Sermons for the great days of the year

Contents

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I New Year and Debt . . « r. 9 (ROMANS XIII 17.)

•-""II Saint Valentine's Marriage Reform . . . ■., ^.3 . r.j 22

II (MATTHEW XXV :i)

IN the story of the wise and foolish virgins which I read this evening, in the 25th chapter and the 1st verse, Jesus said :

''Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom."

It is Jesus' description of a wedding. You will notice in all the history of the Saviour's life on earth His references to anything were ever to those of the very highest type. His thoughts were pure as the light from the sun, and the illustrations which He used were in themselves helpful and inspiring in every possible direction.

It was a wonderful parable; though I am not here

to speak of the parable or its story, but simply of

one of its suggestions. Of all the characters in

forms of beauty, of all that has been condensed

into a few expressions of wisdom or poetry, of the

marvelous and the majestic, there is found nothing

finer, nothing more eloquent than Jesus' reference to

a wedding. He refers to it as being an institution in which His Heavenly Father is interested, in which He Himself has taken such especial interest that He allowed it to be put on record that the first miracle He ever performed was in the turning of water into wine at a wedding in Galilee. His reverence for the marriage ties, His references to home and childhood, and to all the associated domestic loveliness which gathers around a dwelling where love is, are full of that spirit which lifts the heart unto God. Wonderful, wonderful Saviour of mankind!

He says that there was a marriage feast, and that ten virgins were invited, and five were admitted and five kept out. He uses marriage, its occasion, its ceremonies, and its sacredness to enforce His important theological thought. Why was my attention called to it this evening? Because yesterday was St. Valentine's Day. While this generation seem to have forgotten the purposes for which St. Valentine's Day was first celebrated, it is an occasion that calls attention to the marriage of men and women, to home life and child life, and to all the domestic felicities that are connected with such relationships. St. Valentine's Day has become an occasion when people send ludicrous pictures from one to another or try to surprise each other with some anonymous communication, and oftentimes send insult. Yet when that day was instituted there was no thought more beautiful above the Saviour's description than was that which led St. Valentine to devote himself to this particular work.

St. Valentine's Day was first observed by that saint of the third century who loved the birds so well. There are a great many improbable stories told concerning him. But that he was actually a real character there seems to be no reason to doubt. That the birds obeyed him may not in any sense be true, though he may have trained them as modem men have done until he could understand them and they him as few people could do. Anyhow his study of the birds that flew from tree to tree, which made their nests in the spring and taught their young to fly later in the season, which sang to each other from bough to bough, and that supported and helped each other through their domestic felicities and domestic trials, made them to him an object of great interest. He said, "God made the birds as a particular expression of his love of the beautiful," and to those who have given attention to such things there is scarcely anything more interesting than to look upon the habits or the customs or the plumage, or hear the song of the birds. You who have not watched them should watch them.

St. Valentine's Day, the 14th day of February, was observed m the first place because it was the especial day when in that Eastern land the birds chose their mates. It was on that day, or very near that day, when in that climate or that region the birds selected their companions for life. The birds have one wife, one husband, and each was selected for life. A bird is never married the second time. I remember in the country a few years ago that one of my neighbors either by accident or design, I think by accident, killed a little house swallow, and the nest of those two swallows was in the comer of his veranda. The other bird, the wife, whose eggs had not yet hatched, sat on the side of the nest, and called, and called. Night and day her voice was heard calling for the loved and lost. Had he abandoned her? Or had he been killed? Where lay his body? O sweet bird! how tender, how touching, how mournful that sweet call. One morning after the calls had ceased they clambered up to the nest to see if she had gone, and there she lay dead upon her unhatched eggs. She had wept herself to death. Those who have studied the life of birds and their matrimonial relationship find in it the most excellent type, the highest form of human marriage.

St. Valentine, by whom that day was first observed, and who tried to teach all the people of Christendom to observe it, made it not only the topic of his observation, but used it as an exhortation for human marriage. In that land of St. Valentine they established a custom (it may have been a law), that on the 14th day of February young people were to choose their mates for a year of acquaintanceship; that is, they were to become, in a sense, experimentally engaged to be married on the 14th day of February. Then for a year they were to improve opportunities for social and intellectual acquaintanceship, and if in a year they found themselves fitted for each other, or loving each other in the sincerest and divinest way, they were to be married a year later, thus requiring of all young people a year of waiting before they decided to be married. It was the hope of St. Valentine, as it was of his contemporaries, that they could make the whole Church of God on earth observe that custom for the good of humanity. If it had been observed we can see that it would have been a great boon for humanity.

St. Valentine's Day has been so diverted from the original purpose that men have altogether forgotten what it did mean ; oh, the sadness of it. The sadness of the 4th of July that becomes a mere time for sports, or the exhibition of absurdities ; Oh, the sadness of the turning away of Decoration Day from the solemn laying of flowers upon the graves of the heroic dead to the playing of baseball, dancing, and to all forms of sports ! Oh, the sadness of turning Thanksgiving Day into anything but a day of thanksgiving, and the turning of the Sabbath into anything but that which brings to the mind sacred and beautiful associations! It is a sad, sad thing. Among the saddest desecrations of Satan upon the good of mankind has been the change on St. Valentine's Day.

The tendency of mankind to be profane seems to be innate in the human nature. Profanity consists in far more than simply taking the name of God in vain. It consists in an individual heart purpose to make ridicule or scorn of those things that should be regarded as sacred for the sake of human character and human love. It is just as sacrilegious and just as profane to speak disrespectfully of the marriage tie as it is to use the name of God in vain, for it expresses precisely the same character. If one go before the white throne of God to be examined as to what he has been he will find that profanity means something far wider than in the mere location of it to the use of certain words. It means in the way in which a man looks upon all that is divine and sacred.

When this orchestra was playing that magnificent hymn in this last piece to-night, amid all these sacred associations that make a hymn so appropriate, so musical, if you had treated it with disrespect or regarded it with scorn you would have been profane in the same sense in which it is profane to speak of the sacred and lovely name of God with disrespect.

The ordinance or the ceremony of marriage, or rather the spirit of the marriage tie, is one of those divine things that was established of God from the beginning, in which every heart feels all that is sacred welling up into the worship of God. No man ever feels drawn so near to the Almighty, no man's soul is ever filled so full of all that inspires to the godly and angelic as a young man who becomes engaged to be married to one worthy of him, and he worthy of her, and looks forward to the time when they shall have a home. You cannot express the terms of heaven in finer language than in that simple word "'home."

This observance of St. Valentine's Day carries with it a great lesson, and I hope you may never see the day again without remembering something of what was said to-night whether you forget the speaker and the place or not.

When marriage began among mankind it began like the birds, with the instinct of the birds. They were to choose each one mate, live together all their lives, love each other, bring up their families together, work together for their offspring until their oflFspring could fly away and care for themselves, and choose again for themselves. So like the birds were the original instincts God gave to mankind.

But evil has come in in some way. It has come into life with its impressions in ways we cannot fathom. It has come to be the work of Satan. The work of evil has been to try to bring reproach, or to bring disregard or disrespect for the marriage tie, and the marriage ceremony is losing its power now. Men care little, they say, for the ceremony. The ceremony in itself may be hypocritical, may be weak because it is hypocritical, and yet as the flower expresses the beauty of the designs of God, in the observance of those formal ceremonies with the heart behind them is found the most important training for the worship of God and the love of mankind.

Where it was that women ceased to be the equal of men we cannot see, but the Bible tells us that in the beginning Eve was made a help equal to man, a helpmate for man, so that God's evident first intention was that men and women should be completely equal in all their rights, and each should be the sustainer of the other, so that both together might make a perfect one. God said, 'These twain shall be one,'' and being one each in his place or her place was to do their share to make a complete, beautiful, and divine home. But somewhere back in the ages the devil came in, and man began to own woman. A female child born into the world soon began to be regarded as mere property, to be a slave. In all the heathen nations of the world even now such is her position. As far back as we can go in the history of our own races we find that woman was the slave of man, that she was property, that she was valued as worth so many cows, so many horses, so many pounds of silver, so many potatoes, or so many boats. Barter and exchange were made for her through all those early ages. When St. Valentine came in he recognized that. He attempted to reform the idea that in the marriage ceremony or in the marriage relationship itself, woman was in any sense the inferior of man. But he did not succeed. The tide against him was too strong. Sacrilege and profanity have come in, and still creep into the Church, and maintain the things that mdicate the heathen state of life.

For instance, the wedding ring is but a reminder of that heathen practice of buying a woman, and fastening a chain to her wrist. The ring that was welded upon her wrist has only become the ring that is put upon her finger now, to carry down through the ages, as it should not, the idea that a woman is the slave of man, consequently must wear a ring to be chained to him.

St. Valentine also recognized the other thought preserved in our marriage ceremony of ''giving away'' a woman. In this age of intellectual equality, when men and women are regarding each other with a reverence that is certainly according to the teachings of God, how foolish it is to ask, "Who gives away this woman?" at the marriage altar. Who gives her away ? Who owns her ? Whose property is she? Who has given the bushel of potatoes for her. Who has given any property for her and acquired the right to sell her or give her away? St. Valentine was opposed to all those heathen customs. His idea was that like the birds they should mate together and make their bargains themselves. He did not believe that parents should make them. He believed that they should be allowed to come on the 14th day of February and get so acquainted through the coming year that their own hearts should decide whether they ought to be married or not.

He advocated the fact that the churches ever taught that real marriage is an inspiration of the spirit of God. The Catholic church is right in making it a sacrament of the Church, and it is right that everywhere it should be so regarded. No man can say he is married because he may have gone to the mayor, and gone through the civil service. He may have been to the cathedral and gone through the religious service, and he may have gone to the Protestant church and gone through another ceremony — through three ceremonies, and yet not one of those three made them man and wife in the sight of God. The more ceremonies they require the less likely it is they are married. The real marriage, according to St. Valentine, is Christ's marriage — a marriage of the soul, of the inner instinct that comes directly into a young man or woman from God. If any instinct is given direct from heaven, it is the mating instinct between young men and young women, and it is right that they should get acquainted with each other. I beHeve in schools that bring them together, in colleges that bring them into acquaintanceship, and in all of those gatherings where they mingle each with the other with that perfect and modest freedom by which they may become intimately acquainted with each other.

But acquaintanceship is not enough. Unless there is a gift of God of the spirit in marriage it is no true marriage. That was Christ's representation of what a marriage was when He spoke of the marriage feast that was a real marriage feast. He meant a feast where the bride and bridegroom were so brought together by the providence of God, and so inspired by the spirit of divine love that they knew in their own souls that they were intended of God for each other from eternity to eternity.

If the Church took that view of it, as it seems to be Christ's view of the marriage ceremony, how important it is that we as followers of Jesus Christ should teach and by example inspire the thought of the great and awful sacredness of marriage.

In what does real marriage consist? It consists in the love of two hearts for each other so deep and so sure that each would sacrifice for the other his own life at any time. To be worthy of being married at all requires that love should be so great that they could live separate from each other an entire lifetime if it were for the value or the good of the other so to do. The love that is a real love is a deep abiding affection given of God, and like unto the angels of God. That is real marriage. The ceremony should go with it that the world may recognize it, that they may themselves be treated as living in that relationship. It is a horrid, murderous thing for people to get married, to come into the marriage relationship in any form tmless their hearts have so united that they cannot do otherwise. As the apostle said, *T cannot but preach the Gospel,'' so neither could they do otherwise than to be married. They could not think in real marriage that any other state was possible. You cannot make a business arrangement of a real marriage.

Then the question that comes, to which I can make only a moment's reference to-night, is that of divorce. When is divorce allowed? We are asked that question as teachers, and preachers, and the priests are often asked, *'What is the excuse that is right for divorce?" The Saviour says that if two people at the time of their marriage think they love each other as they should, or if one of them does love fully and the other does not, if in after time they find they cannot live together in peace, and they are so unfitted to each other that hfe is but a misery, showing that their marriage was not a real and divine one, that cause, is fornication. That is what it means. It is a spiritual thing. If a husband is at heart untrue to his wife, does not support her, or care for her, and hates her or abuses her, he is guilty of the Saviour's interpretation of fornication, and for that cause divorce should be allowed. While I would not advocate divorce, while I think it is very dangerous to suggest it lest people in spasms of anger should avail themselves of it when love still continues, and when they afterwards will bitterly regret it, yet when the Saviour laid down the law of divorce He laid it down as wise when there was evidence that the marriage itself was not that spiritual affectionate eternal love of the hearts which should characterize a true marriage. Where that becomes apparent, although they have lived together, the Saviour admitted of a divorce, and the laws of the land seem to follow in the teaching of the Saviour in the provisions they make therefor.

Divorce is an awfully sad thing because it advertises to the world a great wrong, for there is no wrong so terrible, murder itself not more awful, than the marriage of two people who do not love each other. The sacrilege of it is as deep as hell, and the horror of it the angels of God themselves condemn. But a real marriage is a perfect heaven.

It is heaven on earth. A real marriage in which all are equal, where the woman and the man in every respect are the equal of each other, and where there is no thought of compulsion, no question of law, no thought of it in the house where each serves the other with sacred and pure devotion, and never thinks of any obligations, customs, or laws because their two souls are so one that each is ever desirous to do for the other, — that is a heaven on earth. That is real marriage. No divorce can ever come in there.

I advise St. Valentine's provision that young people wait. Take, not too long, but a year of waiting, as that is long enough, and in that time keep their good sense, and their worship of God, and ask for direction of the divine spirit, and decide not until the year has passed. When the year has passed if love be so strong that it is irresistible, if there be no impediment in the way which would do more harm than good, if there be no restriction either of human or divine law that would make the marriage a harm to the community or to the cause of God, then it is their duty before God to become united at the marriage altar, and set up their home. ^'Increase and multiply'' was the first commandment of God to man, and it is the strongest instinct that is left with mankind. It is the greatest source of joy to be found on earth.

How thankful I am for the returning tide of good sense in the newspapers, in the books, and in the speech of people. For we have lately passed through a horrid state of accusation against men and women, as though this world was hastening into licentiousness and low, degraded debauchery. I hope many of you have seen through it all that women were more true than all these stories made them appear, and that men were more true than we had represented them to be. When you think that only one out of five hundred men and women in the cities, with all their temptations, ever visit or ever go into association with vile places, oh then the world is better than you think. Yes, it is more hopeful than you think. Think of the homes throughout the world; think of the millions happily married throughout the world ; think of the children that love their parents and the parents their children; and while your hearts go out in sympathy for the poor weak-minded who have fallen into those degraded conditions, and you should help them, yet your heart should swell with praise to God for the establishment of the marriage relationship, for the establishing of the homes of earth. Your effort should be to increase their number, and increase the reverence of mankind for them, so that marriage here on earth may be a tie that shall last on forever into the future eternities.

O Lord, bring soon about that day when women shall no longer be sold in marriage, when men shall no longer be sold in marriage, when that great relationship shall not be assumed for money, or for title, or because of influences extraneous to the heart. Hasten the time when Christ shall be so taught that all over the earth hearts shall be brought to choose, and when each shall find its own divine mate, and earth shall be a heaven, an open door, a vestibule to an eternal home of love on high.

Hear our prayer, and grant us that benediction. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen.

Ill

(ecclesiastes VII :28, 29)

IN the two last verses of the 7th chapter of Ecclesiastes is the wise observation in which the preacher says:

^'That which my sduI seeketh I find not; one man among a thousand have I found, but a woman among all those have I found not.

''Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they hftve sought out many mventions/^

The whole nation, during the last week, has been celebrating the birth of Abraham Lincoln, and it furnishes an excellent opportunity for one to point a moral or to apply a lesson of the Gospel. It is a very interesting thing, and a very profitable thing to read what the great editors and the great authors of the country write concerning that singular character, Abraham Lincoln. But it is very confusing to see how they differ in their estimate of the man, or the reasons they give for the place he holds in the esteem of the American people.

It IS an interesting thing to find that such a character, one who never joined the Church, who never made what people sometimes call an open profession of religion, should now be a hero of the Church, and his principles accepted as principles of genuine Christianity.

It appears to me that the one man in a thousand for whom the preacher was looking is found in Abraham Lincoln but not because he differs from other men. It would be very useless for me to turn your attention again to this great man if it were not for the fact that the lesson can be very helpful.

When a man attempts by poetry or oratory, or song, to put a man like him far up high on a pedestal, as though no man could ever approach him, they do a great deal of harm instead of good, and are disheartening those who might follow his footsteps if they were encouraged to do so. I am not one of those who believe that Abraham Lincoln was so far above all the other men or was so different from other men that he could not be imitated now. I believe he can be followed.

I lived in a day of great excitement in the Civil War, when every side of Abraham Lincoln's character was brought under the microscope of public opinion, and I heard what was said against him, and I heard what people who underestimated him said, and I have lived these fifty years now, and we are finding that the confused mind is becoming more and more clarified with each succeeding year. His influence grows, and his words are stronger now than they were when he died. His great speech at Gettysburg has become now the example of the highest form of oratory, and yet at the time it was delivered it received little applause.

Why is it that his liberation of the slaves, which has become an inspiration to lovers of liberty the world over, at the time it was done, was regarded merely as a military necessity? I have asked this question of myself, thinking that you, with this Spiritual advice, might take a clear view which one should take of such a character, not for the purpose of entertainment or for discussion, but to point a Gospel lesson pure and simple.

Abraham Lincoln did not differ so much from thousands of other men. There are certain circumstances in his life which made him an excellent example of that in which he did differ from common men, and if I were to say to the young men who hear me speak or who may read my words that Abraham Lincoln was a strange, peculiar, God-given genius, and that when his image was cast, "the mould was broken," and that there never could be or never was another like Abraham Lincoln, I am simply saying to the young men, *'It is of no use for you to try." But if, on the other hand, we take that reasonable view of the life of Abraham Lincoln that he was like other men, but especially used by the Providence of God, and that there are many things in his life worthy of imitation, we have furnished an incentive to the rising generation. This ought always to be done. There is only one character that was ever on earth, that should be held up above the ambitions of young men and women.

This text that I read confuses people. But it is a statement which I may put in other words — ^that God made a perfect man, and that since that day there has not been found a woman who has reached that standard in her attempt to make herself over into the image; and that since that day there has been f oimd only one man in all the thousands, and there has not one single woman been found by the writer who has been able to imitate that uprightness which God created in man in the first place. It seems to say that men have a right, by their manner of independence, to make themselves over into something else which they desire to be. Like that preacher, I have never found a man that could build up the ideal figure and imitate the perfect uprightness of the Second Adam. They have all failed, so far as I can see.

Abraham Lincoln felt that he was not a perfect man. Why should we think so, when an age is passed and his enemies are silent, and his friends have become more enthusiastic about him ; when we have not reached that state as a nation where we can extol him and worship him as the Chinese do their ancestors ? The lesson that comes down to us through the years is that he was the nearest to that ideal manhood, perhaps, in his closing years, of any known American. There may have been a more perfect character of whom we did not hear, but Abraham Lincoln is an encouragement to every young man in this — that nearly every young man to-day has more advantageous circumstances in life than Abraham Lincoln ever had.

Abraham Lincoln inherited nothing above the trials of life from his parents, in body, mind and spirit. Abraham Lincoln's race was that poor white race of Kentucky which has been found there in the years since. You may have read, or may have seen, if you have traveled in the South, those ''poor whites," lazy people, that lie around the grocery stores and who drink, who chew tobacco and swear and shoot each other occasionally when they have their family feuds. These poor white people of Kentucky remain, in a measure, something the same as they were in the days of Abraham Lincoln. But those men of the mountains, with valleys deep, with precipices steep, often made characters of a certain rugged, noble kind. Abraham Lincoln inherited nothing from his father and mother for which we need claim praise. Less from his father than from his mother. It reminds me of Henry Ward Beecher saying of his church composed of eighteen members, that seventeen of them were women and the other was nothing. Abraham Lincoln was something. But his father was nothing. Abraham Lincoln inherited no money ; he did not come into the world in possession of any funds with which to start himself in life, or with which he could secure an education. I want to say to the young men who hear me, or who read what I am saying, that you have many advantages which Abraham Lincoln did not possess. Abraham Lincoln had no culture; he had no opportunity to go to the schools up to the time he was 19 years of age. As a boy he could not read or write, or scarcely scrawl his name. He had been brought up to hew wood and do odd jobs of various kinds, and lay around the grocery stores up to that time. He had consequently no helps such as men now have to make himself a great man. He therefore lacked that culture and lacked that education; and he had many special misfortunes to hold him back which you do not have.