The Young Man Who Was Born to the Purple
"In the year that King Uzziah died"—it was more than a date, it was an experience! The king had been a wise and good ruler. He had served his country well for fifty-two long years. He showed an interest in the welfare of his people—"He loved husbandry and dug wells for them in the desert." He caused vineyards to be planted on the slopes of Carmel and he increased the herds of cattle which grazed in the lowlands. He fortified his capital by building towers at the valley gate and at the turning of the wall in Jerusalem.
His reign was beneficent, but now he was dead, and this warm-hearted young patriot felt that his heart was overwhelmed. He and his fellow citizens must now plan for the future of their county without the guidance and inspiration of this great king.
But "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord." There came something more than a personal experience of disappointment. There came the emergence of a new and higher form of faith. This young man saw the earthly majesty of this wise and good king go down in utter defeat. In some strange way the king contracted leprosy. During all the closing years of his reign he suffered from the crawling inroads of that loathsome disease. By the stern requirements of the Jewish law he was banished from his own capital. He was compelled to live outside the city and to reign by deputy. He finally died a lingering and horrible death.
And in that dread hour the young man saw the heavenly majesty of the King of kings resplendent and enduring. "In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord, high and lifted up, sitting upon His throne and His glory filled the temple." The spirit of hero-worship was passing over into religious faith.
Let me study with you the effect of this crisis in the life of his nation upon this young man who was born to the purple. He possessed all those advantages which go with wealth, social position, and education. We have here no rough man of the hills like Elijah, the Tishbite, rudely dressed and rude in speech. We have here no man with the smell of the fields in his garments like Amos, the herdsman of Tekoa.
Isaiah belonged to the fortunate class. He lived on Fifth Avenue. He had an assured social position which gave him ready access to the court and to the presence of the king. He was familiar with the customs and the costumes of fashionable society, as we find in that chapter where he openly rebukes the showy extravagance of the idle rich. He was well educated—he had that literary skill which comes only to those who are well trained. In all the Old Testament you will find nothing finer than the sweep and finish of some of this young prophet's public utterances. He was one to whom five talents had been given where other men were struggling along with one apiece. He therefore owed to society what might be called the debt of privilege. It is a fixed charge upon the lives of those who sit above the salt. It has a right to insist upon full payment. "To whom much is given, of him will much be required."
It is for every man to ask himself: "How much do I eat up in my generous mode of life? How much in food and dress, in housing and furnishing, in motor cars and yachts, in travel and in recreation? How much do I consume in those provisions which I make for a wider culture through books, pictures, music and the like?" What is your average intake of this world's good things? That measure of consumption will indicate the measure of your responsibility. If you are born to the purple and fare sumptuously in all these ways then the world has a right to demand that you shall render back in corresponding measure that useful service which is your plain duty.
In that effective cartoon which Jesus drew of the Rich Man and Lazarus, it was the unpaid debt of privilege which brought about the loss of a soul. Jesus showed the two men in this world, one of them living in a palace, clothed with purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day; the other in rags dying at the Rich Man's gate, hungry and full of sores. Then Jesus showed the two men in the next world, Lazarus the beggar now in Abraham's bosom, and the son of good fortune enduring torment.
There is no hint that the Rich Man had gained a penny of his wealth wrongfully; no charge of lying or theft, of murder or adultery is laid at his door. He was damned not by the wicked things he had done, but for the lack of that generous and humane service which he had left undone. His sin was that of selfish indifference. The way to perdition is paved with moral neglect. The debt of privilege can no more be escaped than death or taxes. To whom much is given, of him will much be required. And a full sense of that responsibility was brought home to this well-endowed young man in the year the great king died.
The fortunate young man stood out in the open confessing his sense of moral need. There in the place of worship in that high and serious mood which followed upon the death of the king, he caught a fresh vision of God. "I saw the Lord high and lifted up, sitting upon His throne. I saw Him surrounded with the winged seraphs. And one of them cried to another, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts! The whole earth is full of His glory."
The very sight of the unstained purity of Him "unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid," brought this young man to his knees. He knelt in the dust and beat upon his breast and told the sins of his life. "Woe is me, I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips. I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. And mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts."
The man who has no sense of sin has little sense of any sort. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves or else we lie. Where is the man who can stand up in the presence of those who know him and say, "Every deed that I have done was done in honour and integrity. Every word that has fallen from my lips has been spoken in truth and in kindliness. Every desire which I have harboured in my soul has been one upon which the eye of my Maker might rest with approval."
Can you say that? I am frank to confess that I cannot. I have done wrong. I feel my need of the divine mercy. I want forgiveness, cleansing and renewal. And every man who is honest enough to look himself in the face, without flinching, will be moved to make the same confession. It is up out of those moments of contrition when men are humbled and broken before God that the spiritual impulses come which are to beat back the forces of evil and make this earth at last as fair as the sky.
I care not what the man's outward station may be—he may live on the Avenue or he may live in the slums; he may be clothed in purple or he may be dressed in rags; he wear a Phi Beta Kappa key or he may be so untaught that he has to make his mark when he signs a mortgage—in any event here is a prayer which will fit his lips—it fits every pair of lips: "God be merciful to me, a sinner."
In that one brief sentence we have the four main terms of religious experience. "God," the object of religion, the ground of all finite existence, the basis of all our hope! "Me," the human soul, the subject of religion, the field where the work of religion is to be wrought out! "Sin," the obstacle to religion, the source of all our moral failure, the cause of our alienation from God! And "mercy," the agent of religion, the form of energy which accomplishes our recovery! God be merciful to me, a sinner.
This young man of good fortune stood up in the temple in the presence of his fellows making his open confession of moral need. "Woe is me for I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips."
In that very hour when this honest confession came from his lips his life was cleansed by the direct action of the divine spirit. He saw one of the winged seraphs flying towards him through the open spaces of Heaven. The angel took a live coal from the altar and laid it upon the lips of this young man. He cried out as he did it, saying, "Thine iniquity is taken away. Thy sin is purged." Isaiah was no more a man of unclean lips—he could now speak with that Lord whose name is Holy as friend speaks with friend.
We have this profound moral experience dressed up in those grand, Oriental robes which were dear to the people of that region. But when you strip away the silk, the lace, and the feathers of Eastern imagery, and get down to the bare, warm truth, this is what you find—a man whose sense of moral lack had prompted that open confession, cleansed in that high hour by the direct action of the divine spirit upon his soul.
Here is that which is basic and fundamental in all religious life! I wonder if we have not been tempted in recent years to obscure this vital experience. We have held those two big words, "Heredity" and "Environment," so close to our eyes as to blind us, oftentimes, to the larger vision of that which is superhuman in earthly experience.
It is possible for the inner life of a man to be so wrought upon by the action of the spirit of God that the corrupt nature is cleansed, the weak nature is made strong, the selfish disposition is transformed into benign love.
It matters little how you go about it, if you go with sincere faith. You may seek for that renewal through the regenerating influence of the Sacraments dear to the heart of the Romanist and the High Churchman. If you find it there, it will be because Christ is within the Sacrament. You may seek for it in those profound emotional reactions which come at the Methodist mourners' bench. If you find it there, it will be because the spirit of Christ was operating through those feelings. You may find it as you make an about face, turning away from that which is evil and making Christian duty your supreme choice in the quiet of your own room. If you find it there, it will be because Christ was present in those movements of your inner life. The woman was healed in the Gospel story by touching the hem of Christ's garment because Christ was within that garment.
If any man will seek for moral renewal at the hands of God he will find. If he will knock at any one of these doors it will open. Here is the Gospel as it stands recorded on the pages of the Old Testament—"The spirit of the Lord shall come upon thee and thou shall be turned into another man." Here is the same Gospel as it stands recorded on the pages of the New Testament—"If any man is in Christ he is a new creature. Old things are passed away and all things are become new."
In the joy of moral renewal this well-born, well-reared, well-trained young man gave himself in eager consecration to the highest he saw. "I heard the voice of the Lord say, Whom shall I send? Who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I, send me."
His nation, now robbed of its great king by the hand of disease, was facing a crisis. The national church to which he belonged was steeped in formalism and insincerity. The divine voice was uttering a heartfelt lament over the unfaithfulness of the chosen people. "Israel doth not know! My people do not think. The whole head is sick and the whole heart is faint."
There was a loud cry for men of large build with wise heads and sound hearts to furnish moral leadership. And in the face of that demand this son of good fortune did not allow the divine spirit to go out into the highways and hedges in order to compel some sort of man, any sort of man, to come in that the ranks might be filled. He answered to his name with a clear-cut consecration of himself. "Here am I, send me."
When war comes to any country, there are rich men who give money, millions of it, that the war chest may be full. There are great manufacturers who promptly place their plants at the disposal of the government for the making of munitions. There are ship owners who turn over their vessels to the Navy that they may be sent to do business in the great waters of national defense. There are wise men who think hard upon the problems of finance and statecraft that they may provide that counsel which is more precious than rubies. All this is in the highest degree praiseworthy.
But the only men who give what Lincoln called at Gettysburg "the last full measure of devotion" are the men who give themselves. These men do not go on horseback nor in automobiles. They walk. They eat the hardtack. They sleep on the ground. They dig the trenches and fight in them. They march out at the word of command to be shot at. They keep right on doing those plain things until the war is ended and victory achieved. These are the men who awaken our warmest feeling of admiration and gratitude. "Here am I, send me"—nothing can take the place of that!
In that sterner war where there is no discharge, in that age-long, world-wide fight against the evils of earth this same sound principle holds. Money is needed; counsel is needed; organization and administrative ability are needed. The bringing in of that kingdom which is not meat and drink, nor shot and shell, but righteousness and peace and joy in the divine spirit, requires all these fine forms of effort. But nothing can ever take the place of that personal consecration of each man's own soul to the service of the living God.
In that high hour when Isaiah saw the God of things as they are, high and lifted up, sitting on His throne, he did not say, "Here are any number of fine people, send them. Here is a man who could perform the task better than I—send him." He said what every man must say who means to stand right in the Day of Judgment, "Here am I, send me."
He was the son of good fortune, and his life was bright and rich with many an advantage. But this did not prompt him to claim any sort of exemption from the call for volunteers. His vision of the awful difference between the earthly majesty of that king who sank so swiftly into a leper's grave and the heavenly majesty which rose above it sovereign and eternal, made him feel that nothing would suffice but the gift of himself.
What shall it profit a man, this man, that man, any man, to gain the largest measure of earthly success you may choose to name, if in the process he loses himself, his real self, his best self, his enduring self? What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, but feels within himself a capacity for higher things unrealized? In the great outcome nothing really matters save the devotion of the personal life to the highest ends.
In the year 1840 near the city of Louvain a child was born, who came of good stuff. He was educated for a business career, and there in prosperous little Belgium the outlook at that time for wealth, for social position, and for a life of joy was very bright. But at the age of eighteen this boy offered himself for the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church. He joined the Society of the Sacred Heart. He went out to the Hawaiian Islands as a missionary and was ordained as a priest in the city of Honolulu.
He was at once impressed with the sad condition of the leper settlement on the island of Molokai. He resolved to give his life to those poor, diseased, horror-stricken people. He knew that to live among them would mean banishment from his ordinary associations and the loss of all possible preferment in the church. He knew that he might himself contract that terrible disease and suffer a lingering, painful, frightful death. "No matter," he cried, "I am going." And he went.
He not only preached to those lepers the Gospel of the Son of God and ministered to them in spiritual things—his own labours and his appeals to the Hawaiian government secured for them better dwellings, an improved water supply, and a more generous provisioning of the unhappy settlement. For five years he worked alone, but for the occasional assistance of a priest who came to the colony for a single day. He finally succumbed to the dread disease of leprosy and in his forty-ninth year died a martyr to humane devotion. His name was Father Damien, and he shed fresh luster upon the Christian ministry.
The young man who was born to the purple, called now to be a prophet of God, seized upon the vital elements of religion and uttered them with power. "What does it mean to be religious?" men were asking. Some of the dull, blind priests of that day were saying, "It means sacrifice and burnt offering. It means the careful and showy observance of the forms of worship." Israel did not know; the people did not think.
Then this young prophet gave them the word of God with an edge on it. He showed them the folly of all those outward signs of devotion apart from the inward spirit of righteousness. "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices? Who hath required this at your hands? When you spread forth your hands I will hide my eyes. When you make many prayers I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean. Put away the evil of your doings. Cease to do evil, learn to do well. Then though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow."
"Salvation by righteousness—this is the message of the Old Testament," Matthew Arnold used to say. "Righteousness through Jesus Christ," this is the message of the New Testament! And this nineteenth century man of letters was but echoing the words which fell from the lips of those prophets in the eighth century before Christ.
"Wherewith shall I come before the Lord?" said Micah. "Will the Lord be pleased with a thousand rams or with ten thousand rivers of oil? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God."
"Seek justice," Isaiah said; "relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. If ye be willing and obedient ye shall eat the good of the land. If ye refuse and rebel ye shall be devoured." This was the heart of his message. It was the call of God to personal righteousness.
He represents the Almighty as sitting upon the throne of the universe, summoning His people into friendly conference with Him. "Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord." Religion is not a thing of magic. There is no sleight-of-hand or hocus-pocus in the benefits it seeks to confer. Religion is rational and moral. It is a reasoned form of intercourse between an intelligent and moral being who is finite and the Intelligent and Moral Being who is Infinite. Its benefits are to be realized in that direct impress of the spirit of God upon the soul of the man who has made an intelligent and honest approach to his Maker.
The young prophet saw his country threatened with disaster from both sides. He saw upon the south the selfish and cruel designs of Egypt. He saw the encroachments of mighty Assyria from the north. He saw the madness of those Israelites who thought they could combine wickedness and worship, the observance of religious forms with lives of moral unconcern. And in that hour the truths he lifted before them were "The majesty and authority of God, the everlasting obligation of personal righteousness, the certainty of the ultimate triumph of God's Kingdom over the wrath of man." These were the mighty truths by which he sought to inspire the hearts of men to do their duty, come what might.
Have we not great need at this very hour of just such men! It has been given to you and to me to live through one of the great, searching crises of human history. The world has never seen a struggle so gigantic. We have been patient for more than two years with a certain nation across the sea—patient clear up to the border of what has seemed to some of our neighbours like a lazy acquiescence in lawlessness. We have seen that nation referring contemptuously to her own treaties as mere scraps of paper, and then openly disregarding her solemn obligations.
We saw the outrage perpetrated upon Belgium, an outrage which men who know their histories better than I know mine are saying will go down as the greatest crime in the annals of the race. We saw the drowning of hundreds of helpless women and children in the sinking of the Lusitania without warning and in flat defiance of international law. We saw the judicial murder of women like Edith Cavell and of men like Captain Fryatt. We have seen the Zeppelins engaged in the dastardly business of hurling down bombs upon unfortified towns for the killing of old women and little children—heretofore when decent nations have gone to war men have fought with men. We have seen thousands of helpless Armenians butchered by the Moslem allies of that so-called Christian power,—it is all but universally believed, with its own connivance and under its direction. We have witnessed a frightful record of brutality and outrage, investigated and established by the competent testimony of such men as James Bryce and Cardinal Mercier. We have seen the sinking of hospital ships loaded with wounded men and the sinking of relief ships carrying provisions to the famine-stricken children of Belgium, no matter what flag they flew, or what cargo they bore.
We have had our own rights as a neutral trampled upon by that government with the arrogant assumption that her necessities knew no law. And now to crown it all we have detected the official representatives of that country with protests of friendship upon their false lips actually plotting with Mexico and seeking to extend that plot to Japan with the unholy purpose of destroying the peace between this country and its neighbours.
The men of our country who have red blood in their veins and the sense of justice in their hearts are saying, "How long, O Lord, how long!" War is a terrible thing and no honest man ever speaks lightly of war. But there are things which are worse than war. The loss of all capacity for moral indignation is worse. The easy, lazy, cowardly acquiescence in lawlessness and crime is worse. The loss of the readiness to sacrifice one's very life, if need be, for those ends which are just and right, is infinitely worse.
There are interests which are worth fighting for and, if need be, they are worth dying for. The sanctity of womanhood and the safety of little children, the security of those interests which are essential to human well-being and the protection of our homes, the honour and integrity of our country, and the maintenance of those majestic principles of righteousness which underlie all social advance—these ends are worth dying for. If these high ends can be secured by persuasion and moral appeal, well and good. But if they cannot, if their very existence is threatened by lawlessness and hate, then let men of sound mind and honest heart stand ready to do battle for the right.
In these hours of stress which have come upon our country, we have need of men who possess the necessary moral courage to stand forth and meet the crisis. There is a loud call everywhere for those who are prepared to face duty without flinching. It is for every man to say touching his own measure of ability, "Here am I, send me."
If the cause of democracy is not to fail in those hard years which will come at the close of this war, there is need not only of wise and honest leaders—there is need of ranks upon ranks of plain men who are ready to give their best strength to the service of that government which is "of the people, for the people, and by the people."
"O beautiful, my country, ours once more,
What were our lives without thee;
What all our lives to save thee.
We reck not what we give thee,
We will not dare to doubt thee,
But ask whatever else and we will dare."
V
The Young Man Who Changed the
History of the World
Why do you write it 1917? "April 1, 1917," that was the way you wrote it this afternoon in your letter to her.
There was a time when it was not so. The Hebrews were dating their calendars from what they supposed to have been the period of the creation. The Romans reckoned their time from the founding of the city on the seven hills. The Greeks reckoned their time from the first Olympic games.
But to-day if you meet a Hebrew, or an Italian, or a Greek in any part of the world and ask him, "What year is it?" he will reply instantly, "Nineteen seventeen." It is just that long since a certain Child was born in Bethlehem of Judea.
How strange it is, when you come to think of it, that the birth of a child in an out-of-the-way village in Palestine should change the calendars of the world! We find in this commonplace fact a prophecy of His radical transforming power in every department of life. He was destined to take the moral government of the race upon His shoulder as none other ever has. He was to alter the flow of the spiritual currents in human society and ultimately to change the history of the world.
He did it all while He was still a young man. He was only thirty-three years old when they put Him to death upon the Cross. He had used thirty of those thirty-three years in quiet preparation for the great tasks which were to come. No wonder the three years of which we know so much were mighty when we think of the thirty years of preparation standing behind them! Ten years of training and discipline for one of public action! Ten days of study and devotion for one day of healing, redemptive effort! Ten hours of silence and prayer before God for one hour of speech in the ears of men!
He did it all in His youth and when He died at the age of thirty-three He did not look down and say, "I have failed because My life is cut off all too soon." He looked up and said, "I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do."
How marvellous was the life of this young man who changed the history of the world! If we could get away from the idea that He is a stained-glass window or a marble statue or a lovely story in a book which most men seldom read—if we could only see Him as He was, the Word made flesh, real, warm, alive, our hearts would leap.
He was born in the manger of a stable. He grew up in a carpenter's home and in a carpenter's shop. He never saw the inside of a college, yet somehow He learned to think straight and to speak as never man spake. He lived with the birds and the flowers, the trees, the hills and the stars. He thought deeply upon the interests and needs of men until He knew what was in man and needed not that any should tell Him—He told them. He looked up with pure eyes and a pure heart until He saw God. Therefore, when He spoke His word was with power; and when He lived His life was with power; and when He stretched forth His hand, His touch had healing in it.
His mind was exceedingly broad. He had never been outside the borders of His own little country, which is about the size of the State of New Hampshire. He had never seen the mighty cities in Egypt to the south of Him, nor Antioch in Syria to the north. He had never looked upon Athens nor upon Rome. The man who thinks Broadway, New York, is the center of the solar system would have called Him provincial. His feet knew nothing save the narrow streets of Jerusalem and the still narrower lanes of Galilee.
Yet He moved about with a dream of world-wide empire in His head and the vision of a Kingdom Everlasting in His heart. "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me." When He sent forth His disciples to do the work He had taught them to do, this is the way their commission read: "Go into all the world. Make disciples of all nations. Baptize everybody into My name and the name of the Father." He had courage—think of His standing there, a young peasant in little Palestine, talking about a world-wide empire over which He would rule by His own unseen spirit!
He found little in His environment to add strength to His hope. He lived under a government which was tyrannical and corrupt. The Jewish Church to which He belonged was formal and lifeless. He faced a society which was ruled by men like Herod, and by women like the shameless wife of Herod, who cut off a poor man's head for telling her the truth about herself. He saw the religious leaders of His day straining at gnats of difficulty in their formal worship and then swallowing camels of moral fault in their every-day conduct. The situation might well have frightened the boldest heart. It never frightened Him. "The spirit of the Lord is upon Me," He said at the beginning of His ministry, "because He hath anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He hath sent Me to bind up the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captive, and to set at liberty them that are bruised." And when He came to the close of His ministry, He said, "Behold, I make all things new, a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." He was undaunted.
He was an optimist. By that I do not mean one of those silly, short-sighted individuals who goes about saying, "Look always on the bright side." Jesus looked at both sides. He went about with His eyes open. He saw everything. He saw the struggle and the sorrow of human life and felt it as if it had been all His own. He looked upon the tired, sad, sin-stained face of the race. He knew it as He knew His own face, and He saw the heart of pain which had made it so. He was no schoolboy shouting himself hoarse in a thoughtless enthusiasm which had never tested its strength against the graver difficulties of life. He saw it all, felt it all, understood it all, yet He lived and died in a great, sweet, serene hope for the race. You cannot find one hateful, cynical or despairing word falling from His lips.
He stood once where the shadow of the Cross was already drawing a black line across His path. He had twelve disciples to whom for the past two years He had given the best part of His time, His thought and His love. One of them had already betrayed Him, bargaining away his poor measure of loyalty for thirty pieces of silver. In the next hour another disciple would deny Him three times over with an oath. Another would doubt Him straight in the face of all those pledges of genuineness which they had received at first hand. And when the hour of trial struck His disciples would all show themselves cowards and quitters.
Even so, this young man did not despair. "Be of good cheer," He cried. "I have overcome the world." He was speaking in anticipation, but He was so sure of it that He used the past tense as of a thing accomplished. "I have overcome the world." He had kindled a fire which would never go out. He had lodged a bit of yeast in the heart of the race which would finally leaven the whole lump. He had saturated a few men with His ideas and spirit, and they would set in motion a process which one day would cause every knee to bow before Him and every tongue to confess that He is Lord.
He was to change the history of the world—how did He go about it? In the first place He changed men's thoughts about God. Men are influenced by their environment—they are transformed by the renewing of their minds. They are moulded by the thoughts they think and the desires they cherish. As a man thinketh in his heart touching the things that matter, so he becomes.
This is true as regards all our prevailing habits of mind, but the potency of right thought is to be found at its best when we come to a man's thought of God. How shall we think about ultimate reality? What is behind all these changing, passing phenomena? Who is back of it all? Is anybody? If so, is he wise or blind? Is he good or evil or morally indifferent? Does he mean anything by it all, or is he only an unreasoning, purposeless force? You cannot ask yourself or your fellows a more important question than this—"How shall we think about God?"
Men had been filling their minds with all sorts of wild and foolish guesses about God. This young man placed upon the lips of the race and within its heart that great word "Father." "When ye pray say, 'Our Father.'" Begin with those words on your lips, with that thought in your mind and with the filial spirit in your heart. When you worship "Worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him." When you would turn away from the evil of your life say, "I will arise and go to my Father." When you want assurance say, "No man can pluck me out of my Father's hand." When you come to die say, "Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." Death is the act of a tired child falling back into the arms of his Father. He showed us the Father and it sufficed us.
This great truth was the heart of this young man's message to the race—God is our Father. God combines the strength and the tenderness, the authority and the devotion, the responsible control and the capacity for self-sacrifice which belong to fatherhood at its best. Take the highest you have ever seen in fatherhood and raise it to the nth power, and then trust that, for that is God.
How many of you believe that? It is the easiest thing in the world to say, "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and earth," but do you really believe it? Are you striving to live it? If God is your Father, then you are His children, heirs of God, joint heirs with Jesus Christ! Your interests are His interests. Your life and His life, your destiny and His destiny, are not things apart—they are all one.
In the light of that great overarching, underlying, interpenetrating truth, there is no duty more commanding, no privilege more resplendent than that of living daily and hourly in the filial spirit before Him. When a man really believes that, he goes about saying by word and by deed, "I am not alone, the Father is with me. I come not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me. I must be about my Father's business." When that great sublime truth is set within the heart of the race, as it was set within the heart of this young man, it changes the history of the world.
He also changed men's thoughts about goodness. What does it mean to be good? When may we call any man good? There were men who felt that being good meant obeying the law, keeping the rules, ordering one's life in accordance with the endless specifications outlined in the Sacred Books. If a man could get through the day without having gotten off the path for an inch, then he might be esteemed good. And the race groaned under the burdens which this system had bound upon the consciences of men. It was all outward, formal, mechanical, impossible.
Jesus set Himself against that whole conception and method of goodness. "Except your righteousness exceeds that," He said to the men of His day, "you will not in any wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven." Goodness must be inward, vital, spontaneous. A good tree brings forth good fruit. It cannot otherwise. It does it as naturally as a bird sings. Therefore, make the tree good and let the fruit come as it will—it will be all right. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good deeds. He does it spontaneously. Therefore, make the heart right and let the man do as he pleases. Love God with an honest heart and love your neighbours as well as yourself, and then do as you like. Love works no ill, either Godward or manward; therefore, love is the fulfilling of all law. Here is the great underlying principle of all righteousness to which all our ethical considerations must be adjusted. As men rise from the practice of keeping outward rules into the more exacting but more joyous liberty of the spirit, they become genuinely good.
In the third place Jesus put within our reach a power which would change our hearts. If you are made as I am, and as I have found hundreds of other men, you feel oftentimes that your life is weak and thin and mean. You do not love God with an honest heart and strive to be what He would have you. You do not love your neighbours as you ought, and give expression to that love in unselfish action. You lag back when you ought to be forging ahead. You lie down where you ought to climb. You muddle along in a dull, commonplace way when your aspirations and your high resolves should be mounting up with wings like eagles.
When you are frankly honest with yourself you say, as I have said to myself, and as Paul said before us, "The good that I would I do not, and the evil that I would not, that I do. O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me!"
Here was One who knew that men are weak and thin and mean, yet He believed that every one of them through faith in Him could have a life strong and rich and fine, He actually believed that men who have bumped their way clear down to the bottom of the moral stairs could climb up again. He believed that the woman of the street, whom the bigots of that day were ready to stone, could "go and sin no more," her sins forgiven because she loved much.
The publicans and harlots would go into the Kingdom—they would go in, Jesus said, ahead of some of those respectable, cold-hearted Pharisees who were scandalized at such talk. He knew the capacity for moral renewal which lies in waiting in every heart, and He knew His own power to call that capacity into effective action. "I am the door," He said, "to newness of life. By Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved. He shall go in and out and find pasture." Security, liberty, sustenance, they would all be his!
My mind goes back to a man in one of my former parishes. He kept a little store, but he neglected his business in order to get drunk. The wolf was often at his door. He had a good wife and two lovely daughters, but he had broken their hearts by his evil ways. He would become so intoxicated that he would not know his own name nor the street he lived on. When he was coming out of such debauches he would go about dirty, blear-eyed, trembling, asking every man he met to give him money to get another drink.
Then there came a day when that man's heredity was not changed, his environment was not changed, but his heart was changed. He put his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and was turned into another man. He became at once sober, reliable, industrious, affectionate, aspiring. He put a smile on his wife's face which is there yet. He began to take care of his store and of his family. He became an honoured and useful citizen, chosen to positions of trust by his fellow men. He has now gone to his reward, but if he hears what I am saying he would tell you that it is all true. He would tell you also that he owed this change to the transforming power of the Son of God, the Saviour of men.
How the world changes and for the better! When Jesus Christ was here they said of Him, "He receiveth sinners and eateth with them." They said it with a sneer. When William Booth, the head of the Salvation Army, did the same thing they said of him, "He receiveth sinners," but they regarded it as the glory of his life. The first century saw the Son of Man scorned and spat upon for receiving sinners and eating with them. The twentieth century saw William Booth received at court by King Edward VII and honoured with a degree from Oxford University for receiving sinners. The world moves; there is sunrise everywhere and the promise of a brighter day! And this great change has been wrought by the One who brought upon the earth a finer form of spiritual energy to renew the hearts of men.
And finally this young man set in the sky of human aspiration a fixed star of hope. You cannot change the world by scolding it. You cannot change the world by petting it. You must set before its eyes a vision of God and in its heart a passion for goodness, and in its will a form of strength that will not accept defeat, and in its sky a star of hope.
"Strong Son of God, Immortal Love
Whom we that have not seen Thy face
By faith and faith alone embrace
Believing where we cannot prove."
Jesus Christ has done that for us all—"Believing where we cannot prove!" He has taught us how to hope and to trust and in that sign to conquer.
He tasted the whole human situation for every man. He was tempted in all points like as we are, and tried by those ordeals which culminated on Calvary. "In this world," He said, "ye shall have tribulation." The word He used means literally "pressure." Life is not all music and refreshments. Every honest life must be lived under pressure. It is compelled to do its work under the steady weight of duty, obligation, responsibility. It is compelled to fight a good fight in order to keep its faith and finish its course.
In the end that is the making of any life. Steam does all its work under pressure. Turn it loose in the air to go where it will and it becomes useless. In this world we must live under pressure. But Jesus bade men face it all undaunted and radiant. He planted in their lives an eternal hope, "Be of good cheer. I have overcome—you can."
He knew that His own purposes were entirely right—"I do always those things that please the Father." He knew that He was strongly entrenched in the love and confidence of those who knew Him best. He knew that the great moral order was on His side and that He could afford to wait for results. In that high confidence He moved ahead as serene as the sun shining in its strength. "Be of good cheer," He cried, when He stood within a hundred yards of Calvary.
His victory was not meant to be exceptional, it was meant to be representative. It was to be shared and repeated by all those who walk in fellowship with Him. How much it means when a man is making his way through some dark forest or climbing some stiff mountainside to find the faintest sort of a trail. "Other men have passed this way," he cries, "and what men have done, men can do again."
Here is a trail of spiritual victory, reaching on and up through all manner of untoward situations! His own patient, bleeding feet marked it out and thousands of His faithful followers have traversed it in their turn. "Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can tribulation or distress or persecution or famine, or peril or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither life nor death nor angels, nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
When the long, hard, dark days come it means everything to a man to know that there is that within him which cannot go down in final defeat. His real life, his best life, his enduring life, is hid with Christ in God, and that life will yet have its way.
The earth is another place when it is seen to have a sky above it. This earthly life is another thing when it is seen to have a heaven above it and beyond it. We are saved by hope, by the hope of life abundant, life enduring, life eternal, which shines on and on, no matter how earth's clouds may come and go.
When all else seems to fail we look up and hear this young man say, "Let not your heart be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you that where I am there ye may be. Be of good cheer, I have overcome and by My grace you will."
Here then is my case! Here is my own tribute of loyalty and affection for that young man who changed the history of the world. He did it by changing men's thoughts about God—"To us there is but one God, the Father." He did it by changing men's conception of goodness—to be good is to be like Him, simple, genuine, spontaneous, in our love and practice of the right life. He did it by changing the hearts of men from within—"If any man is in Christ he is a new creature." He did it by setting in our human sky a fixed star of hope to shine on until the day dawns and the shadows flee away.
In the face of it all how can any man of sense and conscience do less than follow Him and act with Him until His will is done on earth as it is done in Heaven!
"If Jesus Christ is a man
And only a man, I say
That of all mankind I cleave to Him
And to Him will I cleave alway.
"If Jesus Christ be God
And the only God, I swear
I will follow Him through Heaven and Hell,
The earth, the sea, the air."
Printed in the United States of America
BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES
JAMES M. LUDLOW, P.P., Litt.D.
Author of "The Captain of the Janizaries," "Deborah," etc.