in the primitive elemental religion a profound and solemn witness
to this truth; "Without shedding of blood there is no remission,"
no peace with God, no life in Christ. And I look upon these early
and crude and distorted ideas as God's deep preparation of the mind
and heart of man by the grand gospel of the substitution under the
law of Jesus Christ for guilty sinners. And we can not get those
thoughts out, they are embodied in our very language. Do you know
what the word "bless" means, what it was derived from? The word
"bless" comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for "blood." And the idea
dimly aimed at is this: that before you can really bless a fellow
creature you must part with your life, or part of your life, for
him; shed blood. We can do a great deal by little things; our Lord
said so--by smiles, by gifts, by kind words, by cups of cold water.
Christ will never forget these things. But at the same time, if you
are to bless a soul in the superlative sense, you can not do it in
that easy way; you have to sprinkle the soul with blood, and with
your own blood. You know what I mean. Oh, some of you know it who
have labored for another soul for weary years; you know it too well.
But part with your life and you will win a soul at last. It will
cover a multitude of sins.
I wish I had time to quote from the primitive religions; but I
would remind you of the old legend of the building of Copenhagen.
The builders could not make progress with their work; the sea came
in and took it away, until at last they took a human life, and by
the sacrifice of that human life they gave to the city stability.
And you know the old idea of primitive religion, that the corn will
not grow in the seed ground unless the body of a dead man is buried
there--life coming out of death. Now, I say all these things point
on to the supreme Author of the universe; Jesus died, the Just for
the unjust, that He might bring us to God. Now do you not think you
can see how it is that the eternal Son shed His blood in Gethsemane,
and offered Himself immaculate to God on Calvary?
But we shall never know quite--none of the ransomed ever know--how
deep were the waters crost, or how dark was the night that the Lord
passed through ere He found the sheep that was lost. But we read
with hearts bowed the prayer offered up with strong crying and
tears--the prayer, "If it be possible let this cup pass." There is
no prayer like that, when you feel that a life is hanging in the
balance, that the issues are not quite decided, that your prayer
might turn it. Then you understand what prayer can be. And we hear
those dim, overcome witnesses who heard afar the broken moaning, the
long-drawn sighs, who saw the hard-won victory which seemed defeat,
and we read--I love to read--about that all-pitying but undimmed
angel who appeared to strengthen at last. God made His minister
a flame of fire in the dark and cold, else could Christ have
conquered? His prayer was answered; the cup was not taken away, but
His lips were made brave to drink it, and He drank it and opened the
kingdom of heaven to all believers. Some of my friends think that
the real crowning-point in the suffering of Christ was Gethsemane,
that it was over there that the cross was more the public and open
manifestation which the world, passing by the wayside, could see. I
do not know. Christ quivered a lament upon the cross too.
And now I come to the two thoughts of my sermon.
In the first place, partly from etymology, we learn that the
shedding of our own blood is the condition of our blessing others.
And then my second point is, that since bloom and blossom, the
perfection of life, are also associated with the root, with the word
blood, then I say that the bloom and perfection of our own lives
depend upon our parting with the natural life and having it replaced
by the resurrection life. I hope it is simple enough. Without
shedding of blood there is no blessing to others; without shedding
of blood there is no blessing to ourselves. Take these two great
ruling missionary ideas.
I. Bloodshed for blessing others.
I spoke about Gethsemane because I wanted you to understand that
I was referring not merely to absolute physical death, but to
the death which leads a man to go on, and perhaps to live more
abundantly than before. But still, dear friends, we have been most
solemnly and impressively reminded in these times, that, whatever
has failed in the Church of Christ, the race of martyrs has not
failed. Great names have been written there, the names of those
who have been received in heaven. And, for my part, I love the way
in which the Church of Rome reverences the martyrs. You know that
that Church never prays for the martyrs, but makes requests for
their prayers; you know that that Church pictures in the assembly
of the redeemed before the throne the martyrs in their robes of
crimson and the saints in white. The blood of the martyrs is the
seed of the Church. We can not atone for others, but we can bless
others. We can not, dear friends, have any part in the one perfect
oblation and substitution in the sacrifice of the world, but we
fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ. We know
Him and the fellowship of His sufferings as well as the power
of His resurrection. And when Christ first laid His hand on His
well-beloved He said: "I will show him how great things he must
suffer for my name's sake." This is the chief work of the martyr,
to suffer; and it is the chief work of every Christian to suffer
for Christ's name's sake. And I sometimes think the whole of
Christianity, for the present generation, is summed up in this: fill
up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ, for until
that is filled up He can not have His triumph.
But, dear brethren, of course I do not confuse labor and suffering
in the Christian servant's life. The labor is effective in
proportion as there is suffering, and the suffering by itself is
nothing without the labor. But, oh, how Christ's great servants have
suffered! Have you ever thought how St. Paul was actually driven
to use the awful language of the passion when he described his own
life? He did not like to do it; he always drew the line sharp and
clear between himself and the Master. He said, "Was Paul crucified
for you?" Yes; but he was driven to say, "I am crucified with
Christ"--always bearing about the body and its death--"I die daily."
Oh, they have suffered by way of bloodshed. Yes; but, dear brethren,
I think that in the lives of the great servants of Christ, the elect
servants, there is always one Gethsemane above the rest, far above
the rest; one shedding of blood, one parting with life which makes
all the rest comparatively easy. We can not tell, I think, about
other people's Gethsemane; and we can not tell, will not tell,
nothing would make us tell, about our own.
How does the Gethsemane come? Often it is passed with very little
sign or show. You have read in "The Bonny Brier Bush" that when
George Howe came home to die, his mother hid herself beneath the
laburnum, and as the cat stood beneath the stile, it told the plain
fact, as she had feared. And Margaret passed through her Gethsemane
with the gold blossoms falling on her face. I believe there are
some of you who are passing through your Gethsemane in this chapel
while I am speaking to you now. There is little to show--some
absence of manner, some twitching of the lips, some unwonted pallor,
some strange abstraction, but no more. And you will never tell
anybody about it, and nobody will discover it when you are dead.
You sometimes suspect--do you not?--about another man what his
Gethsemane has been. You are almost sure to be wrong. That surrender
which you see was accomplished almost without murmur or reluctance.
Sometimes in biographies I think I can see where the Gethsemane is.
It may be, and often is, the rooting out of some cherished ambition
that has filled the heart and occupied every thought, every dream
for years and years. It may be the shattering of some song, the
breaking of some dream. It may be, and often is, a great rending
of the affections, the cutting the soul free from some detaining
human tenderness. Well, we do not know--the real Gethsemane never
lasts long. I think an hour is the longest that anybody could bear
it--"Could ye not watch with me one hour?" True, the heartache may
go on to the end, but the Gethsemane, that can not last a long time.
We have in biographies some instances of Gethsemanes, and sometimes
in very unexpected places. You would not imagine that a prosperous
suburban minister, with a rich congregation, and every earthly
ambition realized, would have his Gethsemane as a missionary
far among the heathen has. But in the "Life of Dr. Raleigh," of
Kensington, whom many of you remember, there is a significant
passage. When he was at the zenith of his fame he said that
ministers came and looked around at his crowded church and envied
his position. "They do not know," he said, "what it has cost me
to come to this." In the "Life" of the beloved James Hamilton, of
Regent Square, there is a passage which always touches me. It shows
how he parted, for Christ's sake, with the great ambition of his
life. He longed to write a life of Erasmus, but other things came
and he was balked of his desire. He says:
"So this day, with a certain touch of tenderness, I restored the
eleven tone folios to the shelf and tied up my memoranda, and took
leave of a project which has often cheered the hours of exhaustion,
the mere thought of which has always been enough to overcome my
natural indulgence. It is well. It is the only chance I ever had of
attaining a small measure of literary distinction, and where there
is so much pride and naughtiness of heart it is better to remain
unknown."
I think we may all easily see where the Gethsemane came in in Henry
Martyn's life, and--I say it with great diffidence--I think we may
see where the Gethsemane came in in John Wesley's life, tho I should
not care to indicate it. But the heart knoweth its own bitterness.
What we know is that the Gethsemanes in the Christian life are
in the course of duty, and in obedience to God's will, as it is
revealed from day to day.
Go back to John Wesley's Journal. On one occasion he had the claim
of a reputed saint, and he rejected it, and said--mark these words:
"No blood of the martyrs is here, no scandal of the cross, no
persecution of them that love God." No blood is here, no saint. When
Adam Clarke was speaking in the City-Road Chapel in 1816, at the
establishment of a missionary society in London, he told the people
about the Moravians. And I need not tell you how great the Moravian
influence was on early Methodism. He told his hearers at that
time that the Moravians, when all told, only numbered six hundred
members, but they had missionaries in every part of the globe to
which it was then possible to send them. Dr. Clarke told them of the
beginning, which was in the far-away place of St. Thomas. A negro
slave escaped from St. Thomas somehow, and he came into contact
with Zinzendorf, and found the way of salvation, and rejoiced in
Christ. Well, this negro came to the Moravians, and he told them
that among his fellow slaves in St. Thomas there were several--his
own sister was one, I think--who were feeling after God. "But," he
said, "nobody can go out to tell them the gospel unless they sell
themselves as slaves and go out as slaves." Whereupon two brethren
immediately offered themselves, and exprest their willingness to
be sold as slaves, that they might preach Christ. Yes, we may be
sure that no life will bring forth fruit to God if it is without
its Gethsemane, with the great drops of blood in it; and I believe
that just as the Savior's blood dropt in Gethsemane and the ground
blest it, so the blood of the surrendered soul makes its Gethsemane
a garden, if not now, then hereafter; but the time must be, whenever
a martyr's blood has been shed, upon that ground the fruits of
righteousness must spring.
II. Bloodshed for self-perfection.
I have just my other point. The second point is that there must be
bloodshedding for the bloom and perfection of our own lives before
they can come to their flower, to God's ideal beauty; there must be
the expenditure of the natural life.
Now, what is it that should follow when we have parted with our life
and lived our Gethsemane; what should be the effect upon our lives?
Well, what ought to follow is, that the resurrection life, which the
shedding of blood has made room for, should take the place of the
other. But what does follow? I think three things, often:
First, it often happens that a real Gethsemane of the soul means
a brief tarrying in this world. It seems as if too much life had
gone, as if the spirit could not recover its energies. There are a
few books which the heart of the Church has always loved. I call
them Gethsemane books. They are books about Gethsemane, about the
bloodshedding in the early days and what was gone through. They are
chiefly the lives of David Brainerd, Henry Martyn, and McCheyne. But
there are many others that I have no time to name. All of these died
young, not without signs of the divine blessing, but their rich,
fervent natures were prematurely exhausted and burned out. Have you
read the memoir of Brainerd? John Wesley published it, slightly
abridged, for his people, and I have a copy. Read it, mark its
reserved passion, its austere tenderness; read the story of young
Miss Edwards, who followed her betrothed so soon. You will then feel
that you have done business in great waters. The pages of this book
are all spotted with blood. Read Brainerd's aspirations:
"Oh, that I might be a flaming fire in the service of my God! Here I
am, Lord, send me; send me to the ends of the earth; send me to the
rough and savage pagan, to the wilderness; send me from all that is
called earthly comfort; send me even to death itself if it be but
in Thy service and to promote Thy Kingdom."
But sometimes the earthly life is parted with and not fully replaced
by the resurrection life, and the long-drawn melancholy ensues. You
really must not believe that I am speaking as an enemy of Methodism
when I say I venture to think there is something of that in the life
of that great saint and supreme Christian poet, Charles Wesley. I
think it will be granted by his most ardent admirers that the last
thirty years of his life will not compare with those of his mighty
brother. They were sad years in the main, spent in comparative
inaction, with many, many wearisome discontented days. Dear friends,
there is no such thing as melancholy in the New Testament--nothing.
And Charles Wesley's melancholy is the most attractive in the world--
Oh, when shall we sweetly move?
Oh, when shall our souls be at rest?
And there is this view of life: "Suffer out my threescore years till
the Deliverer come; and then this soul appeals to God to explain my
life of misery with all Thy love's designs in Thee." Those are awful
matters--"explain my life of misery with all Thy love's designs in
Thee." But, dear friends, am I right in saying that this frame is
a Christian frame? When Charles Wesley was in his last years his
favorite text was--and it is a text which will always go with his
name--"I will bring the third part through the fire." That is, he
thought that God would bring to glory one-third part of Methodists,
that one-third of them would endure to the end. Compare that with
"God is with us who seeth the end." Who is right? And he never
sought an abundant entrance into the kingdom. What he used to say
over and over again was: "Oh, that I might escape safe to land on a
broken piece of the ship. This is my daily, hourly prayer, that I
may escape safe to land." In his latter days he was always warning
those about him that a flood was coming out over the country which
would sweep much of this religion away. You know it was said on
another death-bed, "Clouds drop fatness."
It is always necessary that the bloom of life should come out of
death. What Christ means is that as the natural life goes, as the
veins are depleted, there is the resurrection life which should
fill them and pour into them to strengthen. There is no book in
the world, I think, like John Wesley's "Journal," because it is
the book of the resurrection life, and I do not know another in
all literature; the resurrection life lived in this world almost
as Christ might have gone on living it if the forty years had been
prolonged into fifty years. As a book it stands out solitary in
all literature, clear, detached, columnar. It is a tree that is
ever green before the Lord. It tells us of a heart that kept to the
last its innocent pleasures, but held them so lightly, while its
Christian renunciation and its passionate peace grew and grew to the
end, the old wistfulness, the old calm fiery and revealed eloquence.
John Wesley was indeed one of those who had attained the inward
stillness, who had entered the second rest, who, to use his own
fine words, was "of those who are at rest before they go hence,
possessors of that rest which remaineth even here"--even here--"for
the people of God." With what emotion one comes to his closing days,
and follows him to that last sermon at Leatherhead, on the word:
"Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he
is near!" And watch by his triumphant death-bed and hear him say,
"The clouds drop fatness." The only one I can compare him with in
all the history of the Church is the apostle Elliot, the missionary
to the Indians, whose life was written by Cotton Mather. You know
that in that day they had a tradition that the country was safe
as long as the apostle was there. Some of you will remember that
Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his great book, "The Scarlet Letter," tells
us of how the poor children of Arthur Dimsdale pleaded to see the
apostle Elliot, for the testimony is that there was an unearthly
light upon his face to the last of his long life. We read about that
great apostle, fit to be named with Wesley, that he had his bitter
sorrows. Two sons died before him, and Cotton Mather says they were
desirable preachers of the gospel. But the old man sacrificed them.
Now, note Cotton Mather's phrase, "sacrificed with such a sacred
indifference." And he was so nailed to the cross and the Lord Jesus
Christ that the grandeur of this world would seem to him just what
it would be to a dying man, when at a great age and nearing the end
he grew, with John Wesley, still more heavenly, more Saviorly, more
divine and scented more and more of that spicy country at which he
was ready to put ashore. His last words were, "Welcome, joy," and he
died. Such a life of sacrifice is the gateway of the eternal city.
2. It is likewise necessary that the conversion of the world should
come out of death. I for one believe in the ancient promise, "The
knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the
sea." Yes, but before the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the
earth, the earth must be covered with the blood falling upon it from
faithful souls. "Without shedding of blood there is no--." Some
young men whom I love have started societies for the evangelization
of the world in the present generation. I love that; let us try.
But what is evangelization? To send Bibles, to deliver the message
to everybody? No, not that, but the shedding of the servants' blood
on every field, with the world as one great Gethsemane. We shall see
over it the flowers that grew only in the garden where Christ's brow
dropt blood. At this meeting, in this chapel, there will be some
sweet mother who is going through her Gethsemane. She is resolving
to give up a son who has heard the call: "Depart, for I will send
them far hence to the heathen." One in widow's weeds was asked if
she had subscribed to the missionary society. She said: "Yes, I gave
my only son, and he died in the field." That is my text: "Without
shedding of blood there is no--."
Yes, and there is some young heart here that has a great deal to
give up, a great deal at home. And he is hearing me, and he has
made up his mind that he will make the sacrifice, too; that he will
go forth to Christ. And what are the rest of us doing? Well, dear
brethren, there is to be a collection, and we will put our hands in
our pockets in the old way, half thinking what we will spend, and
how we are to spend it before we go home; and select a coin and put
it in. And then we shall go home and see a missionary magazine on
the table, and express our regret that missionary magazines are not
better edited and not more interesting. Of course, there will be
something for the collector when the collector goes round. It will
not be much; and perhaps, owing to the war, you know, we can not
give quite so much as last year.
And do you really think that the world will ever be converted in
that way? Do you believe it? Have you any right to expect that it
should be converted in that way? No right at all. The world will
never be converted until the Church is in agony, and prays more
earnestly, and sweats, as it were, great drops of blood; never,
never! "Without shedding of blood there is no remission of sins."
VAN DYKE
THE MEANING OF MANHOOD
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Henry Van Dyke was born in Germantown, Pa., in 1852. He is a
graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary and of Berlin University.
From 1882 to 1900 he was pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church,
New York, since which time he has been Professor of English
Literature in Princeton University. As a preacher he is generally
regarded as a model, and as the author of many books he enjoys
the highest literary reputation. Doctor Brastow calls him "the
pulpit artist of his school," and adds: "In skilful handling of
the manuscript, in clearness, force, chasteness, and felicity of
diction, and in a directness and cogency of moral appeal which
seemingly his later literary interests have not enhanced, he stands
in the front line of American preachers."
VAN DYKE
Born in 1852
THE MEANING OF MANHOOD[8]
[8] By permission of Dr. Van Dyke and the publishers. From "The
Culture of Christian Manhood." Edited by W. H. Sallmon. Copyright,
1897, by Fleming H. Revell Co.
_How much, then, is a man better than a sheep!_--Matt. xii., 12.
On the lips of Christ these noble words were an exclamation. He
knew, as no one else has ever known, "what was in man." But to us
who repeat them they often seem like a question. We are so ignorant
of the deepest meaning of manhood, that we find ourselves at the
point to ask in perplexity, how much, after all, is a man better
than a sheep?
It is evident that the answer to this question must depend upon our
general view of life. There are two very common ways of looking at
existence that settle our judgment of the comparative value of a man
and a sheep at once and inevitably.
Suppose, in the first place, that we take a materialistic view of
life. Looking at the world from this standpoint, we shall see in
it a great mass of matter, curiously regulated by laws which have
results, but no purposes, and agitated into various modes of motion
by a secret force whose origin is, and forever must be, unknown.
Life, in man as in other animals, is but one form of this force.
Rising through many subtle gradations, from the first tremor that
passes through the gastric nerve of a jellyfish to the most delicate
vibration of gray matter in the brain of a Plato or a Shakespeare,
it is really the same from the beginning to the end--physical in its
birth among the kindred forces of heat and electricity, physical in
its death in cold ashes and dust. The only difference between man
and other animals is a difference of degree. The ape takes his place
in our ancestral tree, and the sheep becomes our distant cousin.
It is true that we have somewhat the advantage of these poor
relations. We belong to the more fortunate branch of the family,
and have entered upon an inheritance considerably enlarged by the
extinction of collateral branches. But, after all, it is the same
inheritance, and there is nothing in humanity which is not derived
from and destined to our mother earth.