Faith in Christ the Savior: Forgiveness
DAILY READINGS
During the next two weeks we are to consider some of the distinctive
meanings which faith in Christ has had for his disciples. They have
found in that faith unspeakable blessing and have uttered their
gratitude in radiant language. But, just because of this, many folk
find themselves in difficulty. Their expectations concerning the
Christian life have been lifted very high, and in their experience of
it they have been disappointed. Their problem is not theoretical
doubt, but practical disillusionment. Their difficulty lies in their
experience that the Christian life, while it may be theoretically
true, is not practically what it is advertised to be. At this common
problem let us look in the daily readings.
Tenth Week, First Day
Many expect in the Christian experience an emotional life of joy and
quietude which they have not found. They are led to expect this by
many passages of Scripture about "peace in believing," by many hymns
of exultation where a mood of unqualified spiritual triumph finds
voice, and by testimonies of men who speak of living years without any
depressed hours or flagging spirits. Such a wonderful life of elevated
emotion many crave for themselves; they came into the Christian
fellowship expecting it; and they neither have it, nor are likely to
achieve it. Now the beauty of a clear, high emotional life no one can
doubt, _but we must not demand it as a condition of our keeping
faith_. We ought not to seek God simply for the sake of sensational
experiences, no matter how desirable they may be. In all the ages
before Christ, the outstanding example of deep personal religion,
expressing itself in over forty years of splendidly courageous
prophetic ministry, is Jeremiah, and his temperament was never marked
by quietude and joy. His emotional life was profoundly affected by his
faith: _courage was substituted for fear_. But if he had demanded the
mood of the 103rd psalm as a price for continued faith, he would have
lost his faith. He was not temperamentally constructed like the
psalmist--and he was a far greater personality. We must not be too
much concerned about our spiritual sensations. Consider the Master's
parable about the two sons: one had amiable feelings, but his will was
wrong, the other lacked satisfactory emotions, but he did the work.
=But what think ye? A man had two sons; and he came to the first, and
said, Son, go work to-day in the vineyard. And he answered and said,
I will not: but afterward he repented himself, and went. And he came
to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go,
sir: and went not. Which of the two did the will of his father? They
say, The first.--Matt. 21:28-31.=
_Ah, Lord, unto whom all hearts are open; Thou canst govern the
vessel of our souls far better than we can. Arise, O Lord, and
command the stormy wind and the troubled sea of our hearts to be
still, and at peace in Thee, that we may look up to Thee undisturbed,
and abide in union with Thee, our Lord. Let us not be carried hither
and thither by wandering thoughts, but, forgetting all else, let us
see and hear Thee. Renew our spirits; kindle in us Thy light, that it
may shine within us, and our hearts may burn in love and adoration
towards Thee. Let Thy Holy Spirit dwell in us continually, and make
us Thy temples and sanctuary, and fill us with Divine love and light
and life, with devout and heavenly thoughts, with comfort and
strength, with joy and peace. Amen._--Johann Arndt, 1555.
Tenth Week, Second Day
Many came into the Christian life because they needed conquering power
in their struggle against sin. They were told that absolute victory
could be theirs through Christ, and they set their hearts on that in
ardent hope and expectation. But they are disappointed. That they have
been helped they would not deny, but they find that the battle with
besetting sin is a running fight; it has not been concluded by a final
and resounding victory. This seems to them a denial of what Christian
preachers and Christian hymns have promised, and perhaps it is. Hymns
and preachers are not infallible. Christian experience, however, is
plainly aligned against their disappointment. Some men under the power
of Christ are immediately transformed so that an old sin becomes
thenceforth utterly distasteful; even the desire for it is banished
altogether. But a great preacher, only recently deceased, no less
really under the power of Christ, had all his life to fight a taste
for drink which once had mastered him. His battle never ceased. His
victory consisted not in the elimination of his appetite, but in
abiding power to keep up the struggle, to refuse subjugation to it,
and at last gloriously to fall on sleep, admired and loved by his
people who had seen in him steadfast, unconquerable will, sustained by
faith. To have done with a sinful appetite in one conclusive victory
is glorious; but we must not demand it as a price of keeping faith.
Perhaps our victory must come through the kind of patient persistence
which James the Apostle evidently knew.
=Count it all joy, my brethren, when ye fall into manifold
temptations; knowing that the proving of your faith worketh patience.
And let patience have its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and
entire, lacking in nothing.=
=But if any of you lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to
all liberally and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let
him ask in faith, nothing doubting: for he that doubteth is like the
surge of the sea driven by the wind and tossed. For let not that man
think that he shall receive anything of the Lord; a double-minded
man, unstable in all his ways.--James 1:2-8.=
_O Lord God Almighty, who givest power to the faint, and increasest
strength to them that have no might; without Thee we can do nothing,
but by Thy gracious assistance we are enabled for the performance of
every duty laid upon us. Lord of power and love, we come, trusting in
Thine almighty strength, and Thine infinite goodness, to ask from
Thee what is wanting in ourselves; even that grace which shall help
us such to be, and such to do, as Thou wouldst have us. O our God,
let Thy grace be sufficient for us, and ever present with us, that
we may do all things as we ought. We will trust in Thee, in whom is
everlasting strength. Be Thou our Helper, to carry us on beyond our
own strength, and to make all that we think, and speak, and do,
acceptable in Thy sight; through Jesus Christ. Amen._--Benjamin
Jenks, 1646.
Tenth Week, Third Day
=Jehovah is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
He leadeth me beside still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
He guideth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil; for thou art with me;
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.=
=--Psalm 23:1-4.=
What expectations are awakened by such a passage! Many have come into
the Christian life because in experience they have found that "it is
not in man that walketh to direct his steps." They wanted a Guide in
the mysterious pilgrimage of life, and in the words of hymns like, "He
leadeth me, O blessed thought!" they saw the promise of a God-conducted
experience. But they are disappointed. They have the same old puzzles
to face about what they ought to do; they have no divine illumination
that clears up in advance their uncertainty as to the wisdom of their
choices; they are not vividly aware of any guidance from above to save
them from the perplexities which their companions face about conduct
and career. Of course part of their difficulty is due to false
expectation. Not even Paul or John was given mechanical guidance,
infallible and unmistakable; they never had a syllabus of all possible
emergencies with clear directions as to what should be done in every
case; they were guided through their normal faculties made sensitive
to divine suggestion, and doubtless they never could clearly
distinguish between their thought and their inspirations. Divine
guidance, did not save them from puzzling perplexities and unsure
decisions. But it did give them certainty that they were in God's
hands; that he had hold of the reins behind their human grasp; that
when they did wisely and prayerfully the best they knew, he would use
it somehow to his service. And so far as the vivid consciousness of
being guided is concerned, that probably came _in retrospect_; when
they saw how the road came out, they agreed that God's hand must have
been in the journey. Such an experience it is reasonable to expect and
possible to have.
_O God our Lord, the stay of all them that put their trust in Thee,
wherever Thou leadest we would go, for Thy ways are perfect wisdom
and love. Even when we walk through the dark valley, Thy light can
shine into our hearts and guide us safely through the night of
sorrow. Be Thou our Friend, and we need ask no more in heaven or
earth, for Thou art the Comfort of all who trust in Thee, the Help
and Defence of all who hope in Thee. O Lord, we would be Thine; let
us never fall away from Thee. We would accept all things without
murmuring from Thy hand, for whatever Thou dost is right. Blend our
wills with Thine, and then we need fear no evil nor death itself, for
all things must work together for our good. Lord, keep us in Thy love
and truth, comfort us with Thy light, and guide us by Thy Holy
Spirit; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen._--S. Weiss, 1738.
Tenth Week, Fourth Day
Many folk grow up into the Christian life, and so interpret the love
of God that they expect from him affectionate mothering; they look to
him to keep them from trouble. In childhood, sheltered from life's
tragic incidents, this expectation was more or less realized; but now
in maturity they are disappointed. God has not saved them from
trouble; he has not dealt with them in maternal tenderness. Rather
Job's complaint to God is on their lips:
=I cry unto thee, and thou dost not answer me:
I stand up, and thou gazest at me.
Thou art turned to be cruel to me;
With the might of thy hand thou persecutest me....=
=Did not I weep for him that was in trouble?
Was not my soul grieved for the needy?
When I looked for good, then evil came;
And when I waited for light, there came darkness.
My heart is troubled, and resteth not;
Days of affliction are come upon me.=
=--Job 30:20, 21; 25-27.=
One such disappointed spirit says that in youth, even if she hurt her
finger, she was told to pray to God and he would take away the bruise;
but now life does not seem to be directed by that kind of a God at
all. It isn't! A pregnant source of lost faith is to be found in this
unscriptural presentation of God's love. In Scripture God's love for
his people and their tragic suffering are put side by side, and the
Cross where the well-beloved Son is crucified is typical of the whole
Book's assertion that God does not keep his children from trouble.
Sometimes he leads them into it; and always he lets the operation of
his essential laws sweep on, so that disease and accident and death
are no respecters of character. When Ananias was sent with God's
message to the newly converted Paul, that greeting into the Christian
life concerned "how many things he must suffer" (Acts 9:16). Whatever
else our faith must take into account, this is an unescapable fact: we
are seeking the impossible when we ask that our lives be arranged on
the basis that we shall not face trouble. Faith means a conquering
confidence that good will, a purpose of eternal love, runs through the
whole process. It says, not apart from suffering, but in the face of
it:
"I'm apt to think the man
That could surround the sum of things, and spy
The heart of God and secrets of his empire,
Would speak but love--with him the bright result
Would change the hue of intermediate scenes,
And make one thing of all Theology."
_Almighty God to whom all things belong, whose is light and darkness,
whose is good and evil, Master of all things, Lord of all; who hast
so ordered it, that life from the beginning shall be a struggle
throughout the course, and even to the end; so guide and order that
struggle within us, that at last what is good in us may conquer, and
all evil be overcome, that all things may be brought into harmony,
and God may be all in all. So do Thou guide and govern us, that
every day whatsoever betide us, some gain to better things, some
more blessed joy in higher things may be ours, that so we, though but
weaklings, may yet, God-guided, go from strength to strength, until
at last, delivered from that burden of the flesh, through which comes
so much struggling, we may enter into the land of harmony and of
eternal peace. Hear us, of Thy mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen._--George Dawson, 1877.
Tenth Week, Fifth Day
=Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge
of the Son of God, unto a fullgrown man, unto the measure of the
stature of the fulness of Christ: that we may be no longer children,
tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by
the sleight of men, in craftiness, after the wiles of error; but
speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things into him, who is
the head, even Christ.--Eph. 4:13-15.=
Many came into the Christian life familiar with such an idea of
growth. They expected the new life to be an enlarging experience, with
new vistas, deepening satisfactions, increasing certitude. If at the
beginning the Christian way did not content them, they blamed their
immaturity for the unsatisfactory experience; they appealed to the
days ahead for fuller light. But they are disappointed. They have not
grown. The most they can claim is that they are stationary; the
haunting suspicion cannot altogether be avoided that their faith is
dwindling and their fervor burning down. This difficulty is not
strange--with many folk it is inevitable; for they have never grasped
the fact that the Christian life, like all life whatsoever, is
law-abiding, and that to expect effects without cause is vain. That a
Christian experience has begun with promise does not mean that it will
magically continue; that the spirit will naturally drift into an
enlarging life. An emotional conversion, like a flaming meteor, may
plunge into a man's heart, and soon cool off, leaving a dead, encysted
stone. But to have a real life in God, that begins like a small but
vital acorn and grows like an aspiring oak, one must obey the laws
that make such increasing experience possible. To keep fellowship with
God unimpeded by sin, uninterrupted by neglect; to think habitually as
though God were, instead of casually believing that he is; to
practice love continually until love grows real; and to arrange life's
program conscientiously as though the doing of God's will were life's
first business--such things alone make spiritual growth a possibility.
_We desire to confess, O Lord, that we have not lived according to
our promises, nor according to the thoughts and intents of our
hearts. We have felt the gravitation of things that drew us downward
from things high and holy. We have followed right things how feebly!
Weak are we to resist the attraction of evils that lurk about the way
of goodness; and we are conscious that we walk in a vain show. We
behold and approve Thy law, but find it hard to obey; and our
obedience is of the outside, and not of the soul and of the spirit,
with heartiness and full of certainty. We rejoice that Thou art a
Teacher patient with Thy scholars, and that Thou art a Father patient
with Thy children. Thou art a God of long-suffering goodness, and of
tender mercies, and therefore we are not consumed._
_And now we beseech of Thee, O Thou unwearied One, that Thou wilt
inspire us with a heavenly virtue. Lift before us the picture of what
we should be and what we should do, and maintain it in the light,
that we may not rub it out in forgetfulness; that we may be able to
keep before ourselves our high calling in Christ Jesus. And may we
press forward, not as they that have attained or apprehended; may we
press toward the mark, for the prize of our high calling in Christ
Jesus, with new alacrity, with growing confidence, and with more and
more blessedness of joy and peace in the soul. Amen._--Henry Ward
Beecher.
Tenth Week, Sixth Day
The Christian experience which disappoints its possessor by lack of
growth is common, because so many leave the idea of growth vague and
undefined. They expect in general to grow, but in what direction, to
what describable results, they never stop to think. If we ran our
other business as thoughtlessly, with as little determinate planning
and discipline, as we manage our Christian living, any progress would
be impossible. What wonder that as Christians we often resemble the
child who fell from bed at night, and explained the accident by
saying, "I must have gone to sleep too near the place where I got in"!
Growth is always in definite directions, and folk will do well at
times, without morbid self-examination, to forecast their desired
courses. Becoming Christians from motives of fear, as many do, we
should press on to a fellowship with God in which fear vanishes in
divine friendship and cooperation. Choosing the Christian life for
self-centered reasons, because it can do great things for us, we
should press on to glory in it as a Cause on which the welfare of the
race depends and for which we willingly make sacrifice. Beginning with
narrow ideas of service to our friends and neighborhood, we should
press on to genuine interest in the world-field, in international
fraternity, and in Christ's victory over all mankind. Such definite
lines of progress we well may set before us. And a life that does
grow, so that each new stage of maturing experience finds deeper
levels and greater heights, is never disappointing; it is life become
endlessly interesting and worth while.
=Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I
press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was
laid hold on by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself yet to
have laid hold: but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are
behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I
press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in
Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, be thus
minded: and if in anything ye are otherwise minded, this also shall
God reveal unto you: only, whereunto we have attained, by that same
rule let us walk.--Phil. 3:12-16.=
_Our Father, we pray Thee that we may use the blessings Thou hast
given us, and never once abuse them. We would keep our bodies
enchanted still with handsome life, wisely would we cultivate the
intellect which Thou hast throned therein, and we would so live with
conscience active and will so strong that we shall fix our eye on the
right, and, amid all the distress and trouble, the good report and
the evil, of our mortal life, steer straightway there, and bate no
jot of human heart or hope. We pray Thee that we may cultivate still
more these kindly hearts of ours, and faithfully perform our duty to
friend and acquaintance, to lover and beloved, to wife and child, to
neighbor and nation, and to all mankind. May we feel our brotherhood
to the whole human race, remembering that nought human is strange to
our flesh but is kindred to our soul. Our Father, we pray that we may
grow continually in true piety, bringing down everything which would
unduly exalt itself, and lifting up what is lowly within us, till,
though our outward man perish, yet our inward man shall be renewed
day by day, and within us all shall be fair and beautiful to Thee,
and without us our daily lives useful, our whole consciousness
blameless in Thy sight. Amen._--Theodore Parker.
Tenth Week, Seventh Day
While some, for reasons such as we have suggested, have made at least
a partial failure of the Christian life, and are tempted to feel that
their experience is an argument against it, we may turn with
confidence to the multitude who have found life with Christ an
ineffable blessing.
=There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ
Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free
from the law of sin and of death. For what the law could not do, in
that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the
likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:
that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not
after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For they that are after the
flesh mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the
Spirit the things of the Spirit. For the mind of the flesh is death;
but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace.--Rom. 8:1-6.=
Innumerable disciples of Jesus can subscribe to this Pauline
testimony, and the center of their gratitude, as of his, is the
victory over sin which faith in Christ has given them. The farther
they go with him the more wonderful becomes the meaning of his Gospel.
What Thomas Fuller, in the seventeenth century, wrote about the Bible,
they feel about their whole relationship with Christ: "Lord, this
morning I read a chapter in the Bible, and therein observed a
memorable passage, whereof I never took notice before. Why now, and no
sooner, did I see it? Formerly my eyes were as open, and the letters
as legible. Is there not a thin veil laid over Thy Word, which is
more rarified by reading, and at last wholly worn away? I see the oil
of Thy Word will never leave increasing whilst any bring an empty
barrel." As for the consciousness of filial alliance with the God and
Father of Jesus, that has been a deepening benediction. How many can
take over the dual inscription on an ancient Egyptian temple, as an
expression of their own experience! A priest had written, in the name
of the Deity, "I am He who was and is and ever shall be, and my veil
hath no man lifted." But near at hand, some man of growing life and
deepening faith has added: "Veil after veil have we lifted, and ever
the Face is more wonderful."
_Eternal and Gracious Father, whose presence comforteth like sunshine
after rain; we thank Thee for Thyself and for all Thy revelation to
us. Our hearts are burdened with thanksgiving at the thought of all
Thy mercies; for all the blessings of this mortal life, for health,
for reason, for learning, and for love; but far beyond all thought
and thankfulness, for Thy great redemption. It was no painless
travail that brought us to the birth, it has been no common patience
that has borne with us all this while; long-suffering love, and the
breaking of the eternal heart alone could reconcile us to the life to
which Thou hast ordained us. We have seen the Son of Man sharing our
sickness and shrinking not from our shame, we have beheld the Lamb of
God bearing the sins of the world, we have mourned at the mysterious
passion and stood astonished at the cross of Jesus Christ; and behind
all we have had the vision of an altar-throne and one thereon slain
from the foundation of the world; heard a voice calling us that was
full of tears; seen beyond the veil that was rent, the agony of God._
_O for a thousand tongues to sing the love that has redeemed us. O
for a thousand lives that we might yield them all to Thee. Amen._--W.
E. Orchard.
COMMENT FOR THE WEEK
I
Hitherto in our studies we have thought of God as the object of our
faith. From the beginning, to be sure, we have been using the Master
as the Way. The God who is in earnest about immortal personalities is
supremely revealed in Jesus Christ. But through Christ's mediation we
have been trying to pierce to the Eternal character and purpose; we
have been taking Jesus at his word, "He that believeth on me,
believeth not on me but on him that sent me" (John 12:44).
The meaning of faith for the Christian, however, cannot be left as
though Christ were an instrument which God used for his revealing and
then thrust aside, a symbol in terms of whom we may poetically picture
God. Christ has been for his people more than a transparent pane,
itself almost forgettable, through which the divine light shone. His
personality has been central and dominant, and when his disciples have
most vividly expressed the meaning of their faith they have said that
they believed in him. The first Christians whose experience is
enshrined in the New Testament did not deal with faith in God alone.
They adored Jesus; they were illimitably thankful to him; they
rejoiced to call themselves his bondservants and to suffer for him;
they claimed him as a brother, but they acknowledged him their Lord as
well; and they bowed before him with inexpressible devotion. "They all
set him in the same incomparable place. They all acknowledged to him
the same immeasurable debt."
One need not read far in the New Testament to see why these first
disciples so adored their Lord. He was their Savior. They called him
by many other names--Messiah, _Logos_, Son of Man, and Son of God--in
their endeavor to do justice to his work and character, but one name
shines among all the rest and swings them about it like planets round
a sun. He is the Savior. From the annunciation to Joseph, "Thou shalt
call his name Jesus; for it is he that shall save his people from
their sins" (Matt. 1:21), to the New Song of the Apocalypse (Rev.
5:5-13), the New Testament is written around the central theme of
saviorhood. These first disciples were vividly aware of an abysmal
need, which had been met in Christ, a great peril from which through
him they had escaped; and throughout the New Testament one never loses
the accent of astonished gratitude, from folk who were once slaves and
now are free, who from victims have been turned to victors. When
Wilberforce's long campaign for the freeing of British slaves was at
its climax, the population of Jamaica lined the shore for days
awaiting the ship that should bring news of Parliament's decision. And
when from a boat's prow the messenger cried "Freedom," the island
rang with the thanksgiving of the liberated. Such rejoicing one hears
in the New Testament. The disciples speak of the freedom wherewith
Christ has set them free (Gal. 5:1); they say that they were dead and
now are made alive (Rom. 6:11-13); once overwhelmed by sin, they now
cry, "More than conquerors" (Rom. 8:37). Nor have they any doubt who
is the agent or what is the agency of their salvation: Christ is the
Savior and faith the means. "This is the victory that hath overcome
the world," they cry, "even our faith" (I John 5:4).
If we are to understand this attitude of the first disciples toward
Christ the Savior, _we must appreciate as they did the peril from
which he rescued them_. One cannot understand the meaning of any
character who, like Moses, delivered a people from their bondage,
unless he deeply feels the importance of the problem to whose solution
the man contributed. Moses shines out against the background of a
nation's trouble like a star against the midnight sky. When the
blackness of the night is gone, the star has vanished, too. The race's
deliverers never can retain their brightness in our gratitude unless
we keep alive in our remembrance the evil against which they fought.
If we would know Moses, we must know Pharaoh; if we would know
Wellington, we must know Napoleon. If we are to value truly the great
educators, we must estimate aright the blight that ignorance lays on
human life. John Howard will be nothing to us, if we do not know the
ancient prison system in comparison with which even our modern jails
are paradise; and Florence Nightingale will be an empty name, if we
cannot imagine the terrors of war without a nurse. Always we must see
the stars against the night.
Nor is there any other way in which a Christian can keep alive a vital
understanding of his Lord. Many modern Christians seem to have lost
vision of the problem that Jesus came to solve, of the human peril to
whose conquest he made the supreme contribution. They think that the
Church has adored Jesus because of a metaphysical theory about him,
but all theories concerning Christ have arisen from a previous
devotion to him. Or they think that Jesus is adored because he was so
uniquely beautiful in character. But while without this his people
never would have called him Lord, not on this account chiefly have
they looked on him with inexpressible devotion. No one can understand
the Christian attitude toward Jesus except in terms of the bondage
from which he came to rescue us. There is a human cry that makes his
advent meaningful; it is like the night behind the star of Bethlehem.
Long ago a Psalmist heard that cry and every age and land and soul has
echoed it, "My sins are mightier than I" (Psalm 65:3).[7]
II
The peril of sin as the innermost problem of human life is in these
days obscure to many minds. For one thing, sin has been so
continuously preached about, that it seems to some an ecclesiastical
question, fit for discussion, it may be, in a church on Sunday, but
otherwise not often emerging in ordinary thought. But sin is no
specialty of preaching. If a man, forgetting churches and sermons,
seriously ponders human life as he knows it actually to be, if he
gathers up in his imagination the deepest heartaches of the race, its
worst diseases, its most hopeless miseries, its ruined childhood, its
dissevered families, its fallen states, its devastated continents, he
soon will see that the major cause of all this can be spelled with
three letters--sin. To make vivid this peril as the very crux of
humanity's problem on the earth, one needs at times to leave behind
the customary thoughts and phrases of religion and to seek testimony
from sources that the Church frequently forgets. When governments try
to build social states where equity and happiness shall reign, their
prison systems, their criminal codes, their courts of law loudly
advertise that their problem lies in sin. When jurists plan leagues of
nations and sign covenants to make the world a more fraternal place,
only to find greed, hate, and cruelty demolishing their well-laid
schemes, their failure uncovers the crucial problem of man's sin. When
philanthropists try to lift from man's bent back the burdens that
oppress him, it becomes plain how infinitely their task would be
lightened, if it were not for sin. As for literature--where the seers,
regardless of religious prejudice, have tried to see into the human
heart and truly to report their insights--its witness is overwhelming
as to what man's problem is. No great book of creative literature was
ever written without sin at the center. Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello,
Faust, Les Misérables, Romola, The Scarlet Letter--let the list be
extended in any direction and to any length! Always the insight of the
creative seers reports one inner peril of the race. Sin is no bogey
erected by the theologians, no ghost imagined by minds grown morbid
with the fear of God. Sin to every seeing eye is the one most real and
practical problem of mankind.
For another reason this crucial problem is dimly seen by many minds:
we do not often use the word about ourselves. The hardest thing that
any man can ever say is "I have sinned." We make mistakes, we have
foibles of character and conduct, we even fall into error--but we do
not often sin. By such devices we avoid the painful consciousness of
our inward malady and even the name of our disease is banished from
decorous speech. But sin does not go into exile with its name. Sin has
many aliases and can swiftly shift its guise to gain a welcome into
any company.
Sin in the slums is gross and terrible. It staggers down the streets,
blasphemes with oaths that can be heard, wallows in vice unmentionable
by modest lips. Then some day prosperity may visit it. It moves to a
finer residence, seeks the suburbs, or finds domicile on a college
campus. It changes all its clothes. No longer is it indecent and
obscene. Its speech is mild, its civility is irreproachable. It gathers
a company of friends who minister to pleasure and respectability,
and the cry of the world's need dies unheard at its peaceful door. It
presses its face continually through the pickets of social allowance,
like a bad boy who wishes to trespass on forbidden ground but fears
the consequence. Its goodness is superficial seeming; at heart it is
as bad as it dares to be. It has completely changed its garments, but
it is the same sin--indulgent, selfish, and unclean. Sin, as anyone
can easily observe, takes a very high polish.
Neither by calling sin an ecclesiastical concern nor by covering its
presence in ourselves with pleasant euphemisms can we hide its deadly
bane in human life. The truth and import of this negative statement
become clear and convincing when its positive counterpart is faced.
The world needs _goodness_. The one thing in which mankind is poor and
for the lack of which great causes lag and noble hopes go unfulfilled
is character. With each access of that humanity leaps forward; with
the sag of that all else is failure. And the one name for every loss
and lack and ruin of character is sin. That is our enemy. Upon the
defeat of that all our dearest hopes depend, and in its victory every
dream of good that the race has cherished comes to an end.
III
The urgency of this truth is manifest when we note the consequence of
sin in our own lives. No statement from antiquity has accumulated more
confirming evidence in the course of the centuries than the Psalmist's
cry, "My sins are mightier than I." Let us consider its truth in the
light of our experience.
Our sins are stronger than we are _in their power to fasten on us a
sense of guilt that we cannot shake off_. Sinful pleasures lure us
only in _anticipation_, dancing before us like Salome before her
uncle, quite irresistible in fascination. Happiness seems altogether
to depend upon an evil deed. But on the day that deed, long held in
alluring expectation, is actually done--how swift and terrible the
alteration in its aspect! It passes from anticipation, through
committal, into memory, and it never will be beautiful again. We lock
it in remembrance, as in the bloody room of Bluebeard's palace, where
the dead things hung; at the thought of it we shrink and yet to it our
reminiscence continually is drawn. Something happens in us as
automatic as the dropping of a loosened apple from a tree; all the
laws of the moral universe conspire to further it and we have no power
to prevent: sin becomes guilt. When on a lonely ocean the floating
bell-buoys toll, no human hands cause them to ring; the waste of an
unpeopled ocean surrounds them everyway. The sea by its own
restlessness is ringing its own bells. So tolls remorse in a man's
heart and no man can stop it.
Our sins are stronger than we are _in their power to become habitual_.
If one who steps from an upper window had only the single act to
consider, his problem would be simple. He could step or not as he
chose. But when one steps from an upper window he finds himself
dealing with a power over which his will has no control. Master of his
single act, he is not master of the _gravitation_ that succeeds it.
Many a youth blithely plays with sin, supposing that separate
deeds--which he may do or refrain from as he will--make up the
problem. Soon or late he finds that he is dealing with moral laws,
built into the structure of the universe as gravitation is--laws
which he did not create and whose operation he cannot control. By them
with terrific certainty thoughts grow to deeds, deeds to habits,
habits to character, character to destiny.
At the beginning sin always comes disguised as liberty. Its lure is
the seductive freedom which it promises from the trammels of
conscience and the authority of law. But every man who ever yet
accepted sin's offer of a free, unfettered life, discovered the cheat.
Free to do the evil thing, to indulge the baser moods--so men begin,
but they end _not free to stop_, bound as slaves to the thing
that they were free to do. They have been at liberty to play with a
cuttle-fish, and now that the first long arm with its suckers grasps
them, and the second arm is waving near, they are not at liberty to
get away.
Our sins are mightier than we are _in their power to make us tempt our
fellows_. When we picture our sinfulness, even to ourselves, we
naturally represent our lives assailed by the allurements of evil and
passively surrendering. We are the tempted; we pity ourselves because
the outward pressure was too strong for the inward braces. We forget
that in sin we are not simply the passive subjects of temptation; sin
always makes us active tempters of our fellows. No drug fiend ever is
content until he wins a comrade in his vice; a thief would have his
friends steal, too; a gossip is not satisfied until other lips are
tearing reputations into shreds; and vindictiveness is happiest when
other hearts as well are lighted with lurid tempers. Sin always is
contagious as disease is; the tempted becomes tempter on the instant
that he falls. Peter weak, lures Jesus to his weakness, and the Master
recognizes the active quality of his disciple's sin; "Get thee behind
me, Satan!" (Matt. 16:23). Sin satanizes men and sends them out to
seduce their fellows. When, therefore, a sensitive man repents of his
evil, he abhors himself--not mildly as a victim, but profoundly as a
victimizer. He repents of the way he has played Satan to others,
sometimes deliberately, sometimes by the unconscious influence of an
unworthy spirit. He remembers the times when his words have poisoned
the atmosphere which others breathed, when his tempers have conjured
up evil spirits in other hearts, when his attitude has made wrongdoing
easy for his friends and family, and well-doing hard. And his
desperate helplessness in the face of sin is made most evident when he
recalls the irrecoverable injury which lives have suffered and are
suffering, hurt, perhaps ruined, by his evil.
_Our sins are mightier than we are in their power to bring their
natural consequences upon other lives._ The landlord, of whom
President Hyde has told, who without disinfection rented to a new
family an apartment where a perilous disease had been, is typical of
every evil-doer. When the only child of the incoming family fell sick
of the disease and died, and the landlord was faced with his guilt, he
pleaded his unwillingness to spend the money which the disinfection
would have cost. He denied his Lord for ten dollars. Let the law
punish him as it can, the crux of his moral problem lies in the fact
that however much he may be sorry now, he never can bear all the
consequences of his sin. Somewhere there is a childless home bearing
part of the result of his iniquity. One who had done a deed like that
might well crave death and oblivion. But everyone who ever sinned is
in that estate. No man ever succeeded in building around his evil a
wall high and thick enough to contain all evil's consequences. They
always flow over and seep through; they fall in cruel disaster on
those who love us best. One never estimates his sin aright until he
sees that no man ever bears all the results of his own evil. Always
our sins nail somebody else to a cross; they even "crucify ... the Son
of God afresh" (Heb. 6:6).
Such is the meaning of the peril against whose background the New
Testament believers saw the luminous figure of the Savior. Sin brings
men into the debt of a great guilt which they cannot pay and into the
bondage of tyrannous habits which they cannot break; it makes men
tempting satans to their fellows, and it hurls its results like
vitriol across the faces of their family and friends. And when one
looks on the lamentable evils of the world at large, its sad
inequities, its furious wars, he sees no need to deal delicately with
sin or to speak of it in apologetic tones. Sin is, as the New
Testament saw it, the central problem of mankind. If anyone has ever
come with the supreme contribution to its conquest, the face of the
world may well be turned toward him today. In the Christian's faith,
such a Savior has come. For if the visitor from Mars who so often has
been imagined coming to earth, should come again, and amazed at the
churches built, the anthems sung, the service wrought in Jesus' name,
should curiously inquire what this character had done to awaken such
response, we should have to answer: Jesus of Nazareth made no direct
contribution to science or art or government or law--with none of
these important realms did he concern himself. Only one thing he did:
_he made the indispensable contribution to man's fight for great
character against sin_. And because that is man's crucial problem, all
science, art, government, and law are under an unpayable indebtedness
to him. Because that is man's innermost need, his birthday has become
the hinge of history, until one cannot write a letter to his friend
without dating his familiar act from the advent of him who came to
save us in our struggle for godliness against evil.
IV
Faith in Christ has a double relationship with the problem of man's
sin; it concerns _the basis on which we are to be judged and the
strength by which we are to conquer_. Christ has brought to men a
gospel of forgiveness and power. With regard to the first--and with
the first alone this chapter is concerned--the opinion of many modern
men is swift and summary: folk are to be judged by what they do; the
output of a man, as of a machine, is the test of him. Until this
popular method of judgment is convicted of inadequacy, there is no
hope of understanding what Christians have meant by being "saved
through faith" (Eph. 2:8). We must see that men are worth more than
they _do_.
A man's deeds alone are an insufficient basis for judgment, because
_motives for the same act may be low or high_. No one can be
unaware of the Master's meaning when he speaks of those who do their
alms before men to be seen of them (Matt. 6:1ff), or of Paul's when he
says, "If I bestow all my goods to feed the poor ... but have not
love" (I Cor. 13:3). Some men habitually shine to good advantage by
such means; they have the facile gift of putting their best foot
forward. Like a store at Christmas time, its finest goods in the
window and inferior stock for sale upon the counters, they are
infinitely skilful in gaining more credit than their worth deserves.
One who has dealt with such folk becomes aware that to estimate an
isolated deed is superficial; one must know the motive. A cup of cold
water or a widow's penny may awake the Master's spirited approval, and
millions rung into the temple treasury by showy Pharisees meet only
scorn.
Deeds alone are an insufficient basis for judgment because, while we
are more than body, _our bodies are the instruments of all that
visibly we do_. Many a man in spirit is like a swift mill race,
eager for service, but the flesh, a battered mill wheel, ill sustains
the spirit's vehemence; it breaks before the shock. One must shut the
gates and patch up the wheel, before the spirit, impatient for
utterance, may have its way again; and some mill-wheels never can be
mended. Says one of Robert Louis Stevenson's biographers: "When a
temporary illness lays him on his back, he writes in bed one of his
most careful and thoughtful papers, the discourse on 'The Technical
Elements in Style.' When ophthalmia confines him to a darkened room,
he writes by the diminished light. When after hemorrhage, his right
hand has to be held in a sling, he writes some of his 'Child's Garden'
with his left hand. When the hemorrhage has been so bad that he dare
not speak, he dictates a novel in the deaf and dumb alphabet." When
one has lived with handicapped folk, discerning behind the small
amount of work the infinite willingness for more, and in the work done
a quality that makes quantity seem negligible, he perceives that deeds
are no sufficient measure of spiritual value. Only an eye that pierces
behind the unwrought work to the _man_, willing while the flesh
was weak, can ever estimate how much some spirits are worth.
Deeds alone are an insufficient basis for judgment because _men face
unequal opportunities_. Some start with one talent, some with ten.
The cherished son of a Christian family ought to live a decent life;
how favorable his chance! But if a vagrant wharf-rat by some
mysterious vision of decency and determination of character makes a
man of himself, how much more his credit! The worth of goodness cannot
be estimated without knowledge of the struggle which it cost. When one
considers the smug, conventional respectability of some, possessing
every favorable help to goodness, and the rough but genuine integrity
of others who have fought a great fight against crippling handicaps to
character, he sees why, in any righteous judgment, the last will be
first, as Jesus said, and the first last. Only God, with power to
understand what heredity and circumstance some men have faced, what
enticements they have met, what a fight they have really waged even
when they may have seemed to fail, can tell how much they are worth.
"What's done we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted."
Judgment based on deeds alone can never truly estimate a man, because
in every important decision of our lives an _"unpublished self"
finds no expression in our outward act_. Duty is not always clear;
at times it seems a labyrinth without a clue. Perplexed, we balance in
long deliberation the opposing reasons for this act or that, until,
forced to choose, we obtain only a majority vote for the decision. Yet
that uncertain majority alone is published in our deed; man's eyes
never see the unexpressed protestant minority behind. And when the
choice proves wrong, and friends are grieved and enemies condemn and
what we did is hateful to ourselves, only one who knows how much we
wanted to do right, and who accounts not only the published but the
unpublished self can truly estimate our worth. Peter, who denied his
Lord, it may be because he wanted the privilege of being near him at
the trial, is not the only one who has appealed from the outward
aspect of his deed to the inner intention of his heart: "Lord, thou
knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee" (John 21:17).
Moreover, even when we choose aright, _no deed can ever gather into
utterance all that is best and deepest in us_. A mother's love is
as much greater than any word she speaks or act she does, as the
sunshine is greater than the focused point where in a burning glass we
gather a ray of it. We are infinitely more than words can utter or
deeds express. No adequate judgment, therefore, can rest on deeds
alone. A machine may be estimated by its output, but a man is too
subtle and profound, his motives and purposes too inexpressible, his
temptations and inward struggles too intimate and unrevealed, his
possibilities too great to be roughly estimated by his acts alone.
"Not on the vulgar mass
Called 'work' must sentence pass,
Things done, that took the eye and had the price;
O'er which, from level stand,
The low world laid its hand,
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:
But all, the world's coarse thumb
And finger failed to plumb,
So passed in making up the main account;
All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:
Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
All I could never be,
All, men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped."
V
If, however, we are to understand the Christian's meaning when he
speaks of being saved by faith (Rom. 3:28; 5:1; Gal. 3:24), we need to
see not only that men are worth more than they _do_, but as well that
they are worth more than they _are_. Some things always start large
and grow small; some things always start small and grow large; but a
man may do either, and his value is determined not so much by the
position he is in, as it is by the direction in which he is moving.
Even of stocks upon the market in their rise and fall this truth is
clear. The figure at which a stock is quoted is important, but the
meaning of that figure cannot be understood unless one knows whether
it was reached on the way up or the way down. How much more is any
static judgment of a man impossible! One starts at the summit, with
endowments and opportunities that elevate him far above his fellows,
and frittering away his chance, drifts down. Another, beginning at the
bottom, by dint of resolute endeavor climbs upward, achieving
character in the face of odds before which ordinary men succumb.
Somewhere these two men will pass, and, statically judged, will be of
equal worth. But one is drifting down; one climbing up. The innermost
secret of their spiritual value lies in that hidden fact. _When,
therefore, one would judge a man, he must pierce behind the deeds that
he can see, behind the present quality that he can estimate, back to
the thing the man has set his heart upon, to the direction of his
life, to the ideal which masters him--that is, to his faith._ There
lies the potential future of the man, his ultimate worth, the seed of
his coming fruit. If one has eyes to see what that faith is, he knows
the man and what the man is bound to be.
When, therefore, men set their hearts on Christ, lay hold on him by
faith as life's Master and its goal, that faith opens the door to
God's forgiveness. In Augustine's luminous phrase, "The Christian
already has in Christ what he hopes for in himself." He is Christ's
brother in the filial life with God, young, immature, undeveloped--but
the issue of that life is the measure of the stature of Christ's
fulness. God does not demand the end when only the beginning is
possible, does not scorn the dawn because it is not noon. He welcomes
the first movement of man's spirit toward him, not for the fruit which
yet is unmatured, but for the seed which still is in the germ; he
takes the will for the deed, because the will is earnest; he sees the
journey's end in Christlike character, when at the road's beginning
the pilgrim takes the first step by faith. There is no fiction here;
God ought to forgive and welcome such a man. All good parents act so
toward their children. This divine grace corresponds with truth, for a
man is _worth_ the central, dominant faith, that determines
life's direction and decides its goal. And the Gospel that God so
deals with man, announced in the words of Jesus, illustrated in his
life, sealed in his death, has been a boon to the race that puts all
men under an immeasurable debt to Christ.
VI
This method of judgment which all good men use with their friends and
families has been often disbelieved, in its Christian formulations,
because it has been misrepresented and misunderstood. But human life,
far outside religious boundaries, continually illustrates the wisdom
and righteousness of so judging men by faith. Roswell McIntyre
deserted during the Civil War; he was caught, court-martialled, and
condemned to death. He stood with no defense for his deed, no just
complaint against the penalty, and with nothing to plead save shame
for his act, and faith that, with another chance, he could play the
man. On that, the last recourse of the condemned, President Lincoln
pardoned him.
"EXECUTIVE MANSION,
Oct. 4, 1864.
Upon condition that Roswell McIntyre of Co. E, 6th Reg't of New York
Cavalry, returns to his Regiment and faithfully serves out his term,
making up for lost time, or until otherwise discharged, he is fully
pardoned for any supposed desertion heretofore committed, and this
paper is his pass to go to his regiment.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN."
Was such clemency an occasion for lax character? The answer is written
across the face of Mr. Lincoln's letter in the archives: "Taken from
the body of R. McIntyre at the Battle of Five Forks, Va., 1865." Five
Forks was the last cavalry action of the war; McIntyre went through to
the finish.
Any one who knows the experience of being forgiven understands the
motives that so remake a pardoned deserter. The relief from the old
crushing condemnation, the joy of being trusted again beyond desert,
the gratitude that makes men rather die than be untrue a second time,
the unpayable indebtedness from which ambition springs, "whether at
home or absent, to be well-pleasing unto him" (II Cor. 5:9)--this is
the moral consequence of being pardoned. Goodness so begotten reaches
deep and high, has in it conscious joy and hope, feels vividly the
value of its moral victories, possesses great motives for sacrificial
service in the world. The Apocalypse is right. There is a song in
heaven that angels cannot sing. Only men like McIntyre will know how
to sing it.
The vital and transforming faith that saves is always better presented
in a story than in an argument, and in the Scripture the best
description of it is Jesus' parable of the Prodigal. As the Master
drew that portrait of life in the far country, all the watching
Pharisees thought that such a boy was lost. The Prodigal himself must
have guessed that his case was hopeless. His friends, his character,
his reputation, his will were gone, and in the inner court-room of his
soul with maddening iteration he heard sentence passed, Guilty. Only
one hope remained. If he was unspoiled enough by the far country's
pitiless brutality to think that at home they might bear no grudge,
might find forgiveness possible, might offer him another chance as a
hired servant, if he could think that perhaps his father even _wanted_
him to come home, then there was hope. With such slender faith the boy
turned back from the far country. He had the same lack of character,
the same weakened will, the same evil habits. Only one difference had
as yet been wrought. Before, he had been facing toward swine, now he
was facing toward home. The _direction_ of his life was changed by
faith. And when the father saw him, homeward bound, "_while he was yet
afar off,_" forgiveness welcomed him. No pardon could unload from the
lad's life all the fearful consequences of his sin. As long as he
lived, the scars on health, repute, and usefulness were there. But
forgiveness could take the sin away _as a barrier to personal
friendship with the father_; the old relationships of mutual
confidence, helpfulness, and love could be restored; the glorious
chance could be bestowed of fighting through the battle for character,
not hopelessly in the far country, but victoriously at home.
One of the chief glories of the Gospel is that it has so reclaimed the
waste of humanity, made sons of Prodigals and patriots of McIntyres.
Its Pauls were persecutors, its Augustines the slaves of lust, and its
rank and file men and women to whom Christ's message has meant
forgiveness, reinstatement, a new chance, and boundless hope.
Scientific business conserves its waste and makes invaluable
by-products from what once was slag; but Christ has been the conserver
of mankind. The lost and sick have been returned to sanity and
wholesomeness and service; humanity has been enriched beyond
computation, with Bunyans and Goughs and Jerry McAuleys. Tolstoi's
simple confession in "My Religion" is typical of multitudes: "Five
years ago I came to believe in Christ's teaching, and my life suddenly
became changed: I ceased desiring what I had wished before, and began
to desire what I had not wished before. What formerly had seemed good
to me appeared bad, and what had seemed bad appeared good.... The
direction of my life, my desires became different: what was good and
bad changed places." Tolstoi had indulged, as he acknowledges, in
every form of unmentionable vice practiced in Russia; and yet
forgiven, reinstated, transformed, he was carried to his burial by
innumerable Russian peasants with banners flying. Where Christ's
influence has vitally come, the loss and wreck and flotsam of the
moral world have been so reclaimed to character and power.
At the beginning of the Christian era, a few desolate sand lagoons lay
off the Paduan coast of Italy. There the wild fowl made their nests;
the lonely skiffs of fishermen threaded the reedy channels; the storms
washed the shifting and uncertain sands. And possibly to this day the
lagoons would have been thus barren and deserted, had not the Huns
swept down on Italy. The Huns made the building of Venice necessary.
They did not intend so fair a consequence of their terrific
onslaughts. Their thoughts were on death and pillage. But because they
came, the Italians fled to the lagoons, built there, behind the
barricade of restless waters, their gleaming city, developed there the
commerce that combed the world, built the Doge's palace as the abode
of justice, and raised St. Mark's in praise of God. Venice was the
city of Salvation; it rose resplendent because the Huns had come. So
Christ turns the ruin of sin to victory, and builds in human life
character, recovered and triumphant. If his Gospel can have its way, a
spiritual Venice will arise to make the onslaught of the moral Huns an
evil with a glorious issue. What wonder that inexpressible devotion
has been felt for him by all his people?
[7] "Iniquities prevail against me."