THE TEACHINGS OF THE BIBLE
We have studied the teachings of science concerning man and his
environment, let us turn now to the teachings of the Bible. And
though eight chapters have been devoted to the teachings of science,
and only one to the teachings of the Bible, it is not because I
underestimate the importance of the latter. It is more difficult to
clearly discover just what are the teachings of Nature in science.
The lesson is written in a language foreign to most of us, and one
requiring careful study; and yet once deciphered it is clear.
Science attains the laws of Nature by the study of animal and human
history. But this record is a history of continually closer
conformity to environment on the part of all advancing forms. The
animal kingdom is the clay which is turned, as Job says, to the seal
of environment, and it makes little difference whether we study the
seal or the impression; we shall read the same sentence. Environment
has stamped its laws on the very structure of man's body and mind.
And the old biblical writers read these laws, guided by God's
Spirit, in their own hearts, and in those of their neighbors, and in
their national history, as the record of God's working, and gave us
concrete examples of the results of obedience and disobedience.
Hence the teaching of the Bible is always clear and unmistakable.
The Bible treats of three subjects--Nature, Man, and God--and the
relations of each of these to the others. I have tried to present to
you in the first chapter the biblical conception of Nature and its
relation to God. In its relation to man it is his manifestation to
us, and, in its widest sense, the sum of the means and modes through
which he develops, aids, and educates us. And in this conception I
find science to be strictly in accord with scripture.
Now what is the scriptural idea of man? Man interests us especially
in three aspects. He is a corporeal being; he is an intellectual
being; he is a moral being, with feelings, will, and personality.
Man's body. Plato considered the body as a source of evil and a
hindrance to all higher life. And Plato was by no means alone in
this. The Bible takes a very different view. Neglect of the body is
always rebuked. The only place, so far as I can find, where the body
is called vile is where it is compared with the glorious body into
which it is to be transformed. "Your bodies," writes Paul to the
Corinthians, "are members of Christ," "temples of the Holy Ghost."
But the Bible teaches that the body is to be the servant, not the
ruler, of the spirit. "I keep under my body, and bring it into
subjection," continues Paul. Here again science is strictly in
accord with scripture.
Man is an intellectual being. I need not quote the praises of
knowledge in the Old Testament. They must be fresh in your mind. But
the practical Peter writes, "giving all diligence add to your faith
virtue; and to virtue knowledge." And Paul prays that the love of
the Ephesians may "abound more and more in knowledge and in all
judgment." But the important knowledge is the knowledge of God, and
of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Master. And similarly science
emphasizes that the chief end of all knowledge is that we should
know the environment to which we are to conform. Knowledge is useful
to strengthen and clarify the mind, that it may see and conform to
truth and God: and if it fails to become a means to conformity, it
has failed of the chief, and practically the only, end for which it
was intended. We are to come "in the unity of the faith and of the
knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of
the stature of the fulness of Christ." But knowledge which only
puffs up and distracts the mind from the great aims and ends which
it should serve is rebuked with equal emphasis by the Bible and by
science.
I would not claim that we have set too high a value upon knowledge,
perhaps we cannot; but there is something far higher on which we are
inclined to set far too low a value. This is righteousness and love;
and true wisdom is knowledge permeated, vivified, and transfigured
by devotion to these higher ends. And in this highest realm of the
mind feeling and will rule conjointly. Love is a feeling which
always will and must find its way to activity through the will, and
it is an activity of the will roused by the very deepest feeling,
inspired by a worthy object. If you try to divorce them, both die.
Hence Paul can say, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of
angels, and though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all
mysteries and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I
could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing." And John
goes, if possible, even farther and says, "Every one that loveth is
born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God;
for God is love." And this sort of love bears and believes and hopes
and endures, and never fails. And for this reason the Bible lays
such tremendous emphasis on the heart, not as the centre of emotion
alone, but as the seat of will as well. And science points to the
same end, though she sees it afar off.
And what of God? God is a Spirit, Creator, Author, and Finisher of
all things, and filling all. But while omnipotent, omnipresent, and
omniscient, these are not the characteristics emphasized in the
Bible. He is righteous. "Shall not the judge of all the earth do
right?" is the grand question of the father of the faithful. And
when Moses prays God to show him his glory, God answers, "I will
make all my goodness pass before thee." He is the "refuge of
Israel," the "everlasting arms" underneath them, pitying them "as a
father pitieth his children." And in the New Testament we are bidden
to pray to our Father, who _is_ love, and whose temple is the heart
of whosoever will receive him. Truly a very personal being.
Now the Bible rises here indefinitely above anything that mere
natural science can describe. But can the ultimate "Power, not
ourselves, which makes for righteousness" and unselfishness, of
whose presence in environment science assures us, be ever better
described than by these words concerning the "Father of our
spirits?"
And an infinitely wise, good, and loving being will have fixed modes
of working; for "with him is no variableness, neither shadow of
turning." Thus only can man trust and know him. The old Stoic
philosopher tells us "everything has two handles, and can be
carried by one of them, but not by the other." So with God's laws.
Many seem to look upon them as a hindrance and limitation to him in
carrying out his righteous and loving will toward man. But they are
really the modes or means of his working, which he uses with such
regularity and consistency that we can always rely upon them and
him. The pure river of the water of life proceedeth from the throne
of God and of the Lamb.
If I am lying ill waiting anxiously for the physician I can think of
this great city as a mass of blocks of houses separating him from
me. But the houses have been arranged in blocks so as to leave free
streets, along which he can travel the more quickly. And God's laws
are not blocks, but thoroughfares, planned that the angels of his
mercy may fly swiftly to our aid. We are prone to forget that these
laws are expressly made for your and my benefit, as well as that of
all beings, that we may be righteous and unselfish. And this is one
ground of the apostle's faith that "all things work together for
good to them that love God." And in the Apocalypse the earth helps
the woman. It must be so.
But what if you or I try to block the thoroughfare? What would
happen to us if we tried to stop bare-handed the current of a huge
dynamo, or to hold back the torrent of Niagara? Nothing but death
can result. And what if I stem myself against the "river of the
water of life, proceeding from the throne of God," and try to turn
it aside or hold it back from men perishing of thirst? And that is
just what sin is, even if done carelessly or thoughtlessly; for men
have no right to be careless and thoughtless about some things.
"The wages of sin is death;" physical death for breaking physical
law, and spiritual death for breaking spiritual law. How can it be
otherwise? The wages are fairly earned. The hardest doctrine for a
scientific man to believe is that there can be any forgiveness of
such sin as the heedless, ungrateful breaking of such wise and
beneficent laws of a loving Father. And yet my earthly father has
had to forgive me a host of times during my boyhood. Perhaps I can
hope the same from God; I take his word for it.
But if you or I think that it is safe to trifle with God's laws, we
are terribly mistaken. The Lord proclaimed himself to Moses as "The
Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and
abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no
means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon
the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and
to the fourth generation." But someone will say, This is terrible.
It is terrible; but the question is, Does the Bible speak the truth
about nature? Is nature a "fairy godmother," or does she bring men
up with sternness and inflict suffering upon the innocent children,
if necessary, lest they copy after their sinful parents? Do the
children of the defaulter and drunkard and debauchee suffer because
of the sins of their father, or do they not? If the blessings won by
parental virtue go down to the thousandth generation, must not the
evil consequences of sin go down to the third or fourth?
That we are not under the law, but under grace, does not mean, as
some seem to think, that it is safe to sin. Otherwise the
forgiveness of God becomes the lowest form of indulgence
slanderously attributed to the Church of Rome. We gain freedom from
law as well as penalty only by obedience. The artist can safely
forget the laws and rules of his art only when by long obedience and
practice he obeys them unconsciously. We seem to be threatened with
a belief that God will never punish sin in one who has professed
Christianity. This view cheapens sin and makes pardon worthless, it
takes the iron out of the blood, and the backbone out of all our
religion and ethics. It ruins Christians and disgraces Christianity.
We sometimes seem to think that our nation or church or denomination
is so important to the carrying on of God's work that he cannot
afford to let any evil befall us, whatever we may do or be.
"Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and princes
of the house of Israel, that abhor judgment and pervert all equity.
They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity. The
heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for
hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean
upon the Lord and say, Is not the Lord among us? none evil can come
upon us. Therefore shall Zion for your sake be ploughed as a field,
and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as
the high places of the forest." That was plain preaching, and the
people did not like it. They would not like it any better to-day; it
would come too near the truth.
But others seem to think that God is too kind, not to say
good-natured, to allow his children to suffer for their sins. This
is part of a creed, unconsciously very widely held to-day, that
comfort, not character, is the chief end of life. Now if God is too
kind to allow his children to suffer some of the natural
consequences of sin, he is not a really kind and loving father, he
is spoiling his children. Salvation is soundness, sanity, health;
just as holiness is wholeness, escape from the disease, and not
merely from the consequences of sin. A physician, unless a quack,
never promises relief from a deep-seated disease without any pain or
discomfort. And if the disease is the result of indulgence, he warns
us that relapse into indulgence will bring a worse recurrence of the
pain. Perhaps, after all, Socrates was not so far from right when he
maintained that if a man had sinned the best and only thing for him
is to suffer for it. "God the Lord will speak peace unto his people,
and to his saints: but let them not turn again to folly." And our
Lord says, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the
prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say
unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in
no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled. For I say unto you,
That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the
scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of
heaven." If we would be great in the kingdom of heaven we must do
and teach the commandments. One of the best lessons that the clergy
can learn from science is that law and penalty are not things of the
past. They are eternal facts; and if so, ought sometimes to be at
least mentioned from the pulpit as well as remembered in the pew.
But if God is a person striving to communicate with man, and if man
is a person intended to conform to environment by becoming like God,
what is more probable from the scientific stand-point than that God
should seek and find some means of making himself clearly known to
man in some personal way? I do not see how any scientific man who
believes in a personal God can avoid asking this question. And is
there any more natural solution of the question than that given in
the Bible? "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself."
"God, who spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath
in these last days spoken unto us by his son." Philip says, "Lord,
show us the Father and it sufficeth us." Jesus saith unto him, "Have
I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? he
that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou shew us the
Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father and the Father in
me? the words that I say unto you I speak not from myself: but the
Father abiding in me doeth his works."
"And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world,
and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were
evil."
Something more is needed than light. We need more light and
knowledge of our duty; we need vastly more the will-power to do it.
I know how I ought to live; I do not live thus. What I need is not a
teacher, but power to become a son of God. "I delight in the law of
God after the inward man: but I see a different law in my members,
warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity
under the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I
am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?"
This is the terrible question. How is it to be answered? Let us
remember our illustration of the change wrought in that
panic-stricken army before Winchester by the appearance of Sheridan.
What these men needed was not information. No plan of battle
reported as sure of success by trustworthy and competent witnesses,
and forwarded from the greatest leader could have stayed that rout.
What they needed was Sheridan and the magnetic power of his
personality. This is the strange power of all great leaders of men,
whether orators, statesmen, or generals. It is intellect acting on
and through intellect, but it is also vastly more; it is will acting
on will. The leader does not merely instruct others, he inspires
them, puts himself into them, and makes them heroes like himself.
Now something like this, but vastly grander and deeper, seems to me
to have been the work of our Lord. Read John's gospel and see how it
is interpenetrated with the idea of the new life to be gained by
contact with our Lord, and how this forms the foundation of his hope
and claim to give men this new life by drawing them to himself. And
Peter says that it was impossible for the Prince of Life to be
holden of death, for he was the centre and source from which not
only new thoughts and purposes, but new will and life was to stream
out into the souls of men. This power of our Lord may have been
miraculous and supernatural in degree; I feel assured that it was
not unnatural in kind and mode of action.
And here, young men, pardon a personal word about your preaching.
You will need to preach many sermons of warning against, and
denunciation of, sin; many of instruction in duty. The Bible is a
store-house of instruction and men need it, and you must make it
clear to them. All this is good and necessary, but it is not enough.
Learn from the experience of the greatest preacher, perhaps, who
ever lived.
Paul, the greatest philosopher of ancient times, came to Athens. You
can well imagine how he had waited and longed for the opportunity to
speak in this home of philosophy and intellectual life. Now he was
to speak, not to uncultured barbarians, but to men who could
understand and appreciate his best thoughts. He preached in Athens
the grandest sermon, as far as argument is concerned, ever uttered.
I doubt if ever a sermon of Paul's accomplished less. He could not
even rouse a healthy opposition. The idea of a new god, Jesus, and a
new goddess, the Resurrection, rather tickled the Athenian fancy. He
left them, and, in deep dejection, went down to Corinth. There he
determined to know only "Christ and him crucified," and thus
preaching in material, vicious Corinth he founded a church.
Some of you will go through the same experience. You will preach to
cultured and intelligent audiences, and they will listen courteously
and eagerly as long as you tell them something new, and do not ask
them to do anything. The only possible way of reaching Athenian
intellect or Corinthian materialism and vice is by preaching Christ,
"the power of God and the wisdom of God." And you will reach more
Corinthians than Athenians.
You may preach sermons full of the grandest philosophy and
theology, and of the highest, most exact, science; you may chain men
by your logic, thrill them by your rhetoric, and move them to tears
by your eloquence, and they will go home as dead and cold as they
came. What they need is power, life. But preach "Christ and him
crucified"--not merely dead two thousand years ago--but risen and
alive for evermore, and with us to the end of the world, the
grandest, most heroic, divinest helper who ever stood by a man, one
all-powerful to help and who never forsakes, and every one of your
hearers who is not dead to truth will catch the life, and go home
alive and not alone.
So long as we preach a dead Christ we shall have a dead church, as
hopeless as the apostles were before the resurrection. "But now is
Christ risen from the dead," "alive for evermore." See how Paul and
Peter and John, and doubtless all the others, talked with him and he
with them, after he was taken from them, and you have found the
secret of their power, and of that of all the great Christian heroes
and martyrs who could truly say, Lord Jesus, we understand each
other. Better yet, prove by experience that it is possible for every
one of us.
And our Lord and Master is the connecting link between God and man,
through whom God's own Holy Spirit is poured like a mighty flood
into the hearts and lives of men, transfiguring them and filling
them with the divine power. This is the biblical idea of
Christianity; man, through Christ, flooded and permeated and
interpenetrated with the Holy Spirit of God. And thus Paul is dead
and yet alive, but fully possessed and dominated by the spirit of
Christ. Alive as never before, and yet his every thought, word, and
deed is really that of his great leader. Can you talk of self-denial
to such a Christian? He had forgotten that such a man as Saul of
Tarsus or Paul ever existed; he lives only in his Master's work, and
is transfigured by it. This, and nothing less, is Christianity, and
this is the very highest and grandest heroism. Paul conquers Europe
single-handed, alone he stands before Cæsar's tribunal, and yet he
is never alone; and from the gloom of the Mammertine dungeon he
sends back a shout of triumph. And Peter walks steadily, cheerfully,
and unflinchingly, in the footsteps of his Master to share his
cross.
Let us, before leaving this topic, notice carefully just what
religion, and especially Christianity, is not.
1. It is not merely opinion or intellectual belief in a creed. This
may be good, or even necessary, but it is not religion. "Thou
believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also
believe and tremble." We speak with pride, sometimes, of our
puissant Christendom, so industrious, so intelligent, so moral, with
its ubiquitous commerce, its adorning arts, its halls of learning,
its happy firesides, and its noble charities. And yet what is our
vaunted Christendom but a vast assemblage of believing but
disobedient men? Said William Law to John Wesley, "The head can as
easily amuse itself with a living and justifying faith in the blood
of Jesus as with any other notion." The most sacred duty may
degenerate into a dogma, asking only to be believed. "I go, sir,"
answered the son in the parable, "but went not."
2. It is not mere feeling. It is neither hope of heaven's joy, nor
fear of hell's misery. It may rightly include these, but it is
vastly more and higher. It is neither ecstasy nor remorse. The most
resolutely impenitent sinner can shout "Hallelujah," and "Woe is
me," as loudly as any saint. Now feeling is of vast importance. It
stands close to the will and stimulates it, but it is not
conformity. The will must be aroused to a robust life.
3. Christianity is these and a great deal more. Mere belief would
make religion a mere theology. Mere emotion would make it mere
excitement. The true divine idea of it is a life; doing his will,
not indolently sighing to do it, and then lamenting that we do it
not; but the thing itself in actual achievement, from day to day,
from month to month, from year to year. Thus religion rises on us in
its own imperial majesty. It is no mere delight of the understanding
in the doctrines of our faith; no mere excitement of the
sensibilities, now harrowed by fear, and now jubilant in hope; but a
warfare and a work, a warfare against sin, and a work with God.
Religion is not an entertainment, but a service. We are to set
before us the perfect standard, and then struggle to shape our lives
to it. Personal sanctity must be made a business of.[A]
[Footnote A: This page is mainly a series of quotations from Dr.
R.D. Hitchcock's sermon on "Religion, the Doing of God's Will."]
A little more than thirty years ago a regiment was sent home from
the Army of the Potomac to enforce the draft after the riots in this
city. Some of you may picture to yourselves a thousand men with silk
banners and gold lace and bright uniforms, resplendent in the
sunshine. You could not make a worse mistake.
First in that gray early morning came two old flags, so torn by shot
and shell that there was hardly enough left of them to tell whether
the State flag was that of Massachusetts or Virginia. And behind
these came scant three hundred men. All the rest were sleeping
between Washington and Richmond, some on almost every battle-field.
The uniforms were old and faded from sun and rain. Only gun-barrel
and bayonet were bright. And the men were scarred and tired and
foot-sore, haggard from hard fighting and long, swift marches. For
these men had been trained to be hurried back and forth behind the
long line of battle, that they might be hurled into it wherever the
need was greatest. I do not suppose that one of them could have
delivered a fourth-of-July oration on Patriotism. They were trained
not to talk, but to obey orders. But they had stood in the "bloody
angle" at Spottsylvania all day and all night; and in the gray dawn
of the next morning, when strength and courage are always at ebb,
faint and exhausted, their last cartridge shot away, had sprung
forward at the command of their colonel to make a last desperate,
forlorn defence with the bayonet against the advancing enemy.
Numbers do not count against men like these. What made them such
invincible heroes? It was mainly the resolute will and long training
to obey orders. A Christian should never forget that he is a soldier
in the army of the Lord of Hosts; that enlistment is easy and
quickly accomplished; but that the training is long, and that he
must learn, above all, to "endure hardness."
And so, my brothers, I beg of you to preach a heroic Christianity,
for if there ever was a heroic religion it is ours. If you offer
merely free transportation to a future heaven of delight on "flowery
beds of ease," you will enlist only the coward and the sluggard. But
everyone who has a drop of strong old Norse blood in his veins will
prefer a heathen Valhalla, though builded in hell, to such a heaven.
And his Norse instincts will be nearer truth than your counterfeit
of a debased Christianity. But preach the city of God's
righteousness on earth and now among men, and call on every heroic
soul to take sides with God against sin within himself and the evil
and misery all around him. There is an almost infinite amount of
strength, endurance, and heroism in this "slow-witted but
long-winded" human race waiting to leap up at the appeal to fight
once more and win a victory after repeated defeats before the sun
goes down. Appeal to this and point to the great "captain of our
salvation made perfect through sufferings," and every man that is of
the truth will hear in your voice the call of the Master and King.
You will not be disappointed, but among the publicans and fishermen
of America you will find heroic souls, who will leave all to follow,
as faithfully and unflinchingly as those from the shores of Galilee.
And what of faith? Faith is the personal attachment of a soul to
such a leader. Fortunately the Bible contains a scientific monograph
on this subject. I refer, of course, to the eleventh chapter of the
epistle to the Hebrews. And the whole result is summed up in a few
words of the thirteenth verse. The great heroes, like Enoch, Noah,
and Abraham, "saw the promises afar off, and were persuaded of them,
and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and
pilgrims on the earth."
They saw the promises afar off, dimly, on the horizon of their
mental vision; as one looks into the distance and cannot tell
whether what he sees be cloud or mountain. And until they could make
up their minds that there was some substance in the vision, they did
not embrace it. They were not credulous. Neither were they
carelessly or heedlessly sure that there was and could be nothing in
the vision but mist and fancy. They recognized that on their
decision of the question hung the life of which they meant to make
the very most. They looked again and again, and kept thinking about
it. Thus they became and were "persuaded of them." And most people
stop here with a merely intellectual faith in their heads, and very
little in their hearts and lives. Not so these old heroes; they were
not so purely and coldly intellectual that they could not _do_
anything. They "embraced them." They said, that is exactly what I
want and need, and I'll have it, if it costs me my life.
Now a promise is always conditional; if you want one thing, you must
give up something else. It involves a choice between alternatives;
you can have either one freely, you cannot have both. It was to them
as to Christ on the "exceeding high mountain," God or the world; God
with the cross, or the world with Satan thrown in. And the same
alternative confronts us.
Moses could be a good Jew or a good Egyptian. Most of us, while
resolved to be excellent Jews at heart, would have said nothing
about it, but remained sons of Pharaoh's daughter in order to
benefit the Jews by our influence in our lofty station. We should
have become miserable hybrids with all the vices and weaknesses of
both races, but with none of the virtues of either. And for all that
we should ever have done the Jews might have rotted in Egyptian
bondage. Enlargement and deliverance would have arisen to the Jews
from some other place; but we and our father's house would have been
destroyed. By faith Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's
daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the children of
God, etc. And certainly he did suffer for it.
They embraced the promises with their whole hearts. They were stoned
and sawn asunder rather than give them up. And what was the effect
on their characters? Having counted the cost, and being perfectly
willing to accept any loss or pain for the sake of these promises,
and hence inspired by them, they became sublime heroes. Through
faith they "subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained
promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of
fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made
strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the
aliens. And others had trials of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea,
moreover of bonds and imprisonment: they wandered about in
sheepskins and in goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented.
Of whom the world was not worthy." That is a faith worth having, and
it is as sound philosophy as it is scripture.
"These all died in faith, not having received the promises." Did
they receive nothing? Moses and Elijah, Gideon and Barak gained
power and heroism greater than we can conceive of. Surely that was
enough. But they did not get the whole of the promise, or even the
best of it. And the simple reason was that God cannot make a promise
small enough to be completely fulfilled to a man in his earthly
life. He gets enough to make him a king, but this does not begin to
exhaust the promise. It is inexhaustible. This is the experience of
anyone who will faithfully try it. And this experience is the
grandest argument for immortality.
Therefore, "giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue ([Greek:
aretê], strength), and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge
temperance ([Greek: enkrateia], self-control), and to temperance
patience ([Greek: hypomenê], endurance), and to patience godliness,
and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness
charity" (love).
And what of prayer? How can it be answered in a universe of law? We
certainly could have no confidence that our prayers could or would
be answered if ours were not a universe of law. God's laws are, as
we have seen, his modes of working out his great plan. And the last
and highest unfolding of God's plan is the development of man. And
man is to become conformed to his environment, and conformity of
man's highest powers to his environment is likeness to God.
The laws of nature, then, are in ultimate analysis and highest aim
the different steps in God's plan of man's salvation from the
disease of sin, not merely or mainly from its consequences, and his
attainment of holiness. For this is the only true and sound manhood.
Salvation is spiritual health, resulting also in health of body and
of mind. If God's laws are his modes of carrying out his plan for
godlikeness in man, then they are so thought out as to be the means
of helping me to every real good.
The Bible declares explicitly that the aim of prayer is not to
inform God of our needs. For he knows them already. It is not to
change God's purpose, for he is unchangeable, and we should rejoice
in this. We are to pray for our daily bread; we are to pray for the
sick; and, if best for them and consistent with God's plan, they
shall recover. Elijah prayed for drought and prayed for rain, and
was answered. And Abraham's prayer would have saved Sodom, had there
been ten righteous men in the city. "Men ought alway to pray and not
to faint."
"More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God."
But could not all these things be brought about without a single
prayer? Not according to the plan of man's education which God has
adopted. Whether he could well have made a plan by which material
blessings could have been bestowed upon men who do not ask for them,
I do not know. The ravens and all animals are fed without a single
prayer, for they are not fitted or intended to hold communion with
God. But a prayerless race of men has never been fed long; it has
soon ceased to exist. God's plan of salvation and ordering of the
universe involves prayer as a means of blessing and good things as
an answer to prayer. God says, I make you a co-worker with me. I
will help you in everything; but you must call on me for help, or
you will forget that I am the source of your help and strength, and
thus having lost your communion with me will die. "When Jeshurun
waxed fat he kicked." This is the oft-repeated story of the Old
Testament and of all history. And thus, while material blessings are
given in answer to prayer, these are not the chief end for which
prayer is to be offered.
Prayer is a means of conformity to environment, of godlikeness. How
do you become like a friend? Of course by associating and talking
with him. And why does it help you to associate with a hero? Simply
because you cannot be with him without being inspired with his
heroism. And so while I may pray for bread and clothes and
opportunities, and God will give me these or something better; I
will, if wise, pray for purity, courage, moral power, heroism, and
holiness. And I know that these will stream from his soul into mine
like a great river. And so I may pray for bread and be denied; for
hunger, with some higher good, may be far better for me than a full
stomach. But if I pray for any spiritual gift, which will make me
godlike, and on which as an heir of God I have a rightful claim,
every law and force in God's universe is a means to answer that
prayer. And best of all, if I pray for the gift of God's Spirit,
that is the prayer which the whole world of environment has been
framed to answer.
But this I can never have unless I hunger for it. I can never have
it to use as a means of gaining some lower good which I worship more
than God. God will not and cannot lend himself to any such idolatry.
I must be willing to give up anything and everything else for its
attainment. Otherwise the answer to the prayer would ruin me.
I cannot grasp the higher while using both hands to grasp the
lower.
Thus religion is the interpenetration and permeation of my
personality by that of God. And prayer is the communion by which
this permeation becomes possible. And faith is the vision of these
possibilities, the being persuaded by them, and the resolute purpose
to attain them. And faith in Christ is confiding communion with him
and obedience to his commands that his divine life may flow over
into me and dominate mine. And common-sense, and the more refined
common-sense which we call science, can show me no other means to
the attainment of that godlikeness which is the only true conformity
to environment.
And, holding such a belief and faith, we must be hopeful. And only
next in importance to faith and love stands hope. The hero must be
hopeful. And when times look dark about you, and they sometimes
will, you must still hope.
"O it is hard to work for God,
To rise and take his part
Upon the battle-field of earth,
And not sometimes lose heart!
"O there is less to try our faith
In our mysterious creed,
Than in the godless look of earth
In these our hours of need.
"Ill masters good; good seems to change
To ill with greatest ease;
And, worst of all, the good with good
Is at cross purposes.
"Workman of God! O lose not heart,
But learn what God is like;
And in the darkest battle-field
Thou shalt know where to strike.
"Muse on his justice, downcast soul!
Muse, and take better heart;
Back with thine angel to the field,
Good luck shall crown thy part!
"For right is right, since God is God;
And right the day must win;
To doubt would be disloyalty,
To falter would be sin."
Hope on, be strong and of a good courage. For in the dark hours
others will lean on you to catch your hope and courage. To many a
poor discouraged soul you must be "a hiding-place from the wind and
a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the
shadow of a great rock in a weary land." Every power and force in
the universe of environment makes for the ultimate triumph of truth
and right. Defeat is impossible. "One man with God on his side is
the majority that carries the day. 'We are but two,' said Abu Bakr
to Mohammed as they were flying hunted from Mecca to Medina. 'Nay;'
answered Mohammed, 'we are three; God is with us.'"
And not only the race will triumph and regain the Paradise lost. The
city of God shall surely be with men, and God will dwell with them
and in them. But you and I can and shall triumph too.
We are prone to feel that the individual man is too insignificant a
being to be the object of God's care and forethought. But we should
not forget that it is the individual who conforms, and that the
higher and nobler race is to be attained through the elevation of
individuals, one after another. God deals with races and nations as
such. But his laws and promises are made almost entirely for the
individuals of which these larger units are concerned.
But there is another standpoint from which we may gain a helpful
view of the matter. I may be the meanest citizen of my native state,
and my father may leave me heir of only a few acres of rocky land.
But, if my title is good, every power in the state is pledged to put
me in possession of my inheritance. They who would rob me may be
strong; but the state will call out every able-bodied man, and pour
out every dollar in its treasury before it will allow me to be
defrauded of my legal rights. And it must do this for me, its
meanest citizen, else there is no government, but anarchy, and
oppression, and the rule of the strongest. And we all recognize that
this is but right and necessary, and would be ashamed of our state
and government were it not literally true.
If I travel in distant lands, my passport is the sign that all the
power of these United States is pledged to protect me from
injustice. Think of the sensitiveness of governments to any wrong
done to their private citizens. England went to war with Abyssinia
to protect and deliver two Englishmen. And shall God do less? Can he
do less? If it is only just and right and necessary for earthly
governments to thus care for their citizens, shall not the ruler and
"judge of all the earth do right?"
Now you and I are commanded to be heirs of God, to attain to
likeness to him. This is therefore our legal right, guaranteed by
him, for every command of God is really a promise. And he will
exhaust every power in the universe before he allows anything to
prevent us from gaining our legal rights, provided only that we are
earnest in claiming them.
But if I alienate my rights to my inheritance, the commonwealth
cannot help me. If I renounce my citizenship, the government of the
United States can no longer protect me. And so I can alienate my
"right to the tree of life," and to entrance into the city, and I
can forfeit my heirship to all that God would give me. "For I am
persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
nor height, nor depth, nor any other creation, shall be able to
separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our
Lord." But I can alienate and make void every promise and title, if
I will or if I do not care. This is the unique glory, and awfulness
of the human will. And we know that to them that love God all things
work together for good. "If God is for us who is against us?" It
must be so if God's laws are his modes of aiding men to conform to
environment.
And what of the church? Is it anything else or other than a means of
aiding man to conform to environment? If it fails of this, can it be
any longer the church of God? The church is a means, not an end. And
it is a means of godlikeness in man.
Some would make it a social club. The bond of union between its
members is their common grade of wealth, social position, or
intellectual attainments. And this idea of the church has deeper
root in the minds of us all than we think. I can imagine a far
better club than one formed and framed on this principle, but it is
difficult for me to imagine a worse counterfeit of a church. Others
make it a source of intellectual delectation, and the means of
hearing one or two striking sermons each week. Such a church will
conduce to the intelligence of its members, and may be rather more,
though probably less, useful than the old New England Lyceum lecture
system. Such a church is of about as much practical value to the
world at large as some consultations of physicians are to their
patients. The doctors have a most interesting discussion, but the
patient dies, and the nature of the disease is discovered at the
autopsy. Others still would make of the church a great railroad
system, over which sleeping-cars run from the City of Destruction,
with a coupon good to admit one to the Golden City at the other end.
The coaches are luxurious and the road-bed smooth. The Slough of
Despond has been filled, the Valley of Humiliation bridged at its
narrowest point, and the Delectable Mountains tunnelled. But
scoffers say that most of the passengers make full use of the
unlimited stop-over privileges allowed at Vanity Fair.
The Bible would seem to give the impression that the church is the
army of the Lord of Hosts, a disciplined army of hardy, heroic
souls, each soldier aiding his fellow in working out the salvation
which God is working in him. And it joins battle fiercely and
fearlessly with every form of sin and misery, counting not the odds
against it. And the Salvation Army seems to me to have conceived and
realized to a great extent just what at least one corps in this
grand army can and should be. And you and I can learn many a lesson
from them.
The church is the body of which Christ is the head, and you and I
are "members in particular." Let us see to it that we are not the
weak spot in the body, crippling and maiming the whole. The church
is the city of God among men, and we are its citizens, bound by its
laws, loyal servants of the Great King, sworn to obey his commands
and enlarge his kingdom, and repel all the assaults of his
adversaries. Thus the Bible seems to me to depict the church of God.
But what if the army contains a multitude of men who will not obey
orders or submit to discipline? or if the city be overwhelmed with a
mass of aliens, who see in its laws and institutions mainly means of
selfish individual advantage? Responsibility, not privilege, is the
foundation of strong character in both men and institutions. There
was a good grain of truth in the old Scotch minister's remark, that
they had had a blessed work of grace in his church; they had not
taken anybody in, but a lot had gone out.
There are plenty of churches of Laodicea to-day. May you be
delivered from them. But, thank God, there are also churches of
Philadelphia and Smyrna. May you be pastors of one of the latter. It
will not pay you a very large salary, for Demas has gone to the
church of Laodicea, because the minister of the church of Smyrna was
not orthodox, or not sufficiently spiritually minded--meaning
thereby that he rebuked the sins of actual living men in general,
and of Demas in particular--or preached politics, and did not mind
his business. And your church may be small. For many of the
congregation have gone to the church around the other corner, which
is mainly a cluster of associations, having excellent names, and
useful for almost every purpose except building up a manly, rugged,
heroic, godlike character. The minister there, they will tell you,
preaches delightful sermons. They make you "feel so good." He
annihilates pantheism, and his denunciations of materialism are
eloquent in the extreme. But his incarnations of materialism are
Huxley and Darwin, and to the uncharitable he seems to almost
carefully avoid any language which might seem to reflect upon the
dollar- and place-worship of some of the occupants of his front
pews. Now, I am not here to defend Mr. Huxley or Mr. Darwin.
Withstand them to the face wherever they are to be blamed. And for
some utterances they are undoubtedly to be blamed, honest souls as
they were. But I for one cannot help feeling that there is among the
"dwellers in Jerusalem" a materialism of the heart which is
indefinitely worse than any intellectual heresy. When you hit at the
one heresy strike hard at the other also.
Many will have left your little church of Smyrna. It had to be so.
For the divine sifting process, which is natural selection on its
highest plane, has not ceased to work. It must and shall still go
on; it cannot be otherwise. Has the great principle ceased to be
true in modern history that "though the number of the children of
Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved?"
But do not be discouraged. Preach Christ and a heroic Christianity.
Do not be afraid to demand great things of your people. Remember
that Ananias was encouraged to go to Paul because the Lord would
show Paul how great things he should suffer for the name of Jesus.
This is what appeals to the heroic in every man, and we do not make
nearly enough use of it. And the heroic Christ and his heroic
Christianity will draw every heroic soul in the community to
himself. They may not be very heroic looking. You may be in some
hill town in old Massachusetts "Nurse of heroes." Pardon me, I do
not intend to be invidious. Heroism is cosmopolitan. One of the
pillars of your church may be the school-teacher of the little red
school-house at the fork of the roads, in the yard ornamented with
alders, mulleins, and sumachs. She boards around, and is clad in
anything but silks and sealskins. But she trains well her band of
hardy little fellows, who will later fear the multitude as little as
they now mind the Berkshire winds. And from the pittance she
receives for training these rebellious urchins into heroic men she
is supporting an old mother somewhere, or helping a brother to an
education. And your deacon will be some farmer, perhaps uncouth in
appearance and rough of dress, and certainly blunt in his scanty
speech. He'll not flatter you nor your sermons; and until you've
lived with him for years you will not know what a great heart there
is in that rugged frame, and what wealth of affection in that silent
hand-shake. And there is his wife. She is round and ample, and
certainly does not look especially solemn or pious. She is aunt and
mother to the whole community, the joy of all the children, nurse of
the sick, and comfort of the dying. She is doing the work of ten at
home, and of a host in the village. And your right-hand man is
great Onesiphorus from the mill down in the valley, fighting an
uphill battle to keep the wolf from the door, while he and his wife
deny themselves everything, that their flock of children may have
better training for fighting God's battles than they ever enjoyed.
I cannot describe these men and women. If you have lived with
them, you will need no description, and would resent the
inadequacy of mine. If you have never had the good fortune to live
with them, it is impossible to make you see them as they are. When
you once have thoroughly known them, language will fail you to do
them justice, and you will prefer to be silent rather than slander
them by inadequate portrayal. They are at first sight not
attractive-looking. If you stand outside and look at them from a
distance their lives will appear to you very humdrum and prosaic.
But remember that for almost thirty years our Lord lived just such
a life in Nazareth, making ploughs and yokes; and then, when the
younger brothers and sisters were able to care for themselves,
snatched three years from supporting a peasant family in Galilee
to redeem a world. And who was Peter but a rough, hardy fisherman?
Now a Paul, trained at the feet of Gamaliel, was also needed; and
the twelve did not come from the lowest ranks of society. But they
were honest, industrious, practical, courageous, hardy, common
people. And single-handed they went out to conquer empires. And they
succeeded through the power of God in them.
Who knows the possibilities of your little church in the hilltown of
Smyrna? These men and women are the pickets of God's great host.
They are scattered up and down our land, fighting alone the great
battle, unknown of men and sometimes thinking that they must be
forgotten of God. And the picket's lonely post is what tries a man's
courage and strength.
Take your example from Paul's epistle. Greet Phebe, the
schoolmistress, and Aquila and Priscilla on their rocky farm on the
mountain-side, and greet the burden-bearing Onesiphorus. And give
them God's greeting and encouragement, for he sends it to them
through you. Show them the heroism which there is in their "humdrum"
lives; and cheer them in the efforts, of whose grandeur they are all
unconscious. Bid them "be strong and of a very good courage." For in
the character of these people there is the granite of the eternal
hills, and in their hearts should be the sunshine of God. Do not be
ashamed of your congregation. Their dimes or dollars may look
pitifully small and few on the collector's plate; only God sees the
real immensity of the gift in the self-denial which it has cost.
Your people will take sides with the cause of right, while it is
still unpopular. They have furnished the moral backbone and
unswerving integrity of many of your great business houses in this
city to-day. From those families will go forth the men whom the good
will trust and the evil fear. The power for good proceeding from
your church will be like the floods which Ezekiel saw pouring out
from beneath the threshold of the Lord's house.
For these common people, whom "God must have loved because he made
so many of them," are the true heirs to the future. And wealth and
culture, art and learning, are to burn like torches to light their
march. Finally, my young brothers, do not be bitterly disappointed
if you are not "popular preachers." Do not let too many people go to
sleep under your preaching, even if one young man did go to sleep
under one of Paul's sermons. But if now and then someone is angry at
what you have said, do not worry too much over it. Preach the truth
in love. If Elijah and John the Baptist, and Peter and Paul, were to
preach to-day I doubt greatly whether they would be popular
preachers. I cannot find that they ever were so. They would probably
be peripatetic candidates, until someone supported them as
independent evangelists. After their death we would rear them great
monuments, and then devote ourselves to railing at Timothy because
he was not more like what we imagine Paul was.
Even Socrates found that he must bid farewell to what men count
honors, if he would follow after truth. You may have the same
experience. You will have to champion many an unpopular cause, and
your people will not like it. They will say you lack tact. Now Paul
was a man of infinite tact. Witness his sermon on Mars' Hill. But if
his letters to the church in Corinth were addressed to most modern
churches, they would soon set out in search of a pastor of greater
adaptability.
If you play the man, and fight the good fight of faith, I do not see
how you can always avoid hitting somebody on the other side. And he
will pull you down if he can; and will probably succeed in sometimes
making your life very uncomfortable. Remember the teaching of
scripture and science, that the upward path was never intended to
be easy. The scriptural passages to this effect you can find all
through the gospels and epistles, and I need not quote them to you.
I will, however, tell you honestly that many are of the opinion that
these passages are now obsolete, being applicable only to the first
centuries, or to especially critical times in the history of
the church. I cannot share that view, but, lest I seem too
old-fashioned, will merely quote the ringing words of our own Dr.
Hitchcock, that "no man ever enters heaven save on his shield." And
allow me to quote in the same connection the testimony of that
prince of scientists, Professor Huxley, in his lecture on "Evolution
and Ethics:"
"If we may permit ourselves a larger hope of abatement of the
essential evil of the world than was possible to those who, in the
infancy of exact knowledge, faced the problem of existence more than
a score of centuries ago, I deem it an essential condition of the
realization of that hope that we should cast aside the notion that
the escape from pain and sorrow is the proper object of life.
"We have long since emerged from the heroic childhood of our race,
when good and evil could be met with the same 'frolic welcome;' the
attempts to escape from evil, whether Indian or Greek, have ended in
flight from the battle-field; it remains to us to throw aside the
youthful over-confidence and the no less youthful discouragement of
nonage. We are grown men, and must play the man
"... 'strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,'
"cherishing the good that falls in our way and bearing the evil in
and around us, with stout heart set on diminishing it. So far we all
may strive in one faith toward one hope:
"'It may be that the gulfs will wash us down,
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles.
"... but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note may yet be done.'"
We must be strong and of a very good courage. While the avoidance of
pain and discomfort, or even happiness, cannot be the proper end of
life, it is not a world of misery or an essentially and hopelessly
evil world. There is plenty of misery in the world, and we cannot
deny it. Neither can we deny that God has put us in the world to
relieve misery, and that until we have made every effort and
strained every nerve as we have never yet done, we, and not God, are
largely responsible for it. But behind misery stand selfishness and
sin as its cause. And here we must not parley but fight. And the
hosts of evil are organized and mighty. "The sons of this world are
for their own generation wiser than the sons of light." And we shall
never overcome them by adopting their means. But we can and shall
surely overcome. For he that is with us is more than they that be
with them. "The skirmishes are frequently disastrous to us, but the
great battles all go one way." And we long for the glory of "him
that overcometh." But the victor's song can come only after the
battle, and be sung only by those who have overcome. And we would
not have it otherwise if we could. The closing words of Dr.
Hitchcock's last sermon are the following:
"It is one of the revelations of scripture that we are to judge the
angels, sitting above them on the shining heights. It may well be
so. Those angels are the imperial guard, doing easy duty at home. We
are the tenth legion, marching in from the swamps and forests of the
far-off frontier, scarred and battered, but victorious over death
and sin."