Sermons upon faith, hope, and love, together with Horæ homileticæ.

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Preface

THE prospect is not exhilarating to him who puts forth a volume of sermons. Nobody reads sermons. A few copies sent to one's friends are sacredly preserved with uncut leaves. They disappear in the limbo of dead things. But this, though taken for granted, is not quite true of published sermons like those of Frederick W. Robertson and Phillips Brooks. Few volumes of an earnest sort are more read than these. And does any one read books that have nothing in them? Sermons must take their chance with essays, poems, histories, scientific works, and all other forms of literature. Yet it has been denied by critics that sermons deserve a place in literature at all; that their object is to move men to immediate action, and they have no relation to past or future, but only to the present. Having done their work they are, like spent shot, worthless. The feeling that produced them has passed away and cannot be repeated. But if music, which is feeling, can still awaken feeling, and vi Preface.

speech, which is thought, can still arouse thought, and motives which move the will can be brought to bear again and again on the mind to impel it to act, then sermons are not spent forces, but they gather up and conserve spiritual power for use. The very beginnings of the German language and literature were in the translations and homilies which Charlemagne caused to be made by the Church for the people. The sermons of the great English divines such as Wycliff, Latimer, Taylor, South, Hall, Robertson, Newman, and Liddon, if they were expunged from English literature, would cause an irreparable loss. Sermons occupy, it may be a small, but a high place in the house of literature, like the chapel through whose windows a celestial light shines. Sermons, even the humblest of them, speak to the ever-recurring wants and hopes of man, and to that which is divine in him. They have in them a breath of eternal life. Every true preacher has a new intuition of religion and Christianity. A sermon which is fit to be heard is fit to be read. The lightning may not strike in the same place, but from the same cloud may come forth electric power. A sincere word of God honestly spoken is never lost, and does not return entirely void to Him who sent it.

By way of introduction, I would speak briefly of a beloved teacher who was a representative of the

Preface. vii

best Christian philosophy of Germany, of which Schieiermacher was the originator, though drawn 'laps more distantly from the older " Theologia rmanica," — a theology that approaches truth from the right side, from the side of God, one might say, apprehending divine things in the way in which they can alone be apprehended, not primarily through the understanding, which is a subordinate factor, but through the spiritual capac: by the higher reason and discernment there are in faith, hope, and love; the theology of Saint John and Saint Paul, in which the freedom of the human will — a truth of priceless value and expressone of the highest prerogatives in man — is not, after all. the fundamental axiom of theology but rather the freedom of God's lov :11 is this ;

in which theory there is a large idea of God that is not based on the limitations of the human mind, or the conception, as it were, of a child, but which begins in God and ends in God, and whose language is, " For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord ; for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are mv ways higher than vour ways, and mv thoughts than your though:

Though sometimes forgetful of this divine phi-

and carried away by pride of opinion. I

nevertheless obtained rest in this spiritual or divine viii Preface.

conception of Christianity, so that I have not been very seriously troubled by the changing phases of theological strife, the apparent antagonisms of reason and faith, the conflict between science and revelation, or " the discovery of the uniform laws of phenomena as disproving the supernatural facts of revelation," the progress of the higher criticism in its relation to inspiration, the bold yet believing speculations of the " new theology " following the track of Maurice and Robertson, the fresh redaction of the books of Scripture, nor the subtle speculations of modern materialistic philosophy; for I seem to have gained a foothold in spiritual truth firmer and farther in than these controversies reach. My obligations to Neander as a teacher, early begun, cannot be sufficiently acknowledged. It was in the last years of his life I attended his lectures, and was admitted to the more intimate home-circle of friends in which he was wont to meet his youthful disciples in a spirit of lovingfamiliarity. He brought his pupils into a very close sympathy with himself, — into the true bond of Christian love. He gave them freely the results of his profoundest thinking. There was something, too, in the subjective character and richness of German thought, as contrasted with much of the barren metaphysics of the English inductive method, that attracted me. Since those

Preface. ix

-.vhich b::h he l:: 5:hleierma:her plared :p:r. feeling and life ir. Ihrishar. phii:s:phy. — that :he Christian is he who has the spirit of Chris;. All truth '.va.s centred in the divine person :f Christ Fr:m hint a rev; life emanated and "/as ::mmani- :a:ed to men. n:t springing fr:m. human rea.so.n but fr:m the' Spiri: :f Christ.' — a supernatural power working in humanity through faith Christ, not miraculously but naturally, as life -v:rks in the physical universe, anu acctruing :;

mystery and yet truth :f this spiritual life in and thrrugh Christ, surpassing hnt'vledge ?..s all that is divine dies, prverfully impressed me and it -eemed t: re the best existent expressim ::' that Jihannean :he:l:gy in whirr, the highest tin: ugh: and truest love which there are in Christianity might find room.

Upon Neander, is i prepared instrument, the mind of Germany slowly revolved from almost utter negation into spiritual Christianity. He left his impress upon the thought not only of Germ but England and America, by introducing his philosophy, not antagonistically, but by ^>n, and through a deeper interpretation of the divine will in the history and facts of human x Preface.

ness. His was a philosophy of humanity as moulded through the ages under the silent shaping influences of the divine spirit. His own personal history was an epitome of the real history of the Christian church. Brought out of Judaism through Platonism he emerged into the clear light of spiritual Christianity, made more rich as well as more humble by his profound experience. His philosophy was essentially of the school of Plato, and, as to that, of Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling, — the ideal philosophy of a self-evidencing intuition or consciousness of truth dwelling in the " eternal idea," the pure reason, which in these philosophers, and especially in Kant, whose philosophy had so deep an ethical basis, came so near to the teachings of the New Testament, but which, in Neander, was transformed into and came to be identical with the real, the divine, and the divinely practical, by the power of faith in the Son and in the Spirit. He himself lived in the region of ideas, and in the contemplation of the love of God, and he was a very child in the wisdom of this world ; yet his rare sagacity in divine things w r as so penetrating that, while unconscious of it, he became a guide and light to myriads of other seekers after truth.

To the few sermons that follow, intended not to provoke criticism but rather to provoke to good

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works and faith, hope, and love, I have added, by way of appendix, under the title of u Horae Homileticae," some short articles, first published in the 44 Homiletic Review" during the years 1886 and 1887, and which are familiar answers to questions sent by young preachers ; and this might be regarded by students as forming a supplement to a work entitled "Homiletics" published by me in 1881.

CONTEXTS

Page

I. The Energy of Faith 3

II. The Enlightening Quality of Faith . 23

III. Faith's Increase 43

IV. Faith's Lesson . . 61

V. Christian Hope . 79

VI. The Childlike Spirit 95

VII. A Song of Freedom 117

VIII. The Fold of Christ 133

IX. Love of an Unseen Sayiour 155

Hor.-e Homiletic.e: 1

SERMONS.

THE ENERGY OF FAITH.

But Jesus answered them, My Father ivorketh hitherto, and I work. — John v. 17.

T

HE most energetic thing in the world is faith. Coming from God it partakes of him. In contradiction to the Oriental idea that God exists in eternal calm, insensible to feeling and above the need of action, the words of the text — wonderful even as spoken by Christ, because they cast light into the depths of the divine nature — reveal the unresting activity of God, that the " Father worketh hitherto," or, literally, " even until now," and that there is a constant outflow of divine energy. The impulse which made the worlds did not exhaust creative energy.

On independent grounds science reaffirms the truth that there is in nature a force which, call it what you will, is ceaselessly active in evolving new results, in producing new forms of being, never

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repeating itself and working toward a perfect end. I quote some words of a modern scientist: —

" When one has become, by a long study of nature, in some sense intimate. with creation, it is impossible not to recognize in it the immediate action of thought, and even to specialize the intellectual faculties it reveals. It speaks of an infinite power of combination and analysis, of reminiscence and prophecy, of that which has been in eternal harmony with that which is to be ; and while we stand in reverence before the grandeur of the creative conception as a whole, there breaks from it such lightness of fancy, such richness of invention, such variety and vividness of colour, that we lose our grasp of its completeness in wonder at its details, and our sense of its unity is clouded by its marvellous fertility. There may seem to be an irreverence in this characterizing the creative thought by epithets which we derive from the exercise of our own mental faculties ; but it is nevertheless true that the nearer we come to nature, the more does it seem to us that all our intellectual endowments are merely the echo of the Almighty mind, and that the eternal archetypes of all manifestations of thought in man are found in the creation, of which he is the crowning work."

When we consider another feature of the divine activity, its universality, this appears as wonderful as its unresting character. Although God cannot be regarded as omnipresent in the sense of filling the universe with his presence, yet his spirit works

The Energy of Faith.

with forceful energy in every part, as if that were the only part where the Divine Power is active. There is no conceivable point of space where the living energy of God is not felt. But when we leave the natural world and come to the spiritual, the truth of the unresting and universal activity of God in the creation of new minds, that (whatever may be said of bodies) are not evolved by physical forces from material forms before existing, but are immaterial, original, and spiritual; when we know 7 that these spirits are created and sustained by divine energy ; when we think that upon these new minds are brought to bear influences which flow ceaselessly from God as ruler of a kingdom of spirit and sustainer of a divine life, — this truth, though harder to conceive, is more worthy of study. To renew a soul lying in the death of a sensual nature, and fit it to shine in the light of God's holy presence, what were the calling up out of chaos of a thousand material worlds to that ! How the loving energies of God are concentrated upon that soul, — that chaos of spiritual being, — and how constant must be the personal care and thoughtful action of God, to bring this new-born and still imperfect soul, through the way of its freedom, being wrought upon by spiritual forces that are in accord with its nature and its peculiarities of personal experience, into final perfection !

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Every such work has a varied richness of its own, and bears, like a work of art, the stamp of unity and originality. " Wondrous in working" must be the mind that is bringing by invisible but powerful methods, by the numberless subduing and shaping strokes of divine skill, this profound, unformed, and disorganized spiritual universe groaning and travailing together in pain while waiting for its redemption, into a new creation.

When we come to view the methods of the divine activity, while, of course, these are incomprehensible to us, yet we infer that God's activity is directed by infinite intelligence toward a purpose of goodness, and that it is upon a plan of absolute reason which sees the end from the beginning. Yet while God works thoughtfully, and in accordance with the laws of reason, we may suppose that he does not work laboriously; for the divine nature has no fatigue as a man has, no loss or waste of power, even as it is expressed in the words of an old French hymn, —

or, God works swiftly in no conceivable time. His work is not labour, which implies a fall, or a loss of original power; and there is doubtless a deep truth after all (when not carried to an extreme) in the Oriental idea of a central calm in the nature of God ; a windless and waveless ocean of peace, which is the true Nirvana, that is not annihilation but the perfection of conscious blessed life. Thus Christ said, in the controversy with the Jews about the Sabbath, that in God the deepest rest is not excluded by the highest activity. If this were not so, where would be the believer's hope of final rest from his toils in the bosom of God's eternal peace? Yet we should not carry this idea so far as to make God's activity to spring simply from the inherent necessity of His nature, that He must work simply because He is God, and not to spring from His will. There is an idea in this language — " My Father w r orketh hitherto and I work" — of the energetic putting forth of will-power; and just as any mind, made on the pattern of God's mind, w r orks voluntarily for a good end, so does God. God works ; Christ, who is the manifestation of the Father, works, — therefore we respect the worker. Christianity exalts work as a reflection of the activity of God. Work is divine. Whatever can be called a " work," which is an act of pure energy, is honourable. Setting aside even the end of the work, that may be good or bad, noble or selfish, we are attracted by a production of human energy, just as we are awed yet delighted before one of the works of the ancients which, like the original hills, time has hardly touched. We are delighted because, though stupendous in material bulk, the work is an expression of spiritual force ; it belongs to the spiritual and free part of man in opposition to the material, and to material obstacles, and is above the worth of the work itself. A man who has done a genuine work — who has built a house, painted a picture, constructed an argument, established an honest business, laid, or helped to lay, a railroad, reclaimed a tract of waste land — deserves honour; for he has asserted his worth as one who effects results ; he has subdued nature by a spiritual force; he has shown a spark of that energy, that fiery particle, which is in and of God. Christianity recognizes the freedom of man to act, and the necessity of work; and although the work of the mind is, in some respects, nobler, as well as more difficult, than the work of the hands, yet there are few kinds of work that do not demand the co-operation of mind; and it is an unchristian sentiment, as well as one opposed to political science, and one which is showing itself in bitter conflicts between classes in society, like those representing labour and capital, that causes any good work, whether of the body or mind, to be held in disesteem. The deification of the intellectual, and the consequent degradation of the bodily nature, are both of them wrong; for the

The Energy of Faith.

world of spirit should come down into the world of sense to exalt and spiritualize it; and in like manner, on the other hand, mind can achieve no great work except on the basis of a sound body. There are some men who are not born to work in the world of pure intellect, who cannot live on books, but who are sent into the world to deal with the facts of nature, to fight with physical forces, to quarry the mines, to level the hills, to bridge the rivers, to till the earth, to fight the world's battles, and to do the world's business. The things of physical nature are also the expression of the creative love of God. God dwells in nature. There must be this material activity in any form of civilization before the immaterial creation can be reared upon it; or, to express it more correctly, the two must go together. The scholar should not hold in contempt the practical man, nor the practical man the scholar; but every man, thoroughly educated and developed in a perfect manhood, should, as far as possible, unite the two characters, even as in God the passive and active qualities, the contemplative and practical, are united in the highest measure. Christianity leaves no part unenergized. The love which seeks God springs from a divinely energized will. Work is the fruit of faith. Faith is the seed of a deified nature, of a new life in all the powers, that brings i o Sermons.

them into healthful action; and when this awakening of the whole nature is accomplished, the end of the activity, like that of Christ, is good. The central motive of our Lord's human activity he declared to be the love of the Father, obedience to the will of the Father who sent him into the world to do an appointed work. He confessed himself to be so filled with that will that he would not call his work his own, but the Father's, who sent him. " The Father who dwelleth in me, He doeth the works ; " and Christ made also another statement that we receive in silent faith : " Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works that I do, shall he do also ; and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto my Father." He who has been energized by faith, by that new spirit of life in Christ, could achieve Christ's spiritual w T orks, his deeds of love ; and every work which springs from this divine germ, whether it be great or small, must be Christlike. In their human brokenness such works are " good works," because they have their life-principle in Him who ever works that which is good; so that, not only outward works of benevolence, doing good to other men, but every act of love, every act of faith, every conquest of pride, temptation, passion, selfishness, hidden in one's own heart, is beautiful, because it springs from the love of God that is in the innermost depths of the soul. These are the trees planted along the banks of the water of the River of Life, that blossom, scent the air, and bear all manner of fruit at all seasons, for the delight of the meek, and for the good pleasure of God. In some strange way in our Protestant theology the doctrine of " good works," of these genuine works of faith, which we find strewed through the Bible in their own right places and relations as plantings of God's hand, has somehow lost its glory and been obscured. Not that Protestant Christians do not abound in good works ; but they do not recognize their divine beauty as fruits of the spirit, n^r share their joy and delight, nor even perceive their absolute necessity, but throw contempt upon them, cover them up, and hardly suffer them to hold their place among the essential doctrines of Christianity. Yet there is a genuine Christian doctrine of " good works," as there is a doctrine of faith, and there is a noble Christian idea of work, that is derived from the Divine nature and example.

There may be drawn from this subject two or three lessons of a practical character.

I. To whatever work, in the good providence of God, we are called, and which itself is of a genuine nature, whether it be secular or religious, to that work, we should give, according to the measure of strength allotted us, our real and undivided energies. Every one, in the first place, ought to try to do for his life-work that for which he is adapted, that which he can do best, and that which he loves to do best, — for then his heart will be in it, and he will be more likely to be a good workman. If it be practicable, we should thus give ourselves to some work in which we feel sympathetic interest and for which we are fitted. This is the work we can do. This is in the genial current of the nature. The poet Shelley could not master mathematics, but he could write poetry. De Ravignan, the orator of Notre Dame, could not make poetry, but he could preach with a masculine vigour. Having settled upon an occupation, whatever it be, if honest, we should give to it our best powers ; for this is the life-work to which we are appointed, the way in which we are to manifest our character on this field of action, the world. One of the most brilliant of modern writers, to whom, if to any man, we are apt to ascribe genius that produces its results spontaneously and without labour, said of himself: " Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well. What I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely. Never to put one hand to anything on which I could throw my whole self, and never to affect depreciation of my work, whatever it was, I find now to have been my golden rule."

Another great man has said, " What I have done has been done by days' works." But it is in the words of Christ that we find the divine expression of this principle of thoroughness, which is not only a golden rule of worldly success, but also a principle of religious duty: " He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much." Thus God works. He who rules the universe and decides the complex and eternal destinies of spirits, who holds in His hand the abysses of being and space and turns about the worlds without noise, looks to the minutest details. 11 Great in great things, greatest in least things " was Augustine's motto respecting God ; but there are really no great or small works with Him ; and whatever He does, is done with the whole mind and whole heart of God, and there are no imperfect divine works. In this, the human worker may learn to resemble God. This soundness in working should indeed be a religious principle. The principle of probity in work, if one drives a nail to do it thoroughly, should become a universal principle of action, should run through a man's life and all his works, even as the tide, when it comes in, not only fills the great gulfs and bays, but runs up into even' creek and inlet, and penetrates and glorifies the whole land. Yet let me not be understood as saying that this faithfulness in work should degenerate into a superficial, feverish, and vulgar activity, without intervals of repose, as Nature has. If men, if American workers, in all departments of life, should cultivate the passive virtues, and let nature and God sometimes work for them and in them by silence and contemplation, they would have deeper and sweeter natures ; and in their apparent inaction the profound springs of thought and life, exhausted by constant drain upon them, would slowly fill up ; as great men have had their Patmos, their Arabia, their Wartburg Castle, and have kept silent and nursed their thought in solitude, and have then come forth to do works that moved the world. Sometimes it is true " their strength is to sit still."

2. In all our work there should be found the higher spiritual motive and love as its impelling and inly sustaining source of activity, the faith that works by love. Are we not the sons of God? A monkish writer has said, " That which gives the only value to human actions is the will of God in them." They spring from the inner life. This spiritual purpose should strike through the whole constitution and activities of the being, even to the most insignificant act, doing all to the glory of God. The eternal life enters into it. If we live humbly and lovingly in the divine will, as Christ lived, who did the works of his Father, and said that his works were not his but his Father's which sent him, it is not of great consequence what a man does, since the spirit in which he does his work glorifies it: " As a man thinketh in his heart so is he." It is possible to serve God in any condition, and more than this, the love of God is consistent with the love of earthly things so far as they are innocent. But man, with limited powers, can, as a general rule, do but one thing, and let him do that divinely. Although joyfully recognizing the truth that there is a peculiar work for God that every Christian has to do, a labour in His vineyard and spiritual kingdom; and a mighty field of work it is to seek and save that which is lost, to make this sinful world, or that part of it which lies under the power of evil, better, happier, freer, and more divine, — a man's work truly; x yet the Christian need not divorce his common from his religious life. God puts us where he would have us be. Our life anywhere is His. God, if we would but see it, is in our common life, — His strength, glory and joy. Let us not dare to call anything common or unclean which He approves of or permits to be. Christ

1 That thou therein do a knightly work. — Luther s translation of 1 Tim. i. 18.

proved his divinity in nothing more than in this, that he made to stand out in such fulness of light the truth " that all that is finite only needs the consecration of the infinite in order to be divine. He saw the universe in its true light." : He filled it with the Father's presence, activity, and love. Religion is the divine element in the ordinary things of life and in all things. It should not be narrowed down into an ecclesiastical form or theory separate from everything else, but should hallow all and work in all like the leaven. Sweep away selfish luxury and effeminacy and bring into our life a broader and higher idea of the love of God and man, and the .land would be filled with simpler, manlier, and merrier men. Let the Christian word " service," come to the front! Let there be nothing in us that remains disunited from and opposed to God, but all — all be assimilated and harmonized to His purer service ! It was Mr. Gladstone, I think, who said that " the belief of men, nowadays, had very little to do with their life, but that this belief was rather a matter of education and opinion." If this be so it bespeaks a deep insincerity, a spiritual corruption, and all the orthodoxy in the world cannot save it. One's belief should permeate and renew his life, in its every act and production, as the rain of heaven sinks into the 1 Schleiermacher.

The Energy of Faith. i earth and moistens the roots of all things that spring up and grow : all will be the plants of a divine faith. A man need not seek any other vocation than the one he finds himself in, if a lawful one, in which to serve God. He need not build an altar to duty outside of the circle of his usual life, of his home, his daily pursuits, his aims, affections, walks, and studies. An artist may be a priest at the altar; so may a coal-heaver. A mechanic shows his Christianity better by thoroughly honest and faithful work than by the most beautiful prayers in the prayer-meeting; or, at all events, unfaithfulness in the line of ordinary daily work would be a greater proof of unchristian character than the omission of beautiful prayers. Having once given himself to God, all that one does, and all that emanates from the man, will bear the character of this spiritual consecration.