(three of them were there), “It is time to bring in the wood.” The
oldest was about sixteen, the next about twelve, and the youngest boy
was five. They all went out. The big boy, perhaps to show off before
the new minister, came in with an enormous load, piled it up, and
turned around to me with pride in his face. The mother looked on with
approval. The second came in with only half as large an armful, and
the mother looked approvingly at him. The last one came in with but
two sticks, and they were so crossed that he had great difficulty in
holding them, and finally they slipped through his arms, and the little
fellow fell down with them. His mother ran to him and kissed him, and
said, “You have done better than they all.”
I thought is not that about the way our Heavenly Father does, when he
sees us trying to be right and perfect, trying to keep step with the
picket line of our best right, when he says, “Walk before me?” Faber
says, “There is no place where earthly sorrows are so felt as up in
heaven; there is no place where earthly failings have such kindly
judgment given, for the love of God is broader than the measures of
man’s mind, and the heart of the eternal is most wonderfully kind.” God
is not severe, he is an easy master, a blessed keeper. “Walk before
me,” said he to Abram, “and be thou perfect; be true to your best
convictions.”
May I ask you to follow me a moment or two, to see how eminently common
sensed these demands God makes upon us are, and how widely they are
endorsed by our own internal consciousness?
There are two relations that we hold: one Godward, and the other
manward. In our relation to God what does he ask of us? What does the
sum total come to? God asks, first, a perfect consecration; second,
a perfect faith, and third, a perfect love. This idea of perfect
consecration is in the realm of human possibilities. Let me look at
it. Does anybody doubt that a man may be perfectly consecrated to his
business? Don’t we know men that are lost, that are really dying,
wrecking body, soul, and spirit, all that they have, in business;
business in the morning, noon, and night, so driven with business that
they are not acquainted with their own children? When I was pastor in
an inland city, I knew a great big boy of eighteen, who went to his
mother one day, and whined out, “I wish you would ask father to get
me a new coat.” “But why don’t you ask him yourself?” said she. “I am
not acquainted with him.” That father had been so driven with business
that his son was not acquainted enough with him to ask him to get him a
new coat. Is not that true? Don’t we know men, in merchandise, in all
the walks of life, that are thoroughly consecrated to business? Don’t
you know some women that are so absolutely consecrated to the idea of
keeping their house in order, that they do not care for their souls?
In calling off their minds from this everlasting housekeeping, this C.
L. S. C. is a blessing to some women. Don’t you know women, and some
men, who are entirely consecrated to fashion, and run after it at the
expense of body, soul, and spirit? Does anybody doubt the possibility
of people being consecrated to an idea? Take the inventor, Goodyear. He
lived in the city of New Haven, where I am acquainted. It is said that
this idea of hard rubber took such possession of him that it took all
he had. One day, when his money and credit were all gone, he took his
axe and split up the bedstead, his bureau, and the chairs for his fire,
and did not succeed after all, until sometime after that. If a man is
capable of this kind of consecration in a merely worldly aspect, I ask,
is it not possible for him to be entirely consecrated to God?
Take the second thought, a perfect faith. There is not a woman, if
she is the woman she ought to be, that is married, who has not had a
perfect faith in some man, or she would not have been married. That
woman has had perfect faith in that man, and that man has had perfect
faith in that woman. We show it in the use of money. We do not
discover any want of faith, except now and then we find a counterfeit.
We pay a debt with our money with perfect faith. We get on the railroad
and check our baggage; wise people do, although once in a while people
take all their luggage in the cars, a bandbox, bundles, and satchels
with them, and it is a great deal of trouble to them. So people try to
get to heaven. Why not check the baggage? We find it at Chautauqua, or
Lakewood, or New York.
You say, “I don’t know about faith.” But you have faith in some men,
and some men would trust you forever. There are some men I would trust
to the end of time. So it is with friendship; you have perfect faith
in men. Children have perfect faith in their fathers until they are
deceived. When I used to look up to my father, I believed that he could
do anything. When I went to him with my griefs, I knew, I trusted they
would be right; I believed in him with all my heart. I say if men are
capable of perfect faith in each other in the domestic and social
relations, they are capable of perfect faith in God. I say these things
are written down in common sense and in the constitution of humanity.
Third, perfect love. Suppose I go into yonder house, and I see a lady
with a sweet baby in her arms, a year old it may be, just coming to
the cunning stage. I see that woman kiss that child. I say, “Mother,
you think a good deal of that baby.” “Yes,” she says, “I love her with
all my heart.” Suppose I say, “I doubt it, madam, I don’t believe you
do.” She would turn to me with supreme contempt, and say, “There is the
orifice left by the carpenter in the side of the room for such as you.”
I am dismissed. It is a slander upon her. I see her at night, when that
babe is sick. I see her on her knees praying, with tears running down
her cheeks, “God, spare my babe!” Day after day, night after night, she
does not sleep. You say it is not a perfect love. I say it is a perfect
love, as perfect a love as she can have for the child.
Do you say men can not have a perfect love for a profession, so that
they can take all and risk all, that they have so poor an ideal that
they can not face the responsibility? Do you say there is no such a
thing as perfect patriotism, perfect love for one’s country? I believe
there is no greater thing than this on earth, that a man lay down his
life for his friends. A few years ago, how many men laid down their
lives for their country. We know there is such a thing as a perfect
love. When that man to-day stands by the side of that woman and gives
her himself, and she gives him herself, it is a slander to say that he
and she do not love each other perfectly. You may say it is imperfect,
to be sure; it is limited by human weakness (we are all earthly and of
the earth), but, as far as human ability goes, it is perfect. Can not
we have a perfect love toward God? We are capable of it on the human
plane; we are capable of it on the divine plane. I think you have laid
aside prejudice against my doctrine, and I speak with frankness, I
think that God demands a perfect consecration, a perfect faith, and a
perfect love, and we are capable of each.
Let us examine the manward relation. It may be stated thus: I think it
embraces three things. First, perfect truth; second, perfect honesty;
third, perfect consecration. The thing we can not abide is a lie. When
a man tells a lie, he is like a horse that slips his halter once, you
buckle it up two or three holes tighter next time, so he shall not
slip it again. If he tells a barefaced lie once, you fail to trust him
again; he loses your respect. God desires truth in the inward parts,
God asks that we shall be true to him, that when we know what is right,
we shall try to do according to our best ability.
The second thing we require is honesty in dealing and words. Let me
tell you, friends, the thing the world does not forget, is the sin
of not paying your debts. I do not care, though your profession may
be like a great four-story brownstone front house, and you may have a
cupola on the top, if you do not pay one hundred cents on a dollar,
your profession is not worth the paper on which it is written. You may
be a fornicator, or an adulterer, if you pay one hundred cents on a
dollar, the world will give you a free pass. One of the crying sins
that the world does not forget, is that some Christians do not pay
their debts. A preacher may preach like an angel, and if anybody says,
“He owes me so and so, and I can’t get my money,” his sermons do not
amount to a great deal. Perfect honesty, this is one of the things that
the Christian Church needs to look at. I remember a farmer in Dutchess
County, when I was pastor there, who had a fashion of throwing an extra
bag of oats on every load of oats sold, especially when sinners came.
A wild young sinner said to him one day, “What do you do that for?”
“Well,” said he, “I may have made a mistake in measuring up those oats,
and as I am going to a country that I shall never return from, and I
shall meet you at the Judgment Day, where I am afraid you will be on
the left side, I want things to be perfectly square with you and your
kind.”
We demand this of our fellow-men, and God demands it of us toward our
fellow-men. Look at this man Abram. The Lord had given him the land,
but he took pains particularly to buy a burying place, and have the
money carefully weighed. When he had a battle with the confederated
kings and brought Lot and his family back again, and the king of
Sodom wanted to give him all the spoil, he stood up in all his manly
integrity and refused to take it. Walking alone with God, he could do
without it. I tell you the man who walks in this ideal, walking before
God in his perfect truth and honesty, need not fear the forces of the
world; he need not fear to be burned at the stake; he can afford to
have his name pitched out of the world as an enthusiast; he can afford
to be despised.
The third thing is perfect magnanimity, which is nothing more or
less than true gentlemanliness. I love to read the Bible because it
introduces me to so many gentlemen. As a celebrated infidel writer says
about Christ, “he was the first gentleman of the age.” What is it? It
is a gentlemanliness, a true magnanimity to our fellow-men, making
arrangements for the good of other people rather than ourselves, living
not for ourselves but for those about us, being polite and careful in
all the arrangements of our lives, loving our neighbors as ourselves.
See that man sitting in the cars, who has paid for but one seat. He
occupies one seat with his feet and the other two with his baggage.
People come in and say, “Is this seat taken?” He says, “Yes.” I heard a
man ask one of these fellows not a long time ago, “Is this seat taken?”
“Yes.” “Whom is it taken by?” “A person.” “Who is the person? Have you
paid for more than one seat?” I was glad to see the man have to take
up his baggage. Did you ever see a man carve a beefsteak who cuts off
the tough pieces for his wife and children and keeps the tenderloin
for himself? A gentleman will see that all the rest are taken care
of, and he generally comes out about as good as the rest; he may lose
sometimes, but he wins in many things. Emerson says a man can not
afford to lose his self-respect. I often think what even some Christian
men must think when they look into the looking-glass and contemplate
themselves; if they would have any recollection of themselves and their
meanness they would not consult the looking-glass.
With these two points—first of all, godward, a perfect consecration,
a perfect faith, a perfect love, which we must admit, in our inner
consciousness, is possible to us; in our manward relation, perfect
truth, perfect honesty, perfect magnanimity. I believe this covers
the ideal. We can understand the meaning when God says to every man,
“Walk before me, and be thou perfect.” But some one says: “Mr. Adams,
you don’t make any allowance for the weakness of human nature.” I do.
Weak human nature! It is God that recognizes it in us, and it is God
that requires these things as belonging to it, belonging to weak human
nature. “But you don’t know about our surroundings,” you say. I may
not; yet even in your surroundings you admit that this is an ideal
that is in the reach of every one. “But you don’t make any theological
distinctions.” I often think of what Dr. Hitchcock said before the
Union Theological Seminary: “Young gentlemen, study theology, yes,
study theology, but preach the Gospel.” I study theology, but I try to
preach the Gospel, theology or no theology. You say: “This will not
stand the straight-edged, extreme sanctification view.” I don’t care
about the extreme sanctification view. There are two kinds of spurious
sanctification, one so high that no one can get to it, and the other so
low nobody wants it. This kind of the text is in reach of every one and
what every one ought to want.
I propose to show how you may all reach it. (May the Lord help me!) I
think I find it in one single expression in this text, “Walk before
me, and be thou perfect. I am the Almighty God.” That is, “I am the
Almighty God, to help you walk before me.” If you please God, you can
take the risk about the rest. Do you say, “I am weak.” God answers it
with his omnipotence. Do you say, “I am poor.” God answers it with his
riches. Do you say, “I am without any useful gift, or I have peculiar
surroundings.” God answers it with that one expression, “I am the
Almighty God, walk before me, and be thou perfect.”
You remember that interview that God had with Moses when he was about
to send him into Egypt. How often God says, “I am the Almighty God. I
am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” What did he say that to him
for? That he might encourage him to believe in him; trust him, and
encourage him to go out under his might. I believe “I am the Almighty
God” answered every excuse of Moses. If we put this matter in the
hands of God, with perfect consecration, faith, and love toward God,
and perfect truth, honesty, and magnanimity to our fellow-men, it will
become easy to us, it will become the joy of our lives, and God will
put us down in his blessed book as among his perfect ones.
Mark what God calls perfect is so different from what men require. We
hear some persons say, “Well, C. is about perfect.” You go out and
tell that thing to somebody that knows her, and does not like her very
much. If I should believe the things I hear said about some men, they
should be put in jail. But you can not find out that way: look up to
God! Knowing how imperfect we are, and how poor we are, in all these
relations of our hearts and lives, God has put it down, “I am the
Almighty God. I am able to make you what you want to be.” That is what
he said to Abram. Look at him. You recollect at one time in his life,
under great pressure, he told a lie. And yet Abram filled the ideal,
but it was in spite of that. Noah was perfect, but he got drunk. Job
was perfect, and upright, and eschewed evil. If anyone will read over
carefully the Book of Job, (and I recommend you to read it), he will
find a perfect answer for all the skepticism of this present age. Job
went so far as to curse the day in which he was born, and the day when
it was said a man-child is born, and yet he was a man that was perfect
in his generation, and that pleased God. He came out of that immature
condition of ignorance of God.
Mark another thing. You remember in this Book of Job, with all the hard
things that Job said, you can not find a place where God rebuked him.
All he said was, “Stand up, Job, and let me talk to you. You can not
understand my providence and government. You must trust me, Job.” So he
does with hundreds and thousands. There was David who wrote the prayers
and poetry of the ages. What a man he was! Yet he succeeded in pleasing
God, not by his sins, but he pleased God. The truth is, the Bible is
a record of bankrupt cases of men who were full of the wreck and ruin
of sin, and yet grew up into this perfect stature of men in Christ
Jesus our Lord. What an encouragement it is for everybody to seek to be
perfect before God.
Let me hasten to the conclusion. The first reason why we should be
perfect before God is this, that God has agreed to help us, “I am the
Almighty God.” He will stand by in every serious and sincere attempt to
be his. If you seek to keep step with your convictions, if you seek to
be true to your best light, remember that God is with you to help you
all he can. I know about the weight of evil; I know that when we strike
out for the shore, there is some dreadful undertow that seems to draw
us back. I know the earthly is weak and we seem to be drawn down. But
I answer the whole of it by this great truth in this text, “I am the
Almighty God.” God helps, God will strengthen us.
There is a little thing that occurred in my boyhood, that has been a
great comfort to me many times in the hard work I have been called to
do. When I was about fourteen years old, and my brother about twelve,
my father took us out fishing on Long Island Sound. We had a poor
flat-boat called a scow. We were ambitious, like all little boys, and
when we turned in to go to the shore, about four miles, I was entrusted
with a pair of long oars, and my brother with a shorter pair. We saw
near us a boat with two boys in it about our own age, with their
father, an admirably built boat, clean in her lines as a yacht. They
were looking at our boat, and the man said to my father, in a sneering
tone, “You have got a pretty strong crew in there, but I guess we will
beat you to town.”
My father said nothing, but he straightened up and looked at his boys.
How we pulled! They beat us a good deal of the way; it was their boat;
I knew the boys were not any better than we, for I had thrashed the
biggest one several times. We pulled away, and they were yet three or
four rods ahead, when my father reached out his great hands and put
them on mine, I seem to feel them to-day, and as I pulled he pushed.
We beat. Many a time I have thought of it when I have been trying my
best, my father pushes while I pull. “I am the Almighty God.” That is
enough for me. All it means is within my reach; all the possibility
it promises is within my grasp; all hope, all blessedness, all might,
all victory through my Father in Heaven. “I am the Almighty God. Walk
before me, and be thou perfect.”
The second thought is, the glorious independence of such a life as
this. The man who walks before God, who is his with devout trust, has
this as the center and circumference of his idea: “I will, I must, I
shall please God, and he will help me to follow him.” He understands
all. A man walks through this world with his conversation in heaven. No
room for selfishness, what shall become of me? Suppose that we could
interview those five smooth stones that David took out of the scrip
against Goliath, that we could endow them with intelligence; every one
was willing to be slung against Goliath. I don’t suppose they would
have whined and said, “I wonder why he picked out such a crooked stone
as that. There is something wrong about that.” But with this idea of
walking before God those four stones that lay in the scrip were as
happy as they lay there as the one that went whizzing against the
giant. Whether we run, or wait, or stand, or go into the fight it is
all one. Milton says “they also serve who only stand and wait.” The
perfect independence of this life is worth all it costs. Suppose in
order to do it we must have the selfish feeling in us, like a cancer,
cut out. As Mrs. Browning says, “He who tears his heart in twain, and
casts away the baser part, is richer for his loss.” Painful as it may
be, before this wonderful and attractive idea, it is cheap.
You remember that the River Nile runs one thousand two hundred miles
through a desert land without a single affluent. How do you account
for it? How does that great river pour its flood through Egypt, and
keep alive for one thousand two hundred miles without a single stream
to feed it? It is fed away back there in Africa, by those giant lakes,
and kept ever full and rich. So it is with the soul that walks with
God. Its sources are in God. He draws his sustenance, not from this
poor world, but far upon the hillside toward God. As the rivers of
Europe, that keep it alive, are kept alive themselves by the tall
mountain peaks in Switzerland, so a soul that walks with God, that
pleases God, is made a wonderful and everlasting benediction to all
around him, while he lives independent of all. I do not say that people
who are seeking this sort of thing do not feel or have a need of human
sympathy. O, no, they have a great deal of it. I do not say that this
ideal is so often found, but I believe it is possible. I believe I
have made a testimony for you this morning. I want you to think and
remember, if you want to walk before God, he will help you.
Somebody says, “How about the profession of this thing?” The Bible
don’t say anything about it. That is a matter for your individual
judgment. Your wife will find out about it if you find it. When I hear
a man say hallelujah very loud, I want to know always how much he pays
toward the Gospel. When I hear a man say he is very happy, or holy, I
want to know how he lives at home, how he carves the beefsteak. Abram
did not hang out any sign, but he became so powerful that the kings
all around wanted to make an alliance with him. If you are keeping
step with the best ideal, it will show in the carefulness and kindness
of your replies, in the grasp of your hand, in the intelligence and
sweetness of your face. O, my friends, may I entreat you to set this
before your eyes? I believe it is the ideal of God for man. “Walk
before me, and be thou perfect.” He will help you as my father helped
me to pull the boat. He will help you as every good, kind and gentle
mother helps her child. He will help you every time. It will not be a
flash and then over. He will make you happy, joyful and independent by
day and night. Never mind the circumstances, you will be wrapped in
arms so soft and hovered in a love so deep, it will not leave a desire
in your souls unsatisfied; there will be such choral harmonies within,
that the babel tongues of this world will not overpower them.
Some one may say, “But, Mr. Adams, how?” I say in a word, go to God
and ask him, get yourselves humble; be truly penitent; be honest
and sincere. Lay your hand in the hand of the Lord. You need not
hypothecate any experience. You can not tell whether you are going to
live long or not, but you can live with your hand in his.
If a sinner has heard me this day, he knows that this life is the life
he wants. I spoke to a sinner the other day, “John, why don’t you give
your heart to God?” “Oh,” said he, “I am sick of you Christians.” Said
I, “Don’t you think there are Christians in the world?” “Well, that
is a hard question.” “But, don’t you think there are Christians?”
“Well,” said he, “I am not going back on my old mother.” “Didn’t you
promise her to be a Christian?” “Yes, I believe I did.” “Why don’t
you do it?” “Why there are so and so that owe me. I don’t want any of
their Christianity, but I believe your kind of Christianity is true.”
I believe John will give his heart to God. That is the kind that
everybody wants. Nobody wants these poor, barren, lean kind, but we
want this royal kind, that which fits and satisfies the feeling of our
hearts.
I must close with one remark. It is a great and intense age; it is such
an age as has never come to the world before. Some of the preceding
ages have surpassed this in some respects, it is true, but men have
never achieved as they are doing to-day. This great age demands a great
piety; it demands deep, wide-spread spirituality. Let me tell you it
again; a great age demands great Christians, Christians like Abram,
Christians like Paul, Christians like John. Who will set themselves
apart to do battle of the royal sort? To keep step with the spirit of
the age? It is an age of culture. Education is the cry. There is such
a thing, however, as using up your heart by giving too much education
to your head. If you guard your heart with this ideal it will be all
right. Oh friends, have your hearts filled with God! Follow this great
idea to be perfect before God, that you may stand in the advance of
the age, and may even run ahead of it. I say that an age like this,
an age of lightning, steam, force, and advance in every department
of human knowledge, demands that the men and women of the Christian
Church should rise to the loftiest ideal of the Christian life. All the
sublime achievements of Christian faith lie in the line of fidelity to
your advanced convictions. It is the inspiration of souls, it makes the
greatness of life. It is that which has made all the grand Christians
in the world. It is that which will make Chautauqua grow from year to
year in spiritual development, and surround it with a great light, as
an aureola, and place it at the head of this great age.