The undying torch

Front matter

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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT

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Foreword

Thirteen members— sixteen hundred members.

Better even than this, two healthy daughters of the First Church share with their mother the honor of the Baptist name in Pasadena, the Calvary Church and the Tremont Church.

Welcome guests in a Methodist Church — a new Temple costing $370,000.

Nine pastors have served — one, the ninth, now serving.

Pastors come and pastors go, but the church, like the brook, goes on, nourished by showers from above, broadening, deepening in power to serve.

The covenant, unlike the Constitution of the United States, has not been amended.

The main Bible School has kept pace with the church in numbers and clamors for new quarters.

The splendid new Washington Street Chapel has already developed a branch Bible School which will eventually be Pasadena's fourth white American Baptist Church.

Boston's loss is Pasadena's gain, in the person of Herbert Handel, associate pastor, who followed the Star of Empire.

The present pastor, Dr. John Marvin Dean, is fundamental in faith, modern in method, and evangelistic in spirit.

The sermons are a sample of his mental strength and spiritual fervor.

Some years ago a pastor from Richmond spent a month in Boston. One day he said to me, " In the South, the text is the end of argument and the beginning of action. In Boston the text seems to be the beginning

Foreword of argument." The present pastor, though a New Englander by descent, is of the Southern type.

The proof of truth is not found in argument but in action.

" If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them."

Pasadena, November, 1925.

Note : The first record made by the clerk of the First Baptist Church of Pasadena, dated Sunday, November 7, 1883, reads as follows :

In response to a request the Baptists of Pasadena and vicinity assembled in the " Good Templars Hall " on Sunday, November 7th, 1883, to consider the advisability of organizing a church. Rev. S. S. Fisk presided. On motion it was unanimously decided to proceed to organization. The following Covenant was read and adopted. (Here follows the covenant referred to by Dr. Gifford.) The following named persons joined themselves together by means of their letters of dismission from various Baptist Churches: Rev. J. J. Woolsey, Rev. S. S. Fisk, Mrs. S. S. Fisk, Henry Fisk, Will P. Jacobson, Carrie Jacobson, D. Williams, O. S. Barber, Mrs. O. S. Barber, F. C. Quarks, Mrs. Emma Quarles, Mrs. M. C. Case, Mrs. Martin Mullins. After the organization the Ordinance of Baptism was administered by Rev. S. S. Fisk to Miss Jane Frazer and Mrs. Mary E. Clark, and at their request they were received into the Church. The hour for Sunday School having arrived, further proceedings were postponed for one week.

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CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Poem of the Almighty 1

II. Christ of the Virgin Born 19

III. The Balance and the Burden 33

IV. The Christ We Worship 47

V. Saved and Certain 63

VI. Silence in Heaven 85

VII. The Secret of Greatness 97

VIII. The Passing World 119

IX. Four Facets of the Fact of Christ 131

X. The Second Coming of Our Lord 145

XL Attended by the Vision Splendid 163

XII. The Fight with Doubt 173

XIII. The House of Peace 197

MISCELLANEOUS MESSAGES

I. The Orthodox Responsible for Heresy . . 225 II. The Great Triumvirate 233

III. Evangelize Europe 245

IV. The Soul of America 255

V. An Iloilo Christian 265

Appendix

Pastors of the First Baptist Church of

Pasadena 277

SUuatraftons

OPPOSITE PAGE

Marengo Street Entrance of the First Baptist Church of Pasadena Frontispiece

Baptistery and Choir of the First Baptist Church of

Pasadena 104

First Baptist Church of Pasadena Viewed from

Holly Street 212

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There is no better way to stimulate faith than to study the far-reaching program of God in the Epistle to the Ephesians.

There is a story told of Cardinal Manning. He was subject at times to great depression of soul. His faith would be darkened, and he would be in great agony of mind. On one of these occasions he went into a bookshop for a copy of his own works, the title of which is " Faith in God." The clerk left him to look for the book. Shortly after he heard a man's voice calling up from the basement, " Manning's ' Faith in God ' all gone."

We are informed that he accepted the message as a rebuke from heaven.

The mighty sweep of God's purposes as revealed in the Epistle of the Ascension will strengthen the confidence of all believers.

"And you did He make alive, when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins, wherein ye once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the powers of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience, among whom we also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace have ye been saved), and raised us up with Him, and made us to sit with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus; that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus; for by grace have ye been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, that no man should glory. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them." — Ephesians 2 : 1-10.

HE epistle to the Ephesians marks the highest point of the Christian revelation. It has well been called the Epistle of the Ascension. In its teachings Christian doctrine rises to its utmost height. The very landscape of the Ephesians is a continual ascension. The apostle in this writing is standing upon the high plateau of Christian privilege. He is " in the heavenlies. ,, Below him yawns the black and terrifying abyss of lost souls. Immediately at his feet are the foothills that may well represent the beginnings of the Christian life. The elevation upon which he stands is that of victory in Christ ; victory over sin. Beyond and above him tower infinite sunlit heights which allure the eye of the pilgrim ever on and upward until the summit of the range is lost in the vast nimbus of the glorified life.

We will first look into the abyss. We will then descend into the abyss. Our next movement will be one that brings us up out of the depths into the " heavenlies " of Christian privilege. Then we will look at the Farther Height. And, lastly, we will listen to the apostolic analysis and application of these movements.

1. The Abyss

We are gazing now through the apostolic eyes into the moral and spiritual abyss of human life and history. There is death in the abyss — " dead through your trespasses and sins." This death is compounded of trespasses against men and sin against God. Burns struck the universal note of conscience when he cried, " Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn." There was a day when to quote his words made us quiver with feeling; the World War, by its awful shadows, makes his indictment pallid.

As we gaze over the edge of the precipice into the awful chasm of moral evil there arises from it a fetid atmosphere compounded of the noxious gases of cruelties, inhumanities, hatreds, lusts, and injustices. No historian is brave enough to attempt a complete account, even in outline, of the appalling transgressions of man against his fellow man. When we turn to the deeper matter of sin, as pointed toward the target of the Throne of Holiness, we are even more startled. Truly there is death in the abyss.

There is life in the abyss — " Wherein ye once walked/' Does this surprise us ? Remember that men may be dead to the obligations of justice and holiness and yet be very much alive to every selfish interest. " She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth." " Thou hast a name that thou livest and thou art dead! 3 Have you ever passed through a grove of trees whose trunks have been freshly girdled ? The whole tree still stands ; only a narrow ring of bark has been cut out around the trunk. The forest rises in its strength, and in its spreading branches the birds of the air are singing. The sunlight filtering through the breeze-stirred leaves pleases the eye with a thousand patterns of color and of light. The picture is one of living delight, yet death is there. The girdled trees have been shut off from the sap that seeks to rise beneath the bark. Every second of time is freighted with dissolution and decay. So the busy, strenuous life of wicked men goes recklessly on in the abyss. But the rebellious will has separated the soul from God, and death is the only issue. " He that believeth not hath been judged already."

There is progression in the abyss — " The course of this world." The word " course " suggests duration and direction. It is a platitude that there is progression in the Christian life; it is as inevitable that there is progression in the life of sin. " In the twilight, in the evening, in the eye of the night, and the darkness ! "

There is organization in the abyss — " The prince of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience."

The selfish life of a sinful world is not unorganized but organized. I do not here refer to government itself as an evil thing, even in a prevailingly evil population. Government is a divinely given instinct. The observance of law and the maintenance of order are of heavenly origin. But alas ! there is every evidence of a fearful misuse of this instinct in a mutual and organized rebellion against God. " They all with one consent began to make excuse.'' There is one known as the prince of this world, so denominated by Jesus Christ Himself. He is a usurper. He has no rights among the sons of men. But, by playing upon their selfishness toward each other and their rebellion toward God, he is able to present against the forces of righteousness not merely a chaos of individual sinners, but a fearful unity of moral indifference and unbelief, and an organized army of active opposition to the redemptive program of God.

We were once there in the abyss ! " Among whom we also once lived in the lusts of the flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind." We were all sinners once, either gross sinners or subtle sinners. It is true that the sensual array themselves against Christ, doing the desires of the flesh.

" Saul Kane," she said, " When next you drink, Do me the gentleness to think That every drop of drink accursed Makes Christ within you die of thirst; That every dirty word you say Is one more flint upon His way, Another thorn about His head, Another mock by where He tread, Another nail, another cross ; All that you are is that Christ's loss."

But there are even greater sinners than Saul Kane. Dante's lowest, icy hell was not for libertines but for the economical traitor, Judas, and the assassin, Brutus. It is not the sensuality of the First Napoleon which appalls us so much as his sensuousness — the prostitution of his glorious mind to such miserably little and selfish ends. Who have sinned more against God and humanity than those who have followed " the desires of the mind," and have produced Godless and Christless philosophies, and materialistic science, and have sneered at God and the Christian revelation in their works of art and literature? A drunkard destroys himself; a man of blazing intelligence, motived by a selfish will, may destroy a multitude!

There is wrath in the abyss — " children of wrath." Not a sudden crackling of divine anger, but the inevitable movement of the nature of God against the attack upon His holy will and the invasion of His beneficent purposes of righteousness. There can be no thought or act of sin that does not release within a moral universe a movement of judgment and retribution which may be long in reaching its objective, but is as inevitable as the fact that sin is real. " Be not deceived ; God is not mocked. "

II. The Descent Into the Abyss

Having briefly noted the characteristics of human sin and pictured it to our minds as a profound abyss, let us now observe the action of the God of grace. We have been looking downward. We have been gazing at a picture of evil fascination until we can perhaps stand its horrors and miseries no longer, and we interrupt ourselves, as Paul in this passage interrupts himself, and lift our eyes unto the hills for an answer to the question that man's sin raises in the thoughtful mind and in the compassionate heart. Hear the answer of the apostle. It is a progressive and cumulative answer. It pictures a movement of the eternal God out of the glory and into the abyss. Observe the phases of this action :

First, God. We have looked into the gulf. We are now lost in the glory. But all we have to start with is the unadorned Name — that significant monosyllable which may mean so much or so little to the one who uses it.

It is a word common both to the street and to the church. It may fall from the lips of the blasphemous or the devout. It may represent merely a mental convenience. But in the mind of Paul its utterance immediately demands amplification and definition. Standing by itself, it is a lonesome, uncertain, or even fearful utterance. To say God! may be an imprecation, a despair, a fear. But Paul immediately throws glory into it. For, observe,

" God — in mercy." What an addition to a mere abstract Deity. Mercy! The God of Paul has turned His face toward the abyss of human need and transgression. To humanity's unspeakable relief it is a face of mercy !

" Rich in mercy ! " It is not with a mere touch of mercy, a soon-expended sympathy, or a passing interest, that the God of Paul turns toward the abyss. It is with a wealth of mercy. What a temptation we have here to dwell upon the conception of the mercy of God and the richness of that mercy. But there is a still further unveiling.

" For His love!" Mercy is suspended justice. Mercy may be the act of one apart from ourselves. It does not necessitate friendship or fellowship. It has more than a tinge of the impersonal. But here we have that warm, understandable, intimate word to which every heart responds ; the word love. God is coming down now to the plane of human understanding!

" His great love." The apostle here can only refer to one thing — that heart and action of the Divine compassion best expressed by the phrase, " God so loved the world that He gave His son." Let us remind ourselves of the significance of the word " gave," delivered up, as to an altar.

The Cross is now being lowered into the abyss!

Through all depths of sin and loss Drops the plummet of Thy Cross, Never yet abyss was found Deeper than that Cross could sound!

" Wherewith He loved us!' With humble daring the apostle ventures to link himself and all believers to the beneficent movement of the rescuing God.

" Even when we were dead through our trespasses ! " Here the Infinite Love has reached indeed the lowest level of the abyss.

Measure now the movement of God's grace :

God!

Is Merciful

Plenteous in Mercy Loves

Loves Greatly Loves Us

Though Dead Even to His Love!

And now observe the third movement.

III. Out of the Depths!

Here we deal with spiritual resurrection and ascension. The Lamb slain before the foundation of the world has become the Christ of Calvary. The Cross has revealed and applied the Divine compassion of God toward men in the abyss. The God of the Incarnation and the Atonement is discovered to be Himself in the depths, and with that discovery the new humanity is born. Observe the movement from the abyss to the heavenlies.

" Made us alive!" What an incalculable step Paul demands of our minds at this juncture — from death to life! It is a vast distance but we cannot conceive of anything lying between the two conceptions. Said David, " There is but a step between me and death/' Saith the apostle to a lost humanity, " There is but a step between thee and life." And what a life ! The sun at its zenith makes the electric light cast a shadow. The brightest, keenest and most alluring thoughts of paganism center about the Grecian use of this word life! But the glory of its meaning, here and in the whole movement of the New Testament revelation, is so utterly beyond its splendor in Greek philosophy or poetry that in contrast all lesser uses of the term are shadowed and shallowed. " He that hath the Son hath the life, and he that hath not the Son hath not the life." If ever the Greek article called for emphasis it is in that declaration — the life!

I did not think, I did not strive, The deep peace burnt my self alive, The bolted door had broken in, I knew that I had done with sin.

I knew that Christ had given me birth, To brother all the souls on earth, And every bird and every beast Should share the crumbs broke at the feast.

Oh, glory of the lighted mind, How dead I'd been, how dumb, how blind. The wayside brook, to my new eyes, Was babbling out of Paradise; The waters, rushing from the rain, Were singing, " Christ has risen again." I thought all earthly creatures knelt From rapture of the joy I felt.

" Together with Christ." Here the apostle declares that the grace of God in man enacts a spiritual resurrection as factual as the resurrection of Christ from amongst the dead. More than that, that new quality of life which we receive upon accepting Christ constitutes an instant and indissoluble bond between ourselves and Him. It is a life common to Him and ourselves.

"And raised us up with Him." The resurrection of Christ was the acceptance by the Father of every redemption claim that He, the Son, had made. By it He, the Son, was transferred from the place of condemnation to the place of acceptance. We are not only given life eternal and assured of our union with Christ but we have here indicated one of the fruits of this union — we are accepted in the Beloved. The grace of God has here lifted us out of every last lingering shadow of condemnation and declared us to be fully justified by the Cross of our Lord. Here is the spiritual privilege which astounded Luther. Here is the illumination that opened the way for the Reformation. A whole section of history in Germany, Bohemia, Holland, France, and England is but a broad commentary upon this statement of Christian privilege. Justification by faith! Accepted in His beloved Son!

" Made us sit down with Him in Heavenly Places." If the sixteenth Century rediscovered the Pauline teaching of justification by faith, and thus enriched the world, what would it not mean to- Christian thought and philosophy if the Twentieth Century would rediscover the philosophy and dynamic of the doctrine of the Heavenly Places as used at this point? The term " Heavenly Places " may refer to experiences of God either in time or eternity ; it may refer either to heaven or earth, but its connection here is plain. It is the present experience and privilege of those who have received life from Christ and are justified and " accepted in the Beloved. " To sit with Christ in Heavenly Places means to be lifted above the tyranny of sin's power. It means the sharing of the throne of Christ, and enjoyment of fellowship with the power of Christ.

To borrow from another letter of Paul's, it is the privilege of the Christian to " reign in life through Christ Jesus." Does this involve the removal of our evil nature? No, God does not give us victory over sin by decreasing the number of our enemies, but by increasing our reserves ; by placing the resources of Jesus Christ at our disposal. From death, then, to life; from life to acceptance; from acceptance to victory! We are indeed out of the abyss and looking down upon it from the high plateau of the Heavenly Places in Christ Jesus. We are rescued, raised and reigning.

IV. The Farther Height

I remind you again that the understanding of the Ephesian epistle is a matter of landscape. The apostle's point of view is taken from the life of moral victory in Christ. He looks downward over the beginnings of the Christian life to the lip of the abyss and even describes for us the abyss itself. He then turns and points us to the summits which rise above him, their peaks lost in the everlasting glory. The apostolic mind sees the great redemptive work of the ages carried up into the vast expanding future of the redeemed humanity. Out of the abyss, onto the plateau, and, now, on into the alluring colors of the Farther Height. Observe his phrases :

u The ages to cornel " What a phrase! The advancing aeons! Some men are content with a single day; to think of the morrow is to them an irritation. Others permit themselves to name the word " eternity " but shrink from any attempt to conceive of it. It is to them a final thought, a term of defeated speculation. But the bold mind of the apostle surveys with serenity the world to come and discovers it to be a procession of ages marching to meet the soul, each one of them more glorious than its predecessor !

His argument seems to be that to the Christian each new day of time brings a further unveiling of spiritual privilege in Christ. And in eternity this progressive revelation will be continued. The coming ages will be ministers of God in the education of His people in the possibilities of their redeemed nature — " That in the ages to come He might show [not " exhibit " merely, but as the word in the original indicates, reveal and share] the exceeding riches of His undeserved favor in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus ! " Dr. R. F. Horton has packed a whole philosophy in a single sentence when he says, " The resources of the Christian life are simply — Jesus Christ." It appears that the amazing things revealed to us in Christ in this life are but the first lessons in a school of blessedness from which eternity itself will never grant us a graduation. It is an overwhelming thought that the most fascinating study possible to the human mind — that bf personality — is to be our eternal occupation, and that Personality is to be God the Son. It is impossible to follow the implications of such a thought; implications of transcendent fellowship; the capabilities of perfected service; the fascinations and surprises of eternal progress.

V. The Apostolic Analysis

The apostle has completed the Divine Movement. He has pictured the grace of God lifting men from the abyss and has dared to give us a glimpse into eternity itself. He now analyzes the whole movement in two phrases. The picture that he has felt himself impelled by the Holy Spirit to paint of humanity ruined, redeemed, rescued, raised, and reigning, forces him to the conclusion that " by grace have ye been saved through faith." Only by the undeserved favor of an infinitely gracious God could the sinning soul of man have entered into the wondrous experiences and privileges of the Christian life. He feels it so deeply, so intensely, that he is fearful lest the least touch of human meriting should becloud the thought of man concerning his own redemption. " Not only are you saved by undeserved favor," he states, " but the very faith by which you lay hold of the proper help of Christ is itself a gift from without you. By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God." Let us not speculate as to whether this gift of faith is bestowed at the moment when a man is regenerated or lies latent within every human soul ready to respond when the Christ is presented. In either case the apostolic statement is proved ; it is the gift of God.

The second statement that sums up the apostolic analysis and explanation of God's grace is, " We are His workmanship." That is, after reviewing the redemption of mankind, his justification and glorification, Paul concludes that the whole matter is a premeditated and finished work of God. You will observe that he uses a Greek term poiema, from which we have mined our English word " poem." " We are His poem! " cries the apostle, " His thoughtfully considered and finished work." No choice of words could be happier. The history of the redeemed humanity is indeed a "finished fabric," a carefully wrought out poem. Every saved man is himself an epic of redemption. He fulfils every requirement and illustrates every characteristic of a great poem. To create a great poem there must be the inspiration of a mighty passion. Homer's passion for Greece gave us " The Iliad." Dante's passion for Italy gave us " The Divine Comedy." Milton's passion for the Word gave us " Paradise Lost." The redeemed man is the product of the passion of God's love for the lost. The redeemed man is God's beloved.

A great poem too must be a finished work — carefully, not roughly, wrought out ; for it must bear the inspection of the centuries. Is not our redemption so? Does not our mind leap to the victorious cry of the Christ, " It is finished ! " and do we not agree that in its every part the redemptive work of God is exact, flawless and perfectly fitted to its great end? Has there yet been discovered a fault in the work of our Incarnate, Atoning, and Risen Lord? A great poem must also contain within it the strength of tragedy. No mighty work of genius can take the first rank if it ignores the tragic elements of human life. Does not every redeemed man contain tragic memories? And does not his every virtue blossom like passion flowers from a soil watered by the tears and blood of an agonizing Christ? A great poem, too, must have rhythm and the possibilities of music. Well, can two redeemed men meet and part without a song? The Salvationist shrills her song in the gutter, destined in the end to reinforce the chanting of the glorified throng in the rendition of heaven's oratorio, " The Song of Moses and of the Lamb."

The great poem must suggest more than it expresses. It must fire the imagination. It must sting us with such a splendor of thought that we leap beyond the words into a thousand inferences that bless and burn. It is at once the joy and the despair of the redeemed man that his lips can never tell the fulness of his heart or describe the depths of his experience. He must appeal to the imagination. A great poem, too, must be witting to wait for its audience and its appreciation. The redeemed man is indeed the finished product of an inspiration of God's own nature, but the world will not acknowledge him as such. He must be patient. " The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the unveiling of the sons of God"

" We are, then/' says the apostle, in his analysis, " the finished product of God; His workmanship; His fine fabric; His inspired, living poem."

VI. The Apostolic Application

" Created in Christ Jesus unto good works, that God hath before prepared (planned) that we should walk in them/'

Here we are back on earth again. The redeemed man, it is true, is a poem, but he is also a peon, a pawn, a peasant, a servant, a man of the soil! Paul very rightly and wisely and sanely leaves as his last impression in our paragraph-text the thought of the redeemed man in the service of his Redeemer. God's finished work at work for others ! " They that wait upon the Lord shall mount up with wings as eagles ; they shall run and not be weary ; they shall walk! 3 We are not redeemed in order that we might pursue ecstatic vision and grow contemptuous of the toiling and soiling of common tasks. We are redeemed that we may become redeemers. " We have received the spirit of power and love and discipline."