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Introduction : Richard Cordley, An Appreciation . . vn

I. " When Jesus Was Born in Bethlehem." Matt.

II "come unto me"

COME one has said that these three words ^ more nearly express the attitude of Jesus to mankind than any words that could be chosen. It is the attitude of invitation — which is the permanent attitude of Jesus. He knew he had something to give men, and wanted them to come and get it. He knew he could do something for men, and he wanted them to come and receive it. He could not look upon a multitude but he was moved with compassion. He could never see people about him but he felt impelled to teach them. He could never see people in want or in trouble but he was impelled to help them. Thus he bore himself through all his earthly life.

But Jesus came from God. He was the Word, which was with God in the beginning. He expressed God to men. He was in time what he was in Eternity. God's eternal thought was vocalized in the life of Jesus Christ. God makes himself known in a great many ways. He makes known his power and wisdom in his works. He makes known his law in the human conscience. He makes known his sovereignty and providence in history and life. But Jesus Christ is the final and full expression. "Here the whole Deity is known. We see God in the face of Jesus Christ."

And Jesus spoke for all the ages. It is quite remarkable that so few of the teachings of Jesus are local and temporary. The truths he taught are of universal application. What Jesus said of God is forever and everywhere true. God is now and forever what he seems in Jesus Christ. The attitude of Jesus is the attitude of the eternal throne. Whenever a man comes to God he can expect to be met in the spirit of Jesus Christ.

"The homage that we render thee Is still our Father's own; No jealous claim or rivalry

Divides the Cross and Throne."

God's attitude is forever the inviting attitude; and God's voice is forever saying, "Come unto me."

And God calls us because he wants us; he wants our lives; he wants our love; he wants our service.

First of all : Christ wants us ourselves. There are some things to which a man gives a specified service, and there are other things to which he gives himself. A man gives his employer a specified number of hours. He gives his teacher a fair knowledge of certain lessons. He owes his friends certain social obligations. In many directions he has limited responsibilities. But to his home he gives himself. He does not give sections of himself to the things he loves. If his child be sick he will sit by its bedside day and night, and his last dollar and the last dollar he can get is at its service. It is not, "I will give two hours a day, or so much a week," but, "all I have, and all I can do." All he is and all he has are on demand that his child may be restored. There is no measure and no limit, except the measure and limit of ability. This is what it means to give one's self. This is the measure of all the highest obligations. And this is the spirit of all the best service, of all service that is trust-worthy and reliable. In some such sense Christ wants you. It is not a section of your personality, or of your time, or of your means, but he wants you yourself, with all which that implies.

And as Paul says, "This is your reasonable service." It is reasonable you should give yourself to your home, for your life is wrapped up in your home. It is reasonable you should give yourself to your country, for your country has in its keeping all that you have and are. And it is reasonable you should give yourself to God, for God is the giver of all you have and the foundation of all you hope for. This consecration does not determine what you shall do, but it determines the spirit of whatever you may do. You may serve your home in any one of a thousand different employments, but you are at its call for anything it may need. You may serve your country by being a good citizen, and attending steadily to the work you are engaged in, but you are at her call for special service whenever she may need you. You may be called upon to serve on the jury, to serve as special police in case of disturbance, or to go abroad as a soldier in case she is threatened by foreign foes. You may serve God in your home and in your daily calling, but you are at the call of God to serve him in whatever line his providence may lead you. His claims are higher than the claims of country, for he made your country all it is. His claims are higher than the claims of home. God's gifts and God's care have made home possible to you. He wants you with all you have and all you are. He wants you with your country, that you may serve your country in his name. He wants you with your home, that your home may itself belong to God and be a

Christian home. And if God calls you to any special service you will have but one answer: "Here I am, Lord. Send me." There is evidence that Christ called the apostles to discipleship before he called them to apostleship. He called them into his kingdom before he sent them out into his service. He wanted them first, and then he wanted whatever service they might be able to do. He called them to salvation, and he then appointed them to apostleship. He would first win a man to the truth, and then make him a messenger of the truth. Whatever Christ would have a man do, he wants the man himself first of all. Loyalty to Christ is the preliminary of all service. And loyalty to Christ makes all service acceptable and honorable. Personal loyalty consecrates all that a man puts his hands to. If I am Christ's, then all I have is his possession, and all I do is a part of his service.

Second: Christ wants all we can make of ourselves. The Christian life is not a repression but an inspiration. It is a new force in a man's life. Jesus kept his disciples with him three years, and never did three years so enlarge and transform men. That was a rare school those men attended the three years he remained on earth. It transformed the clumsy, untaught fishermen of Galilee into the able and dignified advocates of the Gospel before whom the people trembled at Pentecost. The men who seemed so helpless and dependent when he took them, became the competent and fearless leaders of the Christian hosts when he left them. Never was there such a difference between the entrance and the graduation. He knew the men he chose, the material of which they were made. And he knew how to draw out the best that was in them and to make the most of all the gifts they had received. As he called them in their simplicity, they served him with their enlarged powers. He first of all called them, and then he claimed all he had made of them. In like manner he wants you, and he wants all you can make of yourselves. The man who brought his talent, and returned it to his lord and said: "Lo! here is thy talent; take that is thine/ ' received no commendation. All the gifts of God are a trust, and God expects them to be increased as well as used. We must improve them as well as employ them. In fact we improve them when we employ them. And they never improve so fast as when they are most employed. Every man is to use his gifts for service, and also for increase.

And this does not apply simply to what is technically considered the season of growth. It applies no more to school than to home; no more to college than to business. For a man's growth is not all made in youth and his education is not all acquired in school. The soldier does not get all his military training in the academy; the lawyer does not gain all his acumen in the law school; and the minister does not get all his theology in the theological seminary. There have been good soldiers who never saw West Point. And there have been scholarly and effective men who never saw a university. And this is not said to the discredit of West Point or of the university. But it is simply to show that there are other roads to manhood besides the beaten track. A man has more schoolmasters than he knows, and he has more lessons than he recognizes, and he pays more tuition bills than he thinks. Every one we have anything to do with is a teacher to us, everything that happens to us has a lesson in it. Everything that happens to us helps to make us. How it makes us, depends on how we hold ourselves to it, just as other schools depend on the attention more than on their own efficiency. They are effective as we make them so, and they mold us as we hold ourselves to them.

"We are building every day,

In a good or evil way; And the structure as it grows

"Till in every arch and line

All our faults and failings shine; It may grow a castle grand, Or a wreck upon the sand.

"Build it well, whate'er you do;

Build it straight and strong and true, Build it clean and high and broad; Build it for the eye of God."

The bee does not gather all her honey from the walled garden, nor from the field sown for her, but she finds many a flower with choicest sweet in the wild wood, and in the open field.

"She gathers honey, all the day From every opening flower."

We find many delightful people who have not had what people call the best advantages, either of school or of society. They just drank in the sunshine as they came along, and gathered the sweets from every flower on their way. It is not the fault of the schools, but biggest dunces often come from the best schools ; it is not the fault of the social order, but the most ill-mannered men you find will be those who know the customs and rules of the best society, and who scrupulously observe them, too. No man can be so cuttingly insolent as he who knows how to polish the shaft he shoots. A man's learning is not in proportion to his schools, nor is his politeness in proportion to his social advantages. Our schools are the glory of our age, and the hope of our future. But there are limitations to what they can do, and there are things they need never attempt to do. A college diploma is not a guaranty of scholarship, any more than a church letter is a guaranty of sainthood. A college diploma often covers a lazy record, and a limping course. Often they come to us in sheep's-skin clothing, but inwardly they are simpering fools. It is not the fault of the schools, but it shows their limitations. There are no schools to the best things. We have schools of art which do grand work; but no school of art has ever had the temerity to advertise that it turned out artists. They turn out copyists and critics and teachers of art, but not artists. There are schools of elocution, but they do not even pretend to turn out orators. That is as much above their might as Burns found certain things above the might of kings.

"A king can mak' a belted Knight, A Marquis, Duke and a' that; An honest man's above his might, A man's a man for a' that."

So it is true of artists and orators, as it is of poets, "They are born and not made. M And when God makes one he will open a door for him somewhere. They say there are no poets now as there were a generation ago. But the same was said in the days of Tennyson and Longfellow. We used to see the statement quite frequently, that, "We have no such poets now as Burns and Byron/ ' Then they would name Tennyson and Longfellow as our best. Of course there are no such poets now as in a former age; but there may be poets just as good, but of a different type. The genius of one age will not express itself in the terms of another. The poets of one age will not be like the poets of another. Homer's Iliad could not have been written in the Christian Era. Milton's Paradise Lost could not have been written in the nineteenth century. But if God should send a genius like Homer to this generation, he would express himself in such different speech and in such different form from the blind Homer of three thousand years ago that we might never think to compare them, so diverse would they be. If God should send another Milton to the twentieth century, he would speak in the tongue of the twentieth century, and men might never think of Milton when they were reading him. They might still go on murmuring: " There are no Mil tons in this matter of fact generation, in this twentieth century, as there were in the seventeenth/ ' But if God ever sends the world a poet, the poet will find the door to the world's heart, and he will find the key to the world's speech.

But I have been drawn away from my thought, and yet perhaps not so far away as it seems. I was saying: God wants all a man is, and all he can make of himself. And what he can make of himself does nor depend on his opportunities so much as on his use of them. All that happens to him helps to make him. Every event in his life is a lesson if he will only learn it. Every friend is a teacher though he hold no certificate. Every enemy is a teacher, too, if the man be only wise enough to learn. Good fortune may teach a man, and ill fortune none the less. Joy is a teacher, and so is sorrow; we learn from laughter, and not the less from tears. Everything speaks to him who has ears to hear; everything sings to him who has music in his soul; everything teaches him who has the spirit of a scholar. The whole world is a book to him who can turn its pages. Humanity is a library to him who knows how to draw its volumes. Or a man may go away empty from the grandest lessons that are ever given. One of the dullest men I ever spent an evening with had travelled round the world under the best guides that could be given him. And I have been charmed many a time by men who had seen little beyond their own neighborhood. It is true now as in the days of Jesus: "Men see with their eyes, and hear with their ears; and understand with their heart. " It is not the sights or the sounds, or the truth; it is the eye and the ear and the heart. The heart that is on the alert " Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks; sermons in stones and good in everything.' '

Christ wants you, and he wants all you are. He wants you, and he wants all you can make of yourself. He called his disciples for what they were ; he kept them with him until he made them what he wanted them to be. He calls us all as we are, and then if we follow where he leads, he will make us what he wants us to be. Jesus called his disciples one by one, and calls all men into his service. It was, " Matthew, follow me"; or it was, "John, James, Peter, follow me." He spoke to them, one by one. He also said, "Come unto me all ye that labor." "If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink." In the prophetic forecast it was said, "Ho ! every one that thirsteth." It is the same today. God's universal call may be heard of any man who will listen. Every man knows God has a right to him. Every man knows God wants him. Every man knows God needs him. This general call is not audible, but it is as plain as if it were. It speaks in conscience, in Providence, and in the gentler influences of divine grace.

But the call of God is personal as well as general. God speaks to men one by one now as he did of old. You all know the general truth that God has a right to you, that he needs you, and that he wants you. This is the substance of his general call. And you have all felt at times a more personal sense of God's claim. The general sense of truth has become a personal conviction. It has taken a personal form, and you have said in your own heart, "I ought to give myself to God, and yield myself to his service." The general call of God became focussed in your own heart.

Christ now calls for you — for all you are — for all you can make of yourself. He calls for you — not for a tribute from your estate — not for a portion of your time — not for a fragment of your strength. But he wants you yourself. He does not want the fag-ends of your life, or what there is left when you have served yourself; but he wants your life itself, with all its vigor and force, with all its purpose and power. Every man had his own call, and every man is called in his own way; but when God does call a man he calls him for the man himself, and when the man responds to God he brings his life with him.

And God does not call all men to the same work any more than he calls all men in the same way. He calls one man to go across the seas to preach Jesus, and he calls another man to stay at home and live Jesus. And it often happens that he who stays at home has the harder mission. It is sometimes harder to live Jesus than it is to preach him. And the most effective way of presenting Jesus is to embody him in our life. And each man must hear his own call, and each man must obey his own orders. One man cannot hear for another, and one man cannot answer for another. One man cannot fill another's place, and one man cannot do another's work. God wants of each man the service for which he made him, and the service to which he calls him.

First of all then, God wants you that he may do something for you. He can enlarge and inspire your life. He wants you also that you may do something for him. First he calls you for salvation, and then he calls you to service. First come and receive a blessing, then go forth and be a blessing.

Ill a

WHICH OF YOU, BY TAKING THOUGHT, CAN ADD ONE CUBIT TO HIS STATURE?' ' Matt. 6: 27

KNEW a man years ago, who was a loyal A supporter of his church and a firm believer in its doctrines, but who never would become a member of the church. He was a regular attendant and a loyal supporter. He believed in the church, and believed in the work it was doing. He was a well-educated man, well-informed by large reading and wide travel. In talking with him of the matter one day, I asked him why he was not a member of the church he believed in so heartily, and supported so loyally. He believed in God, he believed in the church and he believed in all the Christian doctrines. Why did he not do as he believed? He replied, that it was because he believed the doctrines of his church that he was not a church member, and did not claim to be a Christian. According to the doctrine of his church, the matter of his conversion and salvation was entirely in the hands of God. "God made me, and God put me here. I am just what he made me, and just where he put me. If God intends to save me he will do so; if he don't, he won't. That is all there is to it, and that is the end of it." He was thoroughly fortified in his position, and seemed thoroughly satisfied with it. I do not know how much of bluff there was in it, but he seemed sincere. At all events it was impossible to move him from it. It was the baldest putting of the case I ever heard. I had heard Arminians in Methodist pulpits try to reduce Calvinism to an absurdity in some such fashion as this, but never heard one who believed in the scheme who would consent to such a conclusion.

The thological world has been coming nearer together than they were in those days. The man who exalts the sovereignty of God, and calls himself a Calvinist, and the man who exalts the freedom of man and calls himself an Arminian, can fully agree the one with the other. As they have come to understand each other, they have found that they both believe in the sovereignty of God, and they both believe in the freedom of man. The two truths have been so conceived and so stated that they are seen to run parallel with each other, and not across each other. Some make one line heavier and some the other. But as the best thinkers conceive them in this later day, the two lines of thought do not conflict.

The exaggerated idea of these doctrines, which this old gentleman has referred to, has left the church and taken refuge in the schools of philosophy. It has fled the lecture-room of the theological seminary, and taken refuge in the lecture-room of material science. It is known by a different name, and it is defined in different terms, but in these material speculations it appears in a harder and more relentless form than it ever took on in theological discussion, Native Depravity and Original Sin in the church have been supplanted by Heredity in the schools, and the Federal Headship of Adam in the church has been supplanted by the Solidarity of the Race in the schools. The discarded fatalism of the religious world has been taken up by the apostles of modern speculation. In the scheme of these speculations, the same wheels which grind out the physical events of the earth, grind out also the history of nations, and the conduct and destinies of men. They teach that, "Mental and moral traits depend on ancestry, and sentiment and character depend on climate and food. Heredity determines a man's powers, and environment determines his conditions, and the two together determine his character, and shape his life and destiny." And there is in this scheme no such relief as the older Calvinism gave. There are no Doctrines of Grace, no great multitude of the elect to be redeemed by the power and Spirit of God. All men are like Esau, they find no place for repentance though they seek it carefully with tears

There is truth in all these forms of doctrine and speculation. The trouble is they are too narrow to cover the whole ground. There is a great deal of truth in the doctrine of heredity, but it is not all there is. There are other truths just as well authenticated with which it must be made to harmonize. There is a deal of truth in the doctrine of environment, but it is not all there is. There is a very close relation between matter and thought, but matter does not account for thought. There is a very close relation between heredity and character, but character is not inherited. There is a very close relation between environment and destiny. But environment does not control destiny.

We can all readily see that material conditions have a great deal to do with mental traits, and with moral results. But they do not explain mental action, nor account for the facts of conscience and character. We can all see that heredity has a great deal to do with conduct; but it does not altogether explain conduct, or conscience, or conviction. A man's surroundings have a great deal to do with what he is; but they do not explain what he is, nor why he became such. There are things in a man's life and character which heredity and environment do not explain. We must look for something else as a factor in the common result.

There are three elements which enter into the forming of character and the shaping of life. Modern speculators admit two of them; heredity, environment; I would add personality. Heredity is a mighty factor in the shaping of every man's life. He can not be any more than he is, nor essentially different from what he is. As the text says he cannot add one cubit to his stature. He cannot change five feet six to six feet five. He may develop his powers but it must be essentially in the lines and within the limits of his natural inheritence. A man with small, feeble body may strengthen and enlarge himself somewhat, but he can hardly hope to become a man of massive and robust frame. A man may improve his mental gifts, but if he be wise he will seek to improve those he has rather than to create those he has not. "Poeta nascitur, non fit" the old Latin used to say. A poet is born — not made. Not everybody can be a poet or a painter or a singer. Not everybody can be a superior mechanic or a great inventor. There is a vast difference in the amount of inherited skill. So there is inherited some of the framework of character. Some are quick and passionate. Some are calm and patient. They may intensify or curb these tendencies but they exist and must be recognized. Each man has his own problem in the shaping of his character. There is doubtless a difference in the purely moral tendencies of men. In some natures conscience seems almost left out; while in others it is very strong. It is almost morbidly sensitive in some natures. Some are naturally avaricious and stingy. Some seem to be born liars; their respect for truth is so feeble that they begin lying very early and keep it up very late. Then there are kleptomaniacs or born theives. This is heredity, and you can easily see how mighty a factor it is in men's lives.

Another element to be considered in the building of character is what modern speculation calls environment. Literally this is what lies round a man ; his surroundings ; his circumstances. Heredity and environment include what is born in a man, and what lies about a man; the elements of his nature, and the setting of his life. The setting of a man's life has a wonderful influence in the shaping of his character. It is not strange that to many it seems to be the controlling element. To say, one is born in the heart of Christendom or in the heart of heathendom, in a Christian home or in the slums, would almost seem to settle the whole question as to what a man shall be. And it is the same with heredity. When you consider how differently men are constituted it seems as if that settles the whole question of their career. When you consider how differently they are circumstanced it seems as if that settled the whole question of their career. Put the two together and many men say we have all the elements of the problem of life in these two things.

But we have only to look a little closer to see that neither of these covers the case, nor do both of them cover the case. They do not explain all the facts. They do not explain what every man knows of himself, and they do not explain what every man sees about him. They leave no place for conscience, and no room for responsibility. If a man's nature and setting control his life then conscience is a baseless dream, and obligation is an airy fancy. A sense of injustice is itself unjust, and a sense of guilt for one's own conduct is absurd, and to blame another for a wrong is itself wrong. Yet these are common experiences in every heart, and no logic can banish them and no philosophy can explain them away. We blame others for the wrongs they do us ; we blame ourselves for the wrongs we do them. The pressure of obligation is on every life, and every one claims of others the treatment he counts due himself. These are fixed points which cannot be put away, and they have a significance which cannot be misread.