The investment of truth, and other sermons

Front matter

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Table Of Contents

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I. The Investment of Truth i

II. Eating the Shewbread ....

Introduction

Frederic Eli Dewhurst was in the Christian ministry twenty-four years, less because he had a message to deliver than because he had a message to discover. There was a real sense in which, after his struggles to get the message, he had a right as clear as the apostle John's to describe the content of his preaching as "that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of Life." There was strong resemblance, too, between the types of truth to which the earlier and the later apostle testified.

These sermons should be read, therefore, not as exercises in rhetoric, not as samples of literary form, not as expositions of a complete theology, but chiefest as leaves from the log of a single-hearted explorer. There is but slight hyperbole in calling them the automatic record of the self-discovery of a soul. At the same time, they are a diary of a rediscovery of Jesus Christ and of the Father whom he revealed. As separate discourses they have relatively little significance. When they are taken as minutes of a consistent spiritual progress, they constitute a human document of rare value.

Mr. Dewhurst's philosophy, as it appears at its ripest in this volume, was not anthropomorphic nor anthropocentric, in senses long since discredited; yet it was frankly anthroponormative, if I may be perx INTRODUCTION

mitted to coin such a term for views of life in which the latest readings of psychology and sociology blend. His sermons contain more direct evidence of attention to the psychologists than to the sociologists; but, although he always refers to himself as a learner, it is not too much to say that he was evidently entitled to rank as a fellow-worker in both divisions of labor The sermon which gives the title to this volume is at once a proof of his own grasp of the religious significance of the transition from the static to the dynamic interpretation of life, and a prophecy of the revitalizing of religion which will follow general assimilation of that conception. The other cardinal perception, that everything has value for our intelligence in proportion to its visible worth for human personality, had the force of an axiom in his thinking. He did not state it oftener, because he assumed it always. It came to light most distinctly in such sermons as "Eating the Shrewbread," "The Spirit within the Wheels," "The Sacramental Value of Material Things," and "Work."

Readers of this volume would miss its chief meaning if they supposed that it was a product of the usual editorial selection and correction. It is not ? collection of sermons for special occasions. It is not a laboriously emendated edition of faulty texts. Mr. Dewhurst filed and indexed, by number and title, every sermon that he wrote, and as a rule he read in the pulpit with little variation what he had written In the course of years he recomposed some of the

INTRODUCTION xi

earlier sermons, or used parts of them in the structure of others. Some of the sermons have been published in religious newspapers, and the copy was not returned to the file. For these and similar reasons there are gaps in the collection. With these exceptions, and with allowance also for the more than fifty sermons previously published in pamphlet or book form, the file, in which the last number is 909, is complete. Since 1889 Mr. Dewhurst composed his sermons upon the typewriter. Those in the present series are printed just as he left them, with here and there such corrections as occur in the usual proof-reading. The sheets contain on the average fewer alterations than would ordinarily be necessary if an author had dictated from his complete copy to a typist. The sermons chosen for this volume were all written in the last two years of Mr. Dewhurst's life. There is no conspicuous difference in quality between them and the others preached during the same period. They are selected rather than others because they seem to cover the whole gamut of his later message. With the exception of the sermon "The Investment of Truth," which was preached April 22, 1906, the chronological order has here been followed. It may be taken as a fair indication of the most satisfying perspective of truth which Mr. Dewhurst achieved. The last seven sermons in the volume are the last that he wrote. They begin with "Work," his greeting to the church on the first Sunday after his vacation in 1906, and the illness that proved fatal attacked him after he had completed the sermon xii INTRODUCTION

''Rejoicing in Youth." The day on which he had expected to preach it at Princeton University proved to be next to the last Sunday of his life.

Scarcely a trace of the hortatory element of preaching will be found in this volume. In this respect, too, it is fairly indicative of the means which Mr. Dewhurst chose to use or to leave unused. The fact, in one phase or another, was made a reproach against him throughout his ministerial life. But while some men could not be themselves without exhorting, he would on most occasions have been as unreal in exhortation as in the role of Shylock. He was bent on finding the meaning of life. In listening to him I always had a feeling, which has been heightened by reading his sermons, that he did not much care whether people would immediately accept his words or not, and that it would have spoiled him if he had cared. The main thing with him was to find the forward and upward path, and to keep faring ahead. He made on me the impression of a path-breaker continually calling back from new altitudes: "This is the way! I am pressing on !" He seemed to rely on the essential humanity in men to forge forward in the same direction, and to make its own use of his pioneering. He would have been the last to propose his own preaching as a model for all preachers. It was merely his individual way of being a man and doing a man's work. More evidently than any other man I have known, Mr. Dewhurst displayed the truth of an ancient proverb in its

INTRODUCTION xm

I was once in a small company, chiefly of ministers, when President Harper led the conversation with the bantering remark : "I have come to the conclusion that no one can be at the same time a popular preacher and an honest man." A long discussion followed of the different types of compromise which an intellectual man must make with his best self in order to catch the ear of the public. Mr. Dewhurst was so absolutely incapable of these compromises that he was a preacher for the few, not for the many. But if he were to be judged as a preacher alone, he would still be entitled to eminence. During his second pastorate, a peculiarly competent critic, who was a regular attendant at Trinity Church, Boston, but who spent the summer vacations at Burlington, wrote to me as follows: "If it were not for the single item of physical inequality, I firmly believe that Mr. Dewhurst would take rank as a preacher with Phillips Brooks. I get as much from the younger man's sermons as from the older." Discriminating members of each of his congregations have concurred in similar estimates. Yet it would obscure the supreme meaning of Mr. Dewhurst's life, if he were to be thought of as distinctively a preacher. As a pastor he did a quantity and a quality of work with such economy of system that his example would shame many a faithful minister; yet he was not distinctively a pastor. Mr. Moody would probably have been unable to understand what was meant if he had heard

XIV INTRODUCTION

Mr. Dewhurst called an evangelist. He was not even supposed to be "evangelical." Yet he was incessantly brooding over the young people of his parish, and reaching out after them, and trying to lead them into the church. In his last sickness he was appealing to them, and planning the work of Christian nurture which had prospered in his hands in his later years. But he was not distinctively an evangelist. There was a didactic element in all that he said. His influence in the Sunday school and in the week-day meetings of the church showed quick appreciation of educational improvement. Some of his friends often queried whether the professor's chair, rather than the pulpit, would not have been a more favorable center for his influence. But he was not distinctively a teacher. He was first and foremost a seeker after truth. Whatever he was besides, in his maturer life, was incidental to this central character and vocation. To his mind the working principles which experience had wrought out were rather raw materials of truth than completed knowledge. They were authoritative so long as more literal truth is beyond our grasp, but at best mere rudiments of the mysteries of life which remain to be discerned.

If I were to select his epitaph, I think on the whole I should choose these words : "While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light." Mr. Dewhurst believed in the veracity of life, in the authenticity of life's revelations, and in the credibility of the evidence which the revelations con-

INTRODUCTION xv

tain. All this was the light to which he gave full faith and credit while committed to his chief life-task of arriving at completer light. To get more light ; to gain a higher, larger outlook; to sweep a broader horizon; to adjust a truer perspective; to see things in their real relations, were to him the first duty of man.* Action in accordance with the light was assumed as a matter of course, sooner or later, and, so far as: his temperament and talents permitted, he was faithful in trying to make men use the truth as a standard and rule of action. He was centrally, however, a discerner of truth, rather than a persuader of other men to believe or obey the truth. Speaking psychologically, Mr. Dewhurst functioned less as a preacher than as an artist. To portray, to express, was his main effort. Persuasion was left largely to take care of itself.

Judged intrinsically, not by its accidents, this book should be distinguished from the works of the preachers. It is a contribution to the literature of strenuous communion with God.

Albion W. Small

"Wherefore gavest thou not my money into the bank, and I at my coming should have required it with interest?" — Luke 19:23.

We are beginning to realize that Jesus was a prince of story-tellers. We knew already, of course, that "he spake in parables;" but that phrase somehow seems so solemn and remote that we forget it means just the plain, familiar thing — "he told a story." Because these stories have come down to us in the Bible, moreover, and we have been accustomed to hear them read in a manner and tone of voice different from that which we associate with other books, we more than likely miss the sparkle of fancy, the play of imagination, the gentle light of humor, with which they were at first accompanied.

Many of these stories of Jesus were told for the purpose of relieving a difficult situation. They took off the strain. It is proverbially true that the only way at times to put an end to controversy, when everything is getting tense and embarrassing for both parties, is to sidetrack it with a story. And the superb skill of Jesus in the use of anecdote reached a climax in his ability to extricate himself from controversy, when controversy was simply of no use whatsoever.

Some of these stories of which Jesus made use had their roots in the tales of the Talmud, but in his telling they came to greater amplitude and into closer contact with actual life. He gives a picture where the Talmud sketches only an outline. The parable of the talents — or, as we might call it, the story of the three investments — is a case in point. The Talmud story relates that a certain king gave a deposit to each of three servants. The first guarded it safely; the second lost it; the third defiled it, and committed a part to another to keep. After a time the king returned and demanded his deposits. Him who guarded it he praised, and made prefect of his house. Him who lost it he visited with capital punishment, and ordered that neither his name nor his possessions should remain. To the third he said : "Retain him until we see what the other will do in whose hands he left a part. If he has treated the deposit rightly, let this one be restored to liberty; but if not, let him be punished." Here perhaps is the germ of Christ's story of the talents which he brought so much nearer to life and the amplitude of human experience. Yet to ears trained in the lore of the Talmud his story may have sounded strangely familiar, and for that very reason may have won attention and approval until its drift was perceived.

It is this drift and bearing of the story which I ask you at this time to follow. We sometimes allow our interest to follow the surface incidents of the story, observing the respective uses and rewards of the differing trusts ; but there is a gulf stream of the story into which we are not always drawn. Let us see, then, if we can follow that. It discloses itself in this swift, surprising question : "Why did you not put my money into the bank, that I might receive my own with interest?"

Now, money put into the bank is possibly not quite so safe as money that is put into an old stocking and buried in the cellar. It is not so safe as the mysterious and proverbial treasure of Captain Kidd ; for that has never been found. Money in the bank is subject to certain perils — to the vicissitudes of human prudence and integrity, and to certain unpredictable calamities, such as that which has twice overwhelmed the cities of the Pacific coast. Nevertheless, money in the bank is moving and growing money. It is live capital. It is wealth put to service. You make the venture, you take the risk, you discount possible disaster, for the sake of gain and growth. In the last resort it is a question of emphasis. One may forego safety for the sake of gain; that is what two men in the story did. Or one may forego gain for the sake of safety; that is what the third man did. And the praise of Christ was given to the men who took the risk. He gave the primacy to gain and growth, rather than to safety and fixedness.

At this point, therefore, his story stands in conspicuous contrast with the Talmud story. For in the Talmud story the king gives the chief reward to the servant who safely guarded his deposit : he makes him prefect of the palace. Christ's story gives no praise or reward to the man who merely guarded his deposit, kept it safe, and gave it back intact. This was the man who came in for reproof. And, worst of all, he had his safeguarded talent taken away from him.

Now, this is a difference which goes too deep to pass unnoticed; for it brings to view the two most radically opposed interpretations of life, of what human experience is, and how it grows ; of what truth is, and what we are to do with it.

The contrast appears at once; for the issue was already on between Christ and the religious teachers of his day. That is why he told the story. Its application is obvious enough. The servant who guarded his deposit, and whom the Talmud praised, represents those learned and cautious rabbis whom Christ identified with the man who hid his talent in the earth, because he was unwilling to take the risk of losing it. These were the men on whom he had his eye ; precisely the men of whom, in a different form of speech, h^ said at another time: "The kingdom shall be taken from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof."

Here, then, is the contrast. The rabbis held that the truth was a sacred tradition to be kept intact and handed down ; the law, a holy revelation to be revered and obeyed; and, lest at some unsuspected point it should be infringed, they invented the minor commandments — a chain of subtle casuistry which surrounded this sacred revelation and which they called "the hedge around the law." And there is no respect in which Jesus stands out in the open, as the comrade and champion of fearless thought, and of those who are willing to take ventures and to launch their soul's interest on the ocean of God, so much as in his avowed conviction that the truth, instead of being a treasure to be guarded, is capital to be used. It is a means of service, an instrument of life, something invested for the sake of its returns in character, in welfare, and in growth.

The radical fact which comes to view in the situation of Christ's time, the contrast of view between himself and the Jewish rabbis, is the same which follows human history, along the line of intellectual progress and religious development, as a fissure in the rock, growing more wide and apparent; and in the field of religion it is a fact which becomes everywhere vital and significant, calling upon men to see clearly and to make their choice. The truth which we call the truth of revelation is either a deposit to be sacredly guarded, a tradition to be handed down intact; or else it is the truth which finds contact with all truth that comes to light in human experience — truth to be used and trusted, to be risked in the ventures which life demands as it moves on. Revelation is either something whose supreme test is its power to remain unchanged and unchanging — a static reality; or else it is something whose supreme test is its power to fructify life, to deepen and enhance its values, to give life significance as it keeps growing on — in a word, its power to prove a living and dynamic reality.

The Jewish rabbis took the static view ; Jesus took the dynamic view. The Roman church, consistently and tenaciously, holds to the static view. It has an infallible tradition, an infallible church to guard that tradition, and an infallible head to interpret the tradition. It cannot change. And yet, in spite of itself, it has changed.

The Protestant church struggles between the static and the dynamic views. Never in any formal way committed to the theory of revelation and truth as a growth in human experience, a talent to be given to the bankers, it is forced nevertheless, by its own inherent principle, to commit itself to that conception, or else fall back into the position of the Roman church from which it emerged. There is no middle ground; and the tremendous significance of what is going on in the world of Protestantism today is seen in this double current, sweeping a part of Protestantism back, and a part onward toward the open sea. It is therefore a question of serious moment with us, whether we are willing to move onward, out of the quiet harbor, into the deep sea, where there will be only the ocean around us and the sky above.

Now, in a time of hesitation and of indecision over an issue so grave as this, it is perfectly natural and perfectly right that men everywhere should ask the question — and they will ask it with seriousness and concern precisely to the degree that the faith and the religious life has consequence in their eyes: If the truth of revelation is not the absolute, final, and authoritative thing we have supposed it to be, then what ground have we to stand upon, what security for the life of the spirit?

As a partial answer to this question I ask you to note that this was precisely the question which the man with the one talent was tacitly asking. He was far the most careful and cautious man of the three. He said: "This talent is so precious and sacred that I must take no risks with it. I must incur no chance of loss. I must not speculate with it. I must not let it get out into the currents of secular life. I must give it back to my lord when he returns." And that seems at first a most laudable attitude — this cautious, reverent mood; this desire to be faithful to his trust; this controlling fear of loss or waste, the dread of any impairment to the trust committed. And, when the day of reckoning came, with pardonable pride he said : "Lord, here is thine own. This is the identical golden coin you put into my hands when you went away." The other men could not say that at all. The golden coins given to them had been merged in the great currents of trade. At that moment, soiled, abraded, they may have been the counters of any transaction whatsoever. They could not say : "Here, Lord, is thine own ;" they could only say: "I traded with thy talents, and lo, here are five more; here are two more."

But when the man came with his one, unused coin, just as bright and new and untouched as when the master went on his journey, he was confronted with the indignant question: "Why did you not put my money to the bankers ?" And his answer, if it betrayed a timid and cautious soul, was nevertheless perfectly sincere and consistent : "I was afraid to take the risk of losing what was not my own."

And this is the evident defense of anyone in io THE INVESTMENT OF TRUTH

times past or present, who feels constrained to maintain the static or unchanging view of truth and revelation as the human guide. It was the defense of the rabbis. They could have said to Moses : "Here is thy law unchanged. We have watched over it and defended it through these weary years. It has suffered no abrasion or impairment. Not one jot or one tittle is unobserved."

It is also the splendid bulwark of the Roman church. Through all these years that church has stubbornly maintained what it believes to be an unbroken and unchanging tradition, and at the final accounting it hopes to say: "Here, Lord, is thine own."

But, in the light of the parable, and in the light of the mind of Christ as reflected in the parable, is it worth while to be able to say that? What if the Jewish rabbi could say: "Here is the law unchanged, unchanging, sacred" — if the maintenance of that legal tradition meant human oppression or impoverishment because of its failure to get into vital and organic connection with life ? Jesus had to break a hundred legal traditions in order to liberate life itself. It is said that Cromwell made every mistake known to military strategy, and yet won his battles ; and that is the great test of generalship — to win battles. Likewise, the test of law, commandment, truth, is that it shall strengthen and support and fructify life. And it was over the broken shards of ancient tradition that the bleeding feet of Jesus trod out a new highway into life. The letter of the law was killing men, and it needed the

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revelation of its spirit to give them life. There was needed that transfer from the static to the dynamic field which is so perfectly forecast in the words of Paul, who, under the spell of the spirit of Christ, was an emancipated man. "If," he said, "there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law."

Likewise, if the static view of things could vitalize and move the world, then the static view might be preferable. If you could formulate a truth, or frame a law, or establish a tradition, or organize a church, which should remain unchanged, and still elevate and fructify the life of man, then recourse might be had to that alternative. If you could have the absolute safety which comes from keeping truth out of circulation, and at the same time the gain, the increase, the accumulated dividends which accrue from pouring it into the channels of human thought and activity; if you could only say, "Lord, here is thy very own," and at the same time present the accrued dividends — then might you find justification for the man with the one talent. But that situation has never yet arisen. And when the choice is to be made on the side of gain and growth through venture, and the side of infallible certainty and security, Christ, through his parable, delivers the determining vote in favor of the man who dares.

Let us now come still closer to the question by means of which Christ condemned the man who did not dare. "Wherefore gavest thou not my money into the bank, and I at my coming should have required it with interest?" How does that apply to truth and revelation, and to the great spiritual issues of life? How does it answer the great, hungry questions of the soul that men are forever asking?

We may get help on this question by recalling first what happens to our money when we send it to the banker. Our first act is to deposit the funds we have And this word "deposit" is an interesting word in this connection, because it is just the term which we find so often on the lips of the rabbis and legalists, the defenders of the static view of things. They are accustomed to speak of the sacred "deposit" of truth. Revelation is a "deposit" — that is, something given and settled in place, as a layer of soil is deposited on the surface of the earth. It is something essentially fixed and irremovable, something which has come to stay.

"Deposit" is also one of our current banking terms. When we place funds to our credit in the bank, in a certain theoretical and verbal sense they are deposited there, and we expect to find them there when we make demand. But in the actual economic and financial sense they are not deposited at all. A bank is not an eleemosynary institution to keep your ducats and mine from getting tarnished and stolen. It stands as the great intermediary between supply and demand. What, in bank parlance, you have deposited is swiftly diverted into the channels of industry. These countless deposits are useless in their merely deposited and safeguarded form. They are useful only as they move on into the endless energy of the world's life. The final destiny of all wealth is to be consumed. And the real justification for diverting portions of the world's wealth from immediate consumption lies in the fact that wealth turned back into capital will produce more wealth, and thus eventually vary and enrich the satisfactions of human desire. So there the banker stands — an intermediary between supply and demand ; between gold and silver ; railways, buildings, and steamships ; schools and colleges; art, music, travel; food and drink — all the instruments of life on the one hand, and life itself on the other. The money you deposit will never come back to you in identical form. It has gone coursing on its way toward some enrichment of life. But when it comes back to you it comes with increase of lifevalue and satisfaction.

Let us return to the parable of Jesus and the use he made of his fruitful metaphor. He was talking about truth and religion, about revelation and the spiritual values of life, and he was speaking to men who made a specialty of protecting these spiritual values. He said, without shrinking or hesitation, that the accrediting of truth, the demonstration of spiritual values, is out in the open field of life. This truth, which you call religious truth, must be deposited, not as a stratum of tradition, but as capital in the bank. It must be broken up, and applied to the countless needs and industries of life. It must find its credentials in its workability. What it can do must be the final test of what it is.

We have been so long accustomed to think of religious truth as a special kind of truth, as something off by itself, a kind of sacred tradition to be guarded by a special institution and a special body of men, that it comes a little difficult to press this parable of Christ's home to its real application, and to feel sure that all this great accumulation of religious truth must become the working capital of the world's life; that it must be broken up, and in a way lose its identity as religious truth, in order that it may flow into the current of the whole world's life and thought. It must have no credentials of its own, and no fear of making ventures., or of testing what it is itself by those disclosures and experiences which come to the world along avenues which are not labeled religious.