The Fellowship of Faith
DAILY READINGS
Our thought turns, in our closing week of study, from believers taken
one by one, to believers gathered in fellowship. This community of
faith has wider boundaries than the organized churches; in a real
sense it includes all servants of man's ideal aims; yet in the Church
we naturally seek the chief meanings of fellowship for faith. Why men
do not go to church, is often asked. But why men do go, so that in
spite of countless failures in the churches, attendance on public
worship and loyalty to organized religion are among mankind's most
usual habits, is an inquiry far more important. To that inquiry let us
in the daily readings turn our thought.
Twelfth Week, First Day
=But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye shut
the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye enter not in yourselves,
neither suffer ye them that are entering in to enter.=
=Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea
and land to make one proselyte; and when he is become so, ye make him
twofold more a son of hell than yourselves....=
=Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye tithe mint
and anise and cummin, and have left undone the weightier matters of
the law, justice, and mercy, and faith: but these ye ought to have
done, and not to have left the other undone. Ye blind guides, that
strain out the gnat, and swallow the camel!--Matt. 23:13-15; 23, 24.=
Jesus' indictment of the Jewish Church is terrific, and yet no one who
knows the story of the Christian churches can doubt that they often
have deserved the same condemnation. They have at times committed all
the sins that can be laid at any institution's door; they have been
selfish, formal, worldly, cruel. A wonder-story from the Arctic says
that once the candle-flames froze and the explorers broke them off and
wore them for watch charms; the flames of the great fire congealed and
were wound like golden ornaments around men's necks. So repeatedly the
burning words of Scripture, the blazing affirmations of old creeds, on
fire at first with the passion of souls possessed by God, have been
frozen in the churches' Arctic climate, and handed to men like
talismans and amulets, with no saving warmth or light. Creeds,
rituals, organizations--how often these frozen forms of life have
taken the place of inward spiritual power! Dr. Washington Gladden
would not be alone in saying: "While therefore I had as large an
experience of church-going in my boyhood as most boys can recall, I
cannot lay my hand on my heart and say that the church-going helped me
to solve my religious problems. In fact, it made those problems more
and more tangled and troublesome." And yet the Church goes on.
Voltaire prophesied its collapse in fifty years, and in fifty years
the house where he made the prophecy was a depot for the circulation
of the Scriptures. The Church's persistence, continual adaptation to
new conditions, and apparently endless power of revival must have some
deep reason. It may be because prayer like this which follows has
never utterly died out in the sanctuary.
_O Thou that dwellest not in temples made with hands! We ever stand
within the courts of Thy glorious presence, only we open now the
gates of our poor praise. Thou hast enriched this day of rest, O
Lord, with Thy choicest gifts of peace; and lo! Thou unforgetting
God, its record is before Thee, for ages past, moistened with
penitential tears, and illumined with glad hopes, and hallowed by the
innumerable prayers of faithful and saintly men. In this our day may
the churches of Thy Holy One seek Thee still in spirit and truth; may
we also enter in and find our rest, being of one heart and mind, and
serving Thee with a wakeful and humble joy. Teach us now how we may
converse with Thee, for we cannot order our speech by reason of
darkness. We are naked and without disguise before Thee; oh! hide not
Thyself from us behind our ignorance and sin. May we at least in
this Thine hour shake off the sluggish clouds of sense and self that
cling around our souls; and strenuously open our whole nature to the
breath of Thy free spirit, and the healthful sunshine of Thy grace.
Let the divine image of the Son of God visit us with power; driving
out, with the chastisement of penitence, all obtruding passions that
profane the temple of our hearts, and turn into a place of traffic
that native house of prayer. O God of glory, God of grace! let not
the things which are spiritually discerned be foolishness unto us
through the blindness of our conscience: Thou knowest the thoughts of
our wisdom that they are vain; take them from us, and bid them vanish
away, lost in that wisdom from above which is revealed only to the
pure in heart. Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thee be
every thought of praise! Amen._--James Martineau.
Twelfth Week, Second Day
Some men doubtless go to church from traditional habit only, but such
a motive obviously is not adequate to explain why the recurrent tides
of humanity, even after an ebb in interest, sweep back to the Church
again. In the eighteenth century, for example, Butler reports the
common opinion that all that remained for Christianity was decent
obsequies. But in a few years the Wesleys began a movement that
changed the spiritual complexion of the English-speaking world, and
swept multitudes into Christian fellowship. One reason for this
repeated fact is clear. Mankind cannot and will not consent to live
without faith in God, and faith in God in its genesis and its
sustenance is largely a matter of contagion. We are not so much taught
it; we catch it. It is vitally imparted in the family circle, and
wherever kindred and believing spirits gather. No man is so
independent as to escape the vital fact that his noblest emotions,
attitudes, ideals, and faiths are socially engendered and socially
sustained; he never would have had them in a solitary life and a
solitary life would soon spoil those which he has now. A man may
believe in his country and love her; but let him join in a patriotic
movement or even attend a high-spirited patriotic meeting, and he will
believe in her and love her more ardently. Man's religious life is not
lawless; it is regulated by the same necessities of fellowship. The
Church has made many mistakes, but on her altar the fire has never
utterly gone out, and in her fellowship the faith of multitudes has
been kindled.
=Let us hold fast the confession of our hope that it waver not; for
he is faithful that promised: and let us consider one another to
provoke unto love and good works; not forsaking our own assembling
together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another; and so
much the more, as ye see the day drawing nigh.--Heb. 10:23-25.=
_Great is Thy name, O God, and greatly to be praised. In Thee all our
discordant notes rise into perfect harmony. It is good for us to
think of the wonder of Thy being. Thou art silent, yet most strong;
unchangeable, yet ever changing; ever working, yet ever at rest,
supporting, nourishing, maturing all things. O Thou Eternal Spirit,
who hast set our noisy years in the heart of Thy eternity, lift us
above the power and evils of the passing time, that under the shadow
of Thy wings we may take courage and be glad. So great art Thou,
beyond our utmost imagining, that we could not speak to Thee didst
Thou not first draw near to us and say, "Seek ye my face." Unto Thee
our hearts would make reply, "Thy face, Lord, will we seek."... We
thank Thee for our birth into a Christian community, for the Church
and the Sacraments of Thy grace, for the healing day of rest, when we
enter with Thy people into Thy House and there make holy-day; for the
refreshment of soul, the joys of communion, the spiritual discipline,
the inspiration of prayer and hymn and sermon.... We praise Thee for
the myriad influences of good, conscious and unconscious, that have
been about us, deeply penetrating our inner life, shaping and fitting
us for Thy Kingdom. Thou hast indeed forgiven all our iniquities, and
healed all our diseases, and redeemed our life from destruction, and
crowned us with loving-kindness. Therefore would we call upon our
souls, and all that is within us, to bless Thy holy Name.
Amen._--Samuel McComb.
Twelfth Week, Third Day
=For ye, brethren, were called for freedom; only use not your freedom
for an occasion to the flesh, but through love be servants one to
another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, even in this:
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. But if ye bite and devour
one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.--Gal.
5:13-15.=
One fundamental reason for the endless revival of the Church is that
faith never is satisfied until it issues in work. It insists on our
being "servants one to another." We have spoken of God's merciful
acceptance of a man when out of sin he turns his life by faith toward
Christ; but to interpret this as meaning the adequacy of faith without
effective service is to misread Scripture and to demoralize life.
Faith that does not lead to service is no real faith at all. But
whenever men endeavor to express in work any faith which they may hold
they must come together. Service involves cooperation. A hermit may
have faith, but his faith does not concern any ideal hopes on earth;
it has no outlooks save upon his own soul's condition in the world to
come; it is a narrow, selfish, inoperative thing. As soon as men are
grasped by some moving faith about what ought to be done for God's
service and man's welfare here and now, a hermit's solitude or any
sort of unaffiliated life becomes impossible. They must combine in a
fellowship of faith and of labor to seek common ends. They begin to
say with Edward Rowland Sill, "For my part I long to 'fall in' with
somebody. This picket duty is monotonous. I hanker after a shoulder on
this side and the other." And to fall in with others to serve
Christian ends means some kind of church. Let us pray today for a
church more fit to express this passion to serve.
_God, we pray for Thy Church, which is set today amid the
perplexities of a changing order, and face to face with a great new
task. We remember with love the nurture she gave to our spiritual
life in its infancy, the tasks she set for our growing strength, the
influence of the devoted hearts she gathers, the steadfast power for
good she has exerted. When we compare her with all other human
institutions, we rejoice, for there is none like her. But when we
judge her by the mind of her Master, we bow in pity and contrition.
Oh, baptize her afresh in the life-giving spirit of Jesus! Grant her
a new birth, though it be with the travail of repentance and
humiliation. Bestow upon her a more imperious responsiveness to duty,
a swifter compassion with suffering, and an utter loyalty to the
will of God. Put upon her lips the ancient Gospel of her Lord. Help
her to proclaim boldly the coming of the Kingdom of God and the doom
of all that resist it. Fill her with the prophet's scorn of tyranny,
and with a Christ-like tenderness for the heavy-laden and
down-trodden. Give her faith to espouse the cause of the people, and
in their hands that grope after freedom and light to recognize the
bleeding hands of the Christ. Bid her cease from seeking her own
life, lest she lose it. Make her valiant to give up her life to
humanity, that like her crucified Lord she may mount by the path of
the cross to a higher glory. Amen._--Walter Rauschenbusch.
Twelfth Week, Fourth Day
=For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be put
to shame. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek: for the
same Lord is Lord of all, and is rich unto all that call upon him:
for, Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and
how shall they believe in him whom they have not heard? and how shall
they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach, except they
be sent? even as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them
that bring glad tidings of good things!--Rom. 10:11-15.=
The necessity of affiliation for effective faith is clear when one
considers the missionary enterprise. One of the noblest qualities in
human life is our natural desire to share our blessings. Every normal
child is happier when some other child is joining in the play; every
lover of music is gladdened by sharing with a friend enjoyment of a
favorite symphony; save in singularly churlish folk the love of having
others partake our joys is spontaneous and hearty. To those whom
Christian faith, has blessed with hope and power, the undeniable
impulse comes to share these finest benedictions with all other men.
The missionary enterprise does not rest upon a text; it wells up from
one of the worthiest impulses in man's life. One may be fairly sure,
that save as some perverted theology inhibits a spirit of love, a
man's missionary interest will be proportionate to the reality and
value of his own experience. If he himself has something well worth
sharing, he will want to share it. But the missionary enterprise is
more than any individual can compass; it demands organization,
cooperation, and massed resources; it cannot be prosecuted without a
church. The further our thought proceeds the more clear it becomes
that the question is not, shall we have churches? but rather, since
churches are inevitable, of what sort shall they be?
_O Thou who hast made all nations of men to seek Thee and to find
Thee; bless, we beseech Thee, Thy sons and daughters who have gone
forth, into distant lands, bearing in their hands Thy Word of Life.
We rejoice that, touched with the enthusiasm of Christ, so many have
consecrated their lives to proclaiming the message of Thy love to
those other sheep of Thine who are not of our fold, that they may be
united with us and that there may be one flock and one Shepherd. Help
Thy ministering servants to recognize the fragments of truth and
goodness that are ever found where men are sincere and to claim these
glimpses of Thyself as the prophecies of a fuller revelation. When
discouraged by the hardness of their task, and the meager fruit of
all their labor, give them faith to see the far-off whitening
harvest. Inspire them with Thy gracious promise that though the sower
may go forth weeping, bearing precious seed, he will come again with
joy, bringing his sheaves with him. Comfort them in their exile and
loneliness with a sense of Thy companionship and with the prayers and
sympathy of their brethren at home. Through them let Thy Word have
free course and be glorified. And so let Thy Kingdom come, and Thy
Will be done on earth as in Heaven, for Jesus Christ's sake.
Amen._--Samuel McComb.
Twelfth Week, Fifth Day
=After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in
heaven, so on earth. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us
our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And bring us not
into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For if ye forgive
men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But
if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father
forgive your trespasses.--Matt. 6:9-15.=
The central ideal of Christian effort is set for us in the first
petition of the Master's prayer. But a Kingdom on earth, with God's
will done here in heavenly fashion, is a social idea. It means not
only right personal quality; it means right family life, and economic,
political, and international relationships Christianized. No amount of
fine individual character, necessary as it is, will of itself rectify
the social maladjustments and inequities. Were everyone as good as
possible, we still should need organized action. All parts of an
engine may be correct, and yet they may be wrongly fitted together. As
it is, social relations obviously demand concerted action; we must
join together to combat immoral industrial conditions, to throttle the
liquor traffic, to make human fraternity a fact and not a dream. The
opposition to all such reforms is organized, and no haphazard attack
will succeed. Now, many organizations may arise to serve special ends
and may do excellent service to the cause, but what has proved true in
the conflict with the liquor traffic, is true also of enterprises for
industrial justice and international cooperation--_only when the
churches see the moral issue and put their power in, is there any hope
of victory_. A Christian whose faith involves the Kingdom sees
plainly that he cannot go on without the Church.
_O Lord, we praise Thy holy name, for Thou hast made bare Thine arm
in the sight of all nations and done wonders. But still we cry to
Thee in the weary struggle of our people against the power of drink.
Remember, Lord, the strong men who were led astray and blighted in
the flower of their youth. Remember the aged who have brought their
gray hairs to a dishonored grave. Remember the homes that have been
made desolate of joy, the wifely love that has been outraged in its
sanctuary, the little children who have learned to despise where once
they loved. Remember, O Thou great avenger of sin, and make this
nation to remember._
_May those who now entrap the feet of the weak and make their living
by the degradation of men, thrust away their shameful gains and stand
clear. But if their conscience is silenced by profit, do Thou grant
Thy people the indomitable strength of faith to make an end of it.
May all the great churches of our land shake off those who seek the
shelter of religion for that which damns, and stand with level front
against their common foe. May all who still soothe their souls with
half-truths, saying "Peace, peace," where there can be no peace,
learn to see through Thy stem eyes and come to the help of Jehovah
against the mighty. Help us to cast down the men in high places who
use the people's powers to beat back the people's hands from the
wrong they fain would crush._
_O God, bring nigh the day when all our men shall face their daily
task with minds undrugged and with tempered passions; when the
unseemly mirth of drink shall seem a shame to all who hear and see;
when the trade that debauches men shall be loathed like the trade
that debauches women; and when all this black remnant of savagery
shall haunt the memory of a new generation but as an evil dream of
the night. For this accept our vows, O Lord, and grant Thine aid.
Amen._--Walter Rauschenbusch.
Twelfth Week, Sixth Day
=Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on
me through their word; that they may all be one; even as thou,
Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us: that
the world may believe that thou didst send me. And the glory which
thou hast given me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even
as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected
into one; that the world may know that thou didst send me, and
lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me.--John 17:20-23.=
To the Christian the Church is a problem, just because she is a
necessity. He caught his faith from the contagion of her fellowship
and he sees that if he is to serve effectively the ideals of Christ
and the coming of the Kingdom he must work through some church. But
because the Church is necessary, he is not thereby made content with
her. She is at once helping and hindering the spread of the faith; she
is the source of immeasurable good and yet she is not "one, that the
world may believe." A traveler across the American plains in
springtime sees fences, tiresomely prominent, staring at him from the
landscape; but in summer when he returns the fences are invisible. The
wheat and corn are growing, the earth is bearing fruit, and while the
old divisions may be there, they all are hidden. One suspects that if
Christians everywhere set themselves with hearty zeal to bear the
fruit of service for the common weal, if they gave themselves to
achieve the aims of Christ for men with ardor and thoroughness, the
sectarian divisions would grow unimperative and disappear. We may not
be able to think the disagreements through, but we may be able to work
them out; even where we cannot recite a common creed, we can share a
common purpose. The War, where Jewish rabbis have held crucifixes
before the eyes of dying soldiers, and where Catholic priests have met
death, as one did at Gallipoli, following a Wesleyan chaplain--"my
Protestant comrade"--into danger, has revealed how deeply underneath
our sharp divisions our spiritual loyalties seek unity when crisis
comes. For all the unity that can come without compromise to
conscience, surely the Christian people are bound to pray and work.
_O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Saviour, the
Prince of Peace; give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great
dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions. Take away all hatred and
prejudice, and whatsoever else may hinder us from godly union and
concord; that as there is but one body and one Spirit, and one hope
of our calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father
of us all, so we may be all of one heart and of one soul, united in
one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with
one mind and one mouth glorify Thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen._--"The Book of Common Prayer."
Twelfth Week, Seventh Day
=For I am already being offered, and the time of my departure is
come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I
have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me
at that day; and not to me only, but also to all them that have loved
his appearing.--II Tim. 4:6-8.=
The fellowship of faith is not bounded by the earth. Paul's
expectation took into its account a communion that far overreached
the confines of temporal experience. The New Testament believers not
only held but vividly apprehended that the "whole family" to which
they belonged in Christian communion was "in heaven and on earth."
Their outlook Wordsworth has expressed in modern words:
"There is
One great society alone on earth:
The noble Living and the noble Dead."
To that society of the world's prophets and martyrs, seers and
servants, it may well be a man's ambition to belong. And that ideal is
not impossible to anyone, for the mark and seal of their fellowship is
that they have "kept the faith." When others despaired, lost heart,
and deserted causes on which man's welfare hung, they kept the faith.
When mysteries perplexed their minds and discouragement, to human
vision, was more rational than hope, they turned from sight to insight
and they kept the faith. When new knowledge, half-understood,
disturbed old forms of thought and multitudes were confused in
uncertainty and disbelief, they kept the faith. And they often came to
their end, like Paul, having "suffered the loss of all things"--yet
not all, for they had kept the faith.
"For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
Who Thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest,
Alleluia!
O may Thy soldiers, faithful, true, and bold,
Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
And win with them the victor's crown of gold,
Alleluia!
O blest communion, fellowship Divine!
We feebly struggle; they in glory shine;
Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia!"
_O God, Thou only Refuge of Thy children! who remainest true though
all else should fail, and livest though all things die; cover us now
when we fly to Thee. Thy shelter was around our fathers. Thy voice
called them away, and bids us seek Thee here till we depart to be
with them. In Thy memory are the lives of all men from of old. Before
Thy sight are the secret hearts of all the living. We stand in awe of
Thy justice which, since the ages began, hath never changed: and we
cling to Thy mercy that passeth not away._
_Almighty Father, Thou art a God afar off as well as nigh at hand.
Thou who in times past didst pity the prayers of our forerunners, and
especially of that suffering servant of Thine whom Thou hast made our
Leader unto Thee! be pleased to strengthen us now, O Lord, to bear
our lighter cross and surrender ourselves for duty and for trial unto
Thee. Show us something of the blessed peace with which they now look
back on their days of strong crying and tears, and teach us that it
is far better to die in Thy service than to live for our own. Rebuke
within us all immoderate desires, all unquiet temper, all
presumptuous expectations, all ignoble self-indulgence, and feeling
on us the embrace of Thy Fatherly hand, may we meekly and with
courage go into the darkest ways of our pilgrimage, anxious not to
change Thy perfect will, but only to do and bear it worthily. May we
spend all our days in Thy presence, and meet our death in the
strength of Thy grace, and pass thence into the nearer light of Thy
knowledge and love. Amen._--John Hunter.
COMMENT FOR THE WEEK
I
So far in our studies we have been dealing with the individual
believer in his search for a reasonable faith. But we must face at
last what from the beginning has been true, that there is no such
thing as an individual believer. _All faiths are social._ However
little we may be aware of each other's influence, however intangible
the social forces which shape the convictions by which we live, no man
builds or keeps his faiths alone. We may pride ourselves on our
independent thought, but the fact remains as Prof. William James has
stated it: "Our faith is faith in some one else's faith, and in the
greatest matters this is most the case."
The realm of religious conviction is not the only place where we hold
with a strong sense of personal possession what has been given us by
others, and often forget to acknowledge our indebtedness. We believe
in democracy and popular education, not because by some gift of
individual genius we are wiser than our unbelieving sires, but
because, in the advance of the race, that faith has been wrought out
by many minds, and, with minute addition of our own thought, we share
the general conviction. As a man considers how rich and varied are the
faiths he holds, how few of them he ever has thought through or ever
can, and how helpless he would be, if he were set from the beginning
to create any one of them, he gains new insight into Paul's words,
"What hast thou that thou didst not receive? but if thou didst receive
it, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it?" (I Cor.
4:7).
Indeed, this same truth holds in every relationship. Nothing is more
impossible than a "self-made man." In no realm can that common phrase
be intelligently applied to anyone. If in business one has risen from
poverty to wealth, he has used railroads that he did not invent and
telephones that he does not even understand; he has built his business
on a credit system for which he did not labor and whose moral basis
has been laid in the ethical struggles of unnumbered generations. For
the clothes he wears, the food he eats, the education he receives, he
is debtor to a social life that taps the ends of the earth and that
has cost blood not his and money which he never can repay. If granting
this, a man still say, "My power and the might of my hand hath gotten
me this wealth" (Deut. 8:17), he may well consider whence his power
has come. His distant ancestors stalked through primeval forests,
their brows sloped back, their hairy hides barren of clothes, and in
their hands stone hatchets, by the aid of which they sought their
food. What has this Twentieth Century boaster done to change the
habits of the Stone Age to the civilization on which his wealth is
based or to elevate man's intellect to the grasp and foresight of the
modern business world? All the power by which he wins his way is
clearly a social gift, and any contribution which he may add is
infinitesimal compared with his receipts.
By this truth all declarations of individual independence need to be
chastened and controlled and all boasting cancelled utterly. Normal
minds have their times of self-assertion in religion, when they grow
impatient of believing anything simply because they have been told. As
a college Junior put it: "I must clear the universe of God, and then
start in at the beginning to see what I can find." But to assert a
reasonable independence ought not to mean that one cut himself off
from the support of history, the accumulated experience of the race,
the insight of the seers, and in unassisted isolation walk, like
Kipling's cat, "by his wild lone." No man can do that anywhere and
still succeed. Imagine a man, in politics, dubious of his old
affiliations and disturbed by the conflicting opinions of his day. If,
so perplexed, he should throw over all that ever had been thought or
done in civic life, and in an unaided individual adventure attempt out
of his own mind to constitute a state, in what utter confusion would
he land! No mind can begin work as though it were the first mind that
ever acted, or were the only mind in action now. All effective
thinking is social; contributions from innumerable heads pour in to
make a wise man's knowledge. And to suppose that any man can climb the
steep ascent of heaven all alone and lay his hands comprehensively on
the Eternal is preposterous. No one ever apprehended a science so,
much less God! Even Jesus fed his soul on the prophets of his race.
II
Indeed, Jesus' attitude toward the fellowship of faith is most
revealing, seen against the background of his nation's history. In the
beginning, there was in Israel no such thing as individual religion.
In the earliest strata of the Bible's revelation, we find no
indication of a faith that brought God and each of his people into
intimate relationships. Jehovah was the God of the nation as a whole
and not of the people one by one. When he spoke, he spoke to the
community through a leader; "Speak thou with us and we will hear," the
people cried to Moses, "but let not God speak with us lest we die"
(Exodus 20:19). It was at the time of the Exile, when the nation fell
in ruins, and the hearts of faithful Jews were thrown back one by one
on God that individual trust, peace, joy, and confidence found
utterance. It was Jeremiah (Chap. 31) and Ezekiel (Chap. 18) who saw
men individually responsible to God, and who opened the way for loyal
Jews to be his people even when the nation was no more. And what they
began Jesus completed. He lifted up the individual and made each man
the object of the Father's care. "It is not the will of your Father
... that _one_ of these little ones should perish" (Matt 18:14). "What
man of you, having a hundred sheep, and having lost _one_ of them ..."
(Luke 15:4). "The very hairs of your head are all numbered" (Matt.
10:30). As for religion's inner meaning, it became in Jesus' Gospel
not a national ritual but a private faith: "But thou, when thou
prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door,
pray to thy Father who is in secret" (Matt. 6:6).
While Jesus, however, so emphasized the inward, individual aspects of
religion, he did not leave it there, as though persons could ever be
like jugs in the rain, separate receptacles that share neither their
emptiness nor their abundance. He bound his disciples into a
fellowship. He joined their channels until, like interflowing streams,
one contributed to all and the spirit of all was expressed in each. He
braided them into friendship with himself and with each other, so
close that the community did what no isolated believer ever could have
done--it survived the shock of the crucifixion, the agony of sustained
persecution, the frailties of its members, and the discouragements of
its campaign. On that _group_ the Master counted for his work: "The
gates of Hades shall not prevail against it" (Matt. 16:18). And when
the New Testament Church emerged, the fellowship which Christ himself
had breathed into it was clear and strong. Men who became Christians,
in the New Testament, came into a new relationship with God indeed,
but into a new human fraternity as well. They were "builded together
for a habitation of God through the Spirit" (Eph. 2:22), and even when
death came that fellowship was not destroyed. They were still "the
whole family in heaven and on earth" (Eph. 3:15). John Wesley was
right: "The Bible knows nothing of a solitary religion." In the Old
Testament religion was predominantly national; in the New Testament,
individuals rejoicing in the "Beloved Community" could not describe
their life without the reiteration of "one another." They were to
"pray one for another" and "confess sins one to another" (James 5:16);
they were to "love one another" (I Pet 1:22), "exhort one another"
(Heb. 3:13), "comfort one another" (I Thess. 4:18); they were to "bear
one another's burdens" (Gal. 6:2) and in communal worship "admonish
one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" (Col. 3:16).
So when they thought of their faith, they never held it in solitary
confidence; they were "strong to apprehend _with all the saints_
what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the
love of Christ which passeth knowledge" (Eph. 3:18).
III
When a modern believer endeavors to interpret this spirit in the New
Testament in terms of his own wants, he sees at once that he needs
fellowship for the _enriching_ of his faith. Cooperation for
achievement is a modern commonplace, but when Paul prayed, as we have
quoted him, that the Ephesians might be "strong to _apprehend_
with all the saints," he was stating the more uncommon proposition
that men must cooperate for knowledge. He saw the divine love in its
length, breadth, depth, and height on one side, and on the other a
solitary man endeavoring to understand it. Impossible! said Paul; the
divine love in its fulness cannot be known in solitude, it must be
apprehended in fellowship.
At first nothing seems more strictly individual than knowledge. To
know is an intimate, personal affair; it cannot be carried on by
proxy. But even casual thought at once makes clear that in solitude we
cannot know even the physical universe. No man can go apart and
through the narrow aperture of his own mind see the full round of
truth. For astronomers study the stars, geologists the rocks, chemists
know their special field and physicists know theirs; each scientist
understands in part, and if one is to know the breadth and length and
height and depth of the physical world he must be strong to apprehend
with all the scientists.
In religion this necessity of cooperation in knowing God may not at
first seem evident. In the secret session behind closed doors, as
Jesus said, one finds his clearest thought of God, and in the
individual heart the divine illumination comes. So some insist; and
the answer does not deny, but surpasses the truth in the insistence.
_Is yours the only heart where God is to be found? Does the sea of his
grace exhaust itself in what it can reveal in your bay?_ Rather, in
how many different ways men come to God, how various their
experiences of him, and how much each needs the rest for breadth and
catholicity of view!
One man comes to God by way of intellectual perplexity and he knows
chiefly faith's illumination of life's puzzling problems; another
comes through the experience of sin and he responds to such a phrase
as "God our Saviour" (I Tim. 1:1); another comes to God through
trouble and has found in faith "eternal comfort and good hope through
grace" (II Thess. 2:16); and another by way of a happy life has found
in God the object of devoted gratitude. One, a mystic, finds God in
solitary prayer; another, a worker, knows him chiefly as the Divine
Ally. Some are very young and have a child's religion; some are at the
summit of their years and have a strong man's achieving faith; and
some are old and are familiar with the face of death and the thought
of the eternal. How multiform is man's experience of God! Some
compositions cannot be interpreted by a solo. Let the first violinist
play with what skill he can, he alone is not adequate to the endeavor.
There must be an orchestra; the oboes and viols, the drums and
trumpets, the violins and cellos must all be there. So faith in God is
too rich and manifold to be interpreted by individuals alone; a
fellowship is necessary. Even Paul, in one of his most gloriously
mixed-up and yet revealing sentences, prays for fellowship that his
faith may be enriched: "I long to see you, that I may impart unto you
some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established; that is, that I
with you may be comforted in you, each of us by the other's faith,
both yours and mine" (Rom. 1:11, 12).
Poverty of faith, therefore, is not due only to individual lapses of
character and perplexities of mind; _it is due to neglect of Christian
fellowship_. One who with difficulty has clung to his slender
experience of God, goes up to the church on Sunday. Even though it be
a humble place of prayer, if the worship is genuine, the hymns, the
prayers, the Scriptures gather up the testimony of centuries to the
reality of God. Here David speaks again and Isaiah answers; here Paul
reaffirms his faith and John is confident that God is love. Here the
saints before Christ cry, "Jehovah is my rock, and my fortress, and my
deliverer" (Psalm 18:2), and the sixteenth century answers, "A mighty
fortress is our God"; and the nineteenth century replies, "How firm a
foundation, ye saints of the Lord!" We go up to the church finding it
hard to sing, "_My_ Jesus, _I_ love thee, _I_ know thou art _mine_";
we go down with a _Te Deum_ in our hearts:
"The glorious company of the apostles praise thee;
The goodly fellowship of the prophets praise thee;
The noble army of martyrs praise thee;
The holy Church throughout all the world doth acknowledge thee."
In the rich and varied faiths of the Church we find a far more
fruitful relationship with God than by ourselves we ever could have
gained. Without such an enriching experience men can only with
difficulty keep faith alive. Twigs that snap out of the camp-fire lose
their flame and fall, charred sticks; but put them back and they will
burn again, for fire springs from fellowship. Amiel, after an evening
of solitude with a favorite book on philosophy, wrote what is many a
Christian's prayer: "Still I miss something--common worship, a
positive religion, shared with other people. Ah! when will the church
to which I belong in heart rise into being? I cannot, like Scherer,
content myself with being in the right all alone. I must have a less
solitary Christianity."
IV
Men need fellowship, not only for the enrichment of their faith, but
for its _stability_. No man can successfully believe anything all
alone. Let an opinion in any realm be denied, despised, neglected by
common consent of men, and not easily do we hold an unshaken
conviction of its truth. But let it be agreed with, supported and
endorsed by many, especially by men of insight, and with each
additional testimony to its truth our faith grows confident. A
fundamental experience of man is that his faiths are socially
confirmed.
Authority of some sort, therefore, never is outgrown in any province
of knowledge, and strugglers after faith have solid right to the
sustenance which it can give. For one thing the authority of the
_expert_ is acknowledged everywhere. When a great astronomer speaks
about the stars, most of us put our hands upon our mouths and humble
ourselves to listen. If in science, expert knowledge has this
authority--not artificial, infallible, and externally enforced, but
vital, serviceable, and real--how much more in realms where insight
and spiritual quality are indispensable! Such authority comes in the
spirit of Paul: "Not that we have lordship over your faith, but are
helpers of your joy" (II Cor. 1:24).
An amateur stands before a picture like Turner's "The Building of
Carthage" and either does not notice the details, or noticing sees no
special meaning there. But when Ruskin, Turner's seer, begins to
speak--how wonderful the children in the foreground sailing toy boats
in a pool, prophecy of Carthage's future greatness on the sea!--one by
one the details take fire and glow with meaning as our eyes are
opened. Such is the service of a real authority. It does not, as
Weigel says, put out a person's eye and then try to persuade him to
see with some one else's. It rather cures our blindness and enables us
to see what by ourselves we were incapable of seeing. Christ
supremely, when allowed to be himself, has helped men thus. He has not
oppressed the mind with burdensome authority, denying us our right to
think. He has come appealing to our little insight with his own clear
vision, "Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?" (Luke
12:57). Things which we see dimly he has clarified; things which we
did not see at all, he has made manifest. He has been what he called
himself, the Light, and his people have said of him what the man in
John's ninth chapter said, "He opened mine eyes" (John 9:30). A
struggler after faith may well count among his assets the insight of
the seers and of the Seer. As another states it: "Our weak faith may
at times be permitted to look through the eyes of some strong soul,
and may thereby gain a sense of the certainty of spiritual things
which before we had not."
Beside the authority of the seers, there is _the authority of racial
experience_, to which indeed no mind ought slavishly to subject
itself, but from which all minds ought to gain insight and confidence.
Tradition has done us much disservice. Oppressions that might long
before have been outgrown have been counted holy because they were
hoary. There must be something to commend an opinion or a custom
beside its age, and all progress depends upon recognizing that
"Time makes ancient good uncouth."
But if out of the past have come evils to be overthrown, out of the
past also have come the best possessions of the race. "Traditional"
has grown to be an adjective of ill repute; it signifies in common
parlance the inheritance of oppressive ideals and institutions that
hold the "dead hand" over hopes of progress. But our best music also,
our poetry, and our art are traditional; the discoveries of our
scientists on the long road from alchemy to chemistry, from magic to
physics are traditional; all that each new generation begins with,
fitted out like the well-favored child of a provident father, is
traditional. No one can describe the utter barrenness of life, if we
could not build on the accumulations of our sires, using the result of
their toil as the basis of our work, their hardly won wisdom as our
guide. To discount anything because it is traditional is to discount
everything, except that comparatively minute addition which each new
generation makes to the slowly accumulating wisdom and wealth of the
race. As Mr. Chesterton has put it: "Tradition may be defined as the
extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most
obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the
dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy
of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object
to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects
to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells
us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom;
tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is
our father."
Now racial experience is dubious at many points and at very few does
it approach finality. But on one matter it speaks with a unanimity
that is nothing short of absolute. _Man cannot live without
religion_--like the earth beneath the mountain peaks this universal
experience of the race underlies the special insights of the seers.
When during the mid-Victorian discomfiture of faith at the first
disclosures of the new science, Tennyson's "In Memoriam" appeared,
Prof. Sidgwick wrote of it, "What 'In Memoriam' did for us, for me at
least in this struggle, was to impress on us the ineffable and
irradicable conviction that _humanity_ will not and cannot acquiesce
in a godless world." That conviction is confirmed by the whole
experience of the race. To be sure religion, like love, exists in all
degrees. From degraded lust to the relationship of Robert Browning and
Elizabeth Barrett, love is infinite in variety; it takes its quality
from the character of those whom it affects; yet through all its
changes it is itself so built into the structure of mankind, that
though there be loveless individuals, life as a whole is unimaginable
without it. So religion runs the gamut of human quality. In a Hindu
idolater it performs disgusting rites to placate an angry god, and in
Rabindranath Tagore it cries: "If thou speakest not I will fill my
heart with thy silence and endure it. I will keep still and wait like
the night with starry vigil and its head bent low with patience. The
morning will surely come, the darkness will vanish, and thy voice pour
down in golden streams, breaking through the sky." In Torquemada it is
cruel; in Father Damien it becomes a passion for saviorhood. Religion
helped Sennacherib to his campaigns and Isaiah to his prophecies; it
preached the Sermon on the Mount and it dragged Jesus before Pilate.
Can the same spring send forth sweet water and bitter? But religion
does it, for religion is life motived by visions of God; it is
tremendous in strength, but with man's unequal power to understand the
Divine, it is ambiguous in quality. Like electricity, it is
magnificent in blessing or terrible in curse. Yet through all its
degrees man's relationship with the Invisible is so essentially a part
of his humanity that lacking it he has never yet been discovered, and
without it he cannot be conceived. It was this impressive witness of
racial experience that made John Fiske, of Harvard, say, "Of all the
implications of the doctrine of evolution with regard to man, I
believe the very deepest and strongest to be that which asserts the
Everlasting Reality of Religion."
This testimony of the spiritual seers and this cumulative experience
of the race have a right to play a weighty part in any consideration
of religious faith. Even a rebellious youth might pause before he
scoffs at a mature and thoughtful mind, letting his Church, his
Scripture, and his Christ speak impressively to him about the reality
of God. What we all do in every other realm, when we are wise, this
mind is doing in religion. His individual grasp on truth he sets in
the perspective of history. He does not feel himself upon a lonely
quest when he seeks God; rather he feels behind him and around him the
race of which he is a part and which never yet has ceased to believe
in the Divine, and he sees his own insights illumined by those supreme
spirits who have talked with God "as a man talketh with his friend."
He knows as well as any youth that authority has been stereotyped in
theories of artificial infallibility, to which no mature mind for a
moment can weakly surrender its right to think, but he refuses to give
up a real authority because some have held a false one. The authority
of the dictionary is one thing--literal and external. But the
authority of a good mother moves on a different plane. It is not
artificial and oppressive. It is vital and inspiring. She has lived
longer, experienced more than her children; she is wiser, better, more
discerning than they. A man who has had experience of great motherhood
comes to feel that if his mother thinks something very strongly and
very persistently, he would better consider that thing well, for the
chances are overwhelming that there is truth in it. How much more
shall he feel so about the age-long experience of the saints with God!
In this respect at least there still is truth in Cyprian's words, "He
that hath God for his Father, hath the Church for his Mother."
V
Faith needs fellowship not alone for enrichment and stability, but for
_expression_. For faith, as from the beginning we have maintained, is
not an effortless acceptance of ideas or personal relationships; it is
an active appropriation of convictions that drive life, and Christian
faith especially has always involved a campaign whose object is the
saving of the world. Such an expression of religious life involves
cooperation; men cannot effectively support the "work of faith" (I
Thess. 1:3) apart from fellowship.
The necessity for this cooperative expression of religion is clear
when we consider the _one in whom we believe_. How anyone can expect
in solitude to believe in Christ is a mystery. For Christ, with
overflowing love to those who shared his filial fellowship with God,
said, "No longer do I call you servants ... I have called you friends"
(John 15:15); his care encompassed folk who never heard of him and
whom he never saw, "Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold:
them also I must bring ... and they shall become one flock, one
shepherd" (John 10:16); and beyond his generation's life his love
reached out to followers yet unborn, "Them also that believe on me
through their word" (John 17:20). Whatever other quality a movement
sprung from such a source may possess, it must be social. Moreover,
Jesus' faith was active; the meaning of it he himself disclosed, "All
things are possible to him that believeth" (Mark 9:23). In such a
spirit, both by himself and through his followers, he sought the lost,
healed the sick, preached the Gospel, and expectantly proclaimed an
earth transformed to heaven. Such a character cannot be known in
contemplation under the trees in June or through the pages of an
interesting book. If Garibaldi, leading his men to the liberation of
Italy, had found a devotee who said, I believe in you; I love to read
your deeds, and often in my solitary, meditative hours I am cheered by
the thought of you--one can easily imagine the swift and penetrating
answer! That you believe in me is false; no one believes in me who
does not share my purpose; the army is afoot, great business is ahead,
the cause is calling, he who believes follows. Such a spirit was
Christ's. The hermits, whether of old time in their cells, or of
modern time with their unaffiliated lives, are wrong. _The final test
of faith in Christ is fellowship in work._
The Church itself has been to blame for much undedicated faith.
Correctness of opinion has been substituted, as a test, for fidelity
of life. "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,"
has been interpreted to mean: accept a theory about Christ's person
and all is well. But one need only go back in imagination to the time
when first that formula was used to see how vital was its import. To
believe in Christ then meant to accept a despised religion, to break
ties that men value more than life, to face the certainty of contempt
and the risk of violence. To believe in Christ then meant coming out
from old relationships and going to a sect where one was pilloried
with derision, that one might work for the things which Christ
represents. No one did that as a theory; it required a tremendous
thrust of the will, a decision that reached to the roots of life. All
this was involved in believing on Christ, and our decent holding of a
theory about him, in a time when all lips praise him, is a poor
substitute for such vital faith. John tells us that once a multitude
of Jews professed belief in Jesus, but the Master, hearing their
affirmations, saw the superficial meaning there. "Many believed on his
name," says John--"but Jesus did not trust himself unto them" (John
2:23, 24). How many believe in Christ in such a way that he cannot
believe in them! They forget that while the test of a man is his
faith, the test of faith is faithfulness. An apostolic injunction
needs modern enforcement, "that they who have believed God may be
careful to maintain good works" (Titus 3:8).
The necessity for a cooperative expression of religion is evident
again in the _truth which we believe_. Take in its simplest form
the Gospel which Christianity presents, that God is in earnest about
personality, and what urgency is there for associated work! For
personality is being ruined in this world. False ideas of life,
idolatry whether to fetishes in Africa or to money here, irreligion in
all its manifold and blighting forms, are destroying personality from
within, and from without sweatshops, tenements, war, the liquor
traffic, industrial inequity, are engaged in the same task of ruin.
The common contrast between individual and social Christianity is
superficial. The one thing for which the Christian cares is personal
life, and in its culture and salvation he sees the aim of God and
Godlike men. Whatever, therefore, affects _that_ is his concern,
and what is there that does not affect it? What men believe about
life's meaning and its destiny strikes to the core of personal life,
and the houses in which men live, the conditions under which they
work, the wages that they are paid, and the environments which
surround their plastic childhood--these, too, mould for good or ill
the fortunes of personality.
The Christian, therefore, who intelligently holds the faith that he
professes cannot be negligent either of evangelism, education, and
missionary enterprise upon the one side, or of social reformation on
the other. These are two ends of the tunnel by which the Gospel seeks
to open out a way for personality to find its freedom. A man who says
that he believes in Jesus Christ, and yet is complacent about child
labor and commercialized vice, poor housing conditions and unjust
wages, the trade in liquor and the butchery of men in war, stands in
peril of hearing the twenty-third chapter of Matthew's gospel brought
up to date for his especial benefit by the same lips that spoke it
first. The indignation of the Master falls on priests and Levites who,
speeding to the temple service, "pass by on the other side" the
victims of social injury.
Isolated Christians, however, cannot further this campaign for
personality redeemed from inward ills and outward handicaps. _Evil is
organized, and goodness must be, too._ As wisely would a single
patriot shoulder a rifle and set out for France as would an
unaffiliated Christian set his solitary strength against the massed
evil of the world. Men increase effectiveness by a large per cent
through fellowship, as ancient Hebrews saw: "Five of you shall chase a
hundred, and a hundred of you shall chase ten thousand" (Lev. 26:8).
VI
Many secondary fellowships offer to a Christian opportunity for
associated service; no cooperative endeavor to make this a better
world for God to rear his children in should lack Christian sympathy
and support. But the primary fellowship of Christians is the Church.
Some indeed would have no church; they would have man's spiritual life
a disembodied wraith, without "a local habitation and a name." But no
other one of all man's finer interests has survived without organized
expression. Justice is a great ideal; any endeavor to incarnate it in
human institutions sullies its purity. One who dwelt only on the lofty
nature of justice, who thought of it uncontaminated and ideal, might
protest against its embodiment in the tawdry ritual and demeaning
squabbles of a law court. Between the poetry of justice and the
recriminations of lawyers, the perjury of witnesses, the fumbling
uncertainty of evidence, the miscarriages of equity, how bitterly a
scornful mind could point the contrast! But a reverent mind, sorry as
it may be at the misrepresentation of the ideal in the human
institution, is ill content with scorn. He who with insight reads the
history of jurisprudence, perceives how the courts of law, with all
their faults, have conserved the gains in social equity, have
propagated the ideal for which they stand, have made progress
sometimes slowly, sometimes with a rush like soldiers storming a
redoubt, and in times of stress have been a bulwark against the
invasion of the people's rights. The poetry of justice would have been
an idle dream without equity's laborious embodiment in codes and
courts.
Some minds dwell with joy upon the spiritual Church. Its names are
written on no earthly roster, but in the Book of Life; its worship is
offered in no earthly temple, but in the trysting places where soul
meets Over-soul in trustful fellowship; its baptism is not with water
but with spirit, its eucharist not with bread but with the shared
life of the Lord. Or, ranging out to think of the Church as an ideal
human brotherhood men dream as Manson did in "The Servant in the
House":
"If you have eyes, you will presently see the church itself--a
looming mystery of many shapes and shadows, leaping sheer from floor
to dome. The work of no ordinary builder!... The pillars of it go up
like the brawny trunks of heroes: the sweet human flesh of men and
women is moulded about its bulwarks, strong, impregnable: the faces
of little children laugh out from every corner-stone: the terrible
spans and arches of it are the joined hands of comrades; and up in
the heights and spaces there are inscribed the numberless musings of
all the dreamers of the world. It is yet building--building and built
upon. Sometimes the work goes forward in deep darkness: sometimes in
blinding light: now beneath the burden of unutterable anguish: now to
the tune of a great laughter and heroic shoutings like the cry of
thunder. Sometimes, in the silence of the night-time, one may hear
the tiny hammerings of the comrades at work up in the dome--the
comrades that have climbed ahead."
All such ideals, like pillars of fire and cloud, lead the march toward
a promised land. They are to the actual Church what the poetry of
justice is to the actual courts. But in one case as in the other, such
ideals are dreams if, with labor and struggle, through many mistakes,
against the disheartenment of man's frailty and sin, we do not work
out an institution that shall embody and express man's spiritual life.
Even now a discerning spirit whose own faith has been nourished at the
altar regards the Church with boundless gratitude. She has indeed been
to the Gospel what courts are to justice, indispensable and yet
burdensome, an institution that the ideal cannot live without and yet
often cannot easily live with. No one feels her faults so acutely as
one who devotedly values the Gospel and longs for its adequate
expression on the earth. Yet the Church conserves the race's spiritual
gains, fits out our youth with the treasure of man's accumulated
faith, is a power house of endless moral energy for good causes in the
world, exalts the ideal aims of life amid the crushing pressure of
material pursuits, holds out a gospel of hope to men whom all others
have forsaken, and to the ends of the earth proclaims the good pews of
God and the Kingdom. No other fellowship offers to men of faith so
great an opportunity to make distinctive contribution to the race's
spiritual life. In the presence of the Church's service and the
Church's need an unaffiliated believer in Jesus Christ is an anomaly.
For enrichment, stability, and expression, faith must have fellowship.
_"Oh magnify Jehovah with me, and let us exalt His name
together"_ (Psalm 34:3).
SCRIPTURE PASSAGES USED IN THE DAILY READINGS
EXODUS 3:1-5 (VI-5);
4:24-26 (II-4).
DEUTERONOMY 28:65-67 (VIII-2).
II KINGS 21:3-6 (IV-5).
JOB 30:20, 21, 25-27 (X-4);
37:23 (V-3);
38:31-38 (VII-1).
PSALMS 16:5-11 (III-5);
23:1-4 (X-3);
27:1-6 (VIII-5);
27:7-14 (V-7);
51:1-4 (III-3);
55:1-7 (VIII-1);
56:1-3 (VIII-3);
73:2, 3, 16, 17, 24-26 (II-6);
103:1-5 (III-2);
118:1-6 (VIII-7);
145:1-10 (III-7);
146:1-5 (IV-1).
PROVERBS 2:1-5 (II-3);
4:1-9 (II-2).
ECCLESIASTES 3:11 (V-3).
ISAIAH 1:10-17 (IV-2);
40:26-31 (V-4);
51:9-16 (VI-6);
55:1-3 (II-7).
AMOS 5:21-24 (IX-4).
MICAH 6:1-8 (IX-3).
MATTHEW 6:6-14 (III-1);
6:9-15 (XII-5);
6:24-33 (VI-6);
7:15-20 (V-6);
7:24-27 (VI-7);
13:54-58 (XI-3);
17:19-20 (XI-4);
18:12-14 (II-4);
21:28-31 (X-1);
23:13-15, 23, 24 (XII-1);
25:34-40 (IX-7).
MARK 12:28-30 (V-1).
LUKE 6:12-16 (IX-2);
7:48-50 (XI-2);
18:9-14 (IV-3);
22:31, 32 (XI-6).
JOHN 3:21 (IX-5);
4:23, 24 (IV-5);
6:16, 17 (IX-5);
6:27-29 (XI-1);
7:16, 17 (IX-5);
14:25-27 (VII-2);
17:20-23 (XII-6).
ACTS 17:22-28 (IV-6).
ROMANS 8:1-6 (X-7);
8:14-16 (V-5);
8:24, 25 (III-4);
10:11-15 (XII-4);
11:33, 34 (V-3);
11:33-12:2 (IX-6);
15:13 (III-4);
16:1-8 (IX-1).
I CORINTHIANS 2:10-14 (VII-4);
3:4-9 (III-6);
3:18-23 (VII-6);
4:11-13 (VI-2).
II CORINTHIANS 5:5 (V-2).
GALATIANS 2:20 (XI-5);
5:13-15 (XII-3);
5:16-23 (IV-7).
EPHESIANS 1:15-19 (VII-5);
4:13-15 (X-5).
PHILIPPIANS 3:12-16 (X-6).
I THESSALONIANS 3:1, 2, 10 (XI-6);
5:21 (V-1).
II THESSALONIANS 1:3 (XI-6).
I TIMOTHY 6:20, 21 (II-5).
II TIMOTHY 1:3-5 (II-1);
4:6-8 (XII-7).
HEBREWS 1:1, 2 (VII-7);
2:8-10 (VI-3);
4:1, 2, (I-6);
10:23-25 (XII-2);
10:32-36 (I-4);
11:1 (I-1);
11:3, 6 (I-5);
11:8-10 (I-2);
11:13-16 (I-1);
11:24-27 (I-2);
11:32-40 (I-3);
12:1-3 (VI-4);
13:7 (I-7).
JAMES 1:2-8 (X-2);
2:14-21 (IV-4);
5:13-16 (VIII-4).
I PETER 1:3-9 (XI-7);
4:12-16, 19 (VI-1).
II PETER 1:5 (V-1).
JUDE 20-25 (VII-3).
SOURCES OF PRAYERS USED IN THE DAILY READINGS
ALFRED, KING--IX-3, "A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages," by S. F. Fox.
ANSELM, ST.--XI-6. "A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages," by S. F. Fox.
ARNDT, JOHANN--IX-1; X-1. "A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages," by
S. F. Fox.
ARNOLD, THOMAS--VII-5. "A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages," by
S. F. Fox.
BACON, FRANCIS--VII-2. "A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages," by
S. F. Fox.
BEECHER, HENRY WARD--I-4; I-7; II-7; III-5; III-7; IV-7; V-7; VI-6;
X-5. "A Book of Public Prayer."
BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER--XII-6.
DAWSON, GEORGE--X-4. "A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages," by
S. F. Fox.
HALE, SIR MATTHEW--VII-4. "A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages," by
S. F. Fox.
HUNTER, JOHN--I-1; IV-5; XI-2; XI-3; XII-7. "Devotional Services for
Public Worship."
JENKS, BENJAMIN--X-2. "A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages," by
S. F. Fox.
MCCOMB, SAMUEL--I-6; II-1; III-1; VI-3; VIII-1; VIII-2; VIII-3;
VIII-5; VIII-6; VIII-7; IX-2; XI-1; XII-2; XII-4. "A Book of
Prayers for Public and Personal Use."
MARTINEAU, JAMES--III-4; IV-4; V-2; VI-2; XII-1. "Prayers in the
Congregation and in College."
NEWMAN, FRANCIS W.--VI-1; VI-7. "A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages,"
by S. F. Fox.
ORCHARD, W. E.--I-2; I-3; II-2; II-3; II-4; II-5; II-6; III-2; IV-3;
IV-6; V-1; V-3; V-6; VI-5; VII-1; VII-3; VII-7; VIII-4; IX-5; X-7;
XI-5; XI-7. "The Temple."
PARKER, THEODORE--I-5; V-4; V-5; VI-4; VII-6; X-6. "Prayers."
RAUSCHENBUSCH, WALTER--III-6; IV-1; IV-2; IX-4; IX-6; XII-3; XII-5.
"Prayers of the Social Awakening."
ROBINSON, HELEN RING--XI-4. "Thy Kingdom Come," by Ralph E.
Diffendorfer.
SHAFTESBURY, EARL OF--IX-7. "A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages," by
S. F. Fox.
STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS--III-3. "Prayers Written at Vailima."
VAN DYKE, HENRY--IV-6. "Thy Kingdom Come," by Ralph E. Diffendorfer.
WEISS, S.--X-3. "A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages," by S. F. Fox.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Meaning of Faith, by Harry Emerson Fosdick