Personality; sermons...

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I. Personality i

II. A Personal Christ the Ultimate

I. Personality

Because I live, ye shall live also. — St. John xiv. 19. 21 June, i8gi.

PERSONALITY.

"Because I live, ye shall live also," as if he were to say : " For the same reason that I live, ye shall live also. The ground of your life is the same on which my life rests. The foundation of your life is the same as mine." The basis of your life is the same as that on which rests the life of God. Your life, therefore, is not a reflection of any other life, is not a reflection of the life of God, is not an imitation of the life of God ; your life is real, not an imitation, not a reflection : for the same reason that Christ lives, you may live ; for the same reason that God lives, you may live. Your life may be just as real as is Christ's, as is God's, may have freedom of the same nature as the freedom of Christ's or God's life. This is a marvelous truth, that every human soul has within it the possibility of life, personal, individual life, the entire freedom of perfect life, as truly as Christ and as God ; "for the same reason that I live, ye shall live also." Personality, then, is the highest achievement in human life. To be yourself is the highest conceivable attainment — to be yourself and live as God lives.

Christ stands the great life of the world because he lived his own life ; because in him was the realization, complete, full, and final, of personality ; because he lived • as God lives ; because he lived with the same basis of life that God has ; because his life was not in any way an imitation, nor a reflection, but simply the complete and full expression of what God had implanted there. He lived himself ; therefore, the highest achievement of human life is personality, because it is self-realization, self-mastery, self-attainment, the full and complete expression of all that God has implanted within us. In man there is in personality the highest that is within the knowledge of man. It is the "steepest, loftiest summit toward which we move in our attainment."

Nothing in the realm of physical and scientific research can compare in worth and significance with this attainment of personality.

Personality, in its absolute condition, as in the life of God, is without limitation ; it is the entire and complete fulfillment of all the forces that go to make up life, so that only in God do we find complete personality. That does not mean that man's personality is without reality ; is derived from outside sources ; that we are the played upon ; that we are but a bunch or collection of certain hereditary traits and tendencies, over which we have no control ; that our personality rests in the finite limitations by which we are surrounded ; that our personality has its ground in those limitations ; that we are the product of a certain environment ; that certain influences play upon us as the chisel upon the marble ; although our personality has, as a matter of fact, its existence among finite limitations, but not its ground in them. Of course, our personality is affected by those finite limitations. It is true that we are constantly taking our cue from other lives, but always to our disadvantage.

Personality in man is impaired in the same measure in which it is determined from without. It suffers the mutations which exist in the necessary processes of the world. We are content with low views, influenced by other lives, and so our personality is colored by those limitations, but always to our disadvantage. Wherever our personality is affected by our surroundings, or is derived from those surroundings, just so far is it impaired. The example of some one else will never serve for us, because each man is made to live his own life. Each man has his own ground of personality, his own foundation for his own personality, in the same everlasting life that Christ has, that God has. He is made to be a free spirit, an entire and complete realization of the forces that are w T ithin him, to be an individual, to have his own freedom, his own life, in his own way. In other w T ords, every human soul, however low, debased, or degraded he may be, is made to live his own life in his own way, and to take hold of his own portion of the eternal.

This is a marvelous gospel to preach to men, that they may live as God lives, as Christ lives, that for the same reason that

PERSONALITY. J

God lives, they may live also. It is the glorious gospel of the achievement of personality, of the attainment of independence of life, of self-mastery, the glorious gospel that every man, by the slow, long, and tedious process of individuation may build himself up as Christ is built up, in fullness of assertion and of soul life.

See how this process works. Here are men striving for personality. They scorn imitation, they understand that it is of the nature of limitation. They understand that life is so powerful that it must burst from the restraints of all confining influences ; that if they are to live as Christ lives, as God lives, they must express themselves fully and completely.

How glorious, then, it is to think that they may have, as the highest possible achievement in human life, the realization of their own personality. See what this means. See how God loves with that perfect love which knows no hate, which can harbor no shadow of the feeling of resentment ; that perfect love which pours out its forgiveness as naturally and as truly upon foe as upon friend, as the outpouring spring pours out naturally the rivulet, the stream, the river that loses itself in the ocean of its own realization. See that perfect love of God, which holds within its protecting arms every human soul, and in that perfect love see the spiritual force, which is eternal in its very nature ; and as we see this perfect love of God, so we perceive that personality realizes itself in proportion as it is able to take hold of that portion of eternal life which is love ; realizes itself in proportion as it is able to love perfectly, as God loves ; so are we drawn nearer and nearer to God, for the process of the realization of personality brings man always nearer to God. Thus is the bond made more real and more vital which holds us to God. Nay, there is the eternal necessity of striving to love as God loves, in order that we may live as he lives.

Sometimes this comes as a hard message to human souls. Hearts are torn asunder by the wrong-doing of others. Must it not be a hard message to God when we do him despite and shame and wrong, that he must love us ? Yet he does. But as his perfect love holds us, so we are held by that perfect life when we learn to live as he lives.

As of love, so of thought. The thought of God pours itself out as from the fathomless depths of eternal truth. There is the perfect truth that pours out from him so that thought and will are one ; that thought which sees, in its all -wisdom, from the very beginnings of every human soul away on to its completion ; that thought which realizes itself in absolute and perfect truth. That is the force of personality which finds only its complete realization in God himself.

But as we learn to love as God loves, to think as he thinks, to receive from him the outpouring from those great reservoirs of eternal truth, so are we to become inspired, breathed into, by his eternal thought, so live as he lives, and make our will at one with his thought. Then there follows rightness of conduct, and it cannot be otherwise. Given absolute love and thought, the outcome of those two spiritual forces, love and truth, must of necessity be right dealing, right expression, right conduct ; in a word, righteousness.

Do you not see, then, the sublime height to which you may climb, the summit of all human endeavor, which can be

IO PERSONALITY.

reached by taking hold of those forces of the spirit out of which, as a necessary consequence, there must come right living, right conduct, righteousness, or, in other words, the right expression of the human life according to its own laws, the taking hold by the individual of his own portion of the eternal, and living his own life, in his own individual peculiar way, in righteousness ?

I wish I could hold before you the glory of this possibility, the sweetness, the richness, of this attainment of personality. I wish I could make you feel that if you should take hold of God, that is to say, take hold of these eternal truths which go to make up the life of God, that you would then live absolutely, and, living in your own way, would assert your own life, vindicate your own soul experience.

The one thing you are to strive after is to be yourself, not to be another. Every force that God has implanted in you is of the same nature as those spiritual forces which find expression in himself ; they are not separated from God even in thought, they are of the same nature and waiting for the same expression. Is it possible, O infinite Father, that we maybe like thee ? And Christ gives the answer, " For the same reason that I live, ye shall live also/'

Here enters the personal element, the meaning of your life. It is the struggle to be yourself.

Life has no greater meaning than this ; it is an effort at self-mastery, self-victory. It is an effort to live your own life. It is an effort to rest your own personality on the same foundation as that on which rests the personality of God.

Because the life of Jesus was so widereaching, so profound, so exalted, had such a scope, touched human life so at every point, it was impossible for him to retain within himself any negative force of hate, and because he could love perfectly and truly, it was possible for him to think truly and perfectly as to those great eternal truths which have their influence and effect upon human life.

That we may think truly, we must first learn to love truly. Thought pours out its richest treasure only in the hearts that love the truth. No scoffing man receives great riches of eternal knowledge ; no carping spirit in any realm of investigation receives the richest reward from the great treasurehouse of ascertained knowledge ; and because Christ loved in such an exalted way, he was able to think truly, to teach truly, to pour out of himself the great teachings of eternal truth which welled up in his soul, and because he was so able to love and to think and to pour out the truth, as a consequence he could make no mis-steps in conduct.

If we could love as he loved and think as he thought, mis-steps in conduct would be impossible. It is because love and thought and will do not have harmony existing among them that stumbling ensues^ that transgression of spiritual laws and unrighteousness takes place, and sin, as a manyheaded monster, seems to demand that we shall serve it continually. But if we have the perfect love and thought of Christ, then righteousness comes, righteousness in the same way that you and I are made to be righteous ; that is to say, " for the same reason that I am righteous, ye also may," nay, "also shall be righteous."

On those sublime heights, then, Jesus stands, in the complete achievement of his own personality ; stands there as having brought about the ultimate result of that long process of soul individuation by which he is separated from the great mass of human life, so separated as to assert within himself his own individuality and personality ; standing there because of his complete individuation ; standing there as the one man the world has ever seen ; unique, because one with God, and yet it is the same divineness that is held out as the possible achievement of every individual soul, — "for the same reason that I live, ye shall live also."

From those sublime heights hear the voice of Jesus calling, "Come up here also and be a man." The call is to every human soul to strive to live its own life as Christ lived his life, to be free from every imitation and thus free from every limitation. See how hate may poison the very springs of your conduct ; how falsehood may, like a viper, envenom the very lifeblood of your mind, and make it impossible for you to bring forth all the latent forces of your soul. Jesus calls, " Come up here also and be a man ; be yourself, and be one with God." Nay, he not only stands upon those sublime heights, but he descends into the gruesome valleys, where we are living with poisoned hearts, unstable minds, unrighteous conduct, and as he would lead the wounded lamb, the bruised soul, as he would bind up the brokenhearted, stanch the flow of blood from the gaping wound, so he comes down from those exalted heights, those heights lit with the radiance of Almighty God, and through tortuous paths, through bramble, and thorn, and tangle, and thicket, he seeks every human soul. His locks are wet with dew, on him are the rains that have poured down upon our hearts and lives, and yet he seeks to take us up to those exalted heights where personality is the achievement of his soul, and is made to be the achievement of ours, also.

I have tried to show you what the meaning of life is. It is to struggle -for the achievement of your individuality, your own life, your own personality ; that as God has those great soul forces in full and complete attainment and expression, that as in him there is absolute personality without any limitation, and, in consequence absolute and complete freedom of spirit, that so in you there is the same ground of life, that " for the same reason he lives, ye shall live also/' Then I have tried to show you also how it is that Jesus is the righteous one, because he expressed in himself his own individuality and personality, has taken hold for himself of his own peculiar portion of the eternal; that he is, therefore, unique, and, because unique, he is divine, and, because divine, he is one with God, and, because one with God, he is the manifestation, the revelation, the uttered word of God himself.

I know what a glorious gospel this is to preach to you. I know that when you are conscious of your own peculiarities, nay, of your own temptations, your own hardness of experience, of the heartbroken agony that seems to rend asunder body and spirit, ■ — I know that at such moments you are to remember that those very peculiar experiences of yours are to be treasured as gifts that come from God.

Fancy for a moment Jesus ignoring the peculiar life that he had bestowed upon him. Fancy for a moment his imitation of some other life, his life being influenced in its development by surrounding conditions, his ever failing to be true to himself, failing to be himself, and you behold the defeat of the soul-struggle instead of the victory of self-mastery.

Bear with me while I say this, that absolute independence must be your aim ; you must strive to live as no other soul has ever lived. God has put a heart in you unlike that of any other being that ever lived. Your heart, your affection, your love, is unlike the heart, the affection, or the love of any other soul that ever lived. As was the life of Jesus, of Paul, as was the life of every great spirit that has been great because of his individuality and asserted personality, and, because of his being great, has been useful, so is the life of every man, woman, and child. You have your own heart, your own love, your own thought, to express in your own way. Thus God lives ; thus are you privileged to live. " For the same reason that he lives, you may live/'

You are to express this life in independence. Not in the same way as some other life, not reflecting some other life. Absolute independence in your life is to be your aim.

PERSONALITY. IJ

As this must be your aim in your love, so also in your thought. Check not the inspiration of God by the blending in of your own theory, your own thought. Think after God. Think his thoughts after him. Let him pour his truth into you as he is pouring it out in all its fullness and richness.

No flower is like its companion ; no leaf is like its mate ; no bird sings as any other bird has sung. There are no repetitions with God in his physical universe, nor are there any repetitions in his spiritual creations. Your achievement is to be the attainment of your own personality, to love and to think independently, as he loves and thinks, and with these two conditions your righteousness, that is to say, your conduct, will be unlike the conduct of any soul that has ever been — it will be your own.

It is God's call to you to be unlike your neighbor. His call is, " Come up higher and declare yourself. Stand with me on this height in your own life and in your own way." Standing there, fear is impossible. Who can be filled with fear when he is above the clouds of man's ambition ? Ambitions are but the mist of deadly poison that destroys the soul, and when the soul has reached those starry heights of fellowship with the life of God he has no ambitions and can be attacked by no fears. The courage of a great life ministers to him. Nor on those heights can he be touched by the slings and arrows of malicious tongues, by slander, or by the calumny of vindictive words, for, though he be the chief of sinners, as St. Paul was in his own estimate, God still is calling to him in his great love and all-seeing wisdom to come up higher, and to declare his own love, his own thought, his own life, and so declare himself that he shall at length be righteous.

Men may sneer and scoff at such a soul, but they cannot harm it, as they could not harm the one who endured such a storm on Calvary's mount.

Thus as you have loved and thought after God and with God, so superstition can find no lodgment in your souls. What is superstition ? A collection of perverted thoughts, poisonous, deadly notions about God and about the human soul. There can be no torture with God, and if we rightly apprehend him there can be no room for a false, vindictive God in our thoughts. He shall hold in his loving arms forever the child of his begetting. As God is our father he can never cease to love us, to call to us as does Jesus as he stands on those sublime heights, " Come up here also and be a man." As God loves and thinks, so he will hold us to himself. And the truer we are to ourselves, the nearer we come to him and live more truly and perfectly in him in whom we always live, and move, and have our being.

Take with you to your homes this morning the thought that to be like God is to be yourself, is to live your own life, is to take hold of your own portion of the eternal, your own segment of the circle of eternal life. To be like God is to enter into the freedom of his spirit, is to love as he loves, think as he thinks, act as he acts. Would you be helped to this great consummation ? Then take the outstretched hand, the wounded hand, of the brother Jesus whom you have seen, that he may lead you into the eternal presence of him whom you have not seen.

II. A Personal Christ The Ulti- Mate Gospel

Looking unto Jesus the finisher of our faith. — Heb.

xii. 2.

14. June, i8gu

II

A PERSONAL CHRIST THE ULTIMATE GOSPEL.

The ultimate gospel will be the one which shall manifest a personal life of the race, which shall make possible the ultimate triumph of the best there is in human nature over the worst. That is to be the final gospel.

Whether it is Christianity or not shall be determined by the issue. It will be our present Christianity in its substance, if this Christianity is faithful to her Lord ; it must be a real Christianity because it must be Christ. The ultimate gospel, the final revelation, must be Jesus Christ.

It will be well, also, for our present Christianity if it be Christianity. It must be Jesus Christ, because he is not only the beginner of our faith, but he is the completer, the finisher of our faith ; and he himself, not something said about him, not a system of theology, not a code of laws, not even a message, but he himself is the gospel, the ultimate gospel, because he himself is that manifestation of the personal life of the race which can make it possible for the final triumph of the best there is in human nature over the worst..

I wish I could make this very clear and to be very deeply felt. I sympathize keenly with that yearning of the human heart for good tidings. Most fully do I sympathize with those throes of the human race which are the very agony of the human soul by which, as in a mine, the rock is let loose and the gold is discovered. I sympathize with all the attempts that men and women are making for a larger and completer life, I feel deeply with that intense desire which is manifesting itself continually to accomplish better, nobler, greater things. I realize how intense is the striving to bring in a new kingdom, a kingdom of righteousness ; I appreciate how we all are longing for anew heaven and a new earth, how every man and woman in his or her best estate is desiring to see the city which hath foundations, longing for the republic of God, is desiring to see the kingdom of

God among men, praying in very truth "Thy kingdom come." And I would say to such, as I must say to myself, that that city of God, that republic of God, that city which hath foundations, that new heaven and new earth can come, and will come, in the only way possible, in the manifestation of the personal life of the race, which personal life shall have within it the elements of the possible triumph of the best there is in human nature over the worst.

I have carefully said "a personal life/' because I think that in every uplifting of the human mind there must of necessity be the influence of the personal element. I may not understand the reason of this, — the reason why I may not rise from higher to still higher and more perfect conditions, apart from the aid of any personal element. As I stand and reason theologically, metaphysically I do not find myself able to detect the flaw in my reasoning, in my theory, when I am inclined to say to myself : " I can bring the new life into my soul quite alone, without personal aid."

But still it seems to me that when man is to grow from strength to strength, manifest larger life, there must be the impetus, the kindling power, the vitalizing force of a personal element.

Soldiers find it so beneath the flag which they are striving to defend. Even those who give themselves to art and music find themselves not altogether free from the inspiring influence of master and teacher, and wherever we find human hearts and wills welded together as by a common purpose, there we find the personal element present, inspiring and building up. It seems to be a law of human activity in its best estate, operative in the development of the best over the worst, that there shall be present, as an impelling and compelling force, a personal force, element, life.

I do not see men and women, as a matter of fact, rise to their highest when this personal element is absent. I can understand how a man in those crises of the national life, when the very fireside is in peril, reading in his newspaper of the necessities of the army, of the call of patriotism, and of the reasons why a man should enlist, — I can understand how, theoretically, he should say, "I must be a soldier and go to the front." But he does not go. There is lacking the enthusiasm which is kindled by personal influence. I am constrained to believe that God calls forth the best that is within us only through a personal channel, only by the manifestation of a personal life, — a life which shall be the life of the race, which shall make possible the final triumph of the best there is in human nature over the worst, — so only through himself in Jesus, the Christ,

Men may sneer at us in our demand for personal life, may not understand our devotion to a personal Christ ; but I think as men grow older that they begin to realize that there is something lacking whenever they are striving for the greatest, apart from this devotion and loyalty to a personal Christ.

I see this in children, in the influence that one boy has upon another: how a highspirited lad can draw out the best there is in another boy, and inspire him with enthusiasm to accomplish what he thought an impossible task! I see this, as it seems to me, in every phase of human life, so that I am constrained to believe that, if we are to have a new heaven and a new earth, it must be by the declaring of a personal life, the personal life of him whose attainments in life are of such a nature as to make him, by eminence and by successful expression, the head of the race.

This is the reason why I believe that Christianity is not only the revelation of God, because it is the revelation of Christ, but that it is the ultimate revelation, it is to be the ultimate gospel, and whenever men will cease to build up their own little systems between themselves and God they shall see that Jesus Christ is Lord of all, and that Christianity has within it the possibility of being the ultimate gospel of mankind.

Here are some theories you have. You have been constrained to feel that human life would crystallize. You have wrapped about you, like graveclothes, spiritually, certain thoughts, theories, notions, till you have come to substitute your own notions for God's facts, to dwell in your own theories instead of his realities. You see elsewhere that life does not crystallize. I may bind the tree with knotted thongs, but still the growth will go on, soon the cord will tighten, and, a little later, with a groan and a snap, it will defy my attempts to restrain its life. So with the human soul. You may wrap about a soul confessions of faith, attempt to crystallize it with a theory, make an effort to run it in a mould of some peculiar notion about God ; but God himself, who refuses to be held with chains, ever pours out himself as the outpouring of life, as the inspirer of human souls, and goes on living in that soul which you and I have tried to restrain, till there comes a moment when the preconceived notion begins to tighten, there comes a bursting of the bonds, a going forth from the cerements which have been wrapped about the spiritual life, and the risen life walks out, refusing to be bound, defying any attempt at crystallization, and declaring its life as God gives it to it.

It is so with human life in every process, whether physical or spiritual. Human life refuses to be crystallized, to be bound, to be held, to be restrained.

Inspiration is constant. These are days of inspiration just as truly as any the world has ever seen. Human life cannot be robbed of inspiration. Men and women are as much inspired to-day as they ever have been, and will be more and more inspired as they let the soul fly to its God, and break away from crystallization and restraint, refuse to be bound about by notions and theories, and no longer substitute their own notions for God's everlasting facts.

If I have been perfectly clear that there must be a personal element in every effort to rise to higher conditions in the soul and in the race, that life refuses to be crystallized, that it will burst the graveclothes of any attempt to confine it within the limitations of our own theories and notions, and that the soul must be constantly breathed into by God, then, I think, you are ready to say, when philosophy affirms, " I have found the way, the truth, and the life ; I have found how the new heaven and the new earth are to come ; I have discovered the kingdom of righteousness and of heaven ; I have formulated the ultimate gospel of life ; when improvement shall come along the lines of ethical culture, then men shall reach a sufficient development by which to be fairly judged/'-— you are ready to say that while this theory of ethical culture is a theory of real worth, and one which, unquestionably, has done much in aid of truth, yet it lacks at a vital point.