The preceding God

Foreword

This volume is published at the request of friends in the three churches which the author served as pastor covering a period of about thirty-one years — the North Orange Baptist Church of Orange, New Jersey, 1886-1903; the First Baptist Church of Rochester, New York, 1903-1912 ; the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church of Brooklyn, New York, 1913-1918.

The author cannot express his loving, grateful memories of these churches and of the three country churches in Virginia where he preached at the beginning of his ministry. As expressing his own feelings, he can quote the Latin motto of which Charles Kingsley was fond, " Amavimus, Amamus, Amabimns!'

Most of the contents of this volume have already been printed in " The Examiner/' the more recent " Watchman-Examiner," the " Religious Herald," or elsewhere. The tribute to Rev. Dr. Alfred E. Dickinson, the author's father, appeared first in volume five of " Virginia Baptist Ministers," and is reprinted here by permission of Dr. George Braxton Taylor, the editor of this valuable series of biography, and of the publishers, the J. P. Bell Co.

Part I Sermons Chapter Page

I. The Preceding God 3

II. Filled With the Holy Spirit 19

III. According to Your Faith 31

IV. What Shall We Think of Heaven ? 41

V. This Same Jesus 54

VI. The Love of God Shed Abroad 64

VII. Making a Fresh Start in Prayer 73

VIII. Christmas and Human Joy 83

IX. Greatness Out of Gentleness 91

X. Christ the Door 99

Part II Addresses

I. A Knight of the Sixteenth Century .... 107

II. Poetry and Life 121

III. Lincoln and Washington 126

IV. The Religiousness of Theodore Roosevelt 131 V. Two Hands of Appeal in Foreign Missions 134

VL Memories and Impressions 142

CONTENTS

Part III Tributes And Appreciations Chapter Page

I. Rev. Alfred E. Dickinson, D. D 151

II. Samuel Colgate 161

III. Howard Osgood, the Man and the Teacher 168

IV. A Tribute to Two Leaders 172

V. Dr. Thomas O. Conant 176

VI. William J. Wright 180

VII. Isaac Edwin Gates 185

VIII. Gardner Colby and Hayward Smith 188

Part IV Letters From Abroad

I. A Visit to Bethlehem 193

II. A Winter Journey to Italian Shores .... 198

III. Happy Days in Sunny Sicily 202

IV. Letter from Rome 207

V. Rome — the Hill-towns — Florence 212

Part I Sermons

I

"Thou goest before me with the blessings of goodness "~ Psalm 21 : 3.

" He goeth before them."— John 10 : 4.

u But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee."

—Matthew 26 : 32.

ASSEMBLED here this morning, the past and the present and the future rise before our vision and stir our souls. Again we see the heroic men who founded the three great missionary Societies of our beloved denomination and hear their words of prayer and appeal and holy confidence. We look out upon the world as it is today, and behold its sins, its perils, its glorious possibilities, and from every land and hamlet hear voices calling for the evangel of divine love. Far into the future we gaze, and with enraptured hearts behold the earth redeemed from evil, transfigured to holiness, and hear the song of the triumphant soldiers of the cross.

For such an occasion surely we need not so much ingenious human speculations, not so much historical statistics, as some supreme teaching of God's Word. In early English history, after the death of King Alfred the Great, there were often times of terrible peril and discouragement. When the people and the leaders knew not what to do and were near to despair, the cry would arise, " Give

1 Annual missionary sermon at the Baptist Anniversaries at Buffalo, May »4, 1903.

us a word of our Alfred to cheer and guide." A message throbbing with comfort and inspiration from our Divine Redeemer and King our hearts crave chiefly as we front the most glorious endeavor conceivable — the bringing of the entire world to a knowledge of Jesus Christ. Back of all questions of practical organization, or systematic benevolence, or doctrinal divergence, there are deep and lofty and immediate relationships of the soul to God which kindle the strongest and only permanent enthusiasm in Christian service and sacrifice. Our texts suggest these higher heights and fellowships of the soul.

The first text is from the Twenty-first Psalm, which is also Messianic, and brings before us the Hebrew king and the rejoicing people. In the preceding psalm the king is pictured as going forth to battle, and the people cry : " The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble. Grant thee according to thy own heart." In the Twenty-first Psalm we have the chorus of praise to God sung by the whole congregation as the king returns victorious: " Thou hast given him his heart's desire ; for thou preventest him with the blessings of goodness," More literally, " thou goest before him with the treasures of goodness." So Jesus, speaking of the relationship between himself as Divine Shepherd and his disciples, says, " He goeth before them." Four times in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark Jesus is spoken of after his resurrection as going before his disciples.

The command, " Go, preach, make disciples," is of most urgent, momentous importance. The assurance that God, the living Christ, " goes before " is just as momentous and important for all our work. By the side of the human duty, " Go," let us place the divine assurance, " I go before." Our theme, then, is, The going before of God with blessings of goodness, preparing man's way, giving success and power and glory to his efforts. Let us attempt to climb to various heights of thought and emotion and historical fact and blessed anticipation, each marked by divine precedence and provision and power for the human follower.

In general, there is the sublime fact of an infinite, allpowerful, all-wise, all-loving God existing before this earth and its inhabitants. Creation is not the making of something out of nothing. Ever true is the old Latin proverb, Ex nihilo nihil fit. " In the beginning God." Thus before man from all eternity existed the glorious God, fountain of life, source of all goodness and beauty.

More specifically, we observe that in the physical world God preceded man with treasures of goodness. The Genesis narrative tells of the stages in the divine creative work (and with the account agree in essence the teachings of the best science), and one of the notable facts of the narrative is that God made a good and wonderful world before the creation of man. Solid earth, gleaming water, bright sun and moon and stars, plants and flowers, birds of song, flashing fish, and animals of the land, all things serviceable and glorious were made. Then, then came man, the crown of creation — man, the guest for whom God had prepared so wonderful a banquet. Throughout all the centuries since every science has been a record and a witness of God's going before man with illimitable physical blessings. Invention and discovery have simply been the taking hold of the divine provision. Treasures of wood and iron and marble and silver and gold and flashing gems, treasures of wheat and oil and fruit, treasures of steam and electric power — these God had placed here awaiting man ; and who would dare prophesy what other treasures await him in earth and air and water?

But with greater treasures still in a man's mental and spiritual equipment did God go before. Plan and pattern must always precede performance. Before man went the design of man, the image of man in the holy, wise, loving, mighty God, after whose likeness man's essential nature was made. Hence the glories and possibilities stored up in the human soul — thought, and love, and imagination, and joy, and memory, and hope, and aspirations Godward and eternityward. Whence comes all that is thus highest and best? Not from the dust. We do not, cannot accept that materialism which has been aptly called a " Gospel of dirt." From the Infinite Spirit must come all the movements and upreachings of our spirits. Goethe said that his best thoughts "came like the singing birds from out of the immensities of the air, and all that he knew about them was when they announced their presence. He did not make them; they came." Often with us truth, power, joy, aspirations find us rather than we find them. As Jesus in the training of the Twelve went before them, leading them on from one high level of truth to another, so God goes before us beckoning us on, quickening us with

Authentic tidings of invisible things, • Of ebb and flow and ever-during power, And central peace subsisting at the heart Of endless agitation.

This is in accord with the great doctrine and fact of the Holy Spirit. He goes before us with light and peace and power for those who follow stedfastly on. Hence Christ said to his disciples as to the sharp trials awaiting them : " But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak ; for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you." Again : " But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things. He will guide you into all truth."

But man is more than a physical being, and he has another differentiating characteristic besides his intellectual and spiritual aptitudes; he is a sinful creature, with a heavy sense of being at war with his highest nature. So far as we know, this earth is the only planet marred by sin and man the only creature with a bitter sense of moral dereliction. But even before man's sin there was provided man's salvation; treasures of redemptive grace preceded him. His salvation was a forethought, not an afterthought. Christ's redemptive work was wrought out in the divine thought even before man's advent. How rich and wonderful are the Scripture teachings concerning this ! " I have loved thee with an everlasting love." " That was the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." " He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world." " The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." So when a child is born into this world, Christ is there by the cradle with spiritual grace. Jesus during his earthly life touched every phase of human experience — childhood, youth, manhood, joy, sorrow, temptation, physical and mental toil, loneliness, death. He is God's Word, his incarnate, uttered thought. As Christ touched and transfigured all of human life, so with sovereign grace God goes before the individual and the race, the same yesterday and today and forever in his redemptive work. Can such everlasting love be baffled? Impossible, cry the deepest instincts of the soul, the wisest reasonings of the intellect.

What a sense of might and irresistibleness comes to one as he watches the broad expanse of the Mississippi near New Orleans and thinks of the waters of a continent far back among distant States poured into it ! But in the vast stream of divine grace the infinite resources of an eternity back of us have poured and the momentum of an eternity of life-giving power is working for us.

Turning from the sublime teachings of Scripture and Christian faith to the evolution of history, we find most impressive illustrations of how the divine power and wisdom and love are ever leading onward humanity's march. The course of human history is often dark with terrible tragedies and reactions, but through the ages one increasing purpose runs fraught with blessing and gradual uplift. Each great crisis that seems to foretoken irrevocable disaster is marked by a supernatural presence which brings blessing out of apparent ruin. The early subapostolic church was persecuted with such diabolical cruelty that it seemed as if in a few years there would be no Christians left on the earth, but soon after the faithful disciples had preached the Cross everywhere and almost the whole world had yielded to its message.

In medieval times the power and beauty of the primitive faith had apparently gone to return no more; deep darkness, with only here and there a light, covered the face of Europe; some thought the end of the world was near. In overwhelming depression, Martin Luther said, as he surveyed the intellectual and spiritual decay of the church and the wickedness of the world : " Asia and Africa have no gospel; another one hundred years and all will be over; God's Word will disappear for want of any to preach it." But, behold, soon a new and glorious chapter opens for humanity. In close proximity of time Luther proclaims the fresh, strong gospel of Christ, the art of printing with movable types is invented, and Columbus discovers a new world. Urged on by a trinity of forces, human history starts afresh with a new world in which to work out the old problems, a new multiplication of the Bible for universal distribution, and, above all, a new return to the redemptive grace of the living Christ.

In the early part of the last century, infidelity, skepticism, and a cold deism were wide-spread throughout our own country, and accompanying them gross immoralities. From his home in Virginia Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams in Massachusetts, " You and I will live to see the time when every child born in America will be a Unitarian. " How grievously the great statesman erred when, leaving politics, he assumed the role of a religious prophet! Not many years after Jefferson's prediction a great wave of evangelical fervor swept over the country, with mighty revivals and spiritual blessings, and Unitarianism has long been a waning force. The history of civilization and of the Christian church marvelously illustrates the divine assurance through the prophet Isaiah: " I will bring the blind by a way that they know not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known. I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight."

But in missionary work, in the evangelization of the world, both at home and abroad, do we behold the most remarkable confirmations of our theme. And where in all the realm of literature shall we find such romances, such poems, such histories of sublime heroism, such heavenly philosophy as in the annals of the missionary enterprise at home and abroad ? Oh for a Milton or a Carlyle to depict with winged words the patience and the courage and the celestial victories of the men and women who in earth's darkest places have carried the message of light ! The threefold assurance that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit will go before us are witnessed on every page of these annals. In the moving, the compulsion, of the heart of the worker we see the divine preparation. Sometimes humble men are chosen, sometimes brilliant ones, but the call is such as to exalt the influence of the supernatural. Carey, the shoemaker, was deeply oppressed by his seeming unfitness for the great work into which he was drawn, and would have stayed in his lowly shop; but a heavenly gravitation drew him on and on, until he became the founder of modern missions. Judson seemed to be bound to his own land by the great openings for his splendid gifts and by every human reason ; but a beckoning hand — the hand with the wound-print in it — led him across the seas and to distant Burma. Count Zinzendorf had every inducement to lead a life of elegant leisure, but he laid fame, wealth, social position, everything upon the altar, saying, " I have but one passion, and it is He, only He." The call of the living Christ seemed ever in his heart as he journeyed to plant the gospel among distant nations. So it has been with all of Christ's valiant soldiers; a power they could not resist has drawn them on and on. This divine power has been most signally manifested in the opening up of the way for the preaching of the gospel and in the overcoming of obstacles. In our own day the whole world has been thrown open to Christian civilization by circumstances almost miraculous. The capture of Manila by our navy and the thrusting forth of our nation into Asiatic life illustrate the strange events beyond human thought or control that have made all nations accessible to the gospel.

Into the heart of humanity, even among the heathen, the divine Spirit has gone before the message of the gospel has been preached. How otherwise can we explain the heavy consciousness of sin among non-Christians? How interpret the unhappiness of the race out of Christ ? Whence come the vague yearnings and perturbations of the human soul which exist among the heathen as well as among ourselves ? The very idol-worship and abominable heathen rites bear witness to man's essential religiosity. Humboldt describes his deep emotion at finding an exquisite flower on the edge of the crater of Vesuvius. There amidst the lava, a little rich soil had gathered and to it the wind had borne a seed and there amidst awful desolation had sprung up the sweet flower. Nansen declares that he found near the north pole, amidst the icebergs of the arctic sea, in an abyss of wintry darkness, the warm, life-giving movement and pulse of the Gulf Stream.

To the heart of humanity the Divine Spirit has come. Many in our own country and in heathen lands have been prepared by heavenly influences for the preached word. A missionary writes that a woman in the wilds of Africa heard for the first time of Christ and his saving grace, and then exclaimed : " That must be the man who comes to me so often in my prayers. I could not tell before who he was." John Fiske, philosopher and historian, relates, in his " Idea of God/' of how an untutored Kaffir savage found in the gospel message the immediate and blessed answer and fulfilment of the vague questionings and yearnings that had long filled his soul. The waiting of the world for Christ, with its yearnings, sins, woes, is dramatically pictured in the poetical-prophetical passage in Romans, the eighth chapter, the nineteenth to twenty-first verses. We who have the knowledge of Christ and the first-fruits of the Spirit " groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption — to wit, the redemption of our body." But this is not all, says the inspired apostle; there is a broader synthesis of aspiration Godward ; there is a wider fellowship of spiritual yearning, a more passionate symphony of cryings and groanings. He depicts all creation as a mighty creature, glorious in its possibilities, yet in sore need and bitter sin and suffering, groaning and crying and stretching out bruised and bleeding hands toward the skies. " For the earnest expectation of the creation waited for the revealing of the sons of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together with us until now." Oh, the weary, anguished waiting of the world, its heart touched by the Spirit, for the preaching of Christ!

Before us has God gone, fashioning this wonderful material universe, making the human soul a reflex of himself, revealing his heart in Christ's gospel, inspiring the race through the Holy Spirit to continual progress, and in the proclamation of the gospel giving peculiar and irresistible tokens of his leadership. Beyond this brief present life and through all eternity we believe that the divine goodness will go, ever leading into higher and higher enjoyments and employments and spiritual treasures.

Let us take to heart special applications of our theme to the majestic plans and efforts of our three great missionary societies, and for every realm of Christian effort. Here is the thought of unlimited power and resources pledged for us. This is God's world. He bears it on his heart. What Christ did and felt in his brief earthly ministry, that we may be sure Almighty God is feeling and doing through all the ages. John Foster, in one of his essays, says that in the miracles of the Bible " God rings the great bell of the universe to call the attention of all people." Let us expand the saying. In the miraclcs of missions God has been ringing the great bell of the universe to waken us from self-centered, mancentered thoughts and to remind us of the supernatural, divine forces all about us. Ah, the infinite power of God in flower and mountain, and ocean and sky, in all the worlds that go circling through space, and in the secret, silent forces by man yet undiscovered, and all this power guided by love and pledged in behalf of the Christian worker ! This limitless power is with us when we follow the divine call. " Ye shall have power." That promise is closely linked to another " shall" — " Ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."

The going before of the ever-living Christ involves our subordination, our subjection. The divine pattern involves a command for human imitation, the divine example involves human exemplification. How blessed is such subordination ! We are simply to follow the divine leadings and leave results with God. There is divine responsibility upon which we may rest with serene faith, as Judson and Livingstone and Clough have done.

How large and bold should be our activities in all Christian work under the inspiration of our theme! No plan for Christian expansion can be too ambitious, no faith too bold, no zeal too great, when we remember the needs of humanity and the leadership of Christ. Let us have the spirit of those missionaries who were planning to advance from New Guinea to Murray Island. An attempt was made to stop them by a native, who said, " There are alligators on Murray Island, and snakes, and centipedes." " Hold," said Tapeso, " are there men there ? " " Oh, yes ; there are men, of course ; but they are such dreadful savages that there is no use of your thinking of living among them." " That will do," replied

Tapeso ; u wherever there are men, missionaries are bound to go." Wherever a single soul is, there is need, there are eternal possibilities, and there is the Divine Spirit preparing the soul for the message. We cannot, must not, rest until every nation and every individual has had an opportunity to accept Christ. Alas for our languor, our spiritual lethargy! The Christian churches of today scarcely do one scintilla of what they might do for the evangelization of the world. The newspapers told us, last March, of how Niagara Falls became almost dry, the great torrent of water having nearly ceased for a few hours. What was the trouble? Power impeded by ice. Great masses of ice from Lake Erie pressed together near the head of Goat Island and diverted the water from the American to the Canadian side, and so for a season the stupendous waterfall vanished. Oh, the impeded energy of the church, diverted, thwarted, sometimes destroyed, by the ice-flows of selfishness, worldli-

ness, and sin!

f

Do you remember that characteristic scene in Victor Hugo's masterpiece, in which that great soul, Jean Valjean, gives to the uttermost his vast strength for the saving of life? An old man, Valjean's enemy, by a strange accident had fallen under a ponderous cart, which, heavily laden, rested on his breast and was crushing the life from him. The soil was soft with rain, the cart sank deeper and deeper, crushing out the old man's life. In five minutes more he would be dead. Who will crawl under the cart and risk his life to save the perishing one ? Appeal after appeal is made. The police inspector says only one man in France could do it, and he was a convict at the galleys in Toulon. Jean Valjean turns pale. Shall he risk his life and also reveal his unhappy past and destroy his present high position? Meanwhile the cart sinks lower. Its victim is manifestly about to die. Without a word, Jean Valjean falls on his knees ; flat on the ground he crawls under the terrible weight and makes two vain efforts for rescue. The crowd cries : " Come out, come out! You, too, will die." The suffering victim says : " Leave me ! You will get yourself crushed also/' All the spectators are panting with affright. The great cart sinks lower and lower, and both rescuer and victim are apparently about to die. Suddenly Jean Valjean exercises to the utmost his prodigious, almost superhuman, power. His muscles standing forth like ropes, all his strength in limbs and shoulders and back strains upward, upward. The great mass trembles, quivers, rises slowly upward. The dying man moves, is saved! This, O disciples of Christ, is our task, to put our uttermost strength beneath the awful weight of sin and heathenism, and to lift and lift until all oppressed and dying souls are freed from terrible bondage.

The more active we are in missionary work, the deeper we go into it, the more glorious and rewardful it becomes to our souls. The splendor of the conception of proclaiming the redemptive love of Almighty God far surpasses in grandeur the warrior's plan, the statesman's endeavor for national conquest, the poet's dream of human brotherhood, the philosopher's theory of universal linguistic unity. The soul that truly takes Christ's sublime thought and command for the redemption of humanity is in turn taken control of by that command, every impulse and power sweetened, broadened, vivified, energized!

And let us be filled with holy hope and exultant expectation for humanity as we think of God's leadership, Christ's perpetual presence, the Holy Spirit's residence in and preparation of the race. In a time of terrible trial, personal and national, James Russell Lowell wrote :

" I take great comfort in God. I think he is considerably amused sometimes, but, on the whole, loves us, and would not let us get at the match-box if he did not know that the frame of the universe was fire-proof." Slow may seem the progress of the world's redemption, heavy the burdens on the hearts of faithful toilers, well-nigh insurmountable the barriers of sin and selfishness, but full victory is near because of what God is. The glorious company of the saints is with us ; the irresistible gravitation of eternal truth is with us ; the best yearnings and aspirations of humanity are with us; the momentum of nineteen centuries of Christian work is with us ; the living, omnipotent Christ is before us. With exultant hearts we climb to some great height of revealed truth and look out with glad expectancy to the consummation of the ages when at the pierced feet of Christ every soul shall fall in loving trust and service.

Stronger than steel Is the sword of the Spirit; Swifter than arrows The light of the truth is; Greater than anger Is love and subdueth.

The dawn is not distant, Nor is the night starless ; Love is eternal !

God is still God, and His faith shall not fail us ; Christ is eternal.

Sudden have been the comings of the Son of God in the history of the world, and this element of unexpectedness is predicted in Scripture for the day of final triumph. The most experienced missionaries, the most devoted Christian workers the world over, seem to be standing, as it were, today on tiptoe in solemn expectancy of some great and surprising turning of hearts to Christ. Sir Alexander Mackenzie, one of the great statesmen of India, said, a few years ago, to Dr. J. H. Barrows, that he thought there were blessed surprises for Christian workers in India ; " that he looked forward to the time when multitudes of the people of India should be pressing into the kingdom of heaven. ,, The distinguished president of Union Theological Seminary, who has recently been spending a year in India, has just stated that there is a deep longing among the people for spiritual religion, and that Christianity is growing with remarkable rapidity. From missionaries everywhere come tidings of a new and profound anticipation of some great religious transformation near at hand. Who can tell how near the dawn of realization may be?

Never can I forget a strange, soul-thrilling sunrise on the Gulf of Mexico, some years ago. Long had been the night to the sleepless travelers, as through blackness and storm the train rushed on. It seemed as if the morning would never come. At last a single bird began to sing. The darkness here and there was penetrated with an arrow of light, the shadows began to tremble and fall away. At intervals the white gleam of the sea waves shone out. But still the day delayed its coming, and we said, Will the night ever end ? Suddenly, as by a miracle, the sun, like a great ball of fire, leaped above the horizon, earth was flooded with a glory as of heaven, the sea shimmered in a blaze of splendor, and a thousand birds sang as if their hearts were bursting with joy.

Long, long seems the night, and weary is the watching, but the arrows of divine light are piercing the darkness; here and there sentinels of the day are singing, radiant spots begin to appear, the shadows of sin and ignorance are receding. Soon — in God's good time — as by special divine intervention, nations will be born into the kingdom of heaven as in a day. Happy, thrice happy, they who watch and work and plan and pray for the advent of the King of Glory !