before him into Jerusalem to prepare the Passover meal, while he does
not himself enter the city until the afternoon. There he meets his
friends, and after the supper he takes the bread and wine and with
entire naturalness asks them, as they eat and drink, to remember him.
Then he talks with them and prays with them, and they go out again on
the road toward Bethany; and coming to a little garden at the foot of
the hill called the Mount of Olives he bids his companions wait while
he goes, as his custom was, to pray.
We hear much discussion about prayer and its possibilities,--what we
can pray for and what God can do in return, and what is the true answer
to prayer. But what a silence comes over all such questionings when
one notices that this prayer of Jesus uttered thus {157} in this most
solemn hour was not, in the sense of these discussions, answered by his
God. It was the moment of the supreme agony of Christ. The falseness
of friends, the blindness of his people, the malice of their
leaders,--all these things seem more than he can bear. "Let this cup
pass from me," he prays, and, behold, his prayer is not accepted, and
what he asks is denied, and the cup is to be drunk. And yet in a far
deeper sense his, prayer is answered. "Thy will be done," he
prays,--not in spite of me, or over me, but through me. Make me, my
Father, the instrument of thy will; and so praying he rises with
absolute composure and kingly authority, and goes out with his prayer
answered to do that will.
What should we pray for? Why, we should pray for what we most deeply
want. There is no sincerity in praying for things which are fictitious
or abstract or mere theological blessings. Open to God the realities
of your heart and seek the blessings which you sincerely desire. But
in all prayers desire most to know the will of God toward you, and to
do it. Prayer is not offered to deflect God's will to yours, but to
adjust your will to His. When a ship's captain is setting out on a
{158} voyage he first of all adjusts his compasses, corrects their
divergence, and counteracts the influences which draw the needle from
the pole. Well, that is prayer. It is the adjustment of the compass
of the soul, it is its restoration from deflection, it is the pointing
of it to the will of God. And the soul which thus sails forth into the
sea of life finds itself--not indeed freed from all storms of the
spirit, but at least sure of its direction through them all.
{159}
LXIV
AN IMPOSSIBLE NEUTRALITY
_John_ xviii. 28-38.
(PASSION DAY--FRIDAY)
The story of Friday in this last week of Jesus begins with this meeting
with the Roman governor, and certainly few persons in history would be
more surprised than Pilate at the judgment of the world concerning him.
If Pilate felt sure of anything it was that he did not commit himself
in the case of Jesus. He undertook to be absolutely neutral. See how
nicely he poises his judgment. On the one hand he says: "I find no
fault in him," and then on the other hand he says: "Take him away and
crucify him;" First he washes his hands to show that he is innocent of
the blood of this just person, and then he delivers Jesus to the Jews
to take him away. It was a fine balancing of a judicial mind, and I
suppose he withdrew from the judgment hall saying to himself: "Whatever
may happen in this case, at least I am not responsible." But what does
history think {160} of this judicial Pilate? It holds him to be a
responsible agent in the death of Jesus. He was attempting a
neutrality which was impossible. The great wind was blowing across the
threshing floor of the nation, and the people were separated into two
distinct heaps, and must be counted forever as chaff or as wheat. He
that was not with Christ was against him, and Pilate's place, even in
spite of himself, was determined as among those who brought Jesus to
his cross that afternoon.
I was once talking with a cultivated gentleman who volunteered to tell
me his attitude toward religion. He wished me to understand that he
was in sympathy with the purposes and the administration of worship.
He desired that it should prevail. He welcomed its usefulness in the
university. But as for himself it appeared better that he should hold
a position of neutrality. His responsibility seemed to him better met
by standing neither for religion nor against it, but in a perfectly
judicial frame of mind. He did not take account, however, of the fact
that this neutrality was impossible; that it was just what Pilate
attempted, and just wherein he failed. If he {161} was not to be
counted among those who would by their presence encourage worship, then
he must be counted among those who by their absence hinder its effect.
On one side or other in these great issues of life every man's weight
is to be thrown, and the Pilates of to-day--as of that earlier time--in
their impossible neutrality are often the most insidious, although most
unconscious opponents of a generous cause.
And so to-day on this most solemn anniversary of religious history,
while it is, as the passage says of this interview with Pilate, "yet
early," let us set before ourselves, the issue just as it is now and
just as it was then. This morning demands of any honest-minded man an
answer to the question: "On which side do I propose to stand?" It is
not a demand for absoluteness of conviction or unwavering loyalty, but
it is a summons to recognize that Jesus Christ died on this day largely
at the hands of intellectual dilettanteism and indifferentism,--the
peculiar and besetting sin of the cultivated and academic life. On
which side, then, do I propose to stand; with the cultivated neutral
and his skillful {162} questioning: What is truth? or with the prisoner
who in this early morning says: "Every one who is of the truth heareth
my voice;" with Pilate in his neutrality or with Jesus on his cross?
{163}
LXV
THE FINISHED LIFE
_John_ xix. 30.
(PASSION WEEK--SATURDAY)
The last word of Jesus as he gives up his spirit is: "It is finished."
But was it what could be called a finished life? Was it not, on the
contrary, a terribly unfinished life, prematurely cut short, without
any visible effect of his work, and with everything left to live for?
Surely, if some sympathetic friend of Jesus had been telling of his
death, one of the first things he would be tempted to say would be
this: "What a fearful pity it was that he died so soon! What a loss it
was to us all that he left his life unfinished. Think what might have
happened if he could only have lived to sixty and had had thirty years
for his ministry instead of three!" And yet, as Jesus said, it was a
finished life; for completeness in life is not a thing of quantity, but
of quality. What seems to be a fragment may be in reality the most
perfect thing on earth. You stand in {164} some museum before a Greek
statue, imperfect, mutilated, a fragment of what it was meant to be.
And yet, as you look at it, you say: "Here is perfect art. It is
absolutely right; the ideal which modern art may imitate, but which it
never hopes to attain." Or, what again shall we say of those young men
of our civil war, dying at twenty-five at the head of their troops,
pouring out all the promise of their life in one splendid instant? Did
they then die prematurely? Was not their life a finished life? What
more could they ever have done with it? Why do we write their names on
our monuments so that our young men may read of these heroes, except
that they may say to us that life may be completed, if one will, even
at twenty? All of life that is worth living is sometimes offered to a
man not in a lifetime, but in a day.
And that is what any man must set before him as the test and the plan
of his own life. You cannot say to yourself: "I will live until I am
seventy, I will accomplish certain things, and will attain a certain
position;" for the greatest and oldest of men when they look back on
their lives see in them only a fragment of what they once dreamed that
they {165} might do or be. But you can design your life, not according
to quantitative completeness, but according to qualitative
completeness. It may be long or short, but in either case it may be of
the right stuff. It may be carved out of pure marble with an artist's
hand, and then, whether the whole of it remains to be a thing of beauty
or whether it is broken off, like a fragment of its full design, it is
a finished life. You give back your life to God who gave it, perhaps
in ripe old age, perhaps, as your Master did, at thirty-three, and you
say: "I have accomplished, not what I should like to have done, but
what Thou hast given me to do. I have done my best. It is finished.
Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."
{166}
LXVI
ATTAINING TO THE RESURRECTION
_Philippians_ iii. 11.
(MONDAY AFTER EASTER)
This is certainly a very extraordinary saying of St. Paul--that he
hopes to attain unto the resurrection from the dead. We are so apt to
think of the resurrection as a remote truth, to be realized in some
distant future, when some day we shall die and live again, that the
very idea of attaining to such a resurrection now is not easy to grasp.
But here we have a resurrection which can be attained any day. "I have
not already attained," says St. Paul, "but I press on." It is
possible, that is to say, for a man to-day, who seems perfectly
healthy, to be dying or dead, and for a man to rise from the dead
to-day and attain to the resurrection.
And thus the fundamental question of the Easter season is not: "Do I
believe that people when they die shall rise again from the dead?" but
it is "Have I risen from the dead {167} myself?" "Am I alive to-day,
with any touch of the eternal life?" Mr. Ruskin describes a grim
Scythian custom where, when the king died, he was set on his throne at
the head of his table, and his vassals, instead of mourning for him,
bowed before his corpse and feasted in his presence. That same ghastly
scene is sometimes repeated now, and young men think they are sitting
at a feast, when they are really sitting at a funeral, and believe
themselves to be, as they say, "seeing life," when they are in reality
looking upon the death of all that is true and fair. And on the other
hand the most beautiful thing which is permitted for any one to see is
the resurrection of a human soul from the dead, its deliverance from
shame and sin, its passing from death into life. As the father of the
prodigal said of his boy, he was dead and is alive again, and in that
coming to his true self he attains, as surely as he ever can in any
future world, unto the resurrection from the dead.
{168}
LXVII
SIMON OF CYRENE
_Luke_ xxiii. 20-26.
This Simon, the Cyrenian, was just a plain man, coming into town on his
own business, and meeting at the gate this turbulent group surging out
toward the place of crucifixion, with the malefactor in their midst.
Suddenly Simon finds himself turned about in his own journey, swept
back by the crowd with the cross of another man on his shoulder, and
the humiliation forced upon him which there seemed no reason for him to
bear.
How often that happens in many a life! You are going your own way,
carrying your own load, and suddenly you are called on to take up some
one else's burden,--a strange cross, a home responsibility, a business
duty; and you find yourself turned square round in the road you meant
to go. Your plan of life is interrupted by no fault of your own, and
you are summoned to bear an undeserved and unexpected cross.
{169}
And yet, how certain it is that this man of Cyrene came to look back on
this interruption of his journey as the one thing he would not have
missed? When others were remembering the wonderful career of Jesus,
how often he must have said: "Yes, but I once had the unapproached
privilege of bearing his cross for him. On one golden morning of my
life I was permitted to share his suffering. I was called from all my
own hopes and plans to take up this burden of another, and I did not
let it drop. It seemed a grievous burden, but it has become my
crowning joy. I did not know then, but I know now, that my day of
humiliation was my day of highest blessedness.
"I think of the Cyrenian
Who crossed the city-gate,
When forth the stream was pouring
That bore thy cruel fate.
* * * *
"I ponder what within him
The thoughts that woke that day
As his unchosen burden
He bore that unsought way.
* * * *
"Yet, tempted he as we are!
O Lord, was thy cross mine?
Am I, like Simon, bearing
A burden that is thine?
{170}
"Thou must have looked on Simon;
Turn, Lord, and look on me
Till I shall see and follow
And bear thy cross for Thee." [1]
[1] Harriet Ware Hall, _A Book for Friends_, p. 90. (Privately
printed.) 1888.
{171}
LXVIII
POWER AND TEMPTATION
_Matthew_ iv. 1-11.
All these temptations of Jesus came to him through the very sense of
power of which he could not but be aware. Here was this great
consciousness of capacity in him to do wonders, to display himself, to
get glory. How should he use his gifts? Should it be for himself, for
honor, for praise, or should it be for service, for sacrifice, for God?
The devil's temptation was that Jesus should take the gifts of which he
was conscious and make them serve his own ends of ambition or success.
The first great decision in the work of Jesus Christ was the decision
of the end to which his powers should be dedicated; the use to which
his powers should be put.
The same fundamental decision comes to every young man in his own
degree. Here are your gifts and capacities, great or small. What are
you to do with them? Are they for glory or for use? Are they for
ambition {172} or for service? The sooner that decision is made the
better. Some people have never quite done with that temptation of the
devil. They go on trying to direct their gifts to the end of
reputation, or wealth, or dominion; and they attain that end only to
find that it is no end, and that their lives, which should have grown
broader and richer, have grown shrunken, and meagre, and unsatisfied.
Such a life is like a fish swimming into the labyrinth of a weir. It
follows along the line of its vocation until the liberty to return
grows less and less; and, at last, in the very element where it seems
most free, it is in fact a helpless captive. The man's occupation has
become his prison. He is the slave of his own powers. The devil has
withered that life with his touch.
And then, on the other hand, you turn to lives which have given
themselves to the life of service, and what do you see? You see their
capacity enlarged through use, you see small gifts multiplied into
great powers. Few things are more remarkable in one's experience of
life than to see men who by nature are not extraordinarily endowed
achieve the highest success by sheer dedication of their {173} moderate
gifts. Their capacities expand through their self-surrender, as leaves
unfold under the touch of the sun. They lose themselves and then they
find themselves. The devil tempts these men, not with a sense of their
greatness, but with their self-distrust; yet he tempts them in vain.
Their weakness issues into strength; their temptation develops their
power. The angels of God have come and ministered unto them.
{174}
LXIX
LOVING WITH THE MIND
_Mark_ xii. 30.
In the great law of love to God and love to man which Jesus repeats as
the law of his own teaching, there is one phrase that seems not wholly
clear. You can love God with your heart and your soul; you can even
increase your strength by love; but how can you love with the mind? Is
it not the very quality of a trained mind to be unmoved by love or
hate, dispassionate and unemotional? Is not this the scientific
spirit, this attitude of criticism, with no prejudice or affection to
color its results?
Of course one must answer that there is much truth which can be
discovered by a loveless mind. Yet there is, on the other hand, much
truth which cannot be discerned without love. There are many secrets
of literature, of art, of music, and of the higher traits of character
as well, into which you cannot enter unless you give your mind to these
things with sympathy and affection and responsiveness; loving them, as
Jesus says, with the mind. One {175} of our preachers has lately
called attention to the new word in literature which illustrates this
attitude of the mind.[1] When people wrote in earlier days of other
people and their works they wrote biographies or criticisms or studies,
but now we have what are called "appreciations;" the attempt, that is
to say, to enter into a character and appreciate its traits or its art,
and to love it with the mind. Perhaps that is what this ancient law
asks of you in your relation to God, to come not as a critic, but as a
lover, to the rational appreciation of the ways of God. Here is the
noblest capacity with which human life is endowed. It is a great thing
to love God with the heart and soul, to let the emotions of gratitude
to Him or of joy in his world run free; but to rise into sympathetic
interpretation of his laws, to think God's thoughts after Him, and to
be moved by the high emotions which are stirred by exalted ideas,--to
love God, that is to say, with the mind,--that, I suppose, is the
highest function of human life, and the quality which most endows a man
with insight and power.
[1] Rev. Leighton Parks, D. D., in a sermon at the Diocesan Convention
of the Protestant Episcopal Church, Boston, May, 1895.
{176}
LXX
AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?
_Genesis_ iv. 9.
Cain was the first philosophical individualist; the first
"laissez-faire" economist. When God asked: "Where is Abel?" Cain
answered: "What responsibility have I for him? My business is to take
care of myself. Am I my brother's keeper?" But the interesting fact
is that Cain had been his brother's keeper though he declined
responsibility for him. He refused to be responsible for his brother's
life, but he certainly was responsible for his brother's death. He
refused to be his brother's keeper, but he was willing to be his
brother's slayer. There are plenty of people to-day who are trying to
maintain this same impossible theory of social irresponsibility. They
affirm that they have no social duty except to mind their own business;
but that very denial of responsibility is what makes them among the
most responsible agents of social disaster. They deal with their
affairs on the principle that they are nobody's {177} keeper, and so
they are stirring every day the fires of industrial revolt. We are
passing through dark days in the business world, and there are many
causes for the trouble, but the deepest cause is Cain's theory of life.
"Where is thy brother?" says God to the business man to-day,--"thy
brother, the wage-earner, the victim of the cut-down and the lockout?"
"Where is thy brother?" says God again to the unscrupulous agitator,
bringing distress into many a workman's home for the satisfactions of
ambition and power. And to any man who answers: "I know not. Am I my
brother's keeper?" the rebuke of God is spoken again: "Cursed art thou!
The voice of thy brother crieth against thee from the ground."
{178}
LXXI
PROFESSIONALISM AND PERSONALITY
1 _Corinthians_ xii. 31.
The wonderful chapter which follows this verse becomes still more
interesting when one considers its connection with the preceding
passage. Paul has been looking over the life of his Christian
brethren, and he sees in it a great variety of callings. Some of his
friends are preachers,--apostles and prophets, as he calls them. Some
are teachers, some are doctors, with gifts of healing; some are
politicians, with gifts of government. The apostle speaks to them as
though he were advising young men as to the choice of their profession,
and he says: "Among all these professional opportunities covet the
best; take that which most fills out and satisfies your life." But
then he turns from these professional capacities and adds: "Be sure
that these gifts do not crowd out of your life the higher capacity for
sympathy. For you may understand all knowledge and speak with all
tongues, and if you have lost thereby {179} the personal, human,
sympathetic relation with people which we call love you are not really
to be counted as a man. You are nothing more than an instrument of
sound, a wind instrument like a trumpet, or a clanging instrument like
a cymbal." That is the apostolic warning to the successful
professional man,--the warning against the narrowing, self-contented
result which sometimes taints even great attainments and professional
distinction. Covet the best. Be satisfied with nothing less than the
highest professional work of doctor, politician, or teacher. But
beware of the imprisoning effect which sometimes comes of this very
success in professional life, the atrophy of sensibility, the
increasing incapacity for sympathy, for public spirit, for charity,--an
incapacity which makes some men of the highest endowments among the
least serviceable, least loving, and least loved of a community. "If,"
says the apostle, "in the gain of professional success you lose the
higher gift of love, you are no longer a great man; you are not even to
be described as a small man. You are 'nothing.'"
{180}
LXXII
THE CENTRAL SOLITUDE
_John_ xvi. 32.
In one of Frederick Robertson's sermons he speaks of the conduct of
life as like the conduct of atoms, which have a certain attraction for
each other, but at a certain point of approach are repelled and do not
touch. There is in every large life a certain central solitude of this
kind into which no other soul can enter. Some persons fear this
solitude, some rejoice in it, but the use of it is the test of a man's
life. A very near friend of Dr. Brooks's once heard of a man who said
that he knew Dr. Brooks intimately; and this friend said: "No man ought
to say that. Not one of us knew Dr. Brooks intimately. There was a
central Holy of Holies in his life, into which none of us ever
entered." So it was. And this preservation of an inner privacy for
the deeper experiences of life is what proves a soul to be peaceful and
strong. Guard your soul's individual life. In the midst of the social
world keep a place for the {181} nurture of the isolated life, for the
reading and for the thoughts which deal with the interior relations of
the single soul to the immanent God.
"Thyself amid the silence clear,
The world far off and dim,
His presence close, the bright ones near,
Thyself alone with Him."
That is what makes a man strong under the tests of life. He is not a
parasitic plant deriving its life from some other life; he is rooted
deep in the soil of the Eternal. As was said of John Henry Newman,
such a man is never less alone than when alone. "He is not alone,
because the Father is with him."
{182}
LXXIII
IF THOU KNEWEST THE GIFT OF GOD
_John_ iv. 10.
We usually notice in this story the great words of Jesus--perhaps the
deepest and richest series of utterances that have ever fallen from
human lips. Yet it is almost as striking to notice the attitude of
mind in which the woman remained throughout these wonderful scenes.
She seems to have been entirely oblivious of the situation, and unaware
that anything great was going on.
Jesus speaks to her of the living water, and she thinks it must be some
device which shall save her coming with her pitcher to the well. Then
Jesus looks on her with infinite pathos and says: "If you only knew the
gift of God, and who it is that is now speaking to you!" But she does
not know, and shoulders her pitcher and trudges home again, reporting
only that she has seen some one who appeared a wonderful
fortune-teller, and never dreaming that the greatest words of human
history had been spoken to her, and her alone.
{183}