Do you say men can not have a perfect love for a profession, so that they can take all and risk all, that they have so poor an ideal that they can not face the responsibility? Do you say there is no such a thing as perfect patriotism, perfect love for one’s country? I believe there is no greater thing than this on earth, that a man lay down his life for his friends. A few years ago, how many men laid down their lives for their country. We know there is such a thing as a perfect love. When that man to-day stands by the side of that woman and gives her himself, and she gives him herself, it is a slander to say that he and she do not love each other perfectly. You may say it is imperfect, to be sure; it is limited by human weakness (we are all earthly and of the earth), but, as far as human ability goes, it is perfect. Can not we have a perfect love toward God? We are capable of it on the human plane; we are capable of it on the divine plane. I think you have laid aside prejudice against my doctrine, and I speak with frankness, I think that God demands a perfect consecration, a perfect faith, and a perfect love, and we are capable of each.
Let us examine the manward relation. It may be stated thus: I think it embraces three things. First, perfect truth; second, perfect honesty; third, perfect consecration. The thing we can not abide is a lie. When a man tells a lie, he is like a horse that slips his halter once, you buckle it up two or three holes tighter next time, so he shall not slip it again. If he tells a barefaced lie once, you fail to trust him again; he loses your respect. God desires truth in the inward parts, God asks that we shall be true to him, that when we know what is right, we shall try to do according to our best ability.
The second thing we require is honesty in dealing and words. Let me tell you, friends, the thing the world does not forget, is the sin of not paying your debts. I do not care, though your profession may be like a great four-story brownstone front house, and you may have a cupola on the top, if you do not pay one hundred cents on a dollar, your profession is not worth the paper on which it is written. You may be a fornicator, or an adulterer, if you pay one hundred cents on a dollar, the world will give you a free pass. One of the crying sins that the world does not forget, is that some Christians do not pay their debts. A preacher may preach like an angel, and if anybody says, “He owes me so and so, and I can’t get my money,” his sermons do not amount to a great deal. Perfect honesty, this is one of the things that the Christian Church needs to look at. I remember a farmer in Dutchess County, when I was pastor there, who had a fashion of throwing an extra bag of oats on every load of oats sold, especially when sinners came. A wild young sinner said to him one day, “What do you do that for?” “Well,” said he, “I may have made a mistake in measuring up those oats, and as I am going to a country that I shall never return from, and I shall meet you at the Judgment Day, where I am afraid you will be on the left side, I want things to be perfectly square with you and your kind.”
We demand this of our fellow-men, and God demands it of us toward our fellow-men. Look at this man Abram. The Lord had given him the land, but he took pains particularly to buy a burying place, and have the money carefully weighed. When he had a battle with the confederated kings and brought Lot and his family back again, and the king of Sodom wanted to give him all the spoil, he stood up in all his manly integrity and refused to take it. Walking alone with God, he could do without it. I tell you the man who walks in this ideal, walking before God in his perfect truth and honesty, need not fear the forces of the world; he need not fear to be burned at the stake; he can afford to have his name pitched out of the world as an enthusiast; he can afford to be despised.
The third thing is perfect magnanimity, which is nothing more or less than true gentlemanliness. I love to read the Bible because it introduces me to so many gentlemen. As a celebrated infidel writer says about Christ, “he was the first gentleman of the age.” What is it? It is a gentlemanliness, a true magnanimity to our fellow-men, making arrangements for the good of other people rather than ourselves, living not for ourselves but for those about us, being polite and careful in all the arrangements of our lives, loving our neighbors as ourselves.
See that man sitting in the cars, who has paid for but one seat. He occupies one seat with his feet and the other two with his baggage. People come in and say, “Is this seat taken?” He says, “Yes.” I heard a man ask one of these fellows not a long time ago, “Is this seat taken?” “Yes.” “Whom is it taken by?” “A person.” “Who is the person? Have you paid for more than one seat?” I was glad to see the man have to take up his baggage. Did you ever see a man carve a beefsteak who cuts off the tough pieces for his wife and children and keeps the tenderloin for himself? A gentleman will see that all the rest are taken care of, and he generally comes out about as good as the rest; he may lose sometimes, but he wins in many things. Emerson says a man can not afford to lose his self-respect. I often think what even some Christian men must think when they look into the looking-glass and contemplate themselves; if they would have any recollection of themselves and their meanness they would not consult the looking-glass.
With these two points—first of all, godward, a perfect consecration, a perfect faith, a perfect love, which we must admit, in our inner consciousness, is possible to us; in our manward relation, perfect truth, perfect honesty, perfect magnanimity. I believe this covers the ideal. We can understand the meaning when God says to every man, “Walk before me, and be thou perfect.” But some one says: “Mr. Adams, you don’t make any allowance for the weakness of human nature.” I do. Weak human nature! It is God that recognizes it in us, and it is God that requires these things as belonging to it, belonging to weak human nature. “But you don’t know about our surroundings,” you say. I may not; yet even in your surroundings you admit that this is an ideal that is in the reach of every one. “But you don’t make any theological distinctions.” I often think of what Dr. Hitchcock said before the Union Theological Seminary: “Young gentlemen, study theology, yes, study theology, but preach the Gospel.” I study theology, but I try to preach the Gospel, theology or no theology. You say: “This will not stand the straight-edged, extreme sanctification view.” I don’t care about the extreme sanctification view. There are two kinds of spurious sanctification, one so high that no one can get to it, and the other so low nobody wants it. This kind of the text is in reach of every one and what every one ought to want.
I propose to show how you may all reach it. (May the Lord help me!) I think I find it in one single expression in this text, “Walk before me, and be thou perfect. I am the Almighty God.” That is, “I am the Almighty God, to help you walk before me.” If you please God, you can take the risk about the rest. Do you say, “I am weak.” God answers it with his omnipotence. Do you say, “I am poor.” God answers it with his riches. Do you say, “I am without any useful gift, or I have peculiar surroundings.” God answers it with that one expression, “I am the Almighty God, walk before me, and be thou perfect.”
You remember that interview that God had with Moses when he was about to send him into Egypt. How often God says, “I am the Almighty God. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” What did he say that to him for? That he might encourage him to believe in him; trust him, and encourage him to go out under his might. I believe “I am the Almighty God” answered every excuse of Moses. If we put this matter in the hands of God, with perfect consecration, faith, and love toward God, and perfect truth, honesty, and magnanimity to our fellow-men, it will become easy to us, it will become the joy of our lives, and God will put us down in his blessed book as among his perfect ones.
Mark what God calls perfect is so different from what men require. We hear some persons say, “Well, C. is about perfect.” You go out and tell that thing to somebody that knows her, and does not like her very much. If I should believe the things I hear said about some men, they should be put in jail. But you can not find out that way: look up to God! Knowing how imperfect we are, and how poor we are, in all these relations of our hearts and lives, God has put it down, “I am the Almighty God. I am able to make you what you want to be.” That is what he said to Abram. Look at him. You recollect at one time in his life, under great pressure, he told a lie. And yet Abram filled the ideal, but it was in spite of that. Noah was perfect, but he got drunk. Job was perfect, and upright, and eschewed evil. If anyone will read over carefully the Book of Job, (and I recommend you to read it), he will find a perfect answer for all the skepticism of this present age. Job went so far as to curse the day in which he was born, and the day when it was said a man-child is born, and yet he was a man that was perfect in his generation, and that pleased God. He came out of that immature condition of ignorance of God.