The beasts of Ephesus...

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Table Of Contents

I. Introductory 7

II. The Young Christian and the City 17

III. The Young Christian and Money 27

Introduction

THIS is a book that the times demand. The Beasts of Ephesus are still going about seeking whom they may devour. They change their form but not their natures. Every young person has to battle with these as did Paul. This book will enable them to discern the ravenous beasts even under the sheep's clothing and it will arm them for the fight with the panoply of God.

This is a book from the right source. It is evidently wrought out of a pastor's loving heart. It is written by one who has seen with pain, and sometimes with anguish, the beasts rending their victims, by one who has longed to leap into the arena and slay the monsters that are slaying the young. Only a pastor who has mourned over mangled lives and wasted possibilities inyouth could have written such a book. There is in these chapters much of the "woe is me if" I write not this book. It is written not to satisfy a literary dilletanteism, but a yearning love for young souls.

This is a temperate book. It does not denounce amusements in a wholesale, indiscriminate way. It does not mistake a mouse for a lion, or brandish its sword against a harmless hare. It chooses real and not imaginary evils and makes nice discriminations between a sin per se and the tendency and trend of an amusement which may lead to sin; basing its opposition upon rational and reasonable grounds that will commend themselves to the experiences and consciences of young people everywhere.

This is a strong book. In vigorous English the author grapples with many delicate subjects and never fails to make his meaning clear. The conventionalities of society life have not induced him to choose or pick phrases which are equivocal, or destitute of the fire of righteous indignation. The author sees underneath the surface the hideous, soul-blighting tendencies of some of these forms of social amusement, and strips off the mask which they wear in public.

From personal experience I know that some of the questions here treated; the card table, the theater, the popular dance, etc., perplex many young Christians more than any other problems of the day. Dr. Brand's plain and earnest words will do much to resolve their doubts, will furnish them with weapons of offense and defense against the sophist, and will brace their souls to resist the attacks of the enemy of all righteousness.

Above all, the author touches the right chord in appealing to the heroic element in Christian youths. Young people cannot be wheedled into the right, or coaxed into giving up the wrong, but he who writes' to them " because ye are strong," he who recognizes the Christlike courage of every true young Christian; he who appeals to the highest manliness and womanliness in the young disciple and urges duty " for Christ's sake" will not write in vain. With such spiritual insight and strength has Dr. Brand written these stirring chapters. I wish that every young person in all the land might read them.

Francis E. Clark.

Boston, May 24, 1892.

Chapter I. Introductory

PAUL is dead; but the Beasts of Ephesus are still alive. Their distinguishing characteristic is longevity. They belong to every age and clime. They will not cease to exist till the millennium comes. And every man and woman who proposes to be an out-and-out Christian, must enter the arena, as Paul did, and give them battle.

What were the Beasts of Ephesus? Beyond all reasonable doubt the Apostle's language in I Cor. xv : 32, was figurative, not literal. He meant that during his stay at Ephesus he had to contend with men and customs, ideas and influences, which were of such a nature that the battle was like that of a man fighting for life with wild beasts. This will seem to be the only reasonable interpretation when we remember on the one hand, that Paul's Roman citizenship would have saved him from the indignity of being sentenced to literal combat with

beasts in the am; hitheater; and on the other, if it had been a literal fight the case would surely have been mentioned by Luke in his account of Paul's work in that city. It is incredible that such an event could have been passed over in silence by a careful historian who did mention details far less important than that would have been.

Paul's thought was this: If, like the great mass of men, with no motive but that of the present earthly life, with no inspiration drawn from my relation to God and the hope of immortality, I have fought, as it were, with beasts here in Ephesus, what do I gain? What is the use? Why continue this struggle with the world, the flesh and the devil? If there is no immortal life beyond, then let us go with the world.

That this is his thought seems the more certain from the character of Ephesus itself. It was a city of " many adversaries," a great commercial center, lying at the junction of great roads which connected it with the interior and far east, as the sea did with the far west. It naturally brought together all the moral leprosy of the heathen world. Canon Farrar calls it " The Vanity Fair of Asia." Paul was daily confronted in his work with the bitter prejudice of money-grasping Jews, and ridiculed by the luxurious and licentious Greeks, The city was famous for its intellectual pride and its groveling superstition. It was honeycombed with sorcery and falsehood. The people lived for the attainment of creature comforts and the gratification of carnal passions. The vicinity of the great temple, with its hordes of male and female priests, "reeked with the congregated pollution of Asia." Everywhere were wrong views of morals and false maxims of life. The city was full of men who would sell even spiritual gifts any hour for money with which to gratify the flesh. No self-denial, no lofty spiritual aims, blank materialism, social corruption, prostituted art. "Ionia, the corruptress of Greece, Ephesus the corruptress of Ionia, the favorite scene of her most voluptuous love tales; the lighted theater of her most ostentatious sins." Along with all this, and embosoming it all, was the perpetual presence of great, dazzling, alluring, captivating material splendor and display.

In the midst of such scenes, that lonely man of God had to live and work and fight. Here were the Beasts of Ephesus. And yet in the strength of his simple, sublime faith, sustained by the presence of Christ and the assurance of immortality, he was enabled to stand his ground and daily fling himself anew into the unending combat. When I am tempted, he seems to say, as I often am, to fall in with the common life of this godless city, and take my ease like other men, then I think of my mortal freedom; I think of the resurrection; I think of the throne of judgment; I think of eternal life; I think of communion with God; I remember the life, the love, the peace, the glory of Christ, and the work of the Holy Spirit helping my infirmities; and my soul springs once more to the battle with eager, devouring joy. Thus we find both the nature of the Beasts and the secret of their defeat. The Beasts of Ephesus are in every sinner's heart and in every soul's environment. There is no escape from them but in victory, in city or country, at home or abroad. They are the spirits of "the world, the flesh and the devil." We thus have before us the general theme of the proposed series of articles. In these articles the class of persons which I especially wish to address is made up for the most part of young CJiristians. For the last seventeen years I have been brought, in the providence of God, into peculiar relations to this class of people and have learned not only to watch with peculiar interest their spiritual growth, but also to love them with a peculiar intensity, and to set a measureless value upon the hope, the energy, the generosity, the high aims and sublime possibilities of young men and young women just entered upon the Christian life. I shall not have to do with the vicious or dissipated, the prodigal or the courtesan, except indirectly. My present field is that of young church members. My motive is not simply to point out dangers, to utter warnings, or to keep Christian life from deteriorating; but also, and chiefly, to help young Christians to plant their feet on higher and safer ground; to inquire into the causes of spiritual inefficiency, and lead my readers into the secret of heroic and joybringing service. I shall assume, therefore, that those whom I address are in sympathy with me and are ready to accept such suggestions and' arguments as may seem pertinent and reasonable.

My task, therefore, is the delightful one of speaking to those who already appreciate the motives that moved and swayed the soul of Paul in his conflict with the Beasts of Ephesus. Let it be distinctly understood, then, that in traversing the ground of the proposed articles the principle advocated is not simply that of self-denial. The secret of Christian victory is not repression, but inspiration. We kill the devil by awakening the angel in the soul. We are not to fight the good fight all our days on the low line of the defensive. The heroic saints of God go out to victory and joy aggressively, along the line of positive virtue. They set out with the conviction that the world is not to be avoided, but conquered and subdued. With this fact in view, two things become absolutely necessary:

I. A fixed spiritual purpose. Carlyle once asked an Edinburgh student what he was studying for. The young man said he had not made up his mind. "The man without a purpose," said Carlyle, "is like a ship without a rudder; a waif, a nothing, a no-man. Have a purpose in life, if it is only to kill and divide and sell oxen well. But have a purpose , and having it, throw such strength of mind and muscle into your work as God has given you." But Carlyle's rugged language falls short of the exquisite touch and force of that of the Apostle James, who says, "He that wavereth is like a surge of the sea, driven of the wind and tossed." Where can you find anything so absolutely the thing of circumstances as a wave of the sea? Its very existence is due to the wind. It rises or falls, is fierce or gentle, high or low, is rolled or tossed, in this direction or that, absolutely at the whim of the breeze, and when the wind ceases the wave is gone also. So is a man without a fixed spiritual purpose. If good influences surround him, he will be good or goodish. If evil influences come, he will be evil. If public opinion is favorable to religion, he will be religious; if adverse, he will be non-committal. If the Beasts of Ephesus are fierce and aggressive, he will decide that they are too strong to be overcome; if they are tame and gentle and winning, he will lie down with them in their den.

On the other hand, a fixed spiritual purpose to go forth and conquer the world, within and without, for Christ, will make man the master of his circumstances. And one of the grandest facts of our nature is that, even in this world of low ideals and false maxims and models, every young Christian can, if he will, go like Paul into the noise and glare of a godless city, into the rush of trade, into the crowded street, into the great congregation where false lights flame and low standards and wrong principles prevail, and yet be alone with his own great purpose; alone with his sublime faith amid the faithless; alone with God amid the godless and the vile.

2. Along with this fixed spiritual purpose every soul needs a settled Christian policy. The purpose answers the question, Shall I be a Christian at all? The settled policy decides what kind of a Christian I shall be. This policy should not beleft to be settled by circumstances as they arise, but should be settled, as far as possible, in advance. There are many questions of casuistry, or morality, or expediency, some of them in the church and some between the church and the world, which every Christian has to meet, and the settlement of which determines what kind of Christian one is going to be in the world. I do not urge a rash or hasty decision, but a wise and deliberate one, as to what attitude you will take toward certain questions which are in controversy, certain amusements, certain lines of business, certain phases of public sentiment and fashion, certain practices of society. Each one must settle these questions ultimately for himself. And he must do it in view of all the light he can get, as to their bearing on his own life, the life of his friends, the cause of Christ, and upon his own supreme spiritual purpose. Outside authority or restrictive rule cannot settle any but plain facts of revelation or self-evident truths. What each Christian needs is an intelligent reason of his own for his chosen policy, formed in view of his fundamental purpose to live for the glory of God. It is on this account that we urge a settled Christian policy, that every Christian should, as far as possible, take up these practical questions of life and decide what attitude he will take regarding them, on principle, and in advance, before the soul's environment takes final shape and crowds them upon him in the form of temptations. No Christian is in a proper condition to settle a doubtful question of casuistry or self-indulgence after he is strongly tempted to follow a certain course. It is leaving these questions unsettled as to what attitude they will take, until they are forced upon the will for immediate action in the form of temptation, that gives the Beasts advantage and robs the church of its spiritual power. It can never be a matter of indifference what attitude we take toward the Beasts of Ephesus, which meet us at every turn. It is safe to say with Dr. Bushnell that, "It is not conformity we want. It is not being able to beat the world in its own way, but it is to stand apart, and above the world, and produce the impression of a holy and separated life. This only can give us true Christian power."

In conclusion, it may be said, that the utter inexperience of multitudes of young Christians when they leave the home and go out into the world is reason enough why Christian ministers should not only hold but teach sound principles and rules with regard to the kind of beasts their tender flock may expect to meet. I cannot agree with the sentiment of an excellent friend who says that "everything is gained and nothing lost, by remanding to the back seat all discussion of amusements which are not sinful per se." Paul did not confine his instructions to practices which were sinful perse. He laid down great guiding Christian principles in addition to those of moral science, which will always be the safe guard of the church.

l6 THE BEASTS OF EPHESUS.

The question, What is sinful or righteous perse? is not the one which meets young Christians most frequently. The question of absolute right and wrong has become largely a matter of civil law in Christian nations. It is the question of what is best for the soul and best for the cause of Christ, which the Christian stands for in the world. It is on these questions that the inexperienced Christian needs instruction. It would be foolish to say that a pastor should not speak of the dangerous tendency of the modern theater because the act of attending the theater is not a sin per se.

Many an unsuspecting soul has stumbled into limbo over this talk about "per se." It is the tendency of things not necessarily sinful per se that needs a clear light. Of course the great motives that gave Paul his victory — inspiration rather than repression, "the expulsive power of a new affection" — will be the pastor's ground of appeal. But after all he is bound to send forth the young souls instructed as to the nature of the Beasts to be fought, as well as the secret of victory.

Chapter II. The Young Christian And The City

The relation of the city to Christian life and power is growing every day more important. The modern city of Christendom differs from the ancient pagan city in this: That in addition to its innumerable perils to the spiritual life, it also has a few great advantages. While it presents the worst temptations, it also furnishes the greatest motives to self-denial and the grandest opportunities for service. It is the place where some of the best forces of our civilization gather; but also where the worst elements of wrecked humanity over-whelmingly concentrate. Aside from a small minority of Christian homes and a few Christian churches, standing like lonely beacon lights, illuminating a little space, it is by no means certain that the great modern city is much better than the ancient. New York, Cincinnati or Chicago is as truly a city of " many adversaries " as was ancient Ephesus; and the forces that antagonize the new life are probably not reduced.

The chief fruits of Christianity thus far appear in the individual, not in the city, as a whole. The church and the city are constantly acting and reacting upon each other, and the natural

2 17 tendency is to find a common level. The result is, Christianity is not always really Christian. It is taking care of itself. Its attitude is not Apostolic. Its policy is timid, its pulse beats feebly and its voice is thin and low, as compared with the rampant roaring spirit of the city. There the fact of bad government, of low political standards, of party zeal at the expense of party virtue, and the selfish use of money especially prevail.

Ex-President White of Cornell University says, "Without the slightest exaggeration, we may assert that with very few exceptions the city governments of the United States are the worst in Christendom; the most expensive, the most inefficient, the most corrupt." There the courts are corrupted and injustice is meted out by juries of saloon-keepers and thugs. There sensational and corrupting literature is especially accessible to- the }/oung. There the new curse of the Sunday secular paper is thrust in every Christian's face. There the glaring advertisements of vice, the obscene pictures of prostituted art meet the young Christian's eye unsought. There is the Sunday theater with its Satanic effrontery, reminding the Christian of his dishonored Christ and his lost Sabbath. There stands the brothel, luring men and women together to the portals of hell. There, as the cause and home of almost every other

THE YOUNG CHRISTIAN AND THE CITY. 10,

vice, "the distinct and mighty school of self-indulgence," despiritualizing men's minds and breaking down all the bulwarks of moral rectitude and self-control, stands the saloon, open day and night. And there, worst of all, the great busy, hurrying world of pleasure-seeking and gain-getting is acquiescing in the existence of the saloon as it does in the existence of the church, and getting bravely accustomed to the woe and wickedness of the one, as it does to the high aims of the other. There, also, multitudes of well-to-do people who wear the Christian name, go cheerfully about their secular business in the presence of unspeakable want and misery, on the one hand, and measureless wealth and luxury on the other, as if all this were the arrangement of God!

The peculiar sins of the great commercial centers of to-day are just as real as those of Ephesus or Rome. One might almost think the Apostle was describing in his apocalyptic vision, a modern Babylon, rather than the ancient, when he speaks of the "traffic in merchandise of gold and silver, and precious stones, and pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and every vessel of ivory and every vessel made of most precious wood, brass and iron and marble, and cinnamon, and spice, and incense and ointment, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and flour and wheat, and cattle, and sheep, and merchandise of horses and chariots, and

slaves, AND THE SOULS OF MEN."

Here, then, are the Beasts of the modern Ephesus, with which young disciples of Christ have to contend. And when we reflect that 290 out of every thousand of our population live in cities, great and small; that one in every five in this country live in cities of 50,- 000 or upward; that in the last forty years the population of the fifty principal cities has increased six fold, while that of the whole country has increased only three fold; that in every corner of the land the rush is toward a still greater congestion of population at such points; and therefore that vast numbers of young Christians just entering upon life either do or inevitably will spend their days in cities and have to meet such forces of evil — I say when we think of this, the question becomes imperious, "What is to be the type of the spiritual life of the future? What is to be the history of the church of God in America? What shall we do in the presence of these Beasts of Ephesus? Shall we fight or shall we surrender?" Our salvation and that of our country depends upon the answer.

The influence of great cities is not confined to their own limits. It affects the religious

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faith and life of the State and Nation; nay, it reaches even to the ends of the earth.

The result of this low state of spiritual life is painfully manifest. To a looker-on in most of our great cities, the first impression is that the churches are located where they are least needed, and that they are far too few for the population. In Boston there is one church to i, 600 people; in New York, one to 2,300; in St. Louis, one to 2,800; in Chicago, one to 2,300. In a single district of the latter city, says one of its own daily journals, there is a population of 50,000 with Sunday-school accommodations for 2,000. " It is full of theaters, saloons and gambling dens." " The churches," it is said, " don't care for that district. They are looking after the avenues "—what they seem to want is millions of money, not millions of men. In one section of New York City we are told there are 360,000 people, with one saloon to every 118 persons and one Protestant church to every 11,624 persons.

Now the reason for this state of things is largely a social one. It cannot be denied that the spirit of the world has entered too much into the heart of the church, excluding from it the spirit of the Cross; blinding its eyes to the agony and despair of the " submerged tenth," deafening its ears to the Macedonian cry from the other part of the city, and tempting it to seek first the kingdom of creature comforts and the money to buy them. It is painfully evident that the vast multitude of churches are identified with the well-to-do and well-dressed portion of humanity and widely separated from the larger part of God's toiling poor. This has an ugly look. It does not suggest the Apostolic Church. It does not bring to mind the Christ. It does not suggest the Golden Rule. The very fact of the establishment of so-called " people's churches " is an acknowledgement that some of the existing churches certainly have not been regarded as " people's churches."

In saying these things, we do not forget that there are many noble efforts being made by the churches, many grand agencies employed, many consecrated souls at work for humanity in our great cities. There is the work of the city missionary societies, the agencies of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the children's aid societies, homes for newsboys, etc. All these show what Christianity can do, but how meager, how inadequate, compared with the measureless need of the past and the latent power of the churches.

Now my appeal is to young Christians to rise up in their strength and convert all churches into "people's churches." I speak to young men, and to young women too, "because they are strong." What I would fain say to them, if they would listen, is that they must fight the Beasts of Ephesus not only outside, but in the Church of Christ. A new type of religion, with broader views of the meaning of the Cross, and a more Pauline consecration, must permeate the church, if the world is to be saved. There must be a more aggressive type of church life. We must start out with the conviction that we have joined not simply a divine Being but also a divine cause. To the young, the progressive, the heroic, in the church of to-day, Christ himself makes this appeal. Nothing in Scripture is more touching than the Savior's sympathy and solicitude for Christians. Our solicitude for a man often ceases when we see him received into the church. Not so with Christ. Even when the shadow of the cross was falling upon his own life, his supreme thought and care was for the well-being, the efficiency of Christians, who were to be the light of the world, the saving element in society. "I am no more in the world; but these are in the world." I shall still work for the world but it must be henceforth through "these," and upon what kind of Christians they shall be will depend the kind of church the world is to have and so the destiny of the race. They are "in the world," and so tempted to live on the world's plane, to use the world's tactics, to lose sight of their sublime mission, to turn a deaf ear to the pathetic, perpetual, inarticulate cry of the world's need. "These are in the world," and to be in it, to meet its pains and storms, its allurements, its curse and its falsehood, "Holy Father, keep them!'

This is the Savior's solicitude to-day.

Two things, therefore, I would ask young Christians to consider: First the vastness of the opportunity ; second, the grandeur of the motive. The city itself opens a door to every dweller therein for Christian service which cannot elsewhere be found. More can be done for Christ and humanity in a given time, and with smaller proportionate outlay of money, in the great city than anywhere else on the globe. Everything is within reach. There is the appeal of ignorance and suffering and want. There at the Christian's door is the hunger and thirst and temptation and pain and sadness and sin of our dilapidated humanity, lying in its moral misery under the face of God, struggling not for character or culture or style, but for bare existence. And there, in the Christian's hands, are the glad tidings of great joy for all people, if they only have the heart to utter them. All lands are full to-day of great cities lifting up their cry for the good news. This was the "great and effectual door" which Paul found opened

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and which led him to devote his life to the great cities of the Roman Empire.

The motive which Paul found not only sufficient, but over-mastering, was the fact of immortality, the infinite destiny of every man, the assurance of eternal life with God. From this fact spring all worthy conceptions of humanity. With the hope of immortality gone, the value of the soul ceases, and men are not worth living for. If there were nothing beyond this life of sin and suffering and tears, the motive for heroic self-mastery and service would be gone. If we believed that we were to die like the beasts, we should soon begin to live like the beasts. If a man is to die like a dog, why should he live like an angel? No; the inspiring motives which thrilled the souls of prophets and apostles are all included in Christ's conception of man, his moral freedom, his accountability, his immortality, his capacity to live with and be like God. We can thus see what Christ has done for the world. He has set on foot a divine upward movement in the life of humanity which is to touch and inspire every people under heaven. He has supplied us all with the infinite motives which impel to love-service and to victory.

Oh, that young men and women of to-day, whose souls have been touched by the Spirit of God, might also be heart-smitten as Paul was with this great conquering motive! Oh, that they, when tempted to acquiesce in things as they are, when solicited to go with the crowd, to simply eat and drink and die, might catch the inspiration of immortality! Oh, that every reader might think of the throne of judgment and the glory of the self-denying Christ, and so fling himself into the battle!