platforms and propositions are presented to us, as though religious
unity were a thing to be constructed and put together like a building,
which should be big enough to hold us all. But in this splendid
chapter religious unity is regarded by the apostle, not as a thing
which is to be made, but as a thing which is to grow. "There is," he
says "one body and one spirit; there is a unity of the faith. But we
do not make this unity; we grow up into it as we attain unto a
full-grown man; we attain unto it as a boy becomes a man, not by
discussing his growth, or by worrying because he is not a man, or by
bragging that he is bigger than other boys, but simply by growing up.
Thus, as people grow up into Christ, they grow up into unity. The
unity comes not of the assent of man to certain propositions, but of
the ascent of man to {48} the stature of Christ. And so what hinders
unity is that we have not got our spiritual growth. It takes a
full-grown mind to reach it. It takes a full-grown heart to feel it.
The unity is always waiting at the top. Religious progress is like the
ascent of a hill from various sides. Below there is division,
obstructive underbrush, perplexity; but as the top is neared there is
ever a closer approach of man to man; and at the summit there is the
same view for all, and that view is a view all round. The climbers
attain to the measure of the stature of Christ, and they attain at the
same time to the unity of the faith.
{49}
XVIII
THE PATIENCE OF FAITH
_Mark_ iv. 28.
Jesus here falls back, as he so often does, on the gradualness of
nature. Life, he says, is not abrupt and revolutionary in its method;
it is gradual and evolutionary: the seed is sown and slowly comes to
fruitage; the leaven silently penetrates the lump; the grain grows,
first the blade, then the ear, finally the full corn. The best things
in the world do not come with a rush. Some things have to be waited
for. Faith is patient. And this he says, not only against the nervous
hurry of life, which is, as we all know, cursing the American world
to-day, but also against the spiritual impatience which is to be
observed in every age. The most marked illustration of it to-day is in
our dealings with the social movements of the time. It is the
impatience of the reformer. He wants to redeem the world all at once.
As Theodore Parker said of the anti-slavery cause: "The trouble seems
to be that God {50} is not in a hurry, and I am." Thus we are beset by
panaceas which are to regenerate society in some wholesale, external,
mechanical way. When such a reformer not long ago presented some quick
solution of the social question, and it was criticised, he answered:
"Well, if you do not accept my solution, what is yours?" as though
every one must have some immediate cure for the evils of civilization.
But the fact is, that the world is not likely to be saved in any
wholesale way. A much wiser observer of the social situation has
lately said: "When any one brings forward a complete solution of the
Social Question, I move to adjourn." Jesus, let us remember, saved men
one at a time. The patience of nature taught him the patience of
faith; first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn.
Or, again, we are afflicted in our day by the impatience of the
theologian. He wants to know all about God. It seems somehow a
depreciation of theology to admit that there is anything which is not
revealed. But the fact is that the wisest feel most the sense of
mystery. The only theology which is likely to last is one which admits
a large degree of {51} Christian agnosticism. As one of our University
preachers once said: "We do not know anything about God unless we first
know that we cannot know Him perfectly." [1] How superb, as against
all this impatience of spirit, are the reserve and patience of Christ.
Accept doubts, he says. Bear with incompleteness. Give faith its
chance to grow. First the blade, then the ear, and then the harvest.
There are some things which youth can prove, and some which only the
experience of maturity can teach, and then there are some mysteries
which are perhaps to be made plain to us only in the clearer light of
another world.
[1] Henry van Dyke, D. D., _Straight Sermons_, p. 216, Scribners, 1893.
{52}
XIX
THE BOND-SERVANT AND THE SON
_Luke_ xvii. 7-10.
"We are unprofitable servants, we have done that which it was our duty
to do." It seems almost as if we must have misread this passage. Can
one who has done his duty be called an unprofitable servant? Shall one
have no credit because he has done what is right? This seems strange
indeed. But Jesus in reality is contrasting two ideas of duty,--the
duty of a bond-servant and the duty of a son. The duty of a slave is
to do what is demanded of him. He accomplishes his stint of work, his
round of necessities, his grudging service, and for doing that duty he
gets his hire and his day's work is done. Sometimes we see workmen for
the city in the roadway, doing their duty on these terms, and we wonder
that men can move so slowly and accomplish so little. They have done
their duty, but they are unprofitable servants. Now against this,
Jesus sets the Christian thought of duty, which {53} grows out of the
Christian thought of sonship. A son who loves his father does not
measure his duty by what is demanded of him. No credit is his for
obeying orders. He passes from obligation to affection, from demand to
privilege. And only as he passes thus into uncalled-for and
spontaneous service does any credit come. There is no credit in a
man's paying his debts, earning his hire, meeting his demands. The
business man does not thank his clerk for doing what he is paid for.
What the employer likes to see is that service beyond obligation which
means fidelity and loyalty. Do you do your work for wages, for marks,
from compulsion? Then, when you lie down at night, you should say: "I
have done that which it was my duty to do, and I am ashamed." Do you
do your work for love's sake, for the life of service to which it
leads, for generous ambition and hope? Then with all your sense of
ineffectiveness and incapacity you may still have that inward peace and
joy which permits you to say: "I have done but little of what I dreamed
of doing, but I have tried, at any rate, to do it unselfishly and
gladly,--not as a bond-servant, but as a son."
{54}
XX
DYING TO LIVE
2 _Corinthians_ iv. 13.
Paul repeatedly described his spiritual experiences under physical
figures of speech; and most of all he writes of himself as living over
in his spiritual life the incidents of the physical life and death of
Jesus. He is crucified with Christ; he is risen with Christ; he bears
about in his body the dying of Christ. "Death worketh in us, but life
in you." This sounds like exaggerated and rhetorical language. It
seems a strange use of words to say that the death of self is the life
of the world. But consider how it was with this man Paul. He had been
ambitious, sanguine, impetuous, and it had all come to nothing, and
worse than nothing. He had been led to persecute the very faith which
he had soon found to be God's truth. And then he gives up everything.
He throws away every prospect of honor and public respect and social
ambition. He simply dies to himself, and gives himself {55} to the
service of Christ; and, behold, that death of self is the beginning of
life and courage to generation after generation of Christian followers.
The same story might be told of many a man. Just in proportion as
self-seeking dies, life begins. A man goes his way in self-assertion,
self-display, the desire to make an impression, and he seems to achieve
much. He gets distinction, glory, the prizes of life. But one thing
he fails to do; he fails to quicken spiritual life in others. His work
is stained by self-consciousness, and becomes incapable of inspiration.
It is life to him, but death to the things that are trusted to him.
Then some day he absolutely forgets himself in his work. He buries
himself, as we say, in it. His conceit and ambition die, and then out
of the death of self comes the life of the world he serves. That is
the paradox of life. Life is reproduced by sacrifice. The life that
is lost is the only life that is saved. The dead self is the only
life-bearer. Only the man who thus sinks himself in his cause is
remembered as its apostle.
{56}
XXI
CARRYING YOUR OWN CROSS
_Mark_ viii. 34.
"If any man will come after me," says Jesus, "let him take up his cross
and follow." Notice that it is his own cross. This is a different
picture of Christian discipleship from that which is commonly
presented. We are used to thinking of people as abandoning their own
lives, their passions and desires, their own weakness and their own
strength, and turning to the one support and safety of the cross of
Jesus Christ. We remember that familiar picture of the woman who has
been almost overwhelmed in the sea of trouble, and is finally cast up
by the waves of life upon the rock where she clings to the cross which
is set there as a refuge for her shipwrecked soul. Now, no doubt, that
refuge in the cross of Christ has been to many a real experience.
"Other refuge have I none, hangs my helpless soul on thee," has been,
no doubt, often a sincere confession. But that is not the {57} state
of mind which Jesus is describing in this passage. He is thinking, not
of some limp and helpless soul clinging to something outside itself,
but rather of a masculine, vigorous, rational life, which shoulders its
own responsibility and trudges along under it. Jesus says that if a
man wants to follow him, he must first of all take up his own burden
like a man. He sees, for instance, a young man to-day beset by his own
problems and difficulties,--his poverty, his temper, his sin, his
timidity, his enemies; and Jesus says to him: "That is your cross, your
own cross. Now, do not shirk it, or dodge it, or lie down on it, or
turn from it to my cross. First of all, take up your own; let it lie
on your shoulder; and then stand up under it like a man and come to me;
and as you thus come, not limply and feebly, but with the step--even
let it be the staggering step--of a man who is honestly bearing his own
load, you will find that your way opens into strength and peace. The
yoke you have to carry will grow easier for you to carry, and the
burden which you do not desire to shirk will be made light."
{58}
XXII
THE POOR IN SPIRIT
_Matthew_ v. 3.
Whom does Jesus call the blessed people? First of all, he says, they
are the "poor in spirit." And who are the poor in spirit? It
sometimes seems as if Christians thought that to be poor in spirit one
must be poor-spirited--a limp and spiritless creature, without dash, or
vigor, or force. But the poor in spirit are not the poor-spirited.
They are simply the teachable, the receptive, the people who want help
and are conscious of need. They do not think they "know it all;" they
appreciate their own insufficiency. They are open-minded and
impressionable. Now Jesus says that the first approach to his
blessedness is in this teachable spirit. The hardest people for him to
reach were always the self-sufficient people. The Pharisees thought
they did not need anything, and so they could not get anything. As any
one thinks, then, of his own greatest blessings, the first of them must
be {59} this,--that somehow he has been made open-minded to the good.
It may be that the conceit has been, as we say, knocked out of him, and
that he has been "taken down." Well! it is better to be taken down
than to be still up or "uppish." It is better to have the
self-complacency knocked out of you than to have it left in. Humility,
as Henry Drummond once said, even when it happens through humiliation,
is a blessing. Not to the Pharisee with his "I am not as other men
are," but to the publican crying "God be merciful to me, a sinner,"
comes the promise of the beatitude. The first condition of receiving
the gift of God is to be free from the curse of conceit. The
spiritually poor are the first to receive Christ's blessing. They have
at least made themselves accessible to the further blessings which
Jesus has to bestow.
{60}
XXIII
THE MOURNERS
_Matthew_ v. 4.
Whom does Jesus call the blessed people? How strange it sounds when he
answers: "Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted."
Blessed, that is to say, are not only the people who, as we say, are in
sorrow; but blessed are all the burdened people, the people who are
having a hard time, the people who are bearing their crosses, for they
are the ones who will learn the deeper comfort of the Gospel. It is
the same promise which is repeated later in another place: "Come unto
me all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." This does
not mean that mourning is blessed for its own sake, or that the only
way to be a Christian is to be sad. It simply calls attention to this
fact, that every life is sure to have some hardness, or burden, or
cross in it. If you have none, it simply shows that you have not
really begun to live. And Jesus says that the farther you go into {61}
these deep places of experience, the more you will get out of his
religion. There are some phases of life where it makes little
difference whether you have any religion or not. But let the water of
trouble go over your soul, and then there is just one support which
keeps you from going down. Religion, that is to say, is not a thing
for holidays and easy times. Its comfort is not discovered until you
come to a hard place. The more it is needed, the stronger it is. How
strange it is that the people who seem most conscious of their
blessings and sustained by a sense of gratitude are, as a rule, people
who have been called to mourn. It is not resignation only which they
have found; it is light. They have been comforted through their
sorrows. Their burden has been made easy and their yoke light.
{62}
XXIV
THE MEEK.
_Matthew_ v. 5.
Whom does Jesus call the blessed people? Again he answers: "Blessed
are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." And who are the meek?
We think of a meek man as a limp and mild creature who has no capacity
to hurt or courage to help. But that is not what the Bible word means.
Meekness is not weakness. The Book of Numbers says that Moses was the
meekest man that ever lived; but one of the first illustrations of his
character was in slaying an Egyptian who insulted his people. The meek
man of the Bible is simply what we call the gentle-man--the man without
swagger or arrogance, not self-assertive or forthputting, but honorable
and considerate. This is the sense in which it has been said of Jesus
that he was the first of gentlemen. Now these people, the gracious and
generous,--not the self-important and ostentatious,--are, according to
Jesus, in the end to rule. {63} They are not to get what we call the
prizes of life, the social notoriety and position, but they are to have
the leadership of their time and its remembrance when they are gone.
Long after showy ambition has its little day and ceases to be, the
world will remember the magnanimous and self-effacing leader. He does
not have to grasp the prizes of earth; he, as Jesus says, "inherits the
earth." It is his by right. The meek, says the thirty-seventh Psalm,
shall inherit the earth and shall delight themselves in abundance of
peace. The meek escape the quarrelsomeness of ambition. They live in
a world of peace and good-will. And when we sing of peace on earth and
good-will to men, we are only repeating the beatitude of Jesus:
"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."
{64}
XXV
THE HUNGER FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS
_Matthew_ v. 6.
Whom does Jesus call the blessed people? "Blessed," he goes on, "are
they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be
filled." The New Testament repeatedly states this doctrine, which
sounds so strangely in our ears. It is the doctrine that a man gets
what he asks for--that his real hunger will be filled. We should say
that just the opposite of this was true--that life was a continued
striving to get things which one fails to get--a hunger which is doomed
to stay unsatisfied. But Jesus turns to his followers and says: "Ask,
and you shall receive; seek, and you shall find," and in the same
spirit turns even to the hypocrites and says again: "They also receive
their reward." Conduct, that is to say, fulfils its destiny. What you
sow, you reap. The blessing which is sufficiently desired is attained.
What you really ask for, you get. The only reason why this does not
{65} seem to be true is that we do not realize what the things are
which we are asking for and what must be the inevitable answer to our
demand. We ask, for instance, for money; and we expect an answer of
happiness. But we do not get happiness, we only get money, which is a
wholly different thing. We ask for popularity and reputation, and we
expect these gifts, when received, to last; but we have asked for
something whose very nature is that it does not last. It is like
asking for a soap-bubble and expecting to get a billiard-ball. We
cannot work for the temporary and get the permanent. If, then, it is
true that we are to get what we want, then the secret of happiness is
to want the best things and to want them very much. If we hunger and
thirst for base things we shall get them. Oh yes, we shall get them;
and get the unhappiness which comes of this awful discovery, that as we
have hungered so we are filled. And if we are really hungry for
righteousness, if we want to be good, as a thirsty man wants water, if,
as Jesus says of himself, our meat is to do the will of Him who sends
us, then that demand also will be supplied. "He satisfieth the longing
soul," {66} says the Psalmist, "and filleth the hungry soul"--not with
success, or money, or fame, but with that which the soul was hungry
for--"with goodness." The longing soul has sought the best blessing,
and it has received the best blessedness.
{67}
XXVI
THE MERCIFUL
_Matthew_ v. 7.
Whom does Jesus call the blessed people? "Blessed are the merciful:
for they shall obtain mercy." This repeats in effect the later words
of Jesus: "With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged." The
merciless judgment passed on others recoils upon one's own nature and
makes it hard and mean and brutalized. The habit of charitable
judgment of others is a source of personal blessedness. It blooms out
into composure and hopefulness, into peace and faith. How wonderful
these great calm affirmations of Jesus are! They are directly in the
face of the most common views of life, and yet they are delivered as
simple axioms of experience, as matters of fact, self-evident
propositions of the reason. It is not a matter of barter of which
Jesus is speaking. He does not say: "If you treat another kindly he
will be kind to you. The merciful man will get mercy when he needs
it." That {68} would not be the truth. The best of men are often
judged most mercilessly. Jesus himself gives his life to acts of
mercy, and is pitilessly slain. This beatitude gives, not a promise to
pay, but a law of life. To forgive an injury is, according to this
law, a blessing to the forgiver himself. The quality of mercy blesses
him that gives as well as him that takes. The harsh judge of others
grows hard himself, while pity softens the pitier. Thus among the
happiest of people are those whose grudges and enmities have been
overcome by their own broader view of life. It is as though in the
midst of winter the warmer sun were already softening the frost. They
are happy, not because others are kinder to them, but because that
softer soil permits their own better life to germinate and grow. The
merciful has obtained mercy; the blesser has received the blessing.
{69}
XXVII
THE PURE IN HEART
_Matthew_ v. 8.
"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." That, I
suppose, is the highest and deepest proposition which ever fell from
human lips. Without the least argument or reasoning about it, as a
thing which is perfectly self-evident, Jesus announces that purity of
heart leads to the knowledge of God. Your character clarifies your
creed. A theologian who wants to be profound must be pure.
Consecration brings with it insight. The perfect knowledge of God is
to be attained only by the perfectly consecrated life. The human soul
is a mirror on which the light of God shines, and only the pure mirror
reflects the perfect image. What a word is this to drop into the midst
of the conflicting theologies and philosophies of the time, of the
disputes between the people who think they know all about God, and the
people who think they cannot know Him at all! Do you want to be {70}
sure that God is directing and supporting you in all your perplexing
experiences of life? You cannot see God in these things except through
a perfectly purified heart. Clarify the medium of vision, and truth
undiscerned before breaks on the observer's sight. A mile or two from
here skilful artisans make those great object-glasses with which the
mysteries of the stars are disclosed. The slightest speck or flaw
blurs the image, but with the perfect glass stars unseen by any eye
throughout the history of the world are to be in our days discovered.
It is a parable of the soul. Each film on the object-glass of
character obscures the heavenly vision, but to the prepared and
translucent life truth undiscernible by others breaks upon the reverent
gaze, and the beatific vision is revealed to the pure in heart.
{71}
XXVIII
THE TWO BAPTISMS
_Luke_ iii. 16.
THE WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS.
Among the persons who group themselves about Jesus, the most dramatic
and picturesque figure is certainly that of John the Baptist. There is
in him a most extraordinary combination of audacity and humility. He
is bold, denunciatory, confident; but at the same time he is
self-effacing and preparatory in his work. He never thinks of his
service as final; after him is to come a man who is preferred before
him. There is always the larger work than his to follow. There are in
him the most beautiful humility and the most absolute bravery, and this
makes perhaps the rarest combination of traits which a character can
show. It is all summed up in his doctrine of the two baptisms: the
baptism by water, which John is to bring, and the baptism by the Holy
Ghost and by fire, which is to be brought by Jesus. Water is, of
course, the symbol of cleansing, the washing away of {72} one's old
sins, an expulsive, negative work. Fire is the symbol of passion,
enthusiasm, flame. It is illuminating, kindling, the work of the Holy
Ghost. One of these baptisms prepares for the other. First a man must
be clean and then he may be passionate. First, the fire of his base
affections must be washed away and then the fire of a new enthusiasm
may be lighted. And only that second step makes one a Christian. It
is a great thing to have life cleansed, and its conceits and follies
washed away. But that is not safety. The cleansing is for the moment
only. It is like that house which was swept and garnished, but because
it was empty was invaded by tenants worse than the first. The only
salvation of the soul lies in the kindling of a new passion, the
lighting of the fire of a new intention, the expulsive power, as it has
been called, of a new affection.
So it is in our associated life. We need, God knows, the baptism of
John, the purifying of conduct, the washing away of follies and sins;
but what we need much more is the fire of a moral enthusiasm to burn up
the refuse that lies in the malarious corners of our college life, and
light up the whole of it {73} with moral earnestness and passionate
desire for good. That is to pass from the discipleship of John to the
discipleship of Jesus, from the baptism by water to the baptism by
fire, from the spirit of the Advent season to the spirit of the
Christmas time.
{74}
XXIX
THE WISE MEN AND THE SHEPHERDS
_Matthew_ ii. 1-11; _Luke_ ii. 8-10.