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Front matter

Class Book.

Copyright^?.

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT;

Contents

Page

XVI. The Cross, a Symbol of Obedience 67

XVII. Beyond Peradventure .... 70 XVIII. No Compromise with Tyranny 73

II

XXV. The Early Morning Outfit

of Prayer 101

XXVI. Gifts for Gain 105

XXVII. Good Cheer for Darkest

Hours 108

XXVIII. The Broken Heart 116

XXIX. Tenacity of Christian Purpose 127

XXX. Giving Conscience the Benefit of the Doubt 131

XXXI Numbering our Days 136

CONTENTS

Page

XXXII. System and Sentiment in

Giving 141

XXXIII. The Greater of Two Great

Victories 144

XXXIV. Gratification and Gratitude 148 XXXV. Intercession for the III

Deserving 152

XXXVI. Slander — Its Methods, Motives and Results 154

XXXVII. The Foolish Formalist 160

XXXVIII Two Kinds of Religion, and

the Better of the Two . 165 XXXIX Heart-Reception of Jesus . 174

XL. An Old Man's Prayer 189

XLI. Faith's Tranquility 193

XLII. Forward 197

XLIII. Free to go Back, but Liking

Better to go on 203

COMMON SENSE, FAITH AND IGNORANCE

So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; and should sleep and rise night and day; and the seed should spring and grow up, he hnoweth not how. Mark 4: 26, 27.

The acting out of true religion, as we find it unfolded in one of our Lord's parables, is made up in about equal parts of Common-Sense, Faith and Ignorance. The husbandman "casts seed into the ground." That is his common-sense. This done, he "sleeps and rises night and day," in full confidence that the seed will "spring and grow up." That is his faith. But, it is added, he "knoweth not how." That is his ignorance.

For the doer of the things that most need to be done, this "how" is a question which may either be ignored or the consideration of which may be indefinitely postponed. Be she the veriest "fool" as to the chemistry of combustion, the housemaid "errs" not in the boiling of her tea-kettle. Be the husbandman ever so unversed in the philosophy of plant-growth, he is yet at no loss as to the plowing of his field or the sowing of his seed. He is not that other "fool" he would surely be were he either to decline or delay his farm-work unless he first have fully explained to him the scientific secret of seed-sprouting, stalk-shooting and ear-filling. Prompt to do his stint, he trusts with no distraction of doubt that his silent and unseen Co-Worker will do His own full share of their joint undertaking; that He will see to it that soil and sun and shower and season do each its appointed task. Caring less for causes than for results, so the outcome be sure, he will not stumble at the mystery of the cause. Accepting the established facts of farming experience, he goes cheerily through the whole round of summer toil, not puzzling himself about those hidden links which join his own work with the greater work of God.

As is the domain of earth, so, also, is the Kingdom of Heaven. The husbandman knows well what his farm duties are. We know just as well what our Christian duties are. We know what it is, first of all, to treat one another in a Christian way ; to do to others and to all others as we would have them do to us ; what it is to put envy away from us and to rejoice in the gifts, acquirements and successes of others as we would have them rejoice in our own; what it is to lend a helping heart to those in sorrow and a helping hand to those in need. We know what it is to love, pray for and forgive our enemies. Equally well do we know that besides these duties toward our fellow-men, we are to seek for a nearer acquaintance with God by diligent study of His Word and by prayer. We know that we are to pray in our closets and that we are to use all social and public helps of Christ's appointment.

FAITH AND IGNORANCE 3

All these are just as plain duties of the Christian as were those in the parable of the husbandman. Are we practising these duties? We cannot but be growing Christians if we are. And these duties any Christian may do and be wholly ignorant of technical theology. No man who wishes to come to Christ need lose a moment's sleep because he cannot understand the new birth or reconcile foreordination with free-will. We may have the full and blessed benefit of prayer and know nothing of its philosophy. We may plant and water and gather precious fruit in the Lord's vineyard, yet know not how it is that God quickens the seed and gives the increase. Enough for us that He does bless our labor for Him and for souls; enough that He does bless to us the Word and prayer and the sacraments and fellowship of His church. We may not see it from day to day, but if we are doing our part faithfully we may rest in assured confidence that God is doing His, and that we are, therefore, both growing to the stature of perfect men in Christ and gathering fruit unto life eternal.

II

A SURE GUIDE AND GOAL

Looking unto Jesus, the captain and perfecter of our faith. Heb. 12: 1.

When the Arctic explorer, Nansen, announced to the crew of the Fram his determination to quit the ship for good and all and push his way northward alone over the ice-fields, Petersen begged that he might accompany his captain on the journey.

"It will be no child's play," said Nansen. "The journey will be one not only of severe hardship, but of great danger."

"I would not think," replied Petersen, "of taking it alone, but with you along, I know it will be all right."

The world's best framed code of morals leaves us stranded on the way to our strenuously sought goal of a perfect life as discouragingly as the Pram halted Nansen on his way to the Pole. In this crisis of our need, Jesus appears and encourages our quest with the assurance that, if we but follow in His steps, He will make our seeking a success.

But first He would have us consider well what following in His steps means — the living by us of the same self-denying, cross-bearing life that He Himself lived here on the earth — a life of equal love to our neighbor and of supreme love

FAITH AND IGNORANCE 5

to God ; the doing to others, in all our social and business relations, as we would have them do to us; the refusing to put fame, power, wealth or selfish ease or advantage before love ; the suffering of loss, if need be, in the maintaining of this high standard ; meekness under wrongs done to us ; forgiveness for the wrong done, and for the evil a return only of good; obedience to whatever it be God's will that we should either do or suffer.

To live such a life as this in such a world as this Jesus would at the outset have us understand is no "child's play." On the contrary, that it means hardness to be endured, dangerously misleading by-paths to be shunned, rising inclinations to turn aside or turn back to be steadfastly resisted; a fight against disloyal doubt to be fought in right soldierly fashion, and fought to a triumphant finish.

In a crowd the little child holds tight to its father's hand. In the heart of a forest the traveller fears losing sight of his guide. Like the child and the traveller we are all beset by dangers, to defend us from which we need a higher wisdom than our own. For those who believe in either one Supreme Being or many superior beings, it is the greatest of comforts to know that He or they are both ever near them and ever able and willing to defend them from all that is evil and bring them to all that is good.

It is in this natural and universal feeling that idolatry, or sight-worship, has its root and, to a certain extent, its justification. If I can see the God I worship, then I know that He sees me ; that He takes note of my homage, beholds my offerings and hears my prayers. Better, a thousand times better, the devout idolater than the no-God atheist or the know-nothing-of-God agnostic. For idol-worship is still worship; a humble acknowledgment of dependence on divine wisdom and strength. As much better than atheism or agnosticism as a living tree, however disfigured by unsightly excrescences, is better than a dead tree, however tall and shapely; better as crudest petroleum, which may yet be refined to brilliancy, is better than deadly gas, however scientifically prepared, which extinguishes any light over which it is poured. Be it that idol-worship is but a pitiful mockery of the soul's deepest need, it is still a constant reminder of that unsatisfied need. Such a point of union is thus established between polytheism and Christianity as easily accounts for the welcome which the honestly inquiring idolworshipper has gladly given to those new and trustworthy answers of Revelation which give true scope and direction to the hitherto blind impulses and aspirations of his religious nature.

What the hardships and perils of that Arctic expedition from the Fram would prove to be, Nansen himself could no more tell than could his would-be follower. It would be an equal risk for them both.

In Jesus we have an experienced as well as a

A SURE GUIDE AND GOAL 7

faithful guide. He knows the way; is Himself the way. He knows our need; just what strength for whatever weakness, what support under whatever burden of care, what succor for whatever kind of temptation, what comfort for whatever sorrow, what courage for whatever disheartening fear. More than guide, He is also a companion ; eating with us the bread of whatever trial, tasting with us the cup of whatever affliction. He not only feels for us; He feels with us. Hence the calm and fearless trust with which we go on to meet whatever the future may have in store for us, in assured confidence that we shall be welcomed, at last, to the joy, in heaven, of our faithfully followed Leader and Guide.

Ill

NEIGHBORLINESS, NEXT TO GODLINESS

First, be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. Matt. 5 : 23, 24.

Wholly taken up with the decent semblance of religion, formalism ignores morality. Fancying that God is pleased with the shows of outward worship, the over-devout formalist feels himself at liberty to treat his fellow-men with a rudeness or injustice which upright, though perhaps prayerless persons would scorn to commit. Hence that unseemly yoking together of strenuous piety with sickening depravity which our Lord so aptly describes as "straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel."

The men thus satirized by Christ were a set of religionists who maintained that a man might keep the first table of the law so punctiliously that he need not keep the second table at all; might serve God so devoutly that he could without blame hate men as cordially as he pleased; who imagined that they could so hoodwink God by bribes and flattery that He would care little whether or how much they abused their neighbors. Making the law of no effect through their traditional glosses and false interpretations, where their lives did not fit God's pattern they changed

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the pattern to fit their lives — strangling the law under show of embracing it.

In strongest opposition to these Pharisaic notions the Bible everywhere puts morality before what is generally termed piety; doing right before praying; duty to our fellow-men before direct duties to God. Even in the Old Testament God made it to be clearly understood that He cares nothing for religious forms in themselves. "I have," He says, "forms and offerings enough of my own, if that were what I wanted. The beasts of the forest are mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. If I were hungry I would not tell thee. . . Offer unto the Lord the sacrifices of righteousness." "Seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." "Make all right with your fellow-men, and after that I will make all right with you."

In the New Testament the teaching is the same; only if possible more full and emphatic. It was by such preaching that John prepared the people to receive Christ. When told of Christ's coming and how important it was that they should be ready to receive Him, the people "asked Him saying, What shall we do then?"

"He that hath two coats let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat let him do likewise."

"Then came also publicans to be baptized and said to Him, Master, what shall we do ?"

"Exact no more than that which is appointed

you."

"And the soldiers likewise demanded of Him, saying, And what shall we do?"

"Do violence to no man, neither accuse any."

Thus was a pure and honorable morality the trumpet by which the coming of Jesus was heralded to the world.

Our Lord taught nothing more pointedly than that unneighborly acts are a complete bar to acceptable worship.

"First, be reconciled to thy brother." You have come bringing a gift to the altar of worship ; to render praise, offer thanksgiving, seek forgiveness for your sins, drop money into the Lord's treasury. Before bending your knees in adoration, singing your hymn or making your contribution, you think of some unrighted wrong done to a neighbor — unpaid debt, unfair bargain, rude discourtesy, tale-bearing, kindness repaid by neglect, pretext of injury received when you were yourself the injurer. What Jesus would have the very first sight of His altar do for you, the intended worshipper, is to quicken remembrance of wrongs which it has hitherto been convenient for you to forget. What would He have you do? Go on with your worship? No; "Leave there thy gift before the altar." Leave it before the altar, but do not put it on the altar. It is a defiled gift, and will not be accepted. Let the prayer go unsaid, the psalm go unsung, the money stay awhile in thy purse. You have come to make your acknowledgments to God; but there are other ac-

NEIGHBORLINESS 11

knowledgments which are more important just now, and which He says you must make first or He will not accept those made to Himself. "First, be reconciled to thy brother." God wants the first table of the law kept, but not at the expense of the second. He would not suffer broken tables to be put into His ark nor to be brought into His sanctuary. Whole tables must be brought in or none. What is technically called "religion"; prayer, thanksgiving, confession, are good; but they are not good, they are worse than useless if disjoined from a high-toned, rght-minded, honorable treatment of our fellow-men. Unless wrong done to our neighbor be righted, devotion of whatever kind is of absolutely no account whatever in the sight of God. That wronged brother is also a child of God ; and would you as a father smile on the man who has done some grievous wrong to your child and who leaves the wrong unacknowledged? What would that be but to wink at the indignity and outrage?

It may be that some who are not Chrsitians are saying to themselves, "That is what I like; that is a comfort to me." I am glad if you like it and glad if it is a comfort to you ; although I did not say it for that, but because it is true. It is a comfort to any man that he is not mean, selfish, or underhanded in his treatment of his fellows. It is a comfort to be tenderly, honestly, nobly mindful of the rights, good name, prosperity, and happiness of one's neighbors. And there are men out of the church as well as in the church who have this stamp of nobility and honor.

We say to such men, You are on the right road ; but you have by no means completed your journey. You need to be devout towards God as well as upright towards men.

To the offender against morality Jesus does indeed say, "Put not thy gift on the altar." He does not say, "Take away from the altar thy gift." "Leave there thy gift before the altar and go thy way. First, be reconciled to thy brother" ; but there is a second; "Then come and offer thy

gift."

This explains in what sense morality is more important than piety. Here is an old stubble field, and I would sow it to wheat. Which is more important to be done first, sowing or plowing? Plowing, certainly, since without that the sowing would be labor lost. But I do not stop with the plowing. So Jesus says we must not stop with the strictest morality. If everything is right in the home, in the office, shop and store, in society, then I may go to Christ about my personal relations with Him. From the altar thus revisited I shall bear away the inward consolation of an accepted gift.

IV Fullest Accord In Warfare And Worship

The people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. Josh. 6:20.

And they were all with one accord, in one place. Acts 2:1.

In order to win the happiest success in Christian work, there must be both unity of action and freedom of action. After the walls of Jericho had fallen "the people went up into the city every man straight before him, and they took the city." They went up as one body. None stayed behind, none straggled, none shirked. Every man was in his place in the ranks — priest, officer and private ; each in his own place. It was not by a select and privileged few that the victory was won. The army moved with one purpose, as though it were one man animated by one spirit. Yet along with this oneness of purpose and spirit, there was complete personal liberty. All went up together, but every man went up "straight before him"; every man in his own path. Every man had both foot-room and elbow-room. The man was not sunk in the mass. Each soldier fought after his own fashion, and on his own individual responsibility — no crowding, no interference, no damaging criticism ; no saying of one to another, "You must grind your spear exactly as I grind mine and wield it exactly as I wield my own."

And shall one follower of Christ now say to another, "Come under my form of church-government ; fall in with my manner of worship and my mode of administering the ordinances, or I cannot recognize you as a fellow-disciple of the Master"? As fitly might the English at Sevastopol have said to their French allies, "We would like your help in the taking of this fortress, but we cannot allow you to have any hand in the business ; at least, we cannot give you any recognized place in the lines of investment and battle, unless you will consent to exchange your French gray for our English scarlet; unless you alter your Chassepot rifles into our Enfields ; unless on your banners you emblazon our Hon and unicorn over your fleur-de-lis."

Unhindered by overawing or needless restrictions, sacrificing cheerfully so much of what is peculiar to himself in opinion and practice as the best good of all may require, each hardness-enduring soldier of Christ will wish to go up and help fight his Lord's battles. But because he loves his brethren, also, he will wish for them what he desires for himself, that each of them be allowed to go up "straight before him," do his own share of the work, and win and receive his own due share of the reward.

And as in warfare, so in worship. Going to service one Sunday morning, I was seized with a

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pleasurable surprise as all of a sudden the city bells rang out with the accord of their joyous tones. Subdued and blended by the intervening hillside, some notes as of a familiar church-tune came to my ear. Is it the "Reformed" or "Trinity/' I at once asked myself, that has so quietly during the past week put a new chime into its old bell-tower? Listening more intently, however, I soon distinguished the sounds of the individual bells of the different churches. My next thought was, What, after all, if the bells of adjacent churches were really tuned in groups and rung as a chime? Some by preconcerted arrangement pealing forth notes for the line, "How pleased and blest was I" ; others taking up the refrain, "To hear the people cry"; and others following with, "Come, let us seek our God to-day." Such a united call from all the churches, what a delightful sense would it give of the oneness of all Christians in worship if not in creed !

CHRISTIANITY, A RELIGION OF FACTS

And ye are my witnesses of these things. Luke 24: 48.

This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. Acts 2:32.

Christianity has for its key-phrase, "And it came to pass." It is distinguished from false religions in that it is essentially a record of events. It is this advantage which it has of certified narration over uncertain speculation that gives it a reach which is infinitely above all that to which even the most profound philosophy has ever attained. Who of all the "wise and prudent" thinkers of all the ages is more wise and prudent than is Plato? Yet Plato has no story to tell us. It is the Athenian cult. What "all the Athenians" want, what "all the strangers" who have caught from them the spirit of mental collision and combat want, is not finalities, but new and yet newer things about which there can be no end of discussion — a competitive field for logical and metaphysical gymnastics. So long as St. Paul has anything to offer about which they can dispute with him, it is all right. They will not only argue with him to the "end of the chapter," but they will then be just as eager to begin a new chapter of disputation. The history of philosophy, indeed, has no last chapter, ending with maledictions

A RELIGION OF FACTS 17

against any man who shall either add to, or take from, the words that have been already spoken.

St. Paul does indeed have something new to say to these ever-inquisitive Athenians by way of argument, but what is vastly more to the purpose, he has news to tell them. He is not, from choice, a disputant. He is, chief of all, a reporter of up-to-date transactions. They listen not only patiently, but interestedly, to the new argument about "the unknown god" ; but no sooner does he go on to clinch his argument with the news of Christ's resurrection, than they call him down, and, with their hootings and cat-calls, compel him to stop.

It is the historically established fact of the resurrection that makes it so well worth while to know all else that can be known about the words and works of Jesus. But for His resurrection all else would be but little more than a matter of interesting but merely human biography. His having been both "raised up" and "taken up" gives a life-and-death significance to His whole mission upon earth.

Essentially, then, Christian preachers are always and everywhere to be evangelists — to preach as the Evangelists wrote — not inferences, experiences, systems or dogmas, but — facts. It is the "Gospel — the Good News — according to Matthew" — not according to the catechism or the creed. "Ye are my witnesses," says Jesus; and the business of a witness is to tell not what he, the witness, feels or infers from the facts, but the facts. Tell the facts. Tell them over and over again. Keep on telling them. Then let the facts speak for themselves. Let them make their own appeal to the minds, consciences and hearts of those who hear them. "It is the facts," says Paul to his Corinthian brethren, "in which you stand. It is the facts by which you are saved. It is the facts that you are to hold fast — the facts which I delivered to you, first of all, and which you also received — how that Christ died for our sins, that He was buried, and that He was raised again the third day; that, as an indisputable proof of this, He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve; after that, of five hundred brethren at once ; that He was seen of James, then of all the apostles ; and, last of all, of me also."

Some are, no doubt, at a loss to know just how to take St. Paul when he says that he rejoices and will continue to rejoice in even make-belief preachers of Christ ; who have only a feigned interest in what they preach. What has now been said makes it easy of interpretation. If there be a fact which it is all-important for the world to know, let any one tell it who will. The Tories of the American Revolution did not much like the way the war had ended. Yet. if they pretended to like it, and started out to spread abroad the good news of the peace that had been made with the mother country, even the most loyal of patriots would have bid them Godspeed. "Tell it to

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all the inhabitants of the land." It is what they want; what they need; what they are waiting to hear.

"Go into all the world," is the great commission, "and tell to every creature in it the 'good news' of Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; who, having been delivered for our offences, was raised again for our justification."

VI Likewise

And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them, likewise. Luke 6: SI.

Five hundred years before Christ, the great heathen moralist of a great heathen nation gave this as a complete guide for our treatment of others : "Never do to another what you would not like done to yourself."

This does not tell us to do anything; it only tells us what not to do.

The hermit keeps this rule to perfection. He has no "others" about him to be either hurt by, or to hurt. Instead of vexing himself with the thousand and one troublesome problems of social, business or religious intercourse, he thinks it wiser to run away from them all. Xo neighborhood squabbles for him, no peace-conferences, no labor-disputes, no political or church controversies, no home or foreign missionary appeals, no contribution-box for any cause to be passed to him. Such commands as "To do good and communicate, forget not"; "Rejoice with them that rejoice and weep with them that weep"; "Look not every man on his own things, but every man, also, on the things of others" — such precepts as

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these have no practical meaning for him — a negative way of keeping to a negative rule.

Are even Christian churches and ministers in danger of taking this narrow, eremite view of all that is outside their own denominational interests; of keeping as aloof as possible from those bearing other names than their own?

In his annual Thanksgiving sermon a minister once gave as one cause for thanksgiving, that he and his people had, the past year, gotten along so pleasantly with the minister and people of another large, near-by, wealthy and influential congregation. Then he gave as the reason for it that they had had during the year so little to do with one another! Two near-by, yet hermit congregations. That is one way — husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, families, neighbors, churches, towns and countries, having as little to do with one another as possible — hermit families, hermit churches, hermit neighborhoods and hermit nations.

Yet even Confucius did not advocate seclusion. To one who expressed the wish that he might be a recluse, Confucius said, "We cannot withdraw from the world and associate with birds and beasts that have no affinity with us. With whom should we associate but with suffering men? The disorder that prevails is just that which requires our efforts. If right principles prevailed in the world, there would be no necessity for us to change its state."

To shirk duty because it is hard is to play the coward. To do it is to act the man. We may avoid possible unpleasantness by living apart, but what we want to know is how we may live together and live in right human fashion, too.

The world's rule for our treatment of others is summed up in the one word "retaliation" — taking the word in its exact, literal meaning, "the like again" — good for good, bad for bad. The world regards it good legal tender if you pay a man back in the same coin that he has paid out to you — be the coin what it may. Most men, I think, answer their consciences fairly well if they give back either as good or as bad as has been given to them. "Whatsoever things men do to you, do ye to them likewise" is the way Christ's currency is alloyed in the world's mint. True, even our Lord would say that this is right, provided it is only kindness that is done to you. Do good to them that do good to you, certainly. Never lived another man so susceptible to kindness as Jesus was. Never did He forget the least kindness done to Him, and what is more, He said that He never would forget it ; that He would not let even a cup of water, given to one of His disciples in His name, go without its reward. Instead of doing more than others, that professed disciple of Jesus would do less than others — less even than the heathen — were he not to respond thankfully to any act, however small, of good will done to him. It was a heathen who had the sense to say, "You