Honest debtors; wermons and addresses

Preface

Many of the addresses of Doctor Gifford from pulpit and platform have been printed and circulated in more or less ephemeral form as pamphlets or as newspaper articles. Much of his work exists in type-script as it was prepared for the author's own convenience. By the courtesy of Doctor Gifford a selection from each of these bodies of material has been made available to the publishers of this volume.

For the arrangement of the material the publishers are responsible, but the sermons and addresses appear as they were delivered, substantially unchanged, with all their wealth of allusions to the events of the times that gave them occasion.

The well-known abilities of Doctor Gifford that have given his work charm and appeal are strikingly in evidence here : Fulness of thought, and compression of utterance ; a wide range of information, furnishing a wellordered treasury of apt illustration, and epigrammatical statement that proves the artist's patience and skill in clarifying, crystallizing, and cutting his gems of expression.

Not alone style will be remarked, but useful matter also. The sermon that occupies the title role, and some of its immediate associates, cannot fail to be of interest and service in these years when Christian living is rightly interpreted in Jesus' own terms as Stewardship of Life.

The Judson Press.

Philadelphia, Pa., August 30, 1922.

Part I Sermons Chaptb1 Page

I. Honest Debtors 3

II. Hope of Gains 14

III. Christian Use of Money 22

IV. Religion and Business 33

V. The Holy Spirit 42

VI. The Spirit's Birthday 51

VII. Filled with the Spirit 61

VIII. A Real Revival 70

IX. Redemption Through Blood 80

X. Salvation by Christ 91

XL The Christ-type 102

XII. Conquest for Christ 112

XIII. Christ Our Peace 123

XIV. God's Purpose in Christ 133

XV. Your Life Hid in Christ 142

XVI. The Life of Faith 154

XVII. Authority in Religion 163

XVIII. My Shepherd 172

CONTENTS

Part II Addresses Chapter Page

I. Is Life Worth Living? 181

II. Character a Credit Man's Asset 193

III. Christian Science 201

IV, Soul-winning 218

V. Adoniram Judson 229

VI. Religious Liberty 240

PART I SERMONS

" I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians ; both to the wise, and to the unwise. So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also." — Romans 1 : 14, 15.

Three civilizations meet at the Cross of Christ. Language is the highest possible expression of thought. Thought is the soul of civilization. Governments decay ; institutions perish ; buildings go into ruins ; but language persists.

The empire founded by Alexander is a haunting memory ; the thoughts wrought out by Socrates and Plato are persistent. Alexander entrusted his thoughts to institutions and forms of government; Plato and Socrates entrusted their thoughts to the Greek language.

Christ built no cities, founded no governments, left no institutions, but the thoughts of Christ have reorganized the world. He entrusted them to words. The Hebrew, the Greek, and the Latin civilizations voiced one common thought : " Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews."

Three Civilizations Met in Paul

Three civilizations met in Paul — the Hebrew, the Roman, and the Christian. He was a Hebrew, of the seed of Abraham, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin; born and reared in a Jewish home, educated in Jewish schools. But it is not a Hebrew who says : u I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians ;

both to the wise, and to the unwise. So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also/' The Jew had no sense of obligation to the world. He dealt in cash payments wherever he went. Paul Kriiger of South Africa welcomed no nation to his republic; he stood fully armed beating back the British invasion. All who entered the Transvaal must comply with the institutions when they entered. So Paul the Pharisee would not cross the street to make a convert. He would go from Jerusalem to Damascus to hinder an onslaught. The religion of the Jew brought no sense of obligation.

It is not Paul the Roman who says : " I am a debtor both to the Greeks, and to the barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise." Rome owed nothing to the world. The world owed everything to Rome, and she was busy collecting her debts. She pushed her collections out to the ends of the world ; she assessed her taxes on kingdoms and empires; she sat at the receipt of customs in the four quarters of the globe.

But a new civilization had come into Paul's heart and life — the Christian. He stood at the ends of the two civilizations and at the beginning of another. He said : " I, Paul the Christian, am debtor to the Greeks, and to the barbarians ; to the wise, and to the unwise."

Christ introduced a new principle of life. The debtor is commonly thought of as one who owes for what he has bought and has not paid for. A man buys a house ; he pays $2,000 down, and gives a mortgage for the rest, and the borrower is evermore the slave of the lender. If a tenant cannot pay his rent, he is put out on the street, and loses nothing. A man with a mortgage who does not pay his interest loses all that he has put in. The merchant belongs to the debtor class. He stocks his

,i shelves with goods that are not paid for. The purchaser, leaning over the counter and running his eye up and down the stock, envies the merchant. So the debtor class is the class that owes for what it seems to have and has not yet paid for. What had the Greek and the barbarian, the wise and the unwise, done for Paul that he was in debt to them? Nothing. But the new principle is that the man who has the truth is in debt to the man who lacks the truth. The man who has power is in debt to the man who is weak. So, as much as in him is, he is under obligation to share his truth with the man who has it not.

One day one of the Pharisees asked Christ, " What is the greatest commandment ? " And he said, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself ." And the man said, " Who is my neighbor ? " Jesus answered, " A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves, who stripped him and left him half-dead. ,, A rich priest and a Levite went by that way. They stood near enough to see him, but he had done nothing for them, therefore they were under no obligation to do anything for him, and they passed by on the other side. A Samaritan, coming that way with his beast of burden, saw him. The man had done nothing for him, but he could do something for the man, therefore he was a debtor. " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Put yourself in the man's place, and if, by the wayside, you find a man stripped and half dead, your beast of burden belongs to him ; your cash and credit belong to him ; your strength and time belong to him. That is not Judaism ; that is not Roman Imperialism; that is Christianity. But there are a great many in the Christian church who still think that indebtedness arises when some one has done something for you. It arises when you can do something for the other man.

The Civilization the World Lacks

What had Paul that the world lacked? The gospel. The gospel is made up of facts and truths. The facts of the gospel are about a dozen. Jesus of Nazareth was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the King. He was taken down into Egypt to save his life. He was reared in a humble home in Nazareth. He was baptized for the fulfilment of righteousness. He received the gift of the Holy Ghost. He was tempted forty days in the wilderness. He came out and gave his life to the world in teaching. He was convicted of blasphemy, for he made himself the Son of God. He died on the cross ; he was buried in a borrowed tomb ; he arose the third day, and ascended on high, leading captivity captive. He poured out the Spirit on his waiting disciples of the world. These are the facts. But inside this row of facts is a mighty truth. " God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever shall believe in him shall have everlasting lif e." " As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up," that he may draw all men toward him. He bore our sins in his own body on the tree. He is the resurrection and the life. The man who grasps these facts by faith, grasps the truth, and the truth regenerates. The wire on Elmwood Avenue is visible ; the current is invisible. When the trolley-wheel touches the visible wire with a visible touch, the invisible current drives the car. The body of man is made of the dust of the earth; the soul is the breath of God. He who receives the body, receives the soul. If your friend should telegraph you tomorrow from Washington, " I am coming," and should die on the way, you would not welcome the body. The body has been forwarded without the spirit — the fact without the truth. The fact in Jesus Christ's gospel carried truth, truth that regenerates and redeems. What the soul is to the body, what the current is to the wire, the truth is to the fact. He who presents the facts by faith, and he who lays hold of the facts by faith, lays hold of the truth, and it is the truth that gives strength and righteousness.

Now, this gospel that Paul was ready to preach at Rome and thus discharge his indebtedness, was the power of God unto salvation. So what Rome lacked is power. The morning lesson from the first chapter of the Epistle of Paul to the Romans, is a true photograph of Rome, and Rome wallowed in its weakness. It was unable to strengthen itself into the likeness of God's thought. What the world lacks today is power. The forces of nature are terrific, and the laboratory of nature is packed with men who are searching for power. Civilization waits on power. When man found a beast of burden that could carry his load for him, half the work was done. When he found steam-power that carried him and his burden, the journey became a delight. We have passed on now to electric-power, and new ranges of achievement have now opened to us. When we mastered the perpendicular railroad, we ran our buildings twenty stories toward the clouds.

The world waits for power. Every grain of sand on the seashore struggles toward the center of the earth. And the whole force of gravity is to make matter a dead weight. When man wants to make a building, he has to get under and lift against this force of gravity. When he has power to do the building, then building is a pastime and amusement. Men's minds are filled with great ideas. They wait for power to execute them. Oh, if men were only strong to carry out their thoughts? If you were only as good in the street as you muse yourself to be by the fireside! But when I do good, evil is ever present with me. It is the dead weight. Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I want power. That is what the world wants. That is what the gospel of Jesus Christ gives, and the man who has found the secret of power, and refuses to share it, is a thief. The man who knows how to save the soul, and is mute and dumb, is a bad man. Wherever this gospel has gone and has been received, it has proved itself to be a power of God to salvation. Now the man who has a truth like that and will not share it, is worse than the heathen who waits for it. And Paul, knowing he had this power in his own keeping, acknowledged himself an honest debtor, and said he was willing to preach the gospel of that power to the weakness of Rome. The gospel of Christ is the righteousness of God.

Men are not only weak, but they are wicked. When they get strength, they use it to carry out wicked purposes. What man lacks is righteousness of motive, of thought, of act. An unseen finger has written on the walls of our modern civilization this simple question, " What would Jesus do? " The business man lifting his eyes from his desk, finds it written on the walls of his counting-room; the school-teacher on the walls of the schoolroom; the doctor on the walls of his office; the woman on the walls of her home — What would Jesus do ? That question was answered over eighteen hundred years ago when Jesus told us what God did do in the flesh ; for Jesus Christ is God manifest in the flesh, and Jesus Christ is the righteousness of God. He is the right kind of a life, and the man who follows Christ's example, lives a righteous life.

How the New Civilization Comes

Paul stands there in his power of righteousness and his power of religion, and says, " I am willing to share it with the men of Rome/' It is a curious thing that men put thoughts into words, and these words and thoughts taken into life, transform life; and yet the mind is so made that that is a fact of life.

Suppose a man does not pay his honest debts — he shrinks from his obligations. First of all, he wrongs his neighbors. I have a friend living in a suburb near Boston. He belongs to the vast class of suburban dwellers in that section of the country; his office is in Boston, his home in the suburbs. And he tells me of this curious condition of things. He found that he must pay two, three, or ten cents more for everything he buys in the suburbs than he pays in the city. He asked a neighbor for the secret of this, and the neighbor said : " My grocer tells me that it is because a certain proportion of the people who live in the suburbs never pay their debts, and the dealers, to save themselves from bankruptcy, must spread it over the honest people." This gentleman was standing one morning on the street corner, over against the finest tenement in the block. A grocer was wearing out his knuckles on a back door. He turned to this gentleman finally, saying, " Do you know where Mr. R. has moved to?" The gentleman replied, "No, I do not." With a sigh, the grocer said : " It is always so. He owes me $75." He has saved that out of the community. So, down in that section, the average suburbanite never buys a house ; he gets a month's rent and then flees in the night-time. Now, in order to strike a

B general average, it must be spread out over the community, and honesty pays the debts of dishonesty.

You take a church that is made up of five hundred members, two hundred and fifty of whom shirk their honest obligations in caring for the home and the foreign work, and the load comes with double burden on the honest members of that church; for if it is dishonest to rob your grocer, it is as dishonest to rob your God; if it is dishonest to rob your landlord, it is just as dishonest to rob your Christ. And the result of it is a low spiritual temperature all through the church. It is a burden on the honest people when men will get the advantage of a Christian civilization and not do their part in bearing its burdens. " I am a debtor," said Paul. You are no less debtors. What have you done to share the gospel that is so much to you with the world? Ever and again on the street I see a boy who has managed to get a " hitch " ; he is getting a ride for nothing. The Christian church has a great many " hitched " on who are getting their gospel without paying their fare for riding. It is a double burden.

In the second place, the dishonest man injures himself more than he injures his fellow. I would rather live in a neighborhood where I had to pay ten cents a pound more for my butter, and fifteen dollars more for my rental, and pay it, than to be the man who will eat butter at my expense and live in a house for which I pay.

The Master said that a nobleman went away into a far country, and before he went, he left talents to his slaves ; and one slave with one talent wrapped it in a napkin and buried it, and it stayed there undisturbed ; and the man seemed to be as well off while the master was gone. The master returned, and that was the day of judgment. The talent was dug up and carried to the master ; it was taken from the man, and he was cast into outer darkness. But science teaches us that the day of judgment is now; the disintegration of character goes on now, and the man need not wait for the nobleman to return, but the disintegration begins with the first shovelful of earth that is dug — begins with the thought that prompts the digging. There is not only unfolding into a nobler life, but there is degenerating into a viler life.

One of the saddest studies of Christian character is this : To see a man take the gospel of Christ and refuse to obey its genius, and lose its power in his own life. Charles Darwin said that when he was a young man he was charmed with poetry and delighted with music; but when he became an old man, he writes that Shakespeare nauseates him, poetry has lost its charm, and music is a bore ; and he says, " The upper part of my nature seems to be atrophied in such things." He has tracked the earthworm so long that he has lost touch with the genius of Shakespeare. When he was on board the steamer Beagle he was laughed at by the sailors because he was orthodox in his belief of the Bible. When he became an old man he says, " I must write myself an agnostic." He had measured the length of an earthworm and lost God; he had mastered the secret of the plant and lost eternal life; he had found a monkey and lost heaven. He did not need to wait for the day of judgment. His day of judgment overtook him this side of the grave, and he stumbled wearily into the kindly arms of mother earth, having lost his faith, lost his knowledge, lost his moral impulse and power, because he had not been keen enough to see that the laws of God run through the religious life just as surely as they run through nature.

The man who holds this gospel truth, that holds in itself power, and refuses to obey the genius of that gospel, loses the power of it, and loses the righteousness of it; and there is the secret of the non-development of this power of a Christian character, right under the shadow of the altars of a living God.

Some months ago a minister in the great Northwest, going out to look up a mission field, knowing that there were deer in the forest just beyond, made an arrangement with a merchant in the town to go with him on a deerhunt. A light snow had fallen the night before. They separated, the business man going to the left, and the minister to the right. They made an appointment to meet at a certain tree. The minister took the gun, the compass, and some matches, and journeyed into the woods. The business man swung around and came to the tree at the appointed time, and the minister was not there. He waited awhile and then went back to the town to meet a business engagement. The night fell. They formed a searching-party; they followed the minister by the tracks in the snow until they found he had tracked a deer; they went after him for over a mile, until they came to where he found he was lost, and knew it. He went back and got his gun and matches, and looked at his compass and then started off into the woods again. He laid his gun against a tree and studied his compass, and deliberately marched away from the town. They found him about midnight shivering over a little forest fire, and when they asked him why he did not follow the compass, he said, " When it said south, I knew it meant north." He was wiser than his compass. There he sat waiting for some one to find him, because he knew more than his compass.

Men, women, have you grown wiser than the Word of God? The Word of God points you to the mission field. Are you going, in your thoughts and in your sympathies, in your prayers and in your gifts? The world points you to the unsaved soul beneath your own roof, to the man you do business with, to your neighbor across the way. The gospel of Christ has become very dim and indistinct, it has lost its power over your life ; you are not as righteous as you were ten years ago. Why? Because as a dishonest Christian you have not paid your debts. Power and righteousness, to be realized, must be shared. The gospel, to be known, must be preached and lived and shared ; and the man who shrinks from the genius of it, loses the power of it.

II

"And when her masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas, and drew them into the market-place unto the rulers/' — Acts 16 : 19.

In the Hebrew record of the Exodus we read that the pillar of cloud and fire served two purposes. It was a guide to Israel and destroyed Egypt. From it Jehovah looked upon Israel, and there was light ; he looked upon Egypt, and the way was dark. The slave escaped, the master was overwhelmed. Walls of water stood up on either side, and Israel passed through dry-shod ; the walls toppled over, chariot-wheels stuck, horses tangled in their harness, and soldiers were anchored by their armor.

The Double Meaning of God

Centuries after the Exodus, descendants of the escaped slaves kept the feast of the Tabernacles once a year in memory of the tent life in the wilderness. The evening before the beginning of the feast, two huge lamps, one upon each side of the altar of burnt-offering, were lighted as the darkness gathered. They poured out a flood of light on temple, courts, streets, and over the walls of the city into the gorge beyond. Troops of worshipers danced and sang praises in the light. The lamps were symbols of the pillar of fire. Standing in the flood of light Christ said : " I am the light of the world. He that f olloweth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life/' 14

God revealed himself in two ways through the pillar, saving and destroying. God revealed himself in two ways through Christ, saving and destroying. " The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." " I am come to destroy the devil and his works." " God is love." " God is a consuming fire." The same God who called Moses to carry Israel across the desert, as a nurse carries a sick child, bade him smite Egypt, turn the empire into a huge morgue. " There was not a house without one dead." Bade him scourge the land till it writhed in agony, bade him bury the Egyptian army in an unmarked grave. The God who made the heavens and the earth, and gave the earth to the children of men, who walked with man in the cool of the day, drove him from the garden, and fastened the earth like a burden upon the bowed back of labor. Love demands love, if it gets hate it curdles. Purity demands purity, if it gets impurity it revolts ; righteousness, if it gets unrighteousness, flames. The more I love my friend the more I give, the more I demand. If a man does not care for a woman he takes no notice of her character, actions, company; but if he gives her his heart, he demands a return. A man fences his field and guards what he loves. Because he loves his boy he demands carefulness of life. " The Lord our God is a jealous God." The shackles that fell from Israel broke the heart of Egypt.

The same truth comes out in nature. The force of gravity holds the stones in place to shelter the worshiper, to give an oasis of silence in a sea of noise; but if you step from the pinnacle the same force will crush out your life on the pavement below. The third rail is alive to drive the car and to murder the man who touches it. Water in the stomach quenches thirst and prolongs life; in the lungs, it strangles and shortens life. The same

Christ who bent tenderly over the sinning woman and bade her go in peace, smote the cheek of hypocrisy till it tingles through the centuries. The Christ who said, " Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not," also said, " It is better for a man that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble. " It is better to go without dividends than to declare them at the cost of child labor. The same Christ who bade all weary and heavy-laden laborers come unto him and rest, denounced the religious leaders of his day as hypocrites, whited sepulchers, not merely caretakers in a graveyard, but themselves graves. He pictured a great white throne : before it came nations, and from it went men to joy and heaven, and also men to hell and torment.

God revealed himself in Egypt, saving and smiting. God reveals himself in nature, curing and killing. God reveals himself in Christ, drawing to himself and driving from himself. Christ is a savor of life unto life, and of death unto death. In the parade of the Roman conqueror the clouds of incense meant victory to the Roman, slavery to the conquered.

To Destroy Demons, to Save Men

This same God was in Paul on European soil. When Paul walked the streets of Philippi, he was the Christian church entering Europe. He spoke mercy to Lydia by the riverside, hope to the jailer in the prison, but cast out the demon from the slave girl, and bankrupted the syndicate that drew gains from her shame.

Christians must face evil as well as seek prayermeetings. The cloud must destroy Egypt as well as save Israel, nay, rather, it must destroy Egypt to save Israel.

Christ must cast out demons as well as save men. To save men he must cast out demons. The church must smite evil as well as comfort weakness, must smite in order to comfort. A knife is better than a poultice in treating a cancer.

Christ was merciful with men, but merciless with demons, and if men become identified with demons they must suffer the consequences. It is not enough to use the street in going from home to prayer-meeting; we must cleanse it of demons. The church has the conscience of the community, has the open vision. " If the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness/' When Sinai was used as a stable for the Egyptian calf, the Law was in danger; both could not exist together in the same camp. When the temple court was used as an exchange, the true worship was in peril. Cattle and Christ could not be in the temple court at the same time. The church would save more men if she had more power over demons that ruin men. Buddha was in the passive voice, Christ was in the active voice ; we have a great many Buddhas in the modern church.

In casting out the demon that enslaved the girl he struck the men who profited by her slavery. This blow revealed their motive — "hope of gain."

The Motive That Is as Gravity

Motives give character to deeds. What the soul is to the body, motive is to action. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he," and his thoughts give meaning to his deeds. The act may be the same, its effect the same on the man acted upon, but the reaction utterly unlike. A man is drowning, another man plunges in and saves him at the risk of his own life. " Greater love hath no man than this, that he will lay down his life for his friend." The heroic act fills the papers, the man steps into the temple of fame. We learn later that the man saved him that he might punish him; drowning was too easy, the savior had pursued this man for months, and plunged in to get a grip on him and torment him for years. The public changes its judgment. We learn later that the man was employed to track the would-be suicide, was promised a thousand dollars to save him if he attempted death; we lose interest in the man who will risk death for dollars — that is the national disease. We learn that the man who plunged in was a stranger, but risked death for a Carnegie medal ; we lose interest in him. Hope of gain does not appeal to the heroic in man, it is too common a motive, it is as wide-spread as the force of gravity, it holds too many of us down to earth. It is the mainspring in the mechanism of the commercial watch. Of all motives that ensoul the deed the commonest and the meanest is hope of gain. John Milton tells us that the least erect of all the spirits that fell from heaven was Mammon. He trod the pavement of heaven face down, and so was compelled to face the burning marl of hell when lost. Motive shapes a man's attitude and habit and so determines character.