THE POWER OF THE GOSPEL
St. Paul says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the
_power_ of God unto salvation.”
Yes, the gospel is the _power_. The soul is as dead as a street car with
the power gone, till it is touched by that special power. I could kneel
at the side of a sinner and quote the very best things of Shakespeare or
Milton, and the soul would step to no higher ground; but when the right
verse of God's word is shown with the New Testament in hand, and the
Holy Spirit makes that soul see that the passage before him is God's
recorded wireless message for his soul alone, the power comes on and
that verse again proves true, “But as many as received Him, to them gave
He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His
name,” and a soul is born into the kingdom of God. Dan Crawford, the
great missionary to Africa, says not Livingstone, not Taylor, not Dan
Crawford, are the real pioneer missionaries, but the Spirit of God
Himself, and when the word is brought to a prepared soul it is a spark
of powder. He tells of one besotted Negro who read John's Gospel. The
Negro said, “I was startled that Christ could speak Chulba; I heard Him
speak out of the printed page, and what He said to me was, 'Follow me.'”
Mr. Crawford says, “When the guncotton of John's Gospel came in contact
with the tinder of his rebellion, he was literally exploded into the
kingdom,” and by continuing to study St. John's Gospel the transforming
power of the gospel made him a good earnest Christian man, fit for the
companionship of good people.
At a rescue mission we have such scenes almost every night of the year.
In our case it is usually the word first implanted in the human heart
either at a mother's knee or by some Sunday school teacher, or by a
faithful preacher in early life, then the very room of the Mission is
filled with the Holy Spirit in answer to the prayers of God's people.
Now, when a heart-broken, world-buffeted sinner comes into the room, the
words or music of some song, or the presentation of God's word, is used
by God's Spirit to bring to memory all the sinner has known of these
things; he hears redeemed men tell how God cured them of lust, of
alcoholism, of gambling, of profane language, of all sin; he sees these
men well clothed, radiantly happy, and sees and feels his own
degradation; is it any wonder he drops on his knees and cries out, “Men
and brethren, what shall I do to be saved”? When he wants God more than
he wants deliverance from his besetting sin, when he wants God more than
he wants his deserted wife and children, when he wants God for what God
can do for his poor soul, the God of his soul comes down, and at that
second the soul passes from death unto life eternal, for that soul the
decisions of the judgment day have been settled, for Jesus said,
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my words and believeth
on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into
condemnation, but is passed from death unto life.”
That verse comprehended and lived has power enough to carry a soul
through all besetments into the very presence of God.
THE CASE OF MR. ABBOTT
During the winter of 1910, there came into the Gospel Mission a man,
ragged, soiled, blear-eyed, doped and utterly down and out; he came only
for the coffee and rolls given Sunday night. Before coming up the steps
he had said to a friend, “I don't want to hear any of their blank
sermons, but I am starving.” He heard no sermon, instead he received a
warm hand-shake, he heard bright singing, but, best of all, he heard
redeemed men tell how God had saved them from the alcohol habit, till he
cried out, “If God has power to save me from the sin of drink, I want
God!” He kneeled and poured out his soul in prayer. As soon as he began
to pray aloud, we saw he was an educated man. The Spirit came upon him
in great power, he really had the searchlight of God on his soul, and he
saw himself for a short time as God saw him. Then God forgave him, he
rose justified, strong, happy, a new man in Christ Jesus. The Mission
gave him a bed for the night, and the next morning this man, who had not
worked or desired work for two years, begged that we should find a place
for him to earn his way. He obtained a situation to solicit business for
a laundry, about as hard work as one can imagine, but he made good, and
in six months he was made foreman of the laundry in which he was
employed. He modernized its methods and doubled its business by the end
of the year, and the company made him a present of five hundred shares
of stock and elected him president of the company. Then he received
$3000 a year salary, besides his percentage of all gains made by the
house. His friends claim his income is now about $5000 a year. In the
meantime, after he had been redeemed, probably four months, his wife, a
most beautiful and accomplished Philadelphia woman, brought their lovely
son, aged about eight, and they began housekeeping again. The home has
given needed physical comfort, the companionship has given the mental
and the spiritual help needed to make this former tramp into a
first-class citizen. At night, during the last winter, he has been
studying law in one of the university law schools, and on Sunday he acts
as usher and vestryman in one of the largest Protestant Episcopal
churches. As a child he had been a choir boy in a church in
Philadelphia. Doubtless the knowledge gained there as a child made him
able to understand his duty to God and man after his conversion better
far than an ignorant, uninstructed person could have done after months
of instruction.
[Illustration: CHILDREN OF ALL NATIONS]
[Illustration: SETTLEMENT HOUSE]
THE PSYCHOLOGY
of just this case is worth considering. This man was spiritually dead,
so far as we could see. He did not desire to live. The people of the
Mission had been more or less in prayer from three o'clock to eight when
this man came in. He saw religion in action in the person and speech of
redeemed men. But even if these testimonies were factors it was the Holy
Spirit that did the work. It was the divine spark to human tinder, or,
as Henry Drummond better puts it, “The spiritual world reached down and
carried this worldly soul into the world above it.” “He that hath the
Son hath life, he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” Life
depends upon contact with life, it cannot develop out of anything that
is not life.
Even as the physiologist cannot explain how the human seed generates in
a human body eventually becoming a new-born man child, neither can
theology fully explain how the Holy Spirit can touch a human soul out of
which will be born another soul in the same body with marks of its
divine parentage in every line, or, as St. Paul says, a new creature in
Christ Jesus.
I heard a distinguished man who had long been in official connection
with prisons and reformatories, say, “A reformed man is always in
danger; he may stand twenty years and then fall back into sin, but a
regenerated man is as safe from his sinful besetments as if they had not
been the weakness of his life.”
I fancy I can hear some preacher say, “If it is the word and the Holy
Spirit do the work, why does not the church have as many conversions as
a mission?” The very first element of spiritual power is lacking in most
churches. If the preacher, the official members, then every member of
the church first sought God's special blessing in private, then came
together offering first praise, then united prayer to God from the very
depths of their hearts, there would be conversions every Sunday in every
church.
Spurgeon and Moody expected conversions every Sunday, and they had them.
In presenting a soul to Christ no perfunctory Christian can do it and
have that soul received. To present a person to the King of England, let
us say, the presenter needs to be acquainted with the king; so a person
unacquainted with God has no power at the throne; he even impedes the
soul coming into the light. I have seen many a dancing, card-playing
Christian at the side of the penitent, praying earnestly, then rise
baffled, troubled, helpless; not able to reach the throne, they had no
access to God.
Often people from the States write me to present such and such a paper
in person to the President of the United States. I am obliged to reply,
“I have no access to the President of the United States,” but I daily
thank God that I have access to the throne, for I am acquainted with
God.
RELIGION WITH THE DEFECTIVE DELINQUENT
I venture to take the two following short articles from the November
numbers of 1913 of the _Survey_, the most valuable weekly magazine which
comes to my desk on all social questions:
“WHAT ABOUT JEFF?”
“Jeff is a white boy sixteen years old. I am estimating this, as
Jeff says he doesn't know how old he is and doesn't know his
surname. He has every appearance of being a little less than half
witted.
“I found Jeff this morning working, with two other white boys and
ten or twelve Negro boys, as an inmate of the County Workhouse. He
was carrying stone on a public hitch-lot. One of the white boys and
two of the Negro boys were in chains.
“Jeff has been in the workhouse for sixty days. He was placed there
for beating a ride on a railroad train. Next Monday Jeff will be
released. He will have not a cent to his name, not very good
clothes, not a relative in the country, no place to sleep and
nothing to eat.
“I have put this predicament before our city inter-church
organization, and we have seen no solution. About the best thing we
can see for this half-witted boy is that he will do something that
will again bring him within the clutches of the law in order that he
may be immediately sent back to the workhouse. At the age of sixteen
he is a human derelict, yet he has capacity to work, to love, to
respect, to enjoy, and to feel sorrow.
“There is another mentally weak boy in this same gang. If we knew
what to do with Jeff we might be able to do more for the other one.
What do you suggest?”—_W. H. Swift, Greensboro, N. C._
“SUE AND JEFF”
“'What about Jeff?' was shown to a New York settlement worker.
'Print it,' he said, 'in the hope that someone may stir up the
inter-church organizations of Greensboro to find another solution.
The question is: What about that organization? rather than poor
Jeff. He is a victim of wrong social conditions, plus his weak head;
but if there is no one in his neighborhood who can see any other
solution than the workhouse for a lad who has the “capacity to work,
to love, to respect, to enjoy and to feel sorrow,” then I suggest
that the community is worse off, a good deal, than poor Jeff. To
begin with, why don't the inter-church organization take him under
its own wing?'
“Now, it would be very easy for the inter-church organization of
Greensboro to take care of Jeff if there were only one of him.
Unfortunately, there are many hundreds of him. How many of the boys
of sixteen sent to the island from the New York City courts are of
Jeff's class? Nobody knows for certain, because nobody tries to find
out. Those of us who have lived for years among defectives and have
visited reform schools know that the number is large. Yet the
inter-church organizations of New York City do not take them under
their wings.
“The proportion of the feeble-minded Jeffs in various reformatories
has been to range from twenty to fifty per cent of all the inmates.
Every intelligent worker with prisoners knows there are many
weak-minded among them; yet the usual method of treating the
defective-delinquent (and every defective is a potential delinquent)
throughout the United States is to do with them just what our
Greensboro friend hopes to do with Jeff—send him to the workhouse as
soon as he commits his next petty crime. And we keep on doing it
over and over and over again.
“Meanwhile the proper method with the Jeffs and the Sues is so
simple and plain, so patently economical in this generation, and so
tremendously profitable for the next, that its very simplicity makes
it neglected. The colony at Templeton, Mass.; the one just organized
at Menantico, N. J.; the farm colonies at Fort Wayne, Ind.; Lincoln,
Ill.; Faribault, Minn.; Columbus, Ohio; and Letchworth Village, N.
Y., all point the way with greater or less success.
“Yet Letchworth Village was enacted by the legislature of New York
nearly five years ago. Its first commission reported 29,000 suitable
inmates pressing for care. To-day it has only 100 inmates; and the
Inter-church Federation says nothing.
“It is not worth while to get all stirred up and excited about Jeffs
in North Carolina. What have we to say about the defectives in
jails, workhouses, penitentiaries, reformatories, and prisons under
our noses in New York? Is our beam so big that we cannot see
it?”—_Alexander Johnson, Director Department of Extension, Vineland,
N. J._
Now, that was the churches' opportunity. Federation work should see that
a religious school should be started in each community for its Jeffs and
Sues. A city rescue mission could easily find work for Jeff.
I saw a Jeff come into the Sunday school of my own church. He was a
great lumbering chap of eighteen years of age, he was not quite clean,
there was the odor of the unwashed about him. He immediately went to the
class of about thirty young men of his own age. I was gratified to see
that youth seek the society of the church people rather than the saloon,
but he was not welcome with the young men. The teacher visited his home,
there was no help to be expected from the home, so the teacher, or the
class, whether by actual request or by treatment, caused Jeff to stay
away. Now, in the great day of accounts, of whom will that soul be
required? If the defective intellect, what there is of it, can be turned
to believe God, the defective is prevented from becoming a criminal. We
have them at the Gospel Mission. The very first thing is to have the
physician talk to Jeff of the sacredness of his own body to absolutely
prevent all secret habits which injure the body and brain, and the
motive of self-restraint both for physical habits and for drink must be
that these things offend a loving Saviour who walks with each one of us.
Each year I meet Dr. H. M. Freas, of Philadelphia, at Northfield. His
work as a physician frequently takes him to the asylum for the insane.
He feels most keenly that these institutions should be in the hands of
Christian people only. Many a brilliant intellect could be restored to
perfect sanity if the loving care of some saintly Protestant sisterhood
or brotherhood were in charge to bring the human love, which even the
sanest of us need, to bear on the tottering brain. These human
deficients are found in the public schools; as soon as discovered they
should be transferred to a religious school where they can be
scientifically studied, what intellect they have developed, and the
religious side of each one fostered. If then they are found permanently
deficient, especially in the moral sense, or in physical self-control,
then they should be segregated on farms for the sake of the race. People
of deficient brains become fanatics; now, if these unbalanced people
become filled with an enthusiasm of righteousness they absolutely do
much good. They constitute three-fourths of the street preachers, and
they reach many a soul who never enters a church. Religion prevents
insanity. There is no doubt that fanaticism run riot leads to the
asylum. We had one man who was insufficiently fed, badly clothed, who
spent the entire night in prayer, two or three nights of the week. Of
course, he was brought up in the insane asylum, but when he had food
enough at the asylum where he was not permitted to pray aloud, he soon
became normal, and was set free. It taught him a needed lesson.
But religion sustains us through the breaking ties of life, through the
loss of fortune, through the defection of friends, through blasted
hopes, through the anguish of children going wrong, and their punishment
by the State which follows.
Religion holds many a woman whose son is a wanderer, either criminal or
otherwise, from insanity. I know a woman who has not looked into the
face of her wandering son for six years. She stands up and sings with
radiant face, “I am going through whatever others do, I am going through
with Jesus,” and in spite of what looks an unbearable sorrow, leads a
useful and apparently happy life. A mission is a blessed thing for
enthusiasts. It sends them with flowers and literature to hospitals and
jails, it sends food to private families in need, it gives the
enthusiasts tracts to distribute, it puts musical instruments into their
hands and says, “Praise the Lord with pleasant sounds,” it sets women to
repairing clothing for the poor, to caring for little children, while
mothers earn money for food. As we do these things we talk religion, we
tell of Jesus, the friend of sinners, we make a steady effort in very
many directions to have each soul brought into harmony with God. In
almost every instance where sorrow in a family has been the result of
sin; and Jesus is allowed to become to each of them a personal Saviour;
the home is electrified by a new enthusiasm; the parents become
efficient, self-supporting, happy; the children become self-respecting;
are taken from the class needing help; and become helpers. Religion
eases the burden of life and heals the welts of adversity.
We have in Washington a club known as “The Monday Evening Club,” a
clearing house for all forms of philanthropy. At the different banquets
and at their monthly meetings all forms of reforms, from purely a
humanitarian standpoint, are discussed, but we, who go at the open sores
of the world with the only sure cure earth has yet received, the
religion of Jesus Christ, we receive no recognition, we are given no
hearing at banquets, and are never spoken of as part of the city's force
for betterment, yet we comfort the prisoner, we bring hope to the
hopeless, and we are the real protection of the city. No hungry man is
turned from our door unsatisfied. A hungry man is a danger, a man with a
hungry family is a menace. He will get food even if it costs a life to
obtain it. Like Him whom we serve we are rejected of men. We work amid
the social dynamite of a great city. Unless the religious part of this
nation assumes its rightful place as arbiter in all labor troubles,
saying to the rich man, “Thou shalt not defraud,” and to the poor man,
“Thou shalt do no violence”; unless Christian people see to it that
remunerative labor can be had by every person willing to work; unless
Christian people close the saloons (the author of seventy-five per cent
of the sufferings of the poor), on some sad day our great cities will be
systematically dynamited. As Christians we must go down among them and
make the broken man feel that he is only temporarily sidetracked from
the great highway of success. That the grace of God and his own will can
and will bring him back to the great highway of prosperity.
The Church is waking up to its full duty in social service. Bishop
Simpson, even in his day, eloquently described the mission of the Church
in the world: “The Church must grope her way into the alleys and courts
and purlieus of the city, and up the broken staircase, and into the bare
room and beside the loathsome sufferer; she must go down into the pit
with the miner, into the forecastle with the sailor, into the tent with
the soldier, into the shop with the mechanic, into the factory with the
operative, into the field with the farmer, into the counting-room with
the merchant. Like the air, the Church must press equally on all the
surfaces of society; like the sea, flow into every nook of the shoreline
of humanity, and, like the sun, shine on things foul and low, as well as
fair and high, for she was organized, commissioned and equipped for the
moral renovation of the world.”
In closing this chapter we cannot do better than to quote from the
fourth volume of the Jewish Encyclopedia, which pays this remarkable
tribute to Christianity:
“Christianity, following the matchless ideals of its Christ, redeemed
the despised and outcast, and ennobled suffering. It checked
infanticide, and founded asylums for the young. It removed the curse of
slavery by making the humblest bondsmen proud of being a child of God.
It fought against the cruelties of the arena, it invested the home with
purity and proclaimed the value of each human soul as a treasure in the
eyes of God, and it so leavens the great masses of the empire as to
render the cross of Christ the sign of victory for its legions in place
of the Roman eagle.
“The Galilean entered the world as a conqueror. The Church became the
educator of pagan nations; and one race after another was brought under
her tutorship. The Latin races were followed by the Celt, the Teuton and
the Slav. The same burning enthusiasm which sent forth the first
Apostles, also set the missionaries aglow, and brought all Europe and
Africa, and finally the American continent, under the scepter of an
omnipotent Church. Christianity is not an end, but the means to an end,
the establishment of the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God.”