Visions and service...

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VISIONS AND SERVICE

FOURTEEN DISCOURSES DELIVERED IN COLLEGE CHAPELS

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I. The Young Man's Vision i

II. The Challenge of Jesus 19

II

John the Baptist's work was done. The popular enthusiasm for him had passed ; forsaken by the crowd, almost friendless, imprisoned, nothing remained for him in this life but the death sentence of Herod and the axe of the executioner. The last message had just passed from the Baptist to Jesus, and His answer was on its way to the dungeon. As the people followed with their eye the retiring figures of the messengers of the imprisoned John, the memory of the scene of his preaching and popularity must have swept over them ; and the contrast of his position then and now must have moved them, some to pity, but the most of them to a disdain of a man who had mounted, and for the moment had rested on the crest of a wave of popular enthusiasm, but who

1 Appleton Chapel, Harvard University, February 2, 1890.

l 9 had sunk, and was now imprisoned and degraded.

Anticipating these thoughts, the Saviour hastened to convince the people that the failure was with them, and not with the Baptist ; that in their mistaken view of his mission they had failed to grasp the greatness of his character ; that in going out to see a man who was the object of popular applause, they had neglected to see in him the elements which, when the crisis came, threw popular applause to the winds.

" And when the messengers of John were departed, He began to speak unto the people concerning John, What went ye out into the wilderness for to see ? A reed shaken with the wind? But what went ye out for to see ? A man clothed in soft raiment ? Behold, they which are gorgeously apparelled and live delicately, are in kings' courts. But what went ye out for to see ? A prophet ? Yea, I say unto you, and much more than a prophet." 1

Three types of character, — all of them existing in the Baptist's day, all of them existing in our day, — three types, each of which appeals to every one of us, and claims our interest, and may claim our lives.

"A reed shaken with the wind." With those words, our memories, like the memories of those who had stood on Jordan's banks, run back to a summer's day, when, as we have walked through some meadow, or floated down some placid stream, we have watched the stately sedges and reeds sway and bend beneath the moving air ; they seem to anticipate the coming breeze before we feel it, and prepare to bend their heads to avoid the sharp or sudden blast ; graceful, yielding, they right themselves, and swing again to the changing air.

The perfect type of the pliable character. We have not time to describe it as it was in the Baptist's day. There are so many phases that interest us now all about us. It is one of the admirable features of culture that it adds to the grace of living. The highly cultivated man may have the same strong convictions as the ignorant man, but he expresses them in a gentler and more sympathetic way, and so avoids the friction of hard and angular characters.

In these days, when popular opinion gathers force so quickly, and moves in such varied currents, and when the convictions and sentiments are so intricate and so differently expressed, it is well, it is necessary, that tact and grace and a wide sympathy with other views should come to the aid of strong opinion and help it yield and bend in certain ways, though standing firm by its deeper convictions. But — and here is the point of the Saviour's word — the danger comes when yielding and pliability become the characteristic of the man, and strength of character is sapped in the effort to meet every wave of popular opinion, and to let it pass over without resistance.

One might almost say that this is the danger of the nineteenth century, and the temptation which above all besets every boy and young man who has an ambition in life. The rise of democracy has put the power into the hands of the people and of public opinion. He who would succeed must be in touch with the people, and sensitive to every movement of public opinion. We know that the manufacturer who expects to sell his goods next year must already know, or learn, or rather feel, what the people are going to want next year ; and the politician who is going to get office must have already anticipated the popular opinion on certain questions ; and so with the smallest spheres of life. The result is that, like some animals that can feel the coming storm before they see it, we are developing an extreme sensitiveness to popular movements and popular opinion which may work to our safety, and which often works to our destruction. This temptation to yield quietly and gracefully to the breezes of popular opinion — there is not one of us that does not feel it.

We have seen a young man enter politics, and in the first years of his political life stand as stiff and true under the varying movements as the little reed that is just springing from the meadow. But as he rises into popular view and feels more directly the waves of the different parties and opinions, how he droops and sways ! And who can tell which way he will next swing? In his political rise he has reached a position where the waves of party affiliation and policy have a much heavier weight than 23 any of us realize. His opinions are no weaker, but the pressure is so much heavier that his convictions have to yield.

We have seen girls enter society, and young men enter college life, and pass through the same experience. At first the ideas of the true life, though small and narrow in some features, are clear and strong. Home and school life and parents' words have set the lines of right and wrong. With the larger life of society and college, however, principles carried into action become more intricate and definite, convictions more difficult. Those whom we admire do what we consider questionable, and those whom others admire do what we believe is low and degrading or wrong. Then comes the shrinking from being considered peculiar, from setting ourselves up as stronger or better than the rest. What right has one ugly reed to stand stiff and upright, when all the others bend gracefully to the breeze ? And so we bend ; we will not break, we say. Thus we do the " correct thing ; " we create no ill-feeling, we appear modest and never self-assertive; we move in syn> 24 pathy with our comrades ; we strengthen no one, and help no one to keep his convictions, and gradually our principles weaken. Unless, my friends, we guard ourselves and keep true to our better selves, and sometimes dare to stand strong, we become the world's puppet ; admired, and at the same time despised ; to the popular view, respectable ; to the view of all true men, and of your inner self, simply despicable.

You know, and I know, men and women to-day, whom we meet in society and see in the clubs and on the streets, who are not bad or grossly immoral ; they are no worse than the public opinion about them makes them, and no better. They simply exist, and gracefully bend as they are moved.

Is it of one of us that Jesus speaks ? A reed shaken with the wind ?

" But what went ye out for to see ? A man clothed in soft raiment ? "

It cannot be that this type exists in modern life, we say. In those ancient days when monarchs lived in royal state and the people were ignorant, character and position might have been measured 25 by the wealth of garments and houses and the size of retinues. And in Europe, we may still find the same. A social caste, an aristocracy, create social ambitions and all the sycophant's spirit which goes with them. But in the democracy, each man is measured by his worth, not in houses and carriages and clothes, but as a man of character. The people in St. Petersburg, Berlin, and even in London, may crowd out to see those who are sumptuously apparelled and live in kings' houses ; but we — we Americans — flock and crowd about the man ; we select the noblest character in the community for our applause ; our newspapers are full of the wise sayings and ennobling words of the purest and most intelligent and truest men in the land ; we hear not of the people whose only title to popular esteem is their income and their houses and their dances.

Is it in sober truth, or in sarcasm, that this is spoken ? Let each man answer for himself.

If one can figure popular interest by

the circulation of these newspapers which

treat of men and women clothed in soft

raiment, of those which are filled with petty personalities and society gossip, and talk about the silliest and weakest and most despicable creatures in society, I am afraid that our assertions of popular interest in the noble character must be taken as sarcasm. The gossip of kings' courts had some touch of character, for it dealt with historic interests and real powers, though it dealt with them in a mean way. And the thought of an aristocracy has in it associations with a noble past at least, though the present be ignoble : but the reading by the half hour and hour together of the petty personalities of those whose only distinction is that they have suddenly become rich, the devouring of books that treat of the silliest and not the strongest and noblest characters in society makes us ashamed of ourselves.

Oh ! ye upholders of democracy, where man is man, and manhood is respected for its own sake, what go ye out for to see ? Do our newspapers, our small talk, and much of our popular literature belie us ? Have we no nobler object of interest than richly clothed men and women, and no nobler ideal than to become as one of them ? In our weaker moments some 27 of us envy them, but at heart we despise them, and despise ourselves for regarding them.

But what went ye out for to see ? A prophet ?

A prophet. We have a crude notion of what that is — a man of severe mien, strong but hard, denunciatory, unsympathetic ; or one who, magician-like, foretells events in the far future.

But surely there is something greater and more vital in the true prophet than foretelling events and denouncing sins. The prophet is the speaker for God ; he interprets to men the heart and thought of God. Two features, therefore, belong to him, which are not confined to the days of Elijah or of John the Baptist, or to the pulpit and the ordained preachers of these days, but features which may be in the possession of any one, thus making him, up to the limit of his powers, a Prophet ; and these, are the knowledge of God and the knowledge of men.

A young man breaks from a maze of doubts about God and religion into the conviction that whatever else may be 28 true, righteousness is eternally right ; and he lives by that. Soon he finds that living by that law he is led into the realm of truth, of purity, of love, of sacrifice, and of grateful service. Behind all these he craves the fact of a personality. And then by that same path, over which millions have trod, he is led to the faith in the personal God, the Heavenly Father. From lame and halting aspirations he is drawn to more direct and distinct prayer. Then, in that communion which is more than prayer, he receives from God his noblest hopes, his highest ambitions, and his deepest truths. As God whom he adores and with whom he communes is perfectly pure, true, and just, the man becomes sensitive to impurity, untruth, and injustice. As he speaks or acts, so far as he is in communion with God, he speaks or acts for God. The man who thus knows God does not necessarily ascend the pulpit steps, nor stand like Elijah, or the Baptist, before kings, but in the smaller circle of his friends he speaks, and in the wider circles of his acquaintances he acts. His voice may find an echo in hearts at a distance. In book and song and story 29 he may speak. But in all these, when his voice sounds for the right and true, he speaks for God ; he is God's prophet. Coleridge, Maurice, Keble, and Kingsley were prophets by their firesides as well as through their books. Carlyle also in his early days, Ruskin and Bright ; aye, and many men whose voices have never reached beyond their fireside or the limits of their humble village, men of God, peasants and miners and factory hands, were prophets. For, by a close and intimate communion, tested by years of spiritual experience, they have known God ; and when they have his word to speak, they have uttered it with no uncertain sound.

The prophet must have a knowledge of men. For how can he speak to their sins, their wants, or their ambitions, unless he know well what they are ? He cannot stand apart ; but living, working, enjoying, suffering with men, he will probe to their innermost thoughts, and with that instinct which comes with intimate knowledge, he will leap at their most secret ambitions. As sensitive as the tenderest reed to the coming breeze, he will feel the coming social and reli- 30 gious movements and will utter his sharp note of warning or of hope. Study the lives of those whom I have mentioned, and you will see how we are living in the sins and the blessings which those men anticipated a generation ago.

I say that they are as sensitive as the reed ; but — mark the difference — unlike the reed, when it is a question of right or wrong, they refuse to bend to the popular breeze, but assert the right of the man to stand. Aye ! so convinced are they of God's truth that it is hardly an effort to stand : for the principles of God are so inwrought into their characters that they can do nothing but stand. Their knowledge of men gives them the tact, the insight, and the readiness to bend when yielding is right ; their knowledge of God keeps them true and strong when yielding is weak and not right.

Have we been wandering from our thought ?

What go ye out into life to see ? Surely not a reed shaken with the wind. Far less the man clothed in soft raiment. The prophet ; he who, full of the divine life, is true and strong ; and he who, intensely 3 1 interested in men, is full of sympathy, grace, and tact. Prophets have not always been these ; sometimes they have been hard, and under harsh treatment have become embittered, and then they cease to speak for God ; but these are the qualities of the true prophet.

Now, if you will, go out into the world and look for such men. You may find one in the heyday of popularity and another in lonely neglect, or perhaps some young prophet who is soon to catch the ears of the people, but who looks not to their applause for his reward. Wherever you discover them, you will see those whom the world to-day needs above all others, men of courage — courage to speak their convictions and to stand by them ; courage to meet defeat of their dearest hopes in patience ; and, what is sometimes harder, courage to meet success without yielding a hair's breadth in principle. You will find men who esteem public opinion, but who will never become its slave ; who are ready, so far as they can consistently, to do what is called the correct thing, but who will always do the right thing ; men who will risk popularity to denounce a 32 sin, and who will be socially ostracized, if that is necessary, to uphold a virtue.

They will be men of hope. No cynic or pessimist was eyer a true prophet. Such men live in the ills of the present. But however evil the present may be, the prophet always has God above and behind him, and the conviction that somehow, some day, God's light will break forth before him. The prophets of old to a man pointed forward to the brighter day, to the coming of the Sun of Righteousness.

In all the turmoil of disappointed hopes and unfulfilled ambitions of these days, in the discontent and cynicism of rich and poor alike, in the sins and sorrows and sufferings of our pushing civilization, the voice that needs to be heard above all others is that of the prophet of hope and peace and relief.

Given the man of God, the man among men, the man of courage and of hope, and you have the leader of all true men.

What go ye out for to see ? A reed shaken with the wind ? a man clothed in soft raiment ? A prophet ?

Oh, you who are young, whose lives 33 will be moulded by your leaders ; who are now looking here and there to see what career you will mark out for yourself ; you who are studying and talking of the leaders of to-day in society, in the professions, in public life, and in literature, listen to the challenge of Jesus : Whom go ye out for to see? Which crowd will you join ? Which leader will you take ?

Ill

Science is teaching us what the prophets tried to teach the people of their day, that a man's life cannot be cut up into separate parts which have no relation to each other. Life is a living stream, and whatever pours into it becomes a part of its current, either for good or for bad. We must go even farther than this, and recognize the fact that all human life, through its various generations, is bound together, so that each one of us is more or less the result of the past. On this fact was founded the old doctrine of original sin, and on this is based the principle of heredity.

The people to whom the prophet Ezekiel preached recognized all this ; but instead of using it as a motive for developing the good in themselves, they made it an excuse for their wrong-doing. " Our

1 St. John's Memorial Chapel, Cambridge, March 5> 1893.

fathers, and not ourselves, are to blame for our sins," was their cry. " Our fathers have eaten sour grapes, and their children's teeth are set on edge ; the fathers have sinned, and the children are not responsible for their sin." How familiar it all sounds ! It is the same excuse that we are hearing every day, — a half truth, which becomes a lie when exaggerated into the whole truth. Therefore the prophet emphasized the other side of the truth, the personal responsibility of each man for his own sins or righteousness.

"The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him." 1

Each one of us, from birth to the grave, is by thought, word, and action building up his life, for bad or for good. Each one of us is giving a set to his character every moment that he lives, either for evil or for righteousness. The thought, then, that I want to bring out

1 Ezekiel xviii. 20.

is that of the fixedness of character for bad and for good.

Such a truth comes to us rather naturally in these days, when the inexorable laws of nature are so clearly brought before us in our scientific mode of thought. The laws of our body are just as inexorable as are the other laws of nature as seen in geology or in botany. Any abuse of the body, any sin against the laws of health, is going to wreak its vengeance upon the body just as surely as a burn is to make a scar. Whether that sin was committed long ago or yesterday, whether it is unknown to others or not, whether the effects conceal themselves for years or not, the fact stands that the scar is there. Nature has been violated, and nature will reassert itself. I do not know that the scientific habit of mind has any greater lesson to teach us, especially those who are young, than that fact. We know how easily it is thrown aside. The young are strong and vigorous, and their physiques will endure many violations of the laws of self-restraint and temperance without showing the result. Thus they are led to think that the results are not there. What 37 they want to weigh in their minds is this, that whether the results show themselves or not, they are bound to be. It is in the neglect of this law that people are liable to condone the sins of those who are young, and to say that they are not as bad as those of more mature years. We thus fall into the philosophy that it is the natural thing for the enthusiasms and the high spirits of youth to work themselves off in some form of license or debauchery which would not be endured in older men. So we drop into the habit of expecting that wild oats will be sown, and that there is no help for it. In all honesty it must be said, I think, that when the young are in exceptional conditions, perhaps away from home and without the restraints of family life, they are more liable to fall into temptation, and to do things which they never would have thought of doing at home. Such sins may not have the permanent continuance of those committed in other times of life, because of the temporary conditions. When those conditions have passed, and those special temptations are left behind, the young man will not have the same pressure to continue in the evil habit. And yet, with this said, the fact stands that the sin is a sin ; the violation of nature's laws is a sin ; and even if the habit is not continued, for those sins nature will wreak vengeance in some form or other. The young man knows that he has sinned against himself, against his whole education, against his parents' words and his own honor. He is ashamed to think of his life for the past three months in connection with his home. He tries to set it apart and excuse himself by saying that this is college life, or this is city life, or this is life in Europe, and that it is a temporary matter ; and that that is home life.

But whether this is temporary or not, the man is the same. He cannot divide himself ; he goes from here to there, and the laws of the spiritual and of the physical life follow him wherever he goes ; what he does here has its result there. The sin is the same whether under temporary conditions or not, and the results of sin are the same, as far as they affect others. When a man has to-day by his word or example dragged down one of his fellows a step lower in his 39 ideal ; when he has led another to violate his conscience ; when the action of a man who has been brought up with pure surroundings is bad, and thereby leads another to degradation : he may go to his home and be as pure as he pleases ; he may attend his parish church and receive the communion ; he may be counted most respectable and try to be most respectable ; but all the time those whom he has left behind, those whom he has touched with the poison of his life, are going into further degradation, and he alone is responsible. The more respectable he becomes, if he is not ashamed of his sin, and if he makes no effort to undo the wrong that he has done, the more of a hypocrite he becomes. In fact, I know of no hypocrisy equal to that of a man who has sown his wild oats, as it is called, who has led others into degradation, and then, tired of that sort of life, settles down as a respectable citizen and a good Churchman, without repentance, without shame, and without the effort to do something to recompense for his wickedness ; who sets himself up as a model of social virtue, and speaks with pity or scorn of the degraded men and 40 women of the city of the same class that he led to degradation.

Whether, then, the sin be temporary, and under exceptional surroundings, the sin is the same in its essence, in its results upon others; and — this is the next point — it is the same in its results upon the man himself.

You know that there are certain chemical properties which in certain combinations make heat, and in others make light, and in others make power. So, sin does not assert itself in its results in the same form, but it reveals itself in the most unexpected ways. An old man, for instance, may be querulous, selfish, and autocratic, and yet he seems to be in his way a religious man. Trace back his life forty or fifty years ; and in the yielding to the sins of youth, in intemperance and other excesses, you will find the seeds of this irritability of old age. One would have said that nature would have wreaked her vengeance before and in other forms, but nature is most interesting in the unexpectedness with which she acts.

There is many a man on the border line of chronic sin, of a bondage to some 4i evil habit, who will not fall into the form of the bondage which others expect ; he will not end in the gutter ; but he is en- ■ tering into some form of bondage which will be just as strong as the more open bondage of the drunkard. You know young men who come to Cambridge with high ideals, pure life, and a sensitiveness to the touch of sin, who in the course of six months or a year are different. At first, they have thoughtlessly yielded ; then they have gone deeper. Now it is useless to say that they are going to the bad, that they will surely fall into bondage to the lower vices ; some of them will, many of them will not. They will recover themselves, and in two or three years, tired of their foolish ways, will settle down. What harm, then, has come from it ? Why should n't one pass through this temporary phase of life, if the danger is not great ? This harm comes : that every one of them, as they enter into their better and more staid life, will be men of lower tone and of less vigorous character than if they had not sinned. Some result is just as sure as fate. The spiritual laws work with the same exactness as the physical laws. 42

It is impossible for a man to sin against his ideal, and to hold the same ideal with all the firmness of the past. This is the heavy weight that social life and college life have to bear to-day, that so many men who pass through, and in passing through enter upon some phase of sin, are now living, on the whole, excellent lives, and yet who, because of their own past, do not uphold the high ideal of youth which belongs to youth. They dare not go back on their record and rebuke the sin of which they are guilty, lest they accuse themselves of hypocrisy. So their mouths are shut, or else they yield to the popular idea that these things must be ; that a certain proportion of youth have got to go wrong for awhile. It is a lie ; for a certain proportion of youth do not have to go wrong. How many go wrong is dependent largely upon the conditions which surround them, upon the ideals which they gain from their home and school life. The moral tone varies in various years, and if the community would lift its standard and its expectation, there would be a lift in the life of all of us. Here, then, my friends, is the terror 43 of sin, — in its fixedness. The tendency to sin again is the punishment of sin. The tendency to sin, mark you, not in the same form, necessarily, but in some form. In that incarnate son of sin, Judas, you can see how the same character cropped out first in the fictitious jealousy in behalf of the poor, that the money spent in the ointment should not be wasted, but should be given to the poor ; it took another form in his conversation with Jesus. But sin had so fixed itself on his character that when the crisis came, and our Lord pointed him out with the words, "That thou doest, do quickly," Judas rose and went to his work of betrayal as automatically as the drunkard seeks his glass. He was under the bondage of sin all the time, though it showed itself in varied forms, and was finally revealed in the treacherous kiss and the miserable suicide.