Chapter 4
The Church is a body ministrant: it has received the accolade of spiritual service. It stands among the world's forces, as one of giving, not of gain. It holds within its scope both a teaching and a training power. It is the school of the soul, the illuminator of the meaning and discipline of life. Abélard is said to have attracted thirty thousand students to Paris by his teaching. But the Church to-day calls into its assemblies fully one-third of the millions of the world. They are held by its tenets, guided by its ideals, thrilled by its hopes, and set to its works of charity and mercy. The highest philanthropy is but a scientific renewal and adaptation of work which has had its start, primarily, in the Christian Church. Wealth is its vicegerent, and from the adherents to the Church fall largely the contributions to great philanthropic causes.
Take the work of Missions alone: Has there ever before been a body which attempted to bring the whole world into its fellowship, to make known everywhere its ideals, and to share with all living a spiritual inheritance? "The Evangelization of the World by this Generation" is one of the most sublime thoughts which has come to the race.
4. There is a large amount of ability in the world which the Church needs, but which has not yet been thoroughly enlisted in church service. Take business energy, executive ability. It is a common saying, that business men are not interested in the Church, and do not work well in it. Why? Because there is not yet in the Church enough of the active and economic spirit to make a business man feel at home in it, or approve of its ways of work.
This weak spot in the Church, which business men mock at, or fret at, exactly reveals the work that is waiting for business men to do. Business to-day takes intellectual grasp and insight--promptness, energy, enterprise, and common-sense. These qualities are needed at once in the conduct of the Church.
A second class greatly needed by the Church is the university-bred. Many college graduates are church-members--some are even active workers. But until lately the universities as a whole have stood rather indifferently apart from the Church. They have somewhat indulgently regarded it as one more historic institution for preserving myth and legend. To them the Christ-life has meant little more than the Beówa-myth, the Arthur-saga, the Nibelungen cycle, the Homeric stories, the Thor-and-Odin tales! Druids, fire-worshippers, moon-dancers, and Christian communicants have been comparatively studied, with a view to understanding the race-progress in rite and religious form.
This spirit is changing. The most remarkable aspect of the intellectual life of to-day is the rise of faith in the universities. Like the incoming of a great tidal wave at sea is the wave of spiritual insight and religious aspiration that is rolling over the colleges of our land.
The whole intellectual structure of the Church is approaching reconstruction--its doctrines, creeds, tenets. This reconstruction cannot possibly be effected by schools of theology alone. At every point the theologian needs assistance from the man of science. Philosophy, psychology, ethics, history, literature, sociology, language, natural science, and archaeology are all bound up in an old creed and must be looked into, ere a new statement can take form. Their data must be known at first-hand. Hence there is no intellectual specialty which may not be made invaluable to the Church.
Too often religion has been a matter of hearsay or dogma. A bitter conflict has always raged between theology and the latest word of science. The Church cannot afford to be without the scientific thinkers of the race. The time has come when there is everywhere heard the call of Jesus to men of mind.
What work awaits the university man or woman? It is to help free the Church from traditions and superstitions which scholarship cannot uphold. It is to throw fresh vigor and intellectual vitality into the services of the Church. It is to build up a hymnology which shall be noble and poetic in expression; it is to contribute a great religious literature to the world. It is the work of educated men and women to add their insight, their zeal for truth, their scholarship, their training and ideals to the Christian community: to sweep thought and practice out of ancient ruts, to clarify the spiritual vision of the world, and to present new aspects of truth and new goals of human endeavor! Let Research join hands with Prayer.
A third class which the Church needs to-day is that of the working-man. The hand of the working-man is the hand that has really moulded history. Working-men lead a brave and self-sacrificing life. From their toil come the necessaries and many of the comforts of the race. The man of labor knows the root-problems of the industrial world. While all his industry and skill, all his courage, heroism, and strong-armed life are so largely alienated from the Church, the Church is deprived of one of the fundamental sources of inspiration and growth. The tree of progress can never grow, except it has labor-roots. It is absolutely essential for the health of the Church that every form of human energy be represented.
Suppose that by some great revival a very large number of working men and women could suddenly be added to the membership of the Church. What would happen? Would there not be at once a return to more simplicity of life? There are two currents at work always in society--emulation and sympathy. Rightly used, each is for the social good. If all classes of men and women worked side by side in the Church, many great social differences would become adjusted.
5. It holds sway over the fortunes of the home. Where, outside of the Church, will you find the ideal conception of marriage, and the really united and happy home? The Church makes for domestic happiness, because it goes straight to the roots of life and plants happiness where happiness alone can grow. More and more the Church is lifting the standards of a noble, proud, pure, and rejoicing married life. Its ideal of human love is sacred, because founded on the deeper love of the soul in God. The Church is drawing hosts of young people under the shelter of its teaching, and is placing before men and women ideals which cannot fail to make their mark upon the social standards of the times. It stands for purity, for patience, for tenderness, for the love of little children, for united education and endeavor, for mutual hopes and dreams, for large public service.
6. It is the militant force of time. We speak of the Church militant, and of the Church triumphant. For us, to-day, the Church militant. To-morrow, triumph comes. Armies have been, and armies shall be, but the hosts of this world fight against material foes, and largely for material ends. It is the glory of the Church militant that its conquests are spiritual and its victories are eternal. Its fight is chiefly against the inner, not the outer foe--against sin and wrong-doing, impatience, strife, anger, clamor, meanness, evil-speaking, wrath. It is the foe of tyranny and its heel is upon the head of the oppressor and the avenger. Its banner flies over every country and has been carried through tribulation, through sorrow, through danger, and through death to the remotest parts of the yet-known world. Its troops are legion, marching from the far distances of the past, and extending out to the far confines of the eternal years.
7. It is the ascendant force of the future. Rightly conducted, it will surely absorb the vigor of the world. To stand apart from it is to be out of step with the march of nations. The processional of progress to-day is the processional of the historic influence of the Church. What force has there been in time gone by, which has lived and so greatly grown for nineteen hundred years? Nations have risen, and nations have decayed. States, once prominent, have passed into the oblivion of the years. Plato and Pericles, Socrates and Sophocles, Philip and Alexander, the Caesars, the Georges, and the Louis have passed away. Their politics have passed from our following; their empires are no more. But through these centuries of change, the Church of God has risen stronger, more powerful year by year; stretching its arm out to the uttermost parts of the earth; levying tribute on the islands of the sea; enlisting all ages and conditions, and looking out over coming generations--not as a waning, but as a growing and ever-increasing power. Think you that such a Church can die? Think you that any spiritual power aloof from this Church can be as efficient as if it were allied with it?
These, you say, are the reasons why one's allegiance should be given to the Christian Church. Let us now look back over the processional as it marches across the dim years. Saints, martyrs, confessors, evangelists, and singing children have joined its historic train. Is there any other processional in the world's history which, numbering such millions and millions, began with only one? When the Christ enters the arena of history, He comes as one to lead myriad deep-lived souls! Next, there follow twelve. They, two by two, take up the marching line. Think of their deeds and influence, of their inspiring power! What would have been the record of those obscure fishermen of Galilee and of their simple friends, had they refused to ally themselves with the leader who called for their allegiance and their obedient love?
Next follow the early disciples. Tried by scourging, by stripes, by poverty, by imprisonment, by all manner of danger and trial, they yet remain true. Then follow the prophets, those whose clear vision looks out on things unknown and things unseen. To the prophet is intrusted the ministry of hope and inspiration. Then follow the martyrs who yield life for the cause they profess. In torture at the stake, and on the cross, by fire and by sword, they show forth an unshaken and undying faith. Then follow matrons and virgins, babes and children, reformers and mediaeval saints with a convoy of angels, singing as they march. These are the Church triumphant, the Church above. But to-day we have among us the Church militant--the long processional of congregations, elders, deacons, members, ministers and missionaries, young people, and workers in every phase of enterprise and reform. These all communicant on earth are the Church militant, whose work is to keep alive the traditions of the past and to march onward to an endless victory and to an unceasing praise. Who, looking upon that processional, filing through the ages of the years of man, would say that there may be a parliament of religions? A parliament of boasts and pomps, of good precepts and queries, of misuses and half-truths, of superstitions and infinite idolatries, no doubt; but there is but one religion, though it be perverted in many ways and rightly revealed at divers times; and there is but one God, infinite, true, holy, just, loving, and eternal. Where now are the gods of Hamath and of Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Bow thy head, O Buddha! and do thou, O Zoroaster! hang thy head. Isis and Osiris grow dim; Jove nods in heaven; the pipe of Pan is dumb; Thor is silent in the northern Aurora; the tree of Igdrasil waves in midnight; Confucius is pale; Muhammad is dust. Darkness is over the skirts of the gods of the past--gloom receives them, Erebus holds outstretched arms. But the Lord God, Jehovah, the Ancient of Days, encanopied in space and glory, leads onward to the end of years His people in a mighty train, to a rule and kingdom which shall know no end. May thou and I, dear friend-soul, in whatsoever land thou be, may thou and I be numbered in that throng!
IV. THE WORLD-MARCH: OF KINGS
[DIE WACHT AM RHEIN]
_Jesus shall reign where'er the sun Doth his successive journeys run; His kingdom stretch from shore to shore, Till moons shall wax and wane no more.
People and realms of every tongue Dwell on His love with sweetest song; And infant voices shall proclaim Their early blessings on His Name.
Blessings abound where'er He reigns; The prisoner leaps to lose his chains, The weary find eternal rest, And all the sons of want are blest.
Let every creature rise and bring Peculiar honors to our King; Angels descend with songs again, And earth repeat the loud Amen_.
ISAAC WATTS
The elemental force of some men is appalling. They lift their eyes--thrones tremble; they wave a hand--empires rise or fall. It comes over the heart of many a man at times, Here am I, running my little office, shop, factory, fire-engine, or professional circuit, with no influence that I can see, beyond my borough or my barn-yard. But in the world there are other men, no taller than I, no older than I--men born within a stone's throw of where I was born--whose hand is on the fate of nations, and whose decrees are universal law!
It is deeply impressive, the way in which one man, born not above myriads of his fellows, begins to rise until by and by he stands head and shoulders above his generation! What is the inner vitality which presses him upward? What is this hidden difference in men by which one remains in the by-eddies of life, and another sweeps out on the crest of the rising tide of history?
Much of it is in the man himself. To be kingly is inborn. There is the nature that refuses to be shut up to the petty, that will not content itself with one street or town, that steps out into life from childhood with the step of the conqueror, and walks among us; one who was born a king. To be a king, one must have the powers of organization, combination, discipline, direction, statesmanship. These qualities enlarge as one passes from the particular to the general, from the personal to the range of natural forces, emergencies, and wide pursuits.
Dominion is an inherent right of the soul. In all our hearts, did we but listen and understand, there are adumbrations of kingly ancestors, and the latent stirrings of kingly powers.
Which of us would want to be born at all, if we should be told in advance, You shall never control anything? You shall never have the slightest chance of self-assertion, of impressing your own individuality upon the world? One might as well be born without hands or feet!
Kingship involves ascendancy and authority. Both are truly gained, not by chicanery, but by personal force. There is a natural gift of leadership, which is strengthened by endurance, perseverance, and ceaseless hard work.
Kingship also involves a larger vision. One man looks at his shoe-strings; another man looks at the stars. The first step toward rule is to find a point of view from which one can look widely out over the race. This is the primary value of education: it is not that books are important, but that men are--the men who have swayed history--and books tell of such men. Not the library is inspirational, but the life-spirit of mankind, bound up in even dusty papyrus-rolls, or set on clay-tablets of four thousand years ago. He who would serve his times politically must first understand, so far as may be, all times.
Another basis of supremacy is conviction. Leadership belongs to those who believe. The man who has a definite policy to propose, and a definite way of working for it, soon outstrips the man who is just looking about.
Kingship involves an iron will. An iron will does not imply necessarily ugliness of temper, obstinacy, or pig-headedness. It is simply a straight-forward, dauntless, and invincible way of doing things. What I say, you must do, is back of all successful leadership, whether in the home or in the world-arena. The man who is master of the obedience of his child, or of his fellows, is master of their fate. We are all at the mercy of the strong-willed.
Growth is development in right assertion; it is the assumption of legitimate responsibility and command. To be lowly of heart does not mean to be inefficient; to be humble does not necessarily mean to be obscure. Luther and Lincoln were both of a childlike humility of heart.
What Christianity has not emphasized in the past, but what it must now begin to emphasize, is the reality of dominion--its value, and its relation to the kingdom of God. For centuries, religion has too often been thought of, too often spoken of, as if it were the last resource of the heart, A brilliant young professor of psychology not long ago referred to religion as something to flee to, by those who were disappointed in love! We have spoken so much of "giving up," that the Christian life has wrongly seemed to mean the giving-up of one's individuality, interests, powers. As well might we expert the deep sea to give up its rolling tides, or the air to give up its four winds, as to expect the heart of man to part with its human hopes!
This is not a right interpretation of life. When Nature plants an oak in the forest, she does not say, Be a lichen, an _Eozoön canadense_, a small ground-creeping thing! She says, Grow! Become a tall, strong, mountain tree! When we hold our baby in our arms, we do not say, My child, be good for nothing! Neither does God say, Be nothing, do nothing! Just exist as humbly and meekly as you can! He says, "Quit you like men!"
Each of us is born for a sceptre and a crown. It gives a strange new thrill to life, to realize that we may be just as ambitious as we please, that we may long earnestly for high things, and work for them, if our inmost desire is not for self but for God. This new idea of ambition should be at the root of education and of religious teaching. Piety is not a namby-pamby sentiment; it is a great intellectual force. Desire is architectural: our dreams should be of prestige and power. True ambition is the reaching-out of the soul toward preordained things. What else is the meaning of our love for excellence, our insatiable yearning for perfection? "What is excellent," says Emerson, "is permanent." To excel in any work is to combine in that work the most enduring qualities of human labor; to excel in any place is to shine forth with the great qualities of the race. Hence, ambition has a rightful place.
The power of a king is the power of control. All about us are moving the great forces of the universe--physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual. What we can do with them is a test of our power. Life is in many ways a majestic trial of one's power to command.
Three men buy adjoining tracts of land. One man mines coal upon his acres. He amasses wealth and influence because he is in control of the Carboniferous age and the human need of light and heat. The second man tills his ground and raises wheat and corn. He is in command of living nature--of the rotation of seasons, of wind, frost, rain; he uses them to provide food for those that hunger and must be fed. The third man lies under the trees. He digs no mine. He plants and reaps no corn and grain. He simply lies under the trees, gazes into the sky and dreams. Men call him idle, but he is not so. One day he writes a book. It lives a thousand years. His control is over the spirit of man. He has entered into its hopes and sorrows, its aspirations and its dreams.
This story is a Parable of Kings. Such is the power of control that is granted to each new soul. Each child is bequeathed at birth a sceptre and a crown.
The first rule is parental. The primitive monarchy is in the home. A young baby cries. The trained nurse turns on the light, lifts the baby, hushes it, sings to it, rocks it, and stills its weeping by caresses and song. When next the baby is put down to sleep, more cries, more soothing and disturbance, and the setting of a tiny instinct which shall some day be will--the power of control.
The grandmother arrives on the scene. When baby cries, she plants the little one firmly in its crib, turns down the light, pats and soothes the tiny restless hands that fight the air, watches, waits. From the crib come whimpers, angry cries, yells, sobs, baby snarls and sniffles that die away in a sleepy infant growl. Silence, sleep, repose, and the building of life and nerve and muscle in the quiet and the darkness. The baby has been put in harmony with the laws of nature--the invigoration of fresh air, sleep, stillness--and the little one wakens and grows like a fresh, sweet rose. The mother, looking on, learns of the ways of God with men.
Firmness is the true gentleness. There is a form of authority which must be as implacable as the divine decree. Mercy is the requiring of obedience to law; it is not a cajoling training in law-defiance, which shall one day break the mother's heart and upset the social relations of the world.
The next rule is personal: the direction of one's own energy in the way of one's own will. The child moves his hands, his feet; he turns his rattle up and down, and shakes it about. He discovers that he can pull things toward him and push them away; that he can reach things that are higher than his head. He begins to creep. He touches things that are the other side of the world from him, that is, across the room. He plucks fibres from the rug or carpet; swallows straws, buttons, and little strings. He pounds, and sets up vibrations of pleasant noise; he clashes ten-pins, he blows his whistle, squeezes his rubber horse and man, rattles the newspaper, flings about his bottle and his blocks. He feels himself a self-directing power, and at times asserts this power against the will of those who would make him do what he does not want to do. The love of rule is in him, and he lays his little hands on power.
Education determines whether this power shall be for good or for evil. We cannot take away power from any child--he shall move the affairs of nations--but we can direct this love of power, or crush it; strengthen it, or weaken it; turn it toward the highest help of man, or deflect it to tyranny, cruelty, and crime.
Child-training is guidance in the way of God's decrees. It is not the setting of one's own ideas upon a little child; it is not the gratification of one's own love of power; it is not the satisfaction of one's own self-conceit. It is a firm, humble striving to carry on the harmony of the universe: to bring up the child to love order, justice, mercy, and truth.
Education is the teaching of how to direct energy for the universal good. It lays hold of a child and, out of his destructive instincts--the instinct to bang, and pull, and tear to pieces--it develops creative power, the inventive genius that lies hid within him. It takes the pure love of noise, and trains it to pitches, harmonies, intervals, and makes a musician of the boy who used to whack his spoon. It takes the alphabet and the early pothooks, and the boy by and by combines them into literature. The apples and the peaches which he is taught to exchange justly are by and by transmuted into trade and commerce. He brings cargoes from Cuba and Ceylon, trades with Japan and Hawaii, and the Asiatic isles. The energy of block-building is developed into sculpture, architecture, and civil engineering. The stamping of his foot in anger is directed to determination, perseverance, the rule of the brave spirit, the unconquerable will. Nothing is more marvellous than this grave upbuilding.