wrong. I feel my need of the divine mercy. I want forgiveness,
cleansing and renewal. And every man who is honest enough to look
himself in the face, without flinching, will be moved to make the same
confession. It is up out of those moments of contrition when men are
humbled and broken before God that the spiritual impulses come which
are to beat back the forces of evil and make this earth at last as fair
as the sky.
I care not what the man's outward station may be--he may live on the
Avenue or he may live in the slums; he may be clothed in purple or he
may be dressed in rags; he wear a Phi Beta Kappa key or he may be so
untaught that he has to make his mark when he signs a mortgage--in any
event here is a prayer which will fit his lips--it fits every pair of
lips: "God be merciful to me, a sinner."
In that one brief sentence we have the four main terms of religious
experience. "God," the object of religion, the ground of all finite
existence, the basis of all our hope! "Me," the human soul, the
subject of religion, the field where the work of religion is to be
wrought out! "Sin," the obstacle to religion, the source of all our
moral failure, the cause of our alienation from God! And "mercy," the
agent of religion, the form of energy which accomplishes our recovery!
God be merciful to me, a sinner.
This young man of good fortune stood up in the temple in the presence
of his fellows making his open confession of moral need. "Woe is me
for I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips."
In that very hour when this honest confession came from his lips his
life was cleansed by the direct action of the divine spirit. He saw
one of the winged seraphs flying towards him through the open spaces of
Heaven. The angel took a live coal from the altar and laid it upon the
lips of this young man. He cried out as he did it, saying, "Thine
iniquity is taken away. Thy sin is purged." Isaiah was no more a man
of unclean lips--he could now speak with that Lord whose name is Holy
as friend speaks with friend.
We have this profound moral experience dressed up in those grand,
Oriental robes which were dear to the people of that region. But when
you strip away the silk, the lace, and the feathers of Eastern imagery,
and get down to the bare, warm truth, this is what you find--a man
whose sense of moral lack had prompted that open confession, cleansed
in that high hour by the direct action of the divine spirit upon his
soul.
Here is that which is basic and fundamental in all religious life! I
wonder if we have not been tempted in recent years to obscure this
vital experience. We have held those two big words, "Heredity" and
"Environment," so close to our eyes as to blind us, oftentimes, to the
larger vision of that which is superhuman in earthly experience.
It is possible for the inner life of a man to be so wrought upon by the
action of the spirit of God that the corrupt nature is cleansed, the
weak nature is made strong, the selfish disposition is transformed into
benign love.
It matters little how you go about it, if you go with sincere faith.
You may seek for that renewal through the regenerating influence of the
Sacraments dear to the heart of the Romanist and the High Churchman.
If you find it there, it will be because Christ is within the
Sacrament. You may seek for it in those profound emotional reactions
which come at the Methodist mourners' bench. If you find it there, it
will be because the spirit of Christ was operating through those
feelings. You may find it as you make an about face, turning away from
that which is evil and making Christian duty your supreme choice in the
quiet of your own room. If you find it there, it will be because
Christ was present in those movements of your inner life. The woman
was healed in the Gospel story by touching the hem of Christ's garment
because Christ was within that garment.
If any man will seek for moral renewal at the hands of God he will
find. If he will knock at any one of these doors it will open. Here
is the Gospel as it stands recorded on the pages of the Old
Testament--"The spirit of the Lord shall come upon thee and thou shall
be turned into another man." Here is the same Gospel as it stands
recorded on the pages of the New Testament--"If any man is in Christ he
is a new creature. Old things are passed away and all things are
become new."
In the joy of moral renewal this well-born, well-reared, well-trained
young man gave himself in eager consecration to the highest he saw. "I
heard the voice of the Lord say, Whom shall I send? Who will go for
us? Then said I, Here am I, send me."
His nation, now robbed of its great king by the hand of disease, was
facing a crisis. The national church to which he belonged was steeped
in formalism and insincerity. The divine voice was uttering a
heartfelt lament over the unfaithfulness of the chosen people. "Israel
doth not know! My people do not think. The whole head is sick and the
whole heart is faint."
There was a loud cry for men of large build with wise heads and sound
hearts to furnish moral leadership. And in the face of that demand
this son of good fortune did not allow the divine spirit to go out into
the highways and hedges in order to compel some sort of man, any sort
of man, to come in that the ranks might be filled. He answered to his
name with a clear-cut consecration of himself. "Here am I, send me."
When war comes to any country, there are rich men who give money,
millions of it, that the war chest may be full. There are great
manufacturers who promptly place their plants at the disposal of the
government for the making of munitions. There are ship owners who turn
over their vessels to the Navy that they may be sent to do business in
the great waters of national defense. There are wise men who think
hard upon the problems of finance and statecraft that they may provide
that counsel which is more precious than rubies. All this is in the
highest degree praiseworthy.
But the only men who give what Lincoln called at Gettysburg "the last
full measure of devotion" are the men who give themselves. These men
do not go on horseback nor in automobiles. They walk. They eat the
hardtack. They sleep on the ground. They dig the trenches and fight
in them. They march out at the word of command to be shot at. They
keep right on doing those plain things until the war is ended and
victory achieved. These are the men who awaken our warmest feeling of
admiration and gratitude. "Here am I, send me"--nothing can take the
place of that!
In that sterner war where there is no discharge, in that age-long,
world-wide fight against the evils of earth this same sound principle
holds. Money is needed; counsel is needed; organization and
administrative ability are needed. The bringing in of that kingdom
which is not meat and drink, nor shot and shell, but righteousness and
peace and joy in the divine spirit, requires all these fine forms of
effort. But nothing can ever take the place of that personal
consecration of each man's own soul to the service of the living God.
In that high hour when Isaiah saw the God of things as they are, high
and lifted up, sitting on His throne, he did not say, "Here are any
number of fine people, send them. Here is a man who could perform the
task better than I--send him." He said what every man must say who
means to stand right in the Day of Judgment, "Here am I, send me."
He was the son of good fortune, and his life was bright and rich with
many an advantage. But this did not prompt him to claim any sort of
exemption from the call for volunteers. His vision of the awful
difference between the earthly majesty of that king who sank so swiftly
into a leper's grave and the heavenly majesty which rose above it
sovereign and eternal, made him feel that nothing would suffice but the
gift of himself.
What shall it profit a man, this man, that man, any man, to gain the
largest measure of earthly success you may choose to name, if in the
process he loses himself, his real self, his best self, his enduring
self? What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, but feels
within himself a capacity for higher things unrealized? In the great
outcome nothing really matters save the devotion of the personal life
to the highest ends.
In the year 1840 near the city of Louvain a child was born, who came of
good stuff. He was educated for a business career, and there in
prosperous little Belgium the outlook at that time for wealth, for
social position, and for a life of joy was very bright. But at the age
of eighteen this boy offered himself for the priesthood of the Roman
Catholic Church. He joined the Society of the Sacred Heart. He went
out to the Hawaiian Islands as a missionary and was ordained as a
priest in the city of Honolulu.
He was at once impressed with the sad condition of the leper settlement
on the island of Molokai. He resolved to give his life to those poor,
diseased, horror-stricken people. He knew that to live among them
would mean banishment from his ordinary associations and the loss of
all possible preferment in the church. He knew that he might himself
contract that terrible disease and suffer a lingering, painful,
frightful death. "No matter," he cried, "I am going." And he went.
He not only preached to those lepers the Gospel of the Son of God and
ministered to them in spiritual things--his own labours and his appeals
to the Hawaiian government secured for them better dwellings, an
improved water supply, and a more generous provisioning of the unhappy
settlement. For five years he worked alone, but for the occasional
assistance of a priest who came to the colony for a single day. He
finally succumbed to the dread disease of leprosy and in his
forty-ninth year died a martyr to humane devotion. His name was Father
Damien, and he shed fresh luster upon the Christian ministry.
The young man who was born to the purple, called now to be a prophet of
God, seized upon the vital elements of religion and uttered them with
power. "What does it mean to be religious?" men were asking. Some of
the dull, blind priests of that day were saying, "It means sacrifice
and burnt offering. It means the careful and showy observance of the
forms of worship." Israel did not know; the people did not think.
Then this young prophet gave them the word of God with an edge on it.
He showed them the folly of all those outward signs of devotion apart
from the inward spirit of righteousness. "To what purpose is the
multitude of your sacrifices? Who hath required this at your hands?
When you spread forth your hands I will hide my eyes. When you make
many prayers I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. Wash you,
make you clean. Put away the evil of your doings. Cease to do evil,
learn to do well. Then though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be
white as snow."
"Salvation by righteousness--this is the message of the Old Testament,"
Matthew Arnold used to say. "Righteousness through Jesus Christ," this
is the message of the New Testament! And this nineteenth century man
of letters was but echoing the words which fell from the lips of those
prophets in the eighth century before Christ.
"Wherewith shall I come before the Lord?" said Micah. "Will the Lord
be pleased with a thousand rams or with ten thousand rivers of oil? He
hath showed thee, O man, what is good, and what doth the Lord require
of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy
God."
"Seek justice," Isaiah said; "relieve the oppressed, judge the
fatherless, plead for the widow. If ye be willing and obedient ye
shall eat the good of the land. If ye refuse and rebel ye shall be
devoured." This was the heart of his message. It was the call of God
to personal righteousness.
He represents the Almighty as sitting upon the throne of the universe,
summoning His people into friendly conference with Him. "Come now, let
us reason together, saith the Lord." Religion is not a thing of magic.
There is no sleight-of-hand or hocus-pocus in the benefits it seeks to
confer. Religion is rational and moral. It is a reasoned form of
intercourse between an intelligent and moral being who is finite and
the Intelligent and Moral Being who is Infinite. Its benefits are to
be realized in that direct impress of the spirit of God upon the soul
of the man who has made an intelligent and honest approach to his Maker.
The young prophet saw his country threatened with disaster from both
sides. He saw upon the south the selfish and cruel designs of Egypt.
He saw the encroachments of mighty Assyria from the north. He saw the
madness of those Israelites who thought they could combine wickedness
and worship, the observance of religious forms with lives of moral
unconcern. And in that hour the truths he lifted before them were "The
majesty and authority of God, the everlasting obligation of personal
righteousness, the certainty of the ultimate triumph of God's Kingdom
over the wrath of man." These were the mighty truths by which he
sought to inspire the hearts of men to do their duty, come what might.
Have we not great need at this very hour of just such men! It has been
given to you and to me to live through one of the great, searching
crises of human history. The world has never seen a struggle so
gigantic. We have been patient for more than two years with a certain
nation across the sea--patient clear up to the border of what has
seemed to some of our neighbours like a lazy acquiescence in
lawlessness. We have seen that nation referring contemptuously to her
own treaties as mere scraps of paper, and then openly disregarding her
solemn obligations.
We saw the outrage perpetrated upon Belgium, an outrage which men who
know their histories better than I know mine are saying will go down as
the greatest crime in the annals of the race. We saw the drowning of
hundreds of helpless women and children in the sinking of the
_Lusitania_ without warning and in flat defiance of international law.
We saw the judicial murder of women like Edith Cavell and of men like
Captain Fryatt. We have seen the Zeppelins engaged in the dastardly
business of hurling down bombs upon unfortified towns for the killing
of old women and little children--heretofore when decent nations have
gone to war men have fought with men. We have seen thousands of
helpless Armenians butchered by the Moslem allies of that so-called
Christian power,--it is all but universally believed, with its own
connivance and under its direction. We have witnessed a frightful
record of brutality and outrage, investigated and established by the
competent testimony of such men as James Bryce and Cardinal Mercier.
We have seen the sinking of hospital ships loaded with wounded men and
the sinking of relief ships carrying provisions to the famine-stricken
children of Belgium, no matter what flag they flew, or what cargo they
bore.
We have had our own rights as a neutral trampled upon by that
government with the arrogant assumption that her necessities knew no
law. And now to crown it all we have detected the official
representatives of that country with protests of friendship upon their
false lips actually plotting with Mexico and seeking to extend that
plot to Japan with the unholy purpose of destroying the peace between
this country and its neighbours.
The men of our country who have red blood in their veins and the sense
of justice in their hearts are saying, "How long, O Lord, how long!"
War is a terrible thing and no honest man ever speaks lightly of war.
But there are things which are worse than war. The loss of all
capacity for moral indignation is worse. The easy, lazy, cowardly
acquiescence in lawlessness and crime is worse. The loss of the
readiness to sacrifice one's very life, if need be, for those ends
which are just and right, is infinitely worse.
There are interests which are worth fighting for and, if need be, they
are worth dying for. The sanctity of womanhood and the safety of
little children, the security of those interests which are essential to
human well-being and the protection of our homes, the honour and
integrity of our country, and the maintenance of those majestic
principles of righteousness which underlie all social advance--these
ends are worth dying for. If these high ends can be secured by
persuasion and moral appeal, well and good. But if they cannot, if
their very existence is threatened by lawlessness and hate, then let
men of sound mind and honest heart stand ready to do battle for the
right.
In these hours of stress which have come upon our country, we have need
of men who possess the necessary moral courage to stand forth and meet
the crisis. There is a loud call everywhere for those who are prepared
to face duty without flinching. It is for every man to say touching
his own measure of ability, "Here am I, send me."
If the cause of democracy is not to fail in those hard years which will
come at the close of this war, there is need not only of wise and
honest leaders--there is need of ranks upon ranks of plain men who are
ready to give their best strength to the service of that government
which is "of the people, for the people, and by the people."
"O beautiful, my country, ours once more,
What were our lives without thee;
What all our lives to save thee.
We reck not what we give thee,
We will not dare to doubt thee,
But ask whatever else and we will dare."
V
The Young Man Who Changed the History of the World
Why do you write it 1917? "April 1, 1917," that was the way you wrote
it this afternoon in your letter to her.
There was a time when it was not so. The Hebrews were dating their
calendars from what they supposed to have been the period of the
creation. The Romans reckoned their time from the founding of the city
on the seven hills. The Greeks reckoned their time from the first
Olympic games.
But to-day if you meet a Hebrew, or an Italian, or a Greek in any part
of the world and ask him, "What year is it?" he will reply instantly,
"Nineteen seventeen." It is just that long since a certain Child was
born in Bethlehem of Judea.
How strange it is, when you come to think of it, that the birth of a
child in an out-of-the-way village in Palestine should change the
calendars of the world! We find in this commonplace fact a prophecy of
His radical transforming power in every department of life. He was
destined to take the moral government of the race upon His shoulder as
none other ever has. He was to alter the flow of the spiritual
currents in human society and ultimately to change the history of the
world.
He did it all while He was still a young man. He was only thirty-three
years old when they put Him to death upon the Cross. He had used
thirty of those thirty-three years in quiet preparation for the great
tasks which were to come. No wonder the three years of which we know
so much were mighty when we think of the thirty years of preparation
standing behind them! Ten years of training and discipline for one of
public action! Ten days of study and devotion for one day of healing,
redemptive effort! Ten hours of silence and prayer before God for one
hour of speech in the ears of men!
He did it all in His youth and when He died at the age of thirty-three
He did not look down and say, "I have failed because My life is cut off
all too soon." He looked up and said, "I have finished the work which
Thou gavest Me to do."
How marvellous was the life of this young man who changed the history
of the world! If we could get away from the idea that He is a
stained-glass window or a marble statue or a lovely story in a book
which most men seldom read--if we could only see Him as He was, the
Word made flesh, real, warm, alive, our hearts would leap.
He was born in the manger of a stable. He grew up in a carpenter's
home and in a carpenter's shop. He never saw the inside of a college,
yet somehow He learned to think straight and to speak as never man
spake. He lived with the birds and the flowers, the trees, the hills
and the stars. He thought deeply upon the interests and needs of men
until He knew what was in man and needed not that any should tell
Him--He told them. He looked up with pure eyes and a pure heart until
He saw God. Therefore, when He spoke His word was with power; and when
He lived His life was with power; and when He stretched forth His hand,
His touch had healing in it.
His mind was exceedingly broad. He had never been outside the borders
of His own little country, which is about the size of the State of New
Hampshire. He had never seen the mighty cities in Egypt to the south
of Him, nor Antioch in Syria to the north. He had never looked upon
Athens nor upon Rome. The man who thinks Broadway, New York, is the
center of the solar system would have called Him provincial. His feet
knew nothing save the narrow streets of Jerusalem and the still
narrower lanes of Galilee.
Yet He moved about with a dream of world-wide empire in His head and
the vision of a Kingdom Everlasting in His heart. "I, if I be lifted
up, will draw all men unto Me." When He sent forth His disciples to do
the work He had taught them to do, this is the way their commission
read: "Go into all the world. Make disciples of all nations. Baptize
everybody into My name and the name of the Father." He had
courage--think of His standing there, a young peasant in little
Palestine, talking about a world-wide empire over which He would rule
by His own unseen spirit!
He found little in His environment to add strength to His hope. He
lived under a government which was tyrannical and corrupt. The Jewish
Church to which He belonged was formal and lifeless. He faced a
society which was ruled by men like Herod, and by women like the
shameless wife of Herod, who cut off a poor man's head for telling her
the truth about herself. He saw the religious leaders of His day
straining at gnats of difficulty in their formal worship and then
swallowing camels of moral fault in their every-day conduct. The
situation might well have frightened the boldest heart. It never
frightened Him. "The spirit of the Lord is upon Me," He said at the
beginning of His ministry, "because He hath anointed Me to preach good
tidings to the poor; He hath sent Me to bind up the broken-hearted, to
preach deliverance to the captive, and to set at liberty them that are
bruised." And when He came to the close of His ministry, He said,
"Behold, I make all things new, a new heaven and a new earth, wherein
dwelleth righteousness." He was undaunted.
He was an optimist. By that I do not mean one of those silly,
short-sighted individuals who goes about saying, "Look always on the
bright side." Jesus looked at both sides. He went about with His eyes
open. He saw everything. He saw the struggle and the sorrow of human
life and felt it as if it had been all His own. He looked upon the
tired, sad, sin-stained face of the race. He knew it as He knew His
own face, and He saw the heart of pain which had made it so. He was no
schoolboy shouting himself hoarse in a thoughtless enthusiasm which had
never tested its strength against the graver difficulties of life. He
saw it all, felt it all, understood it all, yet He lived and died in a
great, sweet, serene hope for the race. You cannot find one hateful,
cynical or despairing word falling from His lips.
He stood once where the shadow of the Cross was already drawing a black
line across His path. He had twelve disciples to whom for the past two
years He had given the best part of His time, His thought and His love.
One of them had already betrayed Him, bargaining away his poor measure
of loyalty for thirty pieces of silver. In the next hour another
disciple would deny Him three times over with an oath. Another would
doubt Him straight in the face of all those pledges of genuineness
which they had received at first hand. And when the hour of trial
struck His disciples would all show themselves cowards and quitters.
Even so, this young man did not despair. "Be of good cheer," He cried.
"I have overcome the world." He was speaking in anticipation, but He
was so sure of it that He used the past tense as of a thing
accomplished. "I have overcome the world." He had kindled a fire
which would never go out. He had lodged a bit of yeast in the heart of
the race which would finally leaven the whole lump. He had saturated a
few men with His ideas and spirit, and they would set in motion a
process which one day would cause every knee to bow before Him and
every tongue to confess that He is Lord.
He was to change the history of the world--how did He go about it? In
the first place He changed men's thoughts about God. Men are
influenced by their environment--they are transformed by the renewing
of their minds. They are moulded by the thoughts they think and the
desires they cherish. As a man thinketh in his heart touching the
things that matter, so he becomes.