The gardens of life; messages of cheer and comfort

Dedication

AS A SLIGHT TOKEN OF ESTEEM AND A SIMPLE EX- PRESSION OF APPRECIATION FOR RARE QUALITIES OF MIND AND HEART, I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO MY FRIEND AND COMRADE IN CHRISTIAN SERVICE

EDWARD C. MILLER

ONE OF NEW YORK'S BUSINESS MEN WHO HAS WON A WORTHY SUCCESS AND THROUGH SERVING THE BLESSED MASTER HAS FOUND THE JOYFUL SECRET OF HAPPINESS IN THE GARDENS OF LIFE

Preface

Feeling that the time was ripe for some uncompromising messages on the shortcomings of the church and the awful sins of modem society, as seen in the light of the sterner warning of God's Word, I prepared for pubhcation a book of sermons under the general subject, ''The Menace of ImmoraHty in Church and State — Messages of Wrath and Judgment."

This book was published by George H. Doran Company. It has gone through several editions and seems to be accompHshing its mission.

Realizing the need of encouragement to many in this time of storm and stress in human society, I am led now to send out the group of sermons embodied in this book as Messages of Cheer and Comfort.

These sermons were stenographically reported and they are printed just as they were delivered. I have not made any attempt to smooth them down or reduce them to a fine literary form, as I hope that the rugged simpHcities of extemporaneous speech may cause them to be more effective. They are sent out in the prayerful and humble hope that they may bring Cheer and Inspiration to many

hearts.

John Roach Straton.

Study of

Calvary Baptist Church,

New York City.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Gardens of Life . 13

II. The Condition of Discipleship .^ . . 26

Chapter I

Gardens have played a large part in human life. The very word itself is musical and fascinating. It suggests to us cool retreats and blooming flowers and the melody of singing birds, and golden sunlight, rippling on green grasses and sparkling upon limpid lakes.

The Bible makes clear the interesting fact that three of the great pivotal events of the world's history took place in gardens.

First of all, the creation and the fall of man occurred in a garden. It is written in Genesis that ^'God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.'' There are several very illuminating truths in this brief verse of Scripture. The first is that God's ideal dwelling place for man is a garden. Not a desert, nor a bleak mountain height, and not the drab streets of a squalid city, but a place of beauty and bloom was the home that God made for man.

And here in this spot of beauty, God walked and talked with man. The plan of a loving Creator was to have an intimacy of communion and fellowship between the Creator and His creatures ; and when God's great plans for man's happiness and peace are finally worked out in *'the fulness of the times," it will be true once more that *'God will dwell with them and be their God, and God will wipe away all tears from their eyes.''

We also learn from this Scripture that God designed man to be a worker. There is a very foolish notion abroad, to the effect that labor has come about only because of the curse of sin, that labor is a part of the punishment that a righteous God inflicted upon a rebellious race. There could not be a grosser or more pernicious error than this. Labor is a blessing and not a curse, and it is made very plain in the Scripture that before ever man was tempted to his fall, and before ever sin entered to blight and blast the race, 'God put the man into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it/'

There was useful labor, therefore, in the plan of God from the very beginning. Sin did take the joy from labor, in part; and yet in the good wisdom and the loving kindness of God, honest toil was designed as a part of the natural heritage of man, and the race will make a long step back toward the lost Eden, toward happiness and peace, when all men everywhere work. The New Testament joins the Old in saying that, ''If a man will not work, neither shall he eat," and untold blessings would come to us all if the drones at both extremes of our society were completely eliminated. The idle rich and the loafing poor alike are offensive in the sight of God, and are a menace to the best interests of man.

Yes, God's ideal home for man is a garden, and God's ideal man is a worker; and the utmost of heavenly wisdom was manifested when God put the man in the garden of Eden *'to dress it and to keep it.''

THE FALL IN A GARDEN

But it IS a tragic and terrible fact that even into the beauty of Eden, the serpent entered and man fell, despite the glory of the bright home that a good God had given him.

And still it is true, my friends, that the devil comes even into our gardens to mar our happiness and to lead us astray. We saw that illustrated in the case of the former German empire. The most prosperous, the most peaceful, the best educated, the most highly cultured people, in many respects, upon the earth were the Germans, and yet even into that garden, the devil of false ambition and selfishness entered to tempt the leaders of the empire to their fall, and through them to change a world that was smiling with peace into a welter of woe and a slaughterhouse of shame.

There are some who are saying to-day that if we will only make a good environment the human race will ultimately come back into righteousness and truth. Environment does undoubtedly exercise some influence, but there is a deeper factor still in the problem of righteousness, and that is the human heart which, according to Scripture, is ''deceitful above all things and desperately wicked."

A MEETING WITH ANARCHISTS

I can never forget an experience I had during my pastorate in the city of Chicago. There had been an epidemic of crime in the city, and a great mass meeting was called by the socialists, anarchists and other 'liberals" of the community to discuss the causes of the crime wave and a possible remedy for it. They invited a professor of the University of Chicago to speak. They had also a well-known judge to discuss the question from the legal standpoint, a ''liberar' preacher to give his ideas on the causes and cure for crime, and a prominent socialist to give his remedies.

I was invited to speak on this subject from the standpoint of orthodox Christianity. It was a very interesting occasion. A great crowd gathered that packed the house v/ith a mass of humanity, reaching all the way from the ''intellectuals" among the socialists, down to the most rabid anarchists. Mine was the closing address of the evening, and I followed the socialist orator. His great argument was that crime was the result of bad environment; that if we would wipe out the inequalities and injustices of modern life, and have a fair, square division of wealth and an equal opportunity for everybody, — that if we would have sanitary homes and plenty to eat and good clothes, and the other things that money can buy for all the people, — crime would disappear and an ideal society would spring up.

I followed this speech with an uncompromising proclamation of the Bible doctrine of sin and rebellion against God as the real secret of all disorder and the true source of all vice and crime. It happened that just at that very time the insurance scandals, which so stirred the nation a few years ago, were being discussed from one end of the continent to the other. The very day of that mass meeting, the papers were full of the sad and sorry story of the defalcation and misdoing of the president of one of the largest insurance companies in this country. The facts were brought out that he had used the money of the company for his own personal ends. So, holding the newspaper that contained these facts in my hand, I pointed out to that great crowd that here was a man who had a magnificent home and all the luxuries and comforts that money could buy, who moved in the best social circles, who was a graduate of one of the leading schools of the country, but who had proven himself a criminal despite his ideal environment! As I frankly put it, he was ''rotten at heart, and that was the key to all of his wrongdoing." I told them without flinching, that ''out of the heart are the issues of life,'' and that until a man's heart is right with God and his fellowsmen, it makes no difference what his environment is, he will be a rascal still!

Some, I am glad to say, received the truth from God's Word which I gave them that night, though others were in open rebelhon against me. When, at the close of my address, I made an appeal for the old faith upon which the best of our Anglo-Saxon ci\'ilization is founded, and then closed with a tribute to the glorious flag of our coimtry, a group of anarchists in the meeting — men and women — sprang to their feet, screaming like tigers : "Down with the flag! Damn the flag! And down with the God behind the flag!''

And that is precisely the logical and final result of the foolish talk of which we hear so miuch to-day. That is what it leads us to. It is not only "down with the flag," but "down with the God behind the flag." There is rank injustice and there are entrenched wrongs, against which we do well to battle; but our American nation needs to learn the stern and terrible truth that not even a garden will save us, if our hearts are wrong. For, once more be it said, the fall of man came in a garden, just conceived by Almiighty Wisdom, and just created by Omnipotent Power! And even in the perfect environment of Heaven, the devil, through false pride and overweening ambition, rebelled against God and fell into sin.

REDEMPTION IN A GARDEN

A second pivotal event in the history of humanity was the redemption of the race, which was wrought out by Christ in a garden. There is no more touching or tender page in all of Scripture than those chapters which picture the agony of our Master in the garden of Gethsemane. There the sorrows and the sins of a fallen race, all the way from Eden down to the last moment of recorded time, were heaped upon Him.; and in that dark hour. He drained to its dregs the bitter cup of human folly and rebellion against God.

But there also, thank God, the wreck and ruin that came to Eden's garden was righted forever. For Gethsemane was essentially a part of Calvary. Christ really won the great fight for our redemption when He said in the Garden: ''Nevertheless not my will, but thine be done.'' It was there in the ''travail of his souF' that our redemption was wrought out. For "His soul was made an offering for sin." Ah, yes, we make a great mistake in thinking that it was only the suffering of His precious body upon the cross that purchased our salvation.

The Southern poet, Sidney Lanier, has beautifully pictured this suffering of our Lord in the Garden, and he makes plain that there, when the face of God was averted from Him, and all human pity was withdrawn, when even His chosen disciples slept, "He tasted death for every man,'' and from under the trees of the Garden, He came "content" to suffer and to die for us:

"Into the woods my Master went, Clean forspent, forspent.

Into the woods my Master came, Forspent with love and shame !

But the oHves they were not Hind to Him, The little gray leaves were kind to Him,

The thorn-tree had a mind to him, When into the woods He came.

Out of the woods my ^Master w-ent,

And He was well content.

Out of the woods my Master came,

Content with death and shame !

When Death and Shame would woo Him last.

From under the trees they drew Him last,

Twas on a tree they slew Him — last,

When out of the woods He came."

Yes, out from the shadow of those sympathetic trees of the sweet Garden, death and shame led him forth to bear our death and shame.

NEW LIFE IN THE GARDEN

But there is yet another pivotal event in the history of humanity which occurred in a garden, and that is the resurrection of our Lord. Very beautifully is it written : ''Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus.'' (John 19:41-42.) It is a very touching and significant fact that we have always had a natural impulse to bury our beloved dead in some spot of beauty; and Joseph's tomb in the garden was a fitting place in which the wounded body of the Son of God should find its brief repose in the cold embrace of death.

Nature was ever good to Christ, for He was ever devoted to her. The Lord of nature w^as also a lover of nature, and in the time of His extreme agony, therefore, it is not surprising that the sun hid its face, and the very earth quaked with sympathy and horror at the enormity of that crime, when the sinful sons of men killed the sinless Son of God. And I have loved to think that upon that Sabbath morning, when the women came to bedew the cold gray stones with their tears, and to laythere the flowery tribute of their love, the birds were singing a little more sweetly than anywhere else upon earth, and the blossoms were smiling to the skies with a brighter beauty because they were watching over the tomb of the Lord of life.

And there in that place of fragrant quiet, in the solemn charm of the garden, Christ arose, and the final victory over death and the grave was won. There God Almighty put His seal of acceptance upon the Master's finished work on the cross by raising Him from the dead. There the correction of the ruin from the first garden was fully completed, and a new and better Eden was made possible for all the children of men. There in the garden, He was ''offered up for our offenses and raised again for our justification."

A GARDEN OF EDEN IN EVERY LIFE

And now, my friends, it remains only to be said that these three gardens, at which we have looked, have their counterpart in human experience to-day.

Childhood is our Eden. There we know none of the cares that later in life eat like cankers at the heart. There in the freedom and the joyful gladness of childhood, God gives each one of us a little touch of His original paradise, and a little foretaste of that happy estate that is coming hereafter to the redeemed children of men. The sweetest time of a human life is found in those bright and blessed days of childish innocence, peace and joy. James Whitcomb Riley, in his great wealth of human understanding and sympathy, has fittingly expressed somewhat of the beauty and charm of that magic time when he says :

'^Oh, the days gone by, the days gone by !

The apples in the orchard, and the pathway through the rye!

The chirrup of the robin, and the whistle of the quail,

As he piped across the meadows, sweet as any nightingale !

When the bloom was on the clover, and the blue was in the sky,

And our happy hearts brimmed over, in the days gone by !

In the days gone by, when our naked feet were tripped, By the honeysuckle tangle, w^here the waterlilies dipped, And the ripples of the river washed the moss along the

brink.

Where the dreamy-eyed and lazy- footed cattle came to

drink ; And the tilting snipe stood fearless of the truant's wayward cry.

And the splashing of the swimmer, in the days gone by.

Oh, the days gone by, oh, the days gone by! The music on the laughing lip, the luster in the eye, • The childish faith in fairies and Aladdin's magic ring. The simple, soul reposing, glad belief in everything. When life was like a story, holding neither sob nor sigh, In the olden, golden glory of the days gone by!"

Yes, childhood is an Eden, and surely it is a happy, sin-free, blessed time! One of the greatest tragedies of earthly life, to my thinking, is the loss of childhood's privileges by many of the little people of to-day. Oh, may God forgive us that in our greed for gold and our passion for pleasure we have trampled the hearts of little children, and denied to them the privileges of Eden's childhood through our commercialism and lust for gain!

But while childhood is an Eden, the sad fact confronts us that into our Eden also the serpent comes. I know not, my friends, what you may think about the story related in the early chapters of Genesis, but there is one fact that we cannot escape, and that is that there is a garden of Eden in every human heart and every human life. The time comes to each of us when we reach the years of moral accountability, when before us the momentous issues of obedience or rebellion stand; when the two roads stretch out before us — the road of trust and righteousness, and the road of disobedience and sin. And the terrible, tragic, heart-breaking fact of all human life is that the day finally comes when every son of Adam takes the wrong road! There has only been one sinless life that has adorned the walks of men, and that was the life of Jesus, the Son of Man and the Son of God.

Yes, to all of us the experience of disobedience and rebellion and sin comes, and with it the anguish and the agony of a ruined Eden. And with that, too, comes the inexorable voice of God demanding an account of our stewardship, and the driving out from that place of innocence and peace, and the fiery sword that guards forever the entrance gate !

OUR GETHSEMANES

Because of these things, too, there comes to each one of us an experience in our own life of the garden of Gethsemane. Every one, soon or late, must pass beneath the trees of the garden and suffer there alone. It may be the Gethsemane of bitter struggle and grinding poverty and corroding care. It may be disease and pain and weary sickness. It may be the long iare\vells that break our hearts beside the deathbeds of those whom we love more dearly than life itself. It may be the Gethsemane of remorse and of well-nigh despair over the sins that we say we cannot, but which in reality we v^'ill not, overcome. But acrcss each hum.an heart, the shadows of Gethsemane fail and to even.- lip the bitter cup soon or late is pressed.

How can we m^eet these agonies of life? How can we struggle against these experiences that wring our souls? Ah, how I rejoice in this hour that I can say that there is a way of relief, that there is a "balm in Gilead." For there is also a resurrection garden for us all.

**Come ye disconsolate I Where'er ye languish, Come to the mercy seat, fervently kneel. Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish ! Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal/''

THE RESURRECTIOX LIFE

Yes, the crowning glor\' of God's truth is that a resurrection life is possible to each and all of us here and now. When Jesus stepped forth as victor over death and the grave, He became our liznng Saviour, and through the vital tmion of faith with Him, we can enter into the richest treasures of His eternal Being. For we need to remember that there is a resurrection life possible in this present world. Xot m.erely are our bodies to be requickened in that blessed coming time that follows death, but even in these walks of earth, through the power of a living Savior, we can enter into the richest treasures of the resurrection. It is written that "if we be risen with Him, we should seek those things that are above/' It is wTitten again that we are to walk ''in newness of life/' when in baptism we have emerged from the watery grave, in striking symbolism of His death, burial and resurrection.

There is a way of victory, thank God, over every sin and every sorrow, and it lies along that pathway w^hich leads across the dark hill of Golgotha, and down into the shining valley of the empty tomb. We cannot, in the limitations and weakness of the flesh, escape the tempter who comes into our Eden and mars and ruins it and leads us into sin. We cannot avoid the shadows of Gethsemane, and the grief that there falls upon our hearts ; but, thank God, we can rise as victors above them both, in the power of a resurrection life, through Christ Jesus our Blessed Lord, unto whom be honor and praise and glory forever !

PARADISE REGAINED

There is one other closing thought that these blessed truths from the Word of God may bring to our minds and hearts, and it is this : When we do pass up through the rebellion of Eden and the sorrows of Gethsemane into the new resurrection life ''in Christ Jesus," we can then look beyond all of this to the eternal joy which shall be ours in the paradise of God forever!

In the wisdom and the power of God, His great Eden plan is to be finally worked out to full victory and perfect blessedness. And in "a new heaven and a new earth,'' from which sin has been blotted, and from which the devil, the great deceiver and betrayer, has been cast out forever, once more humanity will walk and talk with God. Very quaintly and very truly has David Grayson phrased it, in that lovely little verse :

*'A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot !

The veriest school of peace; and yet The fool

Contends that God is not — Not God! in gardens? When the even is cool? Nay but I have a sign, Tis very sure God walks in mine!''

Yes, we have little foretastes of God and the sweetness of communion with Him, in the quiet of the evening hour or the purple splendor of the dawn, amid the fragrant beauty of our gardens. But this is but the faintest foretaste of that ecstasy of fellowship which will come to us, when through the redeeming grace of Jesus Christ, fully reconciled to our Havenly Father, we shall serve Him with unending joy, and walk and talk with our Redeemer in the Garden of God forever!

Chapter II The Condition Of Discipleship

Text : "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." (Matt. 16:24.)

This text sets forth the condition of discipleship but not the way of salvation. The means of salvation are clearly given in Scripture, as repentance for sin and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The text sets before us the proof of discipleship only, though its conditions constitute the test of salvation.

The meeting with the Pharisees and the Sadducees, recounted in the earlier verses of this chapter, was followed by the dialogue between Jesus and His disciples concerning His deity. With a flash of heavenly insight, Peter had confessed, *Thou art the Son of the living God." But almost in the next breath this same Peter, who had had a revelation from heaven, fell under the influence of the spirit of evil, and Jesus had to rebuke him, saying, ''Get thee behind me, Satan!''

So Jesus saw the necessity of teaching them the true conception of discipleship. He here entered into this new teaching*, using Himself by way of illustration. ''From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and sufifer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.'' (Matt. 16:21.) They could not understand this teaching, — the divine Messiah, just fully revealed, crucified! And it was because of Peter's demurring to this teaching that Jesus rebuked him, and then He said unto them, in practical effect, ''Xot only must I bear the cross and die, but you also — all of my human followers — must pass through a like experience. If any man will come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.''

DENYING SELF

The first condition, then, of discipleship as laid down here, is denying self. What does this mean? It does not mean what we call ''self-denial/' Self-denial may really minister to self. If we are to practice self-denial for a period of time, or during a whole season, to the end that we may with better conscience enjoy the pleasures of this world for the remainder of the year, then such self-denial is positively vicious.

No, denying self is infinitely deeper than that. It means literally the dethroning of self. What is self? Self is the essence of personality. Self is the true man of the inner nature. There are three elements in a human personality, the judgment, the affections, and the will. The judgment approves the things that we accept; the aft'ections clamor for the things we desire; and the will is that royal power which says to the judgment ''you shall have the thing you can approve," and to the aft'ections "you shall be given the things you desire."

The sum total of these forces, then, is self, and Jesus says here to us that this self must be denied. That means that we must say "No" to self, in order that we may say "Yes" to Christ. It means that we must enlighten our human judgment by divine truth; that we must set our affections on things in heaven, not upon things upon the earth; and that we must bow our wills to God's will. It means, in a word, that our human natures must abdicate the throne, in order that the Divine Nature may come in and * 'dwell richly in us'' both ''to will and to do of His good pleasure."

It is apparent from this, therefore, that this utterance of Jesus cuts to the very quick. It goes down to the foundation. Now observe very carefully that Jesus did not say, "If any man will come after me, let him take up his cross and follow me." We hear a great deal of that sort of talk to-day. We are told that we must "follow Jesus as our example," that we must ask ourselves "what would Jesus do"? etc. And all of this merely skims the surface of the Christian life. How can we follow Jesus unless we have first denied self? No man can take up the cross until he has first denied himself. The divine nature must supplant the old human nature, until we can say with Paul, "For me to live is Christ." Then the bearing of the cross will be a comparatively easy matter, and through the doing of duty, we will issue out into delight

TWO ELEMENTS OF DENYING SELF

It becomes evident, from these considerations, that really to follow Jesus and to be His true disciple means two things, at the lowest possible estimate. First, it means that we must give up for God. But, much deeper than that, it means that we must give up to God. Here, for example, is Abraham. God said to him, "Come out of thy father's house to the land that I will shew thee. Leave all of this wonderful civilization here in the Mesopotamian valley, — these comforts of your father's house, these rare fellowships with your friends and loved ones, — all of these soft luxuries and delights of living, leave them and follow me.''

And Abraham obeyed God. We can im;agine the amazement of his worldly-minded neighbors and friends. We can imagine some boon companion saying to him, ** What is this I hear ? Are you really going to leave us ? What is this wild-goose chase? They tell me that you are actually thinking of pulling out and leaving all of us and going out to the wilderness.''

And we can see the far-away look of the mystic in the eye of Abraham, and we can hear the tremor in his voice, that the men of the world could not understand, as he answered simply: ^'Yes, I am going out to the wilderness to find God."

And thus Abraham gave up for God. Oh, but that was not all for Abraham! Yonder we see him again — ' an old man now — climbing the heights of Mt. Moriah. A bright, beautiful lad is by his side. The fagots for a sacrifice are under his arm, and a long knife is in his waistband. We can hear the little lad saying wonderingly, "My father, behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?"