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  QUIET TALKS ON PERSONAL PROBLEMS
  by Samuel Dickey Gordon
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Gordon's pastoral guide addressing major spiritual challenges facing
individuals, tackling sin as 'the problem of sin' by examining its nature, law,
and multiple facets, and progressing to address doubt and other personal
spiritual struggles.

  Chapters: 74

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. A Bit Ahead
    2. Chapter 1: The Problem of Sin
    3. The Law of Sin.
    4. Six Sides of Sin.
    5. Seven Facts about Sin.
    6. Unloosing the Demons of Sin.
    7. The Logical Result of Sin.
    8. The Sinless Man.
    9. Opening the Life-door.
   10. Sin Needs Double Treatment.
   11. Chapter 2: The Problem Of Doubt
   12. Perplexed Searchers.
   13. Taking away a Cripple's Crutches.
   14. Some Marks of Honest Doubt.
   15. The Best Book on Christian Evidences.
   16. The Spirit of Search.
   17. The Book.
   18. The Man.
   19. The Call of the Christ.
   20. Chapter 3: The Problem Of Ambition or What Is Best Worth While
   21. The World's Under-Master.
   22. God Needs Men.
   23. The Brooding Need.
   24. "Forgetting, I Press Forward."
   25. A Double Trinity.
   26. A High Aim.
   27. A Strange Coat-of-arms.
   28. A Higher Aim.
   29. The Man Waiting to Go Along.
   30. Chapter 4: The Problem Of Self-Mastery
   31. The Greatest Battlefield
   32. Ditching Life's Stream.
   33. The Original Image.
   34. "Study to Keep Quiet."
   35. Living Musically.
   36. In Step with God.
   37. Living in the Essentials.
   38. The Foes of Self-Mastery.
   39. The Mastery of Jesus.
   40. Chapter 5: The Problem Of Pain
   41. The Commonness of Pain.
   42. Sorts of Pain.
   43. The Source of Pain.
   44. Jesus and Pain.
   45. The Mission of Pain.
   46. Compensations.
   47. Victory.
   48. Chapter 6: The Problem Of Guidance
   49. A Guide over Life's Trail.
   50. God Plans every Life.
   51. God Tells us His Plan for us.
   52. Accepting God's Plan.
   53. A Disciplined Judgment.
   54. Unhurried Waiting.
   55. Guided in Judgment.
   56. The Boys and the Tramps.
   57. Instructed in the Night Seasons.
   58. Finding the Life-plan.
   59. "My Sheep Hear My Voice."
   60. Chapter 7: The Problem Of The Church
   61. Some Wrong Ideas.
   62. The Tie of Blood and Spirit.
   63. A Picture of the True Family.
   64. Fellowship and Service.
   65. The New Church Unity.
   66. The True Church Spirit.
   67. Chapter 8: The Problem Of Questioned Things
   68. Glimpses of Real Life.
   69. Questions that are Not Questions.
   70. The Sabbath Question.
   71. Giving Comfort to the Enemy.
   72. Paul's Advice.
   73. Not to Judge but to Save.
   74. The Law of Love.

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  CHAPTER 1: A BIT AHEAD
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A Bit Ahead Life is a school. There are hard sums to do; new words to learn, and
new meanings of words; knotty problems to tug at and solve, solve partly and
then a little more. Knowing some gives zest for more; and always there is more,
and never an end. Dear Doctor Babcock sang, "Some day the bell will sound, Some
day my heart will bound, As, with a shout That school is out And lessons done, I
homeward run." Yet the day he thought of, while it brought rare delight in
knowing and resting, was simply his entering upon an after-course in the
Teacher's own room. These talks are about some of the problems of life. They
touch only personal problems, and only a few of them, and only some parts of
these. They touch only problems and the phases of them that have come up in my
own schoolroom work. That has seemed best. The men who have helped me most have
been those who let me draw near, and peer in, and see something of their own
struggles and victories, the moist brow as they tugged, the hard breathing under
stress, and the glory-light that came afterwards. All truth must go through the
testing fire of one's own experience before it catches fire in others. I am
still working at these problems; still in the laboratory. At times a wondrous
quiet light steals in to make it clear where it was dark and bothersome. Always
there is a sense of the great Teacher's presence, and the restful thought that
He knows by contact with things down here. That light gives great joy, and that
presence great peace.


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  CHAPTER 2: CHAPTER 1: THE PROBLEM OF SIN
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Chapter 1: The Problem of Sin


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  CHAPTER 3: THE LAW OF SIN.
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The Law of Sin. The ugly face of sin pushes in everywhere. It has to be reckoned
with by everybody. Sin is so ingrained in life that it is constantly being
considered. It is one of the most practical of all problems, and one of the most
personal, too. If a banker is engaging a new teller to be trusted with the
bank's funds he is obliged to think of certain phases of the sin question. If
the manager of a great railroad is studying how to operate the vast system to
the best advantage of his directors, and for the public's safety and
convenience, he is forced to study carefully the sin question, even though not
from a moral standpoint. If a mother and father are eager for their child to be
strong and pure and intelligent they need to know something about the law of
life, and the results of disobeying it. If a man would live long and hold his
vigor; if a maiden would retain her beauty and gentleness of spirit; above all,
if one would live a life pure and strong, pleasing to God and helpful to his
generation, the problem of sin must be thought about and grasped, at least in
part. And the earlier and more thorough the thinking the better. In the English
translation of an old Greek classic there occurs a remarkable sentence about
sin. It is a strange little sentence of just six words, peculiar in its makeup
and packed full of condensed vitality: "The wages of sin is death." There are no
adjectives, nor adverbs, nor other such qualifying words. There are just three
hard, knotty, disagreeable nouns, "wages," "sin," "death"; with only enough
other parts of speech to hold these securely together. These nouns are the bones
of the sentence; the other words the ligaments that hold the bones in place.
There is no soft padding and rounding of flesh. The intensity of suppressed
feeling underneath comes out in the very shortness and sharpness of both the
sentence and each of its chief words. There is not even enough stopping on the
way to give any coloring to these three rugged, sharp-edged words. Each comes
blurting out, goes straight to the bull's-eye of the target, and hits it with a
sharp ringing noise —"The wages of sin is death." That is not true because it is
written in this old Book of God. It is in the book because it is true. It had
been written down in many other books before it found Paul's pen here. Any
breaking of the natural order of life brings a penalty; and the penalty is
always a death, penalty. It has been written in the book of nature as with sharp
chisel edge in flinty rock. In the State of Kentucky is a great cave. In the
cave is a river flowing. In the river are fish. They are like other fish
essentially with one exception, they have no eyes. There is an eye socket. But
where the eyeball should be there is instead the withered-up carcass of an
eyeball, or none at all. . It is a law of life that what we do not use we lose.
All of nature's gifts are held by use. These fish did not use their eyes. In the
absence of light they could not. And through lack of use persisted in for an
untold length of time, they lost both the power of use and the organ of use. The
wages of sin is death. Any breakage of a law of life carries with it a penalty,
and that penalty is always a death penalty. That sentence has been written down
very big with indelible ink in the book of nations. Years ago Spain was at the
head of the great powers of the world. Her ships swept the seas victoriously and
defiantly. But Spain as a nation broke one of the great laws of human life. It
is a law of life written in the spirit of man that every man shall be free to
worship God as he thinks to be right. Spain ruthlessly, with iron-clad fist,
broke that law. She said to her sons, "You shall worship not as you think best
but as I decree." Her sons showed the inherent greatness of the nation by
refusing. And Spain stained her soil with the blood of thousands of her best
sons. And Spain died as a first-class power, a second-class, a third-class, and
more yet. Her proud position of leadership was lost. Her death was by suicide.
The wages of sin is death. Failure to obey the great simple laws of life
contains in itself a sure penalty, a death penalty. It has been written, and
still is being written, in the lives of men, with letters many times traced in a
living red. The Wizard of the North ,in Great Britain, splendid Walter Scott,
felt keenly the sharp edge of debt and financial disgrace. He said imperiously
to his great brain, "You shall pay these debts," and greatly it responded to his
whip. And the law of the body that sets limits to the work that may be done was
broken, badly broken. And that great man began dying early, and that remarkable
brain knew the death of its powers, before the last ebb of life had slipped from
his body. The wages of sin is death. Disobedience of the law of life carries
with it a knotted whip, whose cut and slash and sting always means a death of
some sort.


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  CHAPTER 4: SIX SIDES OF SIN.
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Six Sides of Sin. I ran through the Bible one time rather carefully and found
there six words used for sin. I found the word sin itself. Sin, the word
underneath our English, literally means missing the mark. Here is a
shooting-target; a man stands with rifle up, taking aim; he presses the trigger
and the little leaden bullet flies from the rifle's mouth, but it doesn't hit
the centre of the target, the bull's-eye; it goes off into one of the rings or
clear outside the target. That is the literal meaning of sin. It is failing to
hit that at which you have aimed. Let me ask you, softly, have you ever done
that? Have you ever failed to hit the true mark of life at which you have aimed?
I do not say you have, and I do not say the mark that somebody else has set up
for you to reach. But, just now, as you see things yourself, have you ever
failed to reach the true aim of a true life as you have thought of it yourself?
once? just once back there somewhere? Because if you have that is sin, and sin
earns wages, and the wages of sin is death. There is a second word I found; the
word transgression. It means simply going over a boundary line where you have no
right to go. Here is a line at the side of your path. You have a right to be
here in your own path. You have no right over beyond the line. There is a sign
up, "No trespassing allowed." But you go over that line to the other side. That
is transgression. May I ask you quietly, please—have you gone over the line in
your conduct where you should not have gone? I do not mean just now the line
that others may have set for you. But as you saw things yourself, the line that
you regarded as the proper boundary line for a true, pure life. Have you? once?
You pulled back again, maybe; but as you look back there's a sure jog over the
line there; it's dented in, over and back; two obliques, is that so? I do not
say it is; but as you see things yourself? Because if it is so that is
transgression; and transgression is sin; and sin earns wages; and the wages of
sin, I regret to remind you, is death. The third word is iniquity; that is,
un-equity, not equity, not equal. It thinks of the path of life as a level,
even-faced road, without any breaks-down, no sags, no inequalities; all parts
evenly up to a standard level. Whatever breaks that even level surface is
un-equity, iniquity. May I ask you again, softly, just for yourself to hear, as
you look back over the road of your life thus far, how does it look to you? Is
there one sag-down back there? one place where it isn't plumb up to the level
which you have thought of as the right level? just one? Maybe more than one; but
we are not talking about numbers just now, but about single facts; once so, did
you say? Because if it be so that one break-down back there is iniquity, and
iniquity is sin, and sin carried with it a return, and, I am very sorry to say,
that return is death. A fourth word I found in this strangely frank book is the
word wickedness. Its old, first meaning seems to have been crookedness; that is,
winding aside, turning away, falling back. It thinks of the path of conduct as a
straight path without any curves or crooks or bends. To turn aside this way or
that is wickedness. Would you kindly turn around for a few moments of steady
looking? What sort of a line has your life made? Is there any zig-zag in it? any
jog? maybe "not much" you say, but some? any? a jog off once from the straight
line? If so, that is described by this old word wickedness, and wickedness is
sin, and sin is a wage-earner, and the wages to be paid in is, I much regret to
say, death. The fifth word that pushed its ugly face up into mine in these pages
is the word guile. Guile means sneakiness, shakiness, trickiness! It means being
one thing inside, and trying to have folks who see only the outer side think
you're something else. It means putting clean white-painted shutters up around
your life so folks may think that's what you are like clear through. How about
that? Has the life always been a clear reflector of the motives and purposes
within? If once back there somewhere there has been something of that sort, the
intention to deceive another, that is guile, and guile is sin, and sin has
wages, and the wages spells out the one word death. There still is another word
used, a very strange word that at first flush may seem to many to be quite too
strong, a sort of an extreme putting of the thing. It is in the Revised Version.
Jesus' bosom friend, John, says "sin is lawlessness." (1 John 3:4) It would
sound a bit extreme to call some persons whom we know lawless; yet when the
matter is sifted down to the controlling spirit within, underneath, that is
found to be the accurate word to use. For all true law is the expression of
God's will; all true law is the fine rhythmic swing of God in action. And
whatever is different from that, preferring our will to His, maybe in ignorance
oftentimes of just how much that involves, that is against law, it is without
law, and so lawless. May I ask you most softly yet—any of that in you? any
preferring your own way when that dead-sets you against God's will? a little?
Because however little it may seem in our thought of size, that is lawlessness,
and lawlessness is the very seed of sin, and sin carries with itself a result,
and that result is called death. Sin is not a disease, a moral disease, nor a
misfortune, nor a weakness to be overlooked and maybe gradually overcome. It is
an act of the will. When a man sets himself to do the thing that is not right,
or to omit the thing that he should do, whether in imagination, or in his
speech, or in action, that is the thing called sin.


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  CHAPTER 5: SEVEN FACTS ABOUT SIN.
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Seven Facts about Sin. Now this old sentence ties the word wages up tight to
this word sin. There is a certain logical result of sin. It is put here in the
simple commercial language of a man getting the proper return for his day's
work. Regarding sin's wages there are seven simple facts to be noted; simple
indeed but terrific in what they involve. The first is this, that sin earns
wages. Where there is sin there is a return coming back into the life where the
sin is. There is a law of compensation in sin; something is due and owing to the
man who has sinned. The second fact is that sin pays wages. There is no
defalcation here. Sin is never is bankrupt. It pays. It has a full purse, a
heavy bank account, and pays what is due. Sin insists on paying wages. A man may
decline to receive. You may be quite willing to forgive the account, and call it
square without any further exchanges. But there is always the other side to be
reckoned with here, sin's side. It insists on squaring every account. Its books
are kept with painstaking accuracy. I recall a man in an eastern city whom I
knew well. He stood high in financial circles, in church and social circles for
years. But all the years, as it afterwards proved, he had been untrue to his
trust both in financial and in family relations. He staved off payment for long,
and when the crisis came stood it off a bit longer with legal processes, but
though there was delay the payment was made finally. He had to receive what was
due according to the law of men. Yet be it marked very keenly that the law of
man's making which compelled him to receive what was due had and has very marked
limitations. Man's law deals only with discovered sin, and then only when it can
be technically proven. And such law can compel a man to receive only a certain
portion of the due of wrong, according as men have prescribed. But sin itself is
not so restricted. It deals with the actual thing known by the man who does it,
and known only by him.. Sin's payment works out insistently, pervasively,
irresistibly, even as a fire unquenched reaches every bit of space within the
sphere of its activity. Sin insists on paying wages. This man's home was utterly
broken up, his life companion suffered until her mental balance slipped, his
standing among his fellows was wholly gone, his name was disgraced. When the
gates of his prison-house were opened again for his bodily liberty, the stoutest
of his chains refused to unloose and still held him in their cold, heavy grip.
And yet when this much is said, it leaves the greater part unsaid. The fourth
fact to mark is a tremendous fact, intense, dramatic, graphic, even poetic, if
such a word can be used of that which is most grimly prosaic. Yet it must be
used, for there is a peculiar swing and rhythm to sin's working here. It is
this—§in. pays its wages_«« kind. I mean that the pay is the same sort of stuff
as the sin. That which returns into a man's life is of a piece with the sin that
started the return movement. You remember that the old Hebrew, Jacob, was a
herdsman, in earlier life working under contract with his uncle. When the
settlement period came Jacob was not paid in gold or silver or notes. He
received in pay the sort of stuff he was handling all the time, sheep and goats
and oxen. He was paid in kind. That is the meaning here. Sin in the realm of the
body brings a result in .the body. The body is the open record of a man's life,
to him who can read it. There the skilled physician or the skilled surgeon reads
plainly the habits of the life. Sin against the law of mental life brings its
sure return in that which effects the mental powers. Sin in contact with others
brings a chain of results affecting those others, and in turn those whom they
affect. And this is intensified in proportion to a man's relation to the
community or state or nation. It is terribly true that no man sinneth unto
himself. Sin is the most selfish of acts. It beslimes to some extent everyone we
touch, whether we be conscious or unconscious of that touch. This man Jacob knew
bitterly the working of this old law of sin. He deceived his old father; he was
deceived by his uncle Laban in the matter of his wife, and ten times over in the
matter of his wages as herdsman. He wronged his brother; and his favorite son
was wronged by his brothers, and that hurt the old man far more than though the
wrong had been done to himself. He lied to his father; and was lied to by his
sons. As a young man he used a kid in the heartless scheme to deceive his blind,
aged father; and years after his sons used a kid to give good color to their
attempt to deceive their father. The old man, broken in both body and spirit,
knew with a bitter intimacy those last years that sin pays wages in kind. The
sin breathes out its own spirit into the whole circle of one's life, and ever
returns grown stronger to bother the man who first set it free and sent it out.


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  CHAPTER 6: UNLOOSING THE DEMONS OF SIN.
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Unloosing the Demons of Sin. David committed a sin in secret. It was supposed to
be unknown except to the one who joined him in it. Yet that lawless, utterly
selfish act against the purity of life and of a home brought back big bitter
wages. The frightful effects of it infected his own home, spread out into his
kingdom, left his successor a horrid heritage, and has had a bad influence among
men until this day, with the end not yet. The act itself was repeated with cruel
variation within the circle of his own family. It led to the inhuman dyeing of
his own hands with faithful outraged human blood. And that act in turn was
repeated with heartbreaking variation within the family circle. The man himself
was badly hurt in more ways than one; his sense of right as a ruler was badly
blurred. His favorite son, tainted with the lawless spirit of his father's act,
is received back into the home with no change of heart and with no rebuke for
his conduct. That itself was a lawless act, hurtful to the son, and brought a
very whirlwind of lawlessness that almost disrupted the kingdom, and that left a
debt of blood and of "bitter memory that long years did not fully pay. The
prodigal, received back into the home unrepentant, carried with him a hell of
anarchy and suffering and heart-burnings. The violence that started in the
king's heart, and slew one of his own sons, stayed not until his favorite son
fell under its ruthless hand, and left the old father heartbroken. That first
brief act let loose a horrid horde of demons. Sin has a frightful contagion. Ah!
this old warrior king, with his splendid talents and great traits of character,
learned with a bitter tenacity of memory that sin pays wages in kind. History
tells of a certain portion of the world where two races were brought into
intimate contact; a superior race and an inferior, and so remained for many
years. The men of that superior race, taking advantage of their position of
superiority, with many splendid exceptions, invaded the sanctity of the women of
the inferior race, for passion's sake. And for long years, through successive
generations, the daughters of those injured women have been debauching the sons
of those men, until that bit of country has been made red with precious human
blood, and wet with bitterest human tears. And deep in the very family fibre of
life there is woven inextricably in, the truth that sin pays wages in kind. A
fifth fact to mark is this: sin pays in installments. The payments begin at
once. The very immediate act of sin has in it the beginning of its results, and
those results continue bit by bit, with a grimly patient faithfulness, at
regular periods through the years. The human eye blurred by its own sin is not
always able to see the results. The human mind dulled by its own decisions is
not always keen enough to appreciate what is going on, until passing years pile
up the results, and they are forced upon the attention, and gazed upon with
wonder. And sometimes we hear talk about mysterious providences among religious
folk, and of hard luck among others; but never a bit of suffering has come into
any life but it could be traced back, were our knowledge full and our eyes keen
enough, back step by step in regular logical sequence to some initial human act
of wrong. The sixth fact should be coupled with the fifth, the payment is in
full. There are no defalcations here; no settlement by agreement of fifty cents
on the dollar. But dollar for dollar, and each full weight, and with full
measure of cents, is paid. No amount of reluctance on our part, no attempt at
shirking will make any difference. A man is very apt to grow generous here. He
will forgive the account due him. He is even eager to "call the thing square."
"No," this inexorable paymaster sternly says, "you will step up and receive the
full stint of what has been earned." A French writer has described a scene in
the old province of Brittany, that juts out into the sea on the west of France.
A man was walking along the seashore on a bright afternoon enjoying the air and
sea. Above the sky was blue, the sun shining, the air invigorating, and the view
off very beautiful. And the man walks along leisurely, thinking only of the
enjoyment of his surroundings. He does notice absent-mindedly that his feet sink
into the sand rather much. Then they sink a little more, until he begins to
think it strange; then all at once it flashes upon him that the tide is out, and
he is in a bed of quicksand. With the instinctive dread of a native, he knows
well what that means, and instantly turns in horror towards the mainland to
escape. But his quicker, intenser movements make his feet sink in deeper, up to
the ankles. He plunges madly this way and that, calling wildly for help. But
there is nobody to hear, and the more he plunges the deeper he sinks. Now he
turns to the left, seeking to find a footing beyond the edge of the treacherous
bed of quicksand. And now frantically to the right, and now up towards mainland,
but he only sinks down the deeper into the smooth, slippery sand. Now the sand
is to his knees, and now over his loins; then its pressure crowds in about his
vitals, while he stretches out his arms wildly and shrieks piteously for help,
and the pressure is seen in the blood coming from mouth and nose and ears. And
now only the head is above the smooth level of pretty sand, and now just a pair
of glaring, blood-shot eyes, and now a tuft of hair. Then only a smooth stretch
of pretty shining sand. And above the sky is blue, the sun shining, the air so
fine, and the sea laughing. That is the working of nature's law. It is true
alike of all her laws. Here it was the law of gravitation that ruthlessly,
mercilessly, inexorably drew down the man who had given himself unwittingly over
to its power. The same action marks this law of sin of which we are talking.
Whoever comes within the sphere of its power will find it working in the same
quiet, sure, merciless way. Law knows no mercy. Oh! yes, there is a provision
sometimes made in human law for certain days of grace in meeting financial
obligation. But it simply means that, if the brief time allotted find you
unready with the money, the house may be sold from over your head, and you left
in the cold night unsheltered. That is surely great grace. Here in this old tale
of the native of Brittany is an illustration of the working of law, the logical
sequence of cause and result. With slow pace, bit by bit, with mercilessly sure
tread the law of sin works out its logical way endlessly. Sin pays in
installments, but in full, with a final fullness beyond anybody's power to
compute. There is a seventh fact to be noted here, that should be marked very
keenly, and not forgotten. Sin is self-executive. That is to say, every sin pays
its own bills. Sin keeps an independent bank account and checks out all its own
payments. And it can be said very positively that there is no result of sin
except that which works out of itself. Yet that is terrific beyond the power of
the imagination to picture, or of words to tell. You may, if you choose to,
leave God out of your thinking about this. Yet that does not affect the
tremendous fact put down here. Sin has bound up in itself all the terrific
consequences that ever come. The act of sin unlooses the demons bound within,
and they do but carry out to the full what the man began. Sin works
automatically. It is self-executive.


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  CHAPTER 7: THE LOGICAL RESULT OF SIN.
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The Logical Result of Sin. This cold, calm, strange sentence says that the wages
of sin is death. What is death? There is no question much harder to answer. I
can tell what it is not, and that will help to clear the ground a bit. It is not
the passing of life out of the body merely. That is the thing we all think of
first and most when death is spoken of. Yet that is a very small item, a mere
detail of death, painful in itself, and with distressing results to those who
tarry behind, but the smallest part of death. And death is not ceasing to be,
cessation of existence. That cannot be. A spirit does not cease to be and
cannot, and man is essentially a spirit-being. Good were it for some men if
death meant for them an utter cessation of existence. And it can be said with
great positiveness that death is not arbitrary punishment meted out by God. God
has sometimes been held up to criticism as a cruel, unfeeling sort of tyrant,
taking pleasure in dealing out punishment to sinful men; not so much of late
years as formerly, but still a good bit; always too much. Any is too much and a
slander upon Him. We borrow our ideas of punishment from men, and among men
punishment is very largely arbitrary. That is, it is decided upon, chosen out to
be inflicted upon the guilty one. A child in school disobeys some rule and
perhaps persists in the disobedience. The teacher decides upon some punishment,
either whipping, or detention, or extra work, or to be deprived of some
privilege. That of course is arbitrary, discretionary, decided as the teacher
judges to be best. A soldier breaks the rules of camp, or of the discipline of
army life. His officer decides what punishment shall be inflicted upon him. A
man is found guilty of an offence, and in most instances there is discretion
with the judge to decide what punishment he shall suffer. Let it be said very
plainly that death as a result of sin is not in any way like that. It is the
logical result of sin. It is included in the sin. Sin and death are only
different parts, or phases, or stages of the same thing. Sin is death begun.
Death is sin finished, worked out to its conclusion. Sin is death in the green;
death is sin dead ripe. Sin is the seed; death is the fruitage of that seed.
Death is the logical culmination of sin, the final stage. Death begins with the
beginning of sin. All unsuspected by those standing by, the beginnings of the
pallor of death have already come where sin is done. All unconsciously to the
man committing the sin, the tide of life has already begun its faint,
imperceptible ebb. All living men are partially dead. Death is a gradual state
until finally complete. In its essence death is separation from God. All life is
the breath of God. Sin is cutting one's self off from God. It is like gripping a
man by the throat with tightening clutch until the breath of life departs. Sin
is choosing to leave God out. The very act cuts off the source of life. The
grammar of the verb to sin is peculiar to itself. It is this: present tense, to
sin; first future tense, following instantly on the present, to suffer; in the
second future tense the verb changes its form, it becomes a noun—hell. That
hateful, ugly word hell, which the lips utter only by compulsion when they must,
for the sheer pain of it, is simply the name given to the place where death
reigns; where God has been excluded. They who prefer to leave God out will
gather together at some time by a natural moral affinity, or gravitation. The
name used for such meeting-place in this old Book is that hurting word hell.
Hell is death's abode. God shut out, no life, death, death regnant—that is hell.
Is there anybody listening here who has not sinned? If so, I'll wait a moment
for you to withdraw, please, for to-day's talk is not for you. We all seem to be
staying in. Well, then, by our own confession, .we are under the action of this
law of sin. There is a death sentence written over every face here. Sometimes it
can be plainly seen. Sometimes to our dim eyes there seems to be no suggestion
of such a thing. But were our eyes keener to read spirit-lines and spirit-fact,
we would find through the flashing eye, the clear ruddy skin, the firm rounded
flesh, a distinct tracing of this strange thing called death. I have no doubt
that many, maybe most, of these listening so kindly and patiently are members of
the Christian Church. But as I run my eye over your faces I cannot say who are
church members and who are not. And I am glad for the purpose of this talk
to-day that I cannot. For this law of sin recognizes no such distinctions. There
has been a thoughtless thinking, without it being said in so many words, that
being within the secure walls of church membership shields one from the action
of this law of sin. But that is not so. Whoever is thinking so, maybe half
unconsciously thinking so, is befooling himself here. This law of life which is
a law of death applies fully wherever there is life, and—sin. Well, then, we are
all under the action of this law and all under sentence of death, sin's logical
conclusion. What can we do about it? Of ourselves we cannot do a thing to
relieve the situation. The thing we need is life in place of death; the utter
cutting out of the seeds of death and the putting in of new seed, the seed of
life, a new life. There are only three ways that anything can be gotten, that
is, proper ways: by inheritance, by purchase, and by gift. We have lost our
inheritance of life. It has been forfeited by our alliance with the one thing
that is utterly opposed to life. There is not enough wealth in the vaults of
London and New York, Paris and St. Petersburg, nor in the mines, to buy any. The
wealthy people are merely money-wealthy, not life-wealthy, so far as their gold
is concerned. And we have none for ourselves, much less to give away. What shall
we do? We are all in bad shape. It is a blind alley we are all heading up in.
Would it sound any better, or less bad, if instead of "blind alley" I used a
foreign word for it, cul-de-sac, and hid the ugliness of the truth behind that?
Better just use blunt old English, that the plain truth come more plainly,
bluntly home.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 8: THE SINLESS MAN.
========================================================================

The Sinless Man. But here steps one upon the scene of life from another
sphere—Jesus. By His own word, and by the frank confession of those who know Him
most intimately, He is free from sin. The Jew who so foully betrayed, and the
Roman who so unfairly gave sentence of death, agreed fully in this. Being
without sin, He is not under action of this law. He steps on the scene. And in
effect He says, "It grieves me to the quick that this great race of splendid men
is in such bad shape." But mark you keenly, and let the truth here be said with
the greatest reverence, not even Jesus the Son of God can change the working of
this law of life. He came not to break but to fulfill. What can He do? This is
what He did do. He went down, of His own voluntary accord, went down to where
men's sin had driven man. He tasted death. Tasted? aye, drained its dregs to a
bitterness not known by any other before or since. He went down into the throat
of death, into the mouth of hell, and seizing death by the throat throttled it,
and then rose by the moral gravity of His own being up to a new life, a
deathless life for all men. And now Jesus offers that new deathless life as a
free gift to all who will accept it, and accept with it the conditions of life.
But will you kindly note as keenly as you ever noted anything that there are
three qualifying facts that belong in here. There has been a sort of a weak
sentimentalism, common in some quarters, about salvation through Jesus, as
though by some sort of legerdemain all the evil results of sin were at once
wiped out, and all the benefits of the new life come fully in by means of an
assent to Jesus' offer of salvation. It does seem sometimes as though there were
those who say, "We can do about as we please, indulge in sin as suits us now,
and then after a while,—well, there's Jesus, He's loving; God is love, He is too
loving ever to let anyone be lost. We'll just line up that way and pull through
all right." I do not mean that I have ever heard anybody put it so bluntly, and
baldly, and irreverently as that into words. But I have surely heard a great
many say it loudly with their lives. Better, maybe, if they had put the language
of their lives into the language of the lips, that its very baldness might shock
them into thinking of the truth. The first qualifying fact to note is this:
accepting Jesus does not nullify nor neutralize the results in this life of past
sins. That man who lost his arm through a drunken debauch will remain so,
without the arm, crippled in body and in activity to the end of the years. Those
years absorbed in selfish pleasure-seeking are lost forever, and the mental
strength that was not held and matured by earnest effort can never again be
gotten. The grave of the past never gives up its dead, only their spectres to
trouble and haunt. The broken home circle can never be restored. A new one may
be made, but never the old. That saintly mother, grief-stricken in heart through
somebody's sin, broken in strength and shattered in her years—that is not
changed. There may be some softening of after-years, but the old deep scars upon
heart and body and life are never removed. Time softens greatly where conditions
are changed, but under all remains the old wound, and it pains sharply when a
bit of damp weather comes. The man who through dissipation has depleted his
vitality never will be, never can be, either in body, or in his mental powers,
or in his spiritual perception and grasp, what he was meant to be, and would
have been. The bird with the broken pinion never does soar as high again. Its
broken wing has forever broken the strength and swiftness of his flight. The man
may be fully forgiven, and blessedly changed, and wondrously used, but never can
he be the man God meant, nor be used in service as he could have been had God
had the use of his full, unstunted, unwasted powers. Selfishness is a
spirit-paralysis. The powers never fully recover. The daily grubbing for gold,
with no high spirit-motive gripping and sweetening, forges a finely woven
network about all of the powers. And however the life may afterwards be
surrendered to Jesus the hampering movement is never wholly gone. It has been
rutted deep into the cellular tissue of the body. The heart may become wholly,
blessedly pure, the motives and impulses all sweetly and fragrantly cleansed,
but the mark of the past is dented deep in the body, the energies, the
activities, the outlook. This is the simple, sad, tragic truth. It should all be
said in softest tone of lowered voice, for we are talking of our brothers; and
said too with a hush of shame over the spirit, for we are talking about
ourselves here together. But it should be said, very distinctly, with the words
pronounced clear and sharp, that the process may be stopped instantly.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 9: OPENING THE LIFE-DOOR.
========================================================================

Opening the Life-door. There is a second fact to be put in with hard, sharp
emphasis. Life through Jesus comes only as fully as the opened door permits. You
will note that I am not speaking of heaven, the afterlife, but of this
tremendous life we are living now. There is a truth here for the after-life,
too, no doubt. The after-life will be shaped upon the life lived here. A man's
life here becomes the mold or standard for that great afterlife. Of course this
does not affect a man's salvation; the fact of it. But then, who is there who is
willing to be saved by the skin of his teeth, pulled in at the end of a rope,
without a covering rag to his life, barely in, breathlessly sprawling where he
has gotten in! This new life through Jesus begins now as quickly as the spirit's
door is opened to Him. It begins coursing through all a man's being. It affects
all of his powers. It touches into new vitality and new beauty every gift with
which man is endowed. But it can come only as it is allowed to come. The man's
will always remains supreme in his life. Even when God's will is made supreme in
a life, as it should be, it is by the imperial act of the man's own will. A
man's will is never greater in action than when all its great fine-grained
strength is used in yielding to God's will. A man can keep the door partially
shut. Will it seem severe if I say that most men do? Yet the truth seems to
force just that statement out into plainest speech. And a partially opened door
means only partial life incoming, and partial death remaining. I remember an
old, dear friend of mine, a splendid man in his strong, gentle spirit, a great
leader among men, the great leader in the movement with which his life was and
is identified. Yet he died when a man should be in the mature fullness of his
powers. For certain habits of life common among men, not commonly regarded as
wrong, and not wrong except as being against the law of life in the body —yet
that is a great and grievous exception— sapped his vitality, and poisoned the
body, and led to the death that should have been delayed for years. And as I
speak of him I recall another great leader, in another sphere of activity in the
religious world, who slipped the tether of life when in the prime of his years,
for like reasons. These men sinned against the law of their bodies. And that is
sinning against the God of our bodies. God needs us and our strength. Whatever
takes us away before His time, or takes away our strength, hampers God in His
activities among men just that far. They sinned unwittingly no doubt,
thoughtlessly, and yet there is apt to be a certain willfulness in such
thoughtlessness. Many men sin ignorantly. Yet such ignorance is a sin, for we
can know and should know how best to live for the glory of God. Jesus' gift of
life is both for the after-life, the eternal life, and for the present time. The
present life affects far more seriously than we know the fullness of life in
that after-life. Only as the door is swung fully open can Jesus give fullness of
life here and after. Full surrender to the sway of Jesus, becoming in practice
more really full as new light comes, is the open door to full life from Jesus'
hand. Partial surrender means partial life. There is an exception to be noted
here. Fullness of life does not mean absence of bodily death yet. For Jesus'
plan of life has not yet been fully carried out. He is to reign until all
enemies are put under His feet; then the last enemy, death, is to be put down,
too, but not until then. Jesus' redemption will be completed on His return.
Meanwhile, with this exception noted, there is fullness of life through fullness
of His sway within.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 10: SIN NEEDS DOUBLE TREATMENT.
========================================================================

Sin Needs Double Treatment. The third qualifying fact goes to the heart of the
whole matter. It really has been said already in another way, but should be put
in again for the emphasis of repetition, and for the plainest putting of it into
words. It is this: there is one sin that even the blood—say it very softly and
reverently—that even the blood of Jesus cannot cleanse away; that is, the sin,
any sin, that I cling to. This is going to the very tap-root of the whole
matter. His blood avails only against the sin that I break with, turn out of
doors. Sin needs double treatment if it is to be thoroughly gotten rid of, first
by the man who sins, then by that Man who never sinned; the first must use a
sharp-edged knife, the Second will use a red stream, and then fire; the first
must cut it out, and cut it off, so far as his will can do that, and it can do
it fully; the Second will take away its guilt and power. Oh! for a band of
sin-fearers; men with a horror and dread of sin in any shape, and under any
guise; a band of sin-haters and sin-fighters, who will fight it tooth and nail,
day and night, mercilessly, relentlessly, with all the power of loving tact and
diplomacy, and all the rugged, immovable obstinacy of mountain rock; and who
will give Jesus full entrance into their lives, push the door clear back till
its knob scratches the inner wall, that so He may come in full face with all His
glorious flood tide of life. There's a simple story told of a longshoreman in
Scotland. He was a rough, ignorant man, and a hard drinker. One night he went in
an intoxicated condition to a mission hall, intending to make a disturbance and
break up the meeting. But a tactful Christian gentleman came and sat down by his
side and began talking with him. He quieted down and listened. Then the two
kneeled in prayer. And that strange thing, called in religious talk conversion,
must have taken place, for when they rose from their knees he was evidently a
different man. There was a, new look in his face, a changed spirit looked out of
his eyes, and his manner was gentle and deferential. In a voice affected by the
deeper feelings within he thanked the gentleman, saying he must go home and tell
his wife, and went out. As he entered his home his wife was just going up the
stairs with their son to put him to bed. He called to her, "Come down stairs,
lassie, with the lad; I've been converted; we must have prayers in our house."
And she muttered aloud, "Hehh! drunk again!" But he said, "Nay, nay, lassie, I'm
am drunk; I tell you I've been converted; bring down the lad, and we'll have
prayers." And wondering in her heart what had come over her husband she came
down, and the three of them knelt on the bare floor to pray. But he didn't know
how to pray. He never had prayed. His lips didn't know any word of that sort.
And the situation was getting embarrassing. There they are, the three, kneeling
in silence, the sleepy boy wondering, and the awed wife wondering, and the man
himself wondering what to say. Then like a quick flash he remembered how they
had done in the city years before when the Queen had been there. And as that
come to him, he picked his knit cap from his head and, whirling it in the air,
cried out with an earnest, reverent cry, "Hooray for Jesus! hooray for Jesus!"
Then they went to bed. When I realize how Jesus came down here, and stepped into
man's place, and bore a death that naturally would not have come to Him, I feel
like uncovering head, and heart, and will, and with the deepest reverence of
love, repeating the longshoreman's prayer, "Hooray for Jesus." The wages of sin
is death; but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our
Lord.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 11: CHAPTER 2: THE PROBLEM OF DOUBT
========================================================================

Chapter 2: The Problem Of Doubt


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 12: PERPLEXED SEARCHERS.
========================================================================

Perplexed Searchers. At one time I used to meet frequently, for a short while,
at a hotel dining-room table, a bright young college man who was well informed
and attractive. One day he introduced the subject of religion. He doubted the
divinity of Jesus, or rather he said he did not believe that He was divine.
Again, he as openly said that he did not believe the Bible. I said to him as
gently as I could, so as not to seem to be arguing, that I presumed he had
examined rather carefully into these questions on which he expressed himself so
positively. To my surprise he calmly admitted that he had not. He had not given
the Bible one careful reading through, neither had he examined the facts about
Jesus. When I mildly expressed some surprise at his willingness to give such a
positive opinion regarding matters that he had not examined he did not seem
concerned, but rather to enjoy restating his opinions. When the conversation
turned on other subjects, especially those connected with his profession, he
seemed quite cautious about expressing an opinion except where he had fully
informed himself. As we talked, there would come creeping into my thoughts
unbidden a certain subtle feeling that he thought as he did because he wanted
to. It suited his purpose, or his way of living, or for some reason he preferred
to think as he did, and so he did think that way. It was an extremely handy way
of fixing up one's opinions to suit one's wishes. This man was not a doubter.
That word implies perplexity, questions, a desire to know what is true. This man
did not seem perplexed, had no question to ask, and was not seeking for
anything. He plunged at once to the conclusion that seemed to suit his purpose
or desire, and there he calmly stuck. I seem to have met quite a number of his
clan. This talk about doubt, let me say frankly at once, is not meant for such
as he. It is meant for those who are, as I was, perplexed about the reason for
the great verities of life and faith, and being perplexed seek to learn at first
hand for themselves the reason for things. In contrast with that incident, many
a time, a young man or a young woman in college has sought an interview, and
with eager face has told of the sore perplexity that has come in study,
regarding some of the old sacred truths learned first at a mother's knee. And as
I listened I seemed to read between the lines the story of a mental awakening, a
brain bristling with interrogation points as to "the reason why," the earlier
habit of thought shocked to find such questions arising about such sacred
things, but the questions insistent; withal an earnestness of purpose to find
the truth that was to me fascinating. Then would follow the quiet talk together,
sifting between essentials and non-essentials, bringing in fuller information
sometimes, getting facts into clearer, broader perspective, and getting hold of
the keynote of all such research, then a bit of soft, quiet prayer together, and
then the pleasure of seeing the steadier step, the returning peace of spirit as
the fellow went back to his study, and back to a life controlled by truth. These
latter were the true doubters; they were wavering in their thoughts; they
questioned old opinions in the face of facts new to them; they were earnestly
and actively seeking for information; they watched for every opportunity to get
new light; they were not content to rest in their doubts but were bent on
finding the truth. It is with such, and for such, that this present simple talk
is intended. It is not meant for those who want to doubt. There comes a time in
the life of every one who wakens up mentally, when that awakened mind asks that
the great truths of life come up to the bar of his reason, and prove their right
to be accepted. To think is to doubt; that is, to be perplexed, to question, and
sift into the reason for things. To think more is to doubt less. To think
clearly through is to find the truth. Enough truth can always be found to rest
upon while more is coming. The great truths that are used to shape and control
the life, and bring peace to the spirit, are few and simple. One never finds all
of the truth. It is one of the delights of living to be always finding more of
truth. This, too, will be one of the great delights of the upper after-life.
There will always be the zest of finding new treasures. Some people never doubt
because they never think. Of course, I mean, think for themselves into the
reason of things. Some people never doubt, for they live in that sweet, peaceful
atmosphere, made by their elders or others who have doubted, and thought, and
thought through, and now rest upon the rock of found truth. Some people never
doubt because they have doubted, have searched and sifted, and found enough
truth to rest upon, and to control their lives. These latter are the real
leaders of thought here. They are still learning, studying, questioning, but the
element of perplexity has gone. They rest in what they have found, as they
eagerly search for more.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 13: TAKING AWAY A CRIPPLE'S CRUTCHES.
========================================================================

Taking away a Cripple's Crutches. There are two sorts of doubters; those that
are not doubters at all but like to be so called, and then the doubters that
really are doubters. To mark these real doubters off clearly the word honest
should be used—honest doubters. That's a bit hard on the others, but still it
seems to be the word to use because of its honesty. A true man does love to be
honest. It's one of the touchstones of manhood. The first sort is not really
entitled to that good, wholesome word "doubter," but they insist upon using it,
so let that go. The more accurate word to use for them is quibblers. When they
search it is simply for something that will bolster up the opinion they hold.
They find fault with Christianity. They pick out the flaws and faults of
Christian people—and there are surely enough to pick out—and seem to take
pleasure in pointing them out. They gather up the arguments and statements of
others, and freely pass them out without finding if they are really trustworthy.
They seem to listen to the other side only to study how to answer it. These
quibbling friends are fond of argument; that is, they are fond of that sort of
argument which is a sharp crossing of swords to see which can outdo the other;
the keen, sharp passage of words and measuring of statements to see which can
come out ahead. Such dueling, it can be positively said, though very common,
never helps and always hurts. The men who indulge in it are usually seeking to
defend their own position, which often means to defend their own intellectual
keenness. No earnest man in the thick of life has time for such discussion. It
does but react, however unconsciously, upon a man's beliefs, and, worse yet,
upon his ability to see a fact colorlessly, to weigh what comes without
prejudice, and so to get the help of knowing the truth. There is a story told of
Henry Ward Beecher and a certain gentleman who was very widely known for his
eloquence and for his skepticism. It was at a social gathering of a group of
brilliant, intellectual men. The skeptical man had, as was his wont, taken
occasion to make ugly flings at the Christian religion in his usual keen,
eloquent way. Beecher listened with the others. After a pause he broke in
abruptly by telling of a scene he said he had witnessed that day on one of the
streets of New York. It was a rainy day, with the streets in bad shape. A badly
crippled man was hobbling painfully along on his crutches, picking his way over
the crossing of one of the busiest thoroughfares, when a strong, burly man came
roughly along, and rudely ran into the cripple; the poor fellow's crutches
slipped this way and that, and he fell a-sprawling in the soft slime of the
street. But the strong man, instead of apologizing and helping him up, laughed
coarsely at the poor fellow's plight, and kept on his way. As Beecher told the
story in his own inimitably vivid way the company present expressed their
disgust with such conduct, the skeptical man heartily condemning it. Beecher
looked him full in the face and said slowly, "Thou art the man: we are all
crippled by sin; Christianity is helping us find our way along the road of life,
even then a painful, hobbling way; you come along ruthlessly and knock out the
only help we have to hold us up and steady our steps, and offer nothing better,
but leave us sprawling hopelessly in the mire." With his great keenness Beecher
had characterized the whole class of skeptics, unbelievers, whose whole pleasure
seems to be in telling what they do not believe, and in disturbing those who do
honestly believe something. It is not pleasant to say so, but it is very much to
be feared that much so-called doubt is merely a sort of cloak for something
else, and that something else a thing far worse and meaner than the doubt. The
word doubt has quite an intellectual flavor. It seems to suggest mental
strength. It makes a fine cloak. Its ample folds and soft gray color can cover
up very much within. It is quite apt to be an intellectual covering for some
very unintellectual, very common, and very coarse habits. Scratch some
self-styled doubters and you will find ugly, selfish sinners. Let such friends
remember and not forget that there is no necessary connection between
selfishness and doubt, between sin, just common, plain sin, and intellectual
difficulties


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 14: SOME MARKS OF HONEST DOUBT.
========================================================================

Some Marks of Honest Doubt. Then there is the real doubter. He is not absorbed
in what he does not believe. No true doubter ever is. He is concerned about
finding out what should be believed. He is digging for facts. He carries a
sifter and attempts to separate the mere husks from the wheat-hearts. There is
the throwing aside of much that comes of course. But this is merely incidental
with the honest searcher. His eye and thought are on the kernel of fact. No
serious, thoughtful man allows himself to give his strength to declaring what he
does not believe, except incidentally for an immediate purpose. He centres
thought and strength on what is plainly true, on what must be believed. And as
that is held sharply up to view the other falls away. The best way to get rid of
error is to hold up the truth. Darkness goes when the sun rises. The honest
doubter is a wholesome man to meet. He is not trying to trip somebody up, but to
get a sure footing for himself. He never attacks. He inquires. He is always
seeking for light. He goes about with his eyes and ears more open than his
mouth. It is opened chiefly to ask questions, real questions that seek
information. He welcomes truth from any quarter, and contributions to one's
stock of truth sometimes come from most unlikely quarters. There is another sure
mark of this wholesome man; he will admit himself wrong when new light shows
that he is. That is always a hard thing to do, nothing is much harder. It makes
a severe mental wrench many a time. It wounds one's intellectual pride very
sorely. Many a man's growth is stunted and stopped at this point. For refusal to
admit the light that comes has a peculiarly stupefying effect upon the mind. The
honest doubter honestly admits to himself that he was wrong in his former
conclusions, and then he will admit it to others. Such admission reveals the
really great man. He is not half so much concerned about whether his views have
been right, as he is to get right now. And he knows that nothing clogs up the
road to truth like misconceptions of truth, or positive wrong —untruths. And
then the final test of the real, true doubter is this, that as light comes he
will allow it to govern his habits, his life. Here is the test that drops many a
man out of the ranks. The sharp tug-of-war comes at this point. For it is an
essential of finding truth that the spirit and habit of life be made to fit what
is found. That may mean very radical changes. It may cost friendships, and
income, and standing. But that will not deter the true man, for he is honest
first of all. For mark you keenly, the great truths are the moral truths. They
concern the life we are living now, and to live always. The great test of truth
is its effect upon the life. Truth itself affects life. It pushes away the
artificial, the false, the wrong, and, breathing as a soft warm south wind upon
life, brings out its strength and fragrance. Jesus spoke a word about this that
states a great law quite apart from His immediate use of it: "He that is willing
to do ... shall know." It is a characteristic of the great truths that they
attack what is contrary to themselves, what is wrong. Truth is aggressive. It
points out with unflinching finger the wrong, the untrue, the false, the sin. It
insists upon a man's life measuring up to its requirements. Its voice is
distinct and sharp, although most quiet. It insists on being heard. The only way
to get rid of that voice is to shut up the ears. And then the poor fool of a man
hasn't changed the voice nor stopped it. He has only cut himself off from
hearing it; but not cut himself off from the result it is announcing to him.
Truth is always asking a man to do something. To him who obeys it becomes an
open book in big, plain type. He that is willing to do shall know. Obedience
leads to a university degree in the highest knowledge. Knowledge of truth lies
only along the path of obedience, with most at the farther end. Christianity
owes much to honest doubt. There was a doubter in the original group of twelve
men who stood closest to Jesus. And there is pretty sure to be found one who has
doubted, or who doubts, wherever twelve thoughtful men gather. Jesus' attitude
towards the first doubter is wonderfully cheering and helpful. He didn't chide
nor find fault. He welcomed personal investigation. In earnest tones He said, "
Reach hither thy hand; find out for yourself; know by the feel that it is I
myself who was dead and now am risen." Thomas accepted that invitation. He
revealed his sincerity and earnestness. He came where he was likely to get
light. He was a true doubter, honest in his perplexity, looking for light, and
when it came frankly admitting that he had been wrong. To every thoughtful,
honest doubter comes that same warm, eager invitation from Jesus' lips, "Reach
hither thy hand; find out for yourself." A true doubter never settles down in
his doubts. He asks questions. But he asks them to get information; not to
puzzle somebody else, and never for the sake of arguing, and never to prove
himself right. Much skepticism is an extreme mental protest against the extreme
statements of religious teachers. One extreme always draws out an opposite
extreme. Both men are extreme and therefore both in part wrong. The angle of
vision is not the correct one for clear seeing. But let not the man at the
skeptical extreme think to excuse his position, nor to rest in it because the
other man is extreme too. A man should seek for truth, and not be held back by
somebody's extreme statement of it. The earnest man does seek for truth, not
that he may combat the other man in his wrong view of it, but for the sweet
peace of knowing truth, and the yet sweeter peace of living his life in its dear
light. No man is justified in staying at one extreme because somebody else is at
the other. He is hindering the truth itself, and, worse, is hindering some other
man who is hiding behind him.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 15: THE BEST BOOK ON CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES.
========================================================================

The Best Book on Christian Evidences. All men are controlled in their thinking
either by prejudice or by conviction. Prejudice is prejudgment. It is reaching a
conclusion before getting all the information there is to be gotten. Conviction
is matured judgment formed after getting and weighing carefully all available
information. All men are influenced to some extent by prejudice. I suppose a
really unprejudiced, unbiased man cannot be found. There is always that in his
training that influences him for or against, quite apart from his reasoning
powers. There is nothing harder to overcome than prejudice, especially early
prejudice, that coloring that has come through home surroundings, circumstances,
schooling, companionships, and friendships. It can be overcome. Yet no task is
more difficult. I was a guest once in the home of an old family of New England
stock, and from my host got this story. He was a civil engineer, a man of mature
judgment, and like the old, typical New Englander gave a large place to facts,
without much play to imagination. As a boy he had a boy friend who later became
a lawyer, an orator, and one of the best known lecturers on infidel subjects.
The father of this boy friend was pastor of one of the churches in the village.
He belonged to a certain old type of ministers whose preaching was of a stern,
logical, unsympathetic sort, and his home life was sadly in keeping with it. A
hard, hot temper, a domineering spirit, rank selfishness, did not make a very
lovable sort of man in the home. For months before this boy was born into that
home his mother was in bitterness of soul. Her daily experiences led to much
bitterness, rebellion, doubts of God's love, and grave doubt about the Christian
faith. And in such an atmosphere her son was conceived and born. That was a
terrible birthright for any one to overcome. Yet mark you keenly, it could have
been overcome, even though its tinge might remain over all the life. Where there
is the earnest, seeking spirit, any bent of early prejudice can be practically
overcome, even though its finger marks may remain. Let it be understood at once
that Christianity has counterfeits. That fact helps greatly in believing it.
Could it have a greater compliment than a counterfeit? The counterfeit
emphasizes the value of the real. Nobody ever tried to counterfeit a piece of
common brown wrapping-paper. It is the finely engraved government bill or bank
bill that is counterfeited. And let the other fact, the sad fact, be put down
too, that Christianity must not be judged by some of its followers, indeed by
many of its followers. It must indeed be judged by its influence upon men's
lives. And from that test it has no reason to shrink, for the most enlightened
nations, the strongest nations, are those that have been under Christian
influence. And there are countless instances close at hand everywhere of
individual lives wholly and beautifully transformed under the influence of the
Gospel of Christ; indeed miraculously transformed, so sharp is the change from
old to new, with no explanation other than that of the power of God. One single
instance of that sort is quite enough to prove the living power of God. One
Jerry McAuley or one Samuel Hadley is the best volume on Christian evidences to
be found. That there may be found many selfish, worldly Christians does but
indicate how many unanchored people there are that are swept along by the tide
of their times. Christianity is the popular religion of the western world.
Entrance to much society is through the church door. And many who have been and
are true in their attachment to it have not the strength of character to rise
above the prevalent type of Christianity by which they are surrounded.
Christianity has been severely wounded many times in the house of its friends.
All this should make the honest doubter the more eager to get to the
fountainhead of the stream. Jesus stands the test of any examination. To Him one
should go who would know.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 16: THE SPIRIT OF SEARCH.
========================================================================

The Spirit of Search. The searcher for the truth should mark keenly that the
result of his thinking and study will depend wholly upon two things: the way he
goes at it, and the reason he has for going at it at all. The way he goes at his
study will very largely decide what he will get. He needs to have a candid, open
spirit. He should try to be unbiased as far as possible, neither for nor
against. Indeed he must go a bit further than this; there should in fairness be
a spirit of sympathy with that which he is investigating or judging. This is the
true critical spirit. The expert in sculpture in examining a bit of work seeks
to discern the purpose of the chiseling artist. He tries to put himself at one
in spirit with the workman, so as to see the thing from his standpoint and judge
accordingly as to the success and skill shown. He may find faults and lack of
skill and finish, crudeness of conception and of workmanship, but he approaches
his criticism from the artist's standpoint. The same is true of all proper
criticism, whether of a painting, of a book, or of a piece of art needlework.
The critic approaches not to quibble nor find fault but to get in touch with the
artist's conception and ideal and then judge of his work. This must be the
spirit here. One should be not disposed favorably nor unfavorably, but seeking
to put himself in warm, sympathetic touch with the subject and its ideals to
judge accordingly. Now I do not suppose that anyone ever filled out fully such
requirements, but if he faithfully, honestly tries to he will get just that much
nearer to the truth. Then the reason why a man goes at such study will determine
largely what he will get. And there is just the one great purpose worth while,
and that is to have the life made true and strong and beautiful. Life is too
serious for one to be satisfied with less than this, or to spend time for a less
high ambition. There is satisfaction in getting to understand truth and the
reason of things, a mental satisfaction, but this is incidental. The great,
throbbing passion of a true man is to have his life true and pure, strong and
fragrant. To know more than we weave into the daily fibre of life is to add to
our own self-reproach in the coming days. It does but brew a bitterer drink for
the later years' drinking. But if a man ring true here, if there be the simple
strong purpose to put every truth to the test of living, and to test the life
mercilessly by whatever truth comes, and hold it up to that standard, then—let
me say it very deliberately— that man may throw away all his old teachings, his
mother's Bible and all that goes with it, if he can trust himself to hold steady
to this purpose as he examines what comes up. Our searching friend can go a step
further yet. Let him begin by believing nothing. But let him suppose there is a
God. And all the innermost, deepest yearnings of his soul within and all the
marvels of the universe without make that a very easy and natural supposition.
The simplest philosophy would argue that there is no power apart from
personality. Power may be plainly seen and felt without the personality behind
it being seen. But in all the world of research, so far as men have been able to
sift through to the very bottom, there never yet has been found power of any
sort without a person being behind it somewhere. And all around us in life, in
nature, is tremendous, immeasurable, incalculable power being seen. So that from
the inner yearnings, the swing of the worlds, the workings of nature, it is easy
and natural and philosophical to suppose a marvelous being back of all that we
see and feel. Suppose then there be a God. What sort of a God would we prefer
Him to be? Well, at least five things can be said of the God we would prefer to
have: He would be pure, and powerful; He would be just, and loving; He would
have a plan for His creation and for my life. How would such a God feel towards
the men He had made? He would surely want to communicate with them, and tell His
plan, and take great pleasure in their affairs, and in their realizing in their
lives His plan for them. Well, here is a Book that is distinct from all other
books, that from end to end claims to contain just such a communication. And
here is a Man, the central figure of this Book, before whom all men have
instinctively bowed in reverence, who said that He came from God for the one
purpose of letting men know about God. This clears the ground for the man who
wants to know for himself. He will set himself to examining this Book, and this
Man. As he takes up the Book how shall he feel towards such a God as there may
be? What should his attitude be towards Him? It would surely be one of
reverence, loving reverence, of intense desire to be like Him, and to have His
plan of one's life made fully real. And more, there would be an intense longing
that He would reveal things personally. In such search I would naturally want to
communicate with Him and ask Him to reveal Himself to me, and help me to come
into such contact with Him that I could receive His revelation of Himself. But
how can I communicate with Him? Well, how do I communicate with others? In two
ways: by words telling what is in my mind, and without words. I look in the face
of my familiar friend, with whose spirit I am in full sympathy, and I know very
often the thoughts of his mind before he utters them. I can glance at my wife in
a group of friends and let her know without speaking a word what I am thinking
and get her answer. We are all constantly communicating with each other without
using words. We are revealing our inner thoughts to others in words, and without
words. Then we are getting accustomed to distant communication without any
material thing, even such as a wire, to connect the two talking. There is a
certain sympathetic contact expressed through mechanical contrivances that are
in touch. Persons completely out of sight of each other, with miles between
separating them, can intelligently communicate and exchange their thoughts with
each other without any material connection between them. So we have grown
accustomed to communicate with those we cannot see, and to receive replies. With
such a God and such men desiring to know Him, it would be quite natural for them
to speak to Him in words, and to speak when no words can express the thoughts;
and, more, to be conscious of His sympathetic response. The common word for this
sort of thing is prayer. With this to be said, that very many who pray have not
become skilled in receiving the sympathetic responses. It would be natural
therefore in beginning the examination of this Book, and this Man, to bow in
reverence, and ask such a God as there may be to reveal Himself and His truth,
and all the study and thinking would naturally be done in this reverential,
prayerful spirit. A word of caution should be put in here. There is a very
common tendency with all of us to get to a conclusion too quickly. We are all
apt to form judgments before all the facts attainable are in. The common fever
of life affects us here as elsewhere. We are quite apt to make up our opinions
too quickly, without a broad enough outlook on the facts, and without weighing
each fact duly. Facts are like men, their true worth cannot be told by counting;
they must be weighed. And weighing always takes more time. It is easy to keep
tab on the statements that come along; but to sift them thoroughly so that the
non-essentials fall away, and leave the essential element standing alone, takes
more time; indeed more time than many seem disposed to give. And then to put the
essential element, this real nut-heart of truth, into the scale and hold steady
and quiet enough, so the scale can balance accurately—that takes time and
steadiness of temper. And it takes isolation too. There is so much jarring of
trains overhead, and electric cars on the level, and tunneling beneath the
surface, that a man has to get insulated and isolated so as to get quiet enough
to keep the balances within himself steady. Yet all this is itself an immense
advantage, for it tends to increase the inner quiet, which is man's true spirit.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 17: THE BOOK.
========================================================================

The Book. In such a spirit, and for such a purpose, let a man begin reading this
Book through. Let him read it just as he would any other book so far as his
mental processes are concerned, thoughtfully and clear through, reserving his
conclusion, as of course he will, until he is through. He may find much that
does not seem clear. He may find what seem to be inconsistencies or
inaccuracies. Let him note these mentally, but hold them strictly in abeyance,
for he is aiming to get the spirit and swing of the Book clear through. Repeated
readings have been found to clear up many matters that seemed puzzling at first,
and some never are cleared up. But those, it is to be noted, never affect the
main purpose of the Book. There are certain things to be noted about the Book.
It has had a strange history. Indeed, in the strangeness of its history it is
apart from all other books of any nation or people. It has been printed in
greater numbers by far than any other book, and in many more languages. More
scholarly men of acute mind have given their time and lives to its study and
explanation than to any other. It has been and still is the most studied, the
most read, the best loved, and the worst hated of any book. It has been a
veritable storm centre, and also, in sharp contrast with that phrase, a
veritable haven of rest. Thousands of men have stormed over its contents, and
hundreds of thousands have found in its pages that which spoke sweetest peace to
their spirits, and held them steady in life's roughest storms. It has had a
strange vitality, outliving all sorts of enmity. Men used to burn it up in their
efforts to get rid of it. Of late years they have taken to cutting it up with
keen fingers and sharp-edged knives. But it seems to survive either process
about equally well, and is to-day being printed in larger numbers than ever,
scattered more widely, studied more thoroughly and keenly, and apparently loved
more devoutly. No intelligent man can afford to be ignorant of a book with such
a record. The Book itself is found to contain as many as sixty-six distinct
books, written by many writers, at least as many as forty. These men writing it
are from all classes of society. Some have had the best learning and culture of
their times and of the world; others seem to have had practically no such
advantages. They wrote in many different places, as far apart in extremes as
Rome in Europe and Babylon in Asia. The period of writing runs through as much
as sixteen hundred years. So that it is not like most books, in being written by
one man. It is a collection of books by many men, of different sorts, written
under all sorts of conditions and circumstances, in many different countries,
running through a very long period of time. Now please note what is the most
noteworthy thing of all this Book, its subject. It is about religion. There is
no one subject on which men have talked so much and about which they have
differed so radically and so violently as the subject of religion. The greatest
hatreds of the race have been about religion. The worst cruelties have been
practiced in religion's name and for its sake. Wherever men gather in groups
large or small they will sooner or later get to talking about two subjects, and
differ with each other on each. It may be in the logging-camp, or about the
miner's common fire, on the upper deck or in the steerage of a steamer, in
social circles or university circles, in the commercial club or in the slums.
Let men talk freely together and two subjects crop out, religion and politics;
the relation of man to God and his relation to his fellow. And invariably they
differ, politely, gently, intensely, abruptly, stormily, according to the sort
of men, but always differ. Now this Book, or collection of small books, from so
many different men, so different in every way, is about this stormy, divisive
subject of religion. Yet there is here an essential agreement. There is a
practical unity of thought and ideal and purpose throughout from end to end.
This is one of the first things that strikes one most forcibly in examining this
book. And finding it intensifies one's interest greatly and sets his appetite on
edge as he goes at it farther. There is a second thing to note. This Book is a
sort of mother of books. It has given birth to great numbers of books, on all
phases of life on which books are written. It seems to have had a peculiar power
of stimulating thought. There is here a vitality that has been felt in every
department of writing and research. And more, all the lines of study to which
men have devoted their strength seem to run their roots down into this Book, and
to draw a certain element of life from it. Here in the Book is the oldest
history, hoary with age; and here in the scholarly world are books written by
strong men who have spent money and time and talent in digging up the old
records out of the earth, and verifying these simple statements of the old Book.
Here in the Book is a system of political economy, or at least the principles of
that science; and here in the college libraries and halls are hundreds of books
on that subject which work out and amplify the principles found here. Students
of the perplexing land question will find a simple solution proposed here;
though it is not a solution that ambitious men with selfish desires are very
likely to adopt for their own holdings. The laws of Moses have come to be the
fountain of all modern as well as earlier jurisprudence. Behind Blackstone and
Coke and other great legal authorities is Moses. They build upon his
foundations. The strongest nations of to-day have the primary principles of the
Mosaic code interwoven inextricably into their common law, and so into their
life. A former United States Senator from one of the northwestern States, noted
for his strength as a legal advocate, has told the story of his early ambition
to be a lawyer. As a youth he had gone tremblingly to a famous lawyer and made
application to read law in his office. To his utter astonishment the lawyer said
brusquely, "Can you recite the Bible through, sir?" The young man managed to
stammer out his astonished'' No.'' "Well," the old judge said shortly, "go and
memorize the Bible and then you may come and read law here." And out the youth
went in an utter daze, wondering what the Bible had to do with reading law. But
the coveted permission depended upon that, so he set to work and did commit
great portions of the Book. He became famous as a lawyer both within and beyond
the bounds of his own State, and frequently said he realized in the after-years
what a foundation for his legal knowledge and practice was laid in that early
biblical study. The best books on moral philosophy, on sanitation and personal
health, on shrewd business ethics, draw their inspiration from the principles
first found here. Its language and imagery honeycomb the finest literature of
the English tongue. If one were to cut out of Shakespeare and Tennyson and the
other great English poets all allusions taken from this Book, scarcely a page of
their writings would escape the scissors. When Benjamin Franklin was ambassador
at the French court he was one of a circle of scholarly men who met frequently
to discuss literary matters. It was their custom to bring to the gatherings
choice, rare bits of literature to be read and discussed. It was a time when
skepticism was rampant and the Bible a hated hook. One day Franklin said:
"Gentlemen, I have found a rare gem of literary beauty, which I have brought to
read to you." They listened keenly as he read through the little book of Ruth,
making slight changes that its Biblical identity might not be suspected. As he
finished they were all enthusiastic in praise of its simple beauty, and inquired
eagerly where he had found such a choice gem. He dryly said he had found it in a
book called the Bible. There is one feature of this Book that is most peculiar,
and that is its scientific accuracy. It is not written, of course, in any part
from a scientific standpoint. Its language is never scientific, but is just the
simple language of the common people. But it always 'fits in with well attested
scientific facts. There is no jarring, no slips, no glaring breaks, no language
ever used that does not fit in with the matured statements of science. When we
recall the statement commonly made that any technical book as much as ten years
old must be thrown aside as worthless, because of the constant change in the
state of knowledge, one begins to realize and appreciate what a tremendous
peculiarity this is. But the main thing that gets hold of a man reading
thoughtfully here, and then grips him hard and holds him in its tight grip, is
the ideals of the Book, wonderful high moral ideals such as he finds nowhere
else. Its conception of God, of the worth and nobility of man, its insistent
ideals of right, and of love as the standard in life, are such as can be found
nowhere else. They are such as to swing the earnest man, eager for a pure,
strong life, clear off his feet. And these ideals are held to strenuously in the
midst of the world's worst sin. Its exposure of sin, of insincerity, and
selfishness in all phases and forms is terrific, and its hatred of them more
intensely terrific still. Its heroes are praised, but always with the plainest
unvarnished dealings with their faults and weaknesses.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 18: THE MAN.
========================================================================

The Man. But the great fact of the Book is a personality that looms up large
through all of its pages. From beginning to end there is one striking
personality dominant. All through the older portion He is coming. Men fail, the
best men with the best training fail, the kingdoms fall, the kingdom and people
about whom the Book is woven fail most miserably, but there is some One coming
who will fill out the highest expectations. In the Gospels He has come; in the
later books all thought is utterly absorbed in Him; in the last book, the
climax, His coming glory floods the pages. He is the heart of the Book. Let me
gather up a few facts about this Man. I will pack them into small compass that
they may be grasped together He was born in obscurity and in poverty, cradled in
a stable, brought up in a country village whose good moral character was
seriously questioned, had no contact with the schools of His time, being home
trained, never travelled outside of a bit of territory about seventy by one
hundred miles, was born of a people peculiarly exclusive and intense, had access
to no literature except the very limited literature of His peculiarly seclusive
people. Yet He developed a character singularly perfect. There was in Him the
utter absence of evil, and the presence of all known good. He was sterner than
the sternest man in denouncing wrong, and tenderer than the tenderest woman in
ministering to others. He never uttered an apology. In that He stands alone of
all men of whom we have any record. He said He was without sin, and by consent
of His enemies, including the man who betrayed Him and the man who condemned
Him, as well as those who knew Him most intimately, He was without fault. His
life for those few years of public work was literally spent out in glad,
tireless service of the most practical sort for those around. He gave Himself to
the needs of needy men with an utter self-forgetting abandon. Night and day,
ceaselessly, tirelessly, He ministered to men, feeding the hungry, healing the
sick, relieving the distressed and demonized, and even raising the dead; while
He had at times no time so much as to eat, no home to call His own, and no funds
upon which to draw, being ministered to in personal needs by friends. His
teachings are marked by an originality, a sweep of conception, and a freshness
never approached before nor since, and wholly at variance with His human origin
and His surroundings. They have become and are to-day the accepted standard for
purity of conception, high ideals of life, boldness of originality,
stupendousness of sweep, and simplicity of expression. And then will you please
mark keenly His method of influencing men? The world's greatest leaders and
conquerors have been soldiers. Alexander, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon ruled by
force, their great personality and power finding expression at the sword's
point. Others have swayed men by the books they wrote. Jesus influenced men by
the power of His teaching, of His thought, but far more by the strangely simple
power of His life, by the touch of His personality alone. The extent of his
influence is startling even to this day, though so familiar. He lived for only
thirty-three years. His public career was but for a tenth as long a time, only
about three years and a bit more. He was put to death ignominiously and cruelly,
and laid away in a tomb. He left no book behind, and formed no organization,
only a little handful of eleven unschooled peasants whom He had associated
closely with Himself in His life and work. Yet within three centuries He had
changed the Roman calendar, which was practically the world's calendar. To-day
the world's calendars with small exception swing about the pivot of His birth.
All events of history are located by their relation to Him, their occurrence
"before Christ" or in a given "year of our Lord." The nations that call
themselves by His name are the dominant nations of the earth. The life of the
whole world has known a new life dating from His coming. His conception of life,
personal life and social life, is regarded throughout the world as the highest.
To-day more than ever He is dominant in the life of the earth. Of Him the old
German, Jean Paul Frederick Richter, said in words that have grown very
familiar, quoting freely, that "He, being the mightiest among the holy, and the
holiest among the mighty, lifted with His pierced hands the gates of empires off
their hinges, turned the streams of centuries out of their channels, and to-day
rules the world." Now please mark with keenest thought what this man Jesus said
about Himself. This is the most critical part of all to study regarding Him. He
claimed to be the Son of God in a sense that nobody else was; before His earthly
life He had been with God in closest intimacy, known only by Himself; He had
come down to the earth to tell men about God; when His errand to the earth was
done He would go back again to be with His Father, as He had been from before
the beginning of time. Let the thoughtful man note very sharply that this is the
claim Jesus made, and insistently made for Himself in the face of bitterest
opposition. Such a claim clearly stamps its maker as one of three sorts of men.
Either He was a fanatic, self-deluded with regard to Himself; or else He was not
a good man, but purposely said what He knew to be not so; or else—He was what He
claimed to be. The purity of His life, unapproached by any other man, together
with His constant, tireless, self-sacrificing service on behalf of others,
clearly rules out the supposition that He was not good. And all men have agreed
in His goodness. That He was a fanatic, self-deceived with regard to Himself,
swept off His mental balance by the high fervor of His spirit and hot rush of
His enthusiasm, would seem the much likelier supposition of these two. Yet the
wisdom of His teachings, equaled by none other, recognized and acknowledged
freely by all; His rare mental calmness and poise under all circumstances,
including the most trying; and the remarkable clearness and sanity of His
judgment effectually dispose of this supposition. It has been freely said, of
late especially, that these followers of His, whose accounts make up the Gospel
records, in their enthusiastic loyalty to Him, claim more for Him in their
writing than He actually claimed for Himself. Yet be it keenly marked there,
that it was this claim of His that led to the bitterness of the enmity against
Him, and to its final ending in His being put to death. And further, these
records are our only source of original information about Jesus and the
stupendousness of His character. The unrivalled place He occupies in history and
in all the race of men agrees fully with the claim put forth for Him in these
four small books. Now if these two suppositions be shut out there is left only
this, the most stupendous of the three, that Jesus actually was what He claimed
to be. And the severest criticism that can be made of our scholarly skeptical
friends comes in just here. They agree about His life, its pure, positive
goodness; His teachings, their unapproached and unapproachable wisdom; the rare
sanity of His judgment, and the sublimity of His conceptions. The skeptics of
skeptical France, the rationalists of rationalistic Germany, the worldly men of
all the world, all practically agree here. Yet they have not accepted what He
Himself believed about Himself. Surely if what they do believe about Him is
true, it is altogether logical to go on, and believe what He Himself believed
about Himself.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 19: THE CALL OF THE CHRIST.
========================================================================

The Call of the Christ. Now please note very keenly what it was upon which Jesus
laid the chief emphasis regarding Himself—it was upon His death. From His own
point of view the climax of His life was His death. That last year He
continually referred to it, and to its meaning for men. As the shadows of death
darkened down about Him, and its chill waters deepened in their nearness, He
asked that all who loved Him would remember His death. The Church has never
forgotten that request of the last night. However at times the emphasis of her
teachers may have swung away from it, the simple memorial meal from the Master's
own hands has brought out constantly into boldest relief His great death. Every
week untold thousands of many creeds and tongues and shadings of belief
reverently bow in the presence of the simple bread and wine, and remember that
Jesus died. The chief personality of this Book, and of all history, is this Man.
The chief event of this Man's life, in His own thought of it, was His death. He
declared that for a specific purpose He deliberately yielded to death. The whole
presumption is in favor of our believing that if He had not yielded Himself
voluntarily up to His enemies He would never have died. He would never even have
known any of the common weakness of increasing years; only a full maturing of
His powers. For the element of sin which works weakness and death was lacking in
Him. This puts sharper emphasis yet upon the significance of His purpose in
consenting to death. No fact stands out more plainly in the Gospel stories than
this, that He yielded to death of His own accord for a great purpose. The time
of His death, the fact of it, the manner of it, were controlled by the way in
which He repeatedly avoided His enemies until He chose to yield to their will.
What was the purpose of His death? His point of view in yielding to it may be
put simply in this way: all men have sinned; the natural, logical result of sin
is death; it grieved the Father much that man had gotten into such a bad fix;
out of love the Father sent Him down, and He came down to die that so man might
be saved from dying. Any man and every man who is willing may accept Jesus'
death as his own, and instead of his own. Whoever does can so be free from sin's
power to work death in him. But there is more than this in Jesus' understanding
of the matter. He did more than die. He lived a pure, sinless life before His
death, and He lived a new kind of life after His death. He said He would send
down the Holy Spirit to live in each man who was willing. That Spirit would burn
out the bad, make a man hate sin, and give power to resist sin. He would work
out within a man the pure life of Jesus, and more, the new kind of life that
Jesus lived after His death—a life lived on the earth but not subject to its
power, controlled from above. This new life would be lived in part only, for
there was no promise of bodily death being removed; but in a coming day it also
was to be gone and that new kind of life lived fully. This was Jesus' point of
view, and His purpose in yielding to death. There is a response to this in human
experience that is remarkable. There is that within a man's need that answers to
this plan of Jesus. It is very common to-day, in some quarters, to find great
emphasis laid upon the example of Jesus, and little or none upon His death. Let
our friend who exploits the example of Jesus as the chief thing in His wonderful
life, ignoring the sacrificial element in His death, let him try honestly to
follow that great example fully, with no apologies for his own weakness. And if
he is frank and honest he will be compelled to admit that it takes more than
example to change a man. There needs to be a very positive power put into a man
by some One else. It must be a power with the force of moral dynamite, if some
things such as impurity and selfishness are to be put out, and kept out, and
certain other things such as purity and strength and sweet, strong unselfishness
to be put in. Jesus asked that He might be accepted as man's Saviour, a Saviour
from the result of sin, and from its great power. This was His earnest appeal to
men when down here among us. It is the thrilling appeal of these four simple
Gospels to every man. It is to-day the eager cry of Jesus' heart to each of us.
A man in earnest can easily believe enough to respond with his whole life to
that cry. It means a new life, with new motives, and, infinitely more, new
power. And as a man quietly, resolutely steps into this path, new light begins
to break in from the east, and then more, and yet more, until some day, it is
promised, there will be the full shining of the sun.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 20: CHAPTER 3: THE PROBLEM OF AMBITION OR WHAT IS BEST WORTH WHILE
========================================================================

Chapter 3: The Problem Of Ambition or What Is Best Worth While


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 21: THE WORLD'S UNDER-MASTER.
========================================================================

The World's Under-Master. If a man is climbing a mountain he needs some road
marks, or an object to guide by, else he will not get anywhere. He may enjoy the
climb, and get some pretty glimpses of scenery, but he never reaches the top,
and is apt to lose his way. If he is in a large crowd he needs to have some
definite aim or he will lose himself in the crowd, and come to the end of the
day tired out and with nothing done. If he is crossing the sea, or the desert,
he needs a compass to guide by, or he is likely to lose his life. And if he is
simply trying to make his life count for what it was intended to, he needs
something to guide by. For sometimes the path is hidden and overgrown. And oft
times there is the confusion of a big crowd, with shuffling feet making both
dust and noise. And many times the path seems as difficult to find as on the
pathless sea or desert. And a good many seem to go astray and spend the day of
life on the less important things, and then towards its twilight, feel sharp
twinges of regret. So that we want to talk together quietly a bit about the
North Star of life, the compass, the true road-marks, that we may aim straight,
and travel steady, and reach the top. There are three great forces in the world
of matter, fire and wind and water. And the greatest of these is fire. There are
two great forces in the world of men, organization and the individual; a group
of men acting together and the man himself in the group; and the greater of
these is the individual, the man. The organization is dependent upon the men
composing it, and even more upon the man who is the leader. It is limited to the
things upon which these men can agree. The more men there are, the fewer the
things on which they will agree. The organization is a composite, not of the
men, but of so much of them as can get together in agreement on a particular
subject. By far the greater of the two is the man. The world of matter belongs
under man's thumb. It was given to him to subdue and develop and control. The
greatest force in the world of matter and of man is a man. The greatest factor
in human life is a man, with clear brain and of fine grain,, with clear light in
his eye, and the hue of health on his cheek, with poised judgment and rugged
will, with sweet spirit and pure heart. Every great movement in history has
revolved about a man as its pivot, or found embodiment in him. To recall the
great invasion of southern Europe by the hordes of northern barbarians is to
think of Alaric, the foremost of all their leaders, sacking the world's capital.
To think of the second most stupendous movement among the peoples of the earth,
the Reformation, is to see Luther, the greatest of its leaders. The French
Revolution found its embodiment in Mirabeau. To speak of law and legal codes is
to call up Moses, chiefest of all; and of autocratic government, Julius Caesar,
whose name still survives in the titles of the Russian Czar and the German
Kaiser.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 22: GOD NEEDS MEN.
========================================================================

God Needs Men. When God would do anything among men He chooses and uses a man.
When He wanted to grow a nation that would stand for the highest ideals of
revealed religion, even as later Greece stood for letters, and Rome for the
power of organization, He chose a man up in the Euphrates Valley. And about this
man, Abraham, He began slowly to build up that strange people which has had the
greatest influence of any upon the nations of the earth. When that nation, not
yet fully born as a nation, was in sore danger of being throttled in its birth,
He took a man, Moses, chosen from his birth, graduate in the highest learning of
earth's best schools, with a postgraduate degree from the University of Arabia,
and who has left the indelible marks of his native gifts and special training
upon that people, and upon the life of the whole race. With deepest reverence be
it said, when God would redeem a world He sent a Man. That Man was as truly a
man as though not infinitely more. Yet His character clearly marks Him off from
all other men. When He would awaken the life of the whole earth by awakening its
head, He chose a man, Luther. One cannot think of that vast moral and mental
upheaval of Europe which took so long to reach its flood tide without having his
vision filled with the figure of the German giant, and about him grouped,
through the years of that movement of staggering, regenerating power, such men
as scholarly Wycliff in England, brave Huss in Bohemia, eloquent Savonarola in
Italy, the keen and logical statesman Calvin in Geneva, and rugged Knox in
Scotland. When He would build up a new nation on the westernmost continent to
stand for liberty, He chose the stalwart Virginian, Washington. And when that
nation itself was to be taught liberty, and held together in its hour of
severest testing as a nation, He chose the English giant of Kentucky and
Illinois, Lincoln. And later yet, when He would teach the privileges of liberty
to those whose only birthright was slavery, He chose a black Washington for the
rare, difficult task. But one must never let the leaders make him forget the
faithful common folk without whom no leader could do his work. The common
everyday life, not told by the history writer, is dependent even more upon the
individual man, whether it be the manning of the ship, or the running of the
railroad, or the weaving of life's common web anywhere. Success and happiness
depend upon the one man, in the thick of things, quietly doing the commonplace
things, with an uncommon, faithful steadiness.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 23: THE BROODING NEED.
========================================================================

The Brooding Need. The greatest need of the world is men. The spirit of
organization which has seized hold of present-day life and specialized it so
highly in every direction makes that need greater to-day than ever. The
organization is no stronger morally than the man in control. It is no stronger
in ability than the men who serve it. And one never knows upon what one man the
whole intricate machinery may depend and revolve. The world needs men to-day as
never before. There are movements for higher ideals in national affairs waiting
for men to lead them. There are great movements in the people's religious life
waiting for the men who can embody them, and teach, and lead. And the need
always finds the man. There is a law of affinity that brings them together. The
need brooding over the face of the people seems to bring forth the man imbued
with its own spirit, to be its champion, though the higher in the scale of life,
the longer time does it take for the maturity that finds a perfect birth; man
takes longest of any of the animal creation, finer grained men still longer, and
leaders longest yet. The need disregards all questions of birth and blood,
training of the schools and social surroundings, so dear to human hearts, and by
an unerring intuition goes straight to its man, and patiently waits till he be
full ready.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 24: "FORGETTING, I PRESS FORWARD."
========================================================================

"Forgetting, I Press Forward." But that word " man " seems to have more than one
meaning. There is a cheaper use of it for the male of the human race, with the
usual supply of organs, and the usual stock of limbs to walk and work with, but
with no high controlling aim. And then there is the nobler use of it for that
fine spirit, of either sex, which sees the high aim of life, and bends every bit
of strength steadily towards reaching it. I want to have the boldness to talk a
bit about a man, the ideal man. In a day when the practical is seizing the lines
and driving hard that word ideal is misunderstood and abused. There is nothing
so really practical as the truly ideal. Ideal does not mean visionary in the
weak sense. It means aiming high; no, it means aiming highest. It has not gotten
up there, but it is reaching, stretching up. It is dissatisfied with anything a
whit less than the highest level. Its favorite motto is "Forgetting, I press
forward." Forgetting the things behind, I press toward the mark. The victories
are forgotten in the eager reach for greater. The temptations and falls and
failures are forgotten except as warnings in the onward push. The ideal man is
he who has a vision of the mountain top, and is sweetly, earnestly, untiringly,
unflinchingly making every bit of strength and time and every circumstance bend
towards reaching it. And who resolutely pushes aside everything that would
hinder or not help. We want in our talk to-day to get a bit, a good clear bit,
of a vision of that mountain top, to reach which is the thing best and most
worth while. It will only be a bit, though, at best. For every man must see his
own vision. And the vision increases in size and clearness as one climbs. The
man we are talking about just now is a trinity. There are three of him tied up
together. The three are in a scale ascending from lowest to highest. At the
lowest there is a body; yet though lowest it is never low; at the lowest it is
high. The lowest rung of this ladder is high. A step up is the mind. Every man
has a mind, though quite a number do not seem to have suspected that fact. It is
peculiar in its make-up; there is a cold-storage room for facts; a
photographer's highly sensitized plate for receiving impressions of all that
comes; and a judge sitting above all to weigh and sift and give decisions and
guide all below. And highest of all is the spirit which lives in the body,
thinks through the mind, and holds the sceptre of the life. The true man aims
steadily to have a trained body, its powers matured or rather maturing,
disciplined to obey and under full control. It is to be kept steadily in its
place of a faithful servant. That is a very high place, to serve faithfully the
purpose intended. He does not coddle his body, nor abuse it; he is not heedless
of its requirements; and, above all, he is not ignorant of its nature and needs,
and does not allow it to reverse the true order and become master. This man has
not attained, but he is reaching, and this is his aim.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 25: A DOUBLE TRINITY.
========================================================================

A Double Trinity. On the next higher level is another trinity, a trinity within
a trinity, for the mind is that. Through the five in-gates of eye and ear, taste
and touch and smell, come in the impressions, the information, the facts that
are put away. The intellect is the mind's cold storage for gathering and holding
all that comes. It should be kept clear, cool, and calm, ever alertly listening,
keen for facts, gathering, weighing, sifting, sorting and pigeonholing them for
use. Then there is the power to feel, the faculty that is impressed by all that
comes, and that gives expression to what is felt, the emotional nature. It
should be kept soft so as to record quickly and accurately all that comes in. It
properly is susceptible, plastic; on the one hand not stupid, nor on the other
overexcited or stale. There is perhaps less training of this faculty, except
narrowly in strictly professional studies, as music or art or medical skill,
than of either of the other two powers of the mind. It should not be repressed,
and should not be dominant. Yet to either one of those extremes does the
pendulum usually swing. There is a tendency among men to repress the feelings,
especially the finer feelings. There is a tendency among women to yield unduly
to the feelings and allow them to rule. Both are extremes to be carefully
avoided. A tear may be as manly as rugged strength. And repressed emotion may be
as womanly as the finer fibre of woman's strength. The tears that stand simply
for an emotion spending itself out are hurtful; they do but wear away the
strength to help that somebody needs. The tears that tell of a motive touched
and stirred into action in behalf of that which called them forth are beauteous
with rainbow light. The duty of the feelings is to note accurately all that
comes in and report fully to the will above. One should aim to discipline his
emotional nature that it may serve him fully. The man one should be has not
reached his aim here, but he is steadily stretching up towards it. Combined with
these is the third and highest member of the mental trinity, the will. The will
is the king here; the judge on the highest bench from which no appeal may be
taken. It is the autocrat on the throne, with no constitution to limit its sway.
There are various words used for the will: purpose is the aim or direction of
the will; determination is the quality of the will, telling how much or how
little the purpose may be depended upon; force is the driving power of the will,
telling how much pressure or how little may be brought into play in getting the
will's will done. The man who would be true to his being keeps all the avenues
of approach open to receive all there is, his intellect quietly and steadily at
its work, the feelings sensitive but well in hand, the will listening to its
servants and ruling fairly over all with a gentle but very firm hand. Then
distinctly above both of these is the spirit, the living spirit who resides
within this organism of body and mind, animating and dominating all the powers
below, and all the life. Such a man is ambitious, in the true sense of that
great word. He is reaching steadily towards the highest levels. Ambition is
healthful. I do not mean the feverish, envy-eaten, itching something commonly
called by that name, but the simple absorbing desire to attain the highest.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 26: A HIGH AIM.
========================================================================

A High Aim. What is the highest ambition that such an earnest man may attain to?
I do not say a high ambition, but the highest. There are many high targets at
which men aim. But he is in a bad way who is aiming lower than the highest. And
the highest includes all on the way up. These less-high things are added to the
man seeking the highest. In all fairness the highest must be one that is open to
all men, and possible to all. Leaving untouched many low, ignoble answers, there
are among men four distinct standards of highest ambition. There are many who
believe that to know is the highest achievement. Their number includes great,
worthy names, and many more equally worthy though unnamed by the crowd. And to
know is a great aim. Without doubt knowledge is power. It has literally
revolutionized all thought, and all methods of living. It has led to the saving
of numberless lives, and made the saved lives happier too. It is good to know,
and to know what you know, and, modestly, to know that you know what you know,
and that you do not know what you do not know. The old philosopher of Greece
declared this to be the true knowledge. But the man who sets this before him as
the chief ambition has a keen disappointment ahead. For the more you know the
less you know; that is, the more you know of that you do not know. The wider the
circle of knowledge, the broader is the sweep of ignorance. The higher the hill
of knowledge you climb, the farther views you get of what you do not know.
Knowing is largely a means of discovering the greatness of one's ignorance. If a
man set this before himself as the highest aim he is doomed to bitterest
disappointment. There are those who would take books and manuscripts and like
means of research, and, in imitation of the old Hebrews, make a calf of them—
shall I say a papier-mâché calf?—and say: " These be thy gods that shall lead
out of every Egypt of slavery, up into the promised land." This is a
comparatively small, but very select, company of choice spirits. This ambition
is open to the very small number. Even in our own land, where the public school
is so blessedly common, and colleges large and small of all grades are so
plentiful, these are practically, with the exception of the lower school grades,
for the few. Only a small proportion of all public-school pupils get as far as
the high school grade, a yet smaller number go to college, and many of these do
not complete the course. The world never knew so much, so many different things
as to-day, and never was more ignorant, profoundly ignorant; that is, ignorant
in the ignorance of the great masses of men, and ignorant too of the simplest
knowledge of true living. It is good to know, and to know the most and best, and
to know thoroughly what is known, but plainly knowledge is simply a road through
to something higher up. It is not a goal in itself.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 27: A STRANGE COAT-OF-ARMS.
========================================================================

A Strange Coat-of-arms. Then there is a great company whom nobody ever yet has
numbered, of every nation and neighborhood, who plainly believe that to have, to
possess, is the chiefest thing in life. The taint of this infection seems to
have gone into all circles. Nothing escapes its unhallowed itch. It has become
an epidemic in our own country. The old Hebrews had but one calf. Americans are
more prodigal with their calves than that. We have two at least, the paper calf
already spoken of and the golden; though the golden can no longer be properly
spoken of as a calf. It is a matured bull, but not of the polled type; it has
full-grown horns. Money is extremely handy stuff and extremely dangerous stuff
too. How rare the wisdom that reckons it at its full value—and a great,
untenable value that is—but keeps it strictly as a servant under the strong
thumb of a high purpose. In the partnership of a pure, holy purpose it seems
almost omnipotent. But when it is allowed to grip both lines and whip, it drives
a man such a pace as to use up all his strength, and leave him utterly winded
for anything else. Though the world has a larger supply of gold than ever
before, the vast majority of men are poor, strugglingly, pitiably poor. While
there never was as good an opportunity as to-day for frugal, steady men to get
enough and to spare, the crowd remains needy. And gold in itself is apt both to
be and to bring a curse. It is good to have, and to have the most that may be
gotten honestly, and unselfishly, and without the fever of it getting into the
blood. Its possession increases the possible power of a man enormously. Yet if
getting and having were the highest achievement it would mean that man's highest
estate is to be a safety-deposit vault. The correct coat-of-arms would be a
clutching hand. The man develops into a tightly shut fist. The life becomes a
gold-plated death. The yellow fever germ of the bank vault is sadly infecting
many a noble life to-day. It is good to have for our needs, and for the world's
need, but having is simply a pathway through to something higher. It is not the
highest ambition of life.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 28: A HIGHER AIM.
========================================================================

A Higher Aim. Then there is a standard above these, much above; the standard of
doing. There is a splendid company of those who believe that to do something is
the highest ambition possible to man. These are eager to do the notable thing.
They would be spoken of as having made a mark. Their names become known and are
pronounced with a touch of awe sometimes. This is a distinct step up. It is good
to know and to have; it is better to do. Achievement can transfigure both
knowledge and gold with rare beauty. It can harness them for the world's good.
When gold is at the command of hands outreaching in eager service it is
fulfilling its highest mission. The gray matter of the brain is greatest when it
is tingling at the warm finger-tips of helpful service. The man who knows a
great deal but does not make use of it is like one worth a million dollars—all
in big copper cents; it is not available for use in that shape. The man who is
busy getting money primarily for himself, not for use among others, is like the
Dead Sea. It lies at the deepest depression of the earth's surface; he lies at
the deepest depression below the surface of his fellows' needs. The man who is
bent upon achievement, the doing of some notable, worthy thing, is aiming higher
but not highest. To do something notable is not the highest ambition of life.
And yet more thoughtfully be it said that service is not the highest
achievement. Wherever there is a God-touched life there will be service, warm,
whole-hearted, untiring service; yet it will be the outflow of something deeper
in and deeper down than itself. The man who aims at doing as the chief
achievement of his life, without a deeper driving-power, will come to the end
when things clear up, hungry and tired, and both dissatisfied and unsatisfied.
It is good to know, and to have. It is better to do; to do the thing best worth
while, to do the most and the best; yet the highest ambition is not found here.
It is but a roadway through to somewhere else, a high roadway and noble, yet
only a roadway farther on and higher up.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 29: THE MAN WAITING TO GO ALONG.
========================================================================

The Man Waiting to Go Along. It is good to know; it is better to do; it is best
to be. To be pure and strong, to be honest and earnest, to be kindly and
thoughtful, and in all to be true, to be manly and womanly and Christly —this is
the greatest ambition of life. It is not in knowing or having or doing, but
through knowing and having and doing the best, it is in being, in what a man is
in himself. He can do most for others who has done most with himself. Mastery of
circumstances comes only through mastery of self. The highest sphere of action
is within. The little Corsican Emperor of the French could win great victories
on the battlefield, but he could not overcome the horribly selfish ambitions,
hungrily eating the heart out of his human spirit; The man of Tarsus and Antioch
had as intense an ambition, as great a grasp, and as strong a will, but his
chief ambition was to be well-pleasing to his Master, his grasp was upon his own
nature to bring it into subjection, and his will drove him over the world, that
all men might know the same blessed self-mastery through Jesus. He is aiming at
life's highest goal who, knowing the most and best, and seeking to have all he
needs and can wisely use, and doing the best and most, rests not content in any
of these, but hungrily pushes on towards purity of heart and simplicity of life.
The greatest ambition is not knowledge nor possessions, nor notable achievement,
but it is in being pure, and strong, and gentle, and warm; that is to say, being
Christly. It makes the heart glow to remember that this highest achievement of
life is open to all. Only the few, the very few, become widely versed in
knowledge, or possess large means, or achieve the notable things. The great
majority of us remain ignorant and poor and obscure. But any of us, and every
one of us, may reach to the highest level in this highest sphere. The mountain
white, the plantation black, the man crowded in the city slum or in roomier,
pleasanter quarters, the savage just emerging from his generations of savagery,
the cultured and university-bred, the money rich and the money poor—all may
enter here, and reach to the highest rung. The one most limited in circumstance
may touch the loftiest level. The one in most favored conditions may go as high,
but can go no higher. And mark keenly how this affects all the life in these
other matters. Where the warm, vitalizing touch of the spirit of Christ is upon
the life there is an eager thirst for knowledge. The new birth always includes a
new mental birth too. There will be earnestness in the vocation, the occupation;
a strong purpose to make things count for the most. There will be too an
aggressive spirit of work and service, a desire to achieve the best possible
within reach. But these will grow up out of that first; they will have the sweet
wholesomeness of the dominant purpose of the life. The passion to be masterful
in purity, in gentleness of strength, and simplicity of life, with Jesus as both
example and inspiration, will be the dominant thing. This is the mountain top.
Here is the pure, invigorating air, the far view of great beauty and
inspiration, the inward sense of strength from the climb, and rarest fellowship
with like spirits. A man never gets to the tip-top, though. For as the top is
reached a new top higher up comes into view, and then from that a higher yet.
There is always the upward lift of a higher level just above. But the climber
can't get very high alone. He would better not try. He is apt to make some bad
stumbles, and lose the main road. He does not need to go alone. There is a Man
waiting at the beginning of the path, with a face that is scarred but rarely
beautiful, and a most winsome way. He has been up the road with many others.
Those scars tell the story of the road He has travelled. We may each go along
with Him as our personal guide and friend on the way. Let us go.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 30: CHAPTER 4: THE PROBLEM OF SELF-MASTERY
========================================================================

Chapter 4: The Problem Of Self-Mastery


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 31: THE GREATEST BATTLEFIELD
========================================================================

The Greatest Battlefield The greatest battlefield on which a man ever fought is
within himself. The greatest victories are there. Victory there is the greatest
victory possible in a man's life. All the great achievements of men outside of
themselves are less than the achievement of getting mastery of themselves.
Victory here means victory elsewhere. All other problems of the personal sort
are included in this. Their solution is included in its solution. There must be
practical understanding about sin, and real power over it, before there can be
self-mastery. For it was sin that first stole self-mastery away. Selfishness
must be seen and gripped in its subtle as well as its coarse forms, before the
sweets of the finest self-mastery can be tasted. Doubt must be mastered, at
least far enough to give a steady footing and steady going, if the fragrance of
self-mastery is to fill the life. Only he who sees clearly the highest ambition
of life, and holds everything else strictly under, can climb the heights here. A
man's foes are those of his own household, the household of his own person and
his own life. Victory here brings the strength that wins on every other field.
And victory on any other field, or every other, is robbed of its sweets, if a
man is whipped on this field of his own personality. The man who can rule wisely
and masterfully within his own spirit is greater than he who rules a state or a
nation or a great corporation. It is true there must be some mastery of self
before there can be mastery of others, but then we are not talking about partial
mastery, except as it is a stepping-stone up to the highest. The greatest
mastery is self-mastery. The greatest man is he who has become master of
himself, not in the limited sense of some who do notable things on other fields,
but in the finest, fullest sense. This is the most fascinating of all problems.
It is a continuous problem, ever yielding to solution, yet never fully solved.
For every high level reached shows a higher beyond, so great is the possibility
lying within one's self. Man was made like God and to have dominion over all the
lower creation. That is the Bible way of saying that he was to be master of his
own self, and through that self-mastery to be master of all creation. The man
eager to reach the highest mastery will study God, for here is the original plan
for himself. He will keep in close contact with the Original. The closer that
touch the nearer does he come to his own true self.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 32: DITCHING LIFE'S STREAM.
========================================================================

Ditching Life's Stream. Self-mastery requires a full knowledge of one's self, or
at least a steadily growing knowledge. It means a reverential regard for the
marvelous functions and powers that he finds within himself. Control requires
knowledge, as well as more than knowledge. Increasing knowledge leads the way to
increasing mastery, and should lead to greater reverence. The man who reverences
his wonderful powers is held off just that far from sin. The man who sins
despises himself. Sin is never reverential. It is always profane. Self-mastery
is always reverential, towards God most and first, then towards the man himself
made in the image of God, and then towards all other men in that same image, and
towards all of God's creation. The man who sins is blurring and blotting out the
fine image of God imprinted on himself. Knowledge of one's self, and reverence
for one's self, are open doors, one after the other, into purity and maturity
and control. We have talked together a bit about the ideal man in the talk on
ambition. And one should keep that ideal clearly in mind. There are three
spheres within one's self, the body, the mind, and the spirit. Self-mastery
means fullest culture and control of all three of these. Spirit culture is the
rarest to be found of any of the three. But a full, rounded culture of all
three, each in itself, and each in due relation to the others, is rarer still.
But there is yet more to be said here. A man has three relationships, inward to
himself, upward to God, outward to his neighbor. The relationship to God holds
the key to the other two. There is ever the tendency to push some one of these
at the expense of the others. How sin has unsteadied our nerves, and given a
twist to our eyes! To keep true and steady the upper relation means to keep the
others true too. The nearer to God a man gets the nearer does he come to his own
true possible self. And the nearer to God the closer to one's fellows always;
and not only the closer, but the purer and stronger and fairer that neighborly
contact will be. Self-mastery means holding true to one's relationships, upward,
inward, outward. There are men who are regarded as masterful men who yet ignore
their relationship to God. They are masterful. They reveal rare power. Yet it is
one-sided. Another side, the upper, is untouched, ignored; and the one-sided
mastery itself is incomplete because it can become full only through what comes
in from above. The stream of life flows down from above, it flows in and
through, and then flows out to others. Any other running of the stream by
ditches or dams is changing nature's order, and spoils the life. It will either
stagnate and grow green slime on its surface, or else it will run low and run
out.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 33: THE ORIGINAL IMAGE.
========================================================================

The Original Image. Self-mastery means holding one's self and one's powers
steady to their true use; not lack of use, deficiency; nor over-use,
prodigality; nor misuse, the inappropriate, the improper; nor abuse, the
injurious; but nature's true, full use. It does not mean repression but control,
full expression through control. It recognizes that what is not controlled goes
to extremes; weak, bad, wrong extremes. Nowhere is the hurt of sin seen more
than in the unsteady, uneven swing of the pendulum of life. Sin is a sort of
magnet pulling it unduly over to one side and holding it there, or giving it a
wobbling movement. Mastery is holding things steady to their true use. One needs
to know what their true use is, and then to have the strength of purpose, and
the greater strength of discipline—tested purpose—and then something more, to
hold him steady to the high aim. Mastery of self through mastery by God, and in
order to be of service to one's fellows, is the ideal one should steadily strive
for. A man should not be afraid of that fine word ideal. It is held up to
ridicule quite a bit. It is sometimes used for something impractical, up in the
clouds, quite out of reach. It should rather be used for that towards which a
man aims. The ideal is the perfect natural standard towards which one should be
ever reaching and stretching up. Jesus said, "Be ye perfect, even as your Father
in heaven is perfect." He wouldn't have told us to do it, if it couldn't be
done. There is not only an ideal, "be ye perfect," but the highest possible
ideal, "as your Father is perfect." It is a peculiar quality of the true ideal
that it is never reached; for when reached it grows under the reaching touch
into something finer and higher and yet more attractive. True ideals are
wonderfully stimulating. They grow as they are touched. And while there is a
sense of gladness and content in the touch, that very touch itself gives a
yearning for a higher yet, and a new ambitious reaching on and up. The closer a
man sticks to the Original the nearer will he come to self-mastery. The original
of man is God. To know God is to come to know our possible selves—the men we
should be, and the men we will be. God is all the time revealing Himself to us
in nature, in the wondrous Bible, in our own inner spirits. We should be eager
to know Him, for so we come to know ourselves. And if we will know Him in the
deeper sense of friendship's intimacy we shall come to be like Him again. That
is self-mastery. Our greatest Teacher said: "This is life eternal, that they
should know thee the only true God, and Him whom thou didst send, Jesus Christ."


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 34: "STUDY TO KEEP QUIET."
========================================================================

"Study to Keep Quiet." There are four great traits of God to be seen in nature,
in His Word, and in His speaking within one's inner spirit. God is quiet. The
earth has grown noisy. Nature is still. There are storm noises and earthquakes,
but these result from disturbances above and below. Both the disturbances and
the noises are abnormal, not true to nature. Man has become noisy. God is quiet.
Noise reveals weakness; something is out of gear or tune. Sound is rhythm. Noise
is discord; it is a result of friction always, a jarring of two or more forces.
The members of the orchestra are not controlled by the leader's eye; they are
free-lancing. Strength is still. It may give a sound, but it is always a sound
of stillness. It is rhythmic, harmonious, musical. God is quiet. He is revealing
Himself, all the time, up to the highest possible limit, to His much-loved race
of men. But He can come in only through an opened door. He can reveal Himself
only to the man who opens his door. Sympathy with God, oneness of spirit with
Him, is the key. A spirit of quiet stillness opens the life to this marvelous,
quiet God. We can all recall how, in moments of quietness, God has spoken into
the inner ear, and we have long remembered what He said. We can remember, too,
how at such times His speaking has deepened the quiet in our souls. God would
woo us into that quietness of spirit akin to his own, that we may be living
again in our native atmosphere— His presence. To a man absorbed in Christian
activity, rushing, pushing, with nerves on tension and blood boiling, who
wearily turned to God in prayer, there came one day into the inner ear, as he
was on bent knees, a Voice speaking with great softness and equally great
clearness, "Study to be quiet." It brought a great hush into his spirit; in the
following days it became a veritable sheet-anchor, holding the bark steady in
many a storm. Its variations were brooded over that new life might come out of
its inner depths; "study to keep quiet"; "be ambitious to be unambitious," in
the world's abused meaning of that word ambitious. Many personal, practical
applications, quietly, gradually worked themselves out of it into the fibre of
habit. Keep the body quiet, the voice quiet, the eyes quiet, the thoughts, the
imagination, the emotions quiet. Put on nature's pneumatic tires and rubber
heels. "But," you say, "how self-conscious that must make one!" No, not if you
do it quietly, naturally. Quiet does not mean repression. It means the natural
expression of mastery, neither overdone nor underdone. Mastery is holding true
to nature. Mastery means quietness, the quietness of rhythm, of the sun's swing,
of the dew's fall, of God's action in all nature, of the truly masterful man's
natural life. As the days went their rounds, there came trooping to the support
of this message, one by one, a group of quiet verses. From out the midst of that
stormy Forty-sixth Psalm came the quiet, commanding note, "Be still and know
that I am God," (Psalms 46:10.) with its alternate reading, "Let go and know
that I am God." Let go your will and plans and you will find Somebody's else
will and plans for you. Let go of yourself, and you will become conscious of
Him. Be still, be still, and you will find God, and in finding Him be finding
your own true self, for in His image were we made. But what, a lot of persistent
practicing that "be still" does take! Into the hearts of many thousands have
been sung, in classical music, those words of David's, "Rest in the Lord, and
wait patiently for Him."(Psalms 37:7) The margin of the Revision gives fine
coloring, "Be still before the Lord." But the beauty, as well as the deep,
simple philosophy, or, rather, the beauty because of the philosophy, comes out
best in Luther's translation, "Be silent to God, and let Him mould thee." The
wondrous power of silence when it is in God's presence, and towards Him! The One
hundred and seventh Psalm (Psalms 107:26-32), which the Hebrews sang
responsively in their temple service, pictures vividly such a storm at sea as
many a man has known upon the sea of his life, or the inner sea of his heart.
But the great change comes when the oft-repeated "they" is changed to "He"—"He
maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still." His hands sweep
the human keyboard and discord gives way to sweet music. And what a wealth of
human experience is in the next line, "Then are they glad because they be
quiet." The return to quiet is a return to natural life, as planned by the Giver
of life. This vein of gold comes again to the surface in the Gospels. Matthew's
kingly narrative gives the imperial touch to the same storm scene on Galilee's
blue waters: "He rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm."
(Matthew 8:23-27) "Rebuked!" Something was wrong; somebody misbehaving; they
were raising a storm. The Master appears with His rebuke. He was recognized.
There was a great calm. If He were ever recognized and honored there would
always be a great calm. And there can be mastery only when there is calm,
nature's true condition. A change of figure couples with that this, also from
Matthew: "And He touched her hand and the fever left her, and she arose and
ministered to them."(Matthew 8:15) The riot of fever in the blood, angry faces,
green eyes, hooked fingers! His touch— the fever goes, the storm is stilled, a
great calm, then service. Only calm hands can serve truly. The Old Testament
brings up a familiar line that has strengthened many a life in stress: "In
quietness and in confidence shall be your strength." (Isaiah 30:15) Confidence
is quiet. Fear is always flurried. Strength is stored away in quietness. Out of
the quiet comes new strength. That exquisite, simple, Oriental love story, Ruth,
has in it a bit that contains meaning for one's heart apart from its original
significance: "Sit still, my daughter, until thou know how the matter will fall;
for the man will not rest until he have finished the thing this day." (Rth_3:18)
We who have Paul's prison psalm" (Php_1:6) find in its confident assertion—"He
who began a good work will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ"—good reason
for spelling Ruth's "man" with a capital M in our personal thinking of it, and
finding in that sweet story fresh stimulus to sitting still. God revealed
Himself to Elijah one morning early in "a sound of gentle stillness." (1 Kings
19:12 margin) The shepherd singer says, "He leadeth me beside the waters of
quietness." (Psalms 23:2) Job's true comforter reminds that much troubled man,
"When He giveth quietness, who then can condemn?" (Job 34:29) Solomon's
God-given wisdom has this: "A tranquil heart is the life of the flesh."
[Proverbs 14:30 (American Revision)] Fitting the Ninety-first Psalm into its
likely historical setting of the thirty-third chapter of Exodus suggests this
free translation of its first verse: "He that goeth aside to sit still in the
secret place with the Most High shall find Him coming over so close that he
shall be lodging under the shadow of the Almighty One." (Psalms 91:1, with
Exodus 33:7-11) These are some of the quiet verses that grew up around that
first one. And there are more. They should be looked up slowly, and breathed in
deeply. These statements reveal God. They reveal the true spirit in men who had
found God, and were living in Him. They reveal the true spirit of man. Quietness
is the native air of man. All his powers work best when they work in an
atmosphere of quiet. He can do better work; he can do more; he can do it more
easily, for he is moving in his native element. Quietness is a characteristic of
self-mastery, as well as an essential to it. But quietness does not mean
sleepiness, stupidness. It does not mean the inactivity of laziness. It means
keen alertness to all that is passing, full readiness to respond, with the steam
up, and the hand on the throttle while all is still and under control.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 35: LIVING MUSICALLY.
========================================================================

Living Musically. A second great trait of God is rhythm. Everything He does is
done with the sweet beat and swing of harmony. The word we commonly use for this
is method, or system. The finer word is rhythm; that brings out the ease and
music of it. Nature is rhythmical. There's a fine swing to it. Rhythm is music.
Life is musical, though many fail to see the leader's stick, and don't catch the
pitch nor keep time, and so flat badly and drag, and lose the uplift of it all.
All growth in life is by the musical pendulum-swing back and on, with the clock
hands steadily telling out the onward movement. The waters of the sea ever flow
back and on from ebb tide toward flood. The moon rises and goes down to rise a
bit higher each night, in a larger circle, until the full is reached, and
disappears by the same gradual rhythmic swing. So we get a measure of time, a
moon-th or month. The sun rises and falls through the same sort of rhythm, with
its own variations, and a larger swing, from lowest point to highest and back to
lowest, making the longer measure of our time. The seasons go from the ebb of
dead winter to new spring life, then full flood of summer life, then autumn's
decline, and dead winter, when for a while nature is at rest gathering vitality.
The day rises gradually from modest dawn to full noon, and so back to its sleep
at night. The musical rhythmic beat is in all nature and in all life. Were our
ears less dulled, and less absorbed in a different sort of thing, we could ever
hear the music of God in nature. Through the music of nature as well as its
great beauty He speaks to us and reveals Himself. God is musical. Man's love of
music, so universal, is evidence of the self-mastery to which he was born. You
can't force music. It must go in its own time, or it isn't music. We work best
when we work musically, with a fine beat and swing to all our movements; not
only best, but do most, and do it most easily. Soldiers on march cover a greater
distance, with less tire, when the band is playing. Young people in the
gymnasium get more enjoyment and more good out of the exercise when it is done
to the sound of the piano. So with the little ones in the kindergarten.
Tired-out men are rested by music. The world and the Church come together here;
music is the common element in the theatre and the church service. Men love
music. It is a bit of the original image of God in us. Men noted for great
achievement are, in varying degree, always men of method, of rhythm, of swing in
the thing they do best. Self-mastery means rhythm. It requires deep peace as its
basis; that is, absence of discord, and of the jarring note. As one comes back
into full sweet chord with God there comes the sweet peace, and then the full
swing of nature's rhythm, and so the heritage of self-mastery.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 36: IN STEP WITH GOD.
========================================================================

In Step with God. And God is unhurried; though our word for it is " slow.'' We
say slow because the fever of sin is in our blood, and sends us down the road on
a rush. All life is fevered. The heart beats faster than normal; the temperature
is too high; the eyes have an unnatural brightness; the nerves are strung up
dangerously near to a break. And all the time breaks are happening. But the
fever seems to intensify. Man calls nature slow. The growth of the trees, the
passing of the year through its seasons— we call these things slow. But nature
reveals God. It tells both of Himself, and of His method of work. Nature seems
slow because of this riot of fever in our blood. Nature is normal; the other is
abnormal, not true to nature. I suppose the insects at our feet, if they could
think, would probably think our movements very slow. How long it must seem that
a man's foot stays on the ground when he is walking, even walking fast. The ant
down there can scurry along several times its own length while that foot remains
unmoved. But the length of the foot's stay on one spot tells of the size of the
body it is holding up and swinging forward. God's movements seem so slow to us.
His march through history, the coming of justice to the weak and oppressed, the
shining of light in the dark places—all this has so often been called slow. God
is so big, so great. He is moving steadily on. The apparent slowness only spells
out the greatness of His size and of His plans. It takes time to swing great
things forward. Time is but a hyphen between two eternities. God lives and moves
in eternity. He breathes in the atmosphere of greatness. We are too apt to play
the part of the ants scurrying hastily, hurriedly, breathlessly along, and when
we do look up, if we do, think how slow that One up there does seem. But in this
we are not true to our real selves. We are like God. We belong to eternity more
than to time. It is this fever that's bothering us. Man needs the soothing,
controlling touch of God ever upon his life if the fever is to go, and never to
return. God is unhurried. He is keenly watching; never indifferent. He is
accurate; never missing the mark of His purpose. He is prompt; never ahead of
time, and never late. Man was made in the image of God. As he turns his face
full up to God, and breathes in slowly and fully his native air again, he will
rise again into the fine self-mastery promised for him. But unhurried does not
mean slow, nor indifferent, nor sleepy. It means the measured, onward movement
of a great spirit with a great purpose and limitless power behind. The other
word for unhurriedness is patience. Nothing reveals strength more than patience,
the power to hold still while waiting. Nothing disturbs much fine planning of
good people more than the lack of patience. We are all children in our
impatience. Patience is the most Godlike quality that man can have. It has keen
eyes, and quick ears, and a warm heart; it means seeing keenly, and feeling
deeply and acutely, yet holding still until the fullness of time has come for
action. Self-mastery is keeping step with God. Not running ahead of Him, nor
lagging behind Him, but going at His pace. We miss much of what He is saying to
us because we don't keep His pace, and stay alongside. We lose the immense
uplift of seeing His great plans and far-reaching movements in our feverish
haste to do things for Him. Self-mastery means keeping His pace. It is
unhurried.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 37: LIVING IN THE ESSENTIALS.
========================================================================

Living in the Essentials. There is always a simplicity about God and His
movements. His glory is overwhelming to human eyes and senses. The chosen
leaders of the new Hebrew nation could not bear the awful glory of His presence.
Yet this but tells of the contrast between His glory and purity, and sinful man.
"Clouds and darkness are round about Him." Yet this reveals the tenderness that
protects our weak eyes from the dazzling sight of His presence. When He speaks
in creation it is in simplest language. He walks in Eden in closest intimacy of
fellowship with man with a simplicity very winsome. (The revelation of Himself
there suggests the simplicity of greatness. Greatness is simple. And man is very
great for he is in the image of God. As he allows the image to be reproduced in
him he increases in his simplicity. The spirit of self-mastery is always simple.
Sin tangles things up. It makes life complex in a confused way. It blurs and
dulls our understanding, and weakens our grasp, and so things that are great but
really simple seem confused to us. We get confused and tangled up. True life is
simple. That word has been having new currency of late, and has been
misunderstood some. It does not mean crude, nor immature, nor lacking in culture
as some have thoughtlessly seemed to think. It means clear understanding of
essentials and direct action. It sifts through the mix-up of our common life,
and seizes upon the things that are essential, and grasps them firmly, and is
controlled accordingly. A huge piece of machinery seems very intricate and
complex to one not experienced in Its make-up and workings. But to the engineer
its law of action is simple. A sense of dread sometimes fills the mind at the
sight of giant wheels and beams in motion; a dread of the immense power, and of
what might happen. But while conscious of the enormous power there, the engineer
moves calmly in and out with his oil can, and touches the central wheels
quietly. It is all simple to him, for he understands. Being with God gives one
understanding. It clears his eyes. He comes more and more to see things through
God's eyes. So he comes into the simplicity of God, and of the self-poise and
self-mastery that are his birthright. He becomes simple in thinking of himself.
While recognizing and reverencing the great powers within himself, he knows that
these are a gift to him. He has nothing that he hasn't received from Another.
And these powers and talents can come to their full growth only under the
constant influence and presence of their Giver. Man needs an atmosphere if he is
to reveal his greatness. The tree must have its atmosphere of sunlight and air
and water and food, else it cannot live. God -is the atmosphere of man. Only in
the presence of God, in closest intimacy with Him, under the warm touch of His
breath, does he come into his growth. And getting clear in his relation to God
simplifies a man's contact with his fellows, and simplifies all of his thinking
of life. Simplicity is seeing clearly what is essential and what is
detail—non-essential, and being controlled accordingly. So man rises up into the
full mastery of himself through his utter dependence upon God. But simple does
not mean crude nor rude, not immature nor lacking in culture. It means being
controlled by the essentials, which themselves are always few and simple. Here
are found great traits of self-mastery. It is quiet, and rhythmic; it is
unhurried, and simple.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 38: THE FOES OF SELF-MASTERY.
========================================================================

The Foes of Self-Mastery. There are four tempting demons of very subtle spirit
constantly besieging the path of self-mastery. They are apt to come by turns,
not all at once. They make a sort of relay race of it; as quickly as one seems
held in check or winded, another takes its place, and the new arrival is usually
the opposite of the last one. Yet oft times they come in a bunch, all together,
with a rush. These four enemies are lack of use, deficiency; over-use,
prodigality; misuse, the inappropriate, the improper; and abuse, the injurious.
The man who catches fire with a noble purpose is apt to be attacked by the
temptation to overuse his powers. He feels the strong tide of the needs and of
the possibilities of life. Life becomes to him an emergency, with himself as the
chief factor in meeting it. He seems to be occupying the central position; so
much depends upon him. His view of the need or possibility becomes too intense.
It shuts out the broader view of a plan, the great wise plan of a master Planner
in which he is simply a part; an important part it may be, yet but a part; the
responsibility for the whole is upon broader shoulders. This temptation comes
very strongly, with the rush of a storm down the valley; many a man is swept off
his feet by it. The result is bad. Through over-use the man loses the chief
thing with which to work and fight —his mastery of himself; the working,
fighting power. The cause he would carry through is helped much, and may be
hindered more, because he does not bring to its aid the best weapon he can
use—self-mastery. If a man in his weakness persist here the over-use is apt to
lead to both misuse and abuse. His bodily strength fails; through that the
judgment is impaired; the vision blurs; the will grows unsteady, either weak or
stubborn; and serious mistakes are made. Tired-out nerves lose the sense of
proportion. Details look big and awesome. One's strength and gifts are used as
they were not meant to be. And some catch fire from below, with the ignoble
flames that belong lower down than the human level. They are caught by the fires
of self-seeking. Self becomes and remains the horizon of the life. They have no
eyes to see over the boundary lines of their own needs and lives. All the tides
of life washing up and out are reckoned only as incoming tides beating ever on
the shores of self. The self-fires send out some brilliant sparks and flashes,
and warm some needy folks by their glow. But this is incidental; they are
kindled and fed by the man primarily for himself. There is no sacrifice involved
in the heat given out. It costs nothing. On the contrary, it only feeds the
flames of self-praise. Misuse saps a life of the sweets of self-mastery. And
some are kindled with the fiercely burning fires of low passion that burn out
hot and quick. Or, the highly colored flames of pleasure get control. The
masterful man is controlled in everything by a high, strong purpose, never by
pleasure. Pleasure comes, and is all the keener, and leaves no dregs, because
not sought. True pleasure is the sweet fragrance of life brought out under the
pressure of a strong purpose. It should never be an end in itself. It comes as a
restful cushion to a man absorbed in his purpose. Sometimes there is a
smoldering or waiting of the soul-fires. The fire is there but has not yet
broken out into flames. Then some event, simple in itself or perhaps great, is
the whiff of fresh oxygen that brings the burst of flame. So it seems to have
been with Jesus. With all reverence be it said that He seems to have first
caught fire, as a boy, in Jerusalem. That visit to the holy city and temple was
the match that ignited all the wondrous nature within. The man who catches fire
sometimes lets that fire die down, and sometimes die out. That-is always a
tragedy. The man has had his vision. He has felt the upper pull upon his powers
and responded to it, and then has yielded to the suction of lower things. The
lapping waves of selfishness have been allowed to creep in and put the fire out.
This is one of the sad and frequent tragedies of human life. But some people
never catch fire at all. They never wake up. Their powers lie sluggishly asleep
while they drift slowly along with the moving tide made by others. They never
feel the blessed contagion of the fire of God. Their powers lie wrapped up in
closely folded napkin-cloths, under heavy clods, that never know pick or spade.
A man never amounts to anything until he catches fire. Lack of use robs many men
of self-mastery, and robs the needy world of their needed help. Mastery means
full use and full control; it does not mean repression, but full expression
through control. It means control of the body, developed, and held to its true
use; control of the mental powers developed fully and held steady to their true
use; above all, control of spirit, the master of all, developed and reigning
masterfully over all. The highest seems to yield last and hardest. Lack of
control in the realm of one's spirit seems the commonest of all weaknesses. It
may crop out in the wild outburst of rage, or the sullen, silent rage yet more
to be feared, with its tenacious memory and secret plottings. Men strong in
every other way often seem weak here. And in time the whole fabric is affected.
Nothing injures the body more than a fierce outburst of temper. And in time the
body, tired-out or weakened through disease, is responsible for much lack of
control on the higher levels. Greater is he that controlleth his spirit than he
who can control everything else but cannot do this.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 39: THE MASTERY OF JESUS.
========================================================================

The Mastery of Jesus. That rarely masterful man Paul gives us a bit in one of
his letters that is full of fascination here. He has been speaking of the fierce
storms of passion that leave many a man badly shipwrecked. Then he passes
quickly on to speak of the man who masterfully rides all storms, and brings his
cargo safely in. The latter man has a pilot on board who is responsible for the
glad result. But instead of a storm figure Paul uses a fruit figure. He says:
(Galatians 5:22) "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering,
gentleness, goodness, meekness, faithfulness," and then the climax is reached in
"self-control," or self-mastery. The eight traits named first are really an
analysis of that named last. Each is a phase of self-mastery. Note them again.
Self-mastery is the tender outgoing of the heart towards God and all men; this
is the normal attitude of man unhurt by sin; anything less or different is
abnormal. It is the deep glow of the heart-fires regardless of the dampening
dews of outer circumstances; the quiet, steady stillness of spirit even when
winds blow hard and storms beat fiercely; the patient enduring without
time-limit of misunderstandings and all that hurts through them; the gracious
bending of one's strength to the needs of others; the being thoroughly,
wholesomely good; the forgetting of one's self in the absorbing thought of God
and of man; and the full unflagging meeting of all that is due from us or needed
from us. This winsome picture of self-mastery is the result of the Spirit's
sway. This is a return to original conditions. The wondrous Spirit who created
man's home, and then man himself, comes down at Jesus' bidding to live in us. He
restores the original likeness blurred and rubbed out by sin. Here is the secret
of self-mastery. A man never achieves it alone. Self is no match for self. It
takes more than self to master self. This mastery is not by self; it is of self
by Another living within and working out His plans by our request and glad
consent. He who in the early dawn of man's life breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life comes to rebreathe in us, and reproduce all of his original
ideal. Man had broken with Him through sin. Now the break has been mended by
Jesus, and the original likeness is restored by His Spirit within. The habitual
cultivation of the friendly mastery of Jesus draws out most the mastery of self
and of circumstances. The keeping of the body pure and sound and under the thumb
of the will; the keeping of the mind clear and quiet and alert and ever bending
towards a keener discipline; the keeping of the social contacts simple and warm
and cheery; the keeping of the spirit ruggedly strong and softly gentle; the
keeping of the heart pure in its loves and motives; the meeting of all
difficulties and disappointments with the cheeriness which regards these as mere
subways through to places farther up the road; and with all this, under and
through, above and around all, a simple, confiding trust in God that sings most
when the subway lights all go out—this is the roadway to self-mastery. It was
trodden by Jesus when down here. It may be trodden by every man who yields to
the mastery of Jesus. There is no mastery without the Master. The same Holy
Spirit who controlled Jesus' human life has come down at Jesus' request to
control our lives. With Him alongside, in control, a man can climb the road up
to the heights. Let us go along with Him.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 40: CHAPTER 5: THE PROBLEM OF PAIN
========================================================================

Chapter 5: The Problem Of Pain


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 41: THE COMMONNESS OF PAIN.
========================================================================

The Commonness of Pain. Pain is as common in life as salt in the sea, and has
the same bitter tang and the same power to purify. It stands with hungry hawk
eyes at both ends of a man's life; it comes ahead of him at birth, is usually
felt at death, and keeps close by, with haunting vigilance, all the way between.
It has all the qualities of the fire that burns, of the knife that cuts, of the
bitter drink that makes you shrink back, and of the acid that eats its way
insistently in. And some have found that it has other companion qualities; for
fire cleanses, the surgeon's knife cuts out the bad, the bitter drink tones up,
and the acid neutralizes the evil. Everybody has suffered pain, and does, and
will. It is as common as sin, and has the same biting taste. One can scarcely
walk the streets, or attend a church service without seeing the badge of pain in
face, or form, or dress. The mail coming in, and the calling cards, contain the
same dark reminder. Ever since Eden the broken sob of its music has sounded
through time as a minor dirge, but with the constant interruption of discord,
and of loss of all sense of rhythm. In some lives the problem of pain pushes its
keen edge in early; in some not for a long while; but sooner or later it comes,
demanding imperiously to be considered and explained. No problem has been more
puzzling, or more puzzled over, and none more acute, because it edges its sharp
way so very close into the life, and so near to the most tender and sacred
relationships. It has baffled much study, and embittered the lives of thousands.
But other thousands, though not understanding fully, have learned the secret of
extracting sweets in the place where bitter grows. Many have found in it, or,
better, through it, the elixir of a new life.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 42: SORTS OF PAIN.
========================================================================

Sorts of Pain. Pain is of two general sorts, pain of body and pain of spirit. At
the time of that first break in Eden, Eve was told that there would be pain of
body in the natural course of her life, quite apart from sickness or disease,
and that prophetic word has had continuous fulfillment through all the centuries
since. Pain through disease which disturbs the body, and through the weakness
that keeps it from its full stint of work, has been as common. Then pain of body
through violence, through man's inhumanity to his brothers, and through the
ravages of war, has added intensity to the sum of suffering. Pain of spirit is
keener, harder to bear, and lasts longer than pain of body. It comes through
bitter remorse or regret over one's own conduct, through disappointed hopes and
plans, through lack of being appreciated, and through lack of a return love. It
comes through the subjection of our immature powers to discipline, which need
not be painful but most often is, in proportion to the strength of the character
so being matured; it comes through the chafing of an unwilling spirit against
the simple, natural discipline of life, which brings out fully our strength and
beauty. Then in our relation to others pain comes through failure in those we
love, through being deceived by them, and through the wounding of family pride.
The pain suffered by our loved ones brings keen pain to us, and the pain of
having them slip from our grasp out of life may be shorter, but is always
sharper and severer, with the dull throbbing that so often follows. There is a
sharp pain through culture, proportioned in its sharpness to the extent of the
culture, and softened in its expression by the warmth of one's sympathy with
others. The ear trained to finest harmonies is keenly sensitive to poor music.
The eye trained to fine blending of colors is pained by immature and untaught
work. The mind drilled to the discriminating use of simple, strong language
suffers a bit at contact with the reverse. The heart made pure through contact
with God, and through painful heroic discipline, is pained at the sight and
touch of sin. The heart grown tender through the Spirit of Jesus within is hurt
by the suffering of the distressed. The spirit made eager for the highest ideals
in life through the study of the Bible, the classic of ideals, is pained over
the conditions prevalent in all walks of life. The man who knows the blessedness
of knowing God bleeds at heart for those ignorant of Him. The emergency that the
whole world is in through sin calls for sacrifices that bring great pain of
spirit. A young man in a small church college in the middle West was stirred by
the needs of the foreign mission fields. He determined to offer his life and
service to help meet that need. But before committing himself actively with his
church authorities he wrote to her who had given him life, telling her of the
burning desire in his heart, and asking her consent. By and by the answering
letter came. It was blotted with tears. Its pages brought up a vivid picture of
that mother's face and heart. She replied, in effect giving her consent, and
then writing down these words: "I never knew until now how much it cost God to
give His Son." Many a one has suffered all these different sorts of pain at some
time, and many of them at the same time. They all gather within the human
spirit, incased temporarily in a human body. Job suffered pocket pain through
loss of property, heart pain through loss of his children, pain of body through
disease, pain to his pride through loss of prestige and the criticism of his
friends, pain of spirit in puzzling over why it all came to him; then the
hardest bodily pain in continued pain, and at the last the severest spirit pain
in realizing how different he was from the God he worshipped.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 43: THE SOURCE OF PAIN.
========================================================================

The Source of Pain. Pain is the distressed outcry of a broken order; pain of
body comes through some breaking of nature's arrangements there; pain of spirit
through consciousness of elements within or without that strain and jar, and
clash and break. All pain is a result of sin, somebody's sin, sometime,
somewhere. The connection can rarely be traced, and never traced fully, but it
is there. That connection may be direct, where a man's own actions cause the
break that cries out its distress in pain. Through ignorance of the body's
nature and needs, or through thoughtlessness or passionate desire where we do
know, the break is made. The pain does not always come at once. Nature is very
patient and long-suffering, but come it will,, however long the wait, for she is
likewise very exacting. Countless instances of so called "mysterious
providences" are a result of hardships we thoughtlessly or willfully inflict
upon our bodies. For a number of years I have been trying to observe closely
instances where sickness and death have come, causing a great shock and deep
sorrow, and either criticisms of God or a long drawn sob over the ' strange
dispensations of providence. Yet from the bits of information available it was,
in each instance, clearly evident that the death that seemed so untimely and
strange could be traced directly to the person's own acts done in ignorance; but
most times, if not always, a thoughtless ignorance that a bit of thinking could
have prevented. Then there is the indirect or more remote connection. Whatever
we believe about original sin as a teaching of moral truth, we are all compelled
to believe in a transmission, through the blood, of traits that are a result of
sin in those who have lived before us, either near or remote. That physical
traits and ailments pass faithfully and ruthlessly on through generations is
familiar enough. Most men come into life with the story of somebody's sin,
whether through carelessness or willfulness, written down on the tablet of their
bodies. It is extremely common to hear work spoken of as a curse, as though a
punishment for man's sin, or a result of his sin. Yet work itself is in no sense
a curse, but a positive delight, and a help. But the conditions that sin has
woven around work have made much of it a straining, grinding drudgery. The break
of sin left and leaves man with less than his normal strength. It has affected
the earth so that it does not yield so readily to his efforts, and further
increases his stint of work by producing thorns and such growths as must be
fought and overcome. And so with less than nature's allowance of strength, and
more than nature's allotted task, very much work becomes to thousands a
grinding, slaving, cheerless round that brings pain. It can all be traced to
sin, the break in the natural order. Job's friends, or critics, supposed that
his pain and numerous distresses were a punishment sent by God because of his
sin. Job resents such talk. He felt instinctively that he had been on such terms
with God as to shut out any such thought as punishment. Let it be remembered
that God is not punishing men in the sending of pain and affliction. God is not
dealing with men in judgment; if He were the case would be settled at once for
all of us. Judgment is reserved for future final settlement. And even then
punishment is not a thing that God chooses to be meted out to us as a judgment
for our misdeeds. It is something included in the sin itself. The worst thing
God could do to any man would be to leave him utterly alone to the working out
of his sin. In great graciousness He does not do that. But He does keep hands
off in part, and permits much of the result of sin to work its way out. And so
pain comes through the break in the natural order. The first mention of pain in
the Bible is in connection with the difficulty with which woman would perform
the most difficult and delicate task entrusted to her. All the life of the body
is from God. The natural life is lived in full contact with Him. That first sin
was a break with God. Any break interrupts partially the flow of life from Him
to us. The bodily duties are then done with difficulty, for some of its vitality
has been cut off. In the most difficult duty the lack is most keenly felt. Had
we fullness of knowledge, and subtlety of insight, every bit of pain could be
traced clearly, logically, step by step back to some act of sin. And the tracing
would be thought a strangely interwoven network of sin and that which sin
causes. This does not necessarily mean that the pain is the result of the sin of
the man who suffers the pain. Clearly there is a vast amount of pain on account
of others' acts. Life is such an intricate network that no man can move or
breathe without affecting somebody else. How terribly selfish sin is. Every act
of sin brings pain to somebody else, to those nearest and most tenderly loved,
and those at the farthest reach of influence. Jesus suffered severest, keenest
pain of both body and spirit through sin— the sin of others. Every bit of pain
that came to Him came either through particular acts of sin, or through the
whole fog of sin that enveloped His life as an atmosphere. There seems to be on
record in the Bible just one exception to this. Jacob was lamed in his body by
the strange touch in the night wrestle, in the dark, done by Jabbok's narrow
waters. A direct act of God afflicted the natural order of his body. Yet this
seems to be the only instance of the sort mentioned in the long list of Bible
biographies. And, too, there may not have been actual bodily pain, though there
was a crippled body hindering and hampering his activity. The condition of his
body gave his spirit keen pain, no doubt; yet that was because it reminded him
at every step of his willful stubbornness against God, and God's plan. And mark
keenly that here this unusual thing was done for service' sake. God's plan for a
world centred at this stage in this one man. In His passionate outreach for a
race, He was shut in to using Jacob. The unusual act told the greatness and the
acuteness of the emergency. So there may be in rare cases a direct touch of God
when some great purpose requires it. But clearly that is very rare. God does not
need to resort to such measures, as a rule. There are always enough doorways
opened through sin's breaks to give all the opportunity needed for disciplinary
work. The rareness of such action gives peculiar emphasis to the general
principle that pain comes through the natural channel of a break in the natural
order. The vast, intricate, subtly intangible, but terribly real network of sin
envelops all life. One cannot move without touching and being touched by its
meshes. The atmosphere of life has become affected by sin as by a pervasive gray
fog. One cannot draw the breath of life, however lacking in mental or spirit
culture, without suffering pain, however little he may think of it. The very
stupidness to pain at times spells out the commonness of it, and its hardening,
dulling effect upon the spirit.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 44: JESUS AND PAIN.
========================================================================

Jesus and Pain. But it has been said that Jesus came to bear our sins, and all
of their results; that through His sacrifice not only are our sins forgiven, but
our bodies are to be healed, and all sickness and pain to be removed. It is said
that Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil, and this has been taken to
mean to destroy both sin and all of its results. And all of this is true,
blessedly and wondrously true. Yet simply to say that much is not to tell the
whole of the truth. There is more to be added to make clear how sweeping Jesus'
work is, not only for all the life of a man, but for all men. The salvation from
sin, and all its results, that Jesus came to work out is not completed. It is
completed so far as He is concerned, but not so far as the world is concerned.
It is complete in His dying and rising, but not in its application. The
"finished work of Christ" for the world is finished by Him, but not finished in
it. The salvation worked out on the cross is to be worked out among men. Each
man's salvation is worked out for him, but not yet fully worked out in him. The
present is a transition period, a long period, it is true, now counted into the
twentieth century, yet a transition period, preparing the way for a period of
fullness. It is a time of working and waiting and looking forward to something
much better. Those who stood closest to Jesus preached (Acts 3:21; Romans
8:20-23; I-Corinthians 15:23-26, with Matthew 24:14) that He would remain away
until His dying for all men had been made known to all men, then He would return
to carry out the fullness of His plan of saving men. Paul says that then Jesus
will put down all our enemies including the last—death, the culmination of all.
The fullness of our salvation waits upon the spreading of the news of Jesus to
all men. Here is a strong inner motive for worldwide evangelization. The
carrying out fully of the Master's plan in that will bring to us the fullness of
our freeness from sin and all its results. But, we are reminded, Jesus healed
disease when here, and relieved every form of bodily distress. Yes, He did. The
Gospel days were sample days of the Kingdom. Jesus had not yet been accepted,
and so the Kingdom was not set up. He had not yet been finally rejected, but was
wooing the nation, and so He gave illustrations of Kingdom days and of Kingdom
power. We live in the Church period. The Church occupies the gap in the Kingdom.
When the Church mission is completed the Kingdom will come in, with the Church
itself as a part of the larger movement. Healing, removal of pain, is a law for
all in the Kingdom; it is a privilege in the Church for those who will accept
it; and a gift to be exercised by the very few who can be entrusted with it.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 45: THE MISSION OF PAIN.
========================================================================

The Mission of Pain. This leads at once to the question of the mission of pain.
Pain has a great mission. While God does not send pain, He lets it stay, though
He might intervene and take it away. While as a rule, with possibly rare
exceptions, it comes through sin, it remains through the deliberate purpose of
God. God has a great purpose of love in pain. He uses it as His teacher. It is
the greatest of all His great teachers. It charges the very highest rates,
insists upon the severest discipline, will tolerate nothing short of the highest
ideal, needs our sympathetic help in working, and produces the very finest
results. God's greatest struggle has been with the human will. He made man a
sovereign in his will, and right well man has proven his sovereignty. All of the
great wealth of God's love and planning can be given only by our own free
consent. Sin has twisted our eyes. We prefer something else to God's way. Our
preference is not good; it is bad; only His is good. He insists upon giving His
best. It can be given only through our consent. So His greatest task has been
with man's will, to get man's consent to live on God's plan, and receive the
wealth of God's planning. A great task it has been; God's hardest task;
sometimes an impossible task; some men won't yield. It has been a stupendous
task, for man's will has in it the strength of God's will. And sin has swung the
will's natural strength over to the extreme of obstinacy. And so God has had to
use the greatest thing He could find to overcome the bad, weak obstinacy in
man's will. Pain is His severest, most thorough, oftentimes his only successful
agent. He does not make it. Sin made it. He uses it. It is a bit of the
diplomacy of love that takes a result of bad, and uses it to offset the bad, and
get good. His love must be very great to hold Him steady to His purpose; for
what pains any man pains God too, because it pains the man. There is nothing
that so breaks the stubbornness of a man's spirit, and bends the obstinacy of
his will, as pain. It comes eating its way in so subtly, so cuttingly, so
relentlessly and insistently, that all the footing slips out from under a man,
his jaws relax, and his fist loosens into a hand again. Frequently the
stiffest-set jaws will consent to relax only under the peculiarly persuasive
edge of the knife of pain. In that old rare gem of literature, the book of Job,
the evil that came to Job came through natural channels, at the secret
instigation of the evil one, by permission of God, and strictly within the
limits He set. When the purpose of God in the moulding of Job's character was
secured, the pain was quickly removed, and greater blessings than ever he had
known were poured out lavishly upon him. There is an intensely vivid picture of
God's love, its yearningness, and strong patience, and dissatisfaction with less
than the best. It is in Malachi's prophecy. The expert workman in refining
metals sits patiently over the pot of liquid metal, picking out the dross sent
up to the surface by the intense fire, watching keenly for every speck and spot,
until by and by his own face is clearly reflected in that over which he is
working. Then, the process complete, the metal pure, the fire is withdrawn. Its
work is done. So, we are told, God does. Pain is a fire, sometimes heated seven
times hotter than usual. God's love and great ideal for us hold Him steady while
the dross is being removed. He is not content until He sees again clearly
reflected that great likeness of Himself in which we were originally made. When
the likeness is clear and full the fire is withdrawn. And in the after glory
that shall come the pain will seem light, and the time only a moment; yet how
impossible that often seems at the time of suffering. The last time I heard Mrs.
Margaret Bottome she told of meeting an old friend in Europe. This friend was an
unusually gifted woman, who knew much of the world's culture and prestige. She
had had a bad break in health, and was seeking to find recovery abroad. As Mrs.
Bottome met her, so great was the change in her friend's appearance through the
[illness that she involuntarily exclaimed, "What a wreck!" And the friend
quickly replied, with her soul in her voice, "Any wreck for such a shore!" She
was already getting a taste of the after-glory. Yet had she gone to school to
God with her will earlier, her bark would have reached the same shore by
straight sailing instead of by stranding.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 46: COMPENSATIONS.
========================================================================

Compensations. Pain has great compensations. Its power to purify and refine is
very great. It shakes loose, and sifts carefully out, the coarse and poor and
bad. It weaves over the texture of one's life into a much finer fabric. The fire
that burns also cleanses; the knife that hurts so is removing that which will
hurt more seriously; the bitter draught from which we draw back so strongly has
great tonic power. But the pain needs help to do its best work. There needs to
be a looking steadily through the pain up to the great purpose of God, and on to
the compensations, if it is to produce the finest results. To be made pure and
fine is a full compensation for great pain. Then there is the sympathy of Jesus.
To use the word sympathy of Him in this way is to say that He knew pain. He knew
it with a greater intimacy than any other human that has trodden the earth, for
He was more keenly sensitive to it. Every pain that man has suffered Jesus
suffered, except of course that coming through remorse or regret. Every pain
that man knows was intensified in Jesus; the purity of His nature, the
sinlessness of His life, the sensitiveness of His great spirit made Him more
keenly alive to pain, and so made it the greater as experienced by Him. But more
than that, He went through the trying and maturing experiences of His life that
so He might have a perfect sympathy with our humanity. He was made perfect in
His humanity by the experiences He went through. Only so can a man learn. Jesus
was perfectly human in going through human experiences. He did it purposely,
with a great, strong purpose, that He might be one with us. So He becomes our
keen, warm sympathizer. He suffered pain that so He might help us in our
suffering of pain. He can come near because He knows by touch what we know.
There is marvelous compensation in this, the sympathy of such a one as Jesus. A
man who knows anything at all of the winsomeness and attractiveness of Jesus
would be glad to go anywhere for the chance of getting closer to Him. He doesn't
mind a rough road if in it the Master draws nearer; doesn't mind it! —he prefers
it under such circumstances. The wild storm on the sea is welcomed if so you
feel His arm tighter around you, and His presence more tenderly near, and His
face almost seen by your outer eyes. Jesus relieved suffering when down here
long ago. He seemed to delight in relieving it. He would fairly wear Himself out
in caring for men, though He had rare wisdom to avoid the bad extremes that we
know so well. He seemed to forget His own needs as long as there was any needy
body waiting a chance to be healed. Those great miracles of healing were not
done to prove His divinity; they were done because He was divine; it was the
love of divinity going out eagerly to His needy race of men. They did prove His
divinity, incidentally; but were not done for that purpose, but to relieve men.
So He reveals to us His feeling towards pain. He knows its sharp, cutting edge.
He has power to remove it. He will remove it for us now if so the higher thing
in mind can be reached too. He could, and would, remove it for more if there
were more reaching up after the highest. When the pain remains, so does He. When
it seems sharpest He comes nearest. And amid the tugging twinges His presence
makes one sing joyously, though often with a tremor in the voice,— "E'en though
it be a cross That raiseth me, Still all my song shall be, Nearer, my God, to
Thee." Then there is the compensation of being Jesus' messenger to others.
Suffering qualifies us for ministering to those who suffer. Without doubt God
permits some experiences to come to us that so He may use us to help others
passing through just such experiences. I recall an English clergyman speaking of
this at a conference in Boston. He had gone through a most trying experience.
For days, he said, all was dark to him. He could not understand the way he was
being led. At last light broke in through a particular passage of Scripture, and
all cleared up. He preached on that passage the next Sabbath morning. At the
close of the service one of his members came up with eyes aglow, and surprise in
her voice, and said, "How did you know what I have been passing through? " He
said he didn't know. Then she explained that he had spoken of her identical
experience, and through his message the light and peace had come anew to her.
Others spoke in surprise of the same thing happening to them. Then he
understood, and was grateful indeed to be God's messenger. And more than
grateful, he was willing to go through any experience the Master might send if
so he could better serve Him among his own fellows. Even so must God do in
teaching men. We can tell to others only what we know personally. He can use in
telling the truth only those who know it. Experience is equipment for service.
Grief qualifies us to help those with like grief. There is a right use of grief
and a wrong, weak use of it. Its right use is to let it be a motive impelling us
to help those who have had the same trying experience. Its wrong and weak use is
to' let it remain simply an emotion draining our strength. In the midst of his
great sorrow Tennyson wrote— " Ring out the grief that saps the mind, For those
that here we see no more." We should ring it out, and resolutely keep it out, as
a mere emotion that saps and wears. Activity in service is a help in bearing
what comes. Pain has its temptations. One of them is the use of moral
chloroform; the dulling of our sense of pain in a round of dissipation, or of
distracting gayety. It only puts off the evil hour of feeling it more keenly
than ever, with less of moral strength with which to bear it. There are, too,
some wondrous compensations in that keen pain of having the one who has been by
your side, a bit of your very self, slip from your grasp, out of reach, into the
other life. To have known love, to have loved and been loved, is to have known
the sweetest and most lasting of all life's joys. It makes one the stronger and
gentler. The love that has stood the test of time weaves the finest threads into
the life web. To love is to live. The life is richer and deeper, finer and more
fragrant, for the love that has come in, and that has been drawn out, even
though for a time the one loved and loving has slipped from your side upwards.
Then there is the heritage of a memory that will grow in its fragrance and
richness with the passing days. That is one of the cushions to ease the heart,
for the bit of time in between now and the future meeting. And then we must not
be forgetting that the loss is of companionship down here; all of that; yet only
that. That is much, yet it is only for a while, that the old Book calls little,
"how little! how little!" (Hebrews 10:37, literally, "for yet a little while—how
little, how little, and He" etc.) "A day and you will meet; A night and you will
greet." (Maltbie D. Babcock) But when you miss present companionship, there is
great joy in thinking over the wondrous companionship enjoyed by the one loved,
and now gone. The companionship of Jesus now makes that face all alight with the
radiance from His, while the marvelous music of the homeland fills ears and
heart. Your loved one, side by side with the Master, thinks of you, and is quiet
and glad for all the joy coming to you, and all the loving sovereignty of Jesus
over your life. He is enjoying the fullness of life. "This is the death of
death, To breathe away a breath, And know the end of strife, And taste the
endless life. And joy without a fear, And smile without a tear, And work, nor
care, nor rest, And find the last the best." (Maltbie D. Babcock) And if it be
the one of closest tie who has gone, a husband or wife, leaving a child in your
care, there is more yet of sweet, hallowed compensation. It is the highest
relation of life that yields the finest fragrance. For there is the fine fruit
of your love, a precious new life, God's gift to you revealing and cementing
earth's highest, human love. In your child, his or hers likewise who has gone,
that loved one comes again to you, and abides ever with you. And yours is the
unspeakable privilege of moulding into finest character this bit of your loved
one's life left behind with you. This is a great compensation. And so in the
midst of greatest pain there may come the sweetest rest of spirit, because of
these great compensations. And, more than all else, because of the presence of
the greatest Sufferer and greatest Sympathizer as our closest Friend. Through
Him is rest in pain of any sort. "There is a rest that deeper grows In midst of
pain and strife; A mighty conscious willed repose In depth of deepest life. To
have and hold the precious prize No need of jealous fear; But windows open to
the skies, And skill to read the stars. Who dwelleth in that secret place, Where
tumult enters not, Is never cold with terror base, Never with anger hot. For if
an evil past should dare His very heart invest, God is his deeper heart, and
there He enters into rest. When mighty sea winds madly blow, And tear the
scattered waves, Peaceful as summer woods below Lie darkling ocean caves. The
wind of words may toss my heart, But what is that to me! 'Tis but a surface
storm—Thou art My deep, still, resting sea." (George MacDonald)


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 47: VICTORY.
========================================================================

Victory. But there is a gladder message yet for the bells to ring out tunefully
to all men. It is this—there is to be victory over pain. It will be a full
victory too, with the flags flying, and the music filling all the air, and
sweetest in its filling of all the heart. There are certain foretastes of
victory. The nearer we come to living in full touch with God, with intelligent
knowledge of the nature and needs of our bodies, the nearer shall we come to a
life free from bodily pain. This will not remove bodily pain and discomfort
wholly, for we are a bit of all that has gone before. Each man is a connecting
link between two generations. He may change the stream of life flowing into the
next generation, and he may change a good bit the stream of life he received
from his fathers, but never wholly. Neither does this affect the pain of spirit
through the contact of culture with men and conditions around us. The nearer God
one gets and the closer to His ideal for us he grows, the greater is the pain
over the ravages of sin, but the steadier too is the faith that sees through to
the end of victory. There is, through Jesus, victory in pain over pain. The hurt
remains, but the sting has been extracted. With Him alongside, close up, and the
clearer vision of the great purpose, and through to the end, the pain of pain
lessens and softens, even while the outer pain remains. Then there is the final
victory. Jesus' resurrection is called a first fruits by Paul. It is a wondrous
conception of a winsome truth. First fruits is the language of harvest. The
first fruits is the beginning of the harvest; the great crop remains to be
gathered. There has been a harvest of pain; there is to be a harvest of
painlessness. There has been a harvest of sorrow; there will be one of joy.
There has been a great harvest of death, of separation, of breakings; there is
to be a greater harvest of life, of reunion, of tying up all the old breaks into
knots that no fingers will ever undo. The harvest of pain and sorrow, of death
and breakings, has been the result of sin's sowing. The new harvest of painless,
joyous, reunited life is through the sowing by Jesus of His own life down among
men. Jesus is greater than sin. The coming harvest will be so great as to make
the others forgotten. The work that Jesus finished on the cross and the
resurrection morning is to be finished in all the earth. The first fruits is to
be followed by a great full fruits. The Bible reaches a thrilling climax in the
closing chapter of its closing book. One can believe anew in the divine guidance
of the men who put these books of the Bible together as he comes to the climax
of surpassing splendor at its close. The new glory is revealed as a new city.
The city has been the superlative of human life. There bad has been worse, and
good best. The momentum of man's activities has drawn to the city centre the
leadership of life. On the bad side the city has become a condensed epitome of
darkness and poverty, of pain and misery, of sin and distress. Here in John's
great vision it becomes the glorified condensation of all that God's love has
planned for man. The presence of God is its glorifying, transforming, radiating
atmosphere. "The Lamb is the light thereof." Death has been cast out. There is
no mourning, nor crying, nor pain. All the former things are passed away. And in
a fine touch it is said that God Himself "shall wipe away every tear from their
eyes." That word "away" might better read "out"; "shall wipe out every tear."
The tear forced out under pain's pressure shall be annihilated, for pain itself
has been wiped completely out. "And there shall be no curse any more, and the
throne of God and of the Lamb shall be therein; and His servants shall serve
Him; and they shall see His face; and His name shall be on their foreheads. And
there shall be night no more; and they need no light of lamp, neither light of
sun; for the Lord God shall give them light; and they shall reign unto the ages
of the ages." The old order has completely passed away. The victory over pain is
final and full through Jesus.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 48: CHAPTER 6: THE PROBLEM OF GUIDANCE
========================================================================

Chapter 6: The Problem Of Guidance


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 49: A GUIDE OVER LIFE'S TRAIL.
========================================================================

A Guide over Life's Trail. Nobody thinks of climbing the dangerous passes and
peaks of Switzerland without a guide. The experienced travelers are very careful
about getting experienced guides. Even then a man sometimes loses his life.
These guides have to learn the way at the risk of their own lives, and they take
serious risks every time they climb. And this is the sphere where a man can see
and feel with his outer material senses. How much more does a man need a guide
for the climb on into the future days, where no man has yet learned how to see
or feel an inch ahead. With all our great advances in knowledge and science, we
don't know surely a clock's tick ahead what is coming. The coming year, and
month, and day,—even the next moment is utterly hidden from our eyes. We are in
Egyptian darkness that may be felt, and that is felt, about to-morrow. We are
used to it from the earliest birth of life, and move on with a certain
steadiness, planning, and shrewdly guessing how certain matters will go. That
very steadiness of step in our common life, on into the unlit darkness of the
next hour, tells of a great Guide whose hand upon life all men have learned
unconsciously to trust. But the factor of fear is never absent from human life,
though it lessens steadily as one conies to know his Guide. The man who risks
going alone in a dangerous mountain climb in daylight is reckoned foolhardy.
Even he wouldn't go in the dark night. How much worse is it to go alone on the
life-climb without even a single ray of daylight to show the way. Yet many do
just that. Foolhardy—would you say? There is a tender awe in knowing that there
is some One at your side guiding at every step, restraining here, leading on
there. He knows the way better than the oldest Swiss guide knows the mountain
trail. He has love's concern that all shall go well with you. There is great
peace for us in that, and with it a tender awe to think who He is, and that He
is close up by your side. When you come to the splitting of the road into two,
with a third path forking off from the others, there is peace in just holding
steady and very quiet while you put out your hand and say, "Jesus, Master, guide
here." And then to hear a Voice so soft that only in great quiet is it heard,
softer than faintest breath on your cheek, or slightest touch on your arm,
telling the way in fewest words or syllables—that makes the peace unspeakable.
And if the road lead you into a thick, dark woods, and strange shadowy forms
seem to threaten from behind the trees, you go quietly on singing a bit of a
song, because He led you there, and is leading. That path may lead into some
commonplace Nazareth village, into some wilderness with untamed beasts, or into
some thick Gethsemane grove of gnarly olives, or even up a Calvary hill outside
a city wall, but you go steadily on with the path, and the song, and a joy full
of glory, for the Master led you there, and has not gone away. And if perhaps
the chosen road lead to crowds and great service and praise of men, you will be
thinking it was His leading that brought you there, not your own wisdom or
talent. He has some great purpose for these crowds, and may be some purpose
through these crowds farther on. And you will be very careful not to disappoint
or mar His plans. And, too, you will keep very quiet and close that the dust the
crowd is raising may not bother your eyes and dim the vision of His face. And if
sometimes the way be lonely and long, and the brambly thorn bushes on the sides
scratch face and hands, and sharp stones cut your feet, you can, if you will be
quiet enough, find a new softness to the strong arm of the Guide around you, and
a new fragrance in His presence beside you; and that will make you grateful for
the roughness of the road, because it draws out more the fineness of His love,
and of Himself.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 50: GOD PLANS EVERY LIFE.
========================================================================

God Plans every Life. Guidance is entirely a matter of finding God's plan, and
then following it. God has a plan for every life. He will lead us into it, and
then lead us in it, step by step. He made man's home before He made man. In the
simple Genesis record He planned the man, of what sort he should be and what
service he should do, before He made him. He planned the best, for He made him
in His own image. He gave Himself, His breath, to insure that likeness, and
later gave Himself again, His blood, to restore it. He planned a new trinity in
making man, Himself and the man and the woman, for perfection of friendship
requires three; and man was made for fullness of friendship with God. Every one
needs two friends, one above to draw him up, and one alongside to draw him
out—so God planned. God has a plan thought out for the universe, and for our
planet, and for each man upon it. The great emergency that sin has made in the
world called for special planning. It controls much of His planning for our
lives. He knows that emergency as no one else. He feels the keenness and stress
of it beyond any other. He knows each man of us, our gifts and endowments, what
we can do, and do best. He loves each of us devotedly. The ambition of love is
in His planning. He has great wisdom. His plan is best for all the world, and
for each man. The life of the great Hebrew pioneer Abram clearly was thought out
(Genesis 12:1 and on), and as clearly that of his lineal descendant, the great
law-giver (Exodus 2, 3), and that of his immediate successor, Joshua (Numbers
27:18 and on.). It was the consciousness that he was filling out God's plan for
himself that held Jeremiah so steady to his difficult and thankless, dangerous
task (Jeremiah 1:4 and on.). Paul, the man to whom we Gentile foreigners owe so
much, had no doubt of this in his own life (Acts 13:2 and on.); and he plainly
set it down as a law of God's dealing with men (1 Corinthians 12:11; 1
Corinthians 12:18). The greater includes the less. God has no favorites. Every
man's life is planned. Every man should plan to live a planned life, the planned
life, planned by Another. Every man may. He is touching the very tip-top of
human achievement who comes nearest to fitting into the plan thought out for
him. This glorifies every life, no matter how lowly, or in how hidden away a
corner; for the touch of God's plan is upon it. It dignifies one's life; it has
been thought out by a God! "There is a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough hew
them how we may." And that divine One will shape everything towards the end He
has planned, if He may have our consent. This is the working basis of the whole
problem of guidance. It simplifies it much. It is not coaxing a friendly God to
keep us along a path we have marked out for ourselves. It is finding and fitting
into the plan lovingly thought out for us, and doing the service assigned to us
in the great world-plan. Guidance is a matter of finding God's plan and
following it faithfully step by step. A man should aim to have a keen
understanding of what God's plan for him is (Ephesians 5:15-17). The likeness of
God imprinted upon him puts him under obligation to find out the plan of God
intended for him. The first great question for every one is whether he is going
to go God's way, and to plan to fit into God's plan. The real stiff work in the
problem of guidance is here. This must be settled first of all, and then kept
settled. It can easily be settled, and it can be kept settled. Yet almost every
man of us is bothered with either one or the other of those two things. But if a
man will do this part of the sum up, the figuring out of the rest is assured;
and more, it isn't hard. Let it once be fixed that a man's one ambition is to
fit into God's plan for him, and he has a North Star ever in sight to guide him
steadily over any sea, however shoreless it seem. He has a compass that points
true in the thickest fog and fiercest storm, and regardless of magnetic rocks.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 51: GOD TELLS US HIS PLAN FOR US.
========================================================================

God Tells us His Plan for us. God reveals his plan to a man. Of course He does.
He naturally would if He expected a man to follow it. He has to tell it if we
are to know it. He does tell it, and tells it in the plainest way. This is the
second great factor in guidance. He not only reveals the plan to follow, and the
path to tread, but he is eager to do it. He takes every man into His confidence
regarding the plan for his life. But His great trouble is to get our attention
so He can tell us. Ever since man lost the vision of God's face in Eden, and the
sound of His voice, God has had to do unusual things to attract man's attention,
and get him to understand His plan, and hold him to it. Our spirit-senses are
dulled by sin. Something startling must frequently be used. The strange sight of
a bush all aflame yet not burnt up takes hold of Moses' scholarly temperament,
and holds him quiet enough to hear the Voice and the plan. A fire eating up the
meal that Gideon had prepared for his pilgrim guest tells that startled man of
God's unsuspected presence, and secures his splendid leadership in His plan. A
vision of overwhelming glory led Isaiah into the deeper devotion that changed
his spirit and his career. As extreme a measure as laming his body is used to
waken up the scheming Jacob, for he has a will strong enough to be stubborn, but
not yet strong enough to yield. A vision with features utterly repugnant to the
hungry Peter tells him of God's plan for his outside, outcast brothers. For
Paul, light so bright as to make the sun's light cast a shadow, and so blinding
as to shut his outer eyes for days, that so the inner light might be lit, and
the plan be seen. And later, a needle-pointed thorn ever prodding, but softened
with a wondrous Presence, to hold Paul to the plan. If something has come to you
that seems very strange and unexplainable, better hold very quiet and still—God
is probably trying to get your ear. He is talking; if you give your attention
you will hear something. He needs some help; there is something to be done; he
wants you to give Him a hand, a lift, a life-lift. He is trying to attract your
attention. If you give it and fall in heartily with his plan, you will
understand what He has been doing, and when the thing that hurts has done its
work it will likely be taken away. He reveals the general plan at once, but the
steps in it only one at a time. He wants to keep us in touch all the time
(Genesis 22:2; Matthew 2:13.). His plan needs two at each stage, Himself and
you. We need to be trained to keep His pace. We are apt either to dash ahead or
to lag behind. Both bother the plans. There is a fascination in noting how such
strong men as Abraham (Genesis 12:1; Genesis 12:4 with Genesis 7; Genesis
17:9-10 with Gem 17:23, and Genesis 18:1) and Joshua (Note first ten chapters of
Joshua) were told a step at a time what to do. As one step was taken the next
became clear, and, that taken, cleared the next. Steady walking takes most
strength. Some of us are good at a dashy eagle flight up, or a quick spurt down
the road, but we have not learned the walk-step yet (Isaiah 40:31).


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 52: ACCEPTING GOD'S PLAN.
========================================================================

Accepting God's Plan. How may we know God's plan for us? No question has been
asked more often, nor more earnestly than just this—"May I know certainly what
God's plan for me is?" And the deep glow of fire in the eye tells eloquently of
the eager desire of the heart. Yes, surely we may know, and may know surely. He
that is willing to do may know, and will know. The life-plan that has been
thought out may be known, and there may be, too, the steady going along in the
plan step by step without breaks. A man needn't even stub his toe, much less
fall down. The first essential to knowing God's plan is meekness. That simply
means accepting Somebody's else plan for the life. Meekness is not weakness; it
is strength using its strength in deliberately yielding to a higher will. Moses
is called the meekest man because he yielded so fully and constantly to
Somebody's else plan. He might have been the Pharaoh of the world's leading
nation, but he chose to ally himself with a race of ex-slaves because that was
Somebody's else plan for him. And the spirit of that choice pervaded his whole
life. Jesus was not the meekest man. He was meekness personified. The word gets
a new fineness of meaning from His life. He might have swayed Athens and
Corinth, the centres of the world's philosophies, with His philosophy of life,
but He chose rather to teach the poor, for that was Another's plan for Him. He
might have held in His steady grasp the reins of a new earthly government
stronger than that of Rome, but He chose rather to win the government of men's
hearts, for that was Another's plan for those human years. He might have been
the centre of the highest social circles of beautiful, cultured
Antioch-on-the-Orontes, but He chose to grace and sweeten with His presence the
homes of the lowly, for so His Father wished. His voice could have been used to
give out music that would have classed Him as the world's greatest musician, but
he chose to sing to babes, and to women and men tired out under heavy loads, for
that was Another's plan. Those fingers of His could have chiseled marble and
touched canvas into a life far beyond what marble and canvas have ever known,
but He used them in ministering to sick and needy and tired-out folks, for so it
had been planned for Him. He came to carry out the plan of Another. That was the
great meekness of His great strength. This quality of meekness lies at the very
root of guidance. It makes the road simple and straight. The man eager to do
what God wants done will know certainly what to do (Psalms 25:9). This is a
family trait, by which the sons of the King may be recognized (Romans 8:14).
Those in the inner family circle of God have a fine passion for doing what He
wants done. The second great essential in knowing God's plan is obedience. This
is really saying the first thing over again. Obedience is meekness; it is
meekness in action, in daily use. Obedience is practicing meekness. It makes
meekness effective. Meekness is accepting the plan; obedience is working it out
bit by bit. Meekness is the attitude of one's spirit towards God; obedience is
the doing of the things He wants done.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 53: A DISCIPLINED JUDGMENT.
========================================================================

A Disciplined Judgment. There is a third essential of immense importance, and
that is, listening to God. God is telling us the plan, and telling us the next
step to take, but our ears bother us; they are so dull. It is amazing how many
deaf children there are in God's family. The deafness seems to grow with the
years too. For usually the child-ear—whether a child in years, or in religious
experience—is keen, though it needs training. There is nothing so necessary as
keen, trained ears. Yet there seems to be nothing rarer. An endless amount of
doubt and difficulty in guidance can be traced back to this critical point. The
favorite word for listening in the Bible is the word waiting. It is a great word
full of simple yet wondrous meaning. It means the turning of the face full up to
God so as to know by a look what He would suggest; hearing through the eyes. It
is exquisitely put in the Psalms. God assures us that He is ever keeping His eye
upon us so that by our looking up we can catch His eye and so know what to do
(Psalms 32:8). It means on our side watching God's slightest movement as
intensely as a slave in those old times watched for the first and least
suggestion of the master's desire.1 As the watch-guard on night duty upon the
city wall in old Judea kept his eyes keenly towards the east to see the first
gleam of the coming day that would relieve his long, lonely vigil (Psalms
123:1-2) — so intensely and keenly we are to look towards God to get the first
inkling of His will. The life is to be lived with its face always turned to God.
But this can be put in a very homely, matter-of-fact way that may help yet more.
There are three things given us for guidance, the Word of God, the Spirit of
God, and our own sense, or reasoning powers, our judgment. These three are meant
to agree. When they do agree in one the way is surely clear. When they do not
agree, the only wise thing to do is to do nothing, to wait till they do agree.
Usually the judgment is amiss and needs straightening up to the other two. The
Word of God read habitually disciplines the judgment. There comes to be a
settled conviction as to God's character and preferences and ways of working.
There comes, too, a keener use of one's thinking powers. The Spirit of God
within makes plain the meaning of the Word, and adapts it to our needs in a very
wonderful way. With the Book of God in his hands in good plain type, and the
Spirit of God in his heart, and the common sense with which we are all endowed,
no man need be in doubt when acting time comes, nor make any mis-steps. And this
is said with keen consciousness of many a slip. The great sheet-anchor bit in
the old Book is in the Twenty-fifth Psalm: "The meek will He guide in judgment";
that is, in his mental processes. The American Revision uses the word "justice"
in place of "judgment"; but the reference clearly is to being just in one's
decisions. Judgment is used in the sense of a decision. Here is the great simple
promise regarding the process of guidance. As I sift over the facts and
circumstances that bear upon the decision, I must make the Spirit of God's will
guide my thinking. He will help me to see colorlessly, to weigh accurately, and
to reach a right conclusion. This is putting guidance on the highest plane. God
uses the thinking powers He has given us. They need the discipline of His Word,
of His Spirit's indwelling, and of use. Questions of right and wrong are decided
by the statements of the Word. Questions of what best to do are decided by the
judgment, disciplined by the Word, and guided by the Spirit. Through habitual
reading of the Word of God, in reverent dependence upon the Holy Spirit, for the
purpose of learning God's will, there comes gradually to be a disciplined
judgment, a simple common sense in weighing and deciding what best to do. There
seems to be nothing much rarer nor scarcer than this. The personal coloring and
preferences and advantages get in so strong that they twist the eyesight badly.
The passion for God's plan is the great counteractant for the undue personal
element. The steady, burning passion to do His will makes one forget all else,
and yet makes him fit eagerly in where service is called for, but with no sense
of having done some great thing even when he has. He is absorbed in some One
else through whose power the thing was accomplished, and whose glory is the one
dominant thought.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 54: UNHURRIED WAITING.
========================================================================

Unhurried Waiting. All of this is in that Twenty-fifth Psalm, the great guidance
Psalm. It is written in the midst of difficulties and sore temptations. It
should be studied much by the man seeking to understand guidance. It begins with
oft-repeated prayer for guidance that reveals an earnest heart-desire to go
God's way. The praying stirs the memory of this man writing to the fact that he
hasn't always chosen God's way, but preferred his own. It is the meek man who
reverently "fears the Lord" who is guided and taught about the way to go. The
path pointed out is not only the right one, but proves to be a loving one for
him who is obedient, "unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies." This
meek, obedient man waits on God; he is in the spirit of constant listening. And
he is guided in thinking out his decisions. He is instructed in the way to
choose. God does the instructing; the man does the choosing; he is helped in his
mental processes. The result specified is two-fold, great peace, his soul
dwelling at ease; and power or good success, his seed inheriting the land. Then
comes the great statement that the friendship of the Lord, the exchange of
confidences, is given to such men, " and He will show them His covenant"; that
is, what He has planned to do, and then the plans actually carried out. And the
man writing emphasizes the true spirit that brings all this—"mine eyes are ever
toward the Lord." Such a man will know surely how to go, and will have strength
to go when the way is hard, and, more, will find the road to lead him into far
more of blessing than he had ever thought of. The man who so waits upon God
never decides anything hurriedly. His friends are likely to think him slow
perhaps. He is unhurried. He may decide quickly sometimes, but that is because
he has been brewing in secret over all the considerations. He is never hurried
nor flurried. It is often hard to wait. Our natural impatience and our tired-out
nerves prod us on when we should wait. It is always safe to wait. With the
greatest need unmet, the keenest crises impending, it is safest to wait till
we're clear; that is, clear as to the next thing to do; and the next thing to do
is always clear in time to do it. And yet more: this man who waits on God is so
intent on getting God's plan done that he is not concerned about anything else.
The plan he is in the process of shaping up may fail. But that will not concern
him, for clearly it was not God's plan if under faithful attention it fails.
Personal pride to have a plan carried through doesn't bother him a bit; he cares
only to carry through Somebody's else plan. Yet when the plan is clearly
revealed, or clearly proves bit by bit to be the plan of the Master, he holds to
it with a peculiar tenacity. And, as a matter of fact, the plan carefully
decided upon in such a way doesn't fail. God is eager to reveal His plan, and He
does to the man eager to know. The meek man is guided surely in his planning.
There is a fine word from Luke's pen describing the decision to go to Europe the
morning after Paul's vision of the Macedonia man. Luke had joined Paul. Paul
tells him his vision. "Straightway," he writes, "we sought to go forth into
Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the Gospel to them." *
The old version says, "assuredly gathering" in place of "concluding." The word
underneath suggests a putting together of this and that, and so drawing an
inference. It describes the common process of thinking a thing out. In this case
the evidence was very clear, but the word used for the thinking and talking it
over is very helpful. They were being guided in their mental processes. God's
law of progress is to take the next logical step. But one should not take a step
when in doubt about its being the right one.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 55: GUIDED IN JUDGMENT.
========================================================================

Guided in Judgment. A drop of wine gives the flavor of the cask. A simple straw
will show the direction of the wind. Very simple occurrences sometimes re Acts
16:10, American Revision. veal how God guides. Some very simple instances of
this sort came to my attention recently. A woman who has a flock of poultry to
attend noticed one morning that a brood of very young Plymouth Rocks were not
well. They seemed droopy and distressed. She had been caring for them
thoughtfully, and could not make out the cause of their distress. The
thermometer in the brooder where the little ones made their home indicated a
proper temperature. Her womanly heart was moved with pity for them. As she stood
watching, perplexed, she thought of how God must look down and pity too, and
leaning against the corner of the hen-house quietly prayed to be shown the
difficulty. At once it occurred to her to examine the heating lamp in the
brooder. It proved to need a larger burner to make enough heat; the thermometer
was not registering accurately. The change was quickly made, the temperature
rose, and the little chicks were soon happy and contented. A business man of
Belfast, well known in that city, told this bit of his experience to a group of
men in the Fulton Street Prayer Meeting room one noon. He is a builder, and
recognized as an expert in that business. He had been called to examine a large
building which was being seriously shaken and jarred by the motion of the
machinery. Efforts had been made to find why the machinery shook the building
so, but they failed to reveal the defect in construction. He was called in as an
expert. He examined the building most thoroughly, but could find no faulty
place. It was one of the best constructed buildings he had ever examined, he
said. He was much puzzled to know where the defect could be, and felt quite
nonplussed. As he stood looking in his perplexity, he sent up a softly breathed
prayer to be shown where the trouble was. At once his thought went to a certain
large post or beam on which part of the machinery rested. He went on to notice
that it was not properly adjusted. There was plainly the cause of the violent
jarring of the building by the machinery. Yet he had gone painstakingly over the
whole structure without finding it, as had other experts. The defect was pointed
out and remedied, and all jarring ceased. Could there be simpler and yet more
direct illustrations of the old bit, "The meek will He guide in his mental
processes?" A small group of young men entrusted with the supervision of one of
the great religious activities among young men were spending a day in conference
and prayer. Men were to be chosen for certain very important positions. A
mistake in choosing would have very serious results. They talked over the men in
mind and their suitability to the tasks involved, and prayed together. A
decision was reached about certain men, but reached tentatively, not decisively,
not finally. The suggestion was made that they separate, and pray and think
separately, and then come together again. The matter was so serious that there
must be no mis-step or mistake. They did so, and while in prayer alone the
conviction came that it would not be best to send a certain man tentatively
decided upon for a certain post. More prayer and conference followed, and the
arrangements were readjusted. So were these men guided in their mental
processes. So were they guided to plan out unhurriedly with utmost thoroughness
their serious task. These men were keen Bible students, with discipline of
judgment much above the average, and with a rare openness of mind to the
suggestions of God's Spirit, as a result of long habit. Here was the habit into
which they had been led through long experience, of being guided by the Spirit
through their trained thinking powers. The withdrawal from each other's presence
made them more susceptible to the presence of the One whose will they were bent
on doing.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 56: THE BOYS AND THE TRAMPS.
========================================================================

The Boys and the Tramps. The Spirit of God adapts the words of the Bible to our
needs with a simplicity that is winsome. He constantly breathes through and out
of these pages, these old narrations, and verses, and sentences. He takes these
words and speaks them with an inaudible but very distinct voice into one's mind.
He gives them a precious meaning that fits wondrously and warmly into our needs.
So it comes to pass that a passage will have a warm personal meaning fitting
into some experience of one's life quite in addition to its first historical
meaning. It is a bit of the versatility of Scripture that its words have both a
historical and a philosophical meaning. As originally spoken they tell perhaps
of some story in a certain man's life, and then the words so spoken and written
are found to have a deeply simple philosophy that applies directly to life
to-day. This strikingly brings out the fact that the Scriptures answer a double
purpose. There is the first purpose for which they were written centuries ago,
and then a present purpose in fitting into and helping our changing, daily
needs, and adapted to each man's reading. Surely this old Book is inspired; it
is inbreathed with a living Spirit. There is a living presence in it fitting its
words with a warm, living touch to every man and every circumstance. I had an
illustration of this one summer in a New England village. I had gone to the
prayer meeting in the old white-painted Congregational church. The subject was
Bible study. In the social mingling afterwards a quiet little woman said to me,
"I would like to tell you of a verse that helped me greatly one time." And I
listened. I seemed to know at once that I was to get something. I was standing
close up to a sacred human life, and was to be allowed to look in. I listened
reverently and eagerly. Her story was a simple one. She lived on the edge of
town, with the neighbors not very close. Her husband's business took him away
much of the time. This bit of experience came the previous winter. She enjoyed
the weekly prayer meeting and always planned to attend. Yet she knew, as she
returned home from prayer meeting, that there was sure to be at least one tramp,
and maybe more, taking a night's lodging in the barn back of the house. She was
alone in the house so far as having a man who might protect her was concerned.
Naturally enough that made her nervous and worried her. She prayed, and tried to
be brave, but could not seem to quite shake off the timid worrying about it. At
that same time the superintendent of the Sunday School had asked her to teach a
class of boys. She had declined. She felt that she had no gift for teaching, and
that she could not do it. But he gently persisted; he was sure she could; he
needed a teacher for those boys; it seemed so hard to find one; would she not
think it over and pray about it before finally deciding? And she had rather
reluctantly agreed to this. These were the two things uppermost in her mind at
this time, the danger threatening from the tramps, and the teaching of the boys.
Her habit was to spend a little while each morning with the Bible, reading and
praying. This morning of which she told me her regular course of reading brought
her to the fifty-first chapter of Isaiah. She was reading along in a meditative,
unhurried way, praying softly as she read, and with those two things, the tramps
and the boys, within easy reach in her underneath thoughts. She came to the
sixteenth verse. "And," she said to me, "the first line of that verse seemed to
stand out as though in bigger type: 'I have put my words in thy mouth.' "
Clearly that meant the boys. She grew quiet and still. The Master was speaking
to her. She sat thinking about the class, with the feeling of hesitancy not
wholly gone, and yet the decision clearly made. She would teach the boys the
best she could, and He would be giving her the words. After a little prayer,
still thinking about the boys, her eyes turned half mechanically to the page to
continue the reading. "Then," she said to me, with a moistened glow in her eyes,
"the next line stood out big just as the first had done: 'And have covered thee
in the shadow of mine hand.' " That meant the tramps. It seemed to her that the
wondrous Spirit had taken these words, centuries old, spoken originally to the
distressed nation of Israel, and had with a wholly new, tender meaning spoken
them into her heart in her need. And I felt sure, and feel sure, that she was
right. And the order in which the message came seemed peculiarly helpful. First
came the bit about the service needed from her, and as quickly as she responded
to that call came the word of comfort for her personal needs.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 57: INSTRUCTED IN THE NIGHT SEASONS.
========================================================================

Instructed in the Night Seasons. The habit into which I have grown in making
decisions, even about smaller matters, is to gather up all the information on
the matter, thresh it out and sift it over into the clearest shape possible,
pray over it, be content to have it go either way regardless of personal
preferences, and then sleep over it. In the morning hour alone I am apt to know
pretty clearly what to do. If not quite clear I wait a while longer, including
sometimes more than one night's sleep. The sleep induces a quietness in which
the thing assumes clear shape. Then, too, there is a statement of the old Book
that seems to me to fit in here, though I know well that some may think the
interpretation of it rather fanciful. "So he giveth unto his beloved sleep"
(Psalms 127:2) is the reading of both old and revised versions. But the margin
gives this alternate reading: "So he giveth unto his beloved in sleep." I do not
say that this is the first meaning of that tender old bit of the Book. I do not
know. But I recall how He gives bodily strength in sleep, and has turned the
tide of sickness and weakness in sleep, and I recall, too, that in the Old
Testament times He used to reveal His plan to men in their sleep. The man who
proved to be God's messenger to Job told that troubled man this: "God speaketh
once, Yea twice, though man regardeth it not, In a dream, in a vision of the
night, When deep sleep falleth upon men, In slumberings upon the bed; Then he
openeth the ears of men, And sealeth their instruction." (Job 33:14-18) And the
sixteenth Psalm has this: "I will bless Jehovah, who hath given me counsel; Yea,
my heart instructed! me in the night seasons." (Psalms 16:7) I am not speaking
of dreams, but only of this— that through the perfectly natural channel of the
thoughts, He gives in sleep that which guides us when awake. There is here no
element of the supernatural involved. Through nature's duly appointed channels,
the mental processes, God in a time of greatest stillness clears the thinking
and suggests what to do.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 58: FINDING THE LIFE-PLAN.
========================================================================

Finding the Life-plan. The great question of finding out the life-plan has
puzzled a great many, and should have a special word here. The fact that there
is a life-plan for every one, and that God is naturally eager to tell it so that
it may be carried out, clears the ground very much. The man who wants to know
can know, without any doubt. Hundreds of young people are facing the question of
giving their lives to the great, needy, foreign mission fields. There, without
any question, is the greatest need, and there too is the greatest privilege of
service. And in addition to that are the great home mission fields, and the
church ministry. In our day there is a great call for many sorts of workers in
addition to the ordained ministry. The general plan for all followers of Jesus
is that they shall go. The general marching orders to all who hear His voice are
a plain, imperative "Go." The early disciples so understood and went. In foreign
mission lands there is a spirit akin to that of these early disciples. In Korea
to-day they are going everywhere in the same way. Whenever there is a spirit of
awakening in the Church there is always a spirit of awakening to this ringing
call to go. Whenever the Spirit of God gets sway in a man's life, among the
other marked characteristics, is a new, yearning earnestness to take the message
of Jesus to the far-off peoples who have had no word of it. But in addition to
the general marching order is the particular personal order. The Master has made
plain His plan for His Church; it is to go. He makes plain His plan for each
member of His Church where he is to go. The whole scheme is mapped out by the
Lord of the harvest, and each one's place in the scheme, too. And while all may
go in a very real sense to those neediest fields by prayer and money and earnest
sentiment-making, some are not to go there personally, but to stay here. The
great thing is to be where the Master has planned. How shall a man know that
plan for himself? He should aim to gather all available information, weigh and
balance it carefully, and wait quietly upon God, both in prayer and in the
spirit of his life, with a full, eager willingness to go far or stay near, to be
wholly in religious service or a volunteer with other duties, as the plan may
be. He that is willing to go shall know. He should inform himself about the
great world-fields. That is very easily done to-day. The Student Volunteer
Movement and the Young People's Movement have brought the information close home
in very easy shape. He ought to think about his own abilities and special gifts.
These gifts and talents are gifts from God, and so a trust. One should think
soberly of what he can do, and cannot do, that he may know his responsibility,
and meet it. Some sensible friend or two, sympathetic with you and with the
needs, can be of real service here, to help you get an impartial view, while the
decision must rest with yourself. The circumstances of one's life must be
considered, and the home responsibilities. I know a young man who burned with
the desire to go to a foreign field. But it was very plain to him that he should
not leave home; he was needed there. There was a deep twinge of regret as the
situation cleared to him; but no element of doubt. Clearly it was so planned for
him. And he has since been used graciously in every mission land while yet
remaining home. That is the story of very many who have discerned clearly the
plan, and gladly fitted into it. All this one should gather up: facts about the
world-need; about himself, with friends to help get the undue personal coloring
out; about his circumstances; and the strong inward impulse. These should be
sifted and weighed unhurriedly, and balanced, and time spent in quiet prayer
alone with God over His word. So a man will come to know with the certainty that
steadies all his coming service. And he will always know in time. But he must
not be hurried; he may decide quickly but he must not decide hurriedly.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 59: "MY SHEEP HEAR MY VOICE."
========================================================================

"My Sheep Hear My Voice." There are some snags in these waters to be looked out
for, and avoided. Some terrible mistakes have been made by those who said they
had heard the voice of God, and were doing as He had bid. I am not speaking now
of those who have done insane things under such a delusion. But godly,
well-equipped men, earnest and whole hearted in their devotion, have made
pitiable mistakes that have sadly blighted both life and service. Sometimes a
failure to obey in some matter, a break with God, a getting out of touch, a bit
of sin not fixed up at once but persisted in, has led to the unwise step, and a
wrecked career of service. We are made of such inflammable, catchy stuff that we
must fight shy of the fires of passion and of pride, and live very close to God,
with a constant cleansing from defilement, if we are to go straight. And
sometimes where no such thing comes in there is a plain slip in judgment, with
sad results. The records of service are full of those who have been led away
from the middle road to side paths not meant to be trodden. God is no longer
able to use them. The switching from the road has meant a switching from
service. Paul was constantly on the watch lest after having been used of God he
should have to be laid aside as no longer serviceable (1 Corinthians 9:27). Mark
keenly that the tempter is a great imitator. He is a mighty actor, skillful in
impersonating God. He follows God as closely as he can. There is a fascination
in running through the Bible, especially the book of Revelation, and noting the
imitations of the evil one. There is a voice of God, and there is a voice that
is not God's but sometimes mistaken for His. There is need of constant watchful
care. Yet one may be sure. The Master said, "My sheep hear my voice" (John
10:27); that is, they recognize it. The actual sheep in that land are very keen
and quick to recognize their own master's voice. That sheep simile is immensely
helpful here. The sheep live -with the shepherd. It is by long daily intimacy
with him that they know him so well. So with us. By the intimacy of daily
contact with God, by the intimacy of knowledge with His Book, one may come to
recognize unerringly His voice, and by the cultivation of a quiet spirit one
grows keener to know that voice, for it is a voice of great, still quietness.
There is a Voice of God as well as a Book of God. God speaks by the voice of the
Spirit to a man's inner spirit. He is apt to speak in the words of the Book.
Sometimes He speaks otherwise. And when He does it is always in accord with the
Book, of course; the voice of God agrees with itself. He never speaks contrary
to the Book nor to the spirit of it. Having asked for guidance and reached your
decision, never look back and question your guidance. If indeed it be clear that
you have not waited quietly enough, and have not heard distinctly, and made a
decision unwisely, of course it must be changed. But when you have waited and
listened and not hurried, and come to a decision, then refuse to question it.
Push quietly on. There is a teasing, nagging indecision that whips back and
forth over a matter already disposed of. It often comes from worn-out nerves.
Good sound sleep, and plenty of fresh air, and plain food thoroughly chewed,
would dispel many of the distracting, confusing thoughts that come racing in
like staghounds to bother us. They would help us to hold steady mentally, and to
know the thing to do. Sometimes this indecision lies deeper-down than a tired
body, and is a mental trait to be chastened and disciplined. A will bended to
God's, a spirit of obedience to His wishes, the Book kept open, the cultivation
of the Spirit's friendship, time alone with the Book daily, a habit of wide
reading of its pages, a quiet, unhurried spirit—these simple, great things lead
to the disciplined judgment and sensitive spirit that know what to do and make
no slips. "Thou sweet, beloved will of God, My anchor-ground, my fortress hill,
My spirit's silent fair abode: In thee I hide me and am still.

Upon God's will I lay me down As child upon its mother's breast; No silken
couch, nor softest bed Could ever give me such sweet rest.

Thy wonderful grand will, my God, With triumph now I make it mine; And love
shall cry a joyous 'yes' To every dear command of thine.

Thy beautiful sweet will, my God, Holds fast in its sublime embrace My captive
will, a gladsome bird Prisoned in such a realm of grace.

Within this place of certain good Love evermore expands her wings; Or, nestling
in thy perfect choice, Abides content with what it brings; A sweetest burden,
lightest yoke, It lifts, it bears my happy soul; It giveth wings to this poor
heart; My freedom is thy grand control." (Madame Guyon)


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 60: CHAPTER 7: THE PROBLEM OF THE CHURCH
========================================================================

Chapter 7: The Problem Of The Church


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 61: SOME WRONG IDEAS.
========================================================================

Some Wrong Ideas. "Are you a member of Church? " I was asked by an earnest
Christian woman recently. It was at a conference of Christian people for
speaking about Jesus and the great truths of Christian life and service. She is
a gifted woman, earnest in her spirit of devotion and service. "Yes," I replied,
with a bit of wonder at the question, "I certainly am; I am a member of the
Church in which I was born and reared." "But," she went on, "how can you be? Are
there not many things there of which you do not approve, and things taught that
you do not believe?" I reminded her that church membership was not a matter of
approving everything that was done, nor yet a matter of believing certain
things. It is the gathering together of those who believe in Jesus Christ, and
gather in His name for mutual helpfulness, and for a great world-service. It is
because I seem to have met many whose thought of the Church has not been clear,
and who have wavered in their devotion to it, that I want to talk a bit here
about the Church, and our personal relation to it. This is one of the personal
problems that comes up in the life of very many who would climb the highest
levels, and always ring true. There have been a good many common mistakes
current in thinking about the Church. It is supposed by some that church
membership necessitates a belief in all the items of her creeds; by others that
it is a sort of profession of peculiar goodness or sanctity; and by others that
it is largely for one's own helpfulness and enjoyment. The personality of the
minister has entered in to a very large degree, and very naturally. That must
always have influence. The Church has sometimes, in some quarters, been thought
of practically as an exclusive club to which non-members are not welcome without
a personal introduction by a member in acceptable standing. It has been thought
of, too, as the doorway into desirable social circles, and some very earnest,
Bible-loving people have thought of it wholly as a place to be fed and fired up.
And let it be frankly said that there has been and is much in various quarters
to give coloring to these various suppositions. Yet the simple thought of the
purpose of the Church is quite different from any of these ideas. It will surely
help, to get some clear thought of the mission of the Church, and of one's true
relation to it.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 62: THE TIE OF BLOOD AND SPIRIT.
========================================================================

The Tie of Blood and Spirit. The Church is a family, God's family. It is common
blood that makes a family. The child comes into the family through the blood of
the parents. In quite another sense it can be said it is one blood that makes
the church family. Through the blood of the Head of this family there comes the
life to each one, and that life it is that makes him a member of the family. The
Church is not an organization formed by men for an agreed purpose. It is a
society founded by the Holy Spirit for a great purpose. Its members belong there
only because the Spirit of the Founder is in them. Each one into whom the Spirit
has come is a member of the society because of that fact. The Holy Spirit is the
bond of union that holds the members together. As they are drawn closer to Him
they are drawn closer to each other. Membership in a family is by birth. The
child comes into the family by birth; he comes into the church family by birth
too, the higher spirit-birth. The child has his father's spirit and in some
degree his likeness. The member of the church family has his Father's spirit,
and in some degree His likeness. Wherever there is a heart that has opened to
the gracious Spirit of God there is a member of His family. For He quickly
enters every such heart and His presence is the certificate of membership in His
family, the Church. The members of this family meet with the Head of the family,
of course. Getting together is a family trait. The Spirit in each draws them
together. They meet out of love for their Father. They love to tell Him of their
love for Him, and to express their feelings of regard. The common word for this
is worship. They meet to read their Father's letters, and to talk about Him and
His plans and wishes. Such meetings naturally bring a glow of warmth to the
heart, clearer thought of His wishes to the mind, and a keener edge to the
desire to please Hun. They meet, too, to plan how best to win the other children
of the Father who have strayed away from the home circle, and lost many of the
old family traits. The Father's letters constantly talk about going out for the
others, and going to those farthest away and telling them of His yearning love
for them. For this church family is a sort of reunited family. The old original
family was badly broken up and scattered. The Father sent down His Son to get
them back and together again. It was a great, difficult task. He lost His life
on the errand, but He succeeded in the task. Some came, and more, and many more.
But the Father's heart is very hungry for the rest. He is ever calling them
back. His Spirit in a man is ever urging that man to get the rest back, too,
into the inner circle again. As the members of the reunited family are scattered
in all parts of the world, these meetings are held in different places. For
convenience and mutual helpfulness, different branches of the family have been
organized. Men have been drawn together by national ties, language ties,
neighborhood ties, and by ties of friendship. Personal temperament has been a
great tie. Some prefer to give full expression to their feelings; others find a
freeness of expression in spirit through quiet meetings. By agreement and by
growth the great branches have been built up with certain statements of belief,
and certain forms of management and of worship. All this has played an important
part and still does. But these varying outer forms are incidental. They are a
convenience for the mutual working together of men in a common plan of work. The
vital bond of all is the Holy Spirit's presence. He is the great dominant
factor, and the one element of unity in the whole, and of continuity through all
time.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 63: A PICTURE OF THE TRUE FAMILY.
========================================================================

A Picture of the True Family. Through the long years this church family has
grown very large, and become very widely scattered over the earth. Its members
are different in many ways. They speak many languages. Some are rich and some
poor, some educated and some ignorant, with all degrees between. And sometimes
differences of opinion have occurred. That is not surprising, considering the
great differences of other sorts. And sometimes, it must be confessed, bad
disputes have broken out. The very success attending the effort to bring in all
others has led indirectly to things of this sort. For these men are not all
perfect in love, nor in mental discipline, nor in self-control. And so there are
many branches of the church family, with their gatherings conducted in many
different ways. There are some members of the great church family, members
through the birthmark, of the Spirit's presence in their hearts, who do not
attend any of these gatherings. That is always unfortunate, for they cannot help
so well in carrying out the Father's plan for the world, and they miss the
fellowship and help, and are missed too. And then there are quite a good many
who do not have that birth-mark who have come into the membership of these
branches. But wherever there is a man in whom the Spirit is he will be drawn to
meet the others with that same Spirit. The Spirit of God in a man draws him into
contact with the other members of the family. Now a family is peculiar in this:
here are gathered into one, persons of very marked differences. There are
extreme differences of age, of maturity, of knowledge, of wisdom, of health and
strength, and even of temperament in children of the same parents. The true
family is both a school and a hospital; a place of growth, of the disciplining
of the powers, and of sweetest friendships; with the zest and stimulus of
constant contact, and all pervaded with the atmosphere of unselfish love. And
this is the true conception of the Church, especially of the particular group
that is bound together in one place of gathering, by ties of agreement, as well
as by the fundamental tie of the Holy Spirit's presence in each. A man does not
enter here because he understands the doctrines and creed of the Church, but
that he may understand. He does not come in because he is good, but to become
good and better; not because he is in sound health spiritually, but to be helped
into spiritual vigor. The one essential thing is that he has admitted Jesus into
his life as Saviour and Master. He does not attend the meetings simply to get,
but to give too. His presence in an earnest, devout spirit is a great gift to
the gathering. He should not go to get his torch lighted, but to take a lit
torch and let it touch other lit torches, that so there may be better light and
warmth. He ought to carry a live coal in so that others may be warmed, though he
is not conscious of that. The preaching may not always be to his liking, nor the
music; and some people may not be as agreeable as they might be; but these
things should be thought of as incidentals to be prayed over or, may be,
forgotten. They are important. We cannot help being affected by them. But we
should be careful not to let our possible dislike or dissatisfaction affect our
conduct or speech. A man should aim to keep his boat in the current, and not let
it be swept to one side by little eddies, and maybe get stuck in the mud. The
earnest desire to meet with the other members of the great church family, even
though personally unknown, to worship the Father, and listen for a message
either outer or inner, and help through gift towards the great world-service of
the Church, will always find a blessing coming into the heart, and a bit of
uplift into the life. A man may always find in the church service what he needs.
I have been in all sorts of Churches and church services, in many parts of the
world, and have found that it is always possible to get a fresh touch with God.
Even amid possible distractions of a strange language, or something uncongenial,
there can come the deep, quiet glow into the heart that tells of the Spirit's
touch. God meets with the man who goes to the place of worship to be met. There
is a blessing waiting for each of us in the gathering together in the church
service, and we may get it if we will.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 64: FELLOWSHIP AND SERVICE.
========================================================================

Fellowship and Service. Man was made for fellowship and service. He was made
male and female for mutual help in the maturing of his life, and so greater
efficiency in service. Here in the original plan for man lies the plan of the
Church. It is a divine institution for the mutual maturing of the life of its
members, and for a great service—bearing witness to Jesus Christ before all men.
Its birthday was that marvelous 'day in Jerusalem when the crucified and
enthroned Jesus sent down the Holy Spirit upon His waiting disciples. Its
beginnings were wholly Jewish, at the Jewish capital, with Jewish members, and
in a Jewish atmosphere. Its mission was a striking resemblance to that of the
old Hebrew nation. That nation's great mission was to preserve the revelation it
had received of the true God, and to give it to all the world. The Hebrews were
God's preachers to the world of Himself. The Church's mission is to tell all the
world of Jesus Christ, His life and death and new life beyond death. The Church
is Jesus Christ's preacher to all nations. The principle of organization of the
two is radically different. In the nation there was a birthright membership, in
the Church a membership by personal choice; there others could come in by
choosing to, and fulfilling the requirements; here all come in by choice. In the
nation the magnet was Jehovah, and His worship. In the Church the magnet is
Jesus Christ, and His sacrifice of love. The Church is the lineal descendant of
the Hebrew nation. The nation failed at the greatest crisis of its history, the
coming of its King—failed through rejecting Him. The highest revelation
entrusted to it was refused. The Church was brought to its birth that that
rejected King, accepted as Saviour, might be taken to all men. There are a good
many family traits of the nation in its descendant. That nation was not always
true to its mission. Its leaders were frequently weak and false. It had to be
severely chastened. Its light shone very dimly and unsteadily at times. Yet up
to the time of the great crisis its mission had been largely fulfilled;
everywhere in the civilized world was a knowledge of the true God, and a people
worshipping Him, in the midst of idolatry. Always in its darkest days and
saddest plight the true light was kept shining clear and bright by a faithful
company. There was the nation within the nation; the inner group true to the
national mission while the nation itself was losing sight of its high ideal. The
Church has not always been true to its mission. Yet always there have been those
who have kept the fires alive, though sometimes the live coals seemed very few.
But always there has been a vitality in the Church, a peculiar quality of real
life that has thrown off the bad, broken through the false-work, risen up out of
the dead elements, and swung it true to its great mission. They were all sons of
the Church who led in the great protesting movement which was as a second birth
to it, and to the whole world's life. The counter Reformation within the mother
Church was another evidence of its great vitality. The more recent movements
among young men, and young women, and students, and for a renewed missionary
campaigning by students and young people and laymen, have all grown up within
the circle of its membership; they have drawn their strength from its heart;
they are simply new evidences of its vast fertility and resource, equal to any
emergency. It is intensely interesting to note that all the creative factors
that enter into our present complex, intense civilization found their birth
within the Church. The mental awakening of the world's life so marked and
marvelous in every sphere of life in our day has dated practically from the
great Reformation movement. There has been no such mental activity in the
nations outside the sphere of the Church's influence. It has been most apparent
where the Church's influence has been greatest. The whole modern system of
education found a birthplace in its vitality, and is distinctively its child.
Here in America peculiarly, in the beginning, the Church built the colleges. The
spirit of robust, aggressive vigor so dominant to-day in all the world was
breathed into life by the life of the Church. Church history is the backbone of
all history. Other lines break and recede. The Church supplies the one
continuous warp into which is woven all the rest. The whole network of
benevolent institutions to help the distressed, the hospitals and the asylums of
all sorts for caring for the physically and mentally needy, grew up out of its
warm heart. Great Church-names Sign-posts of Man's Growth* The fact that there
are great divisions of the Church has been the subject of much criticism. It is
not uncommon to hear the Church spoken of as being "all split up." But these
great divisions have, in the main, come about in a very natural way. They have
been a natural development historically of man's progress in liberty, and in the
development of his mental powers. They are a great expression of his strength of
thought, as well as of his individual temperament, brought into conflict with
the autocratic principle of government in both Church and State from which men
have so largely broken away. The first great division was by a geographical line
into east and west, Greek and Roman. Underneath that line was a radical
difference of temperament between the peoples of the West centering at Rome, and
those of the East centering about Constantinople. They had been bound into one
empire through the power of the sword. Now they are free to give expression to
their individuality. It has been commonly said that that division came about
through the dispute over two little Latin words in the creed. But that only
revealed the different modes of thought of peoples diverse in temperament, and
now free to give expression to their thoughts. The next division, the great
Protestant movement, was an evidence of the new life, both mental and spiritual,
of the peoples of Europe. The whole body of Protestant churches to-day tells out
the vigor and vitality both of man's life and of the Church. It spells out large
the greatest movement of man towards a new intellectual life. The race was
catching fire afresh. It was having a new birth. The varying names within the
Protestant Church grew up naturally in different nations. In Germany the
personality of the great leader in their midst gave the name Lutheran. Under the
leadership of that very different personality, Calvin, the churches in the Rhine
countries from Holland to Switzerland used the name Reformed. In Scotland,
always marked peculiarly for its independence and individuality, the name
Presbyterian grew up, indicating a form of government radically different from
that of the mother Church from which they had broken away. In England the
Reformation movement took on national proportions, the King leading in the
break, and so a national name was used, the Church of England. The Methodist
Church was a later movement. It is a child of the Church of England, born in its
heart. It grew up out of the great awakening among the common people of England
under the leadership of John Wesley. Its name is a constant reminder of the
power of the Church to reach out to the masses, and, too, of the marvelous power
inherent in man to develop new life. The stream of life always cuts new
channels. Others have grown up through adherence to some truth or principle that
was not being recognized and emphasized as some men felt that it should be. So
the great Baptist Church came into being and was peculiarly strengthened by the
various persecutions endured. Many of the smaller church bodies are evidence
that the unity of the Church is greater than the differences; for they are made
of remnants who have refused to come into a union being effected by the larger
number. Their existence reveals the fact that the unity of the Church has been
dominant, though not all inclusive. The last hundred years and more have
witnessed an unparalleled spreading out of the race over the whole earth,
subduing, developing, and organizing, even as the command was given in Eden. The
pouring of the hordes of northern barbarians into southern Europe has been
spoken of as one of the greatest movements of the race. But it is clear
overshadowed, both in the numbers and in the vast changes involved, by the
present-day emigration movements. And as the people have gone they have carried
with them the church forms and names to which they were accustomed in the home
land. So it comes to pass that on American soil can be found about every form of
church worship, and management, and name. These differences viewed thus
historically do not reveal the weakness of the Church but its strength. They
mark a certain stage in its progress. They tell the story of man's vigorous
life, and of his devotion to the Church.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 65: THE NEW CHURCH UNITY.
========================================================================

The New Church Unity. And now there is a new movement in church life developing
rapidly; a new stage is being entered upon. The immense strides which man has
recently made and is making in obeying the divine command to subdue the earth
and develop it, are rapidly working out a new family spirit among all the men of
all the earth. The unity of the race is revealing itself afresh. And this is
finding expression in the life of the Church. There has been growing up in the
last half-century a remarkable spirit of unity. And now there is a marked and
remarkable stretching of eager hands across the dividing lines towards such a
unity as Christ prayed for so fervently as He was going away. It can be
thoughtfully said that there is to-day a practical unity in the Church deeper
and keener, warmer and more sympathetic, than when it bore only one name. And
this is said with full alertness to the differences. But the differences are
always less than the likenesses; always less than the one dominant 'spirit
beneath varying names and forms and customs. And in our day the dividing lines
are looking towards a point of meeting. These are not straight lines, else they
would never meet. They are angled lines, slanting lines, of peoples coming up
from different parts of the earth, and they are drawing towards a meeting-point.
We Americans are quite in the habit of thinking of ourselves as the great
world-leaders, in aggressiveness and enterprise at least. But our
spirit-brothers in Japan and Korea have been ahead of us in their attempt to
wipe off the slate the dividing church lines they got from us. And our
blood-brothers in Britain are clear ahead here. In Scotland, a land and people
as much marked for independence of thought and action as ever the old Greeks
were, the coming together of churches within recent years has been most
remarkable. Our Canadian neighbors have joined their Methodist bodies into one,
and are now at the still greater task of uniting bodies as different in both
doctrine and management as Methodist and Presbyterian and Congregational. In our
own country the United Presbyterian Church in its name tells of a coming
together. And movements are in various stages of progress for union on a much
wider scale. Blood-brothers of our North and South who differed intensely and
sacrificially have come together materially and commercially, fraternally and
socially, and have been reaching hands across the line in church life to get
together again there. Never since apostolic days has there been so much evidence
of the oneness of the Church. And yet beneath all the movements towards organic
union is a spirit of unity far greater than can ever find expression through
mere oneness of organization. There has grown up a practical unity in service on
the mission field to a large extent, and ever increasing. And at home the
practical union of missionary efforts by students, by church boards, and now in
this great new laymen's movement, is most inspiring. The Church is one Church in
essential spirit, and is in increasing measure becoming one Church in practical
service. Serious mistakes have been made and very serious differences have
arisen. These but tell the intensity of feeling regarding matters they love of
strong men who are not perfect either in love, or in knowledge, or in self
control. One group of men has made a statement of what they believed. Their
followers have required that all after-comers into their circle shall assent to
that statement. Another group in a later generation, under wholly different
conditions, with new light, and a new way of expressing its thoughts, has not
liked that statement but preferred to make its own. And so there has been
friction. Sometimes earnest men dwelling in the valleys have not been able to
look over the hills for the comprehensive view which sees things in true
relation to each other. But these very differences, with the factional heat
involved, have but spelled out the vigorous vitality of men in robust life. The
crowd has looked too much at the differences. But then, crowds usually do that.
As a rule the crowd doesn't think. Men differ strongly only about the things
they love. The mountain peak of strong life and deep devotion and essential
unity of spirit looms high over all differences. We should keep our eyes more
upon its noble form.


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  CHAPTER 66: THE TRUE CHURCH SPIRIT.
========================================================================

The True Church Spirit. In a very large social gathering in London some years
ago, two gentlemen were speaking together of church matters. One of them
criticized the church differences, and consequently, as he thought, the weakness
of the Church. His friend asserted that these differences were largely on the
surface and incidental; that underneath, at heart, there was a great unity among
church people on the great essentials of the faith. The critic politely
questioned the accuracy of his friend's remark. At once the churchman called
attention to the character of the large company gathered. It was representative
of many different churches and of many walks of life. He said: "At my request
these people will all bow and reverently repeat the Lord's Prayer as a
confession of their common faith." And, securing the attention of all gathered,
he explained the little pleasant dispute that had arisen with his friend, and
made the request. Instantly a soft hush fell over the lively company, and with
bowed heads, and in a deep, low tone, which suggested a great wealth of
suppressed feeling, they repeated reverently the Lord's Prayer. On no other one
subject could there have been found such oneness of thought and such a depth of
reverence. The subject of loyalty to their sovereign would have revealed as
great oneness, but not the underneath depth of reverent feeling called out by
loyalty to the higher Sovereign. The great mission of the Church to remember the
sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, and to tell all the world earnestly and
practically and simply of Him, is being fulfilled to-day on a larger scale than
ever before, and in as devoted a spirit as marked the early band of Jerusalem
disciples. Every true follower of Jesus Christ should be in the fellowship of
the Church. He belongs there by birth, his new spirit-birth. The choice of the
particular branch where his allegiance shall be given will be affected by family
connection and tradition, or friendships, or convenience of location, or the
receiving of some special spiritual blessing, or other such consideration.
Thoughtful prayer will lead any one in doubt to very definite guidance in his
decision. Where he is led to go he should go heartily. That place becomes holy
ground to him. The shoes of his common round of duties, and of cares, will be
put off as he enters its doors. Here he will meet the Father, and worship Him,
and receive blessing and help from Him direct. Here he will, with his brothers,
remember the dying love of Jesus in the simple memorial meal of bread and wine.
Here will be the fellowship of kindred spirits through which he will help, and
be helped. Through fellowship here, too, he shall come to understand better the
love of Christ; for no one ever fully takes in that great love; it takes all of
us together to take hold of that, and realize its depth and strength and
tenderness. And here he can best join with his brothers in the great
world-service entrusted to the Church of telling all the race about Jesus.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 67: CHAPTER 8: THE PROBLEM OF QUESTIONED THINGS
========================================================================

Chapter 8: The Problem Of Questioned Things


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 68: GLIMPSES OF REAL LIFE.
========================================================================

Glimpses of Real Life. A friend took me to luncheon one day. He is a leading
member of his church, and prominent in various forms of Christian activity. We
ate at a very finely appointed club house. As we were looking over the menu card
and deciding upon the items of luncheon, my friend said, in the same tone as
when asking about meats, "Will you have some beer?" I said quietly, "No, I
believe not," not supposing that he was speaking seriously. But as I glanced
over at him he seemed as though he actually supposed I might drink that
beverage. For a long time I was in doubt as to whether my friend was serious in
his question, but, chancing to meet him in a hotel, in another city, dining
alone, I knew through my eyes that he had not been indulging in humor in his
question. At another time a young man who was a leader in an organization for
aggressive Christian work offered me tickets to a certain performance at the
popular theatre of the city, commenting favorably on the merits of the
performance. In response to a question, he said he had found it enjoyable to go
sometimes. I remember vividly the scene one Sabbath night in a large hall in a
city in Germany. A very large audience was assembled, including several
clergymen sitting upon the platform. It was a union meeting of the churches of
the city. Beer was being served throughout the service. And I noted the
dexterity with which the waiters could handle a half-dozen large full mugs, make
change, and glide quietly about, without disturbing the service by noise. I
remember, too, that when one of the speakers gave expression to a pleasing
sentiment the young element present began to applaud by hand-clapping, but were
instantly checked by a storm of hisses, that ran like a sharp breeze over the
hall. Such desecration of the Sabbath day clearly was not permissible. One
Sabbath morning I was startled, on entering the church where I was to speak, to
notice in the corner of each pew a spittoon, and then one in the pulpit. These
articles were of white china, and so in sharp contrast with the surroundings of
walnut and brown furnishings. The color of that which had evidently gone into
the spittoon was in such keeping with the general color-scheme of the church as
to make quite clear the usage that required them. One of the leading speakers at
a Christian workers' convention was inquiring about what train he could get
after the service Sabbath night. He was a very busy man, lived a full night's
ride away, and was eager to be at his desk Monday morning. Another leader
present in the group remarked to me afterwards that he would not think of doing
such a thing as taking a train on Sabbath night. Yet I knew that he was in the
habit of using bottled beer on the score of his health. A large party of church
people were on a trip to a religious gathering. It was a long trip, involving a
Sabbath day on the way. The special train schedule was arranged so as to stop
over for that day, and then leave at a few minutes past midnight of the Sabbath
day. In a chance exchange of remarks with an engineer who did not know me, he
said, with a leering wink of the eye: "These church folks don't travel on
Sunday, you know." His tone and manner suggested that he did not think much of
the sort of technical Sabbath observance that required him and his crew to use
part of their Sabbath day in working. A Southern clergyman visiting his brother
in the North was to attend a certain church service on the Sabbath day. It was
some distance away, too far for him to walk; but he did not think it right to
use the street cars on that day, and so requested his brother to engage a
carriage for his use. The brother did so. Later the brother remarked to me that
if he were seen on the street cars on the Sabbath, his friends would know that
he was going to the mission he attended every Sabbath; if they saw him in a
carriage driving they would likely suppose, he said, that he was out for a
pleasure jaunt. A young woman, member of a leading church in her home city,
teacher in the Sabbath School, and faithful in attendance at the Young People's
Meetings, was talking with a friend of mine about card-playing and dancing. She
said she thought it was not right for a true Christian to engage in these
things, but when she was out in social gatherings, where they were indulged, she
would join through dislike of being thought peculiar.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 69: QUESTIONS THAT ARE NOT QUESTIONS.
========================================================================

Questions that are Not Questions. These incidents suggest at once the principal
things that are being regarded to-day as questionable things. They suggest, too,
the differences of opinion held regarding them by Christian people. Wherever
Christian circles and worldly circles touch and overlap and interlace these
things are being discussed. It is very striking that everywhere they are called
questionable. Though if a thing of this sort be questionable, surely it is not
questionable. If some one seriously raises a question about some such matter of
conduct, there is surely no question about that item for the man who would touch
the highest levels, and always ring true. Just such questions of propriety and
of conscience have always been up for discussion. Ever since Jesus was on earth
men have divided themselves into two great groups around Him. For those who have
stayed close to Him that line of division is usually clear, and sharp, and
easily seen. For those who travel closer to the line itself, and the people on
the other side, it has seemed to be a vague, indistinct line, not easily seen.
The folks on the other side of it seem to be raising a good bit of dust and
those near by are bothered in their seeing. Yet, too, let it be said that for
many an earnest Christian who would live very close to the Master there arise
just such questions of conduct and of conscience that seem very difficult to
decide. The settlement of them is a matter of standpoint. A simple statement of
the Christian standpoint helps much to clear away the haze and fog. It has been
said in a former talk that the Church is Jesus Christ's preacher to the world.
What is true of the Church is true of its members. Each one by his life is Jesus
Christ's preacher to his world. Jesus is counting on us. We are the ones upon
whom His plan for the world depends, and the only ones. The world knows Jesus
through His followers. It knows Him only as it knows His followers. It is to be
feared that some of us are preaching a rather scrappy Gospel, or a very much
hidden Gospel. But whatever each follower of His is in his life, that is the
impression of Jesus Christ which his circle gets so far as he is concerned.
Whatever gives a wrong or weak or obscure impression of Jesus, and of the life
He 'calls us to, clearly belongs outside the Christian man's life. Whatever
hides Him away should be put out. We are judged by our attitude towards these
questioned things. That outside congregation does not know much about creeds. It
doesn't know much about Jesus Christ. It does lay great stress upon conduct,
upon what a man does. It judges his belief by what he does, the way he lives.
Could there be a keener way? or one more philosophical? For a man literally
believes only so much as he actually makes over into life. These questioned
things are familiar to these folks. They are not questioned out in their world,
but freely indulged. They seem to think a Jesus-man should be different from
themselves, in the sense of being better, being guided and held under the strong
thumb of a better and higher motive. So that our Christian profession is largely
judged by our attitude towards such matters. Years ago, before the time of
railroad consolidation had set in, a certain bit of railroad whose main line was
about two hundred miles long, was tinder the management of a Christian man. He
was as much noted in church circles for his earnest, faithful spirit, as he was
in railroad circles for his ability as a manager. The road was widely known for
three things: its good service, its good dividends, and the fact that there were
no Sunday trains. An annual report had just been issued, and the directors had
voted the usual good-sized dividend. Referring to it, another railroad manager,
in conversation with a group of business men, remarked, "Well, those blank
Christians know how to run a railroad." The manager of that railroad was
preaching Christ to all the world by his simple Sabbath observance rule.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 70: THE SABBATH QUESTION.
========================================================================

The Sabbath Question. The question of Sunday travel, both on trains and on
street cars, has been one of the questioned things, but in many circles seems to
be passing outside the line of question. Some who would not think of travelling
on a train on the Sabbath use the street cars freely on that day, though the
difference is difficult to see, except in the matter of distance and time
involved. Some who do not commonly travel on Sunday trains will yet take a train
Sabbath night in order to have a full day for business at the journey's end. In
the thick of city life, with its congested population, the long distances
involved, the home now out a bit may be, and the church still down where it used
to be, with people of limited means getting accommodations where they best can,
and also, be it said, with the growing disregard for the hallowed things—in the
city it is very difficult to get along without using the street cars. The man
trying to help in church services and at missions seems practically compelled to
their use. Yet I know a family of limited means, living in a large city, who, on
removing the home from one part of the city to another distant part, changed
their church membership, breaking old ties in doing so, simply to avoid the
Sunday travel. I know a Christian man whose service for many years has called
him to travel much over the country. I have heard him say that in twenty years
of such travel he has never taken a Sunday train, except once in the beginning
of his travel, when he missed a connection late on Saturday within a short
distance of the place of appointment for the next day. Yet, he said, very
deliberately, as though quite clear after much thinking, that the work of that
day led him to question very seriously the propriety of his action. And he felt
that his influence for the highest standard of the Christian life had been
lessened in that place, which was a boom town where Christian standards were
loosely held. He went on to say that he had travelled on the Sabbath a few other
times in cases of emergency, once a death call, and a few times taking a train
late Sabbath night to reach home on account of serious illness there. This man's
matured conviction is that practically it is better to avoid such travel
entirely except in distinct emergencies. And I have grown to have great and
increasing respect for his judgment. His habit regarding streetcar use on that
day is to avoid using them. In making appointments he has this in mind. Yet when
he feels led to an appointment necessitating a longer distance than he thinks it
wise to walk he does not hesitate to use them. The consideration regarding
Sunday travel is wholly a practical one. It is not that such travel is breaking
the Sabbath day necessarily. Even the Jews, the greatest sticklers for Sabbath
observance on technical grounds, did travel on the Sabbath; travelled much less,
but did travel, as the phrase "a Sabbath day's journey" indicates. But Sunday
travel is not a necessity, though in our intense civilization it has come to be
so regarded. The chief objection to it is that thereby men are deprived of their
day of rest. That is quite enough of an objection in itself to decide an earnest
man. Every man has a right to the rest-day. In being so deprived he distinctly
suffers both bodily and spiritually. The tone of his life, and of his home, is
lowered. But there is a second great objection. A disregard of the Sabbath day
is apt not only to indicate a disregard for other hallowed things, but to breed
such a disregard. The Sabbath is a sort of safeguard. Once it is broken through,
other breaks are apt to come in a man's regard for holy things. It may seem very
radical to say it, yet I am more and more compelled to believe it soberly true
that the common Sunday travel and traffic, both mail and freight, are not a
necessity, from any standpoint, with the usual saving clause about exceptions
and emergencies. In our intense, aggressive civilization it seems that it must
be a necessity. Yet it is not. It could all be stopped, and our national life be
both stronger and sweeter. The intense drive of the time, the continual railroad
accidents, the breakdowns from overwork, all spell out in biggest capital
letters the deep philosophy of needed rest that underlies the old Hebrew
commandment.


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  CHAPTER 71: GIVING COMFORT TO THE ENEMY.
========================================================================

Giving Comfort to the Enemy. Regarding the theatre, it can be said that without
doubt there are some performances, such as historical plays and others, that are
thoroughly enjoyable, and that would not be otherwise than helpful. But clearly
these are the exception. The theatre as an institution is not good; more, it is
bad. The tone of its performances has been steadily lowering to cater to the
sensual appetites, the morbid desire for the sensational. Its representation of
life, as a rule, is not true, nor good, nor well balanced. Then it can be added
that the worst features of sinful life in the city are constantly fostered and
intensified by the theatre. A man might choose only the exceptional, fine play,
and refuse all others. But many of those in his circle who are under the
influence of his conduct make no such discrimination. They are younger, it may
be, with their character and convictions just in process of being formed. The
fact that this man goes influences their going. The chances are all in favor of
their choosing the popular play of the hour, or the one that happens to strike
the fancy. The chances are still more in favor of their being hurt in their
moral lives, not to go higher and say Christian lives. Cards have long been
gamblers' favorite tools. It may not be that the playing of any of the numerous
card games has necessarily any influence upon one's thought of gambling. But
there does seem practically to be a subtle, sure connection between the two.
There is an itch about cards; a contagious itch. The chance of winning something
for nothing must be added to give zest to the playing. And the step from a
trifling something to something of real value, and then of great value, seems to
be a very short one. And the highly colored glamour of high society casts a
spell over all. Gambling itself is not questionable. It is only bad. It is wrong
in principle, of course; never right. It would seem the only wise course to
leave gamblers' favorite tools to themselves. The word dancing seems to cover a
great variety of physical exercise under greatly different conditions. David
danced before the Lord to express his joy at the return of the Ark. The old
Scottish dances were used as fine means of development, but were strictly
guarded, men with men, and women with women, and never otherwise. What is called
the modern dance seems to have radically altered these old regulations. Many of
the common usages of dancing to-day put it quite outside the line for the
modest, thoughtful people. Many dancing institutions and centres join hands with
the theatres in fostering the worst impurity lurking in city life. But what
about private dancing in one's own home with a chosen circle? Well, the fact
that there is a question-mark over the whole custom would seem to answer that
question. What is being questioned in morals would far better be left alone. And
with this goes the kindred fact that people do not discriminate keenly.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 72: PAUL'S ADVICE.
========================================================================

Paul's Advice. Paul set down a great rule about the appetites. There were many
things which he might justify himself in doing, but he said he would not be
brought under the power of anything. Whatever habit brings me under its power,
and so lessens my own power, is a bad habit to me. The habit of good, such as
prayer, or doing kindness, in bringing me under its power is also increasing my
own power of self-mastery. What injures my body is wrong for me. If the use of
tobacco or alcoholic drink in any shape affects the action of the heart, or
lessens my staying powers, or unsteadies my nerves, this clearly to me is wrong.
And the best physicians, backed abundantly by science, and by constant
illustrations from life, have spoken very positively here. In the light of what
specialists say it would seem that any indulgence is bad. Sooner or later its
effect will be felt in the body and so in the life. With the conditions of life
prevalent to-day there is no question at all regarding strong drink for the man
who would be Jesus Christ's true preacher to men. Total abstinence is the only
safe rule for a sound body, a clear brain, a strong will, and for the influence
upon the great crowd of our fellows on a road very slippery and slanting. The
Church of Corinth fairly bristled with questions about matters of conduct. They
gave the earnest people there great concern. They concerned Paul very greatly,
for these people were his spiritual children, whom he had brought into new life
through hard travail. These people write to Paul for advice and help in the
perplexity The first nine chapters of his first epistle to the Corinthians are
largely devoted to these matters. Some of the questions raised were about abuses
concerning which there was very explicit command from God. Regarding other
matters there was no such command, and so Paul is advising them as in his
judgment is best. And he feels that he is being guided in his advice by the
Spirit of God. He says that if doing something causes his brother to stumble he
will not do that thing while the world stands. The passion of service burned
that into his heart. The love for the Master who had sent him to serve was yet
greater. The eager longing to win men up to the highest life overruled all his
own tastes and preferences. His controlling principle in settling all such
questions was love; a tender, intensely practical love for all men. Love is the
great test of the Christian life. Knowledge puffeth up; we all know that, and
are constantly reminded of it. Love buildeth up. We need more of that. Paul
says, "All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient." It is
not wrong to do certain things, but it is not best. It is not a question of
right and wrong here. That test belongs lower down. Up here it is a matter of
doing only what is best, and rigidly leaving the rest. Some of these questioned
things are not necessarily wrong, but they clearly are not best. And if we judge
a thing to be wrong then it is wrong for us, for we are doing the thing we think
to be wrong. The hurt to the character is as great as though it were wrong. If
the inner Voice has said to me not to do a certain thing, and I do, I break off
the intimacy of contact with the One who is wooing me into the inner intimacies
of His friendship. I become less sensitive to His voice. The next time I will
not hear so easily what He is saying. It does not affect my salvation, of
course. But then, who would use the friendship of Jesus as a convenience or as
insurance! If witnessing a play tends to make me get used to sin, and so think
lightly of it, or to make impurity less repugnant to me, or to loosen to any
degree my hold upon the highest ideals of life, clearly to me it is not good,
and so it is positively bad. There is with many a fear of being thought
peculiar. Yet one of the fine, distinguishing marks of Christ's followers is
that they are a peculiar people. That does not mean peculiar in an offensive
sense, in criticizing all who differ with us, nor in setting up standards for
others; not peculiar in oddity of habit or expression of opinion; but peculiar
in the purity of the life, the lovableness of the spirit, the sweet charity of
forbearance and thoughtfulness of others, in modesty of bearing, and in the
earnest willingness to help and serve. But these questions can never be settled
satisfactorily by a negative policy. It will not do merely to cut things off
from without. They must be pushed off from within. Jesus said that when the
unclean spirit is cast out of a man he comes back, and if the man is empty
within the outcast spirit secures the co-operation of other spirits and
re-enters the empty house, and now holds the man more strongly under his sway
than ever. If on returning, he had found in his old place the gracious, mighty
spirit of God in possession, he would quietly have slunk away to other haunts. A
man needs a great, absorbing passion to fill and grip and control his being and
life. There is the one great passion, that which absorbed Jesus—love. That
reaches eagerly up to Himself; it reaches quickly within to remove what He
doesn't like; it reaches warmly and earnestly out to tell others of Him. This
love—Jesus Himself enthroned within—fills one so satisfiedly that things not
congenial are crowded out. It lifts one up to such a level that small things are
seen in their smallness and so their hold loosens. It drives one with such
intensity out into service for men that whatever hinders is stripped quickly off
and thrown aside.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 73: NOT TO JUDGE BUT TO SAVE.
========================================================================

Not to Judge but to Save. There is need of greatest tact in expressing our
preferences regarding these things among those who practice them. There has been
in earlier generations, and not wholly gone yet, a rigidity of practice in some
such things coupled with lack of a loving, earnest, consistent spirit. And the
two have become fixed together in many minds. Truth has always suffered at the
hands of some defending it. One should be very careful not to express himself in
such a way as to seem critical of another. The keenest criticism of wrong is a
consistent life. We are not sent to judge the world but to save it. We are not
sent to be critics of our neighbors. Each man is to be fully persuaded in his
own mind. We are to presume that the other one has thought for himself and
reached a conclusion; we should respect his opinions. So that while as occasion
needs one should clearly make known his own thought and habit, it should be done
with the tactful deference to others that love inspires. I glean this fine bit
from a memorial of Dr. Maltbie D. Babcock, that rarely sainted, sane young
minister who so moved the heart of New York the brief year he preached there:
"He never hesitated a moment over questions of policy. Like Paul he held
tenaciously to the doctrine of Christian liberty. But he had more delight in
waiving his use of that liberty than in exercising it, if his use of it might in
any way interfere with his usefulness. Knowing so well his native dramatic
power, and his great enjoyment of good comedy and tragedy, I asked him if he
ever went to the theatre. 'Never.' Bearing in mind his delight in the best
music, and his familiarity with many scores of celebrated compositions in opera,
oratorio, and orchestral music, I said, 'How about the opera? Do you ever go?'
'Never.' Anyone who knew him well would not have to ask why. I knew it was
Paul's reason. "But Mr. Trumbull, in the Sunday School Times, after Dr. Babcock
left us, related two incidents which explained and illustrated his reason, which
I here quote. 'When lunching one day with some business men, Dr. Babcock was
offered a cigar, and a hope was expressed that he would join the others in a
social smoke. Instantly his face lighted up with one of his winning smiles, and
he said to the speaker: "Thank you very much for your kindness. But you know I
have a profession that means more to me than anything else in the world. I guard
it very jealously. I am liable to be called out at any time of day or night, in
the service of my profession, and if I were called suddenly to the bedside of
some one who was dying, it wouldn't seem just right, would it?—if I had the odor
of tobacco in my clothes and on my breath. So you will pardon me, won't you, if
I don't join you in this?" "At another time one of the wealthier members of his
congregation offered him the use of his box at the opera through the season, and
instantly this reply came: 'I can't thank you enough for the kindness you are
showing me. But you know how a surgeon in practicing his profession is not only
obliged to keep his hands and linen free from dirt, but he must keep himself
aseptically clean as well. Now, in my profession, I have to be even more careful
than a surgeon, and so I must be careful about things that might do harm in even
the most indirect way. You will understand, I know, why I cannot accept the
great kindness you are offering me, though I do thank you for it from the bottom
of my heart.' " ("Maltbie Davenport Babcock." by Chas. E. Robinson, D.D.) Here
was the exquisite tact of a perfect gentleman combined with the highest standard
of conduct. His service controlled in his life and actions. Here is a great
simple question suggested that goes at once to the very heart of this whole
matter of questioned things: Should not service —thought for others whom we
would win by both direct and indirect touch—control every one of us who belongs
to Jesus Christ?


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 74: THE LAW OF LOVE.
========================================================================

The Law of Love. There is a very simple law to follow here. It is Paul's law. He
got it from the Holy Spirit. It is the law of love. It speaks thus: Whatever
dulls the sensitiveness of my spirit towards God, or takes the fine, tender edge
off my thought of Him must be ruled out, for He is my Lord. Whatever injures or
weakens my body, or affects my mastery of it, must be ruled out, for it is the
temple of my Lord. Whatever affects hurtfully the earnestness and clearness of
my witness to Jesus Christ before others must be ruled out, for it was His
parting wish that I be a witness for Him to all men. Whatever lessens in any
way, even through prejudice or misunderstandings, the results of my service must
be ruled out, for to influence men for Him is to be the passion of my life.
Whatever may cause my brother to stumble in his Christian life must be ruled
out, for that would grieve Jesus.


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Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/quiet-talks-on-personal-problems/
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