[_Sunday, July 5._]
THE INFLUENCE OF JESUS.—(I note again, as a characteristic of the
morality of sonship, the way in which it secures humility by aspiration,
and not by depression.) How to secure humility is the hard problem
of all systems of duty. He who does work, just in proportion to the
faithfulness with which he does it, is always in danger of self-conceit.
Very often men seem to have given up the problem in despair, and they
lavish unstinted praise upon the vigorous, effective worker, without any
qualifying blame of the arrogance with which he flaunts the duty that he
does in the world’s face. “The only way to make him humble,” they would
seem to say, “would be to make him idle. Let him stop doing duty and
then, indeed, he might stop boasting. His arrogance is only the necessary
price that the world and he pay for his faithfulness.” To such a problem
the Christian morality brings its vast conception of the universe. Above
each man it sets the infinite life. The identity of nature between
that life and his, while it enables him to emulate that life, compels
him, also, to compare himself with it. The more zealously he aspires
to imitate it, the more clearly he must encounter the comparison. The
higher he climbs the mountain, the more he learns how the high mountain
is past his climbing. It is the oneness of the soul’s life with God’s
life that at once makes us try to be like him, and brings forth our
unlikeness to him. It is the source at once of aspiration and humility.
The more aspiration, the more humility. Humility comes by aspiration.
If, in all Christian history, it has been the souls which most looked
up that were the humblest souls; if to-day the rescue of a soul from
foolish pride must be not by a depreciation of present attainment, but
by opening more and more the vastness of the future possibility; if the
Christian man keeps his soul full of the sense of littleness, even in
all his hardest work for Christ, not by denying his own stature, but by
standing up at his whole height, and then looking up in love and awe and
seeing God tower into infinitude above him—certainly all this stamps the
morality which is wrought out within the idea of Jesus with this singular
excellence, that it has solved the problem of faithfulness and pride, and
made possible humility by aspiration.
And yet, once more, the morality of Jesus involves the only true secret
of courage and of the freedom that comes of courage. More and more we
come to see that courage is a positive thing. It is not simply the
absence of fear. To be brave is not merely not to be afraid. Courage is
that compactness and clear coherence of all a man’s faculties and powers
which makes his manhood a single operative unit in the world. That is
the reason why narrowness of thought and life often brings a kind of
courage, and why, as men’s range of thought enlarges and their relations
with their fellowmen increase, there often comes a strange timidity. The
bigot is often very brave. He is held fast unto a unit, and possesses
himself completely in his own selfishness. For such a bravery as that
the man and the world pay very dear. But when the grasp that holds a
man and his powers is not his self-consciousness, but his obedience
to his Father, when loyalty to him surrounds and aggregates the man’s
capacities, so that, held in his hand, the man feels his distinctiveness,
his distinctive duty, his distinctive privilege, then you have reached
the truth of which the bigot’s courage was the imitation. Then you have
secured courage, not by the limitation, but by the enlargement of the
life. Then the dependence upon God makes the independence of man in which
are liberty and courage. The man’s own personality is found only in the
household of his Father, and only in the finding of his personality does
he come to absolute freedom and perfect fearlessness.—_Phillips Brooks._
[_Sunday, July 12._]
TRUE CHRISTIANITY.—Lord Jesus Christ, thou eternal and only Prince of
Peace! Thou most blessed and truest rest of faithful souls! Thou hast
said, Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and ye shall
find rest to your souls. In the world ye shall have tribulation, but in
me ye shall have peace.
Alas! how often have I sought for rest in this world, but have not found
it! For my soul, being immortal, can not rest or be satisfied with
anything but thee alone; O immortal God, thou and thou alone art the rest
of our souls. The world and all that is in it is hastening to decay; they
all wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt thou change them,
and they shall be changed; but thou art the same, and thy years shall not
fail. How then shall my soul find rest in such fleeting and changeable
things?… O God, my soul can not be satisfied but in thee, the supreme
good. My soul hungereth and thirsteth after thee, and can not rest till
it possess thee.…