Produced by Al Haines
Five Young Men
Messages of Yesterday for
the Young Men of To-day
By
CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN
_Dean of the School of Religion, Yale University_
NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO
Fleming H. Revell Company
LONDON AND EDINBURGH
Copyright, 1917, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street
_To the Young Men_
_of Yale_
_Whose friendship I have highly
valued and in whose future
I feel the warmest interest_
Preface
These addresses were given in the United Church on the Green, New
Haven, Connecticut, on the Sunday evenings of Lent. The audiences were
made up largely of men, many of them Yale students. I have brought the
addresses together in this little book with the hope that they may have
a certain value in their appeal to a wider audience of young men who in
school and college, in their homes and in business life, are making
those determinations which will decide the issue for them in those
exacting years which are before us.
It has been given to us to live through one of the great crises of the
world's history. In these days the hearts of men are being tried as by
fire. If it is "wood, hay and stubble" that we are putting into our
personal moral structures, into the purposes and methods which rule our
industrial life and into our national temper and fiber, then we may
expect to see our work destroyed. The only qualities which will stand
the test are those qualities which are symbolized by "gold, silver and
precious stones."
C. R. B.
_Yale University._
Contents
I. THE YOUNG MAN WHO WAS A FAVOURITE SON
II. THE YOUNG MAN WHO WAS AN ATHLETE
III. THE YOUNG MAN WHO BECAME KING
IV. THE YOUNG MAN WHO WAS BORN TO THE PURPLE
V. THE YOUNG MAN WHO CHANGED THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD
I
The Young Man Who Was a Favourite Son
Which would you say is the harder to bear, adversity or prosperity? I
am not sure. If I were a betting man I would not know on which horse
to put my money.
The Bible says, "The destruction of the poor is their poverty." The
narrowness and the meagreness of their lives, the lack of access to the
highest interests seems to drive them oftentimes into the coarser forms
of indulgence which are their undoing. The Bible also says, "It is
easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich
man to enter the Kingdom of God." The millionaire who strives to be
thoroughly Christian in all his attitudes and actions, in the secret
desires which rule his own soul and in the relations he sustains to his
fellow men by reason of his wealth has a hard task. In every great
city you will find the sons of millionaires falling down or flinging
themselves away in thoughtless dissipation where the sons of toil are
standing up and making good.
Here, for example, was a young man who was born on the sunny side of
the street. He was the son of a rich man, and the favourite son. He
was handsome--"It came to pass that Joseph was a goodly person and well
favoured." He was habitually well dressed--"His father gave him a coat
of many colours," which there in the Orient marked him as a young man
of style. He had a vivid imagination and was a good talker. He was a
young man of parts and his story was so interesting to those early
Hebrews that here in the Book of Genesis thirteen full chapters are
given to his personal history.
Let me notice three points in his career--first, his early
unpopularity. You do not have to know Hebrew to understand why he was
not as popular as Santa Claus. He was his father's favourite, which is
a heavy load for any child to bear. He lived in a family where there
were four sets of children. His father had married two wives, Rachel
who was handsome because he loved her, and Leah who was "tender-eyed,"
the Scripture says, because she was the daughter of his employer at
that time and it was good business. There were also children who had
been born to the two housemaids, according to the easy customs of that
far-off time and place. Joseph was the son of Rachel, the favourite
wife, and her favourite son. He wore the signs of this parental
popularity in the gay coat of many colours. It was almost inevitable
that he should become vain and overbearing.
He was also a talebearer. He looked down with unconcealed contempt
upon his half-brothers who were the sons of the housemaids. "When
Joseph was with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah he brought unto his
father their evil report."
The tattler in the school and the squealer on the street come in,
justly perhaps, for the contempt of their fellows. And whatever
allowance may be made for exceptional situations, the instinct which
brands the talebearer as mean is mainly wholesome. It was One who knew
what was in man who said, "Why beholdest thou the mote in thy brother's
eye and considerest not the beam in thine own eye? Judge not that ye
be not judged." It is well for every man to sweep his own dooryard
first before he begins to peddle stories as to the condition of his
neighbour's dooryard.
This young man also had his full share of that conceit which thinks
quite as highly of itself as it ought to think. He had his daydreams,
and this was well. I would not give a fig for the young fellow who
does not see ahead of him masses of possible achievement in his
particular line as high as the Sierras, if not quite so solid. But
Joseph was soft and callow enough to tell his day-dreams to his fellows
before he had done anything to indicate that those dreams might come
true.
He told his brothers that he would be the tallest sheaf in the field
and that they as lesser sheaves would come and make obeisance before
him. He went still further and included his elders and betters in that
general bowing down. He said, "Behold the sun and moon and the eleven
stars made obeisance to me." He saw himself as the centre of the whole
solar system and the rest of his family revolving about him as minor
satellites. This day-dream of the ambitious young man was too much
even for his indulgent father. "And Jacob rebuked him for his dream."
There you have all the necessary ingredients for a family explosion.
When any young man is a favourite son, and a talebearer, and is filled
to the eyes with self-conceit, he has in him the sulphur, the
saltpeter, and the charcoal which enter into the composition of that
sort of gunpowder which is liable to blow him up. You do not wonder
that his brothers hated him. You are not surprised that when they saw
him coming across the fields at Dothan they said with a sneer, "Behold,
the dreamer cometh!"
We might naturally expect that they would conspire against him. They
proposed to see whether or not this conceited young tattler would
become the tallest sheaf in the field and the centre of the whole solar
system there in little Canaan. He had himself to thank for getting in
wrong with his associates. He was not showing the qualities which make
for peace and joy and advancement.
But in the second place he was sent early in life to the school of
adversity. The place where he "prepared" was not much like "The Hill"
or Hotchkiss; it bore no resemblance whatever to Andover or Exeter. He
took all the grades in the commonest of all common schools. He was
under the tuition of struggle and difficulty. He was a Freshman, then
a Sophomore, a Junior and a Senior in the University of Experience,
where the college colours are always "black and blue" because the
lessons are learned by hard knocks. He learned obedience by the things
that he suffered. He had the conceit taken out of him by being knocked
down. He knew the meaning of the word "discipline," so that he could
have spelled it and parsed it forward and backwards and crosswise.
He was tried in these three ways: first, by being sold as a slave boy
into Egypt. His father sent him out to Dothan to see how his brothers
were faring with their flocks. When they saw him coming across the
plain they said, "Behold the dreamer! Let us cast him into a pit and
see what will become of his dreams."
His brothers seized him and threw him into a deep well, where there was
no water, intending to let him die in that horrible way. But when a
company of Ishmaelites came along on their way to Egypt, a happier
thought struck those men. Judah, who was always a thrifty soul, said,
"What profit is it if we slay our brother and conceal his blood?"
There is no money in murder. "Let us sell him to the Ishmaelites."
Here was the proverbial instinct, an eye for the main chance, already
on its feet and doing business in the very childhood of that race,
which has enjoyed such marked success in commercial pursuits. "Let us
sell him and let not our hand be upon him, for"--here emerges Mr.
Pecksniff, who is much older than the time of Dickens--"for he is our
brother and our flesh." His argument was plausible and the men drew
Joseph out of the pit and sold him to the Ishmaelites who carried him
down into Egypt. Now the hands of the ten men were not stained with
innocent blood and they were also twenty pieces of silver to the good.
How human and how modern were the mental processes of those crafty men!
The man who decides to coin his brother's life into money instead of
killing him with an axe has chosen so much milder a form of wrong-doing
that he feels almost virtuous. "Let us not slay our brother"--that has
an atrocious sound. It smacks of the doings of gunmen. Let not our
hand be upon him for he is our flesh!
"But let us sell him"--this is so much more humane! Let us burn out
his energy swiftly in the long hard hours of the steel mill to make our
profits large. When he is exhausted before his time we can scrap him,
flinging him aside to make room for a fresh hand. Let us set the pace
in the factory so sharp that the man in middle life cannot hold it--he
will be compelled to drop out and tramp the streets in search of a job,
while some younger man takes up his work. Let us keep the wages of the
working girl so near the danger line that unless she is splendidly
fortified with moral stamina she may be tempted after she has sold her
days to greed to add to her income by selling her nights to shame.
Let not our hands be stained by the murder of our own flesh and
blood--let us sell them in these more delicate and refined ways to
increase the toll of profits! The voice of Judah is still heard in the
land. There on the plains of Dothan this favourite son fell into the
hands of greed and was sold as a slave boy into the land of Egypt.
He was also tested by the accusations of an evil-minded woman. When
the Ishmaelites disposed of him in Egypt he was purchased by Potiphar,
an officer in Pharaoh's guard. He was made a house servant. He showed
himself diligent and faithful and was advanced until he was the
overseer of Potiphar's whole establishment.
He was a handsome young Hebrew, his complexion being much fairer than
that of the dark-skinned Egyptians. He attracted the attention and won
the admiration of Potiphar's wife, who was an evil-minded, faithless
creature. As Joseph went about the house in the discharge of his
duties she approached him repeatedly with her solicitations to evil.
He did not look her in the eye, as Billy Sunday suggests in his brisk
way, and say, "Nothing doing." He said something infinitely better
than that--"There is none greater in this house than I. My master hath
kept back nothing from me but thee. How then can I do this great
wickedness and sin against God."
He was not one of those men who do in Rome as the Romans do, who do in
New York as Broadway does, even though that may mean a less wholesome
type of conduct than they are accustomed to put up in their home towns.
He was a man of principle wherever he was placed. How can I sin
against God!
Heaven be praised for men of principle and for men who are not afraid!
A well-to-do Harvard student in one of the dormitories was shaving one
morning when a wretched woman of the street slipped into his room
through the door which he had left ajar. She shut the door and with
her back against it said to him, "Give me fifty dollars instantly or I
will scream for help." He looked around at her and said, "Yell
away"--and went on with his shaving. He knew that his own life was
clean. He had lived as a man of integrity and he felt that his
statement would be taken anywhere against hers, because it was worth
one hundred cents on the dollar. And she knew it--so she slunk out
like a whipped cur. If he had compromised with her or had given her a
dollar, he might have been in for endless trouble and disgrace.
But Joseph was not in Cambridge--he was in Egypt. He was not a
well-known Harvard student--he was only a slave boy there in the house
of his master. When this woman whom he had repulsed made her ugly,
lying accusation against him she was believed and he was thrown into
prison.
What indeed has now become of his dreams! He was a stranger in a
strange land. He was a slave who had been jailed on an ugly charge.
He must have felt that he was a long way from becoming the tallest
sheaf in the field or the brightest star in the sky.
He was also tested by the ingratitude of those whom he had befriended.
While he was in jail he did not for one hour give up his hope of
advancement. He kept right on, attending the school of those
instructors whose names are printed in the catalogue as Professor
Adversity, Professor Difficulty and Doctor Discipline. He found them
most capable teachers. They did not teach him much of that which is
found in text-books, but they were teaching him to be a man, which
after all is the main object of all education.
When Joseph was knocked down he did not wait for some Red Cross nurse
to come with "first aid to the injured." He got right up and was there
on the mat ready for the next round. And the young fellow with that
sort of stuff in him learns, I care not how soft, callow and conceited
he may have been in his "prep. school" days.
He was in prison, but since nothing better offered he would show
himself the best prisoner behind those bars. He bore the false
accusation of that lying woman without a word of recrimination lest he
should injure the honour of his master, who had befriended him when he
was in his employ. He spent his days not in laziness nor in vice, not
in repining and dejection. He bore himself with such a thoughtful,
unselfish spirit that he won the favour of the warden and was made a
kind of overseer among the prisoners of his ward.
He won the regard and confidence of his fellow prisoners by his
sympathetic interest in their welfare. When they were perplexed they
came to him. The butler and the baker from Pharaoh's household were
imprisoned for some fault, and when they dreamed Joseph interpreted to
them their dreams in skillful fashion. And when the butler was
pardoned out a few days later, according to Joseph's prediction, he
promised to remember his friend when once more he stood in Pharaoh's
presence.
But after the manner of many he forgot all about his fellow prisoner in
the joy of his own release. Joseph still lingered in jail. How
sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless friend! There
in the jail he drank to the dregs the cup of ingratitude.
But read on, read on! The Lord has not let His voice fall yet. This
is not a period--it is only a comma or semicolon. The mills of the
gods grind slow, but they grind; and to every man who merits it a good
grist comes at last. Read on!
There came a night when Pharaoh dreamed. The monarch saw seven fat
cows come up out of the River Nile, which was the source of all
fertility there in the Delta. Then he saw seven lean cows come up out
of the river and they ate up the seven fat cows and yet remained as
lean and hungry as they had been before. In the morning Pharaoh called
for his wise men and his magicians, but they could make nothing of it.
Then the chief butler remembered his fault. He remembered Joseph who
had interpreted his own dream in yonder prison. He told Pharaoh of
that strange experience, and the monarch promptly sent for this gifted
young Hebrew. "Seest thou a man diligent in his business he shall
stand before kings." Joseph had shown himself diligent in his business
as a servant in the house of Potiphar, and as a prisoner he had made
himself useful to the warden of the jail. Now he is summoned to stand
before the ruler of all the land of Egypt.
He is the same man in name as when he walked across the fields of
Dothan with his heart full of conceit, but how much he has learned!
His coat of many colours has been replaced by the dull gray of the
prison garb. He has acquired new moods and new methods and a finer
quality of manhood. When Pharaoh called upon him to interpret his
strange dream, Joseph replied modestly, "It is not in me.
Interpretations belong to God. And God shall give Pharaoh an answer of
peace." It was in this mood of reverent, expectant awe that he
undertook the interpretation of the monarch's dream.
How character ripens in adversity! Wheat ripens best under smiling,
sunny skies, but the rigorous winter of hardship and struggle is
demanded for the maturing of those fine qualities of mind and heart
which make up character at its best. Men have found by experience that
it is impossible to produce apples of the choicest flavour where there
is no frost. I am quite sure that the best type of human excellence
cannot be secured without frost. "He is testing me," Job said, when
all those troubles fell upon him; "He knows the way that I take and
when He has tried me I shall come forth as gold."
Here was a young man who in early life had been a spoiled child, a
conceited prig, a talebearer among his fellows, but in the hard school
of adversity he had learned to labour and to wait. He could now endure
as seeing One who is invisible.
The law of gravitation never forgets anything, never overlooks
anything. It matters not whether it is a pound of feathers or a ton of
lead or a planet, the power of gravitation is right there attending to
business. If a man falls out of a fifth story window in New York, in
Constantinople, or in Calcutta, the law of gravitation is there and the
man gets hurt. The moral order never forgets anything, never overlooks
anything. What men sow, they reap, though the harvest be long delayed.
If they sow to the flesh, sometime, somewhere they go out with bruised
hands and bleeding hearts to reap corruption. When they sow to the
spirit they will in the same inevitable way reap life eternal. Here at
last the man of purpose and of faith is reaping the results of
discipline bravely met and nobly borne.
This young man owed his ultimate success to the fact that he was a man
of vision. There is a certain fascination in the story of any life
which rises from obscurity to eminence. Whether the path lies from the
log cabin of a rail splitter to the White House, from the lowly work of
the lanyard to the head of victorious armies, or from a pit on the
plains of Dothan to a palace on the banks of the Nile, there is
something in the human heart which responds to the unfolding of such a
life-story.
The Hebrews were happy in relating how men of their race had made their
way up to places of honour at alien courts through the sheer force of
their own personal ability. Here was Joseph coming up out of the
prison house to the right hand of Pharaoh! Here was Daniel preferred
above the other presidents and princes at the court of Darius! Here
was Benjamin Disraeli belonging to a race formerly disfranchised in
England becoming at last Prime Minister of Her Most Christian Majesty
Queen Victoria! Let every man who looks down upon some lowly life
beware lest he despise what God has blessed!
Here was a young man who had vision! He saw things. He did not merely
"look," as would some dog that bays the moon. When he walked across
the plains of Dothan his mind was not altogether upon wool and
mutton--he was already dreaming of high achievement in his future
years. When he was thrown into the pit and sold into slavery his brain
was busy with the stars. When he faced temptation he saw it all with
the eye of faith--how could he do this great wickedness and sin against
God. And when he was confronted with a problem confessedly too hard
for him he lifted up his eyes to the hills from whence cometh help.
"It is not in me. The interpretation of life belongs to God."
He was only seventeen years old when he walked across the fields that
day to the place where his brothers kept their flocks. Now he was
thirty. He had increased in stature, in wisdom and in favour with God
and man. It had taken thirteen long years to add those cubits to his
height, but they had been well spent. The Almighty takes His time in
working out His finer effects. The spoiled child, the censorious
talebearer, the callow, conceited youth must be wrought upon by the
beat and play of human life. When any man has vision and faith there
is a divinity which shapes his ends, rough-hewn though they be by
doting fathers and envious brothers, by false accusers, and by
ungrateful companions. When a man is faced right, all things, no
matter what shape they bear, will ultimately work together for his good.
"A man in whom the spirit of God is"--that was Pharaoh's verdict when
Joseph had skillfully interpreted his dream, indicating that the seven
fat cows coming up out of the Nile meant seven years of plenty in the
land of Egypt, and that the seven lean cows following them and
devouring them meant seven years of famine, which would tax the
resources of Pharaoh's empire in feeding the hungry people. And when
the monarch had listened to the wise words, had sensed the humane
spirit of this young Hebrew, and had seen the look of faith upon his
face, he felt that no other man would be so competent to become High
Commissioner of the Food Supply there in the land of Egypt. Thus
Joseph was set in a place of authority at Pharaoh's right hand.
His dreams are coming true! He had framed his first anticipations out
of sheaves. Then his mind began to be busy with the stars. He was
destined to have a part in preserving the life of his own Hebrew race
and a part in that moral movement which would outlast the stars
themselves. Through all those long hard years which lay between the
pit of Dothan and the palace of Pharaoh, he was sustained by that
vision of things divine which shone perpetually in his sky.
"A man in whom the spirit of God is"--here is the ultimate reason for
every splendid advance! Here is the ultimate reason why any man is
able to rise from those lower levels where wool and mutton are the main
considerations to those higher levels where he becomes a trusted
implement in the hand of God for a service that will endure.
The young man was a man of faith. He had faith in God. He had faith
in his fellows, as he showed when he generously forgave the brothers
who had wronged him, having them as ruler of Egypt utterly in his
power. He had faith in himself because the spirit of God dwelt in his
heart. And it matters not whether it is Egypt or Connecticut, the
eighteenth century before Christ or the twentieth century after Christ,
it is "by faith" that men work righteousness and obtain promises, wax
valiant in fight and beat back the armies of aliens.
In the long run the world belongs to the idealist. The ultimate
shaping of its life is in the hands of the men who walk the busy
streets and dusty lanes with their feet on the ground but with their
heads and their hearts among the stars. The men of vision and faith
sometimes lose a skirmish; now and then they are defeated in a battle;
but when the war is fought through to a finish they are on the winning
side.
Here in this company there may be many a favourite son. You are
inexpressibly dear to the hearts of those parents. Their thoughts,
their prayers and their efforts are all reaching out for the best
things for you. They do not know and you do not know what hard tests
may lie ahead. You too may be sent for thirteen long years to the
school of adversity, but if the spirit of God is in your heart, if you
have faith, a vital and personal faith in Jesus Christ, if you have
caught the vision of what life may be made to mean at its best, then it
lies within your power also to achieve.
II
The Young Man Who Was an Athlete
What a roomy place the Bible is! It is not filled up with model men
and women. It is not filled up with nice little boys and girls, all
neat and sweet, good enough to be angels right off with no alterations.
It is peopled with imperfect, blundering folk like ourselves.
Some of these samples of human life are offered to us for our
imitation, and some by way of warning. The wide variety exhibited
shows how God can use and bless the better elements in many a life
where the wheat and the tares grow together until the harvest. The
divine purpose shows an amazing measure of hospitality. "The love of
God is broader than the measure of man's mind."
We come for example to the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. It is the roll
call of men of faith. "By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent
sacrifice than Cain." By faith Enoch was translated that he should not
see death because he walked with God. By faith Noah built an ark for
the saving of his house. By faith Abraham went out to found a nation
in which all the nations of the earth should be blessed, not knowing
whither he went. "By faith Moses chose rather to suffer affliction
with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season."
"And what shall I say more," the author remarks in passing. "Time
would fail me to tell of all the men who by faith subdued kingdoms and
wrought righteousness, obtained promises and put to flight the armies
of evil, Gideon and Barak, Samson and Jephthah."
Samson! The very presence of his name in this catalogue of moral
heroes all but takes away one's breath. What does this big husky
fellow, this wild, fun-loving chap have to do with the working out of
the divine purpose for the race? We are as much surprised as we would
be if we had found Jack Johnson undertaking to preach the Gospel, or
John L. Sullivan trying to be elected as a professor in Princeton
Theological Seminary. Samson as a hero of the faith! Surely this is
"Saul among the prophets." We will be interested in studying the life
of this young man who had the build and the mood of an athlete.
He had in his youth the strength and promise of a mighty man. He
caught a young lion and seizing it by its jaws ripped it apart as an
ordinary man would have rent a kid. He caught up the jaw-bone of an
ass and slew heaps and heaps of his enemies in personal combat. He
carried off the gates of a city and hid them on the top of a hill as if
he had been celebrating Hallowe'en. He would have been the making of
any football team. If he had furnished the forward thrust of a flying
wedge it would have gone through any line that might have stood in its
way.
It would not be easy to draw a hard and fast line here between the
prose and the poetry of these narratives. Something of history and a
great deal of folk-lore undoubtedly are blended in these stirring
tales. There are many passages in the earlier portions of the Bible
which have more value for the history of ideas than for the history of
actual occurrence. They are full of truth though they may not always
conform to sober fact. They are parables rather than records.
But we may be sure that this interesting young giant had something more
than mere physical prowess. He had in him some of the elements of
genuine leadership else he would not have been regarded as a judge and
a leader in Israel, raised up for a great work. The people would never
have woven these stories about his name nor enrolled him among the
moral heroes of their race had he not possessed some of the elements of
real strength. He had in him the sense of power--it is a quality which
all men covet and all women adore.
He had a keen sense of the joy of living. We are glad that the element
of humour was not left out of the Bible. It would not have been so
human, so complete, so unmistakably "the Book of Books" had this been
lacking. I am sure that the Almighty has a sense of humour. He must
have or He never would have created pelicans and monkeys. "He that
sitteth in the heavens shall laugh," we read--and He must have laughed
when He made these curious creatures. He was willing to give this
fun-loving Samson a place on the roster of the Army of the Lord.
Samson stands out on the pages of Scripture as a big, overgrown,
rollicking boy looking upon life as one huge joke. His major study was
to turn the laugh on the dull-witted, slow-going Philistines. He tore
the young lion and when a swarm of bees had made honey in the carcass
Samson made this riddle,--"Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of
the strong came forth sweetness." He propounded his riddle to the
Philistines and made them a bet that they could not guess it. And when
they wheedled the answer to the riddle out of Samson's wife he retorted
upon them in coarse fashion, "If ye had not plowed with my heifer, ye
would not have guessed my riddle."
He carried off the gates of the city of Gaza and hid them. He caught
foxes and tied firebrands to their tails and then turned them loose in
the ripe wheat fields of the Philistines, roaring aloud over the havoc
they made. He slew his enemies with the jaw-bone of an ass and then
made a clever pun (which the Hebrew reveals) upon the name of his
homely weapon.
He was the joker of the pack. Time and again in the days of his power
he was able to take the trick. When he came to die that element of
grim humour was still in his heart. He had lost his strength because
he had slept for a night with his head in the lap of his enemy. His
foes had put out his eyes and had made him to grind as a slave in one
of their mills. Now he was brought as a kind of paid jester to one of
their feasts to make fun for the party.
There in the house of his foes, holding fast to a door-post he prayed
in grim fashion that his former strength might for a moment be renewed,
"that he might be avenged upon his enemies for the loss _of one of his
two eyes_." He would leave the rest of the account to be settled
later. When he had them roaring with laughter at some of his sallies,
he pulled down the house upon their heads and killed them all,
perishing himself in the disaster. He was full of humour and had a
deep sense of the joy of living.
He was a strange mixture of good and evil. Here was a blend of
weakness and of strength! Here was the baser metal mingled as an
unworthy alloy with much that was fine gold. "Samson got the laugh on
the Philistine men," as William R. Richards said once in Battell
Chapel, "but their sisters avenged themselves on him by making a slave,
a tool, and a fool of him. This old writer tells his story straight on
without stopping to moralize. But where can you find a better sermon
on the need of personal purity? Of the two forms of sin which
especially assail young men, Samson might guard us from one by way of
example, and from the other by way of warning. Touching no wine, for
he was a Nazarite from his birth, he excelled in strength. But placing
his head in the lap of a false woman whose name was Delilah, there came
to him weakness, blindness, the prison house, and the grave."
He refused the cup which cheers and also inebriates, but he gave his
heart and his strength to that alluring enemy of the divine purpose who
ruined him. Where a young man is a physical weakling, then if his mind
is dull and his heart mean, he is at least all of a piece. He is
consistent in his make-up. Where his body is strong as was the body of
this young giant, revealing in every movement of it that joy and vigour
which come with abundance of life, then if his mental and moral life
are weak and thin, there is something tragic in that walking lie. The
outward man promises so much, but the inward man is a wail of
disappointment.
"The Philistines took him," is the terse comment of the writer upon
Samson's unhappy career. But his sins had already taken him captive.
He had become the bond servant of his own passions. He was already a
slave through his lack of self-control.
"The wages of sin is death"--if you doubt it read through to the end
the story of any man who is headed wrong and keeps going in that
direction. You will find the word "Death" written over against his
name in five capital letters. Read the story of this young man who in
his youth was so "strong and sunny," as his name in the original has
it. When you read on you presently find him dead in his eyes, as he
gropes his way about the prison house in the land of the Philistines.
He is dead in his muscles as he weakly turns the wheels of a mill,
which was the work commonly assigned to women in those rude tribes. He
is dead in reputation--the fool and the jester brought in to make sport
at the table of his captors! He is dead in his soul for he is unaware
that the Lord has departed from him. The wages of sin is death.
Whether pay day comes the following Saturday night or at the end of the
year, or in the final outcome, in every case the sorry result will be
the same.
We are compelled to say that Samson's life was a tragedy because he
failed at these three points. He never learned to take life seriously.
The joker is not the best card in the pack, except by an arbitrary
rule--and in all the better games at cards, the joker is thrown out.
When all is said and done, life is serious business. The humour, the
amusement, the recreation are only the sauce on the table to give an
added zest and relish--they are not the roast beef and potatoes. You
cannot live on them nor by them. The man who laughs and laughs loudly
and laughs at everything will have the laugh turned on him. The very
fact that he has never brought his life under the power of a serious,
definite, compelling purpose will cause him to be left far in the rear
by those men who waken up early to the fact that the world is not to be
taken as a joke.
There was a certain joy no doubt in carrying off the gates of Gaza. I
can recall certain episodes on the evening of the thirty-first of
October when the carrying off of the gates of some neighbour seemed to
me to fill the cup of life to the brim. There is a certain joy in
getting a cow up into the pulpit of the College Chapel or into the
belfry of some church on a dark night--the young fellow who has never
helped to solve that problem in physics has missed something. There is
a time to read the paper we call "Life," and to see some man on the
stage who can be as funny as William Collier. Where all these are the
diversions of a mind devoted to serious ends, where they are only the
by-product of human interest, they have a rightful place in our regime.
But their lines are soon spoken, and the stage must be cleared for
those who have something of more moment to tell. "How much do you
really care?" the world is asking. "How ready are you to think
intently upon something which has no more fun in it than a page of
figures or an array of unyielding facts? How far are you ready to bend
all the best energies of body, brain and heart to the gaining of some
worthy end? How completely have you set your heart upon that which is
vital?" Your answer to these questions will in large measure tell the
story of your future achievement.
This young man failed because he had not acquired the habit of
persistence. His big deeds were all done in a hurry, and they were
soon over. He carried off the gates of the city in ten minutes. He
tore the young lion apart in an instant. He slaughtered the
Philistines with the jaw-bone of an ass in less time than I am taking
in telling it. He tied torches to the tails of the foxes and let them
loose in the wheat fields in a careless half hour of thoughtless sport.
You do not find the man binding up a lifetime of effort into a moral
unit by an all-inclusive and dominant intention. He was never ready to
work and to keep on working until achievement of a worthy sort should
crown his effort.
You cannot drive a long nail in to the head by hammering around all
over the board. You must hit the nail on the head and keep on hitting
it on the head until you have sent it home. You cannot sink the shaft
of a mine by digging all around over the mountainside. You must dig in
one place and keep on digging in one place persistently until you have
sunk your shaft to the vein of ore. You cannot build a life that is
worthy to be the life of a child of God unless you gird yourself for
that persistent effort which lies between you and the goal upon which
you have set your heart. It cannot be done in an hour, or in a day, or
in a year. The hard task of presenting to Him a life which will bear
His own eye and win His approval will mortgage the best strength of all
your best years.
You may have the body of an athlete. You may have a mind with splendid
capacity in it for real achievement. You may have a heart which reacts
as promptly as gunpowder when a spark of genuine aspiration is applied
to it. You may have all these--I hope you have--but unless you have
learned the high art of staying by, of holding on, of keeping at it no
matter what comes, you are doomed to defeat.
How often you see a young man of generous impulse, of kindly
disposition, like Esau, faltering and failing as the years come and go
until at last he is little better than a vagabond upon the face of the
earth. How often you find a man of purpose and persistence, like
Jacob, with many an unfortunate trait in him, with a heavy moral
handicap to overcome, finally winning out by the sheer force of his
spiritual tenacity. "Be thou faithful unto death," the promise has it,
"and I will give thee the crown of life." The crown is held in reserve
for those who persist clear through to the end.
This young man failed because he lacked the favour of God. In the
early stages of his career we read of a divine element in his life.
"The woman bare a son and called his name Samson, and the Lord blessed
him. And the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him" for those
deeds of valour.
However we may interpret these expressions the fact is plain that so
long as he kept his life clean and true he had the sense of divine
reinforcement making him equal to the tasks which fell to his lot.
Then there came a time when by his own actions he forfeited all this.
He became as weak as a rag in the face of temptation, in the presence
of duty, in some great opportunity for valiant effort which opened
before him. And he did not realize how weak he was until he went down
in defeat. "He wist not that the Lord had departed from him."
The spirit of self-indulgence, I care not whether it goes straight for
the coarse sins of the flesh or moves in more refined ways towards the
life of selfish ease and barren culture, will take the iron out of a
man's blood. It will take the vim out of his muscles, the power to
hold fast out of his will.
The man who saves his life for his own personal gratification will soon
find that he has no life to save. That which makes life life is gone.
It is the habit of self-control, the spirit of self-surrender to the
will of God, the purpose of self-dedication to the highest ends in
sight, which puts power into the thrust of each man's effort.
The circular letter which Lord Kitchener, head of the War Office, sent
to every British soldier when the English troops were ordered to the
Continent reads like a classic:
"You are ordered abroad as a soldier of the King. The honour of the
British Army depends upon your individual conduct. You have a task to
perform which will need courage, energy, and patience. Be on your
guard against excesses. You will find temptation both in women and in
wine. Resist both and do your duty bravely. Fear God. Honour the
King.
"(Signed) KITCHENER."
Hang those great words up in your mind! Hang the picture of that
strong, stern, brave man in your heart that you too may wear the cross
of honour.
If it is good for men to be sober and clean in war time, why not at all
times? Have we not sore need of these same qualities in the more
exacting pursuits of peace? Every man who is worthy of the name of man
is set to guard some sacred interest, though he carries neither gun nor
sword.
Here is the everlasting fight being waged three hundred and sixty-five
days in the year--and it is waged year in and year out for there is no
discharge in that war--against hunger and cold, against disease and
death, against poverty and crime! Why not have men at their best in
the mill and in the mine, on the farm and in the factory, in the
counting-room and in the places of trade? The armies which are sent
forth to save, to feed, and to clothe men's lives, no less than the
armies of bloodshed have need of the same high discipline. They, too,
are crippled and broken, they are driven back and hurled to defeat by
those moral foes which march under the banner of self-indulgence.
Here is an evil traffic which flaunts its wares in our faces in every
city block where the forces of righteousness have not risen in strength
to cast it out. But we have fallen upon times when the economic forces
are lining up solidly with the verdict of medical science and the power
of religion in a relentless opposition to the use of alcohol as a
beverage. In these days the man who thinks more of his job than he
does of his grog has the floor.
The wise railroad managers know full well that a tippler in the cab of
an engine or at the flagman's post means sooner or later a frightful
accident with loss of property and life. The owners of intricate and
delicate machinery in the great factories know that placing in control
men whose brains have been clogged and drugged with liquor is as
foolish as throwing sand into the ball bearings. "Safety First" means
"Sober First." The taxpayers are becoming no less insistent--they have
learned that the open saloon means added crime and poverty where they
must foot the bills. Decent people have grown tired of cleaning up the
muss and the dirt occasioned by the rum sellers. The moral forces of
the community recognize the fact that the liquor business allies itself
openly with immoralities of every sort. The people are saying in state
after state, in country after country, "Time's up! You have failed to
show your right to be! You will have to go." The habit of indulgence
in that which robs men of strength, of intelligence, of conscience,
finds every good man's hand against it.
We read in this strange story that Samson's strength was in his hair.
When his locks were cut away by the fair and false hand of evil he was
as weak as a woman.
How much of sober history and how much of poetic allegory there may be
in these glowing statements it is not easy to say. But the moral
content of this record is clear. When those slender and delicate lines
of contact which, as he believed according to his vow as a Nazarite,
bound him in loyalty to the source of all strength, were broken, then
his splendid prowess was no more. "It is that little half-inch rim of
the tree where the sap runs up to the sun that makes the tree alive or
dead." However you phrase it in the clearer light of this twentieth
century of ours, guard with all diligence those lines of communication
between your own inner life and the life of God. Maintain within
yourself that faith and hope and love which will bring to you your own
full measure of strength and joy.
The dull, sad picture of this defeated man is not wholly unrelieved by
any brighter touch. When he was shorn of his strength, robbed of his
honour, stained in the quality of his manhood, we read, "Howbeit the
hair of his head began to grow again after he was shorn."
It was only a gleam of hope, but it was a gleam. It was a far-off
promise of that divine redemptive process which has become the basis of
our trust. His claim upon the divine favour and his hold upon the
sources of strength were not utterly forfeited by his acts of
evil-doing. His hair began to grow again and a hope of moral recovery
was begotten in his heart. "If we say we have no sin we deceive
ourselves; but if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to
forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
Let me close with this plain, straight word of appeal as strong as I
can make it! You need God in your life. You need Him not as a
philosophical belief touching the origin and ground of all finite
existence; not as a mere dogma to be written at the head of your
Confession of Faith; not as a name to be introduced into some liturgy
which you may occasionally employ. You need God as a present, personal
and profound experience. To know Him is to live, and to live well.
It was Phillips Brooks who said once to an audience of Harvard men,
"Here is the last great certainty, be sure of God! By simple, loving
worship, by continual obedience, by keeping yourself pure even as He is
pure, creep close to Him, keep close to Him, and in the end nothing can
overthrow you."
III
The Young Man Who Became King
In some wise way when the door of opportunity opens upon a trying
situation there comes forth a man of sufficient size to perform the
task. When the time is ripe for the Protestant Reformation Martin
Luther is ready and walks in. When the day arrives for Napoleon
Bonaparte to be sent to St. Helena and the peace of Europe restored,
the Duke of Wellington, representing British tenacity, is ready. When
the hour has struck for American slavery to be destroyed by words and
laws and grape-shot, William Lloyd Garrison and Abraham Lincoln and
Ulysses S. Grant are ready. Back of every emergency God waits. He has
His great right hand full of men and when the fullness of time is come
He brings upon the scene His own appointed man.
Here in a very old book is the story of the greatest king that Israel
ever had! The House of Tudor in England, the House of Hohenzollern in
Germany or the late House of the Romanoffs in Russia, never had such a
hold upon the popular imagination and affection as did "the house and
lineage of David" upon the hearts of the Hebrews. The One who was to
be born "King of kings and Lord of lords" to reign forever and ever was
to come from "the house and lineage of David."
But how was this country boy with rough hands and all the marks of toil
upon him to become king? He was no Crown Prince--Jonathan was the
eldest son of the reigning monarch. He was neither the eldest nor the
favourite son of any man. He was the youngest son of a farmer named
Jesse and because he seemed less promising than his older brothers he
had been given the care of the sheep. Anybody with eyes in his head
and feet to walk about can watch sheep. The boy did not seem at first
glance to have his foot on the ladder nor to possess the elements of
royalty.
He became king because he had these five qualities: First of all he
showed fidelity in the ordinary duties of every-day life. Here is the
summing up of his method--"And David behaved himself wisely in all his
ways and the Lord was with him." If a bunch of sheep became his field
of opportunity he would do his work in such fashion that no one could
do it better. He would lead them in green pastures and by still waters
so that they should not want. His rod and his staff would protect
them. He would learn the use of sling and stone so that "he could
sling," as the record says, "at a hair's breadth and not miss." If a
wolf or a bear should attack his flock, he would be able to drive them
off.
The simple ordinary duties which belong to keeping sheep or to getting
one's lessons at school, to meeting one's obligations in some modest
position in office or store, or in doing one's best in a factory or on
a farm, become a kind of dress rehearsal for the larger duties which
lie ahead. If a man knows his lines and can take his part effectively
upon the narrower stage of action he is in line for promotion to a more
important role. You will find whole regiments of young fellows who
drag along, scamping their work and slighting those opportunities which
are right at hand. They are saving up their energies to do something
splendidly effective week after next. But week after next never comes
to such men. It is always to-day, and to-day in their eyes seems ever
small.
If those men were already on the quarterdeck as captains of great ocean
liners; if they were already bank presidents sitting in handsome
offices of their own; if they were already journalists of the first
rank writing editorials for metropolitan dailies, they would do what
their hands and their minds found to do with their might. But in this
day of small things they feel that fidelity and skill would be thrown
away. They have mixed up the words of the promise--they think it
reads, "You have been unfaithful over a few things, I will make thee
ruler over everything." When a man is going up-stairs he must put his
foot first on the step which is at the bottom and then take the other
steps in order. The same rule holds in the great business of living a
man's life and doing a man's work in the world.