It is a world of voices in which we live. We are daily visited by
appeals which are ministering to our growth and progress, or which are
tending to our spiritual downfall. There are the voices of nature, in
sky, and sea, and storm; the voices of childhood and of early youth; the
voices of playfellows and companions,--voices long stilled, it may be,
in death; the voices of lover and beloved; the voices of ambition, of
sorrow, of aspiration, and of joy.
But among all these many voices, there is one which is most inspiring
and supreme. When the _Vorspiel_ to _Parsifal_ breaks upon the ear it is
as if all other music were inadequate and incomplete--as if a voice
called from the confines of eternity, in the infinite spaces where no
time is, and rolled onward to the far-off ages when time shall be no
more. Even so, high and clear above the voices of the world, deeper and
tenderer than any other word or tone, comes the voice of Jesus to the
soul of man.
Look, if you will, upon the World of Souls, many-tiered and vast,
stretching from day's end to day's end,--a world of hunger and of anger,
of toiling and of striving, of clamor and of triumph,--a dim, upheaving
mass, which from century to century wakes, and breathes, and sleeps
again! Years roll on, tides flow, but there is no cessation of the march
of years, and no whisper of a natural change. Is it not a strange thing
that one voice, and only one, should have really won the hearing of the
race? What is this voice of Jesus, so enduring, matchless, and supreme?
What does it promise, for the help or hope of man?
There are some who say that Jesus has held the attention and allegiance
of the race by an appeal to the religious instinct; that all men
naturally seek God, and long to know Him. But if we try to define the
religious instinct, we shall find it a hard task. What might be called a
religious instinct leads to human sacrifice upon the Aztec altar;
directs the Hindu to cast the new-born child in the stream, the friend
to sacrifice his best friend to a pagan deity.
There are others who say that Christ appeals to the gentler instincts of
man,--to his unselfishness, his meekness and compassion. Yet some of the
most admirable Christians have been ambitious and aggressive. Others
say, He appeals to our need of help. But self-reliance is a Christian
trait. Others say, He appeals to our sense of sin--our need of pardon.
But many a Christian goes through life like a happy child, scarcely
conscious at any time of deep guilt, and never overwhelmed by intense
conviction or despair.
The truth seems to be that Christ appeals to our whole selves. He calls
us by an attraction which is unique. In the universe there exists a
force which we must recognize--though we do not yet in the least
understand it--which is gradually drawing the race Christward. The law
of spiritual gravitation is, that by all the changing impulses of our
nature we are drawn upward unto Him. Spohr's lovely anthem voices this
cry of the soul:
"_As pants the hart for cooling streams,
When heated in the chase,
So longs my soul, O God, for Thee,
And Thy refreshing grace.
"For Thee, my God, the living God,
My thirsty soul doth pine;
Oh! when shall I behold Thy face,
Thou Majesty divine_?"
1. Jesus calls us by the mystery of life. There are hours of silence and
meditation when the great thought _I am_ beats in upon the soul. But
what am I? Whence came I? A heap of atoms in some strange human
semblance--is that all? And so many other heaps of atoms have already
been, and passed away! Blown hither and thither--where? The universe
reels with change. Star-dust and earth-dust are alike in ceaseless
whirl. Little it profits to build the spire, the sea-wall, the dome, the
bridge, the myriad-roofed town. A new era shall dawn upon them, and they
shall fall away.
Not only that, but each man who lives to-day has less possible material
dominion than he had who preceded him. Only so many square feet of
earth, and now there are more to walk upon them! The ground we tread was
once trodden by the feet of those long dead. I am taking up their room,
and in due time I must myself depart, that there may be footway for
those who are to come after me. Only the under-sod is really mine--the
little earth-barrow to which I go.
There is no question more baffling than this simple, ever-recurring one:
What am I? If I should decide what I am to-day, I discover that
yesterday I was quite a different person. To-day I may be six feet in
height, and climb the Alps; yesterday I lay helpless in swaddling
clothes. Yesterday I was a thing of laughter and frolic; to-day I am
grave, and brush away tears. As a babe, was I still I? What is Myself?
When did I come to Myself? How far can I extend Myself? My feet are
here, but in a moment my spirit can flee to Xanadu and Zanzibar. There
is no spot in the universe where I may not go. Where, then, are the
limits of Myself?
Personality is never for a single moment fixed: it is as changing and
evanescent as a cloud. We are whirlwind spirits, swept through time and
space, bearing within our souls hopes, fears, joys, sorrows, which are
never twice the same. Every aspect of the universe leaves new
impressions on us, and our wills, in their world-sweep, daily desire
different things.
Incompleteness lies on life--restlessness is in the heart. True love has
no final habitation on earth; there is no abiding-place for our deepest
affection, our most tender yearning. It is curious how deeply one may
love, and yet feel that there is something more. In all our journeys,
skyward and sunward, we never reach the End of All.
Over against this vague and changing self, there stands out the figure
of the changeless Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. In
Him we find the environment of all our lives, and the sum of all
our dreams.
2. Jesus calls us by our earth-born cares. In Mendelssohn's _Elijah_,
there is a voice which sings: "O rest in the Lord!" This angel's message
is the voice of Jesus to the human race.
The voice of Jesus calls us to awake to toil. We sometimes forget this,
and imagine that if we follow Jesus, we shall never have anything to do.
Christ does not still the machinery of the world, nor shut the mine, nor
take away the sowing and the reaping. The call of Jesus is not a call to
rest from work, but to rest in work. The rest we receive is that of
sympathy, of inspiration, of efficiency. Christ really increases the
toil-capacity of man. Man can do more work, harder work, and always
better work, because of the faith that is in him. What makes the
confusion and fatigue of life is, that men are everywhere scrambling
for themselves, and trying to manage their own undertakings, instead of
falling into harmony with God, and through Him, with all that is. What
wears the soul out is not the work of life itself--it is its drudgery,
its monotony, its blind vagueness, its apparent purposelessness. We do
not wish to scatter our lives and spend our years in nothingness.
Christ comes into the world and says: Over-fatigue is abnormal. There
is not enough work in the universe to tire every one all out. There is
just enough for each one to do happily, and to do well. I am come as the
great industrial organizer. My mission is not to take away toil, but to
redistribute it. My industrial plan is the largest of history--it is
also the most simple. I look down over the world, as a master upon his
men. My work is not to found an earthly kingdom, as some have thought;
it is not primarily to set up industrial establishments, or syndicates,
or ways of transport and trade. My work is to build up in the universe a
spiritual kingdom of energy, power, and progress. To this kingdom all
material things are accessory. In My hand are all abilities, as well as
all knowledge. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without My notice. Not
a lily blooms without My delight. Not a brick is laid, not a stone is
set, not an axe is swung, except beneath My eye. I provide for My own.
To each man I assign his work, his task. If he takes upon him only what
I give him to do, he will never be under-paid, or over-tired.
Hence the first step towards an industrial millennium is to arise and do
what Jesus bids. Heaven is heaven because no one is unruly there, or
idle, or lazy, or vicious, or morose. Each soul is at true and happy
work. Each energy is absorbed; each hour is alive with interest, and
there are no oppressive thoughts or ways.
If each heart and soul responded to the call of Jesus, there would be a
new heaven and a new earth--a Utopia such as More never dreamed of, nor
Plato, nor Bellamy, nor Campanella in his _City of the Sun_. Each hand
would be at its own work; each eye would be upon its own task; each foot
would be in the right path. All the fear, the weariness, the squalor,
and the unrest of life would be done away. The life of each man would be
a life of contentment, and of economic advance.
3. Jesus calls us by the scourging of our sins. Flagellation is not of
the body--it is of the soul. Remorse is as a scorpion-whip, and memory
beats us with many stripes. The first sin that besets us is
forgetfulness of God. Apathy creeps over the spirit, and sloth winds
itself about our deeds. Nothing is more pathetic than the decline of the
merely forgetful soul. "Be sleepless in the things of the spirit," says
Pythagoras, "for sleep in them is akin to death."
Sin lifts bars against success: the root of failure lies in irreligion.
Pride, conceit, disobedience, malice, evil-speaking, covetousness,
idolatry, vice, oppression, injustice, and lack of truth and honor fight
more strongly against one's career than any other foe. No sin is without
its lash; no experience of evil but has its rebound. To expect a higher
moral insight in middle age because of a larger experience of sin in
youth, is as reasonable as to look for sanity of judgment in middle age
because in youth a man had fits!
Looking at ourselves in a mirror, do we not sometimes think how we would
fashion ourselves if we could create a new self, in the image of some
ideal which is before us? Would we not make ourselves wholly beautiful
if we could make ourselves?
Even so, looking out upon our own spirits, do we not some day rouse to
the distortion and deformity of sin? Do we wish to retain these
grimacing phases of ourselves? Do we not yearn eagerly for the dignity
and beauty of high virtue? Do we not long for the graces and perfections
which make up a radiant and happy life? If we could be born again, would
we not be born a more spiritual being?
It is to this new birth that Jesus calls our souls. All around the babe,
hid in its mother's womb, there lies a world of which it has neither
sight nor knowledge. The fact that the babe is ignorant does not change
the fact that the world is there. So about our souls there lies the
invisible world of God, which, until born of the Spirit, we do not see
or understand. It is a world in which God is everywhere; in which there
is no First Cause, except God; in which there is no will, except the
will of God; in which there is no true and perfect love, except from
God; no truth, except revealed by God; no power, except from Him.
Conversion is the outlook over a world which is arranged, not for our
own glory, but for the good of God's creatures; in which what we do is
necessary, fundamental, permanent--not because we ourselves have done it
well, nor, in truth, because we have done it at all--but because what we
have done is a part of the universe which God is building. We change
from a self-centre to a God-centre; from the thought of whether the
world applauds to whether God approves; from the thought of keeping our
own life to the thought of preserving our own integrity; from isolation
from all other souls to a sympathy with them, an understanding of their
needs, and a desire to help their lives. It is a turning from a delight
in sin, or an indifference to sin, or merely a moral aversion to it, to
a deep-rooted hatred of every thought and act of sin, to penitence, and
to an earnest desire to pattern after God.
4. Jesus calls us by our sorrows, Jesus calls us by our dreams. He
thrills us by each high aim that life inspires. His voice is one of
understanding, of tenderness, of human appeal. How could we love Jesus
if He did not sympathize with our ideals? But here is a Divine One in
whose sight we are not visionary; who lovingly guards our least hope;
who welcomes our faintest spiritual insight; who takes an interest in
our social plans, and points out to us the great kingdom that is to be.
Christ lays hold of the divine that is in us, and will not let us go.
5. Jesus calls us by our latent gifts and powers. Which of us has ever
exhausted his possibilities? Which of us is all that he might be?
It is an impressive thought, that nothing in the universe ever gets used
up. It changes form, motion, semblance,--but the force, the energy,
neither wastes nor dies away. Air--it is as fresh as the air that blew
over the Pharaohs. Sun--it is as undimmed as the sun that looked down on
the completion of Cheops. Earth--it is as unworn as the earth that was
trodden by the cavemen.
No generation can ever bequeath to us a single new material atom. The
race is ever in old clothes. Nor can we hand down to others one atom
which was not long ere we were born. Yet the vitality of the universe is
being constantly increased, and this increase is also permanent. God has
a great deal more to work with now than a thousand years ago.
For not all energy is material. With each birth there comes a new force
into the world, and its influence never dies. The body is born of ages
past, of the material stores of centuries; but the soul, in its living,
thinking, working power, is a new phase of energy added to the energy
of the race.
This fact confers on each individual man a strange impressiveness and
power. It gives a new significance to the fact that I am. I am something
different from what has been, or ever shall be. In the great whirling
myriads, I am distinguished and apart. I am an appreciable factor in
universal development and a being of elemental power. By every true
thought of mine the race becomes wiser. By every right deed, its
inheritance of tradition is uplifted; by every high affection, its
horizon of love is enlarged. We can bequeath to others this new
spiritual energy of our lives.
This thought gives us a new zest for life. There is an appetite which is
of the soul. It is this wish for growth, for the development of our
powers, for a larger life for ourselves and for those who shall
come after us.
Is there any one who wishes to stay always where he is to-day?--to be
always what he is this morning? Beyond the hill-top lies our dream. Not
all the voices that call men from place to place are audible ones. We
hear whispers from a far-off leader; we are beckoned by an unseen guide.
Out of ancestry, tradition, talent, and training each departs to
his own way.
What calls is not largeness of place--it is largeness of ideal. To each
of us, thinking of this one and that one who has taken a large part in
the shaping of the world, there comes a feeling: Beside all these I am
in a narrow way! What can I think that shall be worth the consideration
of the race? What can I do that shall be a stepping-stone to progress?
What can I hope that shall unseal other eyes to the universal glory,
comfort others in the universal pain? We say: I do not want to be mewed
up here, while others are out where thrones and empires are sweeping by!
I do not want to parse verbs, add fractions, and mark ledgers, while
others are the poets, the singers, the statesmen, the rulers, and the
wealth-controllers of the world! We wish to step out of the trivial
experience into that which is significant. Each day brings uneasiness of
soul. "Man's unhappiness," says Carlyle, "as I construe it, comes of his
greatness; it is because there is an infinite in him, which with all his
cunning he cannot quite bury under the finite." Says Tennyson:
"_It is not death for which we pant,
But life, more life, and fuller, that we want_."
These aspirations are prophetic. Does a clod-hopper dream? We move
toward our desires. The wish for growth is but the call of Jesus to our
souls. We sometimes hear of the "limitations of life." What are they?
Who set them? Man himself, not God. The call of Jesus urges the soul of
man to possibilities which are infinite.
A large life is the fulfilment of God's ideal of our lives--the life
which, from all eternity, He has looked upon as possible for us. Could
any career be grander than the one that God has planned for us? God does
not think petty thoughts: He longs for grandeur for us all.
6. Jesus calls us by the spirit of the times. There is a growing
recognition of the affinity between God and the human soul. Religion has
changed in spirit as well as in form. It used to be considered a tract
in one's experience, and now it is perceived to be all of life--its
impetus, its central moving force, the reason for being, activity,
development, for ethical conduct, and for unselfish and joyous
helpfulness. Religion is more and more perceived to be, not a thing of
feeble sentiment, of restraint, of exaction, of meek subordination and
resignation, but the unfolding of the free human spirit to the
realization of its highest possibilities and its allegiance to that
which is eternal and supreme. The nineteenth century closes with the
thinker who is also a man of meditation and devotion. We offer to Heaven
the incense of aspiration, hope, research, talent, and imagination.
The chief thing toward which we are moving is, I believe, the
Enthronement of the Christ. Christ has always been, in the hearts of the
few, enthroned and enshrined. Even in the dark years of mediaeval
superstition and unrest, there were the cloistered ones who maintained
traditions of faith and did works of mercy, as there were knightly ones
who upheld the ministry of chivalry, and followed, though afar, the
tender shining of the Holy Grail. But now all the signs point to a great
and general recognition of the Christ--Christ to be lifted high on the
hands of the nations, to His throne above the stars!
A new spiritual note is to be heard in modern subjects of study, is
noticeable in all paths of intellectual prestige. History is no more
looked upon as the story of the trophies of warriors, conquerors, and
kings. History, rising out of dim mists, is seen to be the marching and
the countermarching of nations in the throes of progress and of social
change. It is not the story of princes alone, but of peasants as well;
the result of myriads of small, obscure lives; of changing conditions;
of the movements of great economic, psychologic, and spiritual forces.
Looking backward over the moving processional of the nations of the
earth, we may see how, without rest, without pause, through countless
ages, the myriad legions of men have been passing across the scene of
life--passing, and fading away!
"_All that tread
The globe are but a handful of the tribes
That slumber in its bosom_."
Empires have risen, and empires have decayed; dynasties have been
buried, and long lines of kings, wrapping stately robes about them, have
lain down to die. Thrones have been overturned, armies and navies have
been mustered and scattered, land and sea have been peopled and made
desolate, as the thronging tribes and races have lived their little life
and passed away. Babylon and Assyria, India and Arabia, Egypt and
Persia, Rome and Greece,--each of these has had its lands and conquests,
its song and story, its wars and tumults, its wrath and praise. Under
all the tides of conquest and endeavor but one fact shines supreme: the
steady progress of the Cross.
One principle of growth and development is being slowly revealed,--an
approach to symmetry and civic form, which is seen in freedom, justice,
popular education, the rise of masses, the power of public opinion, and
a general regard for life, health, peace, national prosperity, and the
individual weal. The day has passed when men merely lived, slept, ate,
fought; they are now involved in an intricate and progressive
civilization. Sociology, ethics, and politics are newly blazed pathways
for its development, its guidance, and its ideals. We are moving on to
new dreams of patriotism, of statesmanship, and of civil rule.
Literature, instead of being considered as merely an expression of the
primitive experiences of a race in its sagas, glees, ballads, dramas,
and larger works and songs, is more and more revealing itself as an
appeal to the Highest in the supreme moments of life. It is the
unfolding panorama of the concepts of the soul in regard to duty,
conduct, love, and hope. Literature asks: What do I live for? as well
as, How shall I speak forth beauty? How ought the soul of man to act in
an emergency? What is the best solution of the great human problems of
duty, love, and fate? The voices of Dante, Milton, Shakespeare,
Tennyson, and Browning sweep the soul upward to spiritual heights, and
answer some of the deepest questionings of the soul of man. And hence
literature is no longer merely a thing of vocabulary, of phrase, of
rhythm, of assonance, of alliteration, or of metrical and philosophical
form. It is a revelation of the progress of the soul, of its standards,
of its triumphs, its defeats, and its desires. It is the unfolding of
one's intellectual helplessness before the unmoved, calm passing of
years; of one's emotional inadequacy without God for adjudicator. It is
a direct search for God. One finds wrapped within it the mystery,
aspiration, and spiritual passion of the soul.
Science, no longer a dry assembling of facts and figures, is an
increasing revelation of the imagination, the exactness, the
thoroughness, and the great progressive plans of God. Evolution has
become a spiritual formula. The scientist looks out over the earth and
sky and sun and star. Against his little years are meted out vast
prehistoric spans; against his mastery of a few forms of life, stands
Life itself. Back of all, there looms up the great Figure of the
Originator of life, and of the forms of life; the Maker and Ruler of
them all. Each scientific fact helps exegesis and evidence. Each new
aspiration after truth becomes a form of prayer.
Yes, the whole world is being subtly and powerfully drawn to the worship
of the Christ. Never before was there so deep, genuine, and widespread a
Revival of Religion. It has not come heralded with great outcries, with
flame and wind, and revolution and upheaval; it has come as the great
changes that are most permanent come, in stillness and strength.
Throughout the world there is being turned to the service of religion
the highest training, the most intellectual power. Wars are being
wrought for freedom; the Church and the university are joining hands;
the rich and the poor are drawing near together for mutual help and
understanding; industry is growing to be, not only a crude force, brutal
and disregarding, but a high ministry to human needs; the home is
becoming more and more the guardian of faith and the shrine of peace;
business houses are taking upon them a religious significance; commerce
and trade are perceiving ethical duties. Armies are marching in the
name of Jehovah, and a great poet has this one message: "Lest
we forget!"
7. Jesus calls us by the future of the race. Life proceeds to life.
Eternity is what is just before. Immortality is a native concept for the
soul. Beyond this hampered half-existence, the soul demands life,
freedom, growth, and power.
We stand between two worlds. Behind us is the engulfed Past, wherein
generations vanish, as the wake of ships at sea. Before us is the
Future, in the dawn-mist of hovering glory, and surprise. Looking out
over eternity, that billowy expanse, do we not see rising, clear though
shadowy, a vast Permanence, Completion, Realization, in which the soul
of man shall have endless progress and delight? This is the Promise held
out by all the ages, and the future toward which all the thoughts and
dreams of man converge. It is glorious to be a living soul, and to know
that this great race--life is yet to be!
At the threshold of each new century stands Jesus, star-encircled, with
a voice above the ages and a crown above the spheres,--Jesus, saying,
FOLLOW ME!