enough to be ashamed. Bodily acts done in sin and contrary to nature can
never honor God. Wherever the human will introduces moral evil we have
no longer our innocent and harmless powers as God made them; we have
instead an abused and twisted thing which can never bring glory to its
Creator.
Let us, however, assume that perversion and abuse are not present. Let
us think of a Christian believer in whose life the twin wonders of
repentance and the new birth have been wrought. He is now living
according to the will of God as he understands it from the written Word.
Of such a one it may be said that every act of his life is or can be as
truly sacred as prayer or baptism or the Lord's Supper. To say this is
not to bring all acts down to one dead level; it is rather to lift every
act up into a living kingdom and turn the whole life into a sacrament.
If a sacrament is an external expression of an inward grace than we need
not hesitate to accept the above thesis. By one act of consecration of
our total selves to God we can make every subsequent act express that
consecration. We need no more be ashamed of our body--the fleshly
servant that carries us through life--than Jesus was of the humble beast
upon which He rode into Jerusalem. "The Lord hath need of him" may well
apply to our mortal bodies. If Christ dwells in us we may bear about the
Lord of glory as the little beast did of old and give occasion to the
multitudes to cry, "Hosanna in the highest."
That we _see_ this truth is not enough. If we would escape from the
toils of the sacred-secular dilemma the truth must "run in our blood"
and condition the complexion of our thoughts. We must practice living to
the glory of God, actually and determinedly. By meditation upon this
truth, by talking it over with God often in our prayers, by recalling it
to our minds frequently as we move about among men, a _sense_ of its
wondrous meaning will begin to take hold of us. The old painful duality
will go down before a restful unity of life. The knowledge that we are
all God's, that He has received all and rejected nothing, will unify our
inner lives and make everything sacred to us.
This is not quite all. Long-held habits do not die easily. It will take
intelligent thought and a great deal of reverent prayer to escape
completely from the sacred-secular psychology. For instance it may be
difficult for the average Christian to get hold of the idea that his
daily labors can be performed as acts of worship acceptable to God by
Jesus Christ. The old antithesis will crop up in the back of his head
sometimes to disturb his peace of mind. Nor will that old serpent the
devil take all this lying down. He will be there in the cab or at the
desk or in the field to remind the Christian that he is giving the
better part of his day to the things of this world and allotting to his
religious duties only a trifling portion of his time. And unless great
care is taken this will create confusion and bring discouragement and
heaviness of heart.
We can meet this successfully only by the exercise of an aggressive
faith. We must offer all our acts to God and believe that He accepts
them. Then hold firmly to that position and keep insisting that every
act of every hour of the day and night be included in the transaction.
Keep reminding God in our times of private prayer that we mean every act
for His glory; then supplement those times by a thousand thought-prayers
as we go about the job of living. Let us practice the fine art of making
every work a priestly ministration. Let us believe that God is in all
our simple deeds and learn to find Him there.
A concomitant of the error which we have been discussing is the
sacred-secular antithesis as applied to places. It is little short of
astonishing that we can read the New Testament and still believe in the
inherent sacredness of places as distinguished from other places. This
error is so widespread that one feels all alone when he tries to combat
it. It has acted as a kind of dye to color the thinking of religious
persons and has colored the eyes as well so that it is all but
impossible to detect its fallacy. In the face of every New Testament
teaching to the contrary it has been said and sung throughout the
centuries and accepted as a part of the Christian message, the which it
most surely is not. Only the Quakers, so far as my knowledge goes, have
had the perception to see the error and the courage to expose it.
Here are the facts as I see them. For four hundred years Israel had
dwelt in Egypt, surrounded by the crassest idolatry. By the hand of
Moses they were brought out at last and started toward the land of
promise. The very idea of holiness had been lost to them. To correct
this, God began at the bottom. He localized Himself in the cloud and
fire and later when the tabernacle had been built He dwelt in fiery
manifestation in the Holy of Holies. By innumerable distinctions God
taught Israel the difference between holy and unholy. There were holy
days, holy vessels, holy garments. There were washings, sacrifices,
offerings of many kinds. By these means Israel learned that _God is
holy_. It was this that He was teaching them. Not the holiness of things
or places, but the holiness of Jehovah was the lesson they must learn.
Then came the great day when Christ appeared. Immediately He began to
say, "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time--but _I_ say
unto you." The Old Testament schooling was over. When Christ died on the
cross the veil of the temple was rent from top to bottom. The Holy of
Holies was opened to everyone who would enter in faith. Christ's words
were remembered, "The hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this
mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.... But the hour
cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father
in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God
is Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in
truth."
Shortly after, Paul took up the cry of liberty and declared all meats
clean, every day holy, all places sacred and every act acceptable to
God. The sacredness of times and places, a half-light necessary to the
education of the race, passed away before the full sun of spiritual
worship.
The essential spirituality of worship remained the possession of the
Church until it was slowly lost with the passing of the years. Then the
natural _legality_ of the fallen hearts of men began to introduce the
old distinctions. The Church came to observe again days and seasons and
times. Certain places were chosen and marked out as holy in a special
sense. Differences were observed between one and another day or place or
person, "The sacraments" were first two, then three, then four until
with the triumph of Romanism they were fixed at seven.
In all charity, and with no desire to reflect unkindly upon any
Christian, however misled, I would point out that the Roman Catholic
church represents today the sacred-secular heresy carried to its
logical conclusion. Its deadliest effect is the complete cleavage it
introduces between religion and life. Its teachers attempt to avoid this
snare by many footnotes and multitudinous explanations, but the mind's
instinct for logic is too strong. In practical living the cleavage is a
fact.
From this bondage reformers and puritans and mystics have labored to
free us. Today the trend in conservative circles is back toward that
bondage again. It is said that a horse after it has been led out of a
burning building will sometimes by a strange obstinacy break loose from
its rescuer and dash back into the building again to perish in the
flame. By some such stubborn tendency toward error Fundamentalism in our
day is moving back toward spiritual slavery. The observation of days and
times is becoming more and more prominent among us. "Lent" and "holy
week" and "good" Friday are words heard more and more frequently upon
the lips of gospel Christians. We do not know when we are well off.
In order that I may be understood and not be misunderstood I would throw
into relief the practical implications of the teaching for which I have
been arguing, i.e., the sacramental quality of every day living. Over
against its positive meanings I should like to point out a few things it
does not mean.
It does not mean, for instance, that everything we do is of equal
importance with everything else we do or may do. One act of a good
man's life may differ widely from another in importance. Paul's sewing
of tents was not equal to his writing of an Epistle to the Romans, but
both were accepted of God and both were true acts of worship. Certainly
it is more important to lead a soul to Christ than to plant a garden,
but the planting of the garden _can_ be as holy an act as the winning of
a soul.
Again, it does not mean that every man is as useful as every other man.
Gifts differ in the body of Christ. A Billy Bray is not to be compared
with a Luther or a Wesley for sheer usefulness to the Church and to the
world; but the service of the less gifted brother is as pure as that of
the more gifted, and God accepts both with equal pleasure.
The "layman" need never think of his humbler task as being inferior to
that of his minister. Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is
called and his work will be as sacred as the work of the ministry. It is
not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or
secular, it is _why_ he does it. The motive is everything. Let a man
sanctify the Lord God in his heart and he can thereafter do no common
act. All he does is good and acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For
such a man, living itself will be sacramental and the whole world a
sanctuary. His entire life will be a priestly ministration. As he
performs his never so simple task he will hear the voice of the seraphim
saying, "Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is
full of his glory."
_Lord, I would trust Thee completely; I would be altogether Thine; I
would exalt Thee above all. I desire that I may feel no sense of
possessing anything outside of Thee. I want constantly to be aware of
Thy overshadowing Presence and to hear Thy speaking Voice. I long to
live in restful sincerity of heart. I want to live so fully in the
Spirit that all my thought may be as sweet incense ascending to Thee and
every act of my life may be an act of worship. Therefore I pray in the
words of Thy great servant of old, "I beseech Thee so for to cleanse the
intent of mine heart with the unspeakable gift of Thy grace, that I may
perfectly love Thee and worthily praise Thee." And all this I
confidently believe Thou wilt grant me through the merits of Jesus
Christ Thy Son. Amen._