Glad tidings; a selection from the sermons of Reuen Thomas, pastor of Harvard church, Brookline

Foreword

In presenting this volume of sermons, allow me to say that they are intended primarily for the members and congregation of Dr. Thomas' beloved church, many of whom have expressed a strong desire to retain in permanent form some words of their former pastor. They have been published without any revision, just as the manuscripts were found and as they were spoken from the Harvard Church pulpit.

L. C. Thomas.

Contents

I The Divine Manifested in the Human . . 3

II Our Garden of Eden 17

III The Resurrection a Revelation of Man's

II

I can believe that an intelligent child reading this narrative of Eden would be intensely delighted with it. There is something about it which captivates the imagination. It is all vivid and concrete. There is nothing abstract. It is not a record of virtues and qualities, but of man and woman, of animals, birds, trees, rivers, landscape, and so on. It has about it those concrete features which make Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress as interesting to a child as to a man.

Now it is possible so to interpret Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress as to make it ridiculous and even disgusting. You have only to get a dry-as-dust mind, mathematical, logical, literal, matter-of-fact, no poetical quality in it, no imagination, and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress would appear silly and absurd. It is a work of genius of a very high order. From a literary point of view, it is remarkable for its crisp, clear Saxon speech. But this dry-as-dust mind sees nothing in it but a silly story of a fool of a man who left his home on a wild-goose chase for an imaginary Utopia. Precisely so is it witli these earliest Hebrew narratives when they do not accomplish what they were intended to do — to i8 wake up our imagination, and by waking up our imagination, wake up every other of our mental faculties into vigorous life.

Without further preliminary skirmishing, I want, if I can, to suggest how this earliest of all Biblical pictures is an accurate representation of our human life — yours and mine. We all of us begin with our garden of Eden — in other words, we begin with our sheltered home life, where for quite a time we are kept from everything which will harm us. We are innocent. We don't know much. The tree of life is there in that garden. Daily we eat of it. But there is another tree, the tree of knowledge — knowledge of good and of evil. How much is represented by this tree I need hardly say. But I would ask you to admire the superb genius which into this Eden picture has put these two trees. The tree of life is not the tree of knowledge and the tree of knowledge is not tlie tree of life. Life is profounder and deeper than mere knowledge. Knowledge is necessary to supply life with ideas and to stimulate feelings. But so long as we are in this sheltered garden-of-Eden state, we are incapable of using certain kinds of knowledge. And so the tree is a forbidden tree. A child has to learn obedience not simply by doing, but by not doing. In the natural order of discipline law comes before gospel, or either they come together, the ''thou shalt not'' and the "thou shalt." A child has to learn that there are some things it must not touch and not have and not do. And there is no other way of training the will. All this is matter of common experience and it is all suggested in this garden-of-Eden picture. The tree of life is not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

''But why,'' asks one, ''does this tree bear tw^o sorts of fruit?" Because knowledge is relative to personality. That w^hich is good for a grown man to know may only be poison to a boy or girl. That which is good for us at one time in life may be dangerous and demoralizing at another time. Money which will not hurt the disciplined man who has worked for it, may ruin a young man who has had no such discipline. Always the tree of knowledge is of good and evil. It cannot be otherwise. Because knowledg*e may be used to expand the mind and enrich the life, or it may be used to liberate the mind from wholesome restrictions and thus to pollute the life. In distinguishing between life and mere knowledge and in making the tree of knowledge to yield good and evil fruits, this penman shows genius, I should personally prefer the word inspiration.

We go a step further and there w^e meet with temptation, put in the concrete form of the Old Serpent to express the subtle way in which temptation comes. A better term could not have been found. The serpent with its graceful convolutions, its rainbow-tinted skin, its restless, wicked eye — what other figure could have been found so adequately to represent the nature of temptation ? Just as a man naturally shrinks from a serpent, so when temptation first comes to him in concrete form a man naturallv fears. There is in us an instinct of

I aversion to evil, but that instinct is not enough. We need something else — discipHne and training to bring the instinct into will-power. Into the sphere of every life, in some form or other, the Old Serpent comes. True to life is this record. The Old Serpent, in the form of some man or woman, with plausible speech and insinuating manner, begins by suggesting doubt. That is always the first step. **Yea, hath God said. Ye shall not eat?'' I am surprised! There must be some mistake. A tree of knowledge and not to eat of it! Is not all knowledge good? Does it not open the eyes? *'Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.'' "Ye shall not surely die!" You have misunderstood what was said. ''God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil." The same old devil, you see, as we have to-day. The same suggestion of doubt, the same exciting of curiosity, the same appeal to personal pride. The same old devil ! In whatever guise he comes, "his craft and power are great," as Luther puts it. Insinuation, the suggestion of doubt, the exciting of curiosity, the appeal to personal pride. "I wouldn't, if I were you, be under such bonds, such fanatical limitations, and such prejudices! There must be a mistake somewhere. Whoever heard of knowledge corrupting? 'A tree to be desired to make one wise !' " Then as now, it is exactly the way in which innocence is drawn into guilt. There is no new sin and no new temptation; it is all as old as Adam and Eden.

Then our narrative goes on and tells us of the fall from innocence and the fall from faith into doubt and then into distrust of God and then into fear and then into self-accusation and mutual recrimination. The world is no longer delightful. Service is no longer agreeable. Eden is lost.

Now I know that to talk of the fall of man in these days when evolution has come to be a kind of dominant thought in science and literature is to close up the ears of some people against all further attention. And therefore I am about to make a dogmatic statement (though I believe in evolution and work under its influence). But this I will say without any reserve — That whoever lives in our time and looks into the common facts of life and does not recognize the fall of man, must be an idiot.

It seems to me that there is scarcely anything else to be found in the newspapers which most people seem to read than accumulated and unnumbered proofs of the fall of man. The other day a very distinguished scientist was speaking in London and he used these words: '*It is easy to say (ex-cathedra) the story of the Fall is untrue and to receive applause from the unthinking for doing so But the traditions of the Fall and the facts of the early history of the race are not annihilated by an autocratic deliverance or a piece of rhetoric. The knowledge of good and evil came to be the possession of the race when man merged out of a paradise of innocency and the beginning of a sense of degradation, not previously felt when in the lower stages." The progress of the race has never been in a straight line. Its history has been one of fall and recovery over and over again. Let us stick resolutely to common facts of everyday life and we shall get the most illuminating expositions of our biologic and theologic ideas.

Here is a man who was nurtured in a very Eden of a home. His father was a consistent and intelligent Christian man, his mother was an unusually good and wise woman. He has no religion worth anything. He chooses for his companions men inferior in every way to his own father and women not anyway, in mind and heart, comparable to his own mother. Is that man our illustration of the fall of man, or not ? I say, yes. And there are multitudes of such cases. Evolution, if it meant what the generality of people who learn their theology and science and philosophy from the newspapers and the ten-cent magazines think it means, would involve that every son should be a better man than his father; that each generation of men should be in every way ahead of the preceding generation. Is it so? We know it is not. We read the pages of history and what do we find? The garden-of-Eden story over and over and over again. Nation after nation sinking by its corruptions into weakness, losing moral fiber, losing courage, attacked and defeated by more vigorous and less civilized peoples.

That which we see on the broad scale of national life we see over and over again in families and in individuals. If only we will wake up our imagination to open wider our intellectual perceptions, it will be plain to us that in this garden-of-Eden picture we have one of the most complete representations of our human life as it is lived before us in our own day. Wherever there has been an ideal home life, with those virtues and graces which have made Anglo-Saxondom what it has been; wherever there has been a home with a cheerful piety, living faith in God, high integrity in conduct, an atmosphere which was charged with all pure and tonic elements contributing to mental and spiritual health — there has been our modern garden of Eden.

In that garden God and man are represented in communion. Man has no slavish fear of God. He is not afraid of the divine because he is not conscious of being in rebellion against it. Not till the man and woman set up on their own account in self-willed rebellion does fear come in — fear of the divine and a desire to hide away from it. Is it not precisely so in our human life? Wherever there is a family which has fallen from that beautiful ideal, there is a lost Eden. Wherever there is a family in which there is no recognition of the divine, a family whose atmosphere is not charged with that reverence which always abides in man as God made him, there is reenacted the fall of man. Wherever there is an individual man or woman whose life is planned and ordered on the ignoring of the divine, there is evidence of the fall of man. Wherever a man leaves the higher for the lower, the nobler for the baser, spirit for flesh — there is the fall of man reenacted. There is no denying these facts and no getting clear of these inferences.

It is customary in our day to say : *'Oh, yes, I believe in the fall of man, but it was a fall upward from a state of innocence to a state of knowledge and new experience. It was progress therefore/' I am not going to deny that there is a sense in which those words are true. But if it be suggested that there was no other road to progress but that, I join issue. And I do it on the strength of the illumination there is in the facts of our common life.

Here are two young men. I have them before my mind's eye. They are not inventions. They are living facts. One keeps the home feeling, the home reverences. He goes out to his life's work. He keeps his integrity. He maintains his self-respect. He is specially careful as to his associates. Of the tree of knowledge he has discrimination enough to pluck only the good fruit. He resolutely keeps, I repeat, his self-respect, his integrity, and his purity. He inserts himself into the company of the faithful because he knows that only by faith can a man live his best life. Is that man less of a man than this other to whom in a moment I will refer? Look at his form and look at his face. Listen to the character tones in his voice. These tell the story of a pure and intelligent manliness. This man is not fallen. He has held his integrity. He has been in unbroken communion with the divine.

The other began in Eden. He listened to the tempter, as Faust to Mephistopheles. All those plausible reasonings to which I have alluded, he dallied with, until in the place of faith there came doubt; and in the place of confidence, fear; and in the place of quietude of spirit, unrest; and in the place of love, lust and aversion and hatred. He was outside his garden of Eden. On God and his guidance in conscience he had turned his back. Is he a better man than the other? He knows more of a sort, but he has lost more. He has lost his self-respect, his sense of integrity, his ability of saying an immediate and resolute. No! to Mephistopheles when he comes around. And, as a consequence, he has lost his faith in men — for it is almost impossible to lose one's faith in God and keep it in men. If anyone should say that this last man has an}i;hing good in wisdom or knowledge or feeling or will which the first has not — I challenge proof. I will tell you what he has not that the other has. He has not so clean a soul. He has not so restful an eye. He has not so honest a voice. He has not so resolute a will. He has not so agreeable a feeling of self-respect. The one man has nothing to cover up. The other has several cupboards in which there are skeletons and he is afraid lest some one should find the key and open the doors. This garden-of-Eden story is almost photographically correct of the way in which every man who falls, falls. It is a picture for all time and for every place. If men would only read the Bible in the light of the facts of human life with which we are familiar, the question of its inspiration would be asked no more. How do I know this book is inspired? How? It knows me better than I know myself. It knows human nature more accurately and minutely and profoundly, at a deeper depth, than any poet or any philosopher or any psychologist I ever met with. That is my answer for myself. Of that I have not even the remnant of a doubt.

And so, let us each to himself apply our theme by asking: Am I fallen? Have I lost my Eden? Have I lapsed from a former spirituality of mind? Am I less desirous of using the means of communion with the divine than once I was? Is my faith in Christ's service a little more shaky than once? Is my zeal a little cooler? Have I lost my first love? Has my will to good been fortified by a persistent submission to the divine will? Do I know what it is to rest in the Lord and wait patiently for his working out his great designs? What church am I a member of — is it the church of Laodicea ? When I compare my present self with a former self, have I fallen? Do I in my own personal history illustrate this old patriarchal allegory? The Bible was never intended to be interpreted by unspiritualized mind. It has an inner sense w^hich appeals to the spirit in man. And many a man says: "I don't believe in your garden-of-Eden story," when he himself in his own person is a living proof of its truth. Our great Teacher has told us positively that he sometimes spoke in parables for the very purpose of hiding the truth from men, whose rejection of it would only have added to their guilt. And so, for aught we know, our Bible may have been constructed on the principle of disclosing its inner spiritual meaning to all spiritualized minds, while to others it is only a perplexing and

^1 mysterious history of an obstinate and self-willed people.

Be that as it may, in the light of these suggestions, does there not come into that beautiful passage I oftentimes use at the close of our evening service, a new feeling and idea ? "Unto him who is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen."

THE RESURRECTION A REVELATION OF MAN'S CAPABILITIES

He preached Jesus and the resurrection. — Acts

17: 18.

I

Ill

THE RESURRECTION A REVELATION OF MAN'S CAPABILITIES

The Church of Christ exists for the sake of maintaining in the world great truths, rooted in great facts. Once let go of the facts, and the truths for which they stand will evaporate into thin air. Of these facts, none can be greater than that of the resurrection from the dead of Jesus of Nazareth.

The evidences of that resurrection were such that the fact became the foundation of the Church, the inspiration of the apostles, the illumination of life itself. The resurrection produced such a change in the character of the apostles that, from being timid, discouraged, and perplexed men, they became unsubduable and unconquerable heroes. How immeasurably important this fact is, may be gathered from the language of St. Paul : "If Christ hath not been raised ... ye are yet in your sins. Then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ have perished.''

Apart from the resurrection, the life of Jesus of Nazareth is unintelligible. The resurrection gives it finish, completeness, and unity. Why should the innocent suffer with the guilty? The resurrection of Jesus gives the answer. As we see the life of

Jesus now, it is a whole, not a fragment. The argument from the beautiful wholeness of the life is one of the subtlest, but one of the most convincing arguments for the validity of the several parts which go to make the whole. Whenever you find anything in the parts which harmonizes with the whole, you may rest assured of its genuineness.

I do not propose to w^aste your time this morning in reminding you of anything which sceptics have advanced why they should not believe in our Lord's resurrection. It is never of the slightest use offering truth to people who do not want to receive it. Whenever there is hunger, bread is appreciated. Wherever there is thirst, water is valued. Whenever men have an appetite for the *^bread of life,'* they will find it and it will taste good. To me the resurrection of our Lord is a great and glorious fact, full of revelation which we all need. The New Testament presents that fact in the most impressive? way, because in the most literal way, the historical way; or, as St. John puts it: ''That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you." The New Testament presents that fact in the most impressive honest men, who gave their lives in attestation of their honesty.

But these facts are simple and profound. They l,^elong, thus, to the child and the man. They have depths in them which we need to fathom. No fact is simple, so as to be completely understood all at once. The word, ''Man," is a very simple word. "There is a man," is a very simple utterance, which everv child can understand. And vet that word.

''Man/' is so complex that all philosophy and all theology and all that is valuable in biology is occupied in exploring it. And so, when we assert the resurrection of Jesus, we are introduced to an event which has more suggestion in it and more meaning for you and me than almost any other fact one could name. One of the sure signs of a man having yielded himself to be led and guided by the Holy Spirit of God is this, that these Scriptures become increasingly illuminating to him. They are like springs that never run dry, but supply fresh, cool water every day.

Now as we look on, this Easter morning, at the resurrection fact, the first thought that suggests itself is this : That the resurrection is a revelation of man's capabilities. The truth about man and his destiny can come only through a perfect life. I need not stay to argue that. If you think over it long enough, the statement will verify itself. Christ's life, therefore, is the only adequate and authoritative revelation as to man and the possibilities of his nature ever given to the world. Respecting every other life lived here, death seemed to have dominion over it. It seemed to end. This life of Jesus did not end. It continued. It was manifested under other and higher conditions. The identical Jesus reappeared, and yet clothed with new powers and possibilities. The identical Jesus, yet reembodied. The identical Jesus, yet no longer imprisoned, as we are, in this ''body of humiliation." His life did not end. It kept on and on and under higher and nobler conditions. He could make himself visible. He could retire into invisibility. There was a marvelous change in him and that change was a prophecy of what all his disciples would be beyond the event w^e call death.

This revelation inspired them for their work. It took away the fear of "death. To be absent from the body would be to be as the Lord. That made them rather court martyrdom than fear it. Whenever you see a change as great as this come over men, something must be found to account for it — something sufficient. All the evangelists and apostles give us about the events associated with the resurrection of Jesus is suflficient to account for this marvelous change in feeling and thought and life. Man does not die when he disappears from our view. He lives on in a new and more glorious embodiment. "If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body." There are hidden capabilities in man which never develop into actualities so long as he is confined within the limitations of this mortal body. Even science teaches us that.

One illustration will suffice. Our power of hearing is confined within a certain range of aerial vibrations. Above and below that range we cannot hear. There are sounds in creation far more exquisite than we ever hear, above and below the range to which we are limited. There is ravishing music which we have not the competence to detect. Above and below the limit of our hearing faculty all is, so far as we are concerned, silence. Death means the removal of these limitations. It meant that in the case of Tesus of Nazareth. And doubtless it will mean something similar in the experience of all who are Christ's.

A legitimate inference from all this seems to me to be that in regard to the question of personal immortality the Christian disciple has an immense advantage. So far as he receives his divine Master as an infallible teacher on life questions, he has full assurance of the continuance of his life into higher conditions. They who doubt and distrust have not, and cannot have, that full assurance. The utmost that mere reasoning has ever attained to has been a high probability. But Paul the apostle had full assurance and John the divine had full assurance and the impulsive and heroic Peter had full assurance. And all men in all ages who have done the will of Christ and have made a full surrender of themselves to be ruled by Christ, have partaken of this full assurance. Our divine Master brought life and immortality to light. It was in twilight before he brought it into broad daylight and made it a constituent part of the gospel message. The resurrection of Christ was a revelation of the capabilities which lie slumbering in the nature of man.

In the second place, the resurrection of Jesus was a revelation of the power of God. This is the aspect under which it is presented to us in several memorable utterances of the apostles. Let us recall one or two : "That I may know him and the power of his resurrection,'' was the apostle Paul's aspiration. And in that most suggestive and meaty of all his letters — the one to the Ephesians — he writes of ''that working of the strength of his might which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead and made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly places."

When I have been troubled in mind and heart over the fearful cruelties which have been perpetrated in this world by violent and merciless men, a certain word of our Lord has often come to my memory, and out of it I have got no end of comfort. It is this : "Be not afraid of them who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do." Has it ever occurred to you how much of the wickedness of life is made possible through our being associated for a certain number of years with a material body ? There is a limit to all these crimes. When the old Palestinian Jews crucified Jesus, they had done their utmost and worst. When men martyred Peter and Paul, they had done their worst. There was **no more that they could do." When I read the history of wars and all the diabolic cruelties attending them, such a passage as this I have read comes to my relief and saves my faith in God. And the resurrection of Jesus, with all its attendant circumstances, is an enormous comfort to my staggering faith, for, though it does not clear away the fog which hangs over much of our human life, it reveals that to all forms of diabolic cruelty there are limitations which are soon reached. There is an end. There is an "after this." There is only so much which bad men can do.

Our divine Master Had lived within the limitations of our human life. He had endured all those humiliations which depress and degrade sensitive souls. He had been treated with the most supercilious contempt. He had known what it was to be betrayed by a Judas. He had seen a fickle populace, on whom he had rained blessings, turn upon him in disdain: crying, '^HosannaT' one day, and "Crucify him !'' the next. He had been mocked by Herod ; scourged by Pilate ; bedecked with the laughing malignity of the thorn crown; spat upon by a ribald soldiery — all the most dreadful human experiences had been his. But it was all over. He had proved that all the combined powers of wickedness were weak- — contemptibly weak — compared with the power of God. He was lifted into a state beyond the power of persecution. Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, Pilate, Herod, Caiaphas — no longer could these touch him. He was beyond their power. All his weary life was vindicated. He was proved to be what he asserted himself tO' be.

If we had no gospel of the resurrection to preach, we should have no gospel at all. If Calvary ended the life of Jesus, over it would hang an impenetrable cloud whose Stygian darkness would turn our earth into a hell. The resurrection of our divine Master is an imperious necessity to belief in all and everything which went before it. In no single fact of it was the life of Jesus a fanaticism or a mistake. It is an evidence that there is a power stronger than disease, stronger than death, stronger than hell, stronger than all the confederated diabolisms of evil men. I don't wonder that bad men should want death to be the end of all things, because ''after that they have no more that they can do.''

In the third place: It is necessary for us to recognize that the triumph of our divine Master is the triumph of all who are united with him by a living faith.

This idea is so repeatedly cropping up in the letters of St. Paul as to make us feel how valuable it was for him as a self-support in his work and as comforting and enheartening others. Jesus rose not for himself alone. He never did anything for himself alone. He rose and reappeared for the sake of his disciples. "The last enemy that shall be abolished is death," wrote Paul. He had learnt that from the risen Christ. He had learnt what death meant — departure, change, liberation, enfranchisement, exaltation. The resurrection had, as it were, entered into him. Therefore he writes : ''If then ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above."