{67}
Matthewv. 7.
Whom does Jesus call the blessed people? "Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy." This repeats in effect the later words of Jesus: "With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged." The merciless judgment passed on others recoils upon one's own nature and makes it hard and mean and brutalized. The habit of charitable judgment of others is a source of personal blessedness. It blooms out into composure and hopefulness, into peace and faith. How wonderful these great calm affirmations of Jesus are! They are directly in the face of the most common views of life, and yet they are delivered as simple axioms of experience, as matters of fact, self-evident propositions of the reason. It is not a matter of barter of which Jesus is speaking. He does not say: "If you treat another kindly he will be kind to you. The merciful man will get mercy when he needs it." That {68} would not be the truth. The best of men are often judged most mercilessly. Jesus himself gives his life to acts of mercy, and is pitilessly slain. This beatitude gives, not a promise to pay, but a law of life. To forgive an injury is, according to this law, a blessing to the forgiver himself. The quality of mercy blesses him that gives as well as him that takes. The harsh judge of others grows hard himself, while pity softens the pitier. Thus among the happiest of people are those whose grudges and enmities have been overcome by their own broader view of life. It is as though in the midst of winter the warmer sun were already softening the frost. They are happy, not because others are kinder to them, but because that softer soil permits their own better life to germinate and grow. The merciful has obtained mercy; the blesser has received the blessing.
{69}
Matthewv. 8.
"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." That, I suppose, is the highest and deepest proposition which ever fell from human lips. Without the least argument or reasoning about it, as a thing which is perfectly self-evident, Jesus announces that purity of heart leads to the knowledge of God. Your character clarifies your creed. A theologian who wants to be profound must be pure. Consecration brings with it insight. The perfect knowledge of God is to be attained only by the perfectly consecrated life. The human soul is a mirror on which the light of God shines, and only the pure mirror reflects the perfect image. What a word is this to drop into the midst of the conflicting theologies and philosophies of the time, of the disputes between the people who think they know all about God, and the people who think they cannot know Him at all! Do you want to be {70} sure that God is directing and supporting you in all your perplexing experiences of life? You cannot see God in these things except through a perfectly purified heart. Clarify the medium of vision, and truth undiscerned before breaks on the observer's sight. A mile or two from here skilful artisans make those great object-glasses with which the mysteries of the stars are disclosed. The slightest speck or flaw blurs the image, but with the perfect glass stars unseen by any eye throughout the history of the world are to be in our days discovered. It is a parable of the soul. Each film on the object-glass of character obscures the heavenly vision, but to the prepared and translucent life truth undiscernible by others breaks upon the reverent gaze, and the beatific vision is revealed to the pure in heart.
{71}
Lukeiii. 16.
Among the persons who group themselves about Jesus, the most dramatic and picturesque figure is certainly that of John the Baptist. There is in him a most extraordinary combination of audacity and humility. He is bold, denunciatory, confident; but at the same time he is self-effacing and preparatory in his work. He never thinks of his service as final; after him is to come a man who is preferred before him. There is always the larger work than his to follow. There are in him the most beautiful humility and the most absolute bravery, and this makes perhaps the rarest combination of traits which a character can show. It is all summed up in his doctrine of the two baptisms: the baptism by water, which John is to bring, and the baptism by the Holy Ghost and by fire, which is to be brought by Jesus. Water is, of course, the symbol of cleansing, the washing away of {72} one's old sins, an expulsive, negative work. Fire is the symbol of passion, enthusiasm, flame. It is illuminating, kindling, the work of the Holy Ghost. One of these baptisms prepares for the other. First a man must be clean and then he may be passionate. First, the fire of his base affections must be washed away and then the fire of a new enthusiasm may be lighted. And only that second step makes one a Christian. It is a great thing to have life cleansed, and its conceits and follies washed away. But that is not safety. The cleansing is for the moment only. It is like that house which was swept and garnished, but because it was empty was invaded by tenants worse than the first. The only salvation of the soul lies in the kindling of a new passion, the lighting of the fire of a new intention, the expulsive power, as it has been called, of a new affection.
So it is in our associated life. We need, God knows, the baptism of John, the purifying of conduct, the washing away of follies and sins; but what we need much more is the fire of a moral enthusiasm to burn up the refuse that lies in the malarious corners of our college life, and light up the whole of it {73} with moral earnestness and passionate desire for good. That is to pass from the discipleship of John to the discipleship of Jesus, from the baptism by water to the baptism by fire, from the spirit of the Advent season to the spirit of the Christmas time.
{74}
Matthewii. 1-11;Lukeii. 8-10.
One Gospel tells of one kind of people who saw a star in the East and followed it; and another Gospel tells the same story of quite an opposite kind of people. Matthew says that the wise men of the time were the first to appreciate the coming of Christ. Luke says that it was the plainest sort of people, the shepherds, who first greeted that coming. There is the same variety of impression still. Many people now write as if religion were for the magi only. They make of it a mystery, a philosophy, an opinion, a doctrine, which only the scholars of the time can appreciate, and which plain people can obey, but cannot understand. Many people, on the other hand, think that religion is for plain people only; good for shepherds, but outgrown by magi; a star that invites the superstitious and ignorant to worship, but which suggests to scholars only a new phenomenon for science to explore.
{75}
But the Christmas legend calls both, the wise and the humble, to discipleship. Religion has both these aspects, and offers both these invitations. Religion is not theology. There are many things which are hidden from the magi, and are revealed to simple shepherds. But religion, on the other hand, is not all for the simple. The man who wrote that there were many things hidden from the wise and prudent, was himself a scholar. It was like that dramatic day, when Wendell Phillips arraigned the graduates of this college for indifference to moral issues, while he who made the indictment was a graduate himself. The central subject of the highest wisdom to-day is, as it always has been, the relation of the mind of man to the universe of God.
Thus both these types of followers are called. Never before was the fundamental simplicity of religion so clear as it is now; and never before was scholarship in religion so needed. Some of the secrets of faith are open to any receptive heart, and some must be explored by the trained and disciplined mind. The scholar and the peasant are both called to this comprehensive service. The magi and the shepherd meet at the cradle of the Christ.
{76}
Lukeii. 8-14.
We are beginning to feel already the sweep of life that hurries us all along to the keeping of the Christmas season; our music already takes on a Christmas tone, and we begin to hear the song of the angels, which seemed to the Evangelists to give the human birth of Jesus a fit accompaniment in the harmonies of heaven.
This song of the angels, as we have been used to reading it, was a threefold message; of glory to God, peace on earth, and good-will among men; but the better scholarship of the Revised Version now reads in the verse a twofold message. First, there is glory to God, and then there is peace on earth to the men of good-will. Those, that is to say, who have the good-will in themselves are the ones who will find peace on earth. Their unselfishness brings them their personal happiness. They give themselves in good-will, and so they obtain peace. That is the true spirit {77} of the Christmas season. It is the good-will which brings the peace. Over and over again in these months of feverish scrambling for personal gain, men have sought for peace and have not found it; and now, when they turn to this generous good-will, the peace they sought comes of itself. Many a man in the past year has had his misunderstandings or grudges or quarrels rob him of his own peace; but now, as he puts away these differences as unfit for the season of good-will, the peace arrives. That is the paradox of Christianity. He who seeks peace does not find it. He who gives peace finds it returning to him again. He who hoards his life loses it, and he who speeds it finds it:—
"Not what we give, but what we share,For the gift without the giver is bare;Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,—Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me."
That is the sweet and lingering echo of the angels' song.
{78}
Lukeii. 30-35.
The prophecy of the aged Simeon for the infant Christ was this,—that through him the secrets of many hearts should be revealed. Jesus, that is to say, was not only to read the secrets of others' hearts, but he was to enable people to read their own hearts. They were to come into self-recognition as they came to him. They were to be disclosed to themselves. You know how that happens in some degree when you fall in with other exceptional lives. You meet a person of purity or self-control or force, and there waken in you kindred impulses, and you become aware of your own capacity to be better than you are. The touch of the heroic discovers to you something of heroism in yourself. The contagion of nobleness finds a susceptibility for that contagion in yourself.
So it was that this disclosure of their hearts to themselves came to the people who met with {79} Jesus Christ. One after another they come up, as it were, before him, and he looks on them and reads them like an open book; and they pass on, thinking not so much of what Jesus was, as of the revelation of their own hearts to themselves. Nathanael comes, and Jesus reads him, and he answers: "Whence knowest thou me?" Peter comes, and Jesus beholds him and says: "Thou shalt be called Cephas, a stone." Nicodemus, Pilate, the woman of Samaria, and the woman who was a sinner, pass before him, and the secrets of their different hearts are revealed to themselves. It is so now. If you want to know yourself, get nearer to this personality, in whose presence that which hid you from yourself falls away, and you know yourself as you are. The most immediate effect of Christian discipleship is this,—not that the mysteries of heaven are revealed, but that you yourself are revealed to yourself. Your follies and weaknesses, and all the insignificant efforts of your better self as well, come into recognition, and you stand at once humbled and strengthened in the presence of a soul which understands you, and believes in you, and stirs you to do and to be what you have hitherto only dreamed.
{80}
These are the last words of most of the Epistles of the New Testament. They are the last words of the New Testament itself. They are commonly heard as the last words of Christian worship; the most familiar form of Christian benediction. But what is the grace of Jesus Christ? Grace is that which acts not for duty's sake, but for sheer love and kindness. What is the grace of God? It is just this overflowing benevolence. Who is the gracious man? It is he who gives beyond his obligations, and seeks opportunities of thoughtful kindliness. What is the grace of Christ? It is just this superadded and unexpected generosity.
So the life of duty and the life of grace stand contrasted with each other. The duty-doer thinks of justice, honesty, the reputable way of life. But grace goes beyond duty. Duty asks, What ought I to do? Grace asks, What can I do? Where duty halts, grace begins. It touches duty with beauty, and makes it fair instead of stern. Grace is not looking {81} for great things to do, but for gracious ways to do little things. In many spheres of life it is much if it can be said of you that you do your duty. But think of a home of which all that you could say was that its members did their duty. That would be as much as to say that it was a just home, but a severe one; decorous, but unloving; a home where there was fair dealing, but where there was little of the grace of Jesus Christ.
Thus it is that the grace of Jesus Christ sums up the finest beauty of the Christian spirit, and offers the best benediction with which Christians should desire to part. As we separate for a time from our worship, I do not then ask that we may be led in the coming year to do our duty, I ask for more. I pray for the grace of Jesus Christ; that in our homes there may be more of considerateness, that in our college there may be a natural and spontaneous self-forgetfulness, a free and generous offering of uncalled-for kindness. Some of us are able to do much for others, to give, to teach, to govern, to employ. There is a way of doing this which doubles its effect. It is the way of grace. Some of us must be for the most part receivers of instruction or {82} kindness. There is a way of receiving kindness which is among the most beautiful traits of life. It is the way of grace. No one of us, if he be permitted to live on in this coming year, can escape this choice between obligation and opportunity, between the way of life which is discreet and prudent and the way of life which is simply beautiful. When these inevitable issues come, then the prayer, which may lead us to the higher choice, must be the prayer with which the Bible ends; the benediction of the Christian spirit; even this,—that the grace of Jesus Christ may be with us all.
{83}
Deuteronomyxxxiii. 27.
"Underneath are the everlasting arms,"—that was the repeated burden of the great men of Israel. They lived in the midst of national calamities and distresses. They were defeated, puzzled, baffled. The way looked dark. Then they fall back on the one great re-establishing thought: after all, it is God's world. It is not going to ruin. Changes which seemed tremendous are not fatal or final. Israel dwells in safety, for God holds us in his arms.
We need some such broad, deep confidence as we enter a new year. We get involved in small issues and engrossed in personal problems, and people sometimes seem so malicious, and things seem to be going so wrong that it is as if we heard the noise of some approaching Niagara. Then we fall back on the truth that after all it is not our world. We can blight it or help it, but we do not {84} decide its issues. In the midst of such a time of social distress, Mr. Lowell in one of his lectures wrote: "I take great comfort in God. I think He is considerably amused sometimes, but on the whole loves us and would not let us get at the matchbox if He did not know that the frame of the universe was fireproof." That is the modern statement of the underlying faith and self-control and patience which come of confessing that in this world it is not we alone who do it all. "Why so hot, little man?" says Mr. Emerson. "I take great comfort in God," says Mr. Lowell; and the Old Testament, with a much tenderer note repeats: "Underneath are the everlasting arms."
{85}
Johnxiv. 14, 16.
Jesus says that he will send a Comforter, and that it will be the spirit of the truth. Many people say just the opposite of this. If you want comfort, they think that you must not have truth. Is not the truth often an uncomforting and uncomfortable thing? Too much truth seems dangerous. The spirit of the truth is a hard, cold spirit. Should not a comforter shade and soften the truth? But Jesus answers there is nothing so permanently comforting as the truth. Why, for instance, is it that we judge people so severely? It is not as a rule that we know the whole truth about them, but that we know only a fragment of the truth. The more we know, the gentler grow our judgments. Would it not be so if people who judge you should know all your secret hopes and conflicts and dreams? Why is it again that people are so despondent about their own times, their community, the tendency of things? It is because {86} they have not entered deeply enough into the truth of the times. The more they know, the more they hope. And why is it that God is all-merciful? It is because He is also all-wise. He knows all about us, our desires and our repentances, and so in the midst of our wrong-doing He continues merciful. His Holy Spirit bears in one hand comfort and in the other truth. How does a student get peace of mind? He finds it when he gets hold of some stable truth. It may not be a large truth, but it is a real truth, and therefore it is a comfort. How does a man in his moral struggles get comfort? He gets it not by swerving, or dodging, or compromising, but by being true. The only permanent comfort is in the sense of fidelity. You are like a sailor in the storm; it is dark about you, the wind howls, the stars vanish. What gives you comfort? It is the knowledge that one thing is true. Thank God, you have your compass, and the tremulous little needle can be trusted. You bend over it with your lantern in the dark and know where you are going, and that renews your courage. You have the spirit of the truth, and it is your comforter.
{87}
Ephesiansvi. 14-17.
In this passage the apostle is thinking of the Christian life as full of conflict and warfare. It needs what he calls the good soldier of Jesus Christ, and for the moment St. Paul is considering how such a soldier should be armed for such a war. He is like some knight of the Middle Ages, standing in his castle-yard and serving out to his vassals the weapons they need for the battle which is near at hand. "Take all your armor," he says. "This is no holiday affair, no dress parade. You are to fight against principalities and powers. So take the whole armor of God." And then he puts it into their hands. There is, however, one curious thing about this armor. It has but one offensive weapon. The soldier of Jesus Christ is given, to defend himself from his enemies, the shield of faith, the tunic of truth, the helmet of salvation; but to fight, to overcome, to disarm, he has but one weapon,—the {88} sword of the spirit. Is it possible, then, that the Spirit of God entering into a man can be to him a sword; that a man's character has this aggressive quality; that a man fights just by what he is? Yes, that seems to be the apostle's argument. Looking at all the conflicts and collisions of life, its differences of opinion, its causes to be won, he thinks that the best fighting weapon is the spirit of a man's life. Behind all argument and persuasion the only absolute argument, the final persuasion, is the simple witness of the spirit. When a man wants to make a cause he believes in win, his aggressive force lies not in what he says about that cause, but in what that cause has made of him. He wins his victory without striking a blow when he wields the sword of the Spirit. He comes like the soft, fresh morning among us, and we simply open our windows and yield to it, greeting it with joy. It is the air we want to breathe, and we accept it as our own.
{89}
Johnxiv. 6.
When Jesus says: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life," he names the three things which a man must have in order to lead a straight life. Such a man must have first a way to go, and then a truth to reach, and then life enough to get there. He needs first a direction, and then an end, and then a force. Some lives have no path to go by, and some no end to go to, and some no force to make them go. Now Jesus says that the Christian life has all three. It has intention, the decision which way to go; it has determination, the finding of a truth to reach; it has power, the inner dynamic of the life of Christ. Life, as has been lately said by one of our own preachers, is like an arrow. It must have its course, it must have its mark, and it must have the power to go.
"Life is an arrow, therefore you must knowWhat mark to aim at, how to bend the bow,Then draw it to its head, and let it go." [1]
[1] Henry van Dyke, D. D., in theOutlookfor Feb. 23, 1895.
{90}
Revelationii. 1-7.
I do not propose to consider the character or intention of this mystical Book of Revelation. However it may be regarded, it is first of all a series of messages written in the name of the risen Christ to the churches of Asia, singling out each in turn, pointing out its special defects, and exhorting it to its special mission; and there is something so modern, or rather so universal about these messages to the churches that in spite of their strange language and figures of speech they often seem like messages to the churches of America to-day. First the word comes to the chief church of the region, at Ephesus. It was a great capital city, with much prosperity and splendor, and the church there abounded in good works. The writer appreciates all this: "I know thy works, and thy toil and patience, and that thou canst not bear evil men." It was a substantial, busy city church. What was lacking in the church {91} of Ephesus? It had fallen away, says the message, from its first enthusiasm. It had "lost its first love." The eagerness of its first conversion had gone out of it. It had settled down into the ways of an established church, with plenty of good works and good people, but with the loss of that first spontaneous, passionate loyalty; and unless it recovered this enthusiasm "its candlestick would be removed out of its place," and its light would go out.
How modern that sounds! How precisely it is like some large church in some large city to-day, a respectable and respected and useful church, a Sunday club, a self-satisfied circle; and how it explains that mysterious way in which, in many such a large church, a sort of dry-rot seems to set in, and even where the church seems to prosper it is declining, and some day it dies! It has lost its first love, and its candle first flickers and then goes out.
Indeed, how true the same story is of many an individual inside or outside the church, perfectly respectable and entirely respected, but outgrowing his enthusiasms. He becomes, by degrees, first self-repressed and unemotional, then a cynical dilettante. How you wish he {92} would do something impulsive, impetuous, even foolish! How you would like to detect him in an enthusiasm! His life has moved on like the river Rhine, which has its boisterous Alpine youth, and then runs more and more slowly, until in Holland we can hardly detect whether it has any current.
"It drags its slow length through the hot, dry land,And dies away in the monotonous strand."
That is the church of Ephesus, and that is the man from Ephesus, and unless they repent and regain their power of enthusiasm their light goes out. Ephesus lies there, a cluster of huts beside a heap of ruins, and the future of the world is with the nations and churches and people who view the world with fresh, unspoiled, appreciative hope.
{93}
Revelationii. 8-10.
The Church of Ephesus needed a rebuke; the Church at Smyrna needed an encouragement. The first was a prosperous, busy church, without spiritual vitality, and the prophecy was that its light should go out. The second was a persecuted church, with much tribulation and poverty, and the promise was that for its faithfulness it should have a crown of life. And if the traveller, as he stands among the ruins of Ephesus, cannot help thinking how its candle-stick has been removed, so he must think of the reward of fidelity, as he stands among the busy docks and bustling life of Smyrna.
A crown of life! There is no discovery of experience more important in a man's life than the discovery of its legitimate rewards. A man undertakes to do the best he can with his powers and capacities, and inquires some day for the natural reward of his fidelity. Shall he have gratitude, or recognition, or praise? Any one of these things may come {94} to him, but any one of them, or all of them, may elude him; and all sooner or later show themselves to be accidents of his experience, and not its natural and essential issue. Then he discovers that there is but one legitimate reward of life, and that is increase of life, more of power and capacity and vitality and effectiveness. What is the reward of learning one's lessons? Marks, or praise, or distinction, may come of this, or they may not. The legitimate reward is simply the power to learn other lessons. The expenditure of force has increased the supply of force; the use of capacity has developed capacity. What is the reward of taking physical exercise? It is not athletic prizes, or athletic glory; it is strength. You have sought strength, and you get strength. The crown of athletic life is increase of athletic vitality. What is the reward of keeping your temper? It is the increased power of self-control. What is the reward of doing your duty as well as you can? It is the ability to do your duty better. Out of the duty faithfully done opens the way to meet the larger duty. You have been faithful over a few things, and you become the ruler over many things.
{95}
And what is the crown of the whole of life lived faithfully here? It is not a crown of gold or gems in another life; it is simply more life; a broader use of power, a healthier capacity, a larger usefulness. You are faithful unto death, through the misapprehensions and imperfections and absence of appreciation or gratitude in this preparatory world, and then there is offered to you inevitably and legitimately the crown of a larger, more serviceable, more effective life.
{96}
Revelationii. 12-17.
Both of these are Jewish symbols. One refers to that food which, as Moses commanded, was kept in the sanctuary and eaten by the priest alone; the other apparently refers to a sacred stone worn by the priest, with an inscription on it known only to him. Both symbols mean to teach that the Christian believer has an immediate and personal intimacy with God. There is no sacerdotal intermediation for him. He can go straight to the altar and take of the sacred bread. He wears on his own breast the mark of God's communication. It is the doctrine of the universal priesthood of believers; the highest promise to a faithful church. But on this white stone, the message says, there is a name written which no man knoweth save he that receiveth it. How quickly that goes home to many a faithful life. Hidden from all that can be read by {97} others is the writing which one bears upon his own breast, legible only to himself and to his God. Think how hardly and carelessly people try to judge one's life, to read its characteristics of strength or weakness. Think how we all thus deal in hasty judgment, stamping our neighbors as jovial or moody, generous or selfish, as kind or stern, as sinner or saint; while all the time, deeper than any interpretation of ours can reach, there is the central sanctuary of the man's own soul, where is worn against his breast the real title which to his own consciousness he bears, and which may quite contradict all external judgments. What is written on that interior life? What is that name you bear which no man knoweth save you;—that life of yourself which is hidden with Christ in God? That is the most solemn question which any man can ask himself as he bends to say his silent prayer.
Is it just your own name, the badge of selfishness; or is it some vow of irresponsibility,—Am I my brother's keeper?—or is it just a sheer blank white stone, marking a life without intention or character at all? Or is there perhaps written there the pure {98} demand to be of use?—"For their sakes I sanctify myself;"—or is there written on your heart the name of God, or of his Christ, so that this interior maxim reads: "I live, yet not I, but Christ that liveth in me"?
{99}
Revelationii. 18-28.
The morning star is the symbol of promise, the sign that the dawn is not far away. Thyatira was a little place, with a weak church, with small hopes and great discouragements, much troubled by the work of a false prophetess, tempted by "the deep things of Satan," as the message says, and yet to it the promise is committed, that it shall have authority over the nations, and receive "the morning star." It was the same great promise that had been already given to the early Christians: "Fear not, little flock, for it is my Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." It was the same amazing optimism which made Jesus look about him, as he stood with a dozen humble followers, and say: "Lift up your eyes and look at the fields, they are white already to my harvest."
There is certainly passing over the world in our day a great wave of intellectual and {100} spiritual discouragement and despondency. What with philosophical pessimism and social agitations and literary decadence and political corruption and moral looseness, a great many persons are beginning to feel that the end of the century is an end of faith, and are not able to discern in the darkness of the time any morning star. As one distinguished author has said: "This is not a time of the eclipse of faith, but a time of the collapse of faith." It was much the same in the times of Thyatira. There was the same luxury and self-indulgence in the Roman world, the same social restlessness, the same intellectual despondency. Now, who is it that can view these perturbations of the world with a tranquil and rational hope? I answer, that it is only he who views his own time in the light of the eternal purposes of God. The religious man is bound to be an optimist, not with the foolish optimism which blinks the facts of life; but with the sober optimism which believes that—
"Step by step, since time began,We see the steady gain of man."
It may be dark as pitch in the world of speculative thought, but religion discerns the {101} morning star. It believes in its own time. It believes that somehow "good will be the final goal of ill." Even in the perplexities and disasters of its own experience it is not overwhelmed. It is cast down, but not destroyed. It is saved by hope. It lifts its eyes and beholds through the clouds the gleam of the morning star.
{102}
Revelationiii. 1.
Was there ever a message of sterner irony than this to the Church of Sardis: "Thou hast a name that thou livest, and thou art dead"! We may suppose that it was a church of apparent prosperity, with all the machinery of church life, its ritual, and officers, and committees, all in working order; and yet, when one got at the heart of it, there was no vitality. It was a dead church. It could show—as the passage says—no works fulfilled before God. It was like a tree which seems all vigorous, but which, when one thrusts into the heart of it, proves to be pervaded by dry-rot. There are plenty of such churches still,—churches which have a name that they are living, but are dead. They are counted in the denominational year-book; they go through the motions of life; but where is their quickening, communicating, vitalizing power? What are they but mechanical, formal, institutional things, and how sudden sometimes, like {103} the falling of a dead tree, is the collapse of a dead church!
There is the same story to tell of some people. They have a name that they are living, but they are practically dead. For what is it, according to the New Testament, which makes one live, and when is it that one comes to die? "To be carnally minded," answers St. Paul, "is death, and to be spiritually minded is life." "He that heareth my sayings," answers Jesus, "hath passed from death into life." What a wonderful word is that! It is not a promise that the true Christian shall some day, when his body dies, pass into an eternal life. It is an announcement that when one enters into the spirit of Christ he passes, now, in this present world, from all that can be fairly called death, into all that can be rationally called life. Under this New Testament definition, then, a man may suppose himself to be alive and healthy, when he is really sick, dying, dead. A man may perhaps, as he says, see life, while he may be really seeing nothing but death. Or a man may be, as we say, dying, and be, in the New Testament sense, full of an abundant and transfiguring life.
{104}
And so it becomes an entirely practical question, which one may ask himself any morning, "Am I alive to-day, or am I dead? Is it only that I have the name of living, a sort of directory-existence, a page in the college records, a place in the list of my class, while in fact there is dry-rot in my soul? Or is there any movement of the life of God in me, of quickening and refreshing life, of generous activity and transmissive vitality? Then death is swallowed up in victory, and I am partaking even in this present world of the life that does not die."
{105}
Revelationiii. 8.
A few years ago, at the first service of the college year, one of our preachers took for his text this message to the church at Philadelphia: "Behold, I have set before thee an open door;" and it has always seemed to me to represent with precision the spirit of our worship here. We have abandoned the principle of compulsion. We do not force young men of twenty to come here and say their prayers. We simply set before them an open door. The privilege of worship is permitted to them from day to day, and religion stands among us, not as a part of college discipline, but as the supreme privilege of a manly human soul. Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely. Indeed, this same text represents the spirit of our whole university life. What we call the elective system is a method of invitation and persuasion. It multiplies opportunities. It does not compel the allegiance of the indifferent. He that is lazy, let him be lazy still. {106} The university sets before the mind of youth its open door.
And this, indeed, is what one asks of life. What should a free state in this modern world guarantee to all its citizens? Not that equality of condition for which many in our days plead, the dead level of insured and effortless comfort, but equality of opportunity, a free and fair chance for every man to be and to do his best. That land is best governed where the door of opportunity stands wide open to the humblest of its citizens, so that no man can shut it.
And what is the relation of religion to the life of man, if it be not of this same enlarging and emancipating kind? Here we are, all shut in by our routine of business and study and preoccupation, and religion simply opens the door outward from this narrowness of life into a larger and a purer world. It is as if you were bending some evening over your books in the exhausted air of your little room, and as if you should rise from your task, and pass out into the night, and the open door should deliver you from your weariness and your self-absorption, as you stood in the serene companionship of the infinite heavens and the myriad of stars.
{107}
Revelationiii. 20.
To the church at Philadelphia it was promised that the door should be opened; but here was a church at Laodicea which had deliberately shut its door on the higher life. It was a church that was neither cold nor hot, a lukewarm, indifferent, spiritless people, and to such a people, willfully barring out the revelations of God, comes the Christ in this wonderful figure, standing at the door like a weary traveller, asking to be let in. Such a picture just reverses the common view which one is apt to take of the religious life. We commonly think of truth as hiding itself within its closed door and of ourselves as trying to get in to it. We speak of finding Christ, or proving God, or getting religion, as if all these things were mysteries to be explored, hidden behind doors which must be unlocked; as if, in the relation between man and God, man did all the searching, and God was a hidden God.
{108}
But the fundamental fact of the religious life is this,—that the power and love of God are seeking man; that before we love Him, He loves us; that before we know Him, He knows us; that antecedent to our recognition of Him must be our receptivity of Him. Coleridge said that he believed in the Bible because it found him. It is for the same reason that man believes in God. God finds him. It is not the sheep which go looking for the shepherd, it is the shepherd who finds the sheep, and when they hear his voice, they follow him.
This is not contrary to nature. The same principle is to be noticed in regard to all truth. Take, for instance, any scientific discovery of a physical force, like that which we call the force of electricity. There is nothing new about this wonderful power. It has always been about us, playing through the sky, and inviting the mind of man. Then, some day, a few men open their minds to the significance of this force, and appreciate how it may be applied to the common uses of life. That is what we call a discovery; it is the opening of the door of the mind; and one of the most impressive things about science to-day is to {109} consider how many other secrets of the universe are at this moment knocking at our doors, and waiting to be let in; and to perceive how senseless and unreceptive we must seem to an omniscient mind, when so much truth, standing near us, is beaten back from our closed minds and wills. It is the same with religious truth. Here are our lives, shut in, limited, self-absorbed; and here are the messages of God, knocking at our door; and between the two only one barrier, the barrier of our own wills. Religious education is simply the opening of the door of the heart. A Christian discipleship is simply that alertness and receptivity which hears the knocking and welcomes the Spirit which says: "If any man will but open the door, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with me."
{110}
Revelationxxi. 7.
In each one of these letters to the churches there is repeated like a refrain, a sort ofmotifwhich announces the character of all,—this final phrase: "He that overcometh." He is to receive the promise, he is to inherit these things, he is to be the stone in the temple of God. The reward and blessing are to be not for the shirks or runaways or easy-going of the world, but for those who, taking life just as it is with all its hardness, overcome it. It is the manly summons from the soft theory of life to the principle which one may call that of progress through overcoming resistance.
A great many lives are spoiled by the soft theory of life. They expect to get out of life a comfort which is not in it to give. They go about looking, so to speak, for a "soft course" in the curriculum of life, hoping to enroll in it and be free from trouble. They ask of their religion that it shall make life easy and safe and clear. But the trouble is {111} that the elective pamphlet of life does not announce a single soft course. The people who try thus to live are simply courting disaster and despair. Some day, perhaps in some tragic moment, every man has to learn that life is not an easy thing, but that it is at times fearfully and solemnly hard. Nothing is more plainly written on the facts of life than this,—that life was meant to be hard. Trouble and disaster, and the inevitable blows of experience, are absolutely certain to teach this truth sooner or later, and the sooner one learns it the better for his soul. And if life was not meant to be easy, what was it meant for? It was meant to be overcome. It stands before one like the friction of the world of nature, which is always seeming to retard one's motion, but which makes really the only condition under which we move at all. If there is to be any motion through life, then it must be by overcoming its friction. If life was meant just to stand still, then it might stagnate in a soft place; but life was meant to move, and the only way of motion is by overcoming friction, and the hardness of the world becomes the very condition of spiritual progress. What we call the rub of life is {112} then what makes living possible. What we call the burdens of life are the discipline of its power. Not to him who meets no resistance, nor to him whose shoulder is chafed by no cross, but to him who overcometh is the promise given that God will be his God, and that he shall be God's son.
{113}
Matthewxiii. 1-9.
I wish to dwell for several mornings on this parable of the sower, and for to-day I call attention to the air of prodigality which pervades this story. There seems to be an immense amount of seed wasted. Some of it falls on the roadway; some of it is snatched away by the birds; some of it is caught among the bushes. Yet the sower proceeds in no niggardly fashion. He strides away across the field scattering the seed broadcast, far beyond the border where he expects a crop, for he knows that, though much shall be wasted, whatever seed may fall on good ground will have miraculous increase. There may be prodigality of waste, but there shall be prodigality of reproduction. If but one seed in thirty takes root in good soil it may produce thirty or sixty or a hundred fold.
Such is the prodigality of Providence. And it comes close to many experiences, and {114} interprets many perplexities of life. A man goes his way through life scattering his efforts, distributing his energy, doing his work as broadly and generously as he can, and some day he notices what a very large proportion of all that he does comes to nothing. Much of the soil where he sows seems hard and barren, and he might as well be trying to raise wheat on a stone pavement. It seems to be simply effort thrown away. But then some other day this man makes this other discovery,—that some very slight effort or endeavor or sacrifice or word has been infinitely more fruitful than he could have dreamed. It was an insignificant thing which he did, but it happened to fall at the right time in the right place, and he is almost startled at its productiveness.
And so he takes his lesson from the prodigality of Providence. Of course it will happen that the great proportion of his efforts will come to nothing. Of course he is to be misjudged and ineffective and barren of results; but if only one word in a hundred falls in the right soil, if only one effort in a hundred touches the right soul, the hundred-fold fruitage brings with it ample {115} compensation. Thus he strides cheerfully over the fields of life with the broad swing of an unthrifty mind, expecting that much of his seed will fall among the thorns and rocks, but with faith that the harvest—even if he is not himself permitted to reap it—is yet made safe through his fidelity to that prodigal Providence which miraculously multiplies the little he can do, and makes it bear fruit, sometimes a hundredfold.
{116}
Matthewxiii. 1-9.
Let us look still further at this parable of the sower. There are described in it various kinds of lives on which God's influences fall, and fall in vain. The first of these is the hard life,—hard, like a road, so that the seed lies there as if fallen on a pavement, and gets no root, and the pigeons come and pick it up. We usually think of the hard life as if it were a life of sin. We speak of a hardened sinner, of a hard man, as of persons whom good influences cannot penetrate. But the hard soil of the parable is not that of sin. It is that of a roadway, hardened simply by the passing to and fro. It is the hardening effect of habit. Sometimes, the passage says, your life gets so worn by the coming and going of your daily routine, that you become impenetrable to the subtle suggestions of God, as if your life were paved. Some people are thus hardened even to good. They lose capacity for impressions. {117} Some people are even gospel-hardened. They have heard so much talk about religion that it runs off the pavement of their lives into the gutter. Thus the first demand of the sower is for receptivity, for openness of mind, for responsiveness. Give God a chance, says the parable. His seed gets no fair opportunity in a life which is like a trafficking high-road. Keep the soil of life soft, its sympathy tender, its imagination free, or else you lose the elementary quality of receptiveness, and all the influences of God may be scattered over you in vain.
{118}
Matthewxiii. 1-9.
The first thing which hinders God's seed from taking root is, as we have seen, hardness,—the life which is trodden down like a road; an impenetrability of nature, which is not a trait of sinners only, but of many privileged souls. The second sort of unfruitful soil is just the opposite of this. It is not the unreceptive, but the impulsively receptive life. It is not too hard, or too soft, but it is too thin. It is a superficial soil which has no depth of earth, and so with joy it receives the word; but the seed has no depth of earth and quickly withers away. This sort of soil receives quickly and as quickly lets go. It is like that unstable man of whom St. James writes and who is like the wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed. We see the wave come flashing up out of the general level, catching the sunshine as it leaps and crowned with its spray, and then we look again for it, and where is {119} it? It has sunk again into the undistinguishable level of the sea.
Thus the parable turns to this instability and says: "It is bad to be hard, but it is bad also to be thin." When tribulation or persecution arises, something more than impulsiveness is needed to give a root to life. How strongly and serenely Newman writes of this:—
"Prune thou thy words, the thoughts controlThat o'er thee swell and throng;They will condense within thy soulAnd turn to purpose strong.But he who lets his feelings runIn soft luxurious flow,Faints when hard service must be done,And shrinks at every blow."
{120}
Matthewxiii. 1-9.
In the parable of the sower the third kind of soil is one which is very common in modern life. The first soil was too hard, and the second too thin, and now the third is too full. It is overgrown and preoccupied. Other things choke the seed. There is not room for the harvest. The influences of God are simply crowded out. And of what is life thus so full? Of two things, answers the parable. For some it is full of the cares of this world, and for some it is full of the deceitfulness of riches. Care is the weed that chokes plain people, and money is the weed that chokes rich people. Sometimes a poor man wonders how a rich man feels. Well, he feels about his money just as a poor man does about his cares. His wealth preoccupies him. It is a great responsibility. It takes a great deal of time. It crowds out many things he would like to do. The poor man says that {121} money would free him from care, but the rich man finds that money itself increases care. Thus they are both choked by lack of leisure, one by the demands of routine, and one by the burdens of responsibility. And this parable says to both these types of life: "Keep room for God." It comes to the scholar and says: "In this busy place reserve time to think and feel; do not let your cares choke your soul." And then it goes out to the great scrambling, money-getting world, and sees many a man hard at work in what he calls his field, watching for things grow in his life, and finding some day that he has been deceived in his crop. He thought it was to come up grain and it turns out to be weeds. He sowed money and expected a harvest of peace; and behold! he only reaps more money. That is the deceitfulness of riches.
{122}
Matthewxiii.;Markiv. 27.
The parable of the sower, which begins with its solemn warnings against the hard life, the thin life, and the crowded life, ends with a note of wholesome hope. Who are they who bring forth fruit in abundance? They are, the parable says, not great and exceptional people. The conditions are such as any life can fulfil. It is an honest and good heart which hears the word and keeps it and is fruitful. Nothing but sincerity and receptivity is demanded. A plain soil is productive enough. God only needs a fair chance. He only asks that life shall not be too hard, or too thin, or too crowded.
This is a saying of great comfort to plain people. And yet, even for these, one last demand is added,—the demand for patience. If fruit is to be brought forth it must be "with patience." The autumn comes, but not all at once. Jesus is always recalling to us the gradualness of nature; first the blade, {123} then the ear, then the full corn. Nothing in nature is in a hurry. It is not a movement of catastrophes, it is a movement of evolution. And so the last word of the parable is to the impetuous. What a hurry we are in for our results. We look about us among the social agitations of the day and demand a panacea; but God is not in a hurry. Delay, uncertainty, doubt, are a part of Christian experience. It brings forth its fruit with patience. It is like these lingering days of spring, when one can discern no intimation of the quickening life; and yet one knows that through the brown branches the sap is running, and slowly with hesitating advance the world is moving to the miracle of the spring.
{124}
Matthewxxv. 14-30.
The parable of the talents takes up the side of life which is not emphasized in the parable of the sower. In the story of the sower God is doing the work and man is receptive of his influence. In the story of the talents God is a master who leaves his servants to do his work, and the parable is one of activity. These men are responsible agents. Life is a trust. That is the natural teaching of the parable. All these men are accountable; there has been given to them that which is not their own, a trust from God, to be used in his service. But then enters the extraordinary teaching of this parable as to the fact of diversity. We talk of men as created free and equal. The cry of the time is for equality of condition, for leveling down the rich, and leveling up the poor; for paying the genius and the hod-carrier alike; time for time, and man for man. But this parable stands for no such definition of {125} equality. It recognizes diversity. Some have many talents and some have few. To each is given "according to his several ability." Diversity of condition is accepted as a natural feature of human life, just as the hills and valleys make up the landscape. The parable does not make of life a prairie.
Where then, in this diversified life, is justice, the social justice which men in our time so eagerly and so reasonably claim? There is no justice, answers the parable, if the end of life is to be found in getting the prizes of this world; for some are sure to get more than others. The justice of this diversity is found only in its relation to God. It is in the proportional responsibility of these holders of different gifts. Of those to whom much has been entrusted much will be required; of those who are slightly gifted the judgment will be according to the gift. There is no absolute standard. The judgment is proportional. One man may accomplish less than another, and yet be more highly rewarded, for he may do the less conspicuous duty laid on him better than the man with the larger trust does his. The parable humbles the privileged and encourages the disheartened. {126} There is no distinction of reward between the five-talent man and the two-talent man. Each has done his own duty with his own gifts, and to each precisely the same language of commendation is addressed. They have had proportional responsibility, and they have identical reward. Both have been faithful, and both enter into the same joy of their Lord.
{127}
Matthewxxv. 14-30.
The parable of the talents adds to its doctrine of responsibility a second teaching. It is its doctrine of interest; the return to be looked for from investment in the spiritual life. The economists have a law which they call the law of diminishing returns; but Jesus calls attention to the converse of that principle,—the law of increasing and accelerated returns. We see this principle on a great scale in the world of money. Money has a self-propagating quality. It breeds money. If you should ask a very rich man how he accumulated his fortune he would tell you that the first savings involved great thrift and wisdom or great good luck, but that after a while his wealth flowed in upon him almost in spite of himself. He began to get money, and the more he got the more easily he got more. Now this law, says Jesus, which is so obvious in the business world, is true in a much deeper way of the {128} spiritual life. Knowledge, power, faith, all grow by investment. Use of the little makes it much; hoarding what you have leaves it unfruitful. Do you want to know more? Well, put what you now know to use. Invest it, and as you seem to spend it, it increases, and you have found the way to the riches of wisdom. Do you want faith? Well, use what faith you have. Try the working hypothesis of living by faith. Our ancestors in New England trading used to send out on their ships what they called a "venture." They took the risks of business. There is a similar venture of faith, which says: "Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief." He who sends the venture of his faith over the ocean of his life may look for a rich cargo in return. To the faithful in the few things the many things are revealed. That is the law of increasing returns.
{129}
Matthewxxv. 14-30.
In the parable of the talents the use of money is of course only an illustration of spiritual truth. Yet the story has its obvious lessons about the uses of money itself. The five-talent man is the rich man; and his way of service makes the Christian doctrine of wealth. And, first of all, the parable evidently permits wealth to exist. It does not prohibit accumulation. Jesus is not a social leveler. His words are full of tenderness to the poor, but when a certain rich young man came to him, Jesus loved him also; and when one man asked him, saying: "Master, speak to my brother that he divide the inheritance with me," Jesus disclaimed the office of a social agitator, saying: "Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you." Thus Jesus cannot be claimed for any pet scheme which one may have of the distribution of wealth. But let not the Christian {130} think that on this account the Christian theory of wealth is less sweeping or radical than some modern programme. The fact is that it asks more of a man, be he rich or poor, than any modern agitator dares to propose. For it demands not a part of one's possessions as the property of others, but the whole of them. The Christian holds all his talents as a trust. There is in the Christian belief no absolute ownership of property. A man has no justification in saying: "May I not do what I will with mine own?" He does not own his wealth; he owes it. The Christian principle does not divide the rich from the poor; it divides the faithful use of whatever one has from its unfaithful use. Wealth is a fund of five talents of which one is the trusted agent; and to some five-talent men who have been faithful in their grave responsibilities, the word of Jesus would be given to-day as gladly as to any poor man: "Well done, faithful servant, enter into the joy of thy Lord."
{131}
Matthewxxv. 22.
In the parable of the talents the man that gets least general attention is the man that stands in the middle. The five-talent man gets distinction, and the one-talent man gets rebuke, but the two-talent man, the man with ordinary gifts and ordinary returns from them, seems to be an unexciting character. And yet this is the man of the majority, the average man, the man most like ourselves,—not very bad, and not very remarkable. As has been said: "God must have a special fondness for average people, for He has made so many of them." Now, the average man stands in special need of encouragement. One of the most serious moments of life is when a man discovers that he is this sort of man. It comes over most of us some day that we are not going {132} to do anything extraordinary; that we are never likely to shine; that we are simply people of the crowd. Nothing seems to take the ambition and enthusiasm out of one more than this recognition of oneself as an average man. Then comes Jesus with his word of courage. "Your work," he says, "is just as significant, and rewarded with precisely the same commendation as the work of the five-talent man." The same "Well done" is spoken to both, and it may be that the more heroic qualities are in the man with fewer gifts. To make great gifts effective may be easy, but to take common gifts and make them yield their best returns—that is what helps us all. There is not a more inspiring sight in life than to see a man start with ordinary capacity and to see his power grow out of his consecration. Looking back on life from middle age, that would be the story one would tell of many a success. One sees five-talent men fail and two-talent men take their place; average gifts persistently used yielding rich returns, and the promise of usefulness lying, not in abundant endowments of nature, but in the using to the utmost what moderate capacities one has soberly accepted as trusts from God.
[1] Read also, on this and the following subject, the kindling sermons of Phillips Brooks: "The Man with Two Talents," vol. iv. p. 192; "The Man with One Talent," vol. i. p. 138.
{133}
Matthewxxv. 24.
The parable of the talents was specially given to teach Christians not to be discouraged because Christ's kingdom was delayed. The one-talent man is its real object, and the lessons of larger endowment are only by the way. The one-talent man is not the bad man, for to him also God gives a trust, but this man is given so little to do that he thinks it not worth while to do anything. He is not the many-gifted five-talent man, or even the average two-talent man, but he is simply the man of no account. The risk of the five-talent man is his conceit; the risk of the two-talent man is his envy; the risk of the one-talent man is his hopelessness. Why should this insignificant bubble on the great stream of life inflate itself with self-importance? Why should it not just drift along with the current and be lost in the first rapids of the stream? Now Christ's first appeal to this sense of insignificance is {134} this,—that in the sight of God there is no such thing as an insignificant life. Taken by itself, looked at in its own independent personality, many a life is insignificant enough. But when we look at life religiously and recognize that it is a trusted agent of God, then the doctrine of the trust redeems it from insignificance. You have not much, but what you have is essential to the whole. The lighthouse-keeper on his rock sits in his solitude and watches his little flame. Why does he not let it die away as other lights in the distance die when the night comes on? Because it is not his light. He is its keeper, not its owner. The great Power that watches that stormy coast has set him there, and he must be true. The insignificant service becomes full of dignity and importance when it is accepted as a post of honor and trust. So the unimportant life gets its significance not by its own dimensions, but by its place in God's great order, and the most wretched moment of one's life must be when he discovers that he has been trusted by God to do even a little part and has thrown his chance away. The one-talent man thought his trust not worth investing, and behold, the account of it was called for with the rest. He {135} had in his hands a trust from God and had wasted it, and there was nothing left for him but the weeping of regret and the gnashing of teeth of indignant self-reproach.
{136}
Matthewxxv. 29.
The parable of the talents begins with its splendid encouragement to those who have done their best, but it ends with a solemn warning and with the stern announcement of a universal law. It is this,—that from him who does not use his powers there is taken away even the power that he has. The gift is lost by the lack of exercise, or as Horace Bushnell stated the principle, the "capacity is extirpated by disuse."
This principle has manifold illustrations. The hand or muscle disused withers in power. The fishes of the Mammoth Cave, having no use for their eyes, lose them. Mr. Darwin in an impressive passage of his biography testifies that he began life with a taste for poetry and music, but that by disuse this aesthetic taste grew atrophied so that at last he did not care to read a poem or to hear a musical note. So it is, says Jesus, with spiritual insight and power. Sometimes we see a man of intellectual {137} gifts lose his grasp on spiritual realities, and we ask: "How is it that so learned a man can find little in these things? Does not he testify that these things are illusions?" Not at all. It is simply that he has not kept his life trained on that side. His capacity has been extirpated by disuse. He may know much of science or language, but he has lost his ideals. We hear a young man sometimes say that he has grown soft by lack of exercise. Well, if you live a few years you will see people who have grown soft in soul, and you will see some great blow of fate smite them and crush them because their spiritual muscle is flabby and weak. Ignatius Loyola laid down for his followers certain methods of prayer which he called "Spiritual Exercises." So in one sense they were. They kept souls in training. The exercise of the religious nature is the gymnastics of the soul, and the disuse of the religious nature extirpates its capacity. That is the solemn ending of the parable of the talents. From him who does not use his power there is taken away even the power that he hath.
{138}
Matthewxii. 38-45.
It is easy to see where the emphasis of this parable lies. It is on the impossible emptiness of this man's house. A man casts out the devil of his life and turns the key on his empty soul and feels safe. But he cannot thus find safety. That is not the way to deal with evil spirits. Back they come, crowding into his life through the windows if not through the doors, and the last state of that man is worse than the first. If the parable had been told in modern times it might have been called the parable of the vacuum. A man's life is a space which refuses to be empty. If it is not tenanted by good the evil knocks and enters it. There is no such thing as an unoccupied life. Nature abhors a vacuum.
Here is one of the most common mistakes of human experience. A man often thinks that the less occupied his life is the safer it is. He casts out his passions, he denies his {139} desires, he abandons his ambitions, and so seeks safety. But his life is attacked by new perils. The lusts and conceits of life cannot be barred out of life; they must be crowded out. The old passion must be supplanted by a new and better one. The very same qualities which go to make a great sinner are needed to make a true saint. A man's soul is not safe when the vigor and force are taken out of it. It is safe only when the same passion which once threatened ruin is converted to generous service; and the same physical life that seemed an enemy of the soul has become the instrument of the soul. The saved life is not the empty life, but the full life. Jesus comes not to destroy men's natures, but to fill their capacities full of better aims. The only way to overcome evil is to have the life preoccupied by good.
{140}
Lukexvi. 1-12.
This is a difficult parable. There is a quality of daring about it which at first sight perplexes many people. It is the story of a steward who cheats his master, and of debtors who are in collusion with the fraud, and of a master praising his servant even while he punishes him, as though he said: "Well, at least you are a shrewd and clever fellow." It uses, that is to say, the bad people to teach a lesson to the good, and one might fancy that it praises the bad people at the expense of the good. But this is not its intention. It simply goes its way into the midst of a group of people who are cheating and defrauding each other and says: "Even such people as these have something to teach to the children of light."
I once heard of a father whose son was sentenced to the Concord Reformatory for burglary. The father stood by the bars of the cell and heard the boy's story, and then {141} with tears in his eyes he turned to the jailer and said: "It is a terrible sorrow to have one's boy thus disgraced, but"—and his face brightened a little—"after all he was monstrous plucky." So Jesus, out of the heart of this petty group of persons snatches a lesson for Christians. It is this: "Why should not the children of light be as sagacious as these rascals were? Why should pious people be so stupid?" Jesus looks on to the needs that must occur in his religion for sagacity, prudence, discretion, and the perils that will come to it from sentimentalism, mysticism, silliness, and he asks: "Why is it that the children of this world are so much shrewder than the children of light?"
How closely his question comes to the needs of our own time! Why is it that in our moral agitations and reforms the bad people seem so much cleverer than the good ones; that political self-seeking gets the better of unselfish statesmanship; that the liquor dealers defeat the temperance people; that competition in business is so often cleverer than coöperation in business? What does Christianity need to-day so much as wisdom? It has soft-heartedness, but it lacks {142} hard-headedness. It has sweetness, but it lacks light. It has sentiment, but it needs sense. How often a man of affairs is tempted to feel a certain contempt for the Church of Christ, when he turns from the intensely real issues of his week-day world to the abstractness and unreality of religious questions! How fictitious, how unbusiness-like, how preposterous in the sight of God is this internecine sectarianism and impotent sentimentalism where there might be the triumphant march of one army under one flag! Let us learn the lesson which even the grasping, unscrupulous world has to teach,—the lesson of an absorbed and disciplined mind giving its entire sagacity to the chief business of life.