religion discerns the {101} morning star. It believes in its own time.
It believes that somehow "good will be the final goal of ill." Even in
the perplexities and disasters of its own experience it is not
overwhelmed. It is cast down, but not destroyed. It is saved by hope.
It lifts its eyes and beholds through the clouds the gleam of the
morning star.
{102}
XLI
LIVING AS DEAD
_Revelation_ iii. 1.
Was there ever a message of sterner irony than this to the Church of
Sardis: "Thou hast a name that thou livest, and thou art dead"! We may
suppose that it was a church of apparent prosperity, with all the
machinery of church life, its ritual, and officers, and committees, all
in working order; and yet, when one got at the heart of it, there was
no vitality. It was a dead church. It could show--as the passage
says--no works fulfilled before God. It was like a tree which seems
all vigorous, but which, when one thrusts into the heart of it, proves
to be pervaded by dry-rot. There are plenty of such churches
still,--churches which have a name that they are living, but are dead.
They are counted in the denominational year-book; they go through the
motions of life; but where is their quickening, communicating,
vitalizing power? What are they but mechanical, formal, institutional
things, and how sudden sometimes, like {103} the falling of a dead
tree, is the collapse of a dead church!
There is the same story to tell of some people. They have a name that
they are living, but they are practically dead. For what is it,
according to the New Testament, which makes one live, and when is it
that one comes to die? "To be carnally minded," answers St. Paul, "is
death, and to be spiritually minded is life." "He that heareth my
sayings," answers Jesus, "hath passed from death into life." What a
wonderful word is that! It is not a promise that the true Christian
shall some day, when his body dies, pass into an eternal life. It is
an announcement that when one enters into the spirit of Christ he
passes, now, in this present world, from all that can be fairly called
death, into all that can be rationally called life. Under this New
Testament definition, then, a man may suppose himself to be alive and
healthy, when he is really sick, dying, dead. A man may perhaps, as he
says, see life, while he may be really seeing nothing but death. Or a
man may be, as we say, dying, and be, in the New Testament sense, full
of an abundant and transfiguring life.
{104}
And so it becomes an entirely practical question, which one may ask
himself any morning, "Am I alive to-day, or am I dead? Is it only that
I have the name of living, a sort of directory-existence, a page in the
college records, a place in the list of my class, while in fact there
is dry-rot in my soul? Or is there any movement of the life of God in
me, of quickening and refreshing life, of generous activity and
transmissive vitality? Then death is swallowed up in victory, and I am
partaking even in this present world of the life that does not die."
{105}
XLII
THE OPEN DOOR
_Revelation_ iii. 8.
A few years ago, at the first service of the college year, one of our
preachers took for his text this message to the church at Philadelphia:
"Behold, I have set before thee an open door;" and it has always seemed
to me to represent with precision the spirit of our worship here. We
have abandoned the principle of compulsion. We do not force young men
of twenty to come here and say their prayers. We simply set before
them an open door. The privilege of worship is permitted to them from
day to day, and religion stands among us, not as a part of college
discipline, but as the supreme privilege of a manly human soul.
Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely. Indeed, this
same text represents the spirit of our whole university life. What we
call the elective system is a method of invitation and persuasion. It
multiplies opportunities. It does not compel the allegiance of the
indifferent. He that is lazy, let him be lazy still. {106} The
university sets before the mind of youth its open door.
And this, indeed, is what one asks of life. What should a free state
in this modern world guarantee to all its citizens? Not that equality
of condition for which many in our days plead, the dead level of
insured and effortless comfort, but equality of opportunity, a free and
fair chance for every man to be and to do his best. That land is best
governed where the door of opportunity stands wide open to the humblest
of its citizens, so that no man can shut it.
And what is the relation of religion to the life of man, if it be not
of this same enlarging and emancipating kind? Here we are, all shut in
by our routine of business and study and preoccupation, and religion
simply opens the door outward from this narrowness of life into a
larger and a purer world. It is as if you were bending some evening
over your books in the exhausted air of your little room, and as if you
should rise from your task, and pass out into the night, and the open
door should deliver you from your weariness and your self-absorption,
as you stood in the serene companionship of the infinite heavens and
the myriad of stars.
{107}
XLIII
BEHOLD, I STAND AT THE DOOR AND KNOCK
_Revelation_ iii. 20.
To the church at Philadelphia it was promised that the door should be
opened; but here was a church at Laodicea which had deliberately shut
its door on the higher life. It was a church that was neither cold nor
hot, a lukewarm, indifferent, spiritless people, and to such a people,
willfully barring out the revelations of God, comes the Christ in this
wonderful figure, standing at the door like a weary traveller, asking
to be let in. Such a picture just reverses the common view which one
is apt to take of the religious life. We commonly think of truth as
hiding itself within its closed door and of ourselves as trying to get
in to it. We speak of finding Christ, or proving God, or getting
religion, as if all these things were mysteries to be explored, hidden
behind doors which must be unlocked; as if, in the relation between man
and God, man did all the searching, and God was a hidden God.
{108}
But the fundamental fact of the religious life is this,--that the power
and love of God are seeking man; that before we love Him, He loves us;
that before we know Him, He knows us; that antecedent to our
recognition of Him must be our receptivity of Him. Coleridge said that
he believed in the Bible because it found him. It is for the same
reason that man believes in God. God finds him. It is not the sheep
which go looking for the shepherd, it is the shepherd who finds the
sheep, and when they hear his voice, they follow him.
This is not contrary to nature. The same principle is to be noticed in
regard to all truth. Take, for instance, any scientific discovery of a
physical force, like that which we call the force of electricity.
There is nothing new about this wonderful power. It has always been
about us, playing through the sky, and inviting the mind of man. Then,
some day, a few men open their minds to the significance of this force,
and appreciate how it may be applied to the common uses of life. That
is what we call a discovery; it is the opening of the door of the mind;
and one of the most impressive things about science to-day is to {109}
consider how many other secrets of the universe are at this moment
knocking at our doors, and waiting to be let in; and to perceive how
senseless and unreceptive we must seem to an omniscient mind, when so
much truth, standing near us, is beaten back from our closed minds and
wills. It is the same with religious truth. Here are our lives, shut
in, limited, self-absorbed; and here are the messages of God, knocking
at our door; and between the two only one barrier, the barrier of our
own wills. Religious education is simply the opening of the door of
the heart. A Christian discipleship is simply that alertness and
receptivity which hears the knocking and welcomes the Spirit which
says: "If any man will but open the door, I will come in to him, and
sup with him, and he with me."
{110}
XLIV
HE THAT OVERCOMETH
_Revelation_ xxi. 7.
In each one of these letters to the churches there is repeated like a
refrain, a sort of _motif_ which announces the character of all,--this
final phrase: "He that overcometh." He is to receive the promise, he
is to inherit these things, he is to be the stone in the temple of God.
The reward and blessing are to be not for the shirks or runaways or
easy-going of the world, but for those who, taking life just as it is
with all its hardness, overcome it. It is the manly summons from the
soft theory of life to the principle which one may call that of
progress through overcoming resistance.
A great many lives are spoiled by the soft theory of life. They expect
to get out of life a comfort which is not in it to give. They go about
looking, so to speak, for a "soft course" in the curriculum of life,
hoping to enroll in it and be free from trouble. They ask of their
religion that it shall make life easy and safe and clear. But the
trouble is {111} that the elective pamphlet of life does not announce a
single soft course. The people who try thus to live are simply
courting disaster and despair. Some day, perhaps in some tragic
moment, every man has to learn that life is not an easy thing, but that
it is at times fearfully and solemnly hard. Nothing is more plainly
written on the facts of life than this,--that life was meant to be
hard. Trouble and disaster, and the inevitable blows of experience,
are absolutely certain to teach this truth sooner or later, and the
sooner one learns it the better for his soul. And if life was not
meant to be easy, what was it meant for? It was meant to be overcome.
It stands before one like the friction of the world of nature, which is
always seeming to retard one's motion, but which makes really the only
condition under which we move at all. If there is to be any motion
through life, then it must be by overcoming its friction. If life was
meant just to stand still, then it might stagnate in a soft place; but
life was meant to move, and the only way of motion is by overcoming
friction, and the hardness of the world becomes the very condition of
spiritual progress. What we call the rub of life is {112} then what
makes living possible. What we call the burdens of life are the
discipline of its power. Not to him who meets no resistance, nor to
him whose shoulder is chafed by no cross, but to him who overcometh is
the promise given that God will be his God, and that he shall be God's
son.
{113}
XLV
THE PRODIGALITY OF PROVIDENCE
_Matthew_ xiii. 1-9.
I wish to dwell for several mornings on this parable of the sower, and
for to-day I call attention to the air of prodigality which pervades
this story. There seems to be an immense amount of seed wasted. Some
of it falls on the roadway; some of it is snatched away by the birds;
some of it is caught among the bushes. Yet the sower proceeds in no
niggardly fashion. He strides away across the field scattering the
seed broadcast, far beyond the border where he expects a crop, for he
knows that, though much shall be wasted, whatever seed may fall on good
ground will have miraculous increase. There may be prodigality of
waste, but there shall be prodigality of reproduction. If but one seed
in thirty takes root in good soil it may produce thirty or sixty or a
hundred fold.
Such is the prodigality of Providence. And it comes close to many
experiences, and {114} interprets many perplexities of life. A man
goes his way through life scattering his efforts, distributing his
energy, doing his work as broadly and generously as he can, and some
day he notices what a very large proportion of all that he does comes
to nothing. Much of the soil where he sows seems hard and barren, and
he might as well be trying to raise wheat on a stone pavement. It
seems to be simply effort thrown away. But then some other day this
man makes this other discovery,--that some very slight effort or
endeavor or sacrifice or word has been infinitely more fruitful than he
could have dreamed. It was an insignificant thing which he did, but it
happened to fall at the right time in the right place, and he is almost
startled at its productiveness.
And so he takes his lesson from the prodigality of Providence. Of
course it will happen that the great proportion of his efforts will
come to nothing. Of course he is to be misjudged and ineffective and
barren of results; but if only one word in a hundred falls in the right
soil, if only one effort in a hundred touches the right soul, the
hundred-fold fruitage brings with it ample {115} compensation. Thus he
strides cheerfully over the fields of life with the broad swing of an
unthrifty mind, expecting that much of his seed will fall among the
thorns and rocks, but with faith that the harvest--even if he is not
himself permitted to reap it--is yet made safe through his fidelity to
that prodigal Providence which miraculously multiplies the little he
can do, and makes it bear fruit, sometimes a hundredfold.
{116}
XLVI
THE HARD LIFE
_Matthew_ xiii. 1-9.
Let us look still further at this parable of the sower. There are
described in it various kinds of lives on which God's influences fall,
and fall in vain. The first of these is the hard life,--hard, like a
road, so that the seed lies there as if fallen on a pavement, and gets
no root, and the pigeons come and pick it up. We usually think of the
hard life as if it were a life of sin. We speak of a hardened sinner,
of a hard man, as of persons whom good influences cannot penetrate.
But the hard soil of the parable is not that of sin. It is that of a
roadway, hardened simply by the passing to and fro. It is the
hardening effect of habit. Sometimes, the passage says, your life gets
so worn by the coming and going of your daily routine, that you become
impenetrable to the subtle suggestions of God, as if your life were
paved. Some people are thus hardened even to good. They lose capacity
for impressions. {117} Some people are even gospel-hardened. They
have heard so much talk about religion that it runs off the pavement of
their lives into the gutter. Thus the first demand of the sower is for
receptivity, for openness of mind, for responsiveness. Give God a
chance, says the parable. His seed gets no fair opportunity in a life
which is like a trafficking high-road. Keep the soil of life soft, its
sympathy tender, its imagination free, or else you lose the elementary
quality of receptiveness, and all the influences of God may be
scattered over you in vain.
{118}
XLVII
THE THIN LIFE
_Matthew_ xiii. 1-9.
The first thing which hinders God's seed from taking root is, as we
have seen, hardness,--the life which is trodden down like a road; an
impenetrability of nature, which is not a trait of sinners only, but of
many privileged souls. The second sort of unfruitful soil is just the
opposite of this. It is not the unreceptive, but the impulsively
receptive life. It is not too hard, or too soft, but it is too thin.
It is a superficial soil which has no depth of earth, and so with joy
it receives the word; but the seed has no depth of earth and quickly
withers away. This sort of soil receives quickly and as quickly lets
go. It is like that unstable man of whom St. James writes and who is
like the wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed. We see the
wave come flashing up out of the general level, catching the sunshine
as it leaps and crowned with its spray, and then we look again for it,
and where is {119} it? It has sunk again into the undistinguishable
level of the sea.
Thus the parable turns to this instability and says: "It is bad to be
hard, but it is bad also to be thin." When tribulation or persecution
arises, something more than impulsiveness is needed to give a root to
life. How strongly and serenely Newman writes of this:--
"Prune thou thy words, the thoughts control
That o'er thee swell and throng;
They will condense within thy soul
And turn to purpose strong.
But he who lets his feelings run
In soft luxurious flow,
Faints when hard service must be done,
And shrinks at every blow."
{120}
XLVIII
THE CROWDED LIFE
_Matthew_ xiii. 1-9.
In the parable of the sower the third kind of soil is one which is very
common in modern life. The first soil was too hard, and the second too
thin, and now the third is too full. It is overgrown and preoccupied.
Other things choke the seed. There is not room for the harvest. The
influences of God are simply crowded out. And of what is life thus so
full? Of two things, answers the parable. For some it is full of the
cares of this world, and for some it is full of the deceitfulness of
riches. Care is the weed that chokes plain people, and money is the
weed that chokes rich people. Sometimes a poor man wonders how a rich
man feels. Well, he feels about his money just as a poor man does
about his cares. His wealth preoccupies him. It is a great
responsibility. It takes a great deal of time. It crowds out many
things he would like to do. The poor man says that {121} money would
free him from care, but the rich man finds that money itself increases
care. Thus they are both choked by lack of leisure, one by the demands
of routine, and one by the burdens of responsibility. And this parable
says to both these types of life: "Keep room for God." It comes to the
scholar and says: "In this busy place reserve time to think and feel;
do not let your cares choke your soul." And then it goes out to the
great scrambling, money-getting world, and sees many a man hard at work
in what he calls his field, watching for things grow in his life, and
finding some day that he has been deceived in his crop. He thought it
was to come up grain and it turns out to be weeds. He sowed money and
expected a harvest of peace; and behold! he only reaps more money.
That is the deceitfulness of riches.
{122}
XLIX
THE PATIENCE OF NATURE
_Matthew_ xiii.; _Mark_ iv. 27.
The parable of the sower, which begins with its solemn warnings against
the hard life, the thin life, and the crowded life, ends with a note of
wholesome hope. Who are they who bring forth fruit in abundance? They
are, the parable says, not great and exceptional people. The
conditions are such as any life can fulfil. It is an honest and good
heart which hears the word and keeps it and is fruitful. Nothing but
sincerity and receptivity is demanded. A plain soil is productive
enough. God only needs a fair chance. He only asks that life shall
not be too hard, or too thin, or too crowded.
This is a saying of great comfort to plain people. And yet, even for
these, one last demand is added,--the demand for patience. If fruit is
to be brought forth it must be "with patience." The autumn comes, but
not all at once. Jesus is always recalling to us the gradualness of
nature; first the blade, {123} then the ear, then the full corn.
Nothing in nature is in a hurry. It is not a movement of catastrophes,
it is a movement of evolution. And so the last word of the parable is
to the impetuous. What a hurry we are in for our results. We look
about us among the social agitations of the day and demand a panacea;
but God is not in a hurry. Delay, uncertainty, doubt, are a part of
Christian experience. It brings forth its fruit with patience. It is
like these lingering days of spring, when one can discern no intimation
of the quickening life; and yet one knows that through the brown
branches the sap is running, and slowly with hesitating advance the
world is moving to the miracle of the spring.
{124}
L
THE DISTRIBUTION OF TALENTS
_Matthew_ xxv. 14-30.
The parable of the talents takes up the side of life which is not
emphasized in the parable of the sower. In the story of the sower God
is doing the work and man is receptive of his influence. In the story
of the talents God is a master who leaves his servants to do his work,
and the parable is one of activity. These men are responsible agents.
Life is a trust. That is the natural teaching of the parable. All
these men are accountable; there has been given to them that which is
not their own, a trust from God, to be used in his service. But then
enters the extraordinary teaching of this parable as to the fact of
diversity. We talk of men as created free and equal. The cry of the
time is for equality of condition, for leveling down the rich, and
leveling up the poor; for paying the genius and the hod-carrier alike;
time for time, and man for man. But this parable stands for no such
definition of {125} equality. It recognizes diversity. Some have many
talents and some have few. To each is given "according to his several
ability." Diversity of condition is accepted as a natural feature of
human life, just as the hills and valleys make up the landscape. The
parable does not make of life a prairie.
Where then, in this diversified life, is justice, the social justice
which men in our time so eagerly and so reasonably claim? There is no
justice, answers the parable, if the end of life is to be found in
getting the prizes of this world; for some are sure to get more than
others. The justice of this diversity is found only in its relation to
God. It is in the proportional responsibility of these holders of
different gifts. Of those to whom much has been entrusted much will be
required; of those who are slightly gifted the judgment will be
according to the gift. There is no absolute standard. The judgment is
proportional. One man may accomplish less than another, and yet be
more highly rewarded, for he may do the less conspicuous duty laid on
him better than the man with the larger trust does his. The parable
humbles the privileged and encourages the disheartened. {126} There is
no distinction of reward between the five-talent man and the two-talent
man. Each has done his own duty with his own gifts, and to each
precisely the same language of commendation is addressed. They have
had proportional responsibility, and they have identical reward. Both
have been faithful, and both enter into the same joy of their Lord.
{127}
LI
THE LAW OF INCREASING RETURNS
_Matthew_ xxv. 14-30.
The parable of the talents adds to its doctrine of responsibility a
second teaching. It is its doctrine of interest; the return to be
looked for from investment in the spiritual life. The economists have
a law which they call the law of diminishing returns; but Jesus calls
attention to the converse of that principle,--the law of increasing and
accelerated returns. We see this principle on a great scale in the
world of money. Money has a self-propagating quality. It breeds
money. If you should ask a very rich man how he accumulated his
fortune he would tell you that the first savings involved great thrift
and wisdom or great good luck, but that after a while his wealth flowed
in upon him almost in spite of himself. He began to get money, and the
more he got the more easily he got more. Now this law, says Jesus,
which is so obvious in the business world, is true in a much deeper way
of the {128} spiritual life. Knowledge, power, faith, all grow by
investment. Use of the little makes it much; hoarding what you have
leaves it unfruitful. Do you want to know more? Well, put what you
now know to use. Invest it, and as you seem to spend it, it increases,
and you have found the way to the riches of wisdom. Do you want faith?
Well, use what faith you have. Try the working hypothesis of living by
faith. Our ancestors in New England trading used to send out on their
ships what they called a "venture." They took the risks of business.
There is a similar venture of faith, which says: "Lord, I believe, help
thou mine unbelief." He who sends the venture of his faith over the
ocean of his life may look for a rich cargo in return. To the faithful
in the few things the many things are revealed. That is the law of
increasing returns.
{129}
LII
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF WEALTH
_Matthew_ xxv. 14-30.