Moral leadership and the ministry

Preface

THE reality defined under the term Religion, with its central fact, God, and charged with a mighty moral dynamic, has released upon the world the great good of the life we know, and holds in its keeping immense and surpassing richness. The point at which this moral capital is created to be added to the stock of feeling and conscience and will, is the privilege-place of the moral leader.

How this moral capital may be created in his own life and be conviction and enthusiasm, and how, through him, it may constrain men — this very power of God — and become controlling animus and will in society, — how to lead, is the perplexed longing of every soul who, brooded by the [v]

Preface

Spirit of God, has come to feel the pull of the divine love.

If to this perplexity of a soul as to how he may make his life most count, this little book should show the path to certainty; if meeting the ministry and the Church in their retreat, it should call to a valor which would entrench them in the reverence and hope of the world, as valor has more than once done, the confessedly great thing he who writes here has prayed and striven for, would be accomplished.

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. RELIGION AND LEADERSHIP ... 3

II. THE SPIRIT OF LEADERSHIP ... 28 HI. RELIGION — THE EQUIPMENT FOR

Chapter I Religion And Leadership

RELIGION is the making connection with higher powers, a participation in the life of God. Its fruit is a vastly superior life. Even paganism is an effort to bring to men the help of the gods. There are other and higher powers; there are the framework and the disposition and the energy and the ongoing and the law of the universe. The great fact is God. Fellowship with Him is life: i.e., peace, power, service, effectiveness, authority. The prophets of Israel illustrate it; Christ incarnates it. All religion is a quest for fuller life. It is a making connection with the soul of the [3]

universe, a yielding to a great celestial gravitation, an entering into the life of God. It is the best way that has ever been made known, and the greatest support ever found, for the living of a life. Religion involves the fully personal, the extraordinary, the superhuman. There is a mightier Will, there are higher thoughts and ways, and to go forth in the power of them is to share the life. Our fellowship is with the Father; our heritage is to partake of the divine nature. Religion is the most practical and the realest thing in the world. All good things and blessed boons are included in the abundant life it fosters. The religious man has equipment for leadership; he shares the superhuman, he lays hold of the divine, he incarnates God.*

1 " Leadership, mastery of one's self and of the world, mark the character derived from the influence of Jesus Christ." — Peabody, Jesus Christ and the Christian Character, p. 150.

"How to take command of circumstances instead of being their slave; how to own one's wealth and not be owned by it; how to rule one's spirit as well as to take a city; how to be among the leaders and not among the led; how to

The first and great fact of the universe is God. The Gospel is the Gospel of, i.e., concerning, God. The Bible is eminently the story about God. It begins with His creation of a world — it ends with a vision of His triumph. It is the story of what God did, of what God said, of how God loved: how He rewarded and chastened and strove and led and over-ruled and triumphed. Its subject is God's will, God's providence, God's faithfulness. It tells of His dealings with Israel: how He made them a people; how He raised up for them leaders; how He gave them victory over their enemies; how He overthrew them for their idolatry; how He scattered them among the nations. Its great psalm sings that the Lord is a

labor together with God instead of being a cog in some great machine; how to maintain peace of mind amid the disasters, illusions, and tragedies of experience — this is the cry for power which goes up from many a life, ensnared — as whose is not? — in the mechanism and materialism of the world."

"To this cry for moral power . . . there comes . . . the answer of Jesus Christ." — Idem, p. 15£.

shepherd. Christ's Gospel is the fact of fatherhood. According to the insight of an ancient seer God is so much the one factor to be accounted of, that compared with man He shapes him as a potter shapes clay. In this sense, concerning the price of man's redemption, a hymn of the Gospel sings, "Jesus paid it all."

This fact of God, consistently insisted upon in it, gives the Bible its surpassing and wonderful charm, and makes it an unrivaled book. It makes the grand dignity and the cheerful hopefulness of the Gospel. It gives life its awful solemnity, grounds its needed consolation and its glorious liberty; creates man's responsibility. The Gospel's saving grace is faith in God. Eternal life is the gift of God. Take God out of the Bible and it becomes as any other book; lose the fact of God and there is no gospel. The subject of the Bible is not man; the heart of the Gospel is not man.

The significant and hopeful fact of life is God. His imperial will and His perfect love undergird as law all the relations and needs of man.

The Gospel is this — God is for us : man is partaker of the glory of God. Religion is an assessment of those things in the universe that enrich and ennoble personality. Its essential principle is moral power.

This Over-will is the greatest fact of the universe and the ground of every religion. Our God is our glory. The sun shines, the wind blows, the rain falls, the seasons come round, this and that come to pass — man does not have everything resting upon his shoulders. Indeed, what man does is very little compared with what is done for him. There is a power not his own. The wind carries the ship onward; the voyager but directs the course. Man is blocked and hindered; he is overturned and overturned. He cannot escape death, he cannot explain [7]

life. He is in other hands. Time and tide wait for no man. A thousand necessities and inevitables hedge him about, and according to a standard and by a will both apart from man, does justice overtake him. Whatsoever a man soweth that verily shall he reap. Unquestionably, righteousness is enthroned in this universe. Love is in the nature of things as are the axioms of mathematics. God's will is law. That love or will is the great force that moves the current, and he who will do that will, moves with the current and not against it. It is terrible to adversaries; it is attractive and constraining to friends. Joyfully to meet that will with one's own good endeavors, finding other strength for every trial and for mighty mastery, is to practise religion. The mighty will to make man superior begets his will to be superior, and the faith opens into the life. To obey and follow Christ is for the husbandman to enter into alliance with the [8]

sun and the soil and the rain and the spirit of life in the seed : — working together with these, his harvest becomes increased a hundred-fold. The secret of renewal, stability, richness, and progress, is here. The breaking of bondage, the ascent to service, the power to lead and command — all come out of it. There is correspondingly as distinct an Over-good. People with a trustful assurance that things are working for good find that it is even so, and are quite lifted above that fear which disturbs the calm and paralyzes the energies of life. One can hardly deny that there have been those to whom the marvelous seems the fitting expression of their inner power and greatness of soul. Theirs have been a commanding authority and an overflowing joy. They defied the prudent, the mighty, the wise, — living by a faith that, to other men, was raging foolishness, but won, because the unseen is eternal and the soul of the universe. [9]

From their prisons and their crosses, out of their poverties and their shames, men have sung their overflowing mastery and peace. Sorrow could not long sit upon them, and their joy no man could take from them. In their way of life, they found the peace of God. It seems that everything they touched turned into good. The mills ground for them, the floods were lifted up for them, order and beauty were on every hand; and life was blessed. These have been the admiration and worship of the race. Because of confidence they were courageous and mighty; because of their allies they went forth with power; because their law of life is established, they were kept calm. Theirs is the liberty of the glory of the children of God. Their personality is such as to turn things into blessing and to constrain men to love. The qualities of superiority and leadership are inherent in them. Such are most charming and fascinating [10]

people to live with — their love is so free and without thought of evil.

There is no denying that life commonly is not good. Men are broken by sorrow and crushed by defeat. There are a thousand miseries and bondages; and fears. There is lack of tranquillity and repose, afflicting men with a kind of horror or despair of life. Men lack power to attempt, do not trust the sincerity of the world nor the goodness of life. They do not know their heritage as men, nor their partnership with the higher powers. The mood of timidity prevails. So the resources of life are barely touched. Men find themselves at cross purposes with the soul of things, and unable to meet the experiences of life with cheerfulness and hope. Toil turns out to be a curse — drudging and goaded by hunger. There is ignorance and pain and strife. All things seem against. Life is aimless, hopeless, loveless, joyless, unvictorious. Men go like slaves to the

[in treadmill or in bitter complaint; bear like beasts their load — that to them is life. If it is not miserable, it is petty; if it is not hopeless, it is weak; if it is content, it is because it is unaware of the best.

The elevation and seriousness of the good life, in contrast, are evidenced by characteristic marks. They make clear the richer personality, the stronger will, a prevailing power, a conquering faith, the higher kingdom, the spirit of service, — the points of moral leadership. When the father of a friend of mine died some fifteen years ago, he left, to the surprise of his family, a substantial indebtedness, and the estate was adjudged insolvent. For these years that son has been going without pleasures and comforts and the fulfilments of fond hopes, that he might pay the debt. He had hoped to inherit wealth. But when the heritage turned out to be debt, he who had been for years rejoicing that he was his father's son, [12]

would not disallow the hard consequence of that relationship.

That may be foolishness; but it is the conduct that harmonizes with the soul of things, makes life whole, turns things one's way, and reveals a mighty supporting power. Men may not do that, but they wish they might have this man's security and joy.

Dr. Grenfell giving his life on the Labrador coast, meets his experiences with resource, defies hardship, can sleep in face of death, changes the character of a people, and gives his companions the feeling that by his very fearlessness and trust, he is following a stronger law than calculating prudence, and has the vast resource of God behind him. He has dared undertake a great enterprise, he has committed himself to the wholly right, he has become the servant and friend of men ; and whether or not men follow him, they love him and wish they might be capable [13] '

of his heroism. I know a minister who, when offered high place in an industrial establishment and a salary of five thousand dollars a year, refused the offer, to continue in his greater ministry at fifteen hundred dollars! He cares for men's souls! When his wife died, he was kept tranquil; when he was put out of his pastorate, he lost no sleep; won by the glory of sacrifice and athirst for the cross, he is asking for one of the hardest fields in a new state. He walks over great difficulties as though they were not, — removing the mountains. One knowing him feels both his joy and his mastery. He is more than a match for the worst things that can happen to him. He commands the circumstances of life rather than is commanded by them. Some wish that, for his own sake, he believed less in the good, that he hated easy and wrong ways less, that he loved not so much, that he was not so full of plans, that his plans were not so large, that [14]

he was less untiring in his working. But one is constrained to love him, and to pray for his quality of life and for his harmony with God. The divine flows into him and his soul is victorious and superior. When a priest gives his life for lepers; when a missionary regenerates an island of cannibals; when a man lets go his life that he may keep his honor; when one is crucified or exalted in his passion to save his community, or hungers for righteousness and men's souls as others are greedy for gold — God has appeared in a life overflowing and good, and men feel the divine. They may not follow but they admire; they may not heed but they praise. They know that the Christ is living among them. God has been manifest, a moral leader is shown at work, new life and new hope have been brought to men, the common conscience has been quickened, and religion has its vindication.

Religion is an active principle of life. The transformation of desire and will is wrought by it. It is not a philosophy; it is a regenerating power. It is not primarily an attitude within one; it is a reality or fact outside one. It is a great celestial gravitation to which we yield. "God w^orketh" — that is the great fact of the Gospel. And then we work — that is the answering faith in the other. To these two, all things are possible. Faith is the acting in view of this gravity to the finding how mighty is the push and pull of love. This regenerating power is equal to the task of making over the loves and hates and long-standing habits of idlers and gamblers and drunkards and thieves and prostitutes and murderers. It did this in the early day, and in many another day. Though our lack of faith makes this an uncommon hope and the present time in consequence poor in this manifestation of the power of God, it is yet a faithful saying, [16]

and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, even the chief.

One who has himself practised religion could tell wonderful things of the goodness of life at which the world would marvel. For when a man fears not and frets not but pins to the right, mighty resources and allies surely do conspire to favor him. The very stars in their courses fight for him. Launching out into the deep and letting down his nets, he finds his purposes accomplished. One simply comes into fuller life, and has command of greater resources, when he works with God. Mighty and marvelous things are possible to faith, and of this there is no gainsaying. One lives so free and strong and achieving and joyous a life, that compared with it, the living of prudence or the gaining of things is not life at all. If it were only that one fears not death nor pain, nor what man can do, nor the storms [17]

that beat against the house of one's life; if it were only that food and clothing are provided as surely as such needs of the birds are met, — that would be worth while. But this man removes mountains, overcomes difficulties and evils, becomes a man of resource, and is vibrant with life as one sprung from God. Like a tree planted by the streams of water, whose leaf is green and whose fruit is of twelve manners, he luxuriates. The hundred doors that remain shut to others unfold almost at a touch to him. Because he is right, all things are right, and every wind that blows fills his sails, and his voyage is full of peace. He not only is free, he has overcome the world. Trusting in God he finds the mighty Will or Love travailing in the soul of things, and going forth to meet it finds his faith justified and his soul invincible.

Every undying book is the story of those who have lived a superior life; of those who [18]

believed in God and committed themselves to Him. They trusted the Higher Power and went forth in the might of the Strong. They were, so, enabled to meet the experiences of life without flinching and with radiant hope. What God is they dared to undertake to become, and in their faith they found themselves supported by the whole order of things, and so came to the mastery of life. The resources of life were inexhaustible. That could not happen that could confound them. The Bible is the story of moral leaders; of those who walked with God; of those who exceeded in the goodness of their lives; of those who vastly enriched life. They discovered the Kingdom of the Spirit and by faith pressed into it. Out of all Jewish history these men of faith stand superior.

Abraham going out he knew not where, and founding the nation of his vision; Jacob serving seven years for Rachel, [19]

and the time seeming but a day for love; Moses renouncing a throne to deliver a people; Samson slaying his country's enemies and himself being slain; Jeremiah laboring forty years to reform a kingdom and receiving only scorning; Daniel daring a king for conscience' sake; Jesus despising the cross that He might become our Saviour — with both its trust in God and its mastery, it is the characteristic type of the Bible.

Christianity made its way in the early day simply by virtue of its wealth and manner of life. These Christians were winsome persons. They were better servants, better artisans, better citizens, better masters, — more reliable in all the relations of life. The early Christian apologists confidently challenged a comparison of the Christian type of life with the best current. The contrast was notable even to those prejudiced against Christianity. By the ex- [20]

cellence of His disciples' lives, Christ made His way. 1

The Christian individual and Christian society are the best products history has to show. The apostles and missionaries and ministers and stewards of Christ with the divine consciousness, backed by the Gospel facts and truths and power, have been the most constructive social force. The con-

1 " No other religion ever combined so many forms of attraction as Christianity, both from its intrinsic excellence and from its manifest adaptation to the special wants of the time. One great cause of its success was that it produced more heroic actions and formed more upright men than any other creed." — Lecky, History of European Morals, p. 394.

"The Fathers were long able to challenge their adversaries to produce a single instance in which any other crime than his faith was proved against a martyr, and they urged with a just and noble pride that whatever doubt there might be of the truth of the Christian doctrines, or of the divine origin of the Christian miracles, there was at least no doubt that Christianity had transformed the characters of multitudes, vivified the cold heart by a new enthusiasm, redeemed, regenerated and emancipated the most depraved of mankind. Noble lives, crowned by heroic deaths, were the best arguments of the infant Church. Their enemies themselves not infrequently acknowledged it." — Idem, p. 414.

trolling fact in the evolution of society is religious. The law of progress is the subordination of the interests of the individual to the interests of society; the constant admission of the weak and unprivileged to the rivalry of life on the basis of equality of opportunity. This has given the practically universal political enfranchisement of the western world, 1 and is giving social and industrial privileges to the lowliest. The interests of the individual and the interests of society have tended to come into conflict, and the selfish order has steadily given way before the social. The immutable nature of the order of things, and religion, which is revelation of its moving force, have worked in the wills of men to make the western world what it is.

The ideals that literature incarnates; the visions of a man's best moments; the heroisms that redeem the wastes of history; the

1 Kidd, Social Evolution.

institutions and the laws that are charter of the golden age of our hope; the soul's heritage in the will and wisdom of God; the regeneration of evil lives — this is the surpassing realm of religion. Every perfect glory of life is its privilege. Its type is none less than the Son of God. The conventional and mediocre goodness of the average Christian does not at all exhaust the resources of religion. Christ came to fill life full. It is a regnant and majestic power that the Christian allies himself with. The metaphor of a new and heavenly creature suggests the fact. For even the lowest, and worst, and oldest in shame, there is renewal, and the fulfilment of the most daring hopes.

The Church, where religion comes definitely to expression, though weighted with defects, is unquestionably the best social life and influence that is known. Its growth, its variety of life and of fruits, and its enduring — all reveal its essential glory of life. [23]

There may be moral leadership outside of the Church and outside of avowed religion, but its real spring is those ideals and truths and facts and persons which make up the content of our faith. Religion has a superior and surpassing life for its end, and if for any reason the place of constituted religion be usurped by a rival, it is because it has failed of its right. The test of religion is the kind of life it fosters, and there is no place where life should be so glad and masterful and serviceable as where religion is most cherished. The Church has the equipment for superior life — moral leadership is its high privilege. More than this: moral leadership belongs to those whose ministry is distinctly religious, to those who serve the altar of God, to those who would bring others into God's life. The priest, if he would persuade men to God, or mediate God, must himself have a good transcending the common. He must make a real and practical connection with God. [24]

But the superior life is a fact : the greatest fact known to us is God. It may fall out of common recognition and all living be a dreary common-place and men be without their own as some beggar who does not know his royal lineage, but religion is realer than the stars. It may be held as a fairy tale to please the imagination, but it is practical and attemptable, and lays challenge upon the will. The call in this day is loud to enter into it; frankly and freely to take the risk of that high fellowship, and to bring into bold relief the victorious life and the reality of God. The Church can save itself, and the ministry can save itself, only as a vast glory of life is exhibited; only by living under the might of a renewing and victorious Will. Without this the world but languishes; without it life is vain. With it life is redeemed from the petty and from brutehood, from misery and fear, from even that average and conventional goodness that is still [25]

vain, to the dominion that makes us as gods, the glory of which estate so transcends as to be of quite another kind, and so exceeds imagining that they alone can know its glory who have entered into its Life.

But before and behind that grace and power of God, which, getting into a man, becomes attractive and regal being, there is the divine Being who works mightily. The fact is before the faith which the fact creates. The fact of God remains even if there is no faith in Him. In the strength of Him His prophet goes forth like the Mighties of old, with a "Thus saith the Lord." The kingdom that he seeks is God's kingdom; the power he trusts is God's power; the glory he shares is God's glory; the judgment he pronounces is God's decree; the reward he promises is God's gift. Backed by God — the reality of whom he recovers to life — he may make kings tremble, bring to the despairing new heart and hope; and be esteemed as he [26]

whose very feet are beautiful because he brings good tidings.

If one proclaimed today this old Gospel concerning God, it would sound very strange to many ears which, hearing an exclusively emphasized immanence, know only guesses and words of feeble authority. But if one compassed the fact of God — this mighty brooding righteousness and love — he would know how tremendous is the cosmic drift and pull. If feeling it beneath him, he committed himself to it, this celestial current — with his own hearty endeavor which it inspired — would glorify his life with the glory that makes the constraining regality of God.

Chapter II

THERE was heard a few years ago, in one of our eastern cities, an address from the Secretary of one of our laymen's Brotherhoods, in the interest of revivifying the Churches. The climax of the address was a bitter passage in which the speaker charged that ministers are cowards and — not to mention the lack of rugged moral living — fear to hold up a standard that would rebuke even the wicked lives of their people; contended they have great regard for the holding of their places which real enthusiasm for God would endanger, and declared that the office had become mere gilding upon achieving society; decorative but useless. There was truth enough in the charge to [28]

more than sting — it was challenge that had to be answered. The reply came from a minister of rank, and with some feeling, but few could have been prepared for the words. "It is no easier for a minister to starve than it is for any other man," ran the apology, and no franker acknowledgment of the charge could be framed; no more sweeping denial of the minister's function could be made; no baser slander of the Christian disciple could be implied.

But what is disavowed in this infidel defense is exactly what should be, for real religion is the spring of the most valorous life; it is adequate fact and reason and feeling for sustaining one in any kind of loss for righteousness. The minister is the very mediator of the Gospel. If he cannot dare for righteousness, which is his field, what does he more than others. Lacking this, the good of the Gospel is but empty phrase. If he is prudent and calculating, putting place [29]

before the truth, and ease before righteousness, his religion is no better than the worldly wisdom before which he bows. He thus actually has no gospel and no power in, or respect of, society; for he has no saving from sin and its misery; no great comfort for sorrow, or in any abasing; no adequate impulse for daring; no superior incentive for serving; no surpassing and constraining righteousness. To do more than the rest — to stand when others fall; to have peace at the center of life, however disturbed the circumference, and when others fret; to suffer without complaining; to starve if need be for Christ's sake and gladly; to fear not death nor poverty nor what man can do, for the glory of righteousness — this is the aim, and ample for this is the power, of the Gospel. The Life expresses itself in manifold ways according to occasion, but the essence is such a bounding enthusiasm for God, that it overmounts or removes the greatest obstacles. It [30]

is a passion for righteousness that esteems the reproach of Christ greater riches than life.

He alone can lead who cares enough for goodness to suffer for it. The condition is simply that single-mindedness which, daring to be a slave to love, is exalted master over all. A double-minded man, unstable in all his ways, receives nothing of the Lord. The most constraining and admirable thing is enduring a cross for righteousness. If we only dared to die for men, we could lead and save them. Such real faith is the Christly magnetism. All real love has in it the compulsion of the love of Christ.