The south wind, and other sermons

Introduction

This volume of sermons is issued in accordance with the wish and direction of the alumni of the Rochester Theological Seminary, and the chairman of the alumni committee is asked to write an introductory word. He does so in grateful memory of a beloved teacher and friend, to whom our great brotherhood, scattered through every land, is under obligations which never can be met.

Thomas Harwood Pattison was born in Launceston, Cornwall, England, December 14, 1838. His education was received in' England and Germany, and included instruction in the University College School of London, Regent's Park College of London, then under the distinguished presidency of Doctor Angus, and the private tutorage of Henry George Tomkins. For four years he was under training in an architect's office, and these years had much to do with developing in him that love of the stately and beautiful in architecture which was to mean so much to his students.

At twenty-three years of age the twenty years of pastoral service began, first at Hude Chapel, Middleton, 1 862-1 863 ; then at Rye Hill Chapel, Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1 864-1 870; then at West Street Chapel, Rochdale, Lancashire, 1 870-1 875. During these years of notable service in England his reputation was constantly increasing. Sermons and

IV INTRODUCTION

addresses beyond the limits of his own parish made him widely known, and warm friendships were formed with such men as Dr. Alexander McLaren, Doctor Dale, and Dr. John Clifford, which endured through life. Here too, ceaseless and tireless toil developed that delightful and striking literary style which charmed and held the mind and heart of all.

But England was not to have the best of this great life. In January, 1875, Doctor Pattison came to America, and at the age of thirty-seven began a pastorate of four years in the First Baptist Church of New Haven, Conn. Under the shadow of Yale University, and with such parishioners as Dean Wayland, of the Yale Law School, it is small wonder that the ripened powers of the preacher found full play ; yet he had not reached his place of greatest usefulness, though he knew it not. In 1879, the Emmanuel Church of Albany, N. Y., persuaded him to accept its pastorate, and for two years in the capital city of the Empire State he wielded an influence which was felt far and wide. The beautiful memories of this pastorate still linger in Albany.

In 1 88 1 Doctor Pattison was invited by the trustees of the Rochester Theological Seminary to fill the professorship of Homiletics and Pastoral Theology in that institution. In September of that year he entered upon a service in the seminary which ceased only with his death, February 13, 1904. It is by the years of his service in the seminary that he will be longest remembered, for here was the crown and flower of his work.

Such are the brief outlines of a singularly full life. During Doctor Pattison's years in Rochester

INTRODUCTION V

his activity was not confined to his own classroom. Almost every Lord's Day found him in some pulpit. Colleges and universities almost without number counted his presence and his message an inspiration. Yale, Cornell, Brown, Williams, Rochester, Vassar, Virginia, and many more knew and loved him. During intervals in pastorates he served as stated supply for such churches as the First, Second, Lake Avenue, and Park Avenue of Rochester, and the Delaware Avenue of Buffalo. He was gladly welcomed also outside of his own communion ; he frequently filled the pulpits of the Brick, St. Peter's, and the Third Presbyterian Churches in his own city, and very many beyond its borders. Unwearied in activity, unexcelled in pulpit power, unfailing in sympathetic helpfulness, what wonder that demands crowded upon him from every side ? To the limit of his strength, and beyond, he met them. So abounding in Hfe he was, so seemingly exhaustless the fountain of his sei*vice, that the shock was indescribable when it was told that his voice would be heard no more ; that the Master of Life had called him home.

Doctor Pattison's students for the past twenty years will never cease to be grateful to him for the service which he rendered to them in the classroom. As a teacher he was educative, inspiring, unique. His lecture courses might follow the same lines year by year — the lectures themselves were never the same. They grew as he grew. Into them he constantly wove the choicest garnerings of his perennially acquisitive mind. Literature, history, current events, every realm he laid under contribution,

VI INTRODUCTION

the wide reaches of the word of God most of all. To him the Bible was the center of all literature and of all history; around it he grouped his wealth of illustrative material, and he taught us to do the same. To him the center of the Bible was the radiant figure of the Christ, whose he was and whom he served.

What a teacher he was ! Instruction, appeal, frank criticism, kindly advice, pathos, humor, all were there ; sympathy for his students in every trial, every problem — a sympathy which in their after years followed them even to the ends of the earth ; enthusiasm for the great work of the ministry and for its matchless opportunities ; reverence toward the great Teacher ; the power which we knew he himself had to do what he held up as the ideal for others to seek — all the qualities of a great and successful teacher he possessed.

And what a preacher he was \ Texts seemed fairly to fall into their rightful divisions. His sermons were logical, but with that logic which took picturesque form, riveting attention and interest. His illustrations were jewels which glowed and sparkled. The clear-cut, classical face, the kindly eye, the persuasive voice, the appropriateness, dignity, and grace of manner, no one who has heard and seen him in the pulpit can ever forget. The sermons of this volume will lack the throbbing touch of his personal presence, but even for those who have never heard him something of the power of the great preacher is in them still.

With us who knew him best, two pictures of Doctor Pattison will ever linger most enduring and

INTRODUCTION Vll

sweetest of all. One is the hour in the seminary chapel, when he led the daily service. The classroom work for the day is over, and the students gather in the place which has come to mean so much to them. Scripture, hymn, and prayer under his leadership make a harmonious whole. His reading of the Scripture passage is an illuminative interpretation. His prayer bears the students, all their interests, their hopes, their fears, their trials, before the throne. The homes from which they come, fathers and mothers far away are remembered in the wide sweep, the inclusive tenderness of the petition. The alumni of the seminary, in city or country, in home or foreign field, in joy or sorrow, may know that they are not forgotten as the river of that prayer flows on in beauty and majesty. When it is done, in the shining glory of the afternoon sun through the chapel window, the men go quietly out, their hearts refreshed and strengthened for the work of another day.

The other is the hour of family prayer, after the evening meal in that home which was ever open in genuine welcome, in never-failing and gracious hospitality. We shall not know until the books are opened how many lives have been kept from falling, how many lives have grown into high endeavor and noble service, through the holy influence of that hour. He was the priest at his own family altar, and all in the home, though but for the hour, were of the family circle. We miss him sorely. Those who have dwelt in that home miss him most of all.

Clarence A. Barbour.

March lo, 1905.

Contents

CHAPTER

PAGE

I. The South Wind 9

II

And he said, Draw not nigh hither ; put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.

— Exodus j» .• J.

II

The chapter from which these words are taken is full of remarkable contrasts with that which precedes it. In both indeed the central figure is the same. But with this one particular all resemblance between the two seems to cease. Moses the prince in the first is Moses the peasant in the second of the chapters. The son of Pharaoh's daughter becomes the son-in-law of an Arab shepherd chieftain. The schools of Egypt are exchanged for the solitudes of the desert ; the palace vanishes, and in its stead we behold the granite peaks of Sinai.

When his banishment from the populous city, the highly civilized peoples, the luxury and the splendor of the Egyptian court had continued for forty years, it would be natural to conclude that Moses is finally and forever laid on one side. He has played his little part on the stage of life and may now be forgotten. The meteor which burned so brightly has vanished, as many another before and since, into the gloom. This, however, was very far from being the case. The school of God has often trained its aptest scholars in the wilderness. Instead of being buried in an unknown desert grave, Moses is about to rise to a newness of life. The hour has come for him to emerge from the gloom, and once more — and now more illustriously than ever before — to act his great part on that theatre of the world in which heaven and earth, the present and the future, are the interested spectators. Whatever he himself may have believed, he was not retreating when for nearly a century he wandered in the desert ; any more than the wave retreats when by its refluent sweep it gathers force and fullness with which once again to thunder on the shore.

From this first vision of God the man who was destined to be the leader and lawgiver of Israel learned very much ; but I will ask your attention now to one only of these initial truths here revealed to him. I mean the nature and claims of reverence ; and I choose it for the subject of our thought because it is of perpetual interest and moment. We as much as Moses need to learn what true reverence is. Notice then :

I. That this feeling of reverence was wakened in Moses by the warning which he now received. The warning may be said to have been two-fold. He was cautioned against the spirit which he was cherishing, and against the state into which he was sinking.

Think of the spirit which Moses was cherishing. Of the forty years which he has now spent as a shepherd we have no record. It is natural for us to picture him as a learner, a conscious learner, in the great school of solitude and silence where he wandered. No wonder that with our conception, drawn from the restless and eager age in which we live, we should say that doubtless Moses was here to solve the problems which had oppressed him as a boy and a young man in Egypt ; that here as never before

He saw through life and death, through good and ill ; He saw through his own soul.

As a matter of fact, however, we are told nothing about this third part of his life which Moses passed in these mountainous ranges ; and when we listen to his words in this chapter, they suggest that the scholar had almost everything yet to learn. Apparently his religious hopes, and the veiy faith from which they sprang, had well-nigh died out. He was falling into a condition not so much raised above the flock which he tended. ** Look out for a people," says Hume, '* entirely destitute of religion. If you find them at all, be assured that they are but a few degrees removed from brutes." Moses was indeed far from this forlorn condition as yet, but he seems almost to have been on his way to it. From it he is rescued at once by a marvelous natural phenomenon. "A flame of fire in the midst of a bush, and behold, the bush burned," etc.

An unwonted feeling, one which for years had been a stranger to his breast, was roused ; the feehng of curiosity: **And Moses said," etc. But curiosity in its turn was also perilous. It is only worthy of commendation when it becomes a gateway through which one passes to reverence ; and so the feeling was checked at the moment when it rose to action, by the voice of God calling to him out of the midst of the bush, '' Draw not nigh hither ! "

Think, again, of the state into which Moses was in danger of sinking. This is suggested by the words which follow. '* Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place ... is holy ground. A state of quiet hopelessness as to his future led him to a state of quiet indifference as to his personal unworthiness. What was the use served by the sandals ? You answer : They guard the bare feet which are thrust into them from dust and defilement. What would otherwise cling to the foot, now clings to the sandal. " With the shoes, there is left behind that dust or impurity of earth which is collected in walking on earth's ways." Here, then, two truths, so closely related that they can never be considered apart, were impressed on Moses' mind. I mean the sense of his own personal sinfulness, and the conviction of God's absolute holiness. No need to be shod in that presence, " for the place whereon," etc. Walk free and fearless there ! There can gather no stain of sin upon the street of the New

Jerusalem, and therefore it is " pure gold as it were transparent glass."

2. So on the very threshold of this temple of worship and communion ** reared in the mountain of God," Moses learned that reverence claimed that he be holy because God was holy. The first element in reverence is personal sanctification, personal holiness.

That reverence was inspired by the discovery of God's presence. '* And the angel of the Lord." None other, as we are told afterward, than Jehovah himself, "appeared unto him," etc. We remember that Moses had been born and trained in Egypt. His associations in regard to religion would almost inevitably be closely connected with great temples, the stateliest and the most splendid structures in that stretch of splendid land. His father-in-law is indeed called ''the priest of Midian," and possibly he was a believer as Melchisedec was, but we read nothing of shrine or sanctuary or altar in his house. Under these circumstances it was natural that if Moses thought about the subject at all, he should picture the Most High as dwelling only in temples made with hands. From such a narrow conception he is now to be forever emancipated. The poor stunted bush, the thorny acacia, "so characteristic of that barren region that the name Mount Sinai is supposed to be derived from it," became luminous with the glory of God. We need to learn the lesson which Moses was now taught, and therefore we may well pause over it.

He discovered that God reveals himself in the familiar. How well Moses had come to know this desert ! To him it was not historic or heroic, as it is to us. It was only the pasturage for his flock. Notice that to all appearances Moses was satisfied. "And Moses was content to dwell with the man," etc. Why not? Had he not all he needed for the present? The home and the business, both prosperous enough, were his. And further I note that this satisfaction was of the most fatal kind, as it was satisfaction born of tranquil despair. He had no future ; he had no past. Egypt was not more of a faded dream to him than was Canaan an unsubstantial vision. "Who ami?" he cried to God a few moments hence. He has lost reverence for himself, the child of such high hopes and glowing auguries. Ah, yes, for not until we reverence God do we reverence ourselves. Now he discovers, in this sudden burst of divine light, what Jacob had discovered long before — what we must discover also if we are to discover ourselves — "Surely the Lord is in this place ; and I knew it not." Here is the immanence of God. But he learned further, although in the same line of discovery, that God's presence may be looked for in the commonplace. The bush — commonest object in that desert — it was that burned with fire. A

" great sight" indeed ! I do not find it so hard to believe in a God of glory thundering as I do in a God walking amid the trees of the garden in the cool of the evening. That the peaks of Sinai, far-off, remote, piercing the heavens, should flame with the splendor of his advent fire is not so wonderful as that he should touch the poor acacia shrub with his fiery finger. The supernatural in the natural perplexes us. Not " God," but " God manifest in the flesh." We are all conscious of this difficulty. But what does it mean ? Only that sin has robbed the familiar forms and objects round about us of their true and native dignity. It materializes the universe. God' is perpetually rescuing this earth of ours (and of his) from the contempt into which it has fallen. He teaches Moses that even a shepherd's rod can be the mightiest of sceptres, and David that even a shepherd's harp can be the most melodious of instruments. That rod and that harp are now part and parcel of an immortal past. History cannot spare the one, devotion with loving reverence cherishes the other.

Now the conclusion from this is most important. Our holy land is here ; not in Jerusalem or on yonder mountain is God, but rather seated on the lowly well-side. '' I that speak unto thee am he." Our daily life becomes solemn and yet unspeakably beautiful when we grasp the truth. Fellowship with God can be enjoyed in the humblest home.

The shop may become a sanctuary. All life is transformed and transfigured into a sacrament.

Where' er we seek thee thou art found, And every place is hallowed ground.

3. This feeling of reverence was deepened and confirmed in Moses by the revelation of God's nature.

Two senses were appealed to in this experience through which Moses passed, his sight and his hearing.

First, what was it Moses said ? ** He looked, and behold," etc. We are no doubt familiar with many of the explanations of this phenomenon which have been suggested. Fire has by all nations been considered a natural symbol of deity ; and that, in part because it has also been considered a natural symbol of life. Now this was just what Moses most sorely needed to learn. He must come to believe most firmly in a living God, present and powerful in this wilderness. No past or future deity ; but essentially and intensely present. ''And God said unto Moses, Then shalt thou say," etc. So it has been said most truly that what the Old Testament insists upon above all else is the association of the object of our worship with the idea of life. God shall be a living God. " My soul thirsts for God, for the living God." Is this not the only thing for which we still need to be supremely anxious, the presence

TRUE REVERENCE 3I

of the living God ? Reverence for the church building, for the Christian fellowship of men and women, for the individual believer, is most worthless — it is actually dangerous and verges on superstition, unless the bush burns with the presence of the living God. That made the holy of holies resplendent, that transformed the shore of Galilee into a temple, that consecrated the upper chamber in Jerusalem as the mightiest of sanctuaries. Is this building holy? Yes, if the living God be here. Otherwise its colored windows richly lighted, its carven timbers, and its goodly stones, are only like the jeweled robes which wrap the form of the dead monarch. The holy places of earth are many of them as humble and unpromising as was this bush on Horeb ; but nothing is holy where God is not, and where God is there is nothing too lowly to enshrine his glory.

Then think what Moses heard. Oh, he heard so much in those great utterances of God that we can but glance at some few of the powerful impressions made on his nature ! Did not he learn God's mindfulness ? " Moses, Moses ! " His name, then, was not forgotten. Here at his veiy feet the voice speaks, and it speaks to him. Brethren, so well does God understand us that he calls us by our own names. We need not wonder at it, we ought not to do so, but yet we do. And then suddenly some familiar experience becomes vocal and personal with our very name, and we discover that not the care of all the world can blot us out of the mindfulness of our Father in heaven :

Thou art as much his care as if beside

Nor men nor angels lived, in heaven or earth.

Did not he further learn God's transcendent glory ? "I am come down." God was in the bush but only because he had chosen it as the medium through which to reach the shepherd of Horeb. He was not the bush. Always and everywhere it must be a descent when God comes into range and residence with us.

Yes, and the priceless truth of the Divine permanence he learned also. *' I am the God of thy father, the God," etc. He spoke of the patriarchs as not many but only one — " thy father." It is not only that God abides ever the same ; but it is that therefore we, the human family, abide. The individual, indeed, passes away, but the race continues, as the wave rises and sinks but the ocean is always there. I worshiped in Abraham, I pleaded in Jacob, I sang with David. I cried for help in Peter, I yielded in Paul, I waited patiently in the splendor of heavenly vision in Patmos with John. God's purpose for the race holds the race together as the heart of one man.

Then over all falls the conviction of God's love. "I have surely seen." One catches here, as in so many other places in the Old Testament, the prelude of that saving mercy which became incarnate in Christ. " I know their sorrows ; I am come down to deliver them." The advent was anticipated in such words as these. It was under the impressive majesty of that first revelation which bade him keep off from the place, that we are told " Moses hid his face ; for he was afraid to look upon God." Curiosity had now given place to dread. But genuine reverence has nothing in common with either of these. So the further revelation, which is so full of the divine mindfulness and the divine mercy, if it took the sandals from his feet also took the mantle from his shrouded Hps. He spoke to God, as a man speaketh to his friend, face to face.

Brethren, we are far removed from this desert. A moment more, and we shall return to the world, as the great leader returned once again after his forty years' exile to the pomp and splendor of Egypt. But let us leave these granite heights, which have not ceased since then to glow with the dawn and to stand calm and gray under the starlight, with this conviction which changed the slumberous shepherd into the heroic man among men. God with us ; God in us ; God for us. Of this whole world and of each consecrated life in it is it forever true. ** The Lord is in his holy temple ; let all the earth keep silence before him."

Ill

HE WENT AWAY SORROWFUL"

But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful ; for he had great possessions.

— Matthew ig : 22.

Ill

**HE WENT AWAY SORROWFUL"

One word, which rises midway in this verse, gives not to our text alone but also to the whole story a special fascination. This word is ''sorrowful." Omit it, and while the incident would still attract our attention because of the peremptory demand which Jesus made that this young man should surrender all his substance in order to become a disciple, yet the intense human interest which clothes it now would be lacking. One of the old Italian painters represents Solomon as rising at the last day, and looking right and left on the parting multitudes before the judgment throne, as though uncertain with which of the two divisions his lot would be forever cast, and it is just this same doubt which is inspired in our minds by that word "sorrowful." Supposing that we had seen what was happening without hearing what was said, this look on the young man's face would suffice to tell us that he had reached one of those critical moments which in every human life mean so much. Plainly a change has passed over his thought, his purposes, his hopes. The evangelist Mark makes this contrast very vivid when he says, *'he came running," and a moment or two after, '' he went away grieved." The simple fact that in three of the Gospels the story of this rich young man is told at length, plainly shows how much it impressed the disciples, and to this hour that sorrowful look of his continues to haunt the imagination of the world. It seems to be material, therefore, that in what has to be said we should confine our thoughts to the grief which clouded the young man's countenance when he fell back into the throng and vanished from recorded history. Three things we may notice about it. It was the sorrow of disappointment ; it was the sorrow of discovery ; it was the sorrow of disquietude.

I. It was the sorrow of disappointment. Enough is told us about his life up to that hour for us to recover many of its details. Darwin met for the first time one of his most ardent followers, with whom he had already corresponded at length, with outstretched hands, a bright smile, and these words of welcome : " How glad I am that you are so young." The subject of this story has this unspeakable advantage. He had not waited long to find his vocation, now ripened only under late autumnal skies. He was a young man with a career already well defined. What benefits accrue from ancestry and birth he could claim for himself; he had enjoyed all that the schools of that day could do for him, and he had inherited great possessions, with the chances for influencing men which wealth brings with it. Already in the government of his native place, where Church and State were one, he occupied with honor the post of magistrate. All these were conspicuous features in his case, but there is much more and much better to be told yet. He could say, and in no boastful spirit, of the second table in the Decalogue, of the commandments which touch our duty to our fellowmen, and are therefore open to the test of practical daily scrutiny, ''All these have I observed from my youth." There is no evidence that he was either self-righteousor self-deceived. He did not tremble beneath the thunders and the lightnings of Sinai. In an age when religion meant to a greater extent than it does with us, a rigid observance of statutes rather than a living embodiment of principles, this young man could declare with Saul the Pharisee, *'As touching the righteousness of the law, blameless."

And yet, and yet, he was filled with a noble discontent. So when the news spread that Jesus of Nazareth was to pass that way before long, he launched out on a new venture of faith. Already he possessed a religion, but what he was in search of was a religion that would possess him. The tables of the law he had kept indeed, but to his warm touch they felt cold and unresponsive. He was asking for bread, and all they offered him was a stone. It was life, eternal life he yearned for, and all too plainly that way eternal life did not lie. So in an access of rare and beautiful enthusiasm he came running, and as the crowd separated to let him pass straight to the place where Jesus paused, he fell on his knees before him with the cry, " Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?" The answer of our Lord touched at once the high point of his aspirations. " If thou wilt be perfect" — but then as the further words fell on his ears, in the clear resonant tones into which no parleying or compromise could be read, his heart and his countenance fell. " If thou wilt be perfect, go sell that thou hast." Only a moment did it take Jesus to utter his answer, but it was a moment which lost all count of time, and it dashed the young aspirant's hopes baffled and beaten to the ground. *' He went away sorrowful ; for he had great possessions."