01.10. CHAPTER X - THE PASSION FOR SERVICE
CHAPTER X - THE PASSION FOR SERVICE
It goes without saying that whosoever will follow his Master must live a life of service. “I am among you as he that serveth,” said the Master, and washing His disciples’ feet, He set the pace for helpful, gracious ministries of every sort.
What we need is a vast number of charter members for the Society of the Towel and the Basin. When an imperious mother asked of Jesus that one of her sons should be on His right hand and the other on His left in His Kingdom, she was speaking from the standpoint of the same selfishness and greed which we are facing today. We find men who want preeminence even in the ministry. There are plenty of us who would like to be major prophets, but who among us wants to be classed as a minor prophet? Who envies the man who is known as James, the less? It was very significant that when some time ago, reporters asked men in the streets of New York who was the. greatest man in America, different men were named because a different valuation was placed upon the effect of their lives, but the basis on which each of them was named was not of position, of office, of power, or of money, but only on the basis of service. Whatever difference there might be in the estimate of their achievements, there was no difference as to the cause of true greatness.
It has always been so the history of the world shows plainly that it has counted as its greatest men those who have most truly served. Every institution and every organization is measured by its service to mankind. When a nation proves itself unfitted for a task, it must pass away, and the same thing is true of the Church. What a fulfilment of this declaration we have seen in the last few years!
“Lord, where are kings and empires now Of old that went and came*?”
He hath put down the mighty from their seats and exalted those of low degree. We have seen many of the thrones of Europe emptied, discarded crowns by the dozen have fallen into the scrap heap. Why all this? Because they were useless, because God said, “I am tired of kings I suffer them no more.” There is no more any divine right of kings. The motto of the Prince of Wales “I serve” is the only motto fit to be engraved over any throne.
After traveling through the country and being in touch with schools and colleges, as well as with the men of the street, after reading modern literature in the magazines and weekly papers, one is impressed with the fact that there is a sort of materialistic epicureanism which is seeking to make its way in high places. There is a drying up of the great source of life, of the old sense of the outreach of humanity, of destiny outlasting the stars, and a high calling that is not ended with dollars and position. As a recent writer in one of our leading magazines has said, “Robbed of eternity, we mean to make time pay to the utmost.
Hence this nervous, feverish activity. Our anxiety is an unconfessed manifestation of our immense sense of loss. We have but a few minutes in which to rob the house of life, let us seize all the articles in sight. Death, the householder, is even now waiting to take us into custody.” As we look back at our old Puritan ancestors, we pity them for their narrow quarters, and all the hardships which they must have endured from lack of the conveniences which have become necessities to us. We live so much more comfortably and easily. In the dread winters which they passed, they must fell the trees and chop the wood and throw it into the great fireplace where most of the heat disappeared up the chimney. To light their homes, they had the tallow dips, which they prepared with much labor. Now if we want heat or light, we press a button. Conveniences of every kind await our nod. Handicapped as our fathers were, we often wonder was their life worth living. But as a matter of fact, they seem to have been rather happier than we are. The wilful poverty of our spiritual lives must vastly impress us as we contrast that with the holy joy which is reflected in the story of their lives, which they have handed down to us. At a recent church convention, the question arose on what issue to put special emphasis.
Some thought it should be on social regeneration, some that it should be on legal enactments to outlaw sin, and others that it should be the application of religion to business, but it was finally decided that the crying need of the hour was first to get some religion that could be applied, to have some ideals that were good enough to regenerate the world when they were applied. A recent article in one of our leading magazines makes bold to say that the destiny of man was once talked of as a spiritual mystery, connoting endless endeavor and opportunity. Terror and splendor attended the Word. Now the highest dream of high destiny is a porcelain bathtub, or some safe shelter behind a wire screen where we shall be impervious to the attack of germs. We have need of a prof ounder faith, a more poignant fear than this age knows.
One of our New York papers asked this question, “What is the matter with our mode of life?” and these were the answers given by the men whom the reporters stopped on Broadway: “We are drifting away from the faith of our forefathers. There are 65,000,000 heathen in America. That alone answers the question.” Another said, “People are fighting for the material things of this world, instead of the spiritual.” And the next man said, “We are drifting away from the teachings of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
We need to be transformed instead of reformed.
We are in the grip of a materialistic philosophy.”
I think we are all agreed that the need of the hour is the restatement of the great verities which always have been and always will be supreme in the lives of men. We want the same upholding strength which the patriarchs knew and by virtue of which they went out to a land which they knew not, because they heard the call of God. We never needed more than we need now the consolations which uplift the soul in the midst of catastrophe and loss. They tell us that our churches are empty, but our asylums and our morgues are full.
There is nothing that will so steady men in the midst of strain and calamity to play the game, to fight the good fight to the end, as to realize the besetting and f orefending God. If we have lost our faith, our hope in immortality, how did we lose it? Must we not go back to the place where we had it last and see if we cannot find it? “If we have been robbed of incalculable hopes and aspirations, who robbed us? Do we not owe it to ourselves and to our children to bring the robbers to trial and to take from them that which they have filched from us, making us and our children bankrupt indeed?”
One of our liberal papers some time ago had two editorials, the heading of which seemed like an affront to our whole Christian life. The first question asked was, ’ Can democracy tolerate the Church?” At first one was inclined to be indignant at the iconoclast who could even frame such a question, but it all resolves itself into a question of fact. If the church is the friend of the people, if the church is helpful in those things which are lovely and of good report, if the principles which it advocates make life safer, property more secure, and conserve the highest interest of society, there can be no question but that democracy must be the greatestally which the church has, and the church the greatest organization to consummate a true democracy. The other question was, “Can Christianity tolerate the church?” The answer to that must lie in the question, “What is the church in its essential spirit and what is it seeking to become! ’ ’ Christianity cannot tolerate the church unless the church is Christian, that is unless it has the principles of Christ in its life, unless it puts the first things first and enthrones spiritual values above all others and gives itself uncalculatingly and unstintingly to those things to which the Master gave Himself. It must cease to discriminate between the rich and the poor, or even between the ignorant and the learned, or between those socially at the top or socially at the bottom. Jesus was no respecter of persons. He has one gospel for the Pharisee and the Publican one gospel for Dives and for Lazarus.
Customs hoary with age have passed away because they were useless, because they did not benefit mankind. Once slavery flourished in every land, That was service under compulsion. It was right dominated by might, and God said, “It must go.” The same is true of organization and methods of business and everything else that does not serve humanity. Their doom is written in the nature of things. Customs which curse and not bless cannot long survive, for they bear their doom in their own deeds.
We invite to our clubs and to our secret societies men who occupy a similar social plane, or who are congenial, or men of common tastes. If we want to make a club of the church, we can do the same thing there, but such a church will go down to ruin. A church must serve all classes and conditions of men, and he who has caught the spirit of his Master will go with a bounding love and a heart on fire to give service to those who need it most. It needs to be everywhere proclaimed that while the first duty of a man is to get his own soul right with God, he cannot grow in grace or even preserve his own sense of acceptance with God unless he throws himself with absolute abandon into the same work for which his Master lived and died.
“God does with us as we with torches do Not light them for themselves; For if our virtues go not forth of us ’Twere all the same as if we had them not.” The church need have no fear of anarchy or socialism or sabotage or skepticism of any sort, if it will give itself to service. But it is not enough, as we have said, to care for the lesser needs of our human life. * * A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesses.” We are to lead men to a larger life. Here is our greatest service. We must seek for better conditions for men, but we must realize that first and last and all the time our object is to make better men.
I know scores of fathers and mothers who are in anguish not because their sons are not well paid, not because they do not live in good houses and under the best of sanitary conditions, but their hearts are breaking because their children are reaping the wages of unrighteousness, because in the midst of all their plenty they have turned from God to serve the world, the flesh and the devil. No one can read the daily papers without staggering under the fact that men of social prominence and many of our leaders, both among workers and capitalists, are men of ungodly lives who use the advantages of better conditions of labor and better returns of capital to weigh their sonls down to hell with the additional temptations which these successes have given them. The church is to be the regenerator of the world to throw itself into the breach, and since it stands supremely for spiritual things, it is to put these things at the very front. How can a pastor sleep nights or enjoy the comforts of life until he is conscious that he is doing the utmost within his power to put life under the ribs of this death?
How can any member of the church go to his place of worship, receive the holy sacrament, which marks afresh the sacrifice of his Lord and recalls his own holy promise to be true to Him, without realizing that by daylight and by dark he must sound forth the call of his Master by his lips and by his life? When the passion of such a service shall possess the heart of the church, the world will throw off its indifference and the church will come to its own by the preeminence of its life and the power of its sacrifice.