Jesus Christ, so far as he can get any knowledge of Him, is His servant,
the man who makes Christ a teacher of his intelligence and the guide of
his soul, the man who obeys Christ as far as he has been able to
understand Him. What, you say, the man who imperfectly understands
Christ, who don't know anything about His divinity, who denies the great
doctrines of the Church in regard to Him, is he a Christian? Certainly
he is, my friends. There is no other test than this, the following of
Jesus Christ. So far as any soul deeply consecrated to Him, and wanting
the influence that it feels that He has to give, follows Christ, enters
into His obedience and His company, and receives His blessings, just so
far He is able to bestow it. I cannot sympathize with any feeling that
desires to make the name of Christian a narrower name. I would spread it
just as wide as it can be possibly made to spread. I would know any man
as a Christian, rejoice to know any man as a Christian, whom Jesus would
recognize as a Christian, and Jesus Christ, I am sure, in those old days
recognized His followers even if they came after Him with the blindest
sight, with the most imperfect recognition and acknowledgment of what
He was and of what He could do.
And then, again, is it not very strange, certainly, that there should
be, in these later days, in all these centuries that have passed between
the day of Jesus Christ and us, that there should have come a vast
accumulation of speculation and conjecture, of theorizing and thought
with regard to Christ and what He was, and that a great deal of it
should have been very strange and should seem to us to-day to have been
very silly, a great part of it should have seemed to be but a work of
intelligences that were half dulled and blinded, full of prejudice, and
shrinking from the error and the danger in which they stood? What does
it mean--all these complicated theologies that we say are keeping us
away from the simple following of the grandest figure that has ever
presented Himself before human kind? I know not how else it can be when
I see what has been the power of Jesus over thoughts and homes and
hearts of men through all these years. It seems to be a previous
necessity that He who most fastens the heart and life of man, who seems
to be most necessary to the soul of men, shall so attract their thought,
shall so draw them all to Himself that their crudest speculations, that
their most erroneous conceptions, shall fasten upon him, and they shall
be in some true way a testimony of the way in which He has always held
the human heart. This is the way in which all crudities of theology, all
the weaknesses of speculation, all even of the most strange and foul
thoughts in regard to the life of Jesus and His manifestation in the
world, have accumulated around that gracious figure, so simple and
strong, which walks through our human life and manifests to us the God.
Surely it is in one conception of it, and the true conception of it, the
great perpetual testimony of how men have cared about Jesus, that they
have speculated about Him in such strange perplexing ways. But He about
whom the world does not care walks through the world and bears His
simple being. There is nothing that fastens upon Him, that perplexes His
life, that makes mysterious and strange the life He lives. But where is
the great man in all the history of human kind that has not gathered
about his person and work the speculations of those whom we find, with
their crude and unguided minds, have formed their theories in regard to
Him? It is the very abundance of the strange speculations with regard to
Christ, it is the very strangeness of the theories that have been formed
with regard to Him, that has shown me how He has drawn the hearts of
men, how He has not let them go, but compelled them to fasten themselves
to Him, to think about Him and try to follow Him in such poor, blind
ways as they were able to give themselves to Him in. This, then, is the
Christian faith. This is the way in which the larger life opens before
mankind, by the following of a person, by the giving of the life into
the dominion and the guidance and the obedience of one who goes forward
into that life, himself thoroughly believing in it--for Jesus believed
in it with all His human soul.
But then, we ask ourselves, is it possible that we can gather from such
a life as Jesus lived so long ago, a life that was lived back in the
very dust of history and that has come down to us in records which seem
sometimes to be flecked with tradition and obscured with the distance in
which they lived, is it possible that I should get from him a guidance
of my daily life here? Am I, a man of the nineteenth century, when
everything has changed, in Boston, in this modern civilization,--can
Jesus really be my teacher, my guide, in the actual duties and
perplexities of my daily life and lead me into the larger land in which
I know he lives? Ah! the man knows very little about the everlasting
identity of human nature, little of how the world in all these
changeless ages is the same, who asks that; very little, also, of how in
every largest truth there are all particulars and details of human life
involved; little of how everything that a man is to-day, upon every
moment, rests upon some eternal foundation and may be within the power
of some everlasting law. The wonder of the life of Jesus is this--and
you will find it so and you have found it so if you have ever taken your
New Testament and tried to make it the rule of your daily life--that
there is not a single action that you are called upon to do of which you
need be, of which you will be, in any serious doubt for ten minutes as
to what Jesus Christ, if He were here, Jesus Christ being here, would
have you do under those circumstances and with the material upon which
you are called to act. Men have tried to go back and imitate the very
activities of the life of Jesus Christ, to do the very things that He
did. Souls have fled across the sea and tried upon the hills and in the
plains where Jesus lived to reproduce the life that has so fascinated
them. They were poor and unphilosophic souls. The soul that takes in
Jesus' word, the soul that through the words of Jesus enters into the
very person of Jesus, the soul that knows Him as its daily presence and
its daily law--it never hesitates. Do I doubt--I, who see myself called
upon to be the slave of these conditions which are around me--to do this
thing? Because it is the custom of the business in which I am engaged,
do I doubt fora moment if I turn aside and open this New Testament,
which is Jesus' law with regard to that thing? I, with my passion
boiling in my veins, leading me to do some foul act of outrageous lust,
have I a single moment's doubt what Jesus would have me do if He were
here--what Jesus, being here, really wants me to do? There is no single
act of your life, my friend, there is no single dilemma in which you
find yourself placed, in which the answer is not in Jesus Christ. I do
not say that you will find some words in Jesus' teachings in the Gospel
of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John that will detail exactly the condition
in which you find yourself placed; but I do say that if, with your human
sympathies and your devoted love, you can feel the presence of that
Jesus behind the words that He said, the personal perfectness, the
divine life manifested in the human life, there is not a single sin or
temptation to sin that will not be convicted.
There is where we rest when we claim that Jesus Christ is the master of
the world, that He opens the great richness and infinite distances of
the human life, that He shows us what it is to be men. It would be
little if He did that simply with the painting of some glorious vision
upon the skies beyond; but that He comes into your life and mine, into
our homes and our shops, into our offices and on our streets, and there
makes known in the actual circumstances of our daily life what we ought
to do and what we ought not to do--that is the wonder of his revelation;
that is what proclaims him to be the Son of God and the Son of man.
Think, as you sit here, of anything that you are doing that is wrong, of
any habit of your life, of your self-indulgence, or of that great,
pervasive habit of your life which makes you a creature of the present
instead of the eternities, a creature of the material earth instead of
the glorious skies. Ask of yourself of any habit that belongs to your
own personal life, and bring it face to face with Jesus Christ and see
if it is not judged. A judgment day that is far away, that is off in the
dim distance when this world is done--it shall come, no doubt. I know
none of us can know much with regard to it, except that it is sure. But
the judgment day that is here now is Christ; the judgment day that is
right close to your life and rebukes you, if you will let Him rebuke you
every time you sin, the judgment day that is here and praises you and
bids you be of good courage, when you do a thing that men disown and
despise, is Christ. Therefore it is no figure of speech, it is no mere
ecstasy of the imagination of the preacher, when we say that in the
midst of these streets of ours, more real than the men that walk in
them, more real than the sidewalks that are under our feet, and the
buildings that tower over us, there walks an unseen presence. An unseen
presence? Yes. Are you and I going to be such creatures of our senses
that we shall not believe that there are powers that touch us that we
cannot see? Am I going to be so bound down to these poor fingers and to
these poor eyes that I shall know myself in no larger connection with
the great, unseen world? I will not. No great man, no manly man, has
ever allowed such a limitation of himself. There is the unseen presence
in the midst of our life, and he who will feel it may feel it, and that
unseen presence speaks to him continually. It knows every one of us. It
knows the rich man and knows what his wealth has made of him. It knows
whether it has made him selfish. Shall I say it? He, the Christ, the
present Christ, knows whether the rich man's riches have made him
selfish and base and mean, covetous and poor and little-souled, or
whether he has been glad to rise to the greatness of his privilege, and
be the very utterance of the beneficence of God upon the earth. He knows
the poor man and his struggles, he knows the poor man and his
self-respect. He speaks to the poor man's soul, who has been kept poor
because he will not enter into the baser methods and motives of our
modern life, and is despised, and says to him, "Be of good courage, for
I know what you are." He speaks to the poor in distress and poverty. He
speaks to the wretched in their disappointment and their pain. He is
their comforter. He knows every sin. He knows every sorrow of our life.
He goes, unseen on earth, into the chambers where the dead lie dead, and
where the sick lie dying, and He speaks His words of consolation, He
opens up the glory of the perfect life. He lays his hand upon the
mourner whose soul is bowed down to the earth and says, "Look up," and
points into eternity and heaven. All these things Christ can do not
merely, but Christ is doing. He is the inspiring power of this life,
that keeps it from rotting in its corruption and degradation. We dwell
too much, I think, upon some of these things; we cannot dwell too much,
perhaps, but we dwell out of proportion, it may be, to the thought of
Jesus Christ, the comforter of sorrow. He is the comforter of sorrow,
for he knew and he knows what sorrow is. In His own crucifixion, in that
which came before His crucifixion, He knew the suffering of this earthly
life. There is no human being who ever has known the misery of man as
Jesus knows it, and so He comes to all sorrows with tender consolation.
God grant, God grant He may come to any of you who have come into these
doors to-day with a sorrow, with a fear, with a dread upon your hearts,
with souls that are wrung, with bodies that are suffering! God grant
that the Christ may comfort you, may comfort you! But not only that.
Shall there be no Christ for those who for the moment seem to need no
comfort?
Shall there be no Christ for the strong men who have before them the
duties of their life, and who want the strength with which to do them?
Shall there be no Christ for the young men, the young men standing in
danger, but also standing in such magnificent and splendid chances? It
is great to think of Christ standing by the sorrowing and comforting
them. It is great,--we will not say it is greater,--it is very great,
when by the side of the young man just entering into life there stands
the Christ, saying to his soul, with the voice that he cannot fail to
hear: "Be pure, be strong, be wise, be independent; rejoice in Me and My
appreciation. Let the world go, if it is necessary that the world should
go. Serve the world, but do not be the servant of the world. Make the
world your servant by helping the world in every way in which you can
minister to its life. Be brave, be strong, be manly by My strength." Oh!
young man, if you can hear the Christ speak to you like that behind all
the traditions of the street, behind the teachings of the books, behind
all that the wise and successful men say to you, behind all the cynics
and sneerers say to you, the great, strong, healthy voice of Jesus
Christ, who believes in man because He has known man filled with
divinity, and believes in you because He knows that which has been set
before you by your Father in the sending out of your life, and who longs
and prays and waits to strengthen you, that you may do your work, that
you may escape from sin, that you may live your life, this great figure
of the present Christ that Christianity can produce--it is not the
memory of something that is away back in the past, it is not the
anticipation of something to come in the future. We talk about Christ
the Saviour, and think about Calvary long ago. We talk about the Christ
the Judge, and think of a great white throne set in some mystic valley
of Jehoshaphat, where some day the world is to be judged. We do not so
get hold of Christ. The Christ who is in the past is not our Christ
unless His power holds forth, the power of His spirit, which is the
whole knowledge of the life in which we live. We think of the Christ of
the future, for whom all the world is waiting. He will never enter into
us and lead us unless we know that He is here and now. It does seem to
me sometimes that if men would only take religion as a real and present
thing, and if, instead of worshipping it in the past and expecting it
with fear and dread and vain hope in the future, it could be a real
thing with them here and now, something in which they are to live, not
to which they are to flee in moments of doubt, not of which they should
make rescue, but in which they should do all their work and live, then
religion would be to the soul of man so that it could not be cast aside,
so that they must enter into it and take it into themselves and make it
their own. Religion is not the simple fire-escape that you build, in
anticipation of a possible danger, upon the outside of your dwelling and
leave there until danger comes. You go to it some morning when a fire
breaks out in your house, and the poor old thing that you built up
there, and thought you could use some day, is so rusty and broken, and
the weather has so beaten upon it, and the sun so turned its hinges,
that it will not work. That is the condition of a man who has built
himself what seems to be a creed of faith, a trust in God in
anticipation of the day when danger is to overtake him, and has said to
himself, I am safe, for I will take refuge in it then. But religion is
the house in which we live, it is the table at which we sit, it is the
fireside to which we draw near, the room that arches its graceful and
familiar presence over us; it is the bed on which we lie and think of
the past and anticipate the future and gather our refreshment. There is
no Christ except the present Christ for every man, unto whom all the
power of the historic Christ is always appearing, and who is great with
all the sweet solemnity that comes from the knowledge of what in the
future He is to be to the world and to the soul. I am anxious to-day to
impress this upon you: that the Christian faith is not a dogma, it is
not primarily a law, but is a personal presence and an immediate life
that is right here and now. I am anxious to have you know that to be a
Christian does not mean primarily to believe this or that. It does not
mean primarily, although it means necessarily afterward, to do this or
that. But it means to know the presence of a true personal Christ among
us and to follow. Here is the only true power by which a religion can
become perpetual. Men outgrow many dogmas which they hold. The lines in
which they try to live change their application to their lives. But I
know a person with a deep, true life; I enter into a friendship with one
who is worthy I should be his friend, and he is mine always. What is the
meaning of this sort of talk that we hear about a faith that they held
once, but they have outgrown? What is the reason of this expectation
that seems to have spread itself abroad, of necessity that the boy who
had a religion should lose his religion some time or other, and that by
and by he should take up a man's religion somewhere upon the other side
of the gulf of infidelity and godlessness, through which he has passed
in the mean while? You expect your boy of ten years old to be religious
with a child's sweet, trusting faith; and you hope that your man of
forty and fifty, beaten by the world, is to have found a God who can be
his salvation. But the years between? What do you think of your young
men of fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, and thirty years old? To have
outgrown the boy's faith, and not to have come to the man's faith? That
seems almost to be an awful fate and destiny which you expect for them.
But if our faith be this, then there shall be no need, no chance that a
man shall outgrow it. Know Christ with the first conceptions, imperfect
and crude, of his boy's life, and he shall go on knowing more and more
of that Christ. That friend, the Christ he knows at twenty-five, shall
be different from the Christ he knew at ten, just exactly as the friend
I know at fifty is different from the friend I knew at thirty, twenty
years ago; and yet He is the same friend still, forever opening the
richness of an ever richer life, filling it with new experiences, with
new manifestations of Himself. Let him drop something which seemed to
him to be a part of the religion, but was only a temporary phase or
condition of it, going forward with the soul all through the opening
stages of life, and at last going forward with the soul into the life
where it shall see as all along it has been seen, and know as it has
been known. The old legend was that the clothes of the Israelites, which
the Bible said waxed not old upon them in the desert during those forty
years, not merely waxed not old those forty years, but grew with their
growth, so that the little Hebrew who crossed the Red Sea in his boy's
clothes wore the same clothes when he entered into the Promised Land. It
is the parable of that which comes to the man who has a true Christian
faith, a faith which comes in the personal friendship of Christ, a faith
which comes not in the belief of certain things about Him, not in the
doing slavishly of certain things which it seemed as if it had been said
by Him that we must do, but in the personal entrance into His nature in
a life for Him, in which He is able to send His life down into us.
Then there is another thing that people are always thinking, that I hear
very often from men, and that I have no doubt that I should hear from
many of you, one by one. You talk about your earlier religion as if it
had been some sort of a bondage from which you had escaped. How common
it is to hear men, especially in this region, say: "I would be, perhaps,
religious, except that there was so much religion forced upon me in my
earliest days. I was driven to church when I was a boy, in those old
Puritan days. I went to school, where they forced prayers upon me all
the time. I was made to be religious, so now I cannot be religious." Was
there ever a more dreadful thing than for a soul to say that, because,
it may be, of the unwisdom, or the imprudence, the overzeal and the
mistaken zeal of other men, we have not got the full blessing of that
rich, open, free life with Christ which the youth may have, and
therefore we will abandon the privileges of our higher life which is
given to us in our manlier years? It all comes of this awful way of
talking as if religion were the duty and not the inestimable privilege
of human kind. The Christ stands before us and says, "Come to me." You
say, "Must I?" And He answers, "You may." He will not even say, "You
must." You may. And duty loses itself in privilege, and the soul enters
into independence and escapes from its sins, fulfils its life, lays hold
of its salvation, becomes eternal, begins to live an eternal life in the
accepted and loving service of Christ.
Now just one word, my friends. If this be so, whether you to-day are
ready to make Christ your master and your friend or not, do not, I beg
you, let yourself say that it is a silly or unreasonable belief, thus to
know of a spiritual presence which is here among us, in which God is
really in humanity. Do not let yourselves say, my friends, that the man
who gives himself to Jesus Christ and earnestly tries to enter in deeper
and deeper into his life and tries to do his will, that he may know the
Christ and know himself in the Christ more and more--dare not call that
brother a fool, as you have sometimes called your Christian man who
watched scrupulously over his life and prayed, yes, prayed, the thing
you think perhaps the foolishest thing that man can do, the thing that
is the most reasonable act that any man does upon God's earth. If man is
man and God is God, to live without prayer is not merely an awful thing:
it is an infinitely foolish thing. When a man for the first time bows
down upon his knees and prays, "Oh! Christ, come unto me, reveal Thyself
to me, make me to know Thee, that I may receive Thee, make me to be
obedient that I may take Thee into my life," then that man has claimed
his manhood. I beg you, I implore you, I adjure you that, if you be not
ready to be Christian, you at least will know that the Christian life is
the only true human life, and that the man who becomes thoroughly a
Christian sets his face toward the fulfilment of his humanity, and so
for the first time truly is a man. "As many as received Him,"--so the
great Scripture word runs of this Christ of whom we have been
talking,--"As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the
sons of God."
Just think of it!--the sons of God! The power to become that to as many
as will receive the present Christ.
VI. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.[1]
"He chose David also His servant, and took him away from the sheepfolds;
that he might feed Jacob His people, and Israel His inheritance. So he
fed them with a faithful and true heart, and ruled them prudently with
all his power."--PSALM lxxviii. 71, 72, 73.
While I speak to you to-day, the body of the President who ruled this
people, is lying, honored and loved, in our city. It is impossible with
that sacred presence in our midst for me to stand and speak of ordinary
topics which occupy the pulpit. I must speak of him to-day; and I
therefore undertake to do what I had intended to do at some future time,
to invite you to study with me the character of Abraham Lincoln, the
impulses of his life and the causes of his death. I know how hard it is
to do it rightly, how impossible it is to do it worthily. But I shall
speak with confidence, because I speak to those who love him, and whose
ready love will fill out the deficiencies in a picture which my words
will weakly try to draw.
We take it for granted, first of all, that there is an essential
connection between Mr. Lincoln's character and his violent and bloody
death. It is no accident, no arbitrary decree of Providence. He lived as
he did, and he died as he did, because he was what he was. The more we
see of events, the less we come to believe in any fate or destiny except
the destiny of character. It will be our duty, then, to see what there
was in the character of our great President that created the history of
his life, and at last produced the catastrophe of his cruel death. After
the first trembling horror, the first outburst of indignant sorrow, has
grown calm, these are the questions which we are bound to ask and
answer.