HEREDITARY SIN
It was an exceedingly cold night when Jake Grossman burst into the
mission, having on the apparel of a hotel cook. He did not take a seat,
but marched to the front and prostrated himself at the altar, crying,
“God be merciful to me, a sinner.” In such cases, no difference what we
are doing, all formal program is suspended and we go at once to prayer.
Jake was in deep earnest, men and women acquainted with God kneeled all
about him, presenting his case to the Saviour of men. We did not then
know his special need, but a soul in the depth of conviction wanted God,
not for one sin, but he needed cleansing from all the sins of his past
life. It must have been an hour before that soul received light. The
choir had sung softly, “I'm coming home to-night,” and like melodies;
others had come to the altar, been forgiven and gone to their seats,
when Jake Grossman rose to his feet and rejoiced that he had found peace
and pardon through the blood of Christ.
We found afterwards that Grossman was the son of the great Swiss
engineer, who had planned the great tunnel through the Alps, whose
genius had built bridges over roaring, impassable canyons, who had
planned the electric roads in all parts of Switzerland, until he was
wined and dined by scientists not only in his own country but in many
countries, so that he had acquired the alcoholic habit, after which his
brain became sluggish and at last he fell from his high estate, became a
common drunkard and died poor. The memory of the wicked shall perish.
While he was yet prosperous, using expensive wines, his only legitimate
son was born. The mother noticed that, as a child of six or seven, Jake
wanted a sip every time wine was used on the table; by twelve he could
drink a large glass of wine and not show drunkenness. By his twentieth
year Jake was a drunkard, the father dead, the mother poor and
heart-broken. Friends and relatives all advised sending Jake to America,
where wine is not used on the table, and also to get Jake away from old
companions.
He came with letters to good people, but alcoholism is not baffled by
change of location. His money gave out, the people to whom he had been
introduced refused to receive him. Fortunately his mother had taught him
to cook, so he obtained a place as an assistant cook in a Washington
hotel; later he developed into a first-class chef. When he came to the
Mission he had been discharged for drunkenness, and now, being a
redeemed man, he went back to the hotel, gave up his white clothing,
gathered up his belongings, and sought other work.
That was five years ago. Jake has often been asked by the hotels of this
city to cook for them at a salary of $100 or more a month, but Jake
daily prays, “Lead us not into temptation,” and he does not knowingly
walk into it. He shovels coal at a wage of $10 per week. He says, “You
see, it keeps me in the open air; I do not have to taste wine or smell
it; I get black on the outside, but I keep white within, which was more
than I did as a cook.”
All the heroes are not in high places. “He that ruleth his spirit is
better than he that taketh a city.” We believe God cleansed Jake
Grossman from inherited sin.
HEREDITY
I see that scientists are now claiming that a tendency to use alcohol is
not hereditary. We who work among alcoholics know that it is. God says
that the sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children unto the
third and fourth generation, and they are. God gives a high premium for
virtue to all who would take the responsibility of bringing another life
into the world.
I remember a man converted at the Breakfast Association, Philadelphia. I
had spoken on the power of God to take away even inherited tendencies of
sin from our souls. A young chap in the audience sent an usher to ask me
to see him in the after meeting. I went down the aisle till I stood by
his side. He said, “Can God save me from drink? My father was a
saloon-keeper and died drunk. My mother died a drunkard; she fed me beer
as an infant. I am now twenty-two years old; I do not remember a day in
my life that I have not used beer.” Looking over that blear-eyed crowd,
he said, “I do not want an old age like these wretches. Do you know that
I recognize among these bloats at least twenty men who are the sons of
saloon-keepers? You Christians have not yet discovered that no man puts
liquor to his neighbor's lips without destroying his own family. Now,
can God save me from the sin and shame of the old age of an alcoholic
paralytic?”
“Well, let us go to the altar and ask Him.” We knelt long at the altar.
At last he claimed that he had been accepted of God. As he started to
leave the hall he came back and said, “Do pray for me; I am afraid of
the smells of the street; I am afraid of my old companions. Pray for
me.”
“Well,” I said, “you come home with me, you are young enough to be my
son. If you were, I would want some good woman to mother you.” The next
day I took him to Lancaster, Pa., where at that time I had a number of
acquaintances among business men. I took him to quite a number before I
came to a man who would take him at all, and to a number who would take
him but not agree to help save a soul. At last I came to a Christian man
in the leather business, who agreed to take him into his family,
instruct him in the very rudiments of religion, take him to church and
Sunday school with him; in fact, to nourish this new-born soul in
Christ. We prayed together, then I left him. For a very short time I
received a postal-card each week, which I failed to answer; then, amid
the cares of a very busy life, I forgot him. About three years after
that I was walking along a street in Lancaster when a fine-looking chap
came rushing from behind me, and, placing his arm over my shoulder,
said, “Oh, God bless you! God bless you!”
I turned and found a fine-looking man with tear-dimmed eyes blessing me.
“Son,” I said, “what is your name?”
“Oh! do you not know me? I have prayed for you every day for three
years, and you have forgotten me.”
“Well,” I said, “I fancy you are so much better looking to-day than you
were then so that your own mother might not know you now.”
I walked back to the leather store with him and found my friend behind
the counter. “Mr. S.” I said, “is John Schmidt a good man?”
He did not wait to go around the counter, but, coming right over it, he
placed a hand on each of John's shoulders as he said, “I am glad to bear
witness that John is a true, good man. At first he was sorely tried to
associate only with our kind of people, but he has worked all day, gone
to school at night, gone to church and Sunday school every Sunday, and
he is about to marry one of the best young women of our church.” God had
done a perfect work of grace, and the hereditary drunkard became a good
man and a useful citizen. It must be so, for the word says the blood of
Christ Jesus cleanses from _all_ sin.
MR. KLINE'S TESTIMONY
On the evening of September 16, 1913, Mr. Kline, our Superintendent of
the Gospel Mission, gave, in substance, the following:
“It is ten years ago to-night since God, for Christ's sake, forgave my
sins. It was a day like this has been, a perfect day in September. I had
become a confirmed drunkard, so that every waking moment I kept myself
under the influence of whisky. I was a good workman, but I was conscious
that my strength had gone. Three days before I had been attacked with a
trembling which seemed like palsy. As I looked in the glass I saw the
face of a dying man. The barkeeper saw it. He said, 'Kline, take a
drink; you will shake to pieces.' It took four or five drinks to make my
hand steady enough to work. Then the barkeeper said, 'Now you need work
to bring you to strength. You may paper and fix up this bar-room.' I
went to a paper house, selected my paper, and had the man make a bill
four times what it should have been. The bill was paid and I went back
to the paper store and got my rake-off. You see, I had become dishonest
as well as a drunkard. I had been brought up in a Lutheran household in
Harrisburg by a Christian aunt, who was a member of old Zion Lutheran
Church.
“My mother had died in my infancy. I never saw her to remember her
appearance; I never saw a likeness of her, a lock of hair or a garment
which she had worn; but when dying she left a message with my aunt, a
message which never left me, even when I was farthest from God. It was
these words, 'Bring up my boy to meet me in heaven.' It was those words
which really brought me back to my mother's God.
“When I quit work in that saloon that 16th day of September, 1903, I was
all in. I saw my face in the mirror over the bar, and when I am dead I
shall not be more colorless. The barkeeper filled my bottle, and instead
of going, as usual, to my home in the southwest, I made my way up
Four-and-a-half Street. I was simply impelled by an unseen force. Behind
every tree I took a nip from the bottle, till I came to Pennsylvania
Avenue. Then I knew I dared not drink where a policeman would see me;
so, hardly knowing where I was or what I was doing, I staggered to the
old bank corner at Seventh Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. They tell me
I disturbed the meeting, but when they adjourned to the Mission Hall I
followed weeping and crying, 'I shall not go out of this hall till I am
dead or saved.'
“I have been told by Brothers Gordon and Wheeler that no drunkard we
have ever seen disgrace himself in this mission ever behaved worse than
I did. God gave them that night the grace of patience.
[Illustration: BOY SCOUTS]
[Illustration: CAMP FIRE GIRLS]
“I cried to God, 'This poor man cried, and God heard him.' I rose to my
feet, sobered and in my right mind. I gave the bottle to Brother Bratz,
and when I got out on the street I threw away my cigarettes and tobacco,
and from that day to this I have not touched or tasted either liquor or
tobacco. The next morning my hand was as steady as it is this minute.
While I was wondering what to do, a rap came to the door. It was the
saloon man's messenger, telling me to come and finish my job. I was
weak, but I was praying. In the meantime Satan was giving me the battle
of my life. The devil is a hard loser. He said, 'Well, if God could keep
Daniel in the lions' den, and the Hebrews in the fiery furnace, He could
surely keep you in the saloon.'
“But God has done better than that for me. He has kept me out of the
saloon. In my distress of mind as to whether I should finish that job or
go for my tools, I picked up my wife's Bible and I opened at these
words, 'Fear not, for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy
name, thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters I will be with
thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when thou
walkest through the fire thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the
flame kindle upon thee.' It was a message straight from heaven to my
soul. I so accepted it.
“I never finished the job. I never went after my tools, and from that
day to this I have not entered a saloon. Satan has camped on my trail
many times. I have had trials and temptations, but God has delivered me
from the sins of the flesh, whisky, tobacco and their accompanying sins.
No man who has been a drunkard can ever again safely use tobacco. An
experience of ten years in mission work, where I have seen thousands of
souls born into the kingdom, convinces me that the convert who retains
tobacco will surely slip back. Christ's redeeming blood cleanses from
all sin.
“I was a good workman and I soon had permanent work. I never failed to
make the arrangement before I entered into a contract that I was not to
be expected to enter a saloon or any other disreputable place.”
That was Mr. Kline's testimony, and I would like to say for him that God
greatly uses him and his testimony to bring fallen men back to God. He
is an acceptable preacher of righteousness in almost any pulpit in this
city, and he has done acceptable evangelistic work in many large eastern
cities. His presence in the Gospel Mission, we believe, is helpful to
all the men who come under its roof. He is an honored member of the
Luther Memorial Church.
I reaffirm, as long as one man dead in sin can be transformed into a
living, active, aggressive Christian, the words of the Scripture are as
true to-day as when the angel said, “Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for
He shall save His people from their sins.” Nothing now known to science
can accomplish what happened to Mr. H. W. Kline that night; that is, as
Prof. James so pertinently says, “Conversion is the only means by which
a radically bad person can be changed into a radically good person.”
Harold Begbie, as a psychologist, says: “Whatever we may think of the
phenomenon itself, the fact stands clear and unassailable that by this
thing called conversion, men consciously wrong, inferior and unhappy,
become consciously right, superior and happy. It produces not a change
but a revolution. It creates a new personality.” We would say a new
creature in Christ Jesus.
The religion of Christ differs from all other religions. They take the
rich, the happy, the successful, as their expositors, but Christ takes
the broken, the sorrowful, the beaten in the race, and makes them the
rich, the successful and the happy expositors of His religion.
EMOTION IN RELIGION
Prof. H. W. Wynn, D.D., one of the great writers of the _Lutheran
Observer_, has these wise words concerning the elements of emotion in
religion:
“We have discovered that religion as a purely emotional experience may
have no religion in it at all, though kindled by the emotional stimuli
that religion commands. There is an emotional element in religion, of
course, deep, powerful, pervasive; and when you give way to it,
enveloping your whole being as in an atmosphere of flame. Those tender
feelings which enter so largely into the deeper currents of our domestic
and social life—love, pity, joy, hope, the striking of the glad hand,
comradeship locking arms under the same great banner to do deeds of
heroism in the same great cause—religion calls them all up, and fires
them all with a conquering zeal.
“But, manifestly, the zeal may burn out before the deeds of heroism have
been begun. We have learned to know that the same emotional fires may be
kindled when religion is not the theme. A great crowd, an orator of
fluent and persuasive speech, music filling the air with the imaginary
shouts of an “Io triumphe” come to stay—it matters very little what may
be the occasion that has called these people together, the emotional
part of their campaign has been achieved. But, whether in religion or in
politics, it would be stupidly unwise to conclude that the excitement
itself was the end to be attained—emotion being set down as the deed
itself; or, in some way, an assured equivalent of the deed.
“In all such cases fanaticism is the result, and fanaticism has never
been an aid, but always, in the long run, an embarrassment to any great
cause. Fanaticism stops with the excitement—absurdly confounds
excitement with the cause to be maintained.
“In religion, especially, this unhappy 'transvaluation of value' is
likely to be made. For long ages it has been systematically taught that
the emotional element in religion either summed it all up or was an
unmistakable token that, then and there, it had been all summed up for
us in the exchequer of the skies. The great transaction had passed, the
thing was done when your religious ecstasy swelled to the highest, and
you found yourself, as you confidently believed, borne on its billows to
the bosom of God.”
Now, we all recognize this emotional element only as a helpful factor in
religion, but not a permanent element. I have seen a few men accept
Christ without any emotion whatever. I remember a blue-eyed, fair
complexioned man saying, “I have no especial emotion. I am truly sorry
for my sins. I confess them now and here, and I claim 1 John 1:9, 'If we
confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness.' I ask God to cleanse me. I need it
and accept it, because He has said so.” Tracy lived all right as long as
we knew of him. If converts made in evangelistic meetings were taken
into careful Bible school, they would develop into useful Christians,
and there would be no backsliding.
Now, religion, in the sense in which we use it, is a “building” process,
not “inflation,” as the aeronaut would inflate his balloon. We all know
the class of religionists who hop, jump and shout in religious meetings;
they are so busy they do not see the basket as it passes; they give no
money, they do nothing that the world would call religious except these
physical manifestations. They are intolerant to all who do not believe
as they do, they are simply to be tolerated and petted along as
deficients who mean well but cannot be counted as part of the great
organized force of believers which God is using to bring about the
kingdom of God until by training and experience they can be used among
their own class. But, among these, every now and then there comes a man
of good mentality but without education, whom God can use. His church
has no room for him, yet he has the same orders that Jesus gave to the
eleven, “Go ye and preach the gospel to every nation,” and we find him
preaching on the side streets, later a hall or church is hired, and we
have a new sect.
You remember Jane Addams tells of the young college graduate who had
taken a course in a Bible training school and in a school of
philanthropy, who, on her return home, asked the rector for religious
work, and he replied, “You might arrange the flowers on the pulpit each
Sunday.” Think of that to a soul aflame with God!
Macaulay touches off this kind of blindness in his essay on “Ranke's
History of the Popes,” in this way: “Far different is the policy of
Rome. The ignorant enthusiasts whom the Anglican Church makes an enemy,
and, whatever the learned and polite may think, a most dangerous enemy,
the Catholic Church makes a champion; she bids him nurse his beard,
covers him with a gown and hood of coarse dark stuff, ties a rope around
his waist, and sends him forth to teach in her name. He costs her
nothing. He takes not a ducat away from the revenues of her beneficed
clergy. He lives by the alms of those who respect his spiritual
character and are grateful for his instructions. He preaches not exactly
in the style of Massillon, but in a way which moves the passions of the
uneducated hearers, and all his influence is employed to strengthen the
church of which he is a minister. To that Church he becomes as strongly
attached as any of the cardinals, whose scarlet carriages and liveries
crowd the entrance of the palace on the Quirinal. In this way the Church
of Rome unites in herself all the strength of establishment, and all the
strength of dissent. Even for female agencies there is a place in her
system for devout women; she assigns them spiritual functions, dignities
and magistracies.”
How different from these enthusiasts who have not entered a church for
years; their stock in trade is largely vituperation of the churches
until they are trained into a better understanding of relative social
service. The Church is doing the real Christian work of the world in
keeping people from going wrong. Missions and their branches only hope
to catch the driftwood of humanity before it floats out into the great
ocean of eternity.
But every church in the land should have an investment in money or
personal representatives in the nearest city rescue mission. The young
people of the churches should be the choirs of the missions. They will
get inspiration as to how to do work for God in securing the conversion
of every soul committed to their care in the church and community work.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
1. On p. 51, interest on $17,000 at 5.5% would be $935 instead of $850.
2. Added “was” between he and brought on p. 103.
3. Silently corrected typographical errors.
4. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
5. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.