Building on rock

Front matter

lilding on Rock lENRY Kingman ■

I r.

Copyright ]\'"

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Introduction vii

I. The Background of Faith i

Introduction

Thoughtful men and women in our day are concerned as men have seldom been before to get at reality in religion. There have been long periods of Christian history in which this insistent demand for reality before all else has by no means been the dominant note in religious thinking. Men have been strangely satisfied with what was traditional or conventional or respectable, with what was endorsed by the Church, or prescribed by the creeds, or apparently advantage-' ous to society. But today, largely because of the scientific and critical temper of our age, in which sheer honesty and love of the truth will allow nothing to pass unchallenged, we are quite unable to take over our religion from the past, even if we wished to do so. We are no longer satisfied that what our fathers rested on so implicitly, in theology any more than in other fields of knowledge, must needs be true.

We are compelled, whether we will or no, to apply the test of reality to every phase of the religious life. Is there anything about it that for us is merely formal or conventional, or that now begins to appear outworn or artificial or illusory? Is our own personal religion, or the current religion of Christian society, "the real thing"? Or does it show signs of collapsing under strain, as though it could not meet the fierce test of present-day problems? Obviously there is a. dismaying breakdown of much that has passed for Christianity. What, in fact, is Christianity, and where do we get closest to its heart?

It does not matter whether we enjoy asking questions such as these, or whether we like to hear others ask them. We cannot help it. It is impossible for us to share in the scholarly life of our generation and not feel the force of this insistent demand for the essential and abiding elements in the Christian faith.

Our Lord himself would be in sympathy with such a temper. It has its dangers and plainly may be pressed to an extreme. But it is the very temper that he tried to introduce into the

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INTRODUCTION

thinking of his age. He broke himself against the unyielding wall of the "stand-pat" attitude of his day toward religious things. He labored to make men feel — what was -so clear to him — that the popular religion was full of elements of unreality; beliefs and practices that were merely traditional or ceremonial, that were outgrown or even cramping and hurtful to society. He tried to bring men back to such sympathy with God's thought that they could discriminate 4>etween the genuine and the false. He told them how they could be in deed and in truth real children of the Father — how life could be reared on eternal foundations, instead of collapsing into early ruin through sheer blund-ering. But they could not see. They were not honest enough to try to see. Yet we may be very sure that if he had found in them the eager even if critical appetite for truth, willing to search and sift with the open-mindedness of our day, he would have prized it far more than their hereditary loyalty to accredited church teaching.

On one of the days of his teaching, when he had been laying stress on this very danger of illusion in religion, he illustrated in much detail the difference between reality and unreality in the religious life. He drew many pictures of the way in which men deceive themselves and lay waste their characters, when they seem to themselves, and even to others, to give evidence of conspicuous piety. The essence of his contention he summed up in a vivid sentence that will never be forgotten while men live. It may be strenuously denied, but forgotten it cannot be. "He who does according to my words," he said, "is a man who builds his house upon a rock." He builds the character that is unshakable. Life's storms cannot break it down. It is the real thing, even through the ages. ■ It rises out of the truth, and it relates itself to truth at every stage of its development. It takes hold on the strength of God, because it grows to be a part of his thought and purpose.

It was an audacious thing to say, when Jesus said it. He was setting aside the judgment of many wise and good men through the centuries, and discarding certain religious beliefs and practices that seemed to his hearers sacred from long usage. He was setting himself up as the supreme authority upon human character. But the statement no

INTRODUCTION

longer seems audacious. It has been tested from every conceivable angle through eighteen centuries. And never was there such a consensus of opinion as there is today, after this cataclysm of the Great War, that he spoke the truth. The nearer a man comes to shaping his life completely upon the teaching of Jesus, the nearer he comes not only to being morally great but to being the invaluable helper of society. He achieves the highest that is possible for men.

This does not mean — what some instantly think of it as meaning — that one should arbitrarily shape his life by the letter of three or four of our Lord's detached sayings, of a strongly ascetic type — "resist not evil," "sell that thou hast and give unto the poor," "call no man master" — but that he should seek, with an honesty daily renewed and enlightened, to live as Jesus unmistakably and consistently bade men live, taking the spirit and example of Jesus as the inspiration of his life. A man who does this, whether he be like Livingstone or Lincoln or Mazzini or Pasteur, will be a man not only acceptable to God but beloved of humanity. His limitations and his errors may be obvious enough, but his greatness will appear in spite of them, and his friendliness to men will be as inevitable as his loyalty to God.

There is nothing in the world of phenomena more real than character. There is no more efficient force than the force of love that somehow radiates from the personality of Jesus. We cannot get closer to reality in religion than in this habitual submission to his leadership, which he described as "building upon rock." If any man has a better way to arrive at life's noblest development, it is for him to demonstrate it before the world, and society will turn to it with eagerness. But it has never appeared.

Meanwhile we turn reverently to that unchallenged authority in the field of character, to learn what he would have us do and be. These studies are the followirlg out of such an inquiry. What must we do to build our house of life upon the rock? What are the words that we, after so many years, must still hear and do if we would be saved from wasting the irrecoverable years? What commands does Jesus lay on men?

No attempt will be made in these lessons to separate his commands into classes — religious, ethical, or social — or to

INTRODUCTION

distinguish sharply between duties to man and God and self, as though they fell under different departments of human experience. They blend into one another. For the most part they were inseparable in his thought, and though we may profitably segregate one class at times for special study or attention, in a study course as general as this such division would be uncalled-for. In the choice of topics it merely follows certain lines of obvious priority and sequence. The Synoptic Gospels are used as sources for the study, and the daily readings are for the most part from them, supplemented here and there by the Fourth Gospel. Where his closest friends left some word that illuminates his thought, these passages are occasionally added, not as primary sources, but for purposes of illustration and application.

CHAPTER I The Background of Faith

DAILY READINGS First Week, First Day

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves. By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but the corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Therefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Not every one that saith unto me. Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by thy name, and by thy name cast out demons, and by thy name do many mighty works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. — Matt. 7:15-23.

The demand for reality could hardly be more sharply put than in this passage. It insists on character as the ultimate essential. It applies the pragmatic test of results to professions of every kind, without any sort of reservation. Professions are cheap. It is easy for a man to claim the faith of an angel or *the devotion of an apostle. He may even deceive himself. But let him make good ! That, and only that, will show whether his claims are worth listening to. If he does not do my Father's will, said Jesus, he does not belong to the Kingdom of Heaven. My name, or God's name, may continually be on his lips, but he is a fraud.

Character means the choice of God's will, day :n and day out, for the whole length of the winding way of life. And Jesus often asserted, and always assumed, that he was himself the revelation of what God's will meant for human life. So he confidently bade men follow him. Where they have really done so, they have helped to make this world seem like God's world.

First Week, Second Day

While he was yet speaking to the multitudes, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, seeking to speak to him. And one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, seeking to speak to thee. But he answered and said unto him that told him. Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand towards his disciples, and said. Behold, my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother. — Matt. 12:46-50.

Again in this passage Jesus put the same truth in the strongest possible way. There was no favoritism in God's household — no inner circle that had a short cut to preferment. He swept clean out of sight all lesser considerations, in order that the actual doing of God's will might appear in its unchallenged supremacy as the central requirement of religion. No doctrinal scheme may be built up — as schemes have sometimes been built up — that in any wise obscures the inevitable demand for godly living, if one is to be a disciple of Jesus.

Notice also how completely, and as it were unconsciously, Jesus assumes that the doing of God's will is the same as the doing of his own words. He uses the two expressions interchangeably, because he felt that his own teaching was only the transmitted message of his Father. "The word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me" (John 14:24). "The things therefore which I speak, even as the Father hath said unto me, so I speak" (John 12:50). The friends of Jesus, in those Galilean days, were being taught of God through the lips and the daily behavior of their Master.

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Lord, help us to count it the greatest thing in the world to do thy will, and may we fearlessly seek to knozv what that will is.

First Week, Third Day

Every one therefore that heareth these words of mine, and doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise man, who built his house upon the rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon the rock. And every one that heareth these words of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and smote upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall thereof. — Matt. 7:24-27.

Here is the enunciation of the general principle on which these studies are based. To accept the word and follow the teaching of Jesus is to build one's life on rock. To hear his commands and to keep them, as he said elsewhere, is to live in the love of God, and so find life in its highest terms. He had entire confidence that if men would do as he said, they would .be saved from all illusion and mistake in spending life's capital, and would be spared the moral bankruptcy that befalls so many. He presents this plain ethical requirement as the test of righteousness. Nothing is said here about belief, to embarrass for any mind the simple moral issue. A very simple creed is all he asks for — the creed of trusting him as Master.

And yet see what a tremendous conviction of faith such a creed involves — all the faith, indeed, that Jesus ever personally asked of men. To trust ourselves to his direction with complete abandonment, to put in his hands all our little capital of life, to abide by his decision as to our conduct through fair weather or foul to the end, what must we think of a man before we yield him up ourselves like that! And yet, beyond question, this is involved in the simple ethical decision to do his bidding. We should have to believe in him, heart and soul, for life and death. To trust in Jesus as the one who leads on to life's highest development is to believe in him.

First Week, Fourth Day

Now there went with him great multitudes: and he turned, and said unto them, If any man cometh unto me, and hateth not his own father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. Whosoever doth not bear his own cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, doth not first sit down and count the cost, whether he have wherewith to complete it? Lest haply, when he hath laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all that behold begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish. — Luke 14:25-30.

It is well for us to face thoughtfull}^ this undoubted saying of Jesus, even though .we ma}- not enjoy it. It is not and was not meant to be a well-balanced judicial statement. It is a passionate utterance of deep feeling, wrung from Jesus when he had been cut to the heart by the endless indifference and lukewarmness and self-seeking of men who rather fancied his teaching and dallied with his leadership. It means that a man cannot win the supreme achievement in character by halfway methods. To accept as Teacher and Master such a one as Jesus is a choice that strikes to the very root of a man's being and triumphantly outwears any conceivable change of time or circumstance. It is not to be reached without convictions utterly beyond the common. One must be willing to stake everything on his faith. A tentative trial of Jesus as Leader shows a moral indecision that merely dishonors him and disappoints the experimenter.

First Week, Fifth Day

At that season Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea. Father, for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight. All things have been delivered unto me of my Father: and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and

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lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. — Matt. 11:25-30.

From another angle Jesus invites men to shape their lives by him. All about us are those who are restless and discontented because of the seeming futility of life. They are getting on in years and yet are not accomplishing anything of consequence. They may be laying by a substantial property for themselves or their family, but their early idealism has worn out in the process and nothing else has come to take its place. Life for them is an enigma and so a burden.

Jesus confidently asked men to take on them the yoke of his leadership, knowing that this Very obedience would bring them rest. They would be done with the haunting fear that they were building on sand, and would have inward assurance in all their daily work that they were building on the rock. They could go on with life in calm hopefulness. The world has proved that character like that of Jesus infallibly means peace and joy. Fretfulness and discontent cannot keep foothold in a life that breathes his spirit as its daily air.

"In His will is our peace." — Dante.

First Week, Sixth Day

Now when John heard in the prison the works of the Christ, he sent by his disciples and said unto him, Art thou he that cometh, or look we for another? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and tell John the things which ye hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good tidings preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever shall find no occasion of stumbling in me. — Matt. 11:2-6.

It is well to be quite frank with ourselves as to whether we approve of Jesus as a moral guide or not. No one can decide the question for us — we must settle it for ourselves on the most practical and elementary grounds. John the Baptist, at a cruelly hard pinch, wanted a categorical statement as to the ground of Jesus' claims. He asked for dogmatic assurance. None was given. Instead, Jesus simply bade him reflect on the works Jesus did, and decide the matter for himself.

We have the works of Jesus before our eyes, spreading [ under his influence through many generations. Are we drawn to such a leader as he is, or do we on the whole feel distaste for what he stands for? Beyond question there are many, even in our day, who heartily dislike both him and his ways — though as a rule they are careful not to say so. Only if we are truly attached to him and to his spirit, and with transparent honesty long to repeat the kind of life he lived, can we expect to build our characters on lines of his approving.

The greatest contribution any man can make to society is f a life thoroughly mastered by His direction.

First Week, Seventh Day

Upon this many of his disciples went back, and walked ^ no more with him. Jesus said therefore unto the twelve, Would ye also go away? Simon Peter answered him. Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we have believed and know that thou art the Holy One of God.— John 6:66-69. I

It is often helpful to face the sharp alternative to shaping ii our lives on the teaching of Jesus. Probably there are few ^' of us, if the truth were known, who are not tempted in cer- '] tain moods to distrust him as an authoritative religious ; guide — as though this were somehow asking too much of one I in this modern critical age. Very well, suppose we surrender ; him as a divinely sent Master ! We must look for our 1 inspiration elsewhere. Where do we propose to look for it? Who is to be our guiding light in times of moral perplexity and moral defeat? Who shall set for us "the mark of living ; light, above the howling senses' ebb and flow" ? Whence I are we to draw, in days to come, the vivid invincible life- f purpose of unselfish love, that shall mould us steadily into fsomething better than we have known? '•

Jesus declares that his word is a rock foundation for such ■! i divinely tempered character. So it has been through centuries on centuries for unnumbered men and women, benefactors of their race. Are we going to be able to find other

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foundations on which we can build such a life, without his aid? If not, what is it in him that makes him thus indispensable? We cannot but believe that the foundation on which the highest development is reared is one of truth and not of error.

Lord, to whom shall we go hut unto thee? Thou hast the words of eternal life,

I

Many have seen a certain unforgettable cartoon by the Dutch artist, Louis Raemakers. It shows the German Kaiser riding down the highway on his war-horse, stern and masterful, the incarnation of relentless power. Around him are his mounted staff, with cloaks and swords and helmets, silent and terrible in the pride of war. But at his side upon the road, trespassing on that high company, is a humble man mounted on an ass, as Jesus once rode in Palestine, his bowed face eloquent of love and sadness — the Man of Sorrows. And the Kaiser, pointing indignantly to the intruder, exclaims to his staff, "Who is this man?"

The biting satire lies in the exposure of a terrible illusion, not involving the Kaiser only. This Jesus Christ, the man of love, on whom the whole structure of Christianity supposedly is built, appears an unfamiliar stranger even in the eyes of one of the great heads of Christendom. So alien is the Master in his life and spirit, that he is an offense and a stumbling-block in the path of those who bear his name and sign.

Its application is far wider than to an imperialism that had outlived the consent of men, yet ostentatiously counted God its ally. It expresses the age-old unreality of a religion that calls itself Christian, while yet squarely hostile to the ethical and social principles of Jesus. Some might say unthinkingly that it exposes the breakdown of Christianity. Just the reverse is true. It is an eloquent affirmation of the impregnable truth that there is no real Christianity save in loyalty to the spirit of Jesus Christ, who taught us what we know of God.

Historical Christianity, formal Christianity, has often been

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something startlingly out of sympathy with the Great Teacher and Friend of men. It has exalted his formal requirements in the sacraments and institutions of the Church ; it has kept always in the forefront the elaborate creedal formulations of the church councils, but it has sometimes completely broken step with him in his actual life-spirit ; it has wandered clean away out of his company. And this haunting fear of unreality, that makes so many in our time suspicious of the Church and its requirements, is the half-perceived legacy from this long period of dissonance between the ideals of Jesus and those, of his reputed followers.

Curiously enough, the Church has never formally put the ethical code of Jesus in the forefront of its teaching. The law once graven on stone, the Ten Commandments of Mount Sinai, has been taugbt to every child of the Church. Even today, as a part of the stated public worship, we repeat or sing the ancient words that forbid us to worship other gods, or to make graven images, or to do any work on the seventh day of the week. But no such place has ever been given to the royal law that crowned all those centuries of slow education and illumination — that we should love our neighbors as ourselves, that we should be merciful as our Father in heaven is merciful, that we should humble ourselves as little children, that we should pray to our Father, that we should deny ourselves for the sake of Christ and his glad tidings. As the result, we have seen state churches and national governments that stood, as the House of Hapsburg, for example, so long stood in the last century, with equal frankness and intensity for religious orthodoxy and the denial of the rights of the people.

The world has been wakening very fast in the last fifty years to the searching demands of the real discipleship of Jesus, without which any church or any Christian profession is a sorry mockery. But only in these last few years have men far and wide begun to rouse themselves from the old inertia of long-inherited unbelief, to perceive that for nations, also, obedience to the teachings of Jesus is the only policy that does not set at defiance the everlasting purposes of God, and so invite defeat. The old selfishness of individual men or of corporations or of governments, alike in greed for money or greed for power, begins to appear today

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as never before in history in its true light as the fundamental denial and betrayal of the Christian faith. We have lost interest in disputing about creeds, so profound has become our preoccupation with the primary demands of him about whom all creeds center.

Do we wish to get at the heart of reality in the religion of Jesus? Very well, here is the summing up of the actual qualities of character that inevitably appear in those who absorb his spirit — no theoretical or ecclesiastical summary, but a statement out of personal experience on the part of one of the most sympathetically intimate friends of Jesus. Imagine them used as the touchstone of reality for all who profess and call themselves Christians! Here is the list: "Love, joy, peace; patience toward others, kindness, benevolence ; good faith, meekness, self-restraint." It is not meant to be exhaustive, but it does indicate the structural lines of the Christian character.

These qualities spring up in the pathway of Jesus. Just as from a mountain on the desert edge you can follow the course of a river by the green ribbon of tree-tops winding across the sand, so you can follow the succession of the followers of Jesus through fearsome, arid centuries, when cruelty and violence spread like a boundless wilderness on either side. They made life blossom around them. Side by side with them there may have been this pretentious illusion of a Christian church full of pride and harsh intolerance, but, as at this day, the men and women who really shared the spirit of Jesus were like fountains of living water for thirsty men. Never has there been a doubt as to the character of those who actually hear and do his words — it is the world's most precious possession up till now. And it is only leadership like this which can ever bring the world out of the labyrinth of tangled hates and passions, through which it stumbles on its way today. Here is reality indeed, as of the supreme force in the moral universe.

II

It is fairly plain to most men that the genuine following of the teaching of Jesus leads out into character of this particularly high and noble type. It is not so immediately plain that such a life of habitual obedience to his example

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is a triumph of faith. Yet clearly enough it is only as one deeply believes in him that one yields up to his control for life the sweet freedom of self-will.

So many of us have been accustomed to place a purely conventional meaning on the words, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ," that we are slow to discern how simple are .the essentials of that requirement. In the nature of the ,case they must be within the reach of any honest and welldisposed soul face to face with a man claiming, as did Jesus, to be a leader sent from God. Does he commend himself to us or not in that august capacity? Would we be content to build our lives on lines of his direction?

In certain European countries the universities were filled with young men looking forward to civil and military preferment. Their governments demanded that they should be baptized members of the state church and should receive the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. They gave these outward signs of belief in Jesus Christ, as declared members of a Christian community. But by a large proportion of them the actual teachings of Jesus were viewed with derision or disgust: his demand for purity, for self-restraint, for self-denying love to the poor and weak, for a reverent and humble fellowship with God, was to them fiercely objectionable. They subscribed to an orthodox confession, but frankly and energetically they disbelieved in him. They might grow up to be strong supporters of the state church, especially for the sake of the common people ; but their belief in Christianity was a deadly illusion, full of injury to society — as this war has so tragically shown.