three, one of these being Maxentius, who made every attempt that was possible to destroy Constantine — to effect his ruin and his death by fair or by unfair means. I need not recapitulate the story which is probably familiar to you — of the conflicts between the forces of Maxentius and of Constantine, how at the battle of the Milvion Bridge, near the city of Rome, Constantine achieved his great victory; I need not tell you how he conquered his other rival, Lycinius, in subsequent conflicts, and how, in his early manhood, with a princely presence, with an inflexible will, with a daring genius, with a natural aptitude for war, with the greatest self-control after a life of chastity and of temperance, and a life in which he had habituated himself to every species of hardship, he entered upon his magnificent career.

What interests us most in the connection is the story of his conversion, and the insoluble questions that have arisen with regard to it. This is one of those great historical problems that never will be solved. There are a great many Christian writers who look upon Constantine as one of the greatest servants of the church, as a man who accomplished more than any man of his day or of those centuries for its welfare; whereas there are others who look upon him as a crafty politician, as a man consumed by intense personal ambition, as only half converted, if half converted at all. And so the rival factions continue to dispute, widely divergent in their expressions of opinion, as widely differing as the statements of Eusebius, a great admirer and eulogist, and those of Gibbon, who depreciates the character of this man, and represents him as an artful hypocrite.

You are aware of the fact that while Constantine was pursuing his career of conquest he alleged, at least, that he had been greatly influenced by a dream that he had at night, in which a voice spoke to his inmost soul, in which he received, as he thought, a divine commission to undertake the reformation of the world. This was followed by that other most remarkable statement, which also is one of the controverted points in history, with regard to that vision which he professed to have seen in the sky, the vision of the cross flaming in the heavens, and a voice that uttered those oracular and inspiriting words, "By this sign thou shalt conquer." One of the most judicious, thoughtful and pious of modern historians, Ulhorn, in his Conflict of Christianity and Heathenism, does not hesitate to say that he believes that Constantine was perfectly sincere in the statement of what he saw, and of the influence which it exerted upon him. That much we all may admit. Even if it was an hallucination, even if it

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was some distempered ocular condition that induced him to fancy that he saw that vision, yet he believed he saw that sign in the heavens, and the evidence of that belief is that it changed, to a very great extent, the man's life, and in the most solemn manner at the time of his death he reiterated the story, and communicated the fact to Eusebius, who received it from his lips : that it had been the influencing and controlling incident in his entire life. Charmed with the romance, his ambition was too large to be filled by the possession of the city of the seven hills, and he achieved the daring project of giving the world a new capital. He accomplished what he undertook. He was the founder of the most splendid city, so far as its position is concerned, upon the entire globe — the city of Constantinople. Napoleon himself declared that it was the key to the empire of the world, and that the nation that would hold Constantinople would be the dominant nation because of its peculiar position, lying upon the narrow Bosphorus, touched by Europe on one side, and by Asia on the other ; the Bosphorus so easy to shut up at both ends, and thus to exclude all hostile fleets; the city so fortified by nature as to be impregnable by land; and yet, when those gates are thrown open, all the commerce of the Euxine (or Black) Sea, all the commerce of the Mediterranean and the rich countries that the Mediterranean's waters wash, pour their riches into this city, beautiful for situation, strong by position, and the key to the destiny of the East. There it was that he founded his great capital ; there it was that he built magnificent Christian churches; there it was that he invited all the patricians of Rome to emigrate and found new homes, homes which he provided for them. The hundreds of palaces he erected were designed to be the homes of learned men from every part of the world, who were invited to that capital to give dignity and influence to it because of their genius and their culture. He ransacked the whole earth and laid all under contribution in order to adorn the city, and such were his spoliations that some one sarcastically said that he had done everything except to bring back the souls of the great masters, the great poets, the great architects, the great sculptors. He had brought back all their works, and had done everything but to bring back their souls, and make them inhabit the city where their works had been collected in such profusion.

It was in the year 313 A. D. that he issued the celebrated edict of Milan, the edict that declared Christianity to be the religion of the empire. Then it was that he commenced those reforms for which he has been so celebrated and for which the church owes him a great debt of gratitude. He was the man who enjoined the observance of the Christian Sabbath, the first man who ever enjoined it by law, or that forced its observance upon any people. Inasmuch as a multitude of Christian churches had been demolished during the persecutions of the early emperors, Constantine required them all to be rebuilt again, and service to be performed in them by those who were not to be molested in the duties of their sacred office.

These are some of the great changes he introduced, and at the same time it is perfectly evident from the cruelties which he perpetrated that there was an occasional going back, in heart, to the heathenism with which he had been irradicably tainted, making Apollo his God as well as Jesus, Apollo with the radiant brow, Apollo the matchless beauty, Apollo with the infinitely cultivated tastes, Apollo, who charmed the imagination of this man so that his homage was divided between Christ and the Sun God. These are the things that fill the whole world with doubt with legard to the fact whether the man was, really, ever a true convert to Christianity, or whether the alliance that he formed between the state and the church was one out of love for the church or as a matter of state policy.

When our Lord said, "My kingdom is not of this world," these words cut in twain the recognized policy of some of the most enlightened nations of the earth. My friends, accustomed as we have been all our lives to religious liberty, we are oftentimes under a great illusion with regard to the condition of religious freedom outside of these United States. In how many governments is religion free ? Did you ever try to count them ? I did not ask in how many governments is religion tolerated; all religions are tolerated ; but who does not see that there is a world-wide difference between the toleration of religion and the freedom of religion ? If a government has a right to tolerate one religion, it has a right to suppress another religion, and when the government offers to tolerate religion, it offers an insult to every thoughtful man who has been instructed out of these holy Scriptures, and taught what his rights are by that great charter of human rights. Toleration of the worship of God by the permission of a government when that right is a gift direct from God himself to the soul of man? No, my friends, we scorn the permission ; we scorn the indulgence which says, "We tolerate you for that God-given gift which is equally granted to all men, the right to worship God according to the dictates of conscience. Therefore, one of the happiest things that ever occurred in the organization of this government was the fact that in the Constitution of the United States, Congress is forever prohibited from establishing any form of religion or interfering with the religion of any Christian people. It is a noble article in the same Constitution that in these United States there never shall be any religious test that has to be submitted to in order to acquire or to hold any office of trust under this government. It is true the States can make their own regulations, and have done so, with regard to religious freedom ; and it gives us a great deal of pleasure to know that Virginia was the first State to sever entirely the connection between church and state. The conflict was a very long one — it took more years to establish religious freedom than it did to vindicate the independence of the United States ; but at last it was done, and the article of which I speak was embodied in the Constitution in 1785. The next State to adopt such a policy was Maryland, and after Maryland came New York, and forty years afterwards, Connecticut, in 1816. The last link between church and state was not dissolved in Massachusetts until the year 1831, but now there are no religious tests and no religious discriminations in any of the States of this great Union.

Now we are beginning, my friends, to recognize the infinite wisdom that lies in that little statement of our Lord when he said, "My kingdom is not of this world," by which he meant that it did not have its origin in this world ; that it was not the product of the times ; that no tendency evolved it; that there was no philosophy upon the globe, no religion upon the globe, no nation upon the globe that could originate a system like Christianity. Certainly it could not have been originated in Athens. If you remember the ground that we went over on last Sunday afternoon, the two great rival theological sects were those of the Epicureans and Stoics. Christianity did not emanate from the religion of pleasure, nor did it emanate from the religion of pride ; Christianity scorned both as the foundation upon which it was to build. It could not have originated in Rome in its decadence, for then was the very darkest period in Roman history, when all faith in men had been lost, when all faith in the gods of the Pantheon had been lost, when the very hope of immortality was well-nigh extinguished in the world. Christ's kingdom was not of this world because it had a different origin, and next because it has a different purpose from that of any worldly kingdom. What is the purpose of the worldly kingdom ? It is to augment commerce, it is to multiply the material resources of the people, it is to prepare room for a great population, it is to do everything to make the nation so powerful as to hold its own against all coiners, so strong as to command the respect of the world.

Christianity never attempts this directly ; it does it all indirectly. Christianity undermines whatever is not fit to survive in governments simply by rectifying the principles of the people, and it gives support to all that is fit to survive by giving its sanction. The purpose of Christianity is different — it is to restore the lost image of God in the soul of man; it is to make one endowed with that awful attribute at which we shudder when we think of its true meaning, endowed with the awful attribute of immortality, so to live that immortality will be an eternal blessing and benediction, and not an everlasting curse. The great object of Christianity is so, by the preaching of a pure gospel, to influence the consciences and hearts of men as to prepare the way for the universal reign of the Prince of Peace ; and, therefore, Christianity never brings under its wing or asks the protection of fleets or armies; it does not rely upon human help. "My kingdom is not of this world, for then would my servants fight" ; but it is a kingdom founded in human intelligence, because it refines and elevates human thought ; it is a kingdom founded in the human heart, because, as I said just now, such is the expulsive power of a new affection that it casts out all that is unholy and defiling; it is a kingdom of truth established in the soul of man — truth in harmony with eternal law, truth in harmony with immortal love. That is the kingdom that Christ came to establish in the world. "My kingdom is not of this world," and, therefore, when there is an alliance between church and state, both are equally injured.

In the fourteenth century, John, the Bishop of Milan, inherited a domain, and as, by that inheritance, he was to become a temporal prince, he was required to decide between the two — to make his choice as to whether he would continue to be an ecclesiastic, or whether, renouncing his mitre, he would be a secular prince. When the day of decision came he arose from the throne upon which he sat in the cathedral, with a crosier in one hand and a drawn sword in the other, and he said, "These are my weapons of offence and defence, and with this sword I will guard the crosier." My friends, in that little incident I have told you what might be crowded into an hour's discourse with regard to the unhallowed alliance between church and state. Those that combine the two say that so far from renouncing the one because we belong to the other, they say, "With this sword I will guard the cross, and sword and cross combined shall conquer the world." We cannot contemplate such a system as that, my friends, without dismay, when we remember the injury that it does to the church, and how it is calculated to fill the church with corrupt men, with men who seek high positions, with men who will demean themselves and debase themselves in order to obtain the favor of the state. It degrades the citizen when the state undertakes to control religious creeds and religious beliefs; it de- 3 grades the citizen because it deprives him of the right of conscience, and the independence of a man to think for himself and decide for himself the great questions that lie between the soul and God. You have a state of degraded people when they are compelled to suppress that which God has given for the elevation and for the development of man's noblest nature.

The church commits a great mistake when it undertakes to control political movements, when it espouses the cause of either party, when it gives its influence to a particular candidate, when it tries, by any method, to interfere with legislation — then the church is degrading itself; and the state is assuming an unwarrantable authority when it attempts to regulate the creeds of the church, when it attempts to impose penalties upon Christian people for doing what conscience requires them to do. So that, look at the matter all around, in whatever light you may contemplate it, we have a shrinking back from the thought that the day shall ever come when it will even be proposed in this country to form any connection between church and state. We ought to dwell upon and love this great truth announced in these words of our Lord when he said, "My kingdom is not of this world."

When it was proposed to disestablish the churches in the different States of this Union, some of the best men were filled with fear. The Rev. Dr. Dwight, of Yale College, was almost tempted to put on mourning, because he thought religion would decline when the fostering arm of the State was no longer around it; and another man, whose name I will not mention, also said it was the darkest day in his life, and yet that man lived to bless God that he had seen that very day, for he saw a day that was luminous now in memory, dark as it was in past experience. Now the happy thing is that this subject admits of a demonstration, that the men who feared the church would decline when the aid of the state was taken away, have lived to see their mistake because they see the triumph of the system everywhere ; and, therefore, if you look at it for a single moment, you will see that it opens up an exceedingly interesting department of investigation. All state influence in behalf of the church, revenues coming from the state in behalf of missions, or for the building of colleges and schools, being taken away, timid men thought there would be a decline in those great interests. On the contrary, the moment the church was thrown upon its own resources it became conscious of its elasticity, it became conscious of a vigor it never before experienced, and the force and sweetness of which it had not tasted. The consequence has been that there is not a country in the world where education has been so well provided for by free schools, by the establishment of academies of high grades, colleges under Christian influence, for three fourths of all the colleges and universities in the United States are in the hands of Christian men, who exert a Christian influence, influences that are salutary, and influences that are saving, that are non-sectarian but evangelistic.

There is no country that so well provides for the education of its children as this country does, and when I am speaking about children I am reminded that next Sunday is Children's Day, and that there are more children in the Sunday-schools of the United States than in all Europe put together. Is that not wonderful, when we think of great populous countries like Germany, like Great Britain, like other countries that are Protestant — there are more Sunday-school children in the United States than in all the rest of the world combined, so that we have some twelve or thirteen million of litfle ones the best day of the week to learn a lesson out of the best text-book in all the universe, and from Christian men and Christian women. And then there never were such church buildings as these in the United States. I do not mean that the old cathedrals of Europe do not immeasurably surpass them, but these cathedrals were the production of the middle ages, for that was the way the church expressed its devotion in the middle ages. When it did not have missions to undertake, when it did not have benevolent work to do it expressed its devotion by the erection of great cathedrals. When you compare these edifices in the United States with those of the old world, you see what a free Christianity can do for the erection of commodious churches adapted to the purpose for which they were designed — places where it is convenient to speak, and where it is easy to hear and where the people are permitted to worship God without molestation. Then again, there is not a country in the world that makes such provision for the supply of its own spiritual destitution as the United States. Is it not wonderful, my friends, that we have a better system for supplying destitute neighborhoods than even a little country like England, not as large as a great many of our States, and where we would think the whole country could be districted, and where you would think any and all individuals might be reached? There is probably more spiritual destitution in Great Britain in certain localities than can be found anywhere in the United States, with all the splendid civilization which we so much admire and extol, and ever will admire and extol. And then, not only has provision been made to supply this destitution at home, but there never was a land in which the missionary fires burnt upward with such a steady, vestal flame toward heaven as this land; it is the missionary country of the world.