Faith for the college man

Preface

THE hearty reception by the religious press and by ministers of several denominations given to the former volume of college sermons has encouraged the issue of this modest book. In these discourses to college students there has been no effort at mystification, but rather the desire to state plain gospel truths in a manner to interest and strengthen the faith of the hearers in the simple religion of Jesus.

If any of these have been assisted to the deeper trust in their Savior, and a more active service for the kingdom the object of the preacher has been attained.

Martyn Summerbell.

Contents

I. The Faith in Revelation - 11

II. The Faith Revealed in Christ 29

III. Faith Confirmed in Youth - 45

I

Exodus 3: 5 — "Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground."

HERE is a picture which appeals strongly to any imaginative soul, but particularly so to the student who is eager to understand the course of history, and to pursue investigation of the influences which move the souls of men. Moses, the servant of God, bends before the burning bush. The wildness of the mountain renders the scene as weird as the gathering of the witches in Macbeth; but while that is uncanny and blood-curdling, at this sight the soul experiences a solemn awe, which all the remoteness of thirty-three generations cannot efface. The grand old crags are lonesome in their silence of isolation. It is with mountains as with men. Some are friendly and sociable. They invite acquaintance and draw you toward them with a subtle charm. But others repel. They retreat behind a barrier of self-sufficiency, as if to warn all intruders to keep their distance. So it is with Sinai. Its jutting peaks of flinty granite or glowing porphyry tower like sentinels over grim chasms that gape with menace of destruction. Here is none of that friendly retirement, fitted for pleasant and restful

Defiance College, Ohio, October 5, 1913.

meditation, which comes from the outlook through spreading forest and over gentle lakelets, such as stir the tourist with sweet surprise in Upper Westmoreland, or in our own Adirondacks or Catskills; for the mountain side is bare. Here and there the scanty vegetation struggles for existence, and is limited to bunches of grasses, herbs, and stunted shrubs. From their grandeur and desolation travelers have called these elevations of the Sinaitic desert, "The Alps Unclothed." One of our great historians of the past — Ebers — has said that if it were his duty to illustrate Dante's poem, The Inferno, he would have pitched his camp stool here, "for there could never be wanting to the limner of the dark abyss of the pit, landscapes savage, terribly, immeasurably sad, unutterably wild, unapproachably grand and awful." It is the abode of silence, the trysting place where one may wrestle with troublous questions or ponder the solution of perplexities, and, thinking great thoughts attain to grand resolves. And the man. One solitary watcher penetrates these fastnesses, which are seldom trodden by human foot. Leading his flock to pasturage Moses has been forced from the aridness of the plain to push up into the hills where he searches out the remnants of herbage along the torrent beds, where the moisture lingers longest. Though solitary, Moses fits the scene. Majestic in stature and full of dignity — you cannot think of him otherwise — towering like the crags about him, he moves in solemn thought. What great questions weigh him down ; questions of duty, questions of honor, questions of God's providential care. He recalls his race back in Egypt, where they are suffering in bitter bondage. He had come to their aid with all the warmth of a generous nature, but they had thrust him away. From his intervention in their behalf Israel had gained no respite of burdens, and he had forfeited long cherished friendships, established fortune, a prospective throne, and as a result of it all here he is in ignominious exile. As one man, unsupported, what can he offer for the relief of his people whom still he loves ?

And then the wonder! In upon his abstracted senses steals an unwonted sight. In the trackless desert, a flame ! In the uninhabited wolderness, a blazing bush! And, greater wonder still; for though it burns, it is not burning. Lambent tongues of increasing fire curl about twig and bough, and yet when he looks for the twig to shrivel in the consuming heat, or for the bough to fall, they still are there. Astonishment piques curiosity. For the bush is the s'neh of the desert, the dry and tindery acacia, which naturally flashes when kindled into an instant flame, and then, tinder-like, is as instantly gone. But the blaze harms this bush no more than if it were the brick arch of a temple. The phenomenon is so marked as to summon him from his meditations and rouse him to search out the causes. "I will now turn aside," says he, "and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt" But as he approaches, behold, a greater wonder ! Out of the midst of the flame, a voice! So far, and no further! "Draw not nigh hither," such the voice, "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou Blandest is holy ground"

At this the soul of the stalwart Moses trembles. He has no fear in all the awf ulness of nature, but he does shrink in the presence of the living God. You read in the Scripture, "And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God."

Out of the midst of the flame of this burning bush we may to-day read a blessed truth, no less than that of the Divine presence, of God from the heavens reaching down to His servant man.

There are seasons in life, alternations of darkness with the light, when calamity follows calamity, as wave in the ocean chases wave, until from sheer exhaustion the weary struggler loses breath and courage.

There are private griefs and disturbances which plague us by day and make the night a sorrow. There are bitter enmities and perplexing disappointments. The tongue of malice wounds us. Great losses befall. Every path that we follow seems hedged up against progress, and we cannot break down the barriers.

Or, we are bending under the burden of public care. What evils we face, and how gigantic! Iniquity is intrenched in power. Given any vice, and the worse it is, the mightier the resources at its command. Sit in your parlor and map out the campaign for cleansing out the moral plague spots of a great city. How simple the task ! Good people, respectable, who hate iniquity: plenty of them! Officers of the law, civil officers of the town, judges, police; all constituted for this very thing ! The machinery is all ready at one's hand. God is in heaven, God, who looks on sin with not the least degree of allowance ; in whose nostrils all sin is a continual offense. Surely, there needs but the touch, the word, and all these powers will strike hands for the immediate overthrow of any form of evil-doing. So it may appear to the inexperienced, but when you step down from your easy chair to inaugurate your campaign you find the task far from being so simple. You approach the friends of virtue and solicit their cooperation, but find them free with counsel, and slow in actual aid, financial or other. And what counsel they are willing to impart is mostly on the side of discouragement. Each has his own concerns, his pleasures, his business, his household, and these absorb all his energies ; and beside that your campaign if carried through is certain to offend some one in whom he has an interest. So he pats you on the back, but does not enlist in your company.

From him you turn to the officers of the law, to the men who are paid by the city or by the state to attend to this very thing; but they also are prodigal with excuses. Law! I venerate the word. The protection which the state supplies to the persons and property of its citizens is wonderful. But again, how much is left undone! Individual offenders are now and then swept up in the legal net ; but for all that there remains in all our cities a great criminal class, which is a reproach to our civilization. Public officials frequently enforce the laws which it seems popular to enforce, but the others which they are not pressed to enforce they neglect. Constantly they are closing their eyes to the existence of great evils, which they are inclined to call "necessary evils." Under such rebuffs patience almost gives way. But still there is God. You can pray. You turn to your closet and there you pour out your soul for the tide of wickedness to be stayed, and for the right to triumph. What results ? Humanity still groans, being burdened. Your prayer is not answered and the heavens are as brass.

Some such experience befalls every soul that is charged with a sense of high mission. First there comes the flush of enthusiasm; then the settling down to zealous labor, and then lower the shadows of doubt, loneliness, and disappointment.

What travail for Elijah all those years when he regarded himself as the only believer in a nation of idolaters ! What a desolate time for Paul, and Luther, and Wesley, and Edwards, and Judson, before they could enlist helpers to see truth with their eyes! What agony in the soul of Jesus, as He knelt in the garden, and when later, in the shadow of the cross he exclaimed, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me V 3

And yet, for all our doubtings, God is nearer than we think. Israel might groan and implore, and in the bitterness of increasing bondage, might imagine that God had forgotten.

And Moses, in the desperation of his personal fortunes, might suppose the same. What change for him from the courtly circles of the palace to herding sheep in the wilderness. And how tedious the waiting ! I can think how he prayed the first year, and the second year, and the fifth year, and the tenth year. But how about the twentieth and the thirtieth year? And this is now the fortieth year, and life is slipping away, and this man of commanding talents, of untiring zeal, of multiform learning, is buried in this solitude! Forty years of climbing these rugged peaks! Forty years of following the lambs down into the abysses. Forty years of protecting the flocks from ravening beasts ! Is this the life of faith and self-sacrifice ? Has God forgotten ?

And yet for all the loneliness God was there in the desolate wilderness. When most He seemed far away He was close at hand. And it is so to-day. Sometimes it is needful to wait. Our measures are crude, our plans faulty, our purposes misguided. Time must ripen away the crudeness and bring unity of action. But all the while God is hearing and is bringing relief. The Christian believes devoutly in God. I am walking down these aisles of time with a growing sense of the Divine immanence. Though a lonely wanderer, I lift my hand and I touch infinitude. In my prayer closet, God is there. At my desk, God is there. As I enter the pulpit, God is there. And so to me and to you, every incident, even the most trivial ; every circumstance, however discouraging in appearance, may become the medium of cheer and blessing. Many a withered bush, esteemed by men as mean and worthless, may glow with God's presence and God's promise, and bring to the soul the comfort of a lively hope.

From the burning bush flashes also this kindred truth, not only that God reaches men, but that He reaches mind. Beside upholding the world by His arm of power, He makes Himself known to His people. He declares His presence. He communicates His will.

Am I told that there is an opposite view. Are there some who sneer at the beautiful stories of the Old Testament revelation, and are there others who explain them away as being natural events touched up by the vivid imagination of the oriental mind ; and are there others still who hope against hope, and through many fears desire that somewhere in it all they may discover some remnant of truth? These tales of the Exodus, of the Plagues of Egypt, of the Crossing of the Sea, of the Manna from Heaven, of the Waters Gushing from the Flinty Rock ; our fathers believed them all and had great comfort in their confidence in God.

But what are these doubts that so many cherish, open or concealed; and whither do they lead? Likely enough one can so interpret the sacred Scripture as to introduce a seeming consistency in the narrative by explaining away the miraculous. Say that the incident was colored by a vivid imagination. Suggest natural causes for all unusual events. Insist that the sun gleamed on a bush and that Moses was so innocent that he mistook it for a gleam of fire! Make it plain that Aaron's rod was so crooked that Pharoah thought it must be a serpent and was afraid ! Point out that a strong wind must have blown the Red Sea dry at a time of low tide ! Wherever the Scripture tells of a miracle declare that it is merely a figure of speech ! Where the Bible mentions that an angel spoke to Abraham or to Lot assure us that it is a rhetorical flourish ! In such manner the miracles can be emptied of the miraculous, and the Scriptures can be emptied of God. But how shall we characterize such treatment? Admit we must that the miracles offer difficulties; but for that matter what department of human life, or what branch of learning is free from some sort of difficulty? Send your child to the high school, and shall he revise all the grammars to suit his undisciplined condition, dropping out the long rules of the Latin grammar, and dismissing the bothersome sinuosities of the Greek verb ? Not so at all. He has to take the Latin and the Greek as he finds them. And in our view of the case miracles are merely the irregular nouns in the grammar of omnipotence; although I imagine before we are through with them we shall find them far more numerous than we have suspected, and quite the regular nouns of God's administration. Eliminate the difficult, the wonderful things, from history! It is possible, but whenever it is attempted we shall find, as stated in the words of another, that "if we do not understand God's ways with man, we shall at least clearly see what are man's ways with God, and with His revelation/'

But I was asking whither all this explaining away is to lead. It all focusses to a single point, the denial that God reaches His people ; the denial that the Divine Mind reaches the human mind; the denial that the Divine Spirit communicates in any way, or by any channel, with the human spirit.

Now I am not anxious to make a new definition of a miracle, though I confess that I am disinclined to be bound up too tight by the definitions given by others. But this I am willing to stand by and declare that if the Divine Mind is to reach the human mind at all, it must be through what we are accustomed to style as miracle. If God sends bread from heaven to feed the needy thousands of Israel in the desert, that is a miracle. If Abraham has a vision in the night, which bids him to get out of the land of his fathers, that is a miracle. If God sends His Son into the world to teach it and to redeem it, that too is miracle. For the miracle is the bridge which permits the Divine to pass over and come into contact with the human mind. It is the medium for communicating the Divine power or the Divine purpose. How shall God reach man? Shall He write a letter, and seal it with the great seal of heaven, and fold it into an envelop and drop it into the United States mail? You do not discover a miracle recorded between the two lids of the Bible that is greater than such a miracle would be. Shall God touch the soul of man, firing it with new purpose in the line of His great plans and writing on it nobler views of duty and consecration? But that would be miracle also.

Here is the whole question in a nutshell. God can communicate with His people, or He cannot. Who shall aver that He cannot? Have you ever struggled in dreams with a feeling of utter helplessness, anxious to accomplish somewhat, but always restrained ? You dream of the carriage in which you would ride, but it rolls away just as you get your foot on the step. You dream of the friend whom you would greet, but just as you are about to speak to him he vanishes from sight. What torture is such an experience! How glad you are when you waken and realize that it was nothing but a dream ! After that who will be so venturesome as to declare that a state like that is the normal thing with the great God of the universe; that He may wish to help His people, but cannot; that He has so bound Himself up in the laws of His own making that He cannot lift a finger for their relief, or that He cannot speak a word to them that they can hear? Away with such a thought ! If ever there was a place where it would be right to be skeptical it is just here. We will not believe of the Almighty that He has ever excavated an abyss so profound that His grace cannot cross it, or that He has erected any barrier of natural law to such towering height that Infinite Love cannot overleap it and bring some swift message for our knowledge and redemption. But when you say that, you have settled the whole case of the miracle. A Divine religion in its establishment and maintenance has a place for the miraculous. This the Christian believes and is steadfast in the confession of his belief. God determines to send His servant Moses to Egypt. He speaks to this messenger from the burning bush. He gives into his hand signs and wonders so that Pharaoh may know, so that all Israel may know, so that the whole world shall know that God has given him his high commission, and made him His accredited ambassador from the Court of Heaven.

From the burning bush comes also a voice of reverence. God impresses His servant's heart. "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet," so says the angel, "for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground."

No temple there with towering spire or lustrous dome. No modest shrine. Nothing more than a desert bush aflame with the presence of God. But God consecrates the place. Holy ground! Off then with the sandals! Hide the face! Bow in reverential adoration ! This devotion you observe reaches the outward act. "Put off thy shoes!" In the east for the expression of respect they uncover the feet, as we in the west for the same purpose uncover the head. The priests in the tabernacle and in the temple served at the altar, or bore the ark of the covenant with feet unshod. Moses in the desert, as he draws near to God must come with the outward tokens and posture of devotion.

Is there question why this should be so? Why bow the head? Why bend the knee? Why loose the sandal ? What need of the outward sign when the heart prostrates itself before God? Moses might worship in his heart. Is not that enough? No others are here. He is alone with God. Why ask more than that he feel reverential ? And yet here is the plain command, "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the "place whereon thou standest is holy ground"

And this was the right thing to do, for after all that might be said there is much that is due to place and circumstance. Conduct which might be appropriate for the street, or for the concert room, or for the parlor of a friend, is not appropriate for the house of God. I enter the sanctuary on the Sabbath day. It is holy ground. Sacred associations are knit into every part of it ; into the pulpit, where the gospel has been preached; into the choir, whence have ascended such triumphal songs of glory ; into the pews, where the veterans of the cross have taken their places and worshiped. What comfort has been experienced here by struggling souls, what consolation to mourners, what pardon to sinners, what special manifestations of reviving grace to penitent souls when they were seeking after God! What consorts with a place like that? Certainly nothing that is gloomy. That was one trouble with the religion of Egypt. No doubt, according to what we learn from the monuments, there were priests of Egypt who worshiped the one true God, but they did not impart that knowledge to the people whom they suffered to be idolaters, and whom they taught to worship after a ritual which was sombre and funereal in all its accessories and effects. Christians banish such thoughts from the house of prayer. Make religion gloomy, and you freeze devotion to death, with high sounding respectability for its winding sheet. Rather than that, make religion a delight ! Let the vaulted arches ring with triumphal anthems. Make a joyful noise unto the Lord. Let the air be so laden with inspiration and aspiration, that every soul that comes under the holy influence shall say, "/ was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord."

But all this gladness should be on the lofty plane of worship. It should be happy, but not frivolous. It should be uplifting, not relaxing. The altar is not a stage, and is not even a platform. True worship to God is not a spectacle, is not a gaudy show. No place then in the house of God for noise and confusion. No place for idle titterings and gigglings. No place for merriment and folly. Holy ground !

"Lo, God is here, let us adore,

And humbly bow before His face.

Let all within us feel His power, Let all within us seek His grace." But beyond the place something is due the soul itself. Reverence is an emotion. It is then subject to culture. Our feelings are sometimes supposed to be spontaneous. We fear, we admire, we love spontaneously. But there is a difference in feelings. Some emotions, if I may so speak, are naturally spontaneous and others become spontaneous from culture. We acquire tastes and train emotions. The artistic sense can develop under culture till the varied tints of the forest and the shifting hues of the evening sky, to which we once gave the casual glance, become occasions of the most exquisite pleasure. It is similar with the worshipful spirit. This may be crushed in its beginnings, or it may be cherished till it becomes a second nature, and a wellspring of serene and constant joy.

Right here it is that the college man of the day is open to a temptation which may work upon his spirit an infinite mischief. He lives in an atmosphere which has slight regard for what has been established, and he is ever on the lookout for novelties in thought and expression. In certain college sets there is a strong current which runs counter to reverence, to adoration, to worship, and which inclines to turn all these into occasions for idle jestings and ridicule. The unreverential person may distribute his engagements in such a manner as to avoid the gatherings for social worship, and to escape the hallowed moments spent by the

Christian at the table of His Lord. Culture of the soul in religion may be neglected. All those scenes and occasions which incline the soul to bow before God may be voted a tedious bore. Were the bush in the desert to blaze again with the presence of Divinity, would it be strange if the soul that had trained itself to religious indifference should turn its back upon the privilege of communion with its Maker?

But for our student there is the more excellent way. Enjoyment of devotion comes with exercise, and the reverential spirit increases with observance of the outward forms of reverence. Prince Bismarck doubtless owed much of his success in life to the sagacious counsel of his father, who once rebuked him sharply for his irreverence to the throne. While but a boy he had indulged his levity by speaking of the emperor as "Fritz." "Learn to speak reverently of His Majesty/' said he, "and you will grow accustomed to think of him with reverence" The lesson took effect. Bismarck learned to think and to speak reverently of the throne, and the loyalty of his heart gave him the impulse which brought to pass the unity of the Fatherland.

If to speak reverently of earthly dignities is profitable, how much more so will it be with God. Said the Psalmist, "O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our maker" The worshipful attitude induces the worshipful spirit. In one of our southern States a young lady begged of a traveling preacher a book which he carried in his saddle bag, and which had struck her fancy. "J will give it to you willingly,"

said he, "provided you promise me to pray God every night to make you a Christian." She was solemnized by the condition, but she made the pledge. When he came back after the four weeks had passed the whole current of her life was changed. She had kept her promise. She had bowed in prayer, and God had touched her heart with sovereign grace. Four weeks she had prayed because she had given her word. Now she prayed because she had pledged her heart.

The bush burning on the mountainside called Moses from leading the flock to leading a mighty nation. But more than that it stands for us as a perpetual memorial of God reaching down to man, of God reaching the mind of man and of God touching the heart of man.

He who spoke to Moses in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush speaks to us also. Possibly the manifestations may be different, different to us, and different to every one of us. But let the light come as it may, by outward sign, by the teaching of His Holy Word, or by the revelation of His grace in His Son our Lord, or by the inward torch of truth, the conviction of duty in the silent recesses of the heart, be it ours to accept the light, to do the work and to expect the full manifestation of His glory.

We too may hear the voice of the angel, "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground"

THE FAITH REVEALED IN CHRIST

II. The Faith Revealed In Christ

Hebrews 1: 1, 2 — "God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his son."

THE writer of this epistle opens his masterly argument by the statement of two fundamental propositions.

The first of these is in the first verse of the chapter, where he declares that God hath spoken to His people. This thought was welcome to the Jewish mind. The Jew was trained from childhood to believe in God, in a God who could hear prayer and answer it ; in a God who could sympathize with his sorrows and lift a mighty arm for his deliverance.

Some things cannot be argued away. You exist. No trickster in words can convince you that you are not alive or that you are somebody else than yourself. You may not say with Descartes, "I think, therefore I am," but you are positively assured of the fact that you are alive, you, yourself. That matter is past the shadow of a doubt.

So you know your own experiences. You take a little trip to Boston and enjoy yourself hugely. When you get back home, some one in your hearing ventures the suggestion that Boston is a very

Defiance College, Ohio, October 5, 1913.

regular town, since it is all laid out at right angles. But after your personal experience with Boston you speak right up and remark that your friend must have been thinking of Philadelphia, for you had found Boston so far from regular that you had lost yourself inside of half an hour. You are almost ready to accept the old explanation that the Boston streets were laid out on the old cow paths, since they wander so much here and there. In an instance like that you feel that your own experience is conclusive, that seeing is believing.

Nations similarly acquire a national experience, which is as firm and vivid, and possibly even more so than the individual experience. With the years there grows up a national consciousness. Historical facts enter into and become a part of a nation's life. George Washington was born in Virginia ; he became the General, the Commanderin-Chief of the Continental Armies, and when the nation was ready to stand on its feet, he was elected the first President of the United States. Now if some doubter were to come along and endeavor to persuade you that you do not really know anything about George Washington, because you never saw him, and that possibly the whole story is a myth, a sort of glorified tradition, a development of the national pride, and a personification of the American spirit which creates for itself an imaginary hero, what will you say to that? Will his hypothesis shake your historical conviction as to the reality of George Washington ? Not in the least degree. You will tell him that his brilliant hypothesis is all stuff and nonsense. If you did not see Washington for yourself, the nation saw him. The nation honored him. The nation triumphed in his triumph.