of the Church, it has been held, in the first instance, by men who
lived by it and tied their own lives to it. No power of that ax-head
slipt off into life's stream. They knew what they were doing. When
men brought out the doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible, they
knew what they were doing; they hewed down the trees about them, and
they really believed it. Their lives were created by this truth. So
when they believed in the real presence of Christ, they believed
that Christ was really present. It was no fiction. When they
believed in the doctrine of justification by faith, they believed
that God had taken them into His own hands, that God had grasped
their lives, and God Himself was behind their lives. Truth was to
them truth, and it was a consecrated thing; but remember that truth,
which is a flower, has its roots there, and it is only as you grasp
it by its roots it becomes true to you. Truth is not a thing of the
intellect only; it descends into our moral nature, it grafts upon
our affections and conscience; the moment I cut it away from it it
ceases to be truth; it becomes dogma--for the sake of distinction.
That is to say, the men of our age who do not live by that truth
wish, as it were, to attach that truth to them; they wish to make it
actually the cry of party. They stole the wand of the enchanter, but
they had not the power of the enchanter. They knew that they had the
flower, but the flower cut away from its moral root had no force and
no vitality, and therefore it crystallizes it. Hence, the natural
history of a doctrine is this: when men are taking it rightly, using
it as for God, rightly handling it, it is a power in their hands.
Taken up for their own purposes, for the purpose of satisfying an
indolent understanding, for the purpose of evading the claims of God
which other truths may be making upon their minds, it then becomes
evacuated of its power; it is impotent, it is buried underneath the
stream of constantly changing time.
And, then, how shall it be restored? By again, I say, being taken
up out of the stream by the true handle. If you wish to restore
the power of truth, you must see that it is the truth which has
a claim upon your moral being. For just as we are told that the
sun may pour down its beams eternally upon the face of the moon,
burning and blistering with its rays its surface, and that there
everything remains cold and frozen underneath those beams, because
no sweet atmosphere can hold the sunbeams in its fold, so it is
true that when you take truth and use it from its false side, it
shall pour its brightest rays into your intellect, not the dry light
which Bacon meant, but the false light which some substitute for
it. You receive a true light upon your understanding, and there is
no moral atmosphere upon your nature to embrace those sunbeams, to
keep them and make them your own, and make them your life blood by
their presence. If thus we take truth it becomes false to us, a
buried and useless thing. But if you take truth from its moral side,
and approach it from its moral and spiritual side, it shall again
become a power in your nature.
When men believed in the inspiration of God and the Bible it was a
power to them; but when this dropt down into a belief that every
jot and tittle was part and parcel of God's inspiration, then they
merely crystallized into a dogma what was a great and living truth.
When men ask us, Are the doctrines of Christianity dead; are they
played out? my answer is, They are dead to those who use them
wrongly, as all truth is dead to those who have no moral love of
truth--dead to those who will use them as charms and incantations,
sewing them, as the Pharisees sewed some texts, into the border of
their robes; dead, indeed, they are to those who are not making them
part of their own life, but not dead to those who, tho they may
not be able to formulate their view into any way that will satisfy
a partizan section of Christianity, yet feel that to them the old
inspiration is life. God's living voice will speak to them godlike
in every line, to them because they believe in a Christ behind
all these truths, and that these are but the endeavors of men to
express the power of the living thought and voice of God. Then to
them ordinances will live; a real presence will be about their path.
Sacraments and ordinances will live because something lives behind
them. They are not using them falsely but reverently, and truly God
has spoken to their souls; He has put back the truths into their
hearts by the handle of some new-found life.
It is the same with our own lives; often and often it happens that
you feel life has lost its power and charm; its vigor was once
great. I came up, for instance, into the midst of my fellows here,
with all the enthusiasms of university life, and I rejoiced in
them; but now, somehow or other, the novelty has gone away, and the
interest has palled, and I do not care. Life has lost its meaning to
me, and I do not feel that life is worth living at all. Yes, it is
a contradiction in your own mind between the conception of life as
in your nobler moments you form it and your own impotence. Has the
ax-head gone? Has it slipt into the water? How can it be restored?
The first thing a man discovers in his own impotence, is that the
power which was in his hands was not his own.
It is only when you and I see this that we can take it up again.
Take life, and make it the reason for indulgence; take amusements,
and make them the instruments for mere enjoyment; take study, and
make it the reason for mere pride; and you will find the ax-head
will slip off. All the knowledge you possess will be like blinded
knowledge, capable of being applied to nothing. But believe it to
be your own, given you of God--these hands, this brain, this heart,
God's, not your own; these ordinances of religion God's, not your
own; these teachings of the Church in all ages God's varied voice,
which, if heard aright, shall blend into one mold in your ears. Take
it up as His, and not your own; lift up your life right reverently;
bend as you receive it from His hand, who can alone give you the
restored fulness of His powers. You are surrounded by workers; your
mind is often disturbed among the many cries and many sounds; but
believe it, each of you has your own beam, and God can put into your
hand the weapon which you are to use in hewing it down. Go forward,
and be not afraid.
PARKHURST
CONSTRUCTIVE FAITH
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
CHARLES HENRY PARKHURST was born at Framingham, Massachusetts, in
1842. Since 1880 he has been pastor of Madison Square Presbyterian
Church, New York. He reads his sermons from a carefully prepared
manuscript, from which he does not raise his eyes during the
delivery. His English style is much admired for its force and
compactness. His voice interests and impresses the hearer by its
unusual depth and resonance. Dr. Parkhurst has taken a conspicuous
part in the effort for civic purity and righteousness. He has
published a number of books.
PARKHURST
Born in 1842
CONSTRUCTIVE FAITH
_Why is it thought a thing incredible with you that God should
raise the dead?_--Acts xxvi., 8.
Paul stood before Agrippa to answer to him for the things whereof he
had been accused. And one of the charges of which he stood indicted
was his belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the publicity
with which he had proclaimed that belief.
Such resurrection was to Paul credible, to Agrippa apparently
incredible. Why? Why credible to the one, but incredible to the
other? Does the difficulty lie in the event or in the method of
approaching it? In the event, or, perhaps, in the mental or moral
constitution of the people who contemplate it?
The question is not one of mere academic interest. It is too deeply
involved in the whole Christian scheme to have the door slammed in
its face as a mere intellectual or scholastic intruder. The writer
of the first Corinthian letter rather bruskly settled that matter
when he wrote, "If Christ be not risen then is our preaching vain
and your faith is also vain." As Paul understood it, that was one of
the fundamentals of the gospel, and he, if any one, was competent to
judge what its fundamentals were.
And while there is an element of formality, ceremony and parade,
in the way in which the Church, after nineteen hundred years,
celebrates the event, yet the Church has a great deal of heart
for the event, believes in it some and would like to believe in
it more. Its attitude toward it to-day is, "Lord, I believe; help
thou mine unbelief." It is too deeply linked in with our thoughts
of immortality for us to be able willingly to let go of it. One man
slipping through the grave in an immortal way creates a chance for
every other man. Even if Christ did not rise in the way predicated
of Him, we may still be immortal; but the soul likes one good
authenticated instance of a death that was not fatal as something
definite to anchor itself upon, and is not always so sure of its
anchorage grounds as to be able quite to rest in the hope it tries
so hard to cherish. Aside from the fact that even if He did rise it
was a great while ago--and the argumentative value of a fact tends
to weaken with the centuries--there are other considerations that
complicate the case, so that we always welcome whatever promises to
relieve a little the strain of an unsettled confidence.
It will be rather to our advantage then, I am sure, that we should
distinctly face the fact that the event which the day celebrates is
a somewhat severe tax upon that faculty of ours by means of which
we are able to become convinced of what is unproved and perhaps
unprovable. We can reason toward it a part of the way, but the
reasons are all exhausted before we have arrived at an affirmative
conclusion; and the gap that still remains we fill in with faith.
It is better to state the situation in that frank way, for then
we know exactly what we have to deal with. We can in part attest
the fact of Christ's resurrection, but in part we have to accept
it by the exercise of faith. That may be a discouraging condition
of things, and may not be--discouraging, perhaps, if we mean by it
only that we know it in part, and guess or imagine the rest. But we
ought to seek for faith a somewhat more dignified and constructive
function than that.
There is this, at any rate, to be said about faith--that there
is no faculty of which we make more constant use or that we use
with greater effect when used wisely; and no faculty in which
more of the richest contents of our personality admit of being
concentrated. This faculty is going to be quite largely exercised
by people to-day, and it is a favorable time to comment upon it. It
is of great use in religious matters and the season an opportune
one for encouraging its use and stimulating it to more complete
development. It may enable us in some measure to understand why what
was incredible to Agrippa was credible to Paul.
While there is a larger field in religion for the exercise of faith
than there is anywhere else, we ought to know that it is no more
indispensable there than elsewhere. You, of course, are aware that
there are very few things that can be absolutely proved--proved
in such a way that something over and above is not required in
order to insure a satisfactory conviction. Even if mathematical
demonstrations seem to be an exception to that rule, you should
remember that even there your demonstration has to start with
something that is unproved and that can not be proved. As matter
of fact, absolute demonstration is one of the rarities, whether in
the intellectual, moral or spiritual world, and a man who is not so
equipped as to be prepared to piece our logical proof with something
else of a different complexion is in no condition to be confident of
anything.
As a rule, our conclusions contain a good deal more than was
comprised in the premises. Logic is well enough in the text-books,
is, besides, of considerable practical account, and yet if we
never decided to do a thing until we were satisfied of its logical
accuracy, we should leave nearly everything undone.
In framing our convictions we make some use of reason, but either
because the reasoning faculty is weak in us, or still more because
the situation is such with us that our convictions do not have to
be altogether reasoned out, the conclusions at which we arrive are
usually a great deal sounder than can be logically accounted for.
There is some reason about us and a good deal of something else--has
to be. Otherwise, whether individually or collectively, we should
never get anywhere.
We trust people without being more than about half certain that it
is safe to trust them, and usually discover in the end that we made
no mistake in trusting them. We go aboard an express-train without
having one syllable of information about the engineer, the engine,
the track of the railroad, and nine hundred and ninety-nine times
out of a thousand, and a good deal more, a ticket to Chicago will
take us to Chicago. In the same way we talk confidently about the
sun, but should make awkward work trying to prove that there is
one--seeing that the little ethereal pulse-beat knocking just at the
window of our own eye is the only direct information that we have of
it.
The heroism that is in our conclusions is something tremendous, and
we talk about all these matters as tho we were perfectly at home
with and had intellectually penetrated to the heart of them. It is
interesting, and not only interesting but quite suggestive, the
very slight degree to which ordinarily our confidence is discouraged
by the small amount of distinct fact that we are able to adduce in
justification of our confidence; how brave the steps are that we
take upon ground that has never been accurately explored and of
which, therefore, only the roughest outline map has been prepared.
But at the same time how likely we are to find our way through and
arrive safely at the terminal.
Such illustrations are sufficient to indicate that this faculty
that we have of believing where we are not able perfectly to see
is a respectable faculty, a faculty that we are all showing our
respect for by the constancy with which we make use of it in all our
ordinary modes of thought and usual methods of action.
So that when we talk about religious faith--faith in religious
things, and in events of Christian history, we are dealing with an
inner impulse that we depend upon every day, the only difference
being a difference as to the field in which that impulse works; even
as celestial gravity is the same as terrestrial gravity, only in the
one case working among the stars, and in the other operating down
here on the ground.
Now this faculty that in common affairs we call belief and in
religious ones faith, is quite a distinct thing from a disposition
to walk in the dark when there is no light. Faith is not credulity.
A fool can be credulous and certainly will be, but faith requires
for its rooting and growth soil that is deep and strong. The men
large enough to be great thinkers and immense workers were they whom
the writer of the Hebrew letter describes as prophets of faith.
There is a dignity and authority about the faith faculty poorly
appreciated by people who give it a degraded position in the scale
of human powers: the faculty of finding light enough to walk by when
the light is only a twilight with no distinct sunbeams in reach to
make the path brilliant.
If faith were simply a process of assumption, a matter of easily
and perhaps shiftlessly taking things for granted, then the smaller
a man's soul the greater would be the likelihood of the abundance
of his faith. But that is not the case. The men of which Scripture
history especially predicates faith are the intellectual and moral
giants of history, the men who were virile and strongly chivalrous
enough to make long excursions into the region of truth and to
move out in a large and telling way upon the field of action.
Credulousness will grow and blossom with its roots hidden only
in dry sand, but it takes something quite different from a human
sand-lot to propagate the sort of quality and the modes of thought
and activity celebrated in the eleventh of Hebrews.
All men or women who have shown themselves able to be anything or
do anything in the world have owed this competence to the fact that
they have felt the presence of objects that were too remote from the
eye to be distinctly seen, too remote from the mind to be distinctly
known. Their field of clear vision has been invariably girt about
with an encompassing zone so dense as to be almost impenetrable,
but too obvious to remain invisible. It is with them a faltering
perception of what is almost altogether out of sight. It is what
St. Paul expresses when he says of faith that, "it is the evidence
of things not seen." It is that captivating apprehension of regions
lying beyond the scope of definite vision that creates a sense of
no end of great possibilities and so breaks down the obstinacy of
antecedent objection.
This mysterious discernment that constitutes the genius of faith
we see delicately illustrated even in the play of the bodily eye.
However transparent the material atmosphere immediately about us, as
the eye reaches forth into the distance the outlines become more and
more obscure until the vision loses itself in the immensity of the
prospect that it can only feel and scarcely distinguish. But even
that makes the universe grow great before us as the little world
we know is evidenced to be fringed with the bewitching margin of a
world that is hardly in view.
When, for instance, we look up into the sky on a starry night we are
delighted, of course, by the stellar spots of distinct brightness,
but after all, the charm unspeakable and almost crushing, of such
a sky, is not the stars that we can distinctly see, but those
whose edges are softened down into tantalizing obscurity, bits of
nebulous uncertainty that leave us almost undecided whether they
belong to the world of things visible or to the realm invisible; so
that our sense of them becomes nearly as much a sense of the unseen
as of the seen. And in the presence of celestial scenery in such
manner stimulating to the mind and heart, any declaration in regard
to the astronomic world, even fairly authenticated by competent
authorities, would secure from us not only willing but eager
acceptance.
There pertains thus to the eye a kind of advance-guard of discovery
that gives us a feeling of the unknown wonders that are away in
the corner of the sky, quite before the eye is able to take strong
visual hold upon them. And, as I say, it makes the universe larger
and richer, and not only that, it lays out for us a sort of shadowy
avenue along which the eye is encouraged to let its vision run out
on experimental and adventurous trips with at least some prospect of
being able to return from such excursions laden with more or less of
the products of discovery. To people who sometimes lift their eyes
above the level of the ground, such evasive hints as distant things
give of themselves are very provocative; they tend to make the eye
alert, to tax it to its utmost endeavor, to fill it with inquiry,
and an interrogation is always the outrider of discovery.
And that is the way always that things of whatever kind become known
to us, by standing as closely as ever we can to the edge of the
known and then feeling our way--not seeing our way, but feeling our
way--as far as we can over the edge of the known out into the vast
space where, in almost, not quite, utter indistinctness, hovers the
unknown. That was the process by which Columbus discovered America.
He discovered it by sailing along the line of his presentiment.
He reasoned toward it as far as he could and then supplemented
the insufficiency of reason by a generous contribution of faith;
possest, that is, of so long a reach of thought and so roomy a
conception of God's world that there seemed space in it for another
Europe, which ought somehow to be there in order to fill that space.
And the way in which the discoverer who sailed from Palos discovered
a new geographical world is the way in which we have to approach
the suspected contents of the religious world, suspected events
of Christian history. The sense, the mastering sense, of outlying
spiritual territory too obscure for us to say a great many definite
things about it, but too certainly there to be denied or ignored,
is a necessary prerequisite to all successful use or observance of
such a day as we are celebrating. A man whose thoughts stop short at
the point where those thoughts cease to move in perfect light can
celebrate Easter as a formality, but never as a reality.
The resurrection of Christ does not admit of absolute demonstration.
Undoubtedly the testimony in favor of the event is strong. It was
evidently unquestioned by a great number of intelligent people
living at the time of its reputed occurrence. So much force as
all such evidence has is to be estimated at its logical value. So
Columbus estimated at its logical value all the indications that
were afforded him of the existence of another continent. To most
people of that generation those evidences appeared insufficient
to warrant fitting out vessels of exploration, and it was long
before funds requisite for the purpose could be secured. And the
magnificent result and discovery was due to the fact that in
Columbus' mind there was room for America and in the minds of other
people there was not. His thought, or whatever you may call it, had
in it a vitality that enabled it to move beyond the point where it
could give a satisfactory account of itself. He could see beyond the
point where he could see distinctly. The scheme of things as it lay
drafted in his mind was drawn on a scale large enough to comprehend
everything that was already definitely known, everything that was
indefinitely surmised, and a good deal beside that neither he nor
any one else had ever conjectured.
Now what I want you to realize is that that is the kind of mind
that does the world's work, the kind of mind that arrives, that
kind of mind that is competent to come up close to the frontier, to
venture across the frontier, to do some outside exploring, to bring
back some of the products grown on ground newly explored, and thus
practically to push forward the frontier and to add another lot
of land to the world's geography, whether it be the geography of
country, of thought, or of religious experience. And nothing more is
asked for here than is demanded along every other line of life and
expansion. It is only the men and women whose minds are sufficiently
sensitive to the unknown to be able to take in more than has yet
been definitely found that are ever the means by which anything new
ever _is_ found. That is true in the departments of astronomy and
geology and in every other field of whatever sort in which thought
has ever done any work. A presentiment of the undiscovered is the
regular prelude to discovery, and to the extent that men, whether
from intellectual contractedness or from moral aversion, have not
that presentiment they will be unable to allow even the historic
proofs of Christian events the argumentative force that belongs to
such proofs.
The convincing power of an argument depends quite as much upon
the size, fiber, quality of the man addrest as upon the logical
compulsions or the argument used in addressing him, which is to say
that we are responsible for what we believe as well as for what we
know, and that the machinery of faith operates inside the domain of
ethics.
For example: standing on the basis of the harmonious testimony
rendered by the intelligent authors of the gospel narratives, no one
would dispute the truth of those narratives were there not in them
references to events which lie out of line with things the scheme
of which we happen to be familiar with, and which in the unblushing
conceit of our unsophisticated humanness we dare to presume to be
the whole of things; which means that people do not want the world
to be any larger or any different from what they have already
decided to have it; nor that any events should occur in it or occur
anywhere but what are slow-paced enough to keep step with any most
common thing that moves in our workaday life.