natural. The death of Christ is not going to be made something
artificial, mechanical, or theatrical. It is going to be the natural
conception of the outflowing life of God.
The new interpretation is going to start from the Fatherhood of
God. The old theories were all born in the counting-room, or the
court-house. Jesus went into the house to find His illustrations
for the conduct of the heavenly Father. He never went into the
court-house, nor can we go there for analogies with which to image
forth His dealings with our race. It was His custom to say, "If you,
being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much
more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them
that ask him."
The new interpretation is going to be comprehensive. It is going to be
built, not on a single metaphor, but on everything that Jesus and
the apostles said. Right there is where the old interpretations went
astray. They seized upon one figure of speech and made that the
determining factor in the entire interpretation. Jesus said many
things, and so did His apostles, and all of them must contribute to
the final interpretation.
Two things are to be hereafter made very clear: The first is that God
reveals Himself in Jesus Christ. The old views were always losing
sight of that great fact. There was always a dualism between God and
Christ. I remember what my conception was when I was a boy. I thought
that God was a strict and solemn and awful king, who was very angry
because men had broken His law. He was just, and His justice had
no mercy in it. Christ, His Son, was much better-natured and more
compassionate, and He came forth into our world to suffer upon the
cross that God's justice might relax a little, and His heart be opened
to forgive our race. I supposed that that was the teaching of the
New Testament, it certainly was the teaching of the hymns in the
hymn-book, if not of the preachers. And when I became a young man,
I supposed that that was the teaching of the Christian religion. My
heart rebelled against it. I would not accept it. I became an infidel.
A man can not accept an interpretation of God that does not appeal to
the best that is in him. No man can accept a doctrine that darkens his
moral sense, or that confuses the distinction between right and wrong.
I would not accept the old interpretation because my soul rose in
revolt against it. I shall never forget how, one evening in his study,
a minister, who had outgrown the old traditions, explained to me
the meaning of the reconciliation. He assured me that God is love,
invisible, eternal. Christ, His Son, is also love. In becoming at
one with the Son we become at one with the Father. This is the
at-one-ment. And when that truth broke upon me my heart began to sing:
Just as I am--Thy love unknown
Hath broken every barrier down;
Now, to be Thine, yea, Thine alone,
O Lamb of God, I come!
I wonder in telling this if I have not spoken the experience of many
of you this morning. It is impossible to love God if we feel that He
is stern and despotic, and must be appeased by the sufferings of an
innocent man. The New Testament nowhere lends any support to that
idea. Everywhere the New Testament assures us that God is the lover
of men, that He initiates the movement for man's redemption. "God so
loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son...." "Herein is
love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us." "God commendeth
his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died
for us." "The Father spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for
us all." "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." "I and my Father
are one." These are only a few of the passages in which we are told
that God is our Savior. When an old Scotchman once heard the text
announced, "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten
Son," he exclaimed, "Oh, that was love indeed! I could have given
myself, but I never could have given my boy." This, then, is the very
highest love of which it is possible for the human mind to think: the
love of a father that surrenders his son to sufferings and death.
And this brings us to the second great truth which is outgrowing
increasingly clear in the consciousness of the Church. The death of
Jesus is the revelation of an experience in the heart of God. God is
the sin-bearer of the world. He bears our sins on His mind and heart.
There are three conceptions of God: the savage, the pagan, and the
Christian. God, according to the savage conception, is vengeful, and
capricious, and vindictive. He is a great savage hidden in the sky. We
have all outgrown that. According to the pagan idea, He is indifferent
to the wants and woes of men. He does not care for men. He is not
interested in them. He does not sympathize with them. He does not
suffer over their griefs. He does not feel pain or sorrow. I am afraid
that many of us have never gotten beyond the pagan conception of the
Almighty. But according to the Christian conception, God suffers.
He feels, and because He feels, He sympathizes, and because He
sympathizes, He suffers. He feels both pain and grief. He carries a
wound in His heart. We men and women sometimes feel burdened because
of the sin we see around us; shall not the heavenly Father be as
sensitive and responsive as we men? But somebody says that God can
not be happy then. Of course he can not be happy. Happiness is not an
adjective to apply to God. Happy is a word that belongs to children.
Children are happy, grown people never are. One can be happy when the
birds are singing and the dew is on the grass, and there is no cloud
in all the sky, and the crape has not yet hung at the door. But after
we have passed over the days of childhood, there is happiness no
longer. Some of us have lived too long and borne too much ever to be
happy any more. But it is possible for us to be blest. We may pass
into the very blessedness of God. The highest form of blessedness is
suffering for those we love, and shall not the Father of all men have
in His own eternal heart that experience which we confess to be the
highest form of blessedness? This is the truth which is dawning like a
new revelation on the Church: the humanity of God. It is revealed in
the New Testament, but as yet we have only begun to take it in. God
is like us men. We are like Him. We are made in His image. We are His
children, and He is our Father. If we are His children, then we are
His heirs, and joint heirs with Christ. Not only our joys, but our
sorrows also, are intimations and suggestions of experiences in the
infinite heart of the Eternal.
MORGAN
THE PERFECT IDEAL OF LIFE
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
George Campbell Morgan, Congregational divine and preacher, was born
in Tetbury, Gloucestershire, England, in 1863, and was educated at the
Douglas School, Cheltenham. He worked as a lay-mission preacher for
the two years ending 1888, and was ordained to the ministry in the
following year, when he took charge of the Congregational Church
at Stones, Staffordshire. After occupying the pulpit in several
pastorates, in 1904 he became pastor of the Westminster Congregational
Chapel, Buckingham Gate, London, a position which he still occupies.
Besides being highly successful as a pulpit orator, Dr. Morgan has
published many works of a religious character, among which may be
enumerated: "Discipleship"; "The Hidden Years of Nazareth"; "Life's
Problems"; "The Ten Commandments." His last work, "The Christ of
To-day," has passed through several editions.
MORGAN
Born in 1863
THE PERFECT IDEAL OF LIFE
_Jesus therefore said, When ye have lifted up the son of man, then
shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself, but as
the Father taught me, I speak these things. And he that sent me is
with me; he hath not left me alone; for I do always the things that
are pleasing to him. As he spake these things, many believed on
him_.--John viii., 28-30.
The Master, you will see, in this verse lays before us three things.
First of all, He gives us the perfect ideal of human life in a short
phrase, and that comes at the end, "the things that please him." Those
are the things that create perfect human life, living in the realm of
which man realizes perfectly all the possibilities of his wondrous
being--"the things that please him." So I say, in this phrase, the
Master reveals to us the perfect ideal of our lives. Then, in the
second place, the Master lays claim--one of the most stupendous claims
that He ever made--that He utterly, absolutely, realizes that ideal.
He says, "I do always the things that please him." And then, thirdly,
we have the revelation of the secret by which He has been able to
realize the ideal, to make the abstract concrete, to bring down the
fair vision of divine purpose to the level of actual human life and
experience, and the secret is declared in the opening words: "He that
sent me is with me; my Father hath not left me alone."
The perfect ideal for my life, then, is that I live always in the
realm of the things that please God; and the secret by which I may do
so is here unfolded--by living in perpetual, unbroken communion with
God: communion with which I do not permit anything to interfere. Then
it shall be possible for me to pass into this high realm of actual
realization.
It is important that we should remind ourselves in a few sentences
that the Lord has indeed stated the highest possible ideal for human
life in these words: "The things that please him." Oh, the godlessness
of men! The godlessness that is to be found on every hand! The
godlessness of the men and women that are called by the name of God!
How tragic, how sad, how awful it is! because godlessness is always
not merely an act of rebellion against God, but a falling-short in our
own lives of their highest and most glorious possibilities.
Here is my life. Now, the highest realm for me is the realm where all
my thoughts, and all my deeds, and all my methods, and everything in
my life please God. That is the highest realm, because God only knows
what I am; only perfectly understands the possibilities of my nature,
and all the great reaches of my being. You remember those lines that
Tennyson sang--very beautifully, I always think:
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies;--
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little Flower--but if I could understand
What you art, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
Beautiful confession! Absolutely true. I hold that flower in my hand,
and I look at it, flower and leaves and stem and root. I can botanize
it, and then I tear it to pieces--that is what the botanist mostly
does--and you put some part of it there, and some part of it there,
and some part of it there. There is the root, there the stem, and
there are the leaves, and there is everything; but where is the
flower? Gone. How did it go? When did it go? Why, when you ruthlessly
tore it to bits. But how did you destroy it? You interfered with the
principle that made it what it was--you interfered with the principle
of life. What is life? No man can tell you. "If I could but know what
you are, little flower, root and all, and all in all," I would know
what life is, what God is, what man is. I can not.
Now, if you lift that little parable of the flower into the highest
realm of animal life, and speak of yourself--we don't know ourselves;
down in my nature there are reaches that I have not fathomed yet. They
are coming up every day. What a blest thing it is to have the Master
at hand, to hand them over to Him as they come up, and say, "Lord,
here is another piece of Thy territory; govern it; I don't know
anything about it." But there is the business. I don't know myself,
but God knows me, understands all the complex relationships of my
life, knows how matter affects mind, and physical and mental and
spiritual are blended in one in the high ideal of humanity. Oh,
remember, man is the crowning and most glorious work of God of which
we know anything as yet. And God only knows man.
But here is a Man that stands amid His enemies, and He looks out upon
His enemies, and He says, "I do the things that please him"--not "I
teach them," not "I dream them," not "I have seen them in a fair
vision," but "I do them." There never was a bigger claim from the lips
of the Master than that: "I do always the things that please him."
You would not thank me to insult your Christian experience, upon
whatever level you live it, by attempting to define that statement
of Christ. History has vindicated it. We believe it with all our
hearts--that He always did the things that pleased God. But I have got
on to a level that I can touch now. The great ideal has come from the
air to the earth. The fair vision has become concrete in a Man. Now,
I want to see that Man; and if I see that Man I shall see in Him
a revelation of what God's purpose is for men, and I shall see,
therefore, a revelation of what the highest possibility of life is.
Now this is a tempting theme. It is a temptation to begin to contrast
Him with popular ideals of life. I want to see Him; I want, if I can,
to catch the notes of the music that make up the perfect harmony which
was the dropping of a song out of God's heaven upon man's earth, that
man might catch the key-note of it and make music in his own life.
What are the things in this Man's life? He says: "I have realized the
ideal--I do." There are four things that I want to say about Him, four
notes in the music of His life.
First, spirituality. That is one of the words that needs redeeming
from abuse. He was the embodiment of the spiritual ideal in life. He
was spiritual in the high, true, full, broad, blest sense of that
word.
It may be well for a moment to note what spirituality did not mean in
the life of Jesus Christ. It did not mean asceticism. During all the
years of His ministry, during all the years of His teaching, you never
find a single instance in which Jesus Christ made a whip of cords
to scourge Himself. And all that business of scourging oneself--an
attempt to elevate the spirit by the ruin of the actual flesh--is
absolutely opposed to His view of life. Jesus Christ did not deny
Himself. The fact of His life was this--that He touched everything
familiarly. He went into all the relationship of life. He went to the
widow. He took up the children and held them in His arms, and looked
into their eyes till heaven was poured in as He looked. He didn't go
and get behind walls somewhere. He didn't get away and say: "Now, if I
am going to get pure I shall do it by shutting men out." You remember
what the Pharisees said of Him once. They said: "This man receiveth
sinners." You know how they said it. They meant to say: "We did hope
that we should make something out of this new man, but we are quite
disappointed. He receives sinners."
And what did they mean? They meant what you have so often said: "You
can't touch pitch without being defiled." But this Man sat down with
the publican and He didn't take on any defilement from the publican.
On the other hand, He gave the publican His purity in the life of
Jesus Christ. Things worked the other way. He was the great negative
of God to the very law of evil that you have--evil contaminates good.
If you will put on a plate one apple that is getting bad among twelve
others that are pure, the bad one will influence the others. Christ
came to drive back every force of disease and every force of evil by
this strong purity of His own person, and He said: "I will go among
the bad and make them good." That is what He was doing the whole way
through. So His spirituality was not asceticism. And if you are going
to be so spiritual that you see no beauty in the flowers and hear no
music in the song of the birds; if the life which you pass into when
you consent to the crucifixion of self does not open to you the very
gates of God, and make the singing of the birds and the blossoming of
the flowers infinitely more beautiful, you have never seen Jesus yet.
What was His spirituality? The spirituality of Jesus Christ was a
concrete realization of a great truth which He laid down in His own
beatitudes. What was that? "Blest are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God." Now, the trouble is we have been lifting all the good
things of God and putting them in heaven. And I don't wonder that you
sing:
My willing soul would stay
In such a frame as this,
And sit and sing itself away
To everlasting bliss.
No wonder you want to sing yourself away to everlasting bliss, because
everything that is worth having you have put up there. But Jesus said:
"Blest are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." If you are pure
you will see Him everywhere--in the flower that blooms, in the march
of history, in the sorrows of men, above the darkness of the darkest
cloud; and you will know that God is in the field when He is most
invisible.
Second, subjection. The next note in the music of His life is His
absolute subjection to God. You can very often tell the great
philosophies which are governing human lives by the little catchwords
that slip off men's tongues: "Well, I thank God I am my own master."
That is your trouble, man. It is because you are your own master that
you are in danger of hell. A man says: "Can't I do as I like with my
own?" You have got no "own" to do what you like with. It is because
men have forgotten the covenant of God, the kingship of God, that we
have all the wreckage and ruin that blights this poor earth of ours.
Here is the Man who never forgot it.
Did you notice those wonderful words: "I do nothing of myself, but as
my Father taught me, I speak." He neither did nor spoke anything of
Himself. It was a wonderful life. He stood forevermore between the
next moment and heaven. And the Father's voice said, "Do this," and He
said "Amen, I came to do thy will," and did it. And the Father's voice
said, "Speak these words to men," and He, "Amen," and He spoke.
You say: "That is just what I do not want to do." I know that. We want
to be independent; have our own way. "The things that please God--this
Man was subject to the divine will." You know the two words--if you
can learn to say them, not like a parrot, not glibly, but out of your
heart--the two words that will help you "Halleluiah" and "Amen." You
can say them in Welsh or any language you like; they are always the
same. When the next dispensation of God's dealings faces you look at
it and say: "Halleluiah! Praise God! Amen!" That means, "I agree."
Third, sympathy. Now, you have this Man turned toward other men. We
have seen something of Him as He faced God: Spirituality, a sense of
God; subjection, a perpetual amen to the divine volition. Now, He
faces the crowd. Sympathy! Why? Because He is right with God, He is
right with men; because He feels God near, and knows Him, and responds
to the divine will; therefore, when He faces men He is right toward
men. The settlement of every social problem you have in this country
and in my own land, the settlement of the whole business, will be
found in the return of man to God. When man gets back to God he gets
back to men. What is behind it? Sympathy is the power of putting my
spirit outside my personality, into the circumstances of another man,
and feeling as that man feels.
I take one picture as an illustration of this. I see the Master
approaching the city of Nain, and around Him His disciples. He is
coming up. And I see outside the city of Nain, coming toward the gate
a man carried by others, dead, and walking by that bier a mother. Now,
all I want you to look at is that woman's face, and, looking into her
face, see all the anguish of those circumstances. She is a widow, and
that is her boy, her only boy, and he is dead. Man can not talk about
this. You have got to be in the house to know what that means. But
look at her face--there it is. All the sorrow is on her face. You can
see it.
Now, turn from her quickly and look into the face of Christ. Why,
I look into His face--there is her face. He is feeling all she is
feeling; He is down in her sorrow with her; He has got underneath the
burden, and He is feeling all the agony that that woman feels because
her boy is dead. He is moved with compassion whenever human sorrow
crosses His vision and human need approaches Him. And now I see Him
moving toward the bier. I see Him as He touches it. And He takes the
boy back and gives him to his mother. Do you see in yon mountain a
cloud, so somber and sad, and suddenly the sun comes from behind the
cloud, and all the mountain-side laughs with gladness? That is that
woman's face. The agony is gone. The tear that remains there is gilded
with a smile, and joy is on her face. Look at Him. There it is. He
is in her joy now. He is having as good a time as the woman. He has
carried her grief and her sorrow. He has given her joy. And it is His
joy that He has given to her. He is with her in her joy.
Wonderful sympathy! He went about gathering human sorrow into His
own heart, scattering His joy, and having fellowship in agony and in
deliverance, in tears and in their wiping away. Great, sympathetic
soul! Why? Because He always lived with God, and, living with God, the
divine love moved Him with compassion. Ah, believe me, our sorrows are
more felt in heaven than on earth. And we had that glimpse of that
eternal love in this Man, who did the things that pleased God, and
manifested such wondrous sympathy.
Fourth, strength. The last note is that of strength. You talk about
the weakness of Jesus, the frailty of Jesus. I tell you, there never
was any one so strong as He. And if you will take the pains of reading
His life with that in mind you will find it was one tremendous march
of triumph against all opposing forces. About His dying--how did He
die? "At last, at last," says the man in his study that does not know
anything about Jesus; "At last His enemies became too much for Him,
and they killed Him." Nothing of the sort. That is a very superficial
reading. What is the truth? Hear it from His own lips: "No man taketh
my life from me. I lay it down of myself. And if I lay it down I have
authority to take it again." What do you think of that? How does that
touch you as a revelation of magnificence in strength? And then, look
at Him, when He comes back from the tomb, having fulfilled that which
was either an empty boast or a great fact--thank God, we believe it
was a great fact! Now He stands upon the mountain, with this handful
of men around Him, His disciples, and He is going away from them. "All
authority," He says, "is given unto me. I am king not merely by an
office conferred, but by a triumph won. I am king, for I have faced
the enemies of the race--sin and sorrow and ignorance and death--and
my foot is upon the neck of every one. All authority is given to me."
Oh, the strength of this Man! Where did He get it? "My Father hath not
left me alone. I have lived with God. I have walked with God. I always
knew him near. I always responded to his will. And my heart went out
in sympathy to others, and I mastered the enemies of those with whom I
sympathized. And I come to the end and I say, All authority is given
to me." Oh, my brother, that is the pattern for you and for me! Ah,
that is life! That is the ideal! Oh, how can I fulfil it? I am not
going to talk about that. Let me only give you this sentence to finish
with, "Christ in you, the hope of glory." If Christ be in me by the
power of the Spirit, He will keep me conscious of God's nearness to
me. If Christ be in me by the consciousness of the spirit reigning and
governing, He will take my will from day to day, blend it with His,
and take away all that makes it hard to say, "God's will be done."
CADMAN
A NEW DAY FOR MISSIONS
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
S. Parkes Cadman is one of the many immigrant clergymen who have
attained to fame in American pulpits. He was born in Shropshire,
England, December 18, 1864, and graduated from Richmond College,
London University, in 1889. Coming to this country about 1895 he was
appointed pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Metropolitan Tabernacle,
New York. From this post he was called to Central Congregational
Church, Brooklyn, with but one exception the largest Congregational
Church in the United States. He has received the degree of D.D. from
Wesleyan University and the University of Syracuse. The sermon here
given, somewhat abridged, was delivered before the National Council of
Congregational Churches, in Cleveland, Ohio, and is from Dr. Cadman's
manuscript.
CADMAN
Born in 1864
A NEW DAY FOR MISSIONS