Professor W. G. Elmslie, D.D.: Memoir and Sermons

by William Gray Elmslie

It was at this moment that the recoil came. I will tell you how. If a man has got any heart at all, he can go any length in his own head with his doubts and questions about whether there is a God or a heaven, or whether it is worth while trying to be holy, and pure, and honest; but if he has any heart at all, the moment that he says, "I am going to be pure no longer, but I am going to be foul," then there is something in him that draws him back. He sees himself, or rather he feels, that he is not doing harm to any one with those doubts that are in his own intellect, but the moment he says, "I am going out into the world, in the train, in the town, in the warehouse, and I am going to tell it, right and left, that I count it an old wife's fable that there is a God and heaven, that I count the man an idiot who denies himself any fleshly joy that he can get without coming within the grasp of the law"—I say, if he has any heart at all, he suddenly thinks to himself, "If I say that to my younger brother, if I say that to that innocent maiden, I shall be doing a cruel wrong to the generation of God's people." Oh, there is an eternal, immovable fact! Doubt may have all logic on its side, but doubt and the denial of God and of virtue are the world's damnation. It may be an advantage to a man to cheat and steal, but it cannot be an advantage to his neighbours. Take the worst man in the City, and ask him if he would wish that all goodness, all virtue, all religion should be so crushed out that every man should become a thief, a robber, a burglar. No; he does not want that. Even in the case of an infidel, if he be a man of fine conscience and fine heart—I have known such—not for his life would he tell his doubts to a child, not for his life would he say a word to stop that mother teaching her boy to pray. I have known such men who told me that they were thankful that the mother of their children kept on doing it. Yes, that Psalm is far away from our theoretical theologies or intellectual apologies and the rest of it. See how intensely human it is—that recognition that doubt held within the intellect is not very harmful, but let it go out into the world, and it will do unspeakable mischief; it is that that gives the doubter check. Ay, and there is reason in it, rationality. When a man recognises that fact he has got to go farther. If doubt manifestly would harm the world, if the denial of God, and goodness, and the earth's moral government would damage human society, then there must be something wrong in the reasoning that leads up to that denial. The facts cannot be as I have fancied, or else my inferences are wrong; for never, never can it be evil to know the truth. Therefore that denial of mine that there is a good God, or that if there be a God He governs this world by goodness, must be false. Now all things appear to the man in a new light. Why? Because he has got up to a great elevation. Suddenly it darts upon him, "Before, I was looking at this world out of my little self; I judged everything by its effect upon my own personality, my own life. I was suffering, and therefore all things must be wrong." What a poor little aspect that is! Now he has risen up to a point where he stands as God stands; he looks at the big world out of himself, and he sees that the doubt, the denial, would destroy all that is best in the world. And he looks farther; he has reached to God's sanctuary. Now his eyes travel over wider reaches of human story. Before he was like a man down in a valley where there is a winding river, and just where he stood the river seemed to flow in one direction, and he went away and proclaimed to men that the river ran north. Now he has travelled away up the mountain, and he is able to look over the whole extent, and he sees that there was a winding and twisting in the stream, but observes that its great ultimate course is to the southern seas. The man stands up above this world of ours, he looks over the great spread of its course and history, and what is the absolute conclusion? That everywhere in the end immorality has death in it; that violence, wickedness, selfishness ruin themselves; that oppressive dynasties have fallen, and corrupt peoples have been struck down; that sin everywhere has God's vengeance set in it, and ends in death. Everywhere in the end virtue does triumph and survive, goodness proves superior. That is a fact which the evolutionist tells us. This world seeks and reaches the moral, the good, the true, the noble in intellect, heart, and soul. It was made, the religious man says, by a good God, and it is making for goodness. Yes; but there comes another revelation. For the good man says to himself, "Now, how came it that I could not see that before?" and suddenly an overwhelming shame falls upon him. "How could I not see that before? Oh, because I was such a little soul, because I lived in such a despicable, little world! I failed to see the truth because I was as base as those bad men. What makes them forsake God and goodness? Because they count earthly gain the supreme thing. Why was I so bitter against their getting the earthly gain? Because I counted it the supreme thing. I, a man made in God's image, a man held by God's hand, a man whose will was being overshadowed, and led, and guided by God's Spirit, through all was so ignorant and so brutish that I thought God's best gift that He had to give to His children was money, or fleshly pleasure, or earthly adulation. I was no better than a brute beast. To the brute beast God can give nothing more than meat, and drink, and fleshly sensual delight; but that a man held in God's hand, loved by God, should have great joy about these things! Ah, my doubt grew not out of the world's enigmas alone! it grew out of my own low morals." Now he stands in a new position. He sees as God sees, and he says to himself, "Ah, let this world grow as ill as it may; even if it were the case that money, power, social ambition, earthly rewards did go predominantly to wickedness, what then? Here am I, a man loving honour, truth, justice, mercy, purity, God; shall I hesitate for one moment if I must lose all the world? Can I hesitate for one moment? No; goodness alone, with no earthly reward, is heaven, and far more precious than all worldly gain." Why? Because goodness has in it the very breath of God, the throb of His Spirit, the echo of His heart. The good man has God in him, loving him, continually with him, he continually with God; and this world lies beneath him, and death beneath his feet. Ah, the best this world can give trembles before death and the grave, and breaks and is gone! but in goodness the human heart clasps God, and doubt is at an end.

Oh, how much our world to-day wants that supreme daring faith in goodness just for itself, and that close fellowship with God, that defies all questionings, all doubts, that would stand if all the evidences about our Gospels and Epistles were swept away, still sure that God is up there, that God loves men, and that God draws them to Himself to make them holy, as their Father in heaven is holy!

IX.
THE STORY OF QUEEN ESTHER.

Esther iv. 13-17.

THE subject to which I invite your attention to-night is the Story of Queen Esther. The kernel of it has been read to you in the fourth chapter. I shall read the closing verses, so as to give you the key-note to the meaning of the narrative. After Esther had refused to go and plead for the Hebrews with the King of Persia, "Mordecai commanded to answer Esther, Think not with thyself that thou shalt escape in the king's house, more than all the Jews. For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this? Then Esther bade them return Mordecai this answer, Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish. So Mordecai went his way, and did according to all that Esther had commanded him."

It is a very difficult task to calculate how much religion there is in the world—true religion, that God accepts. Elijah once tried to calculate, and concluded there was nobody true to God but himself; blind to the seven thousand that had not bowed the knee to Baal. It is quite possible to take superficial, indulgent, optimistic views of the progress made by mankind, but God knows there are as deadly and wicked and more blasphemous errors committed by good men, who talk of this world as if it were given over to the devil to reign and rule in it, as if things were growing worse and worse, as if the number of men and women whose hearts are God's were few. I think the blunder comes from looking for goodness often in the wrong place, from a mistaken idea of what true religion is. It won't do to reckon up our church members; they are not all genuine. It won't do to count our acts of worship, our prayer-meetings, our praises. These are often mere sound, breath, empty air. If you want to know how much of Christ there is in this world, you must go outside the churches, into the workshops, into the homes of the people. Ay, you must go to lands where Christ's name is not often heard, and you have got to listen with a sympathetic ear, and whenever you hear the accents of Christ's human voice ringing out in any way of genuine love and tenderness, whenever you see duty done patiently, and loyally, and uncomplainingly, whenever you see a heart or a soul follow the light, however dim and glimmering, understand that there you are touching Christ, and stand on a bit of the kingdom of heaven. The eleventh chapter of Hebrews is the golden roll of the Old Testament heroes, men of God, stamped by God Himself as genuine; and the deeds recited, too, as having been done by them, that gave them their degree and title as heroes, and nobles, and princes in heaven's kingdom, are not the preaching of sermons, or the writing of books of theology, or the fighting about petty little trivialities of doctrinal explanation, or the performance of rites and ceremonies and acts of worship, but brave deeds of battle, noble, dauntless generalship, heroism, and courage, and self-sacrifice, loyalty to the cause of truth and righteousness in this world. These are the deeds that were done, following the guidance of God, under the inspiration of Heaven, and the men who did them are recited in one long unbroken chain, and linked on in line direct with Jesus Christ, whose death and redemption are presented as the crown and consummation of that long series of priests, and kings, and prophets, and warriors, and heroes, true-hearted men and women who lived for God and fought for God in the olden time. It is sometimes said that Christ was not present in the Old Testament times. True, the human Jesus of Nazareth was not there, but oh, the spirit of Him was! He was the very heart-beat, and pulse, and inspiration of all that long, continuous struggle to bring heaven down into earth, for that is what the Old Testament story presents to us. In every brave deed, in every true word, in every pure and righteous life, it was not the heart of man that glowed, but the very spirit of Christ—Christ coming to full birth and maturity in this world's story.

Some people are puzzled to discover how the Book of Esther comes to be in the Old Testament. It is said to be a romance of history. It contains no religious teaching. The name of God is not once mentioned in it, from the first verse to the last. How comes it in the Bible?

Now, it is quite true that there is no direct dogmatic teaching of religious truth. It is absolutely true that the name of God is not to be found in its pages. But what of that? what of that, if the book is one of the most powerful presentations of God's providence working among men, if the book itself has for its very soul and idea the conception of God overruling events in a marvellous fashion to preserve His kingdom on earth? Is the great thing to get the name of God, spelt with its three letters, or to be shown God? Ah! it is the same kind of blunder that causes us to make so much of mere forms of words in the Church, instead of looking to see if the Spirit of God animates the man and woman and the preacher who inhabit the professed house of God on earth. There may be no teaching of religion, no prophesying of Jesus, no foreshadowing of the evangelical truths of redemption in the Book of Esther; but what it does paint for you is a majestic picture of a human heart struggling against its own weakness, rising to a grandeur that had in it the glory of Christ's own self-sacrifice. The name is not there, the phrase is not there; but the core, and kernel, and heart of Christ's love, and faith, and redemption of men are pulsing and beating in the book.

It is a puzzling book. There is a great deal in it that is revolting. The background on which Esther's deed of heroism was done is ugly and repulsive. She lived in a social state that was degraded and base, containing in it customs and habits that almost sicken us who, through Christ's mercy, have been lifted into comparative purity and sweetness.