"He being dead yet speaketh." Faith and righteousness

Preface

HE sermons contained in this volume are selected from those written by Dr. ELLIS in the more recent years of his ministry, and are printed with only the changes necessary to avoid the repetition usual in sermons written at widely separated intervals and for various congregations. Three, — " The Universal Intuition," " The Christ Consciousness," and " Faith confirmed by Progress," — were included in a series entitled " The Grounds of Faith," delivered in Chicago in 1882 ; and the last in the volume, " Religion the Vital Bond," is that with which he ended his earthly ministry in St. Paul's Church, July 13, 1884.

In view of the responsibility which attaches to the publication after the author's death of iv Preface.

sermons not written for that purpose, it is perhaps needless to remark that the selection has been made with all possible care. It is believed that those now printed represent the best thought of Dr. Ellis, and are good examples of his fine literary expression. They exhibit not only his clear thinking on some of the highest themes of the pulpit, but also his artistic perception, his classical sympathies, his positive delight in all forms of exalted moral sentiment, his rare insight and poetic sensibility, and more than all his profound Christian faith and devout spirit If character may be read (as we are assured) —

" In those fallen leaves which kept their green, The noble letters of the dead,"

his friends may naturally expect in these sermons of Sumner Ellis — so rich in thought, exalted in sentiment, and refined in expression — much of that which was best and highest in himself ; and from their study others may also learn the secret of his personal influence, understand something of his peculiar genius as a preacher, and find an

Preface. v

explanation of the attachment which was felt for him as a pastor and a friend.

It remains to add that the biographical portion of the volume has been prepared by Dr. Ellis's intimate friend and associate in the ministry, the Rev. C. R. Moor, as an appropriate introduction to the sermons. The volume is published in the conviction that it will be received with gratitude by the Church as a memorial of one widely beloved and honored as a faithful minister of the Lord Jesus Christ, and a cultivated preacher of that Faith and Righteousness which the sermons so finely set forth.

J. S. CANTWELL.

Chicago, December, 1886.

Contents

Page

Memorial by the Rev. C. R. Moor ... 9

L The Universal Intuition .... 89

I. The Universal Intuition

FAITH AND RIGHTEOUSNESS.

I.

The Universal Intuition.

As seeing Him who is invisible. — Hebrews xi 27.

HERE are two paths leading from man to his Maker. These are Logic and Intuition; or, as they are sometimes called, Reasoning and Feeling. Along the first the intellect moves ; along the second the heart makes its shorter and more direct journey. The first is the way of argument, and builds on the premise of a manifest intelligence and love in Nature, — the great conclusion that there is a power above us and around us, which we rightly name Deity. The second is the way of experience, along which it is claimed that the sense of the divine is an actual finding of a Deity, an immediate spiritual discernment, more or less distinct, of the Light within the light.

It is of this path of experience, or intuition, that I shall speak at the present time, hoping to show that it leads, not through a realm of fiction, where things are not what they seem, but rather amid a scenery as real as land and water present to the outward eye. I hope to make it appear that this universal sense of God, which we call an intuition, is a fit foundation on which to erect the temple of Faith, within whose sacred walls we all would dwell from day to day, and find needed shelter in the dark hours of life.

Let us seek first a clear understanding of this term intuition. Already I have used the " sense of the divine/' as its synonym. Webster defines it as " a direct apprehension or cognition ; an act of immediate knowledge." Coleridge calls it " a direct beholding; " and Cousin, the French philosopher, in full accord with both, says, " My intuition is my looking upon reality." As methods of proof, logic and intuition differ as outward authority differs from experience. In the one case, proof is formal, and in the other it is experimental. Thus the logician affirms the reality of a Divine Being because a conclusive chain of argument reaches that lofty goal ; but the intuitionalist affirms that there is a Deity because he has a sense of his presence, and is conscious of inspirations derived from him. The former believes since he confides, as well he may, in logic, for logic marching steadily from premise to conclusion is indeed majestic, and worthy of reverence and trust ; but the latter believes since he confides in his experience. In some happy hour he has felt the impress of a Divinity ; in some darker moment a light has shone upon him ; in some great silence his inner listening has heard a voice not of earth. Like Enoch, he has now and then, along some rare eminence, walked with God as in a sacred companionship ; like Job, he has held high converse with him ; or like Jesus, he has realized a oneness of spirit with spirit And by reason of this intuition, Belief has come to take up her abode with him and cheer him on his way, putting a song in his heart, a moral courage in his career, and lighting his path through this life and beyond with the radiance of a great hope. Thus from the stem of Feeling, Faith blooms and bears her gracious fruits. As an antidote to scepticism, Tennyson tells us how befriending is this sense of the Deity, —

" If e'er, when Faith had fallen asleep, I heard a voice, 1 Believe no more,' And heard an ever-breaking shore That tumbled in the Godless deep ;

14 A warmth within the breast would melt The freezing reason's colder part, And like a man in wrath the heart Stood up and answered, ' I have felt.' "

Because he had felt t therefore he paused at the thought of atheism. He could not discredit the witness of his soul, that seemed at times to meet and greet a spirit in Nature and in life, and to hold a high communion. In all beauty he had discovered a hidden Artist. In his sorrow he had known a higher sympathy. In his aspirations he had received the aid of an Inspirer, and an Approver of his nobler deeds was ever near. And on this experience he rested his heart in the sweet trust that there is a God, and that there is a care and guidance, and a " far-off, divine event, to which the whole creation moves. "

On a similar ground have countless souls besides the English laureate reared the fair temple of Faith. Alike have poets and saints trusted in their vivid sense of the divine as something that pointed to a reality. In that great Wesleyan movement, a mighty wave of spiritual awakening, there was realized a wide arrest of doubt, and a broad reign of faith. While Bishop Butler opened the logical path to Deity, Wesley invited his pilgrims to enter the experimental one ; and thus at once shortened the search and rendered it more successful. In feeling he recognized the natural prelude to believing. In like manner did George Fox seek to lead his disciples into the radiance of an inner quickening and illumination, wherein the face and favor of a present Deity would shine forth ; and sitting in that revealing light, the Friends have been noted as much for the absence of scepticism and the joy of a real faith, as for their virtue and humanity. To them belief has been as natural as a song to the attuned heart of a bird. Of their spiritual experience a trust and peace have sprung, which their own poets have set in well-known hymns.

But in all the ages it has been, not the sway of logic, but the sense of the soul, the spiritual feeling, that has set the masses in the attitude of confidence towards the unseen world. Intuition has been not only the Tennysonian and Wesleyan prelude to believing, but even the entire human music of faith has thus its first note in the deeper realm of experience ; and so in China and India and Egypt and Greece and Rome and England and America the altars of religion have been mostly set up in the name of an inner perception of a spiritual environment. The rude Indian has seen God in the cloud or heard him in the wind, has caught his smile in the summer sunshine or met his frown in the passing shadow, and paused to pay him some form of worship. But the soul of a Plato or Thomas a Kempis or Channing has only been cognizant of a higher range of spiritual lights, and felt more sensibly the impress of a Universal

Spirit; and so in the common name of experience — common to barbarian and civilized — these greater souls say their prayers and chant their psalms to the Great Unseen.

And now we pass to the most important part of our discussion; namely, an inquiry into the value of this intuition as an evidence of the spiritual environment to which it points. In other words, is there sufficient ground for putting our trust in it as the witness of a great fact; namely, a Divinity in Nature and in the sphere of human life? Is this spiritual sense a mirror that reflects nothing, projecting out of itself its own images, or does it reveal an actual spiritual scenery? Is there a God because we feel his spirit in communion with ours ; or is the feeling all there is in the matter, and beyond us lies the great void and the eternal silence, with only our phantasy projected into it? To this inquiry let us now address ourselves.

Man shares three orders of perceptions. The first order are sense-perceptions, taking cognizance of matter and its phenomena. Man sees an outward world. He sees the earth at his feet and the cloud overhead, and his vision stretches out to the stars. He sees the properties of bodies, — length, breadth, and thickness, — and their many conformations and colors. He sees the plant and the tree, the bird, the animal, and the members of his own race. He hears sounds. He detects fragrance, and he also discovers flavors. These are called " sense-perceptions."

The second order are mind-perceptions, taking cognizance of ideas, truths, and principles. Man recognizes a realm of intellections, in which are included simple ideas and complex ideas, or ideas in their relations. He sees the elements of numbers, and the principles of morals. He looks upon the verities of philosophy, and the abstractions of metaphysics. These are called " mind-perceptions."

The third order are soul-perceptions, taking cognizance of God and a spiritual sphere. Of these I have already spoken at length; and now I set the three orders together, since I desire to show that the analogies between them as to their origin and scope are such as to confer on them an equal validity as evidence of the reality of the objects to which they point. In the consciousness of man the sense-perceptions and the mind-perceptions and the soul-perceptions assume a common rank as elements of experience. Equally certain are we that we share them all. Together they file through the inner life, appearing as common factors of our being. Now the senses may be busy in their office; and now the mind is active in its sphere; and now the soul comes to the front, and adores and loves and answers back to the celestial appeals : and what I claim is that, accepting the first and second of these orders of perceptions as revelations of their respective objects, we have no good reason for rejecting the third as not being a faithful witness. Hence the proof of an outward world, and of a realm of ideas, and of a Deity, rests on much the same ground ; namely, the common veracity of our three orders of perceptions. If two parts of our being are trustworthy, we need not distrust the third and crowning portion, that perceives a spiritual Presence, and knows a Life that is in all that the senses perceive and the mind contemplates. Man is not such

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a contradiction that two orders of his perceptions are habitually truthful, and a third order is universally false, though it be of transcendent significance. His nature is better balanced and more homogeneous ; and hence while we confess there is the world of matter which he perceives, and the sphere of truth and philosophy on which he gazes, let us follow with all confidence his spiritual footsteps that lead us to a Divinity, an immortality, and a final perfection,

But note one point more with reference to these several orders of perception. Whence come they in the consciousness of man? How can we account for their origin? They ail seem alike to be caused or occasioned by external realities, and not to be self-generated, They transpire under the action of the external upon the internal. Thus the flower, or the tree, or the star, awakens the perception of a rose, or an oak, or a planet flaming in the evening sky. The mountain begets the sense of an eminence, and the vale of a depression, in the landscape. The cloud in the sky floats before the vision, and the eye proceeds to take note of the shape and color, and assigns it to one group or another of the forms that make up the cloud-realm. First is the scenery of Nature, and afterwards the perception of it. The objects produce the subjective sense of them. And thus dependent are the mind-perceptions on the reality of truths and principles ; for no one will claim that it creates these. Rather, truths and principles being eternal, and in all the universe alike, the mind is awakened by their presence as the sleeper by the light of the morning sun. And we have no reason to think otherwise of the soul-perceptions, than that they are the effects of a spiritual environment resting upon the soul and moving it to response. They are not self-generated, for so at least does the analogy of the perceptions declare, and so does consciousness affirm ; but rather are they caused, and their cause can be none other than a Divinity touching them by his nearness, and inspiring them by his grace.

But observe one test more of the value of the spiritual intuition as evidence of the Deity to which it points. It is a universal sense;

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and every universal sense is thus far proved to be truthful in its deliverance, unless this one is an exception, which we have no reason to think. We can have no better witness than a universal sense-perception or a universal mind-perception. This is admitted on all sides. The individual sense in regard to any given object in the world of Nature may be at fault ; it may be the victim of some illusion, and thus render a false report. In the eye there may be a defect, and the thing that seems is not, or is not what it seems. Thus the single vision may err. But we have a remedy, and that is the aggregate of sensations or beholdings ; for these are absolutely reliable. The testimony of one to the color of the grass or the sky might well be distrusted; but when a race tells us with a marked unanimity that the grass is green and the sky blue, there is nothing more to be said : it must be so. One might mistake in his account of the form of an object, since one may be deceived ; but ten pairs of eyes could hardly be confused on this question of shape, and the universal sense of mankind would be reliable to the utmost. Hence we conclude there are the stars in the sky, not merely because our own eyes tell us so, but because the vision of humanity is in perfect accord on this matter. And in like manner are the universal mind-perceptions found to be true to the facts; or, as the common saying runs, "What everybody says, must be so." One man may err on a simple proposition in mathematics ; but a second man might set him right, — a thousand men surely would do so. The judgments of the race are final because truthful. When humanity comes to a common verdict, it will never be outgrown or altered, since it will be the deliverance of a verity.

But if such credit belongs to the universal sense-perceptions and the universal mind-perceptions, then may we not confide in the universal soul-perceptions, which on the score of analogy should give us a just reflection of the truths of a spiritual realm? Of the three orders of universal perceptions, is it reasonable that two should be uniformly reliable, and the third uniformly untrustworthy? Nay, there is no reason in such a supposition. The consistency of the universe is against it. The harmony of the great whole is against it. The integrity of human nature is against it. And hence we may well give full credit to the universal sense of a Divine Power above and around man, and which assumes to his spirit the shape of a wise and kind Providence. The wide intuition must point to a reality. The whole race does not, with one ardent consent, adore a void, nor rest its heart on a phantasy ; but by its universal soulperception it must indeed see " Him who is invisible. " This intuitive recognition of a God is the most majestic and transforming sentiment of human life, and in its universality we may find its verity.

Yes, we feel the Divinity; and therefore let us confide in it, and pay court to it, and aspire to a oneness with it, and render to it our daily service. And from that altitude of life we can each one sing with the poet, —

" My willing soul would stayin such a frame as this, And sit and sing herself away To everlasting bliss."

II. The Incarnation A Necessity

II.

The Incarnation a Necessity.

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. — John i. 14.

jHEOLOGIANS have striven hard to reflect the meaning of this term, "Word." To say that a library has been written upon the " proem," or preface to John's Gospel, would be to keep within the bounds of truth. Now, looking at this term, as of course I must, with my own insight, I am impelled to adopt as its closest synonym and best parallel, the w r ord "God; " and in this I am borne out by Scripture statement, direct and indirect. " In the beginning was the Word," says John ; and w r hat more? "And the Word was with God, and the Word was God." And it is a plain implication, on almost every page of the New Testament, that in Jesus dwelt the Father;

that in him was "the fulness of the Godhead," — »the fulness in the sense that every attribute and disposition, every essential trait, the total elements of the Divine character, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, were given place and power in the Son of God. " The Word was God," and " the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." The highest spirit became incarnate. The Divine gathered itself up, and passed from its veilings into this human embodiment, to the end that it might be recognized among men. The Infinite Light, so vast it could not be seen, outlying the sweep of the eye, and therefore lost, was concentrated into this Star, this bright Nazarene, to be reflected upon all eyes. The Life, a sea without a shore, all centre and all circumference, all-abounding and all-including, manifold, universal, projected itself, sent itself out, worded itself, in a finite form, as a drop of water from the ocean, or from the hidden mist above your heads, would typify the universe of water.

The Word, then, is characteristically God. Jesus is the Divine Man. He is the visible type of the Invisible Presence. He is the special set in front of the universal, — one in quality, and representative of God.

I have said the Infinite is vast, and therefore illusive. We fail to grasp it. It plays beyond our sight. A few great and generalizing minds have indeed touched it and dwelt in rapture on their vision ; but to the masses it has been a far-off and vague attraction, something they could not find, something they could not cease to search for, — a hiding glory, yet luring by its enchanting mystery ; a something dreamed of, but not discovered. And so there was need of the incarnation, among the great mass of mankind, to secure a first clear conception and sense of the true Godhead. Only thus would the hidden be clearly and successfully revealed.

But let me say, further, that the incarnation is not only a primal, but a continual need with us. We need a daily recurrence to it, that its showing of the Father may not fade and vanish. Otherwise we should lose the level of our conception by degrees, and lapse toward the pre-Christian vagueness. Our memory cannot be trusted, especially to keep and carry intact and impressive so subtle a view as that of the Deity which we may catch in some happy mood of life. There is danger of our best vision dissolving and floating off into nonentity, as the tinted cloud vanishes even while you gaze.

I have a friend who tells me how impossible it is to retain in his eye a material form with accuracy and permanence. He is a carver in wood, for the ornamentation of fine furniture. He is a genius in his sphere. His cutting of a bird, a buck's head, a lamb, seems to give it everything but life. His carved flowers mimic nature to a marvellous extent. But he never works without his model before him, to keep him up to his level, even though he repeat the same device to a hundredth time. In the absence of his symbol or his type, he finds he gradually loses ground, — here a line, and there a curve, and elsewhere a rounding; a depression rises, a prominence lowers; and little by little the eye yields to an evil influence, so that his fiftieth piece would be a caricature of his first. But if a rare eye is unequal to the holding with security a view of the finite and outward, what may we not expect will become of the vast and subtle visions of the Infinite, flashed out upon our elevations of soul, had we not some embodied likeness and abiding symbol? What ideals would fade, and refuse to be recalled ! What open prospects — granted once, as on some mountain the clouds part and give you an instant outlook, and then close — would shut in, and stay shut in ! What lost conceptions should we have to sigh over, — as many of us have sighed at the lost face we knew and loved in our earliest childhood ! How would our God become a dim and hazy memory, a faded picture no art could recover, a vanished face from before the soul !

In short, it is the office of the incarnation to supplement and complete the revelations of Nature. A life can be best reflected in a life. God can be most adequately and fully expressed in a character, — - and, indeed, I see not how he could type and show forth his personal and manifold spirit in any other way.

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Matter is too set and clumsy, too formal and cold, too dead and expressionless, even at its best, to portray the divine in all its depths of thought, and tenderness of soul, and personality of relations. It takes spirit thus to mirror spirit. It demands character to show forth character.

Take, for instance, the condescension of God, seeking you out in your obscurity, and waiting upon your soul in the spirit of a guest and friend, coming at your poor and stammered entreaty, placing his arm under you in your need, answering your lowly cry of sorrow or remorse, — this is not the lesson of Xature as that volume is usually read. The most palpable impression of the outward universe is that of power. My first notion of Deity — and in this I think I was not singular — was of an impersonal omnipotence. God seemed to me the might} 7 power that terrified rather than warmed my heart. I saw Him — or It — in the swaying ocean, the uplifted hills, the sweep of the wind and the tramp of the storm ; in the depths of space, with its wheeling systems and its fearful suns. I stood on the old farm as a minute speck against a universe of cold granite. I saw no mild face in the heavens ; I felt no sympathy in the earth. I rambled over the hills alone, with no hidden heart beating against mine, no gentle voice of love whispering to me, no friend attending my steps. The world did not seem godless, but it did not seem full of a tender and companionable presence. And never shall I forget when the lesson of the incarnation in Christ came home to me, in connection with the words, " He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father." " Ah ! " said I, " is this so ? Shall I set that lowly and loving spirit in this vast world around me? Shall I transfer that New Testament character, more gracious than a mother's, above these hills, into the night's darkness, and into the dizzy spaces ? " Yea, even so I did ; and lo ! the old world vanished like a dark scroll, and a new earth and a new heaven stood before me, wherein were the dear affections and influences that were better than life.

The religion of Nature has been a religion of fear ; always a religion of fear, — a re-

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ligion of awful sacrifices to gain the eye and ear of the stern Arbiter of events. Its devotees have been filled with boding and trembling, as not having found the love that tempers the divine power and that concentrates with a personal interest upon every child of the race. In the stooping of Jesus to the child and the outcast and the sorrowing; in the benignity of the Saviour; in the graciousness of the Lord and Redeemer, overlooking none, accessible to all, yearning to meet and greet all, inviting the lowest and worst to come to him and share his company and helping ministrations, — in all this we learn first and best to know him who is the soul of all things, and infinitely great because infinitely condescending.

We need not stand afar off, we need not draw nigh in fear; for the universe veils an inviting face. The brooding Presence, everywhere like that that dwelt in Judaea, will exclude none. The appeal is to woe and want, not less than to joy and affluence. The beggar is as privileged as the prince ; the peasant in his cot as the lord in his palace ; the sinner as the saint; the little lisping child, whiterobed for its night's sleep, as the mature man or woman. No one needs to go in fear. Said a clergyman to me once, " I offer prayer to Jesus, since I am unworthy to approach the Most High." But, said I, " My Deity is reflected in and through Jesus, and both alike would give me ear and favor." The Infinite bends down to the finite, as the mother to the babe. The Holy Spirit waits in the depths, — waits on us continually. He that sits on the planets stands by every toilers side in the dusty shop and on the farm. He forbids none to come unto him. His gates are never closed. Nay, he hastens forth to meet every comer, and gives him a gracious welcome.

Take, again, the moral purpose of God to bring the race to a perfect obedience. Nature does not show it. Nature does not reveal the Father's intent of discipline, to the end that every child of his shall be " thoroughly furnished unto good works." Nature is bountiful towards our temporal wants, — gives us seeds and seasons, food and fuel, ample material for clothing, soft fleeces and growing fibres to be 8

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woven into needful fabrics, commodities for commerce and wealth, quarries and forests for warehouses and homes. Nay, more, Nature supplies amply our aesthetic want. She scatters beauty with a free hand. Her curves and colors are endless. She arches the sky, instead of making it flat and unlovely. The trees are flexile and swaying, instead of rigid, and now and then burst into the very profusion of bloom. The waters ripple and flow. The birds bring a thousand tints to our eyes, and notes to our ears. The very rocks are fringed with mosses, and the dark soil she hastens to hide beneath her beautiful carpet of green. The sunset has a charm to stay the most stolid, and check the child in its sports. It is clear enough that the Genius of the world regards the fine sense of the eye and ear. Nay, more : the intellect is tasked and tempted into activity by these outward conditions, by the laws and processes of Nature. But the moral code is not written there ; morality is not urged on the face of the land, nor across the dome of the sky. The winds are silent concerning the virtues, the waters murmur not of duty, the Golden Rule is not found among the secrets of the visible world.