This mind

Contents

PAGE

Foreword 7

Preface 9

Foreword

The Mendenhall Lectures of DePauw University, to which this series of addresses belongs, was founded by the Reverend Marmaduke H. Mendenhall, D.D., of the North Indiana Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The object of the donor was to found a perpetual lectureship which would bring to the University as lecturers "persons of high and wide repute, of broad and varied scholarship, who firmly adhere to the evangelical system of Christian faith. The selection of lecturers may be made from the world of Christian scholarship, without regard to denominational divisions. Each course of lectures is to be published in book form by an eminent publishing house and sold at cost to the faculty and students of the university."

Lectures thus far published under this foundation:

1913, The Bible and Life, Edwin Holt Hughes.

1917, Understanding the Scriptures, Francis John McConnell.

1918, Religion and War, William H. P. Faunce.

8 FOREWORD

1919, Some Aspects of International Christianity, John Kelman.

1920, What Must the Church Do to Be Saved? Ernest Fremont Tittle.

1922, This Mind, William Fraser McDowell.

Preface

The Mendenhall Lectures for 1922 at DePauw University were prepared and spoken with the desire that they might really assist members of the student body in making their decisions for lifework and service in the world to which they are so rapidly coming. The lectures are not a plea for youth to enter the ministry or mission field, though such a discussion would have pleased the lecturer. He desired in this course to state as clearly as he could some of those principles which should govern young people facing their life decisions and lifework no matter what their particular calling is to be. For it seems to thoughtful students of our age that a new consecration of life in all occupations, a new testing of life in all callings by the principles of Jesus Christ, and a new reference of life to his mind or attitude toward it are imperatively called for, if individual life itself or the human world is to be saved. This will explain the method, the treatment and the spirit of the lectures.

It is hoped that the printed volume may be useful to young people in the supremely critical and important period when they are deciding what they will do with their lives. If it helps

10 PREFACE

them to make their decisions in the light of Jesus' life, to have in themselves toward their lives the mind that was in him toward his life, the author will be content. He will have no doubt or fear as to the outcome. It is hoped that the small volume may be useful also to pastors and teachers, to the advisors of youth in Student Conferences, Young People's Institutes, Student Volunteer meetings, colleges, high schools, churches, Sunday schools, and elsewhere where young people are seeking advice and counsel on this vital subject.

It is especially hoped by the lecturer that the volume may assist and guide parents in their relation to their children's decisions. Here is a real difficulty. Many parents are actually standing in the way of their children's decision according to the mind of Christ, Real parental interest and right are carried often far beyond their proper limit into the realm of the life decisions of their children. Many students, known to me, have been prevented from the acceptance of what has seemed a clear call of the Master because their parents have had other plans for them. We older people are quite likely to think that our right to control life covers not only our own lives, but the lives of our children and grandchildren. It is my conviction after years of observation that the principles here stated should

PREFACE 11

govern parents in their attitude to their children's lifework, just as truly as they should govern the attitude of the young people themselves. It is a serious thing for parents to set their own wills and preferences in opposition to the evident will of God for their children's lives. Those parents who have run with the will of God and the highest desires of their children in their response to it have had the largest joy in the outcome. If the Master wants the son or daughter of any parents reading these lines, for any service anywhere in the world, let the Master have his wonderful way. His wish is the sufficient motive and reason.

It would have been a pleasure to add a lecture showing from the actual lives of other men and women how they have responded to the Master's wish. Maybe in some future time such an addition may be made, either in this book or outside of it. How did Frederick W. Robertson, Phillips Brooks, Henry Drummond, James Chalmers, Alice Freeman Palmer, William H. Baldwin, Dr. William T. Grenfell, and others come to the decisions that led them into the lives they led and the work they did? How did Jesus Christ get his chance in such lives? Through what perplexities, over what difficulties and oppositions, under what influences did these and others reach that final determination that

12 PEEFACE led to such commanding results in their lives? Maybe it is just as well that no attempt is made here to show the experience of individuals. Maybe it is better that in colleges, schools, conferences, institutes and other groups young men and women should by their own reading kindle their lives at the fire of these other lives. Of this I am certain, that the youth of this day and succeeding days will not come to their true place of life or service in the world except as they walk in the spirit and light of those immortal souls who have struck step and kept step with the Master of all good life and work.

I am under great obligation to my dear friends, the Keverends James C. Baker, William J. Davidson, John K. Edwards, Victor G. Mills, and Oscar T. Olson, for reading the manuscripts before the lectures were presented at DePauw, and for making many most valuable criticisms and suggestions.

And my gratitude to the faculty and students of DePauw and the people of Greencastle for their cordiality and kindness during the three days when the lectures were being spoken is deep and lasting. Above all I am grateful for the enlarged satisfaction that this new study of the manifold life of Jesus has brought. His meaning for life is an evergrowing wonder and splendor. What it may grow to when it has full

PREFACE 13

opportunity in human life does not yet appear. What human life and service may become when Jesus Christ is perfectly formed in them, or when they have put on Christ, we may see in some new revelation of life even in our day. Perhaps that is our next great spiritual adventure and achievement. The fellowship of Jesus in life decision and life service, the sharing of his principles and purposes, the identification of personal life with him, and the merging of it into his seem to me to be youth's supreme advantage and privilege.

THIS MIND TOWARD LIFE'S DECISIONS— I

One of our minor pleasures, in certain moods, is the cheerful business of putting together picture-puzzles. The exercise calls into activity several powers, such as the sense of shape and color, patience and imagination, and the ability to visualize a cosmos in the presence of a chaos. One of the happy, less irksome ways of teaching geography follows the picture-puzzle method. Of course the whole thing, whether used for diversion or instruction, has some real limitations. The only thing you can do is to restore the pieces to their original place in the map or the picture. If the process comes out at all, it comes out the same way every time. Always "as it was in the beginning" so it "is now" and so it "ever shall be, world without end." The process is not at all creative. It leaves no place for freedom, originality, or initiative. Indiana always goes into the same place, between Ohio and Illinois, and there is no place for Texas and New York except their own place.

Some years ago the world blew up, and the 15 pieces came down in a heap ; pieces of every size, shape, and color; ragged, torn pieces; soiled, marred pieces, with lots of pieces utterly missing. And all over our world men are trying to put them together, either as they were or in some new adjustment. Putting a picture-puzzle together is a game or a recreation, remaking a sawed-up map an academic activity. But the world business is wholly serious. Worlds have no business blowing up like this. You can spill a puzzle or a map and cheerfully go to work to put it together again; but if the world is going to behave like this with any frequency, life can never be cheerful again, no matter how brave it may be.

This process of reconstruction is at present all absorbing. If the word had not existed, we must have invented it as we did others. For all our principal people, either in groups or individually, promptly set out on the business of reconstruction, some of them vocally, some of them really. And all the old groups appeared again. Thoroughgoing conservatives tried to put the pieces together as they had' been before, to make as little change as possible. It has not been a very encouraging period for a crass conservative. Some frankly do not even care to try to replace the pieces in their original places or relations. They prefer a brand-new combination with a lot of the old stuff left out altogether, either to be burned or junked. Some of these are just plain radicals rejoicing in the opportunity for overthrow and destruction. Some are true believers soberly looking for a new world. They see the rough and ragged edges in some of the old relations, the rotten, sham materials in some of the old fabrics, but they are not downhearted. They know that the process will take time, that it must be as thorough as the new birth, for men and nations, that it will test men even more severely than did the swift and stormy years of the war, and yet they bear into it with "hearts courageous." They lack wisdom, but they rejoice in the unrebuking promise to those who ask for wisdom they mean to use.

And the lines of the rebuilders run into one another. This is no task for one man or one group. Life's interests and departments interpenetrate. The economic policies of the world do bear upon its religious and intellectual life. The forms of government are related to the faith, the education, the economic condition, and the character of the people. We cannot rebuild the modern Nehemiah's wall if we disregard any gate of it or regard any part of it as unimportant.

These lines also run into other realms and regions of life. I suppose God's relation to the world is at least a threefold relation. It is creative or constructive, it is educational or evolutionary, and it is reconstructive or redemptive. Only the half gods concern themselves with part of a god's occupation. We are probably in the third act of the divine drama. In the first act the human soul appears as the climax of creation. And it was so good that the morning stars sang over it. In the second act Jesus appeared as the climax of revelation. And that was so good that the angels sang their song of glory. In the third act the kingdom of heaven, the new heaven, the new earth, a redeemed humanity, a redeemed world will appear. And that will be so good that the host that no man can number will break out in the new song never yet heard. (See Cairns' Reasonableness of the Christian l Faith. )

In this third act we are now. We are in it with the Master of all life and destiny. In a very peculiar sense the youth of to-day, and particularly the college youth of to-day, are in it with Him. For the issue of all this world movement, this quest of man and God for a new world, will humanly depend upon the men and women who will make, shape and determine the next quarter of a century. They are the makers of to-morrow.

This is a long, perhaps a blind, introduction to what I mean to try to say. Maybe the discussion will not equal the theme. I do not flatter myself with pride or deceive myself with false hope. Eeally I shall be content to stand here by the fountain gate and make so loud an outcry that the builders of the wall will put this gate in order and in place.

Now no one of us chooses the time of his coming into the world. We are born and live our lives in the world as it is when we live. We may fret and complain because we were not allowed to live at some other period, under other conditions, but fretting and complaining are not very noble attitudes. (We can go through a period like our own, saying with Hamlet :

"The world is out of joint, Oh cursed spite, that ever I was born To set it right/'

But Hamlet is not the most useful character in literature or history. I do not commend his attitude to you. A man carrying a personal grievance like that cannot carry much else. History is full of finer figures. It would be interesting to study a lot of them. Indeed, I see no way of properly getting into our age unless we know how the best men and women of other ages got into theirs. For in a very real sense every one of us is born in the fullness of time. Some fulfill the purpose for which they are born when and where they are, and these become world benefactors. Others fail, some for one reason, some for another, and these become the world's failures or tragedies. The teacher of history has about the best chance there is to reveal to youth the meaning and value of personality. He can show to men and women having only one life each the importance of placing that life according to right principles, in the right spirit, and in the right place. He can show the real meaning of life decisions, which are not primarily decisions to be preachers, or teachers, or doctors or lawyers. Which of these one will be is really the secondary question of life, the question one is not prepared to answer until the earlier, more fundamental one has been settled. The teacher of history, who at his best is really the teacher of life, can show the necessity of reaching these primary decisions in the light of the best examples. Does he know anyone who has really shown what a man may be, what a man may try, what a man may do? If so, he has in his hand a wisdom, a truth valuable beyond rubies or any other precious thing, for examples are ever better than rules in this holy game of life. The rules, the principles at last come from the persons who have done it or who have failed. If any man has truly served his generation, he is the real gleam. After him, follow him. More than once in these purely personal studies one sentence written by one man of another is likely to break out: "In him was life, and the life was the light of men."

And that sentence introduces us to another fundamental principle, the principle that we must follow the best person there is, that there is no first-class product based on a second-class model. I think I must bear down on this in view of what I mean to try to say before we are through. For many years it has been my high privilege to speak to America's youth. Not so many years remain as have gone. Before the end of the years is reached I must as often and as clearly as possible bear and reaffirm my testimony. This is it: If I knew one who faced his age and all ages in better spirit, greater wisdom, or truer devotion than Jesus showed, I would commend and follow him. If I knew any better plan for a personal life than Jesus' plan, I would commend and adopt it. If I knew any better basis for life decisions than Jesus' basis for his own life decision, I would commend it and rest my life on it. If I knew a better outcome in any life than the outcome seen in Jesus' life, I would try to go the way that reached it.

I have passed through many forms of personal question in my life. Some of them have ceased to be important, some of them remain unanswered. But I quote Robert Browning's words to-day and answer them affirmatively without a quiver or a hesitation :

"What think ye of Christ, friend, when all's done and

said?

Like you this Christianity or not? It may be false, but would you have it true? Has it your vote to be so if it can ?"

/Jesus Christ has my vote, and he has it whether he gets any other votes or not. Maybe no one else will vote for him, but I will not condition my vote on the amount of popular support he gets. I will not say I will be one of ten. I vote for him, not because others are going to do it, but solely because he deserves an unscratched ballot from me. He is the best that has appeared, the best that does appear. He gets me. I go along with him. After all the years you simply cannot think of anyone else. No one else is in his class. And there must be no half-heartedness or division in our loyalty to him. Dragging along after a half god is a desperately wearisome business. Partial allegiance to a perfect god is almost the last thing in futility and dreariness. Nothing but thoroughness can save us here. Half carrying, half dragging the yoke of fellowship will chafe and gall. Casual, shallow, trivial, reserved obedience will not answer. You can go the whole length with him and live, live royally, live exultingly and victoriously, but if you only partially enthrone him, or if yon crown him with mental reservations, you will not get far.

I am not trying to make this appear easy. One of the saddest things in our time is the easy, jaunty air of these shallow loyalties and obediences. Anything that goes to the depths is tolerably certain to hurt. The ease and flippancy of halfway reliance upon and halfway loyalty to the half gods have got us into our present trouble. There is onty one way out. Life decisions made lightly, as one should choose a cravat or order a meal, may be easily made. You can get great numbers of decisions at meetings of a certain sort and under a certain kind of appeal. But you do not get the men and women who will finally count for Christ unless these life decisions are made face to face with Christ and the makers know what 'it cost for him to make his own life decisions.

Many forms of question have arisen and passed in my lifetime. Some of them disturbed the churches very much. I think my chief concern to-day is that the makers of to-morrow shall take Jesus Christ seriously as an authority and example, and that they shall firmly believe that the principles of Jesus can be applied, must be applied to themselves and other men and women. Can his principles for his own life be used by John Smith, freshman or senior? They could be used by Jesus. No others seem possible as you look at him. You cannot get a life like his on any other basis. Maybe the glory that will come to your generation will be the genuine discovery by thousands of college men and women that the principles of that other life are the only principles for their lives. Pretty much everything else has been tried first and last. Let us in all heartiness try this.

Of course this is not a gay, jaunty business. It is not putting together a picture-puzzle for an hour's diversion. It is, at last, putting together in proper place and proper relation the forces of eternal life. Seeing the best person do it with his own life is better than being in at the creation of a planet or a dozen planets. Really I would rather understand the working of Jesus' mind, know his attitude, his disposition concerning his own life in the world than anything else in the realm of knowledge. ( I am using the familiar translation, being familiar, of course, with Weymouth's : "Let the same disposition be in you" — and Moffat's "Treat one another with the same spirit as you experience in Christ Jesus" — and the Twentieth Century New Testament: "Let the Spirit of Christ Jesus be yours.")

And now let us look naturally and steadily at some of those essential principles upon which Jesus proceeded in his life decisions. Let us look at him as we would at John Wesley or Phillips Brooks or Abraham Lincoln if we were trying to find out how they decided what to do with their lives. Only let us remember that in the case of Jesus a perfect result was reached. We must, therefore, be extra careful to find the way by which he reached it. This is a real study in biography, undertaken by serious people who earnestly want to know how to make a life, and who go, wisely, to the one person who made the outstanding success of history in that important matter. This is not a study as to why one should be a preacher, or a lawyer, or a missionary, or a teacher, or an editor, but a study of some of the principles upon which the Supreme Person of time based his life. Making a life on those principles is surely the primary, fundamental thing. The other questions will answer themselves if we find the answer to this one.

First: I think the ultimate basis upon which his life decision was made and on which it was worked out in his life was his sense of God. I wish I could say this as it really ought to be said. I never coveted more earnestly the highest gifts of religious and personal speech. I do not want to speak theologically, or conventionally, or to say anything that may even sound like an outworn shibboleth. If any half dozen intelligent persons were to be asked to name the outstanding fact in the consciousness of Jesus concerning his life nearly a half dozen different answers would be received. One would promptly answer that the deepest thing in his life was his idea and spirit of service and sacrifice; another that it was his power over human and natural forces as seen in the wonders he performed; another that it was his wisdom as seen in his unparalleled teaching; another that it was the Kingdom of which he was ever speaking, for which he was ever striving. And all these answers would be tolerably true. These things and many others are so real, so fundamental in his life that his life does really seem in large measure to rest on them. Still, they do not seem to go quite to the rock bottom. The real basis seems to be that he was, in Browning's words, "very sure of God." One must use a familiar word and at once many persons knowing that word will think it is used in the sense in which they commonly use it. We must try, therefore, even with the familiar term to convey a deeper, more personal, perhaps unfamiliar meaning. Using negatives is not a very fruitful process in interpretation, but I will use one or two nevertheless. Saying that God was the basis of his life is not the same as saying that Jesus firmly believed in God, though of course he did. It is not the same as saying that he genuinely knew

God, though of course he did. It is not the same as saying that he had either a creed or experience of which God was the center and basis, though he did have both. One may never rid himself of presuppositions in such matters as this, but one must never allow the presuppositions he brings to such a study to cloud or prevent an original, fresh, fundamental vision if it can be had. Maybe our next great discovery in personal religion, and, if so, for personal life, will be the discovery of the real, personal meaning of God in the life of Jesus. We need not speak as mystics nor with spiritual extravagance, but we surely never have got to the real bottom of the meaning, the fact, the place of God in the life of Jesus. His consciousness of God has been called "the greatest spiritual fact that has ever emerged in the long story of the human race" (Robertson, Spiritual Pilgrimage of Jesus, p. 13 ) . And yet the church has made a doctrine of God's nature and character, a definition of God where Jesus never did make one. And the church has too largely missed the personal meaning of God in Jesus' own life; failed to emphasize and set out for other young men the relation between the life decisions of Jesus, the lifework of Jesus, and his sense of God, his consciousness of God, his constant treatment of God as the very basis of it all.

This determined his decisions, his activities, his purposes, his spirit and everything else that went to make him what we see him to be. This gave depth, transparency and steadiness to his life. This furnished a foundation for other principles of decision and activity as we shall shortly see. Thomas Arnold complained of the Rugby boys that "God was not in all their thoughts," meaning that God was not in their thoughts at all. One has only to say that to see at once that Jesus had no thoughts at all about his life that God was not in.

One of the sermons much and deservedly much referred to a generation or two ago was Horace Bushnell's famous sermon on the subject, "Every Man's Life a Plan of God." It gave to many hundreds of men a sober sense that life was sacred, that God had a personal interest in what it should be, that it made a difference to God himself whether a man, any man, accepted God's plan for his life or made one for himself leaving God out of consideration as he made it. Many a man with no purpose of doing wrong makes his own plans and either presents them to God for his blessing or goes through life leaving God wholly to one side. But even Bushnell's mighty topic does not quite say what needs to be said. God does not make a plan for a life like Jesus Christ's and hand it to him to adopt and work out. God is not a life-plan maker like that, Nor is God the divine helper of persons who make their own plans. He is the abiding personal basis upon which true men and women make their life plans, life decisions and life endeavors. One most careful student writes: "It is surely fair to begin where Jesus began: and Jesus began with God" (Hutton, The Proposal of Jesus, p. 64). And another as though foreseeing our need for such a word says: "The object of Jesus was to induce men to base all life on God" ( Glover, Jesus of History, 1 p. 113 ) . But we are always failing to see that Jesus had a faith and a practice of his own. His object was to induce men to base all life on God, and his method was to base all his own life on that supreme person. His teachings for other men lie firmly in his beliefs and principles for himself. And I know no way for you to start right in making your life decisions except the way of Jesus; no way to reach a right decision for your life if you leave God out of it or give him a secondary place in it. There is no way to avoid the "fuss and fret," the distraction, shallowness, and selfishness that mar our decisions and spoil our lives except Jesus' way. We, like him, must rest our lives upon God, identify our lives with God, make his business our business, his house our house, and

1 Association Press, New York. Publishers.

do it joyfully even as Jesus did. He evidently thought it the best thing for him to base his life upon God. The outcome fully justifies that act. By doing it he tried to teach and induce the rest of us so to do it. This is the way the best life on earth was reached and maintained. Until a better life has been reached on some other basis let us follow this one.

Second: Even before we are done with the discussion of this basic principle of Jesus' life decision, another principle emerges both from it and with it,/ The New Testament is a relentless book. Once give it a grip on you and it carries you irresistibly to all the implications and conclusions involved. Christianity is not a religion of electives, in which you can choose the things you like and ignore the others. j Men have always been trying to keep or get right relations with God as though that were the essence and whole of religion. And many men making their life decisions have piously said: "I will do what God wants me to do," as though that true and pious principle covered the whole case. Jesus never got into that personal and religious fog. He did not try to solve the personal or the religious problem by any false methods. He boldly, consistently, and thoroughly went the whole length to which his supreme avowals carried him. He never hedged on his faith in God, for example, because that faith would surely lead him to a faith in men and a service for men, absolutely new in the world.