Things of Northfield, and other things that should be in every church

Front matter

SECOND COPY, I8S9.

JAN 30 189£ ofCcor

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Contents

I. Things of Northfield which Should Be in

Every Church, i

II. Why Are there Not More Conversions ? . 29

I. Things Of Northfield Which Should Be In Every Church

Is not the summer a menace to the higher life of man? Is it not a season of spiritual weakness? That depends altogether on where you spend the summer, and how. To some it is ; to some it is not.

A summer spent at a fashionable resort, where artificiality reigns, and the brass band perpetually plays, and the midnight sees the dance only well begun, and custom announces that everybody is expected to be the incarnation of the fashion-plate : — that may be a menace to the higher life. But a summer spent at Northfield, with prayer in the morning, and church all day, and lights out at ten o'clock — that is a summer of another kind.

I do not wonder that the question is asked : " Is not the summer a menace to the higher life of man? " The summer as it is now spent is a 3 season of relaxation. Everything takes a vacation, even conscience. Men and women are away from under the eyes of home police. They have time on hand to do as they please. The spirit of self -abandon is in the air. It is too hot to be serious ; and there is too much languor of nerve and muscle and spirit that one should be expected to rein himself up to anything like duty or self-restraint. Expectation is everywhere let down to a low tone. A man demands little of his neighbor and nothing of himself. The fact is this, during the summer it is considered that no one is on duty. It is the time when we city people expect to spend our money and to make none. It is allowable for us to use up the income of the whole year to cover the expense of a single trip amid people we know not, and among whom we can pose for what we are not. Is my sarcasm misplaced? Am I only a miserable pessimist? Am I simply a mean slanderer of the summer?

Sometimes a single event, a single fact, gives us an insight into the true nature of things. I think this is the case here. Take one single fact relative to the summer — the fact which the bookseller tells us. What does the bookseller tell us? He tells us that the one book which commands the largest sale during the

WHICH SHO VLD BE IN E VER Y CHURCH. 5

summer is the novel. Well, what of that? The novel is a good thing ; it is the very widest door to the mind of mankind. It carries inspiration in it and mental tonic. It kindles and develops love ; and man and woman can do nothing better than love. Yes, all this is true of the good and pure and wholesome novel. But the bookseller tells us that the kind of novel which sells best in the summer is the novel which deals in realism, and whose morals are doubtful. Is that true? Then the people are not at their best in summer, and the higher life of man is not being cultured.

Thoughtful and wise-hearted men have seen the menace which the summer as spent in our age carries in it, and it has awakened them to search for a defence. They have seen idle time going to waste ; they have seen the sleep of conscience ; the frivolous and hurtful dissipation ; the fashionable and unintellectual life, and the charm of the questionable novel. They have seen the people return to their homes morally unkeyed and spiritually paralyzed; and, moved to pity by the sight, they have given themselves to the task of rinding a preventive. In their diagnosis of the case, they have found that the origin of the trouble is largely this: — unused time. As unoccupied time is the cause which makes the summer an injury to so many, they have determined to remove the cause by providing men with something good and grand wherewith to fill up their time. And this I take it is the origin of Chautauqua and Northfield and Long Beach and Keswick and the summer school of theology at Oxford. These are all of them intended to protect the summer against waste, and against what is worse than waste, viz. : a wrong and bad use ; and they do so by filling the summer with education, and with lofty fellowships, and with pure and undefiled religion.

But it is with Northfield that I mean to deal exclusively in this discourse.

Northfield is one of the oldest towns in the United States. It dates back to the year 1663. It is a typical New England town, with its one wide street and giant elms. It is located in one corner of Massachusetts where you can look over into Vermont and into New Hampshire and see the spurs of the Green Mountains and the spurs of the White Mountains. It is picturesque to the last degree. There are river and forest and mountain and lake and fertile valley. But what of this? There are thousands of places in our land which can boast of all I have mentioned. That is true. These do not make Northfield. It is Mr. Moody that makes Northfield, and the institution which Mr. Moody has been instrumental in planting there. At Northfield and on Mount Hermon Mr. Moody has planted Christian schools for young women and young men who have limited means but high aims, and who wish above all things a good and a distinctively Christian education. In these schools are hundreds of young men and women to-day, who are bound to make their mark in this country, and to help America to reach a higher level. Scholars from these schools go to the ends of the earth, and they carry with them a manhood and a womanhood which are themselves educational. Out of these schools have gone pupils already who have taken the highest honors in our leading universities. Here on these Massachusetts hills and in these educational plants, Christians of money should invest their consecrated means, and enlarge and endow and perpetuate these magnificent institutions which under God are making the very men and women that the future needs. Christian capitalist, instead of building a costly shaft out in Greenwood to perpetuate your name and lead people to ask as they look on it, "Who was he, anyway?" build a hall, or a chapel, or a library, or a home to the name of Jesus Christ at Northfield, and make your money live and educate and develop and bless immortal souls to the end of time. If you cannot give in large enough sums for this, give in smaller sums. Select some orphan boy and send him to school there and make a man out of him, and take his coming manhood for Christ. Or select an orphan girl and send her to school and make a woman out of her, and take her coming womanhood for Christ.

But Northfield not only draws the youth of our land to its Christian schools during the school-term ; when the school-term is over and when vacation has come, it draws to itself bands of earnest Christian men and women, that they may spend the summer among its hills in quest of a higher, broader, deeper, fuller spiritual life. In this regard it is like Oxford of England, which has a summer conference for study upon the more intellectual lines relative to religion. A friend of mine who was at Oxford this summer writes: " The profoundest subjects have been treated with no dread of results. There have been no truths too sacred for reverent inquiry. Principal Fairbairn has been really great, and he is the master spirit here. The summer school is his. But yet after all it is Oxford itself that is the charm and the drawing-power. Here are the very colleges in which the men who have made England have been trained, and here are gathered much of the noblest architecture, and the most finished culture, and the richest achievements of the world. And then the place is cool enough for comfortable work in summer." That is it. There is a drawing charm about a spot where educational institutions rise, which are doing a great work ; and now that Northfield has its educational institutions, it has a charm which draws and which helps to make the summer Conference a power and a success.

It is Northfield as the seat of the summer Christian Conference that we have before us now. And Northfield as such has been greatlyblessed by the Lord. God has blessed it to such an extent, and has made it such a farreaching power, that I believe the great need of our Christian churches is, that they be made hungry with an intense hunger for the things of Northfield. The things which succeed there are the things which will succeed in every Christian church.

Now I imagine you ask me : What did you see in Northfield which ought to be in every Christian church? The question calls for several answers.

io THINGS OF NORTHFIELD

i. / saw there a holy, hearty, life-giving, and transforming and tra?isjigurating fellowship.

Such a fellowship certainly should characterize every church of Jesus Christ. There were over two thousand people there, men and women of the church universal, and yet all were heartily welcomed, and all were made to feel at home in this great household of faith. That was one of the very first things that impressed me, and I felt there was power in it, and success in it. That is precisely what our churches to-day need: — A fellowship which welcomes, and which will make men and women feel at home. Such a welcome is as divine sunshine. People will come to it, and respond to it, and in it open all that is best in them and give what is best to God and to others. Let no one say, " Why, that is the welcome every church gives to people " ; for it is not. If that were the welcome the churches gave the people, the churches would be full. A gentleman whom I expect to see to-morrow told me this incident. He is a D. D. , also a LL. D. , and a man of exceedingly fine presence. He said: "I went into a Presbyterian church in New York to hear Rev. Dr. B., lately come to the city. Positively there was not one person in the auditorium to every pew. The sexton showed

WHICH SHOULD BE IN EVERY CHURCH. II

me into a seat in the middle aisle. Presently a lady came up the aisle and stood in front of the pew in which I was, and from her manner I concluded she was the owner of the pew. I rose, stepped into the aisle and handed her in. She bowed her head and said whatever prayer she had to say, and then bending toward me she whispered, 'Do I know you?' I replied, ' Madam, I do not think I have the honor of an acquaintance. ' ' How did you get in my pew?' 'The sexton showed me to this seat.' 'He should have known better than that.' The Doctor of Divinity became at once anxious to know who his kind friend was. The hymn book helped him here. It contained the family name. At the close of the service, using the knowledge he had thus obtained, he addressed his new-made friend : " Have I the honor of speaking to Mrs. X? " " That is my name, sir. " " I knew your late husband well : we were associated together in many ways and very intimately." "Indeed." Then he related several things which awakened her interest; and before the conversation closed, all the ice had thawed away, and she found that he was just as good as she was. In bidding him good-day she leaned over and said : " I hope you will not think anything of the conversation which passed between us at the beginning of the service." That is an exaggerated case, but the same thing is a possibility in a hundred other pews in New York and Brooklyn. For one I wish to say: It ought not to be a possibility in a single pew throughout Christendom. No child of God should ever be made to feel that he is a stranger or that he is unwelcome in his Father's House.

But it is of the power of the fellowship which I saw at Northfield which I wish to speak. I wish to lay emphasis upon its power. The fellowship there had a testing power. It was selfrevealing. If you were nothing but an ordinary Christian, you felt at once that that was your true measure, and that that was all that you were. Is it not something to be taught that there is a life richer, and fuller of joy and of power than that enjoyed by the ordinary Christian? The truth is, that the deepest teachings of Christ are almost meaningless to a large number of the members of the church, so ordinary is the average run of Christians.

The men and women who were present at Northfield were in pursuit of high things, and you felt it. Their religion was a reality to them. God's book was a living voice to them, and salvation through the blood of Christ was a present thing. There was a hunger and a thirst after righteousness in the very air. The whole atmosphere was deeply and intensely spiritual. By your contact with men and women you were made conscious of the absence of the things you had not, but which you ought to have. One felt how feeble his prayers were, and how insignificant his self-sacrifices were, and how little of God he admitted into his life. On the other hand, one felt how great were his possibilities, and how much he might do for God and for self and for others, if he but fulfilled the simple conditions of service laid down in God's word. From all parts of the world there were men and women present whom God was using, and whose stories thrilled one through and through, and found the lowest depths of one's nature, and awoke in one an enthusiasm and a faith and a desire to be used. There was one man there who will be remembered as long as the Conference is remembered. It was the patriarch, the Rev. Mr. Young. He spent his whole life in laboring among the North American Indians. He stood before that audience, his silver locks a crown of glory, a man veritably transfigured, feeling through all his being the ecstasy of a self-surrender, long honored of God. All he did was to tell the story of his life, and how he was instrumental in bringing thousands to the knowledge of Jesus Christ. The audience listened with breathless attention when he told the sorrow of an aged Indian who lost his Bible and who traveled hundreds of miles to find it, and who, when he found it, brought it back with great joy to his wigwam. Methinks many a heart in that audience felt rebuked at the way it treated God's Book in this land of Bibles. That man's life has been a wonderful life; but then the man kept nothing back from God. When Mr. Young finished, if any half-hearted Christian in that audience had been asked to put the life of this missionary to the Indians and the life of A. T. Stewart side by side, and choose which he would rather take before the throne of God, he would have said, with an enthusiasm at white heat, " There is no room for a comparison, there is only a striking and wilting contrast; give me Mr. Young's life a hundred times over."

Such is the holy fellowship which every church of Jesus Christ needs to-day ; but such is not the fellowship which every church of Jesus Christ has. There are churches on every hand in which a man can live half-hearted, cold, lukewarm, building up a questionable character, doing questionable deeds, speaking questionable words, and yet not be revealed unto himself, not be rebuked, not be shamed out of himself and his burlesque caricature of the religion of Christ. I do not wonder that these churches make no saving impression upon the communities in which they are found. They are not yet saved themselves. Give me a church of converted men and women, in which everything morally wrong stands revealed and rebuked ; in which the close-fisted man, and the man of the compromised character, and the man religiously inactive feels himself to be out of place ; in which honesty and purity and truthfulness and love and a true life are all and all ; give me such a church and you give me a church that will command the community, and save sinners by the hundreds, and into which the saints will flock because there they know they can find their best self, and meet with Christ, and grow, and realize the highest demands of their immortal souls. My fellow-men, you may have eloquent sermons in your church, you may have the finest classical music, you may have the richest adornment of sacred art, but if you have not there a holy fellowship, a communion of men and women of pure hearts and of burning zeal for souls, with characters above the suspicion of the world, and lives which are clean socially and commercially and politically, you will have a church upon which God has written " lchabod"; that is: " The glory has departed. The fellowship of every Christian church ought to be such that the moment a man steps into it he will feel that he is in a pure, live, holy, and sympathetic world, in which he gets spiritual electricity and life from every touch, and on every side.

The second thing which I found in Northfield which should be in every church was this :

2. A living faith in a present God, and in Jesus Christ as an all-sufficient Saviour; and in immediate fruits from the faithful offer of salvation.

But do not all churches present God as a present God? No. At first thought you may think they do ; but upon consideration you will see that they do not. They talk to you of God as a God of the past, and that is about all. He was the God of Abraham, and was with Abraham, and called Abraham, and worked through Abraham, and made Abraham a grand man. He was the God of Noah, and saved the world through Noah, and brought Noah through marvellous and startling experience. He was the God of David, and swept David's harpnature ; and from every string caused a song of the soul to leap forth and thrill and inspire and create and voice spiritual life in the souls of men. He was with Isaiah and with the Apostles, and made them leaders of thought and pillars in the kingdom of God. That is what we hear in the churches to-day. God was the great God of the past. But that, good as it is and true as it is, is far from enough. We need a teaching that brings God up to date. That is what the teaching of Northfield does. In the teachings from the platform there, it is constantly impressed upon men that God is as much with men now as he ever was, and that he is knocking at the door of our being, seeking to make Abrahams out of us, Noahs out of us, Davids out of us, Isaiahs and Johns and Peters out of us. The result of the declaration of this faith in a present God, who to-day calls men and is with men, is this : — men leave the Northfield Conference every year with the conviction that they are as much called of God to their every-day work as Abraham was to his, or David to his ; and with this sense of their divine call they successfully do their work. Churches of God, that is what you want to do : you want to put a divine call into

1 8 THINGS OF NOR TBFIELD

the life of men, and give them the power to be successful in living.

Another thing that they believe at Northfield is this : that Christ is a complete Saviour, and he is a complete Saviour because he took our room and law-place, and in his own bodyon the cross bore the penalty of sins. Now, that is not preached to-day as it was in olden days. There are ministers and churches that do not believe in the substitution of Christ in our room and stead. How they can claim to be scriptural I do not know. At one of the meetings of the Conference this year, I heard the great leader of Northfield go through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, setting forth the substitution of Christ and salvation through his substitution ; and when he finished his masterly exposition, the people of that audience said to themselves: "When you take the substitution of Christ out of the Bible, you have left nothing worth keeping, so far as salvation goes ; you may do with the rest of the Bible what you please."

I tell you, churches of God, if you do not tell men who are under the debt of the law and the condemnation of sin that Christ has paid it all, you tell them absolutely nothing. It is nothing to tell them that they are condemned — they know that already ; their wicked hearts tell that ; what men need to be told is how they can be freed from the awful condemnation. They must be told of pardon through the blood of Christ. The news of salvation through Christ is true, and the message is so glad that no church should tolerate any substitute for it. I heard this story related from the Northfield platform, which illustrates the peace and comfort of pardon through Christ.

A criminal was on trial for capital misdemeanor. The evidence proved overwhelmingly against him. The law was explicit. There seemed no avenue of escape. The people grew anxious on his behalf, as the verdict of condemnation inevitably drew nearer. Yet all the while this prisoner at the bar kept inexplicably calm. His eyes never once quailed, although the most damaging facts continually came to light. At last the jury returned and the fatal decision was rendered; but all that the culprit did was to draw a long sigh of unmistakable relief. The bystanders marvelled at his self-control, and grew curious over the secret of his serenity, and especially when they imagined they detected in his unembarrassed demeanor a strange sort of triumph. By and by, when the sentence of death was pronotmced, he arose in his place and laid before his judges a full pardon for the crime of which he had been just now convicted — a pardon which all along he had held hidden in his bosom. They examined the roll with eager scrutiny, and found that it really was his discharge. It left no further question. It had indeed been signed by the hand of their generous sovereign, and sealed with the grand signet of the realm. There remained no more to be done. And amid the shouts of the people the man went immediately forth free. The law's demands were cancelled.

That is the sinner saved by Christ. He is so saved by Christ that there is forever no condemnation against him. He is saved by the imputed righteousness of Christ. Do you say " I am afraid of this imputed righteousness business — I believe only in imparted righteousness "? Never mind, have no fears on this score; because, in God's plan, imparted righteousness always comes to the man to whom God credits imputed righteousness.

The justified man is always made holy.

It is my conviction that the church that cannot preach the imputed righteousness has nothing saving to preach.

Now, if this doctrine be true, and this offer of complete salvation through Christ be genuine, the next thing which Northfield believes in is perfectly logical, viz. : immediate results — conversions on the spot. If our churches gave the message, " Christ has paid it all," and fully believed in the message as the truth of God, they, too, would look for sudden conversions, and would see them. Usually churches get just what they expect. Some people do not believe in sudden conversion, and they think they are orthodox. To my mind they are heterodox. For what saith the Scripture? Are not the most of the conversions recorded there sudden? Zaccheus was converted in coming down from the sycamore-tree and between the branch and the ground. But you say that was because Christ was here on earth. That is not the explanation of it. People were converted faster after Christ left the earth than when he was here. After he went away, they were converted, three thousand in a day and five thousand in a day, and these thousands of converts were stubborn Jews at that.

Professor Drummond describes a man who went into one of the after-meetings at Northfield, and who said he wanted to become a Christian. He was greatly agitated. What was the trouble? He did not wish to tell.

Finally he said: "The fact is, I have overdrawn my account." That was his polite way of putting it. He had been stealing. " Did you take your employer's money?" "Yes." " How much did you take? " " I don't really know." "Have you an idea that you stole as much as % i , 5 00 last year ? " "I am afraid it was as much as that." Now suppose Professor Drummond did not believe in sudden conversions. How would he deal with that man? He would say, " Look here, sir, I do not believe in sudden work; don't you steal more than a thousand dollars next year, and the next year not more than five hundred dollars, and in the course of years you will get so that you will not steal at all. If your employer catches you, explain it to him and tell him you are getting converted. " That is your slow conversion for you, and it is a mockery. The fact is, conversion is sudden or it is not at all. The climax of it is sudden. Churches of God, let us push men to turn at once from their evil lives. Let us present Christ as the Saviour of sinners, and urge men to the instantaneous, whole-hearted acceptance of him as such. If Christ has wrought salvation out to completion, and if he offers this completed salvation to men, the only reasonable thing for men to do is to take it, and take it at once, and then go and work from gratitude and live for Christ who has saved them.

The third thing which I found in Northfield, and which I feel should be in every Christian Church, is this:

3. The enthronement of the Bible as the book of God, and as the sole authority of faith and manners.

The Bible, and the full Bible, is in Northfield. Every claim for faith is tested by the Book. Every practice proposed is applied to the line and the plumb-line of the divine commandment. The Book is never allowed to be the subject of debate. Questions about its composition and inspiration and fallibility never get a hearing. Not that Northfield means to be narrow, but because that is not its method of confirming the Scriptures and establishing its claims. Let others choose what other method they wish. Northfield claims the right to choose its method, and its method is the subjective method. It takes the Word just as it is, and lets it speak for itself to the heart and to the needs of men ; and thus prove itself and thus work its way into the lives and loves of men. Now that is a fair method, and in the long run it has been found to be the most effective method. Men of Northfield believe in the Bible because, by means of a careful and thorough study of the Bible, the Bible has found them. Their hearts respond to it. They feel that they need it.

Following this method, the Bible is studied by whole chapters and by topic and by whole books. And to me it is self-evident that this is the only way of getting at what is in the Bible, viz. : the study of the Bible by whole books. This method requires a Bible in the hand of every man and woman in the audience. And that is what you see largely at Northfield. Is that what you see in our churches? How many Bibles are in the pew-racks of your church? How much Bible is used in our pulpits? A text is taken to start from, and that is about all. Many a man in the pew, if he saw a Bible in his pew-rack, would be like the editor in the West, who found a Bible on his desk one day on entering his office, and who, after turning its pages, sat down and dashed off a review of it and sent it to the press, supposing that it was the last work of some unknown author. But enough upon this point ; I shall take it up again when I come to you with a study of some of the books of the Bible. I shall make this part of Northfield of practical service to this church.