THE WORLD'S GREAT SERMONS
COMPILED BY
GRENVILLE KLEISER
Formerly of Yale Divinity School Faculty; Author of "How to Speak in
Public," Etc.
With Assistance from Many of the Foremost Living Preachers and Other
Theologians
INTRODUCTION BY LEWIS O. BRASTOW, D.D.
Professor Emeritus of Practical Theology in Yale University
IN TEN VOLUMES
VOLUME X DRUMMOND TO JOWETT
General Index
1908
CONTENTS
VOLUME X.
DRUMMOND (1851--1897).
The Greatest Thing in the World
WAGNER (Born in 1851).
I Am a Voice
GORDON (Born in 1853).
Man in the Image of God
DAWSON (Born in 1854).
Christ Among the Common Things of Life
SMITH (Born in 1856).
Assurance in God
GUNSAULUS (Born in 1856).
The Bible vs. Infidelity
HILLIS (Born in 1858).
God the Unwearied Guide
JEFFERSON (Born in 1860).
The Reconciliation
MORGAN (Born in 1863).
The Perfect Ideal of Life
CADMAN (Born in 1864).
A New Day for Missions
JOWETT (Born in 1864).
Apostolic Optimism
Index to Preachers and Sermons
Index to Texts
DRUMMOND
THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Henry Drummond, author and evangelist, was born at Stirling, Scotland,
in 1851. His book, "Natural Law in the Spiritual World," caused much
discussion and is still widely read. His "Ascent of Man" is regarded
by many as his greatest work. The address reprinted here has appeared
in hundreds of editions, and has been an inspiration to thousands
of peoples all over the world. There is an interesting biography
of Drummond by Professor George Adam Smith, his close friend and
colaborer. He died in 1897.
DRUMMOND
1851--1897
THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD[1]
[Footnote 1: Reprinted by permission of James Pott & Co.]
_Tho I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love,
&c._--I Cor. xiii.
Everyone has asked himself the great question of antiquity as of the
modern world: What is the _summum bonum_--the supreme good? You have
life before you. Once only you can live it. What is the noblest object
of desire, the supreme gift to covet?
We have been accustomed to be told that the greatest thing in the
religious world is faith. That great word has been the key-note for
centuries of the popular religion; and we have easily learned to look
upon it as the greatest thing in the world. Well, we are wrong. If we
have been told that, we may miss the mark. I have taken you, in the
chapter which I have just read, to Christianity at its source; and
there we have seen, "The greatest of these is love." It is not an
oversight. Paul was speaking of faith just a moment before. He says,
"If I have all faith, so that I can remove mountains, and have not
love, I am nothing." So far from forgetting, he deliberately contrasts
them, "Now abideth faith, hope, love," and without a moment's
hesitation the decision falls, "The greatest of these is love."
And it is not prejudice. A man is apt to recommend to others his own
strong point. Love was not Paul's strong point. The observing student
can detect a beautiful tenderness growing and ripening all through his
character as Paul gets old; but the hand that wrote, "The greatest of
these is love," when we meet it first, is stained with blood.
Nor is this letter to the Corinthians peculiar in singling out love as
the _summum bonum_. The masterpieces of Christianity are agreed about
it. Peter says, "Above all things have fervent love among yourselves."
Above all things. And John goes further, "God is love." And you
remember the profound remark which Paul makes elsewhere, "Love is the
fulfilling of the law." Did you ever think what he meant by that? In
those days men were working their passage to heaven by keeping the ten
commandments, and the hundred and ten other commandments which they
had manufactured out of them. Christ said, I will show you a more
simple way. If you do one thing, you will do these hundred and ten
things, without ever thinking about them. If you love, you will
unconsciously fulfil the whole law. And you can readily see for
yourselves how that must be so. Take any of the commandments. "Thou
shalt have no other gods before me." If a man love God, you will not
require to tell him that. Love is the fulfilling of that law. "Take
not his name in vain." Would he ever dream of taking His name in vain
if he loved Him? "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." Would he
not be too glad to have one day in seven to dedicate more exclusively
to the object of his affection? Love would fulfil all these laws
regarding God. And so, if he loved man, you would never think of
telling him to honor his father and mother. He could not do anything
else. It would be preposterous to tell him not to kill. You could only
insult him if you suggested that he should not steal--how could he
steal from those he loved? It would be superfluous to beg him not to
bear false witness against his neighbor. If he loved him it would be
the last thing he would do. And you would never dream of urging him
not to covet what his neighbors had. He would rather that they possest
it than himself. In this way "Love is the fulfilling of the law." It
is the rule for fulfilling all rules, the new commandment for keeping
all the old commandments, Christ's one secret of the Christian life.
Now, Paul had learned that; and in this noble eulogy he has given us
the most wonderful and original account extant of the _summum bonum_.
We may divide it into three parts. In the beginning of the short
chapter, we have love contrasted; in the heart of it, we have love
analyzed; toward the end, we have love defended as the supreme gift.
Paul begins contrasting love with other things that men in those
days thought much of. I shall not attempt to go over those things in
detail. Their inferiority is already obvious.
He contrasts it with eloquence. And what a noble gift it is, the power
of playing upon the souls and wills of men, and rousing them to lofty
purposes and holy deeds. Paul says, "If I speak with the tongues of
men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass,
or a tinkling cymbal." And we all know why. We have all felt the
brazenness of words without emotion, the hollowness, the unaccountable
unpersuasiveness, of eloquence behind which lies no love.
He contrasts it with prophecy. He contrasts it with mysteries. He
contrasts it with faith. He contrasts it with charity. Why is love
greater than faith? Because the end is greater than the means. And
why is it greater than charity? Because the whole is greater than the
part. Love is greater than faith, because the end is greater than the
means. What is the use of having faith? It is to connect the soul with
God. And what is the object of connecting man with God? That he may
become like God. But God is love. Hence faith, the means, is in order
to love, the end. Love, therefore, obviously is greater than faith. It
is greater than charity, again, because the whole is greater than a
part. Charity is only a little bit of love, one of the innumerable
avenues of love, and there may even be, and there is, a great deal of
charity without love. It is a very easy thing to toss a copper to a
beggar on the street; it is generally an easier thing than not to do
it. Yet love is just as often in the withholding. We purchase relief
from the sympathetic feelings roused by the spectacle of misery, at
the copper's cost. It is too cheap--too cheap for us, and often too
dear for the beggar. If we really loved him we would either do more
for him, or less.
Then Paul contrasts it with sacrifice and martyrdom. And I beg the
little band of would-be missionaries--and I have the honor to call
some of you by this name for the first time--to remember that tho
you give your bodies to be burned, and have not love, it profits
nothing--nothing! You can take nothing greater to the heathen world
than the impress and reflection of the love of God upon your own
character. That is the universal language. It will take you years to
speak in Chinese; or in the dialects of India. From the day you land,
that language of love, understood by all, will be pouring forth its
unconscious eloquence. It is the man who is the missionary, it is not
his words. His character is his message. In the heart of Africa, among
the great lakes, I have come across black men and women who remembered
the only white man they ever saw before--David Livingstone; and as you
cross his footsteps in that dark continent, men's faces light up as
they speak of the kind doctor who passed there years ago. They could
not understand him; but they felt the love that beat in his heart.
Take into your new sphere of labor, where you also mean to lay down
your life, that simple charm, and your life-work must succeed. You
can take nothing greater, you need take nothing less. It is not
worth while going if you take anything less. You may take every
accomplishment; you may be braced for every sacrifice; but if you give
your body to be burned, and have not love, it will profit you and the
cause of Christ nothing.
After contrasting love with these things, Paul, in three verses, very
short, gives us an amazing analysis of what this supreme thing is. I
ask you to look at it. It is a compound thing, he tells us. It is like
light. As you have seen a man of science take a beam of light and pass
it through a crystal prism, as you have seen it come out on the other
side of the prism broken up into its component colors--red, and
blue, and yellow, and violet, and orange, and all the colors of the
rainbow--so Paul passes this thing, love, through the magnificent
prism of his inspired intellect, and it comes out on the other side
broken up into its elements. And in these few words we have what
one might call the spectrum of love, the analysis of love. Will you
observe what its elements are? Will you notice that they have common
names; that they are virtues which we hear about every day, that they
are things which can be practised by every man in every place in life;
and how, by a multitude of small things and ordinary virtues, the
supreme thing, the _summum bonum_, is made up?
The spectrum of love has nine ingredients:
Patience--"Love suffereth long."
Kindness--"And is kind."
Generosity--"Love envieth not."
Humility--"Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up."
Courtesy--"Doth not behave itself unseemly."
Unselfishness--"Seeketh not her own."
Good temper--"Is not easily provoked."
Guilelessness--"Thinketh no evil."
Sincerity--"Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth."
Patience, kindness, generosity, humility, courtesy, unselfishness,
good temper, guilelessness, sincerity--these make up the supreme gift,
the stature of the perfect man. You will observe that all are in
relation to men, in relation to life, in relation to the known to-day
and the near to-morrow, and not to the unknown eternity. We hear much
of love to God; Christ spoke much of love to man. We make a great deal
of peace with heaven; Christ made much of peace on earth. Religion is
not a strange or added thing, but the inspiration of the secular life,
the breathing of an eternal spirit through this temporal world. The
supreme thing, in short, is not a thing at all, but the giving of a
further finish to the multitudinous words and acts which make up the
sum of every common day.
There is no time to do more than to make a passing note upon each of
these ingredients. Love is patience. This is the normal attitude of
love; love passive, love waiting to begin; not in a hurry; calm;
ready to do its work when the summons comes, but meantime wearing the
ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. Love suffers long; beareth all
things; believeth all things; hopeth all things. For love understands,
and therefore waits.
Kindness. Love active. Have you ever noticed how much of Christ's life
was spent in doing kind things--in merely doing kind things? Run
over it with that in view, and you will find that He spent a great
proportion of His time simply in making people happy, in doing good
turns to people. There is only one thing greater than happiness in the
world, and that is holiness; and it is not in our keeping; but what
God has put in our power is the happiness of those about us, and that
is largely to be secured by our being kind to them.
"The greatest thing," says some one, "a man can do for his Heavenly
Father is to be kind to some of his other children." I wonder why it
is that we are not all kinder than we are? How much the world needs
it. How easily it is done. How instantaneously it acts. How infallibly
it is remembered. How superabundantly it pays itself back--for there
is no debtor in the world so honorable, so superbly honorable, as
love. "Love never faileth." Love is success, love is happiness, love
is life. "Love," I say, with Browning, "is energy of life."
For life, with all it yields of joy or wo
And hope and fear,
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love--
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.
Where love is, God is. He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God. God
is love. Therefore love. Without distinction, without calculation,
without procrastination, love. Lavish it upon the poor, where it is
very easy; especially upon the rich, who often need it most; most of
all upon our equals, where it is very difficult, and for whom perhaps
we each do least of all. There is a difference between trying to
please and giving pleasure. Give pleasure. Lose no chance of giving
pleasure. For that is the ceaseless and anonymous triumph of a truly
loving spirit. "I shall pass through this world but once. Any good
thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any
human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for
I shall not pass this way again."
Generosity. "Love envieth not." This is love in competition with
others. Whenever you attempt a good work you will find other men doing
the same kind of work, and probably doing it better. Envy them not.
Envy is a feeling of ill-will to those who are in the same line
as ourselves, a spirit of covetousness and detraction. How little
Christian work even is a protection against unchristian feeling! That
most despicable of all the unworthy moods which cloud a Christian's
soul assuredly waits for us on the threshold of every work, unless we
are fortified with this grace of magnanimity. Only one thing truly
needs the Christian envy, the large, rich, generous soul which
"envieth not."
And then, after having learned all that, you have to learn this
further thing, humility--to put a seal upon your lips and forget what
you have done. After you have been kind, after love has stolen forth
into the world and done its beautiful work, go back into the shade
again and say nothing about it. Love hides even from itself. Love
waives even self-satisfaction. "Love vaunteth not itself, is not
puffed up."
The fifth ingredient is a somewhat strange one to find in this _summum
bonum_: Courtesy. This is love in society, love in relation to
etiquette. "Love doth not behave itself unseemly." Politeness has been
defined as love in trifles. Courtesy is said to be love in little
things. And the one secret of politeness is to love. Love can not
behave itself unseemly. You can put the most untutored persons into
the highest society, and if they have a reservoir of love in their
hearts, they will not behave themselves unseemly. They simply can not
do it. Carlyle said of Robert Burns that there was no truer
gentleman in Europe than the plowman-poet. It was because he loved
everything--the mouse, the daisy, and all the things, great and small,
that God had made. So with this simple passport he could mingle with
any society, and enter courts and palaces from his little cottage on
the banks of the Ayr. You know the meaning of the word "gentleman." It
means a gentle man--a man who does things gently with love. And that
is the whole art and mystery of it. The gentle man can not in the
nature of things do an ungentle and ungentlemanly thing. The ungentle
soul, the inconsiderate, unsympathetic nature can not do anything
else. "Love doth not behave itself unseemly."
Unselfishness. "Love seeketh not her own." Observe: Seeketh not even
that which is her own. In Britain the Englishman is devoted, and
rightly, to his rights. But there come times when a man may exercise
even the higher right of giving up his rights. Yet Paul does not
summon us to give up our rights. Love strikes much deeper. It would
have us not seek them at all, ignore them, eliminate the personal
element altogether from our calculations. It is not hard to give up
our rights. They are often external. The difficult thing is to give up
ourselves. The more difficult thing still is not to seek things for
ourselves at all. After we have sought them, bought them, won them,
deserved them, we have taken the cream off them for ourselves already.
Little cross then perhaps to give them up. But not to seek them, to
look every man not on his own things, but on the things of others--_id
opus est_. "Seekest thou great things for thyself?" said the prophet;
"seek them not." Why? Because there is no greatness in things.
Things can not be great. The only greatness is unselfish love. Even
self-denial in itself is nothing, is almost a mistake. Only a
great purpose or a mightier love can justify the waste. It is more
difficult, I have said, not to seek our own at all, than, having
sought it, to give it up. I must take that back. It is only true of a
partly selfish heart. Nothing is a hardship to love, and nothing is
hard. I believe that Christ's yoke is easy. Christ's "yoke" is just
His way of taking life. And I believe it is an easier way than any
other. I believe it is a happier way than any other. The most obvious
lesson in Christ's teaching is that there is no happiness in having
and getting anything, but only in giving. I repeat, there is no
happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. And half the
world is on the wrong scent in the pursuit of happiness. They think
it consists in having and getting, and in being served by others. It
consists in giving and serving others. He that would be great among
you, said Christ, let him serve. He that would be happy, let him
remember that there is but one way--it is more blest, it is more
happy, to give than to receive.
The next ingredient is a very remarkable one: good temper. "Love is
not easily provoked." Nothing could be more striking than to find
this here. We are inclined to look upon bad temper as a very harmless
weakness. We speak of it as a mere infirmity of nature, a family
failing, a matter of temperament, not a thing to take into very
serious account in estimating a man's character. And yet here, right
in the heart of this analysis of love, it finds a place; and the Bible
again and again returns to condemn it as one of the most destructive
elements in human nature.
The peculiarity of ill temper is that it is the vice of the virtuous.
It is often the one blot on an otherwise noble character. You know men
who are all but perfect, and women who would be entirely perfect, but
for an easily ruffled, quick-tempered, or "touchy" disposition. This
compatibility of ill temper with high moral character is one of the
strangest and saddest problems of ethics. The truth is, there are two
great classes of sins--sins of the body, and sins of the disposition.
The Prodigal Son may be taken as a type of the first, the Elder
Brother of the second. Now society has no doubt whatever as to which
of these is the worse. Its brands fall without a challenge, upon the
Prodigal. But are we right? We have no balance to weigh one another's
sins, and coarser and finer are but human words; but faults in the
higher nature may be less venial than those in the lower, and to the
eye of Him who is love, a sin against love may seem a hundred times
more base. No form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not
drunkenness itself, does more to unchristianize society than evil
temper. For embittering life, for breaking up communities, for
destroying the most sacred relationships, for devastating homes, for
withering up men and women, for taking the bloom off childhood, in
short, for sheer gratuitous misery-producing power, this influence
stands alone. Look at the Elder Brother, moral, hard-working, patient,
dutiful--let him get all credit for his virtues--look at this man,
this baby, sulking outside his own father's door. "He was angry," we
read, "and would not go in." Look at the effect upon the father, upon
the servants, upon the happiness of the guests. Judge of the effect
upon the Prodigal--and how many prodigals are kept out of the kingdom
of God by the unlovely character of those who profess to be inside?
Analyze, as a study in temper, the thunder-cloud itself as it gathers
upon the Elder Brother's brow. What is it made of? Jealousy, anger,
pride, uncharity, cruelty, self-righteousness, touchiness, doggedness,
sullenness--these are the ingredients of this dark and loveless soul.
In varying proportions, also, these are the ingredients of all ill
temper. Judge if such sins of the disposition are not worse to live
in, and for others to live with, than sins of the body. Did Christ
indeed not answer the question Himself when He said, "I say unto you,
that the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of heaven
before you." There is really no place in heaven for a disposition like
this. A man with such a mood could only make heaven miserable for all
the people in it. Except, therefore, such a man be born again, he
can not, he simply can not, enter the kingdom of heaven. For it is
perfectly certain--and you will not misunderstand me--that to enter
heaven a man must take it with him.
You will see then why temper is significant It is not in what it is
alone, but in what it reveals. This is why I take the liberty now of
speaking of it with such unusual plainness. It is a test for love,
a symptom, a revelation of an unloving nature at bottom. It is the
intermittent fever which bespeaks unintermittent disease within;
the occasional bubble escaping to the surface which betrays some
rottenness underneath; a sample of the most hidden products of
the soul dropt involuntarily when off one's guard; in a word, the
lightning form of a hundred hideous and unchristian sins. For a want
of patience, a want of kindness, a want of generosity, a want of
courtesy, a want of unselfishness, are all instantaneously symbolized
in one flash of temper.
Hence it is not enough to deal with the temper. We must go to the
source, and change the inmost nature, and the angry humors will die
away of themselves. Souls are made sweet not by taking the acid fluids
out, but by putting something in--a great love, a new spirit, the
spirit of Christ. Christ, the spirit of Christ, interpenetrating ours,
sweetens, purifies, transforms all. This only can eradicate what
is wrong, work a chemical change, renovate and regenerate, and
rehabilitate the inner man. Will-power does not change men. Time does
not change men. Christ does. Therefore, "Let that mind be in you which
was also in Christ Jesus." Some of us have not much time to lose.
Remember, once more, that this is a matter of life or death. I can
not help speaking urgently, for myself, for yourselves. "Whoso shall
offend one of these little ones, which believe in me, it were better
for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were
drowned in the depth of the sea." That is to say, it is the deliberate
verdict of the Lord Jesus that it is better not to live than not to
love. _It is better not to live than not to love._
Guilelessness and sincerity may be dismissed almost without a word.
Guilelessness is the grace for suspicious people. And the possession
of it is the great secret of personal influence. You will find, if you
think for a moment, that the people who influence you are people who
believe in you. In an atmosphere of suspicion men shrivel up; but
in that other atmosphere they expand, and find encouragement and
educative fellowship. It is a wonderful thing that here and there in
this hard, uncharitable world there should still be left a few rare
souls who think no evil. This is the great unworldliness. Love
"thinketh no evil," imputes no bad motive, sees the bright side, puts
the best construction on every action. What a delightful state of mind
to live in! What stimulus and benediction even to meet with it for
a day! To be trusted is to be saved. And if we try to influence or
elevate others, we shall soon see that success is in proportion to
their belief of our belief in them. For the respect of another is the
first restoration of the self-respect a man has lost; our ideal of
what he is becomes to him the hope and pattern of what he may become.
"Love rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth." I have
called this sincerity from the words rendered in the Authorized
Version by "rejoiceth in the truth." And, certainly, were this the
real translation, nothing could be more just. For he who loves will
love truth not less than men. He will rejoice in the truth--rejoice
not in what he has been taught to believe; not in this Church's
doctrine or in that; not in this ism or in that ism; but "in the
truth." He will accept only what is real; he will strive to get at
facts; he will search for truth with an humble and unbiased mind,
and cherish whatever he finds at any sacrifice. But the more literal
translation of the Revised Version calls for just such a sacrifice for
truth's sake here. For what Paul really meant is, as we there read,
"Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth,"
a quality which probably no one English word--and certainly not
sincerity--adequately defines. It includes, perhaps more strictly, the
self-restraint which refuses to make capital out of others' faults;
the charity which delights not in exposing the weakness of others, but
"covereth all things"; the sincerity of purpose which endeavors to see
things as they are, and rejoices to find them better than suspicion
feared or calumny denounced.
So much for the analysis of love. Now the business of our lives is to
have these things in our characters. That is the supreme work to which
we need to address ourselves in this world to learn love. Is life not
full of opportunities for learning love? Every man and woman every
day has a thousand of them. The world is not a playground; it is a
schoolroom. Life is not a holiday, but an education. And the one
eternal lesson for us all is how better we can love. What makes a man
a good cricketer? Practise. What makes a man a good artist, a good
sculptor, a good musician? Practise. What makes a man a good linguist,
a good stenographer? Practise. What makes a man a good man. Practise.
Nothing else. There is nothing capricious about religion. We do not
get the soul in different ways, under different laws, from those in
which we get the body and the mind. If a man does not exercise his arm
he develops no biceps muscle; and if he does not exercise his soul, he
acquires no muscle in his soul, no strength of character, no vigor of
moral fiber nor beauty of spiritual growth. Love is not a thing of
enthusiastic emotion. It is a rich, strong, manly, vigorous expression
of the whole round Christian character--the Christlike nature in its
fullest development. And the constituents of this great character are
only to be built up by ceaseless practise.
What was Christ doing in the carpenter's shop? Practising. Tho
perfect, we read that He learned obedience, and grew in wisdom and in
favor with God. Do not quarrel, therefore, with your lot in life. Do
not complain of its never-ceasing cares, its petty environment, the
vexations you have to stand, the small and sordid souls you have to
live and work with. Above all, do not resent temptation; do not be
perplexed because it seems to thicken round you more and more, and
ceases neither for effort nor for agony nor prayer. That is your
practise. That is the practise which God appoints you; and it is
having its work in making you patient, and humble, and generous, and
unselfish, and kind, and courteous. Do not grudge the hand that is
molding the still too shapeless image within you. It is growing more
beautiful, tho you see it not, and every touch of temptation may add
to its perfection. Therefore keep in the midst of life. Do not isolate
yourself. Be among men, and among things, and among troubles, and
difficulties, and obstacles. You remember Goethe's words: _Es bildet
ein Talent sich in der Stille, Doch ein Character in dem Strom der
Welt_. "Talent develops itself in solitude; character in the stream of
life." Talent develops itself in solitude--the talent of prayer, of
faith, of meditation, of seeing the unseen; character grows in the
stream of the world's life. That chiefly is where men are to learn
love.
How? Now how? To make it easier, I have named a few of the elements of
love. But these are only elements. Love itself can never be defined.
Light is a something more than the sum of its ingredients--a glowing,
dazzling, tremulous ether. And love is something more than all its
elements--a palpitating, quivering, sensitive, living thing. By
synthesis of all the colors, men can make whiteness, they can not make
light. By synthesis of all the virtues, men can make virtue, they can
not make love. How then are we to have this transcendent living whole
conveyed into our souls? We brace our wills to secure it. We try to
copy those who have it. We lay down rules about it. We watch. We pray.
But these things alone will not bring love into our nature. Love is
an effect. And only as we fulfil the right condition can we have the
effect produced. Shall I tell you what the cause is?
If you turn to the Revised Version of the First Epistle of John you
will find these words: "We love because he first loved us." "We love,"
not "We love him." That is the way the old version has it, and it is
quite wrong. "We love--because he first loved us." Look at that word
"because." It is the cause of which I have spoken. "Because he first
loved us," the effect follows that we love, we love Him, we love
all men. We can not help it. Because He loved us, we love, we love
everybody. Our heart is slowly changed. Contemplate the love of
Christ, and you will love. Stand before that mirror, reflect Christ's
character, and you will be changed into the same image from tenderness
to tenderness. There is no other way. You can not love to order. You
can only look at the lovely object, and fall in love with it, and
grow into likeness to it. And so look at this perfect character, this
perfect life. Look at the great sacrifice as He laid down Himself, all
through life, and upon the cross of Calvary; and you must love Him.
And loving Him, you must become like Him. Love begets love. It is
a process of induction. Put a piece of iron in the presence of
an electrified body, and that piece of iron for a time becomes
electrified. It is changed into a temporary magnet in the mere
presence of a permanent magnet, and as long as you leave the two side
by side they are both magnets alike. Remain side by side with Him who
loved us, and gave Himself for us, and you too will become a permanent
magnet, a permanently attractive force; and like Him you will draw all
men unto you; like Him you will be drawn unto all men. That is the
inevitable effect of love. Any man who fulfils that cause must have
that effect produced in him. Try to give up the idea that religion
comes to us by chance, or by mystery, or by caprice. It comes to us by
natural law, or by spiritual law, for all law is divine. Edward Irving
went to see a dying boy once, and when he entered the room he just put
his hand on the sufferer's head, and said, "My boy, God loves you,"
and went away. And the boy started from his bed, and called out to the
people in the house, "God loves me! God loves me!" It changed that
boy. The sense that God loved him overpowered him, melted him down,
and began the creating of a new heart in him. And that is how the love
of God melts down the unlovely heart in man, and begets in him the
new creature, who is patient and humble and gentle and unselfish. And
there is no other way to get it. There is no mystery about it. We love
others, we love everybody, we love our enemies, because He first loved
us.
Now I have a closing sentence or two to add about Paul's reason for
singling out love as the supreme possession. It is a very remarkable
reason. In a single word it is this: it lasts. "Love," urges Paul,
"never faileth." Then he begins one of his marvelous lists of the
great things of the day, and exposes them one by one. He runs over the
things that men thought were going to last, and shows that they are
all fleeting, temporary, passing away.
"Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail." It was the mother's
ambition for her boy in those days that he should become a prophet.
For hundreds of years God had never spoken by means of any prophet,
and at that time the prophet was greater than the king. Men waited
wistfully for another messenger to come, and hung upon his lips when
he appeared as upon the very voice of God. Paul says, "Whether there
be prophecies, they shall fail." This book is full of prophecies. One
by one they have "failed"; that is, having been fulfilled their work
is finished; they have nothing more to do now in the world except to
feed a devout man's faith.
Then Paul talks about tongues. That was another thing that was greatly
coveted. "Whether there be tongues, they shall cease." As we all know,
many, many centuries have passed since tongues have been known in this
world. They have ceased. Take it in any sense you like. Take it, for
illustration merely, as languages in general--a sense which was not
in Paul's mind at all, and which tho it can not give us the specific
lesson will point the general truth. Consider the words in which these
chapters were written--Greek. It has gone. Take the Latin--the other
great tongue of those days. It ceased long ago. Look at the Indian
language. It is ceasing. The language of Wales, of Ireland, of the
Scottish Highlands is dying before our eyes. The most popular book in
the English tongue at the present time, except the Bible, is one of
Dickens' works, his "Pickwick Papers." It is largely written in the
language of London street-life, and experts assure us that in fifty
years it will be unintelligible to the average English reader.
Then Paul goes further, and with even greater boldness adds, "Whether
there be knowledge, it shall vanish away." The wisdom of the ancients,
where is it? It is wholly gone. A schoolboy today knows more than
Sir Isaac Newton knew. His knowledge has vanished away. You put
yesterday's newspaper in the fire. Its knowledge has vanished away.
You buy the old editions of the great encyclopedias for a few cents.
Their knowledge has vanished away. Look how the coach has been
superseded by the use of steam. Look how electricity has superseded
that, and swept a hundred almost new inventions into oblivion. One of
the greatest living authorities, Sir William Thompson, said the other
day, "The steam-engine is passing away." "Whether there be knowledge,
it shall vanish away." At every workshop you will see, in the back
yard, a heap of old iron, a few wheels, a few levers, a few cranks,
broken and eaten with rust. Twenty years ago that was the pride of the
city. Men flocked in from the country to see the great invention; now
it is superseded, its day is done. And all the boasted science and
philosophy of this day will soon be old. But yesterday, in the
University of Edinburgh, the greatest figure in the faculty was
Sir James Simpson, the discoverer of chloroform. The other day his
successor and nephew, Professor Simpson, was asked by the librarian
of the university to go to the library and pick out the books on his
subject that were no longer needed. And his reply to the librarian was
this: "Take every textbook that is more than ten years old, and put it
down in the cellar." Sir James Simpson was a great authority only a
few years ago; men came from all parts of the earth to consult him;
and almost the whole teaching of that time is consigned by the science
of today to oblivion. And in every branch of science it is the same.
"Now we know in part. We see through a glass darkly."
Can you tell me anything that is going to last? Many things Paul did
not condescend to name. He did not mention money, fortune, fame; but
he picked out the great things of his time, the things the best men
thought had something in them, and brushed them peremptorily aside.
Paul had no charge against these things in themselves. All he said
about them was that they would not last. They were great things,
but not supreme things. There were things beyond them. What we are
stretches past what we do, beyond what we possess. Many things that
men denounce as sins are not sins; but they are temporary. And that is
a favorite argument of the New Testament. John says of the world, not
that it is wrong, but simply that it "passeth away." There is a great
deal in the world that is delightful and beautiful; there is a great
deal in it that is great and engrossing; but it will not last. All
that is in the world, the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and
the pride of life, are but for a little while. Love not the world
therefore. Nothing that it contains is worth the life and consecration
of an immortal soul. The immortal soul must give itself to something
that is immortal. And the immortal things are: "Now abideth faith,
hope, love, but the greatest of these is love."
Some think the time may come when two of these three things will also
pass away--faith into sight, hope into fruition. Paul does not say so.
We know but little now about the conditions of the life that is to
come. But what is certain is that love must last. God, the eternal
God, is love. Covet therefore that everlasting gift, that one thing
which it is certain is going to stand, that one coinage which will be
current in the universe when all the other coinages of all the nations
of the world shall be useless and unhonored. You will give yourselves
to many things, give yourselves first to love. Hold things in their
proportion. _Hold things in their proportion._ Let at least the first
great object of our lives be to achieve the character defended in
these words, the character--and it is the character of Christ--which
is built round love.
I have said this thing is eternal. Did you ever notice how continually
John associates love and faith with eternal life? I was not told
when I was a boy that "God so loved the world that he gave his only
begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should have everlasting
life." What I was told, I remember, was, that God so loved the world
that, if I trusted in Him, I was to have a thing called peace, or I
was to have rest, or I was to have joy, or I was to have safety. But
I had to find out for myself that whosoever trusteth in Him--that
is, whosoever loveth Him, for trust is only the avenue to love--hath
everlasting life. The gospel offers a man life. Never offer men a
thimbleful of gospel. Do not offer them merely joy, or merely peace,
or merely rest, or merely safety; tell them how Christ came to give
men a more abundant life than they have, a life abundant in love,
and therefore abundant in salvation for themselves, and large in
enterprise for the alleviation and redemption of the world. Then
only can the gospel take hold of the whole of a man, body, soul, and
spirit, and give to each part of his nature its exercise and reward.
Many of the current gospels are addrest only to a part of man's
nature. They offer peace, not life; faith, not love; justification,
not regeneration. And men slip back again from such religion because
it has never really held them. Their nature was not all in it. It
offered no deeper and gladder life-current than the life that was
lived before. Surely it stands to reason that only a fuller love can
compete with the love of the world.
To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love forever is to
live forever. Hence, eternal life is inextricably bound up with love.
We want to live forever for the same reason that we want to live
tomorrow. Why do we want to live tomorrow? It is because there is some
one who loves you, and whom you want to see tomorrow, and be with, and
love back. There is no other reason why we should live on than that we
love and are beloved. It is when a man has no one to love him that he
commits suicide. So long as he has friends, those who love him and
whom he loves, he will live; because to live is to love. Be it but the
love of a dog, it will keep him in life; but let that go and he has no
contact with life, no reason to live. He dies by his own hand. Eternal
life is to know God, and God is love. This is Christ's own definition.
Ponder it. "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only
true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." Love must be eternal.
It is what God is. On the last analysis, then, love is life. Love
never faileth, and life never faileth, so long as there is love. That
is the philosophy of what Paul is showing us; the reason why in the
nature of things love should be the supreme thing--because it is going
to last; because in the nature of things it is an eternal life. It is
a thing that we are living now, not that we get when we die; that we
shall have a poor chance of getting when we die unless we are living
now. No worse fate can befall a man in this world than to live and
grow old all alone, unloving and unloved. To be lost is to live in an
unregenerate condition, loveless and unloved; and to be saved is to
love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth already in God; for God is
love.
Now I have all but finished. How many of you will join me in reading
this chapter once a week for the next three months? A man did that
once and it changed his whole life. You might begin by reading it
every day, especially the verses which describe the perfect character.
"Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not
itself." Get these ingredients into your life. Then everything that
you do is eternal. It is worth doing. It is worth giving time to.
No man can become a saint in his sleep; and to fulfil the condition
required demands a certain amount of prayer and meditation and time,
just as improvement in any direction, bodily or mental, requires
preparation and care. Address yourselves to that one thing; at any
cost have this transcendent character exchanged for yours. You will
find as you look back upon your life that the moments that stand out,
the moments when you have really lived, are the moments when you have
done things in a spirit of love. As memory scans the past, above and
beyond all the transitory pleasures of life, there leap forward those
supreme hours when you have been enabled to do unnoticed kindnesses to
those around about you, things too trifling to speak about, but which
you feel have entered into your eternal life. I have seen almost
all the beautiful things God has made; I have enjoyed almost every
pleasure that He has planned for man; and yet as I look back I see
standing out above all the life that has gone four or five short
experiences when the love of God reflected itself in some poor
imitation, some small act of love of mine, and these seem to be the
things which alone of all one's life abide. Everything else in all our
lives is transitory. Every other good is visionary. But the acts of
love which no man knows about, or can ever know about, they never
fail.
In the Book of Matthew, where the judgment day is depicted for us in
the imagery of One seated upon a throne and dividing the sheep from
the goats, the test of a man then is not, "How have I believed?" but
"How have I loved?" The test of religion, the final test of religion,
is not religiousness, but love. I say the final test of religion at
that great day is not religiousness, but love; not what I have done,
not what I have believed; not what I have achieved, but how I have
discharged the common charities of life. Sins of commission in that
awful indictment are not even referred to. By what we have not done,
by sins of omission, we are judged. It could not be otherwise. For the
withholding of love is the negation of the spirit of Christ, the proof
that we never knew Him, that for us He lived in vain. It means that He
suggested nothing in all our thoughts, that He inspired nothing in all
our lives, that we were not once near enough to Him to be seized with
the spell of His compassion for the world. It means that
I lived for myself, I thought for myself,
For myself, and none beside--
Just as if Jesus had never lived,
As if He had never died.
It is the Son of Man before whom the nations of the world shall be
gathered. It is in the presence of humanity that we shall be charged.
And the spectacle itself, the mere sight of it, will silently judge
each one. Those will be there whom we have met and helped; or there,
the unpitied multitude whom we neglected or despised. No other
witness need be summoned. No other charge than lovelessness shall be
preferred. Be not deceived. The words which all of us shall one day
hear sound not of theology but of life, not of churches and saints but
of the hungry and the poor, not of creeds and doctrines but of shelter
and clothing, not of Bibles and prayer-books but of cups of cold water
in the name of Christ. Thank God the Christianity of today is coming
nearer the world's need. Live to help that on. Thank God men know
better, by a hairbreadth, what religion is, what God is, who Christ
is, where Christ is. Who is Christ? He who fed the hungry, clothed
the naked, visited the sick. And where is Christ? Where?--Whoso shall
receive a little child in My name receiveth Me. And who are Christ's?
Every one that loveth is born of God.
WAGNER
I AM A VOICE
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Charles Wagner, French Protestant pastor and moral essayist, was born
in 1851 in Alsace. He is at present rector of the Reformed Church
in Fontenay-Lous-Bois, in the Department of Seine. He received a
comprehensive education at the universities of Paris, Strasburg and
Goettingen, and after undertaking many cures in the provinces he went
to Paris in 1882, where he occupied himself in a crusade against the
degrading tendency of life, art and literature in certain of their
Parisian phases. He has been a founder of several popular universities
under the auspices of the Society for the Promotion of Morality. He
has published many books, and "La Vie Simple" ("The Simple Life")
was crowned by the French Academy and has been translated into many
European languages, as well as into Japanese. Wagner has been styled
the French Tolstoy, but he is less visionary and much more popular and
practical in his views than the Russian mystic. The author of "The
Simple Life" was greeted with many expressions of warm appreciation on
his visit to the United States a few years ago. He was a guest at the
Presidential mansion by invitation of President Roosevelt, who has
highly commended "The Simple Life."
WAGNER
Born in 1851
I AM A VOICE[1]
[Footnote 1: From "The Gospel of Life," by Charles Wagner, by
permission of the McClure Company, publishers. Copyright, 1905, by
McClure, Phillips & Co.]
_I am the voice[2] of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the
way of the Lord_.--John i., 23.
[Footnote 2: In the French version of the Scriptures it is "_a_
voice," and it is necessary to retain this reading in order to render
precisely Pastor Wagner's thought.--_Translator_.]
Nothing is rarer than a personality. So many causes, both interior
and exterior, hinder the normal development of human beings, so many
hostile forces crush them, so many illusions lead them astray, that
there is required a concurrence of extraordinary circumstances to
render possible the existence of an independent character. But
when, God alone knows at the cost of what efforts and of what happy
accidents, a vigorous and original personality has been able to
unfold, nothing is rarer than not to see it degenerate into a mere
personage. History teaches us that men exceptional in will and energy
almost always become obstructive and mischievous. They commence by
serving a cause and end by taking possession of it so completely that,
from being its servants, they become its masters. Instead of being men
of a cause, they make the cause that of a man, and they degrade the
most sacred realities to the paltry level of their ambitious egoism.
Thus, when we meet with strong natures, endowed with the secret of
leadership and command, yet able to resist the subtle temptation to
which so many of the finer spirits have succumbed, it behooves us to
bow and to salute in them a greatness before which all that it is
customary to call by that name fades into nothingness.