that the Jews confess great admiration for the character and words
of Jesus; that the Mohammedan world gives Him the high title
of Messiah; that the myriad-minded Shakespeare paid Him lowly
reverence, and that men like Galileo, Kepler, Bacon, Newton, and
Milton set the name of Christ above every other name. He also
reminds us that Jean Paul Richter, whom his countrymen call "Der
Einzige," the unique, tells us that "the life of Christ concerns
him who, being the holiest among the mighty, the mightiest among
the holy, lifted with his pierced hands empires off their hinges,
and turned the stream of centuries out of its channel, and still
governs the ages." Spinoza, the great philosopher, son of Portuguese
Jews, disciple of Aben-Ezra and Descartes, calls Christ the symbol
of divine wisdom. Schelling and Hegel speak of Him as the union of
the divine and human. The immortal Goethe, the acknowledged prince
of German poets, and one of the most superbly accomplished men of
the eighteenth century, says, "I esteem the gospels to be thoroughly
genuine, for there shines forth from them the reflected splendor
of a sublimity, proceeding from the person of Jesus Christ, of so
divine a kind as only the divine could ever have manifested upon
earth."
What thinkest thou of the Christ, O Jean Jacques Rousseau, with all
the brilliancy of thy intellect, the singularity of thy character,
and the enthusiasm of thy writings? Give place to the witness
Rousseau; hear his testimony. Rousseau speaks: "How petty are the
books of the philosophers, compared with the gospels! Can it be that
writings at once so sublime and so simple are the work of men? Can
He whose life they tell be Himself no more than a mere man?... Yes,
if the death of Socrates be that of a sage, the life and death of
Jesus are those of a God." What thinkest thou of the Christ, burly,
brusk, brave, and heroic Thomas Carlyle, with all thy marvelous
reading, thy profound thinking, and thy contempt of cant and love
of truth? Carlyle steps forward and speaks: "Jesus of Nazareth, our
divinest symbol! Higher has the human thought not yet reached."
Let us summon Dr. Channing, the cultured and eloquent preacher and
writer, the foremost man among American Unitarians in his day.
What thinkest thou, O Channing, of Jesus Christ? He makes reply:
"The character of Jesus Christ is wholly inexplicable on human
principles."
What thinkest thou, O Herder, illustrious German thinker, broad
scholar, and exquisite genius, of Jesus, the Christ? Superb is his
reply: "Jesus Christ is in the noblest and most perfect sense the
realized ideal of humanity." What thinkest thou of the Christ, O
Napoleon, mighty son of Mars, striding through the world like a
Colossus, darkening the brightness of noonday with the smoke, and
lighting the darkness at midnight with the fires of battle? Hear
this man of gigantic intellect, whatever may be said of his moral
motives: "I think I understand somewhat of human nature, and I tell
you all these (the heroes of antiquity) were men, and I am a man,
but not one is like Him; Jesus Christ was more than man. Alexander,
Cæsar, Charlemagne, and myself founded great empires; but upon what
did the creations of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus alone
founded His empire upon love, and to this very day millions would
die for him." Compared with such witnesses as these, the opponents
of Jesus Christ of to-day are pigmies so contemptible in mentality
and so questionable in morality as to be ruled out of every court of
testimony, where intellectual ability and moral worth have weight.
I summon thee, O execrable Judas. Behold him flinging down the
thirty pieces of silver before the chief priests and elders. Hear
him speak in his agony of soul: "I have sinned in that I have
betrayed the innocent blood." I summon thee, O Pontius Pilate,
with thy immortality of shame in the creeds of the ages. The Roman
Procurator washes his hands. Strange sight! He speaks: "I am
innocent of the blood of this just person." He speaks again: "I find
no fault in this man." I summon John, the heroic Baptist. Hear His
testimony: "Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the
world." O loving and divine John, the Evangelist, what thinkest thou
of the Christ? "He is the Vine, the Way, the Truth, the Light, and
the Word, and the Word was God." I summon thee, O matchless Paul.
What is thy testimony? "He is the image of the invisible God.... The
blest and only Potentate, the King of kings, the Lord of lords."
I summon thee, Apostle Peter, once confessor, then denier, but
afterward penitent witness and heroic martyr. What is thy testimony?
"He is the Christ, the Son of the living God." I summon thee, O
once doubting but always brave Thomas. Hear the testimony of this
witness as he falls at the Master's feet and exclaims, "My Lord and
my God!"
I summon thee, O John Bunyan, immortal tinker; thy glorious Pilgrim,
marching through the ages, telling the story of redeeming love, is
thy testimony to the character of thy Lord. I summon thee, O Charles
Spurgeon, and the testimony of all thy volumes, of thy glorious
life and of thy peerless ministry is that "Jesus Christ is the
chiefest among ten thousand and the One altogether lovely." I summon
thee, O De Wette, great Biblical critic of Germany: "This only I
know, that there is salvation in no other name than in the name of
Jesus Christ, the crucified." I summon thee, O scholarly, cultured
MacIntosh; the attendants are watching thy last moments, they
bend over thee to catch thy last whispers: "Jesus, love!--Jesus,
love!--The same thing." I might summon ten thousand more, who from
the Grassmarket in Edinburgh, and from a thousand racks and stakes
went up to glory and to God, and their testimony would be, "None but
Jesus, none but Jesus." I summon thee, Toplady, and hear thee sing
this great hymn, "Rock of Ages, cleft for me."
I summon thee, O Tennyson, immortal laureate, thou who hast fought
thy doubts and found divine help. Let us hear the result of thy
conflicts:
Strong Son of God, immortal love,
Whom we, that have not seen Thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we can not prove.
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest life in man and brute;
Thou madest death; and lo! Thy foot
Is on the skull which Thou hast made.
Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood Thou;
Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours to make them Thine.
I summon thee, O Browning, poet of divine optimism and interpreter
of the deeper instincts of the human heart, let us hear the
conclusion of thy philosophic mind:
I say the acknowledgment of God in Christ
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee
All questions in the world and out of it,
And hath so far advanced thee to be wise.
I summon thee, O Gladstone, noblest of statesmen, uncrowned king of
the world, thou who didst come in contact with the throbbing life
of the world, of politics, letters, and religions, what sayst thou
concerning humanity's greatest need? "I am asked what a man should
chiefly look to in his progress through life as to the power that
is to sustain him under trials and enable him manfully to confront
his afflictions. I must point to something which, in a well-known
hymn is called, 'The old, old story,' and taught with an old, old
teaching, which is the best gift ever given to mankind. The older I
grow, the more confirmed I am in the belief that Jesus Christ is the
only hope of humanity."
I summon Thyself, O Thou Christ of God, Thou holiest of the holy,
Thou who art God of very God. What sayst Thou of Thyself? "Before
Abraham was I am." "I and my Father are one." "He that hath seen me,
hath seen the Father."
CARPENTER
THE AGE OF PROGRESS
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
William Boyd Carpenter, English divine, was born in 1841 in
Liverpool, educated at the Royal Institution and Cambridge
University, where he was appointed Hulsean lecturer in 1878. After
holding several curacies he was appointed vicar of Christ Church,
Lancaster Gate, in 1879. He held also a canoncy of Windsor Until
1884, when he was consecrated bishop of Ripon. In 1887 he delivered
the Bampton lectures. He has published a large number of works,
among which may be reckoned "Commentary on Revelation" (1879);
"Lectures on Preaching" (1895); and a "Popular History of the Church
of England" (1900).
CARPENTER
Born in 1841
THE AGE OF PROGRESS
_And the sons of the prophets said unto Elisha, Behold now, the
place where we dwell with thee is too strait for us. Let us go,
we pray thee, unto Jordan, and take thence every man a beam, and
let us make a place there where we may dwell. And he answered,
Go ye._--2 Kings vi., 1, 2.
There are two conditions of real personal power in the world. One
is that we should be able to look above this earth and see some
heavenly light surrounding everything we meet. We call this, in
ordinary language, asserting the power of insight, and it is that
which redeems life from being regarded as commonplace. Everything is
tinged with heavenliness for those who see heaven's light above all;
and the possession of this power gives that dignity of conception
to life which is one of the secrets of power. But there is another
condition also, and that is that there shall be the strength of
personal assertiveness. A man may be possest of never so much
insight, and yet he may lack that robustness of personal character
which can make itself felt among his fellows; he may, in fact, be
deficient in the powers of personal action.
Now these two gifts Elisha possest. He possest the loftiness of
insight. He had seen when his master was taken up the glimpse
of the fiery chariot which took him into the heavens, and from
that time forward his life was tinged with the consciousness of
heaven. Nothing could be mean or low to a man who had beheld that
first vision of God. This was, as it were, an enduring and abiding
background of all his after-conceptions. So in the hour when it
seemed as tho beleagured by armies and enemies, that there was no
power of release, his eyes, as it were, were still open to behold
the heavenly brightness about him. He possest also that power of
personal assertiveness. Standing in front of the Jordan, he smote
aside every difficulty which hindered him commencing his career.
But there is a third qualification still which is needed, in order
that these two powers may be brought, as it were, into practical
contact with life. Great men, it has been said by one of our own
great teachers, are men who live very largely in their own age; that
is to say, they are persons the drift and set of whose mind does not
belong to the generation before themselves exactly, altho they may
be possest of powers of insight, nor to the generation after their
own age, but have much power of sympathy and comprehensiveness
toward the interests and exigencies of their own time. They are
men to use the phrase, who are in touch with their own age. And
therefore it is, tho a man may be possest of so much insight that
heavenly light breathes upon all things, tho he may have a certain
robust assertiveness and energy of character, yet if he have
no power of adjusting his capacities, so to speak, in language
understood of the men among whom he moves, all that power will, for
the practical purpose of life, be thrown away.
Elisha possest the two. Does he possess the third? Is he a man, in
fact, who can make his influence felt among the men of his day?
Is he in touch with his time? Can he be a man capable, not only
of acting for himself, but capable, by that subtle and magical
influence, of arousing the activity of others? For a man may,
indeed, hold a position of isolated splendor, which may produce
the admiration of the men of his day; but to be a real prophet, I
take it, is to be able to merge largely our own individuality into
the individualities of others, and to be not so much the cause of
admiration as the cause of activity.
Now I think that the scene will explain to us that Elisha was
largely possest of that gift. If you watch it you will see that here
is a scene which has since then often been exhibited in the story
of all great movements. One of the great conditions of life is the
capacity to expand. Dead things may indeed crystallize into a sort
of cold uniformity, but that which has life in it is always possest
of expansive energy. Here are these sons of the prophets becoming
conscious that the place where they dwell is too strait for them.
It is a movement which, as it were, arises outside the prophet's
suggestion; he is not the one who tells them that the place is too
strait. They gather themselves together and say, "The place is too
strait for us; let us go and build a larger and ampler habitation
for ourselves." And immediately you watch him in the midst of these
men whose minds are alive to the spirit of progress. He identifies
himself with their aspirations; he is one with them in the movement;
he does not coldly frown upon their glorious aspirations, which
are from the extension of their own institutions, but rather makes
himself one with them. Not only so. See how he allies himself to
their individual life. He does not even dictate to them the whole
method of the movement; each man shall be free, he says, to choose
his beam. When they say, Let us go and select our own beam for our
own habitation, be it so. He is not to frown down their individual
efforts, but, at the same time, by going with them he preserves
the coherence, as it were, of their work. He allows the freest
scope of individual activity, but yet preserves them in the great
unification of their work. And when the episode happens which often
does happen in the story of great movements--when the hour comes
when one man's heart is smitten through with despondency, when the
work is still before him, but the power of carrying on the work has
dropt from his hand, slipping into the stream which is ever ready
to drown our best ambitions and endeavors--Elisha stands beside
a man in despondency, cheers his spirit, which is overwhelmed by
hopelessness, and restores to him hope, capacity, and power. I say
this is a man who is, in a great sense, a true prophet of his day,
not simply posing for personal admiration, not merely asserting
himself and destroying the capabilities of those about him, but with
that sweet flexibility and that wondrous firmness combined, which is
capable of giving movement to the young life about him and at the
same time drawing them into the one great purpose of existence.
And thus it seems to me that the scene spreads beyond its own age.
It is a type of all great movements, and it gives us a fitting
attitude of those who would direct and control such movements. Here
is the prophet in relation to the idea of the age of progress. The
place is too strait for us. It is not the cry of the Jewish Church
only; it is the cry of all ages. "The place is too strait." You
and I might say that is a vision of the growth of Christendom;
the place is too strait. The little upper chamber at Jerusalem did
not suffice for the three thousand converts. "The place is too
strait," they are forced to exclaim. The limits of Judea are too
small for the ever-extending energy of Christianity. Every land and
every nationality must be brought within its sway, and the workers
shall be as the workers in this scene, manifold. Here shall be men
like St. Paul, who shall go, with a strong forensic sense of what
the gospel is, to speak it to the hearts of men who need it, and
lift them high above commonplace things. Here shall be one like
St. John, reposing upon the bosom of his Lord, and able to unfold
to them heavenly visions and the anticipations of the outgrowth
and development of the world. Here is one who, like Origen shall
collate, like Jerome shall translate, like Augustine shall expound,
like the men of later ages shall preach the spirit of reformation.
The place is too strait, but given to each man his individual
freedom, the power and the expansion of the Church goes on.
But is it not true that while, on the one side, we might say that
this is a glorious picture, untouched and untinged by any dark
lines, the moment that we begin to look at it in its practical
form we begin to see the difficulties of its development? Let us
go unto Jordan, and let us take each man our own beam. As long as
the expansion of the Church is in the direction of the increase
of its numbers or accession of new territories, so long indeed the
men who have had the spirit of zeal have been willing to sanction
such extension. But there comes a time when the consciousness
of its expansion does not move according to the line of numbers
merely, but it moves according to the line of new institutions and
of new thoughts. How, then, will it be received by those into whose
hand is placed the responsibility of its guidance? "The place is
too strait for us;" so they cried in the early Church when they
found that Judaic institutions were too narrow for the spirit of
Christianity. The new wine could not be left in old bottles. "The
place is too strait for us;" so they cried when they found within
the bosom of the medieval Church that there was not the opportunity
for the expansion of their spiritual life and the development of
their missionary energy. But has it always been true that the
spirit of this religious zeal which longs for new developments and
new departures has been received with the spirit of wisdom? You
and I know full well that the history of the Church of Christ is
the history of a thousand regrets. Did the medieval Church never
regret the act by which it drove forth the Waldenses into schism?
Has our Church never regretted the day when it looked askance at
the work of John Wesley? You know full well, whatever might have
been the feeling of earlier times, there is growing up among us a
larger and wider spirit, catching--shall I say?--the true directing
spirit which shone thus in the life of Elisha; and believing that
it is possible after all that each man may have his function in
life, and each man, choosing his beam, may in bearing that beam
be building up the temple of God. But, alas! it is hard for men
to believe it. Still, even now, the spirit of prejudice surrounds
every aspect with which we regard life and Church movement. It is
difficult for a man bred in one communion, for example, to believe
in the types of saintship which have become the favorites of
another; harder, perhaps, for men bred in the very heart of Rome
to believe in the spirit of saintship which dwelt in the breast of
Molinos; hard for those dwelling in the heart of Protestantism to
understand Bonaventura or Xavier; hard for one who has been taught
in Presbyterian lines to believe in that sanctity which descends
to us as an heritage from Cosin and Ken; and difficult, perhaps,
for Episcopalians to recognize the sanctity which dwelt in Richard
Baxter and John Bunyan....
You may believe that there is the danger of the Church--shall I
say?--growing stereotyped in its forms, by checking the freedom of
individual life. There is the danger, on the other side, of the
Church, as it were, spreading itself in the aggregation of splendid
individualities; and because men believe intensely in their own
mission, because they can not but see that the beam which they
are hewing down is one of paramount importance to take some place
in supporting the temple of God, they are inclined to prefer the
attitude of isolation. Is this wise, and is it well? Pardon me if
I ask you to say that this spirit, if allowed to grow, is a spirit
which, from its various aspects, is one which, by all means in
our power, we ought to set our faces against. Our own beam is not
the temple of God. Each move and form of religious thought is not
comprehensive of the whole; but it is here where men, choosing
their own beam, begin to believe in their own, and their own alone,
and seek to impose that little thing of their own as tho it were
an absolute necessity of every portion of God's Church, that you
get the spirit of actual division. "The whole is greater than its
part." If we could only bring the aphorisms of ordinary life into
the bearings of the Church of God we should be happier. But, let me
assure you, when a man has his beam, and tells me that that beam
will be built into the temple of God, will support its roof, and
perhaps be the very thing which will add new dignity to the splendid
arch which will spring from it, I am content to accept it. Let him
believe anything that will beautify and extend. But when he tells
me that it is catholicity to believe in his beam being all, he
simply, as it were, sins against the very thing he is seeking to
maintain. It is a sign of intellectual mediocrity; it is the spirit
of sectarianism; it is the spirit ultimately of skepticism. When
a man believes that pious views, which have been found profitable
to his own soul, are to be made the rule for the whole catholic
Church; when he tells me that special hours for special services
are essential for the well-being of all Christian souls; when he
tells me that special attitudes in the house of God are essential to
catholicity, it is intellectual mediocrity, as the brilliant French
poet has written which can not comprehend anything beyond itself.
It is a spirit of sectarianism; for what, I pray, do you mean by
sectarianism, if it is not this spirit, that you exaggerate your own
particular doctrine into such proportions as to make men feel that
there is none other than that? You are of your own little Church,
and you are doubtful of the rest of the world. That is the spirit of
sectarianism, and that, if you understand it rightly, is the only
fault of skepticism; for to believe that God is to be narrowed down
to the conception of such a thing as that, to believe that God's
temple is to be brought down to the measure of your own little beam,
is to believe with such a stunted growth, such a stunted conception
of God, that it is practically denying Him altogether.
Sometimes I venture to think that we have lost faith in Christ
altogether. We believe in a Church which can be manipulated by
human wisdom, we believe in a Church which can be galvanized by
organization, but we can not believe in a Church whose development
is being overruled by the guiding spirit and eternal presence of
Christ Himself. If you take a large view of Christianity the danger
becomes yours. Some, indeed, hew down beams for the temple of God
not themselves knowing of that temple into which they are placed;
for I do believe that in the development of God's great world the
efforts of earnest and honest men who know not indeed in what
direction their efforts are tending will be found to have been real
efforts for the promotion of something, for the bringing out of some
truth, for the establishment of some truth by which the Church may
live, on which the Church may build, of whom the whole building,
fitly framed together and compacted by that which every joint
supplies, shall thus grow into the holy temple of the Lord.
But the scene is not the scene merely of these activities uncrossed
by a single reverse. Here is the accident, here is the time in which
men begin to feel that their power has left them. One, in hewing
down his beam, animated by a spirit of a little overeagerness,
perhaps gifted with that egotism of his work which made him develop
it more rapidly than that of his fellows, strikes too hard a blow,
and the loose ax-head slips off the haft and falls into the stream.
Immediately he is face to face with, and conscious of, that most
painful consciousness which can ever visit the heart of man--the
contradiction between the grandness of the work and the ideal of
the work which he has to achieve and his own impotence. There is
the beam, and all about me are the workers, and the house is to be
built for the sons of the prophets. But here, in my hand I hold this
simple haft, bereft of the power of doing my share in that great
work. It is a picture which has been repeated often and often. Does
there not come a time when we feel that the power, as it were, of
things has forsaken us? There was a time when our creeds afforded
us great delight. We believed in God; we believed in redemption; we
believed in the Spirit which could guide human affairs; we moved to
our work full of the exuberance of confidence in that faith. But
behold, there has come a time when we, perhaps almost unconsciously,
lose the very thing which has given us hope.