Part 8

The same fundamental decision comes to every young man in his own degree. Here are your gifts and capacities, great or small. What are you to do with them? Are they for glory or for use? Are they for ambition {172} or for service? The sooner that decision is made the better. Some people have never quite done with that temptation of the devil. They go on trying to direct their gifts to the end of reputation, or wealth, or dominion; and they attain that end only to find that it is no end, and that their lives, which should have grown broader and richer, have grown shrunken, and meagre, and unsatisfied. Such a life is like a fish swimming into the labyrinth of a weir. It follows along the line of its vocation until the liberty to return grows less and less; and, at last, in the very element where it seems most free, it is in fact a helpless captive. The man's occupation has become his prison. He is the slave of his own powers. The devil has withered that life with his touch.

And then, on the other hand, you turn to lives which have given themselves to the life of service, and what do you see? You see their capacity enlarged through use, you see small gifts multiplied into great powers. Few things are more remarkable in one's experience of life than to see men who by nature are not extraordinarily endowed achieve the highest success by sheer dedication of their {173} moderate gifts. Their capacities expand through their self-surrender, as leaves unfold under the touch of the sun. They lose themselves and then they find themselves. The devil tempts these men, not with a sense of their greatness, but with their self-distrust; yet he tempts them in vain. Their weakness issues into strength; their temptation develops their power. The angels of God have come and ministered unto them.

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LXIX

LOVING WITH THE MIND

_Mark_ xii. 30.

In the great law of love to God and love to man which Jesus repeats as the law of his own teaching, there is one phrase that seems not wholly clear. You can love God with your heart and your soul; you can even increase your strength by love; but how can you love with the mind? Is it not the very quality of a trained mind to be unmoved by love or hate, dispassionate and unemotional? Is not this the scientific spirit, this attitude of criticism, with no prejudice or affection to color its results?

Of course one must answer that there is much truth which can be discovered by a loveless mind. Yet there is, on the other hand, much truth which cannot be discerned without love. There are many secrets of literature, of art, of music, and of the higher traits of character as well, into which you cannot enter unless you give your mind to these things with sympathy and affection and responsiveness; loving them, as Jesus says, with the mind. One {175} of our preachers has lately called attention to the new word in literature which illustrates this attitude of the mind.[1] When people wrote in earlier days of other people and their works they wrote biographies or criticisms or studies, but now we have what are called "appreciations;" the attempt, that is to say, to enter into a character and appreciate its traits or its art, and to love it with the mind. Perhaps that is what this ancient law asks of you in your relation to God, to come not as a critic, but as a lover, to the rational appreciation of the ways of God. Here is the noblest capacity with which human life is endowed. It is a great thing to love God with the heart and soul, to let the emotions of gratitude to Him or of joy in his world run free; but to rise into sympathetic interpretation of his laws, to think God's thoughts after Him, and to be moved by the high emotions which are stirred by exalted ideas,--to love God, that is to say, with the mind,--that, I suppose, is the highest function of human life, and the quality which most endows a man with insight and power.

[1] Rev. Leighton Parks, D. D., in a sermon at the Diocesan Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, Boston, May, 1895.

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LXX

AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?

_Genesis_ iv. 9.

Cain was the first philosophical individualist; the first "laissez-faire" economist. When God asked: "Where is Abel?" Cain answered: "What responsibility have I for him? My business is to take care of myself. Am I my brother's keeper?" But the interesting fact is that Cain had been his brother's keeper though he declined responsibility for him. He refused to be responsible for his brother's life, but he certainly was responsible for his brother's death. He refused to be his brother's keeper, but he was willing to be his brother's slayer. There are plenty of people to-day who are trying to maintain this same impossible theory of social irresponsibility. They affirm that they have no social duty except to mind their own business; but that very denial of responsibility is what makes them among the most responsible agents of social disaster. They deal with their affairs on the principle that they are nobody's {177} keeper, and so they are stirring every day the fires of industrial revolt. We are passing through dark days in the business world, and there are many causes for the trouble, but the deepest cause is Cain's theory of life. "Where is thy brother?" says God to the business man to-day,--"thy brother, the wage-earner, the victim of the cut-down and the lockout?" "Where is thy brother?" says God again to the unscrupulous agitator, bringing distress into many a workman's home for the satisfactions of ambition and power. And to any man who answers: "I know not. Am I my brother's keeper?" the rebuke of God is spoken again: "Cursed art thou! The voice of thy brother crieth against thee from the ground."

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LXXI

PROFESSIONALISM AND PERSONALITY

1 _Corinthians_ xii. 31.

The wonderful chapter which follows this verse becomes still more interesting when one considers its connection with the preceding passage. Paul has been looking over the life of his Christian brethren, and he sees in it a great variety of callings. Some of his friends are preachers,--apostles and prophets, as he calls them. Some are teachers, some are doctors, with gifts of healing; some are politicians, with gifts of government. The apostle speaks to them as though he were advising young men as to the choice of their profession, and he says: "Among all these professional opportunities covet the best; take that which most fills out and satisfies your life." But then he turns from these professional capacities and adds: "Be sure that these gifts do not crowd out of your life the higher capacity for sympathy. For you may understand all knowledge and speak with all tongues, and if you have lost thereby {179} the personal, human, sympathetic relation with people which we call love you are not really to be counted as a man. You are nothing more than an instrument of sound, a wind instrument like a trumpet, or a clanging instrument like a cymbal." That is the apostolic warning to the successful professional man,--the warning against the narrowing, self-contented result which sometimes taints even great attainments and professional distinction. Covet the best. Be satisfied with nothing less than the highest professional work of doctor, politician, or teacher. But beware of the imprisoning effect which sometimes comes of this very success in professional life, the atrophy of sensibility, the increasing incapacity for sympathy, for public spirit, for charity,--an incapacity which makes some men of the highest endowments among the least serviceable, least loving, and least loved of a community. "If," says the apostle, "in the gain of professional success you lose the higher gift of love, you are no longer a great man; you are not even to be described as a small man. You are 'nothing.'"

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LXXII

THE CENTRAL SOLITUDE

_John_ xvi. 32.

In one of Frederick Robertson's sermons he speaks of the conduct of life as like the conduct of atoms, which have a certain attraction for each other, but at a certain point of approach are repelled and do not touch. There is in every large life a certain central solitude of this kind into which no other soul can enter. Some persons fear this solitude, some rejoice in it, but the use of it is the test of a man's life. A very near friend of Dr. Brooks's once heard of a man who said that he knew Dr. Brooks intimately; and this friend said: "No man ought to say that. Not one of us knew Dr. Brooks intimately. There was a central Holy of Holies in his life, into which none of us ever entered." So it was. And this preservation of an inner privacy for the deeper experiences of life is what proves a soul to be peaceful and strong. Guard your soul's individual life. In the midst of the social world keep a place for the {181} nurture of the isolated life, for the reading and for the thoughts which deal with the interior relations of the single soul to the immanent God.

"Thyself amid the silence clear, The world far off and dim, His presence close, the bright ones near, Thyself alone with Him."

That is what makes a man strong under the tests of life. He is not a parasitic plant deriving its life from some other life; he is rooted deep in the soil of the Eternal. As was said of John Henry Newman, such a man is never less alone than when alone. "He is not alone, because the Father is with him."

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LXXIII

IF THOU KNEWEST THE GIFT OF GOD

_John_ iv. 10.

We usually notice in this story the great words of Jesus--perhaps the deepest and richest series of utterances that have ever fallen from human lips. Yet it is almost as striking to notice the attitude of mind in which the woman remained throughout these wonderful scenes. She seems to have been entirely oblivious of the situation, and unaware that anything great was going on.

Jesus speaks to her of the living water, and she thinks it must be some device which shall save her coming with her pitcher to the well. Then Jesus looks on her with infinite pathos and says: "If you only knew the gift of God, and who it is that is now speaking to you!" But she does not know, and shoulders her pitcher and trudges home again, reporting only that she has seen some one who appeared a wonderful fortune-teller, and never dreaming that the greatest words of human history had been spoken to her, and her alone.

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If thou knewest the gift of God!--to have had one's opportunity in one's hands and to have let it slip; to have had the Messiah sitting by you and not to have recognized Him; to have thought it just a commonplace day when the most sacred revelations of God were occurring,--that is about the saddest confession that any one can make. And yet, that is what might happen to any one any day. No one can be sure when the great exigencies of life are likely to occur. He looks forward to great things to be done in some more favoring future, and, behold, the insignificant incidents of to-day are the greater things which he does not discern. He looks forward to the discovery of God in some difficult intellectual achievement, and meantime the daily task is full of revelation, and as he wakes to the morning the new day stands by him and says: "If you only knew the gift of God, and who it is that speaks to you today." And at last perhaps he begins to realize that the ordinary ways of daily life are the channels of God's revelation, and then there

"Comes to soul and sense The feeling which is evidence

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That very near about us lies The realm of spiritual mysteries. With smile of trust and folded hands, The passive soul in waiting stands, To feel, as flowers the sun and dew. The one true life its own renew."

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LXXIV

THE WEDDING GARMENT

_Matthew_ xxii. 11-14.

Here is a man who has the feast offered to him, but is not clothed to meet it. He is unprepared and is therefore cast out. He does not wear the wedding garment and therefore is not fit for the wedding feast. This seems at first sight harsh treatment; but one soon remembers that it was the custom of an Oriental feast to offer the guest at his entrance a robe fit for the occasion. "Bring forth the best robe," says the father of the prodigal, "and put it on him." This man had had offered to him the opportunity of personal preparation and had refused it. He wanted to share the feast, but he wanted to share it on his own terms. He pressed into the happiness without the personal preparedness which made that happiness possible.

Every man in this way makes his own world. The habit of his life clothes him like a garment, and only he who wears the wedding garment {186} is at home at the wedding feast. The same circumstances are to one man beautiful and to another, at his side, demoralizing. You may have prosperity and it may be a source of happiness, or the same prosperity and it may be a source of peril. You may be at a college and it may be either regenerating to you, or pernicious in its influence, according as you are clothed or unclothed with the right habit of mind. God first asks for your heart and then offers you his world. The wedding feast is for him alone who has accepted the wedding garment.

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LXXV

THE ESCAPE FROM DESPONDENCY

1 _Kings_ xix. 1-13.

This is God's word to man's despondency; and when we strip this man's story of its Orientalism, it is really the story of many a discouraged, despondent man of to-day. Elijah has been doing his best, but has come to a point where he is ready to give up. His enemies are too many for him. "Lord," he says, "it is enough. I have had as much as I can bear. I am alone and Baal's prophets are four hundred and fifty men." So he goes away into solitude, and looks about him for some clear sign that God has not deserted him. But nothing happens. The great signs of nature pass before him, the storm, the lightning, and the earthquake, but they only reflect his own stormy mood. The Lord is not in them. Then, within his heart, there speaks that voice which is at once speech and silence, and it says to him: "What doest thou here, Elijah," and behold, the man is convicted. For when he {188} reflects on it he is doing nothing at all. He is sitting under a tree, requesting that he may die. He has fled from his duty and is hiding in a cave. Then the voice says to him: "Get up and go and do your duty. You might sit here forever and get no light on your lot. The problem of life is solved through the work of life. The way out of your despondency is in going straight on with the work now ready to your hand. Answers to great problems are not so likely to come to people in caves, as along the dusty road of duty-doing. Not to the dreamer, but to the doer come the interpretations of life. Elijah, Elijah, what doest thou here?"

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LXXVI

THE DIFFICULTIES OF UNBELIEF

_Matthew_ xxiii. 24.

We are often very much impressed by the difficulties of religious belief. It seems hard to attain any absolute, convinced faith. There are doubts and obscurities which every one feels, and these questionings are often stirred into activity by the mistaken efforts of the defenders of the faith. There is even a special department in theological teaching known as Apologetics, or the defense of faith; as though religion had to be always on the defensive, and as if the easiest attitude of mind, even of the least philosophical, were the attitude of denial. But did you ever consider the alternative position and the difficulties which present themselves when one undertakes absolutely and continuously to deny himself the relations of the religious life? Did you ever fairly face the conception of a logically completed unbelief, a world stripped of its ideals, with no region of spiritual hopes or of worship, a {190} world absolutely without God, a permanently faithless world? What is the difficulty here? The difficulty is that these aspects of life, though they are often hard to maintain, are harder still to abandon. Faith has its perplexities, but no sooner do you eliminate the spiritual world than you are confronted with a series of experiences, emotions, and intimations which are simply inexplicable. That was perhaps partly what Jesus had in mind when he met the Pharisees. "You find it hard to believe in me," he said. "Ah, yes, but is it not still harder altogether to refuse me? You are quite alive to the smaller difficulties of my position, but you seem to be quite unaware of the difficulties of your own position. You busy yourself with straining out the gnat which floats on the surface of your glass, but you do not seem to observe the residuary camel."

So with his splendid satire Jesus turns the critical temper back upon itself. Difficulties enough, God knows, there are in every intellectual position, and intellectual certainty usually means the abnegation of the thinking faculty.

But many persons strain out the little difficulties and swallow the great ones. What is, {191} on the whole, the best working theory of life?--that is the only practical question. Under which view of life do the facts, on the whole, best fall? Especially, what conception of life holds the highest facts, the great irresistible spring-tides, which sometimes rise within the soul, of hope and love and desire? So Browning's Bishop, turning on his critic, says:--

"And now what are we? unbelievers both, Calm and complete, determinately fixed To-day, to-morrow, and forever, pray? You'll guarantee me that? Not so, I think. In nowise! All we've gained is, that belief, As unbelief before, shakes us by fits, Confounds us like its predecessor. Where's The gain? How can we guard our unbelief, Make it bear fruit to us? The problem's here. Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch, A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, A chorus-ending from Euripides,-- And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears As old and new at once as nature's self, To rap and knock and enter in our soul, Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring, Round the ancient idol, on his base again,-- * * * * * * * What have we gained then by our unbelief But a life of doubt diversified by faith, For one of faith diversified by doubt. We called the chessboard white,--we call it black."

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LXXVII

KNOWING GOD, AND BEING KNOWN OF HIM

_Galatians_ iv. 9.

It is very interesting to come so close to a great man as we do in this passage, for the Apostle seems to be discovered here, correcting himself. It is as if he had written one teaching to the Galatians, and then crossed it out and written another. "You know God," he says, "or rather you are known of Him." He is asking himself why the Galatians should in a given case do their duty, and he answers: "Because they know God; they are aware of His purposes and laws, and having this rational understanding of Him they know how to act as His servants." "But no," he goes on to say, "that is not the real impulse of their duty. What holds them to their best is rather the thought that God knows them, that He gives them their duty, and that they obey." It is like the position of a soldier under his commander. The soldier does not expect to know {193} all about the plan of the campaign, but what keeps him to his best is the knowledge that some one knows about it; that the commander overlooks the field; that each little skirmish has its place in the great design. That is what makes the soldier go down again into the smoke and dust of his duty with his timidity converted into faith.

Knowing God,--that is theology; being known of Him,--that is religion. Both theology and religion have their influence on conduct. It is a great thing to know that one knows God. There is power in a rational creed. But, after all, the profoundest impulse for conduct is to know that beneath all your ignorance of God is His knowledge of you; that before you loved Him, He loved you, that antecedent to your response to Him was His invitation to you. Thus it is that a man looks out into each new day and asks: "What is to hold me to-day to my duty?" Well, first of all, everything I may learn ought to help me. It is all God's truth, and, as I get a grasp on truth and stand on its firm ground, my conduct is steadier and assured. But, after all, the deeper safety lies in this other confession, that I am known of God; that I {194} am not merely an explorer, searching for truth, but guided and controlled as ever under the great taskmaster's eye; known of Him, with my ignorance of Him held within His knowledge of me, until the time comes when at last I shall know even as also I am known.

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LXXVIII

FREEDOM IN THE TRUTH

_John_ viii. 32.

"The truth shall make you free;"--that is one of the greatest announcements of a universal principle which even Jesus Christ ever made.

But the Jews began to ask of him: "How can one be a disciple of your truth and yet be free? Is not that discipleship only another name for bondage? We are free already. We are in bondage to no man. Why then should we enter into the servitude of obedience to your truth?" And to this Jesus seems to answer: "That depends upon what it is to be free. It is a question of your definition of liberty. You seem to believe that to be free one must have no authority or leadership or master. But I say unto you that there is no such liberty. You must be the servant of something. You must be under the authority of your law, or your superstition, or your God, or yourself. Freedom on any other terms is not freedom, it is lawlessness. {196} Indeed it may be more like slavery than freedom."

What is a free country? Not a country without law,--a country of the anarchist,--but a country where the law encourages each citizen to be and to do his best. A free country gives every man a chance. It opens life at the top. It invites one's allegiance from the things which enslave to the things which enlarge. And that is the only liberty,--a transfer of allegiance, a higher attachment, which sets free from the lower enslavements of life. Suppose a man is the slave of a sin, how does he get free? He frees himself from his sin by attaching himself to some better interest. Sin is not driven out of one's life; it is crowded out. Suppose a man is the slave of himself, sunk in the self-absorbed and ungenerous life, how does he get free? He gets free by finding an end in life which is larger than himself. He becomes the servant of the truth, and the truth makes him free. Suppose a man asks himself, "What can religion do for me? It does not solve all my problems, or satisfy all my needs. What then does religion do?" Well, first of all, it gives one liberty. It detaches one's life from {197} the things which shut it in, and attaches it to those ideal ends which give enlargement, emancipation, range to life. God speaks to you of duty, of self-control, of power in your prayers, and then you go out into the world again, not as if all were plain before you, but at least with a free heart, and a mind not in bondage to the world of circumstance or of trivial cares. The truth of God, so far as it has been revealed to you, has made you free. You have found the perfect law, the law of liberty.

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LXXIX

THE SOIL AND THE SEED

_Matthew_ xiii. 1-9.