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THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO.

Essays on

The Practice of Religion

BY

RUFUS M. JONES, A. M., Litt. D.PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HAVERFORD COLLEGE

TORONTO

1£7'11

PHILADELPHIA

PRACTICALCHRISTIANITY

CHICAGO

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GEORGE FOX: An Autobiography.

IZIDO., 2 vols., S84 pages, illustrated

(r903)

SOCIAL LAW IN THE SPIRITUAL

WORLD. 12IDO., 272 pages (1904)

A DYNAMIC FAITH. 12IDO., lOS pages

(r901)

A BOY'S RELIGION FROM MEMORY.

r6mo., r45 pages (r902)

ELI AND SYBIL JONES: Their Life and

Work. IZIDO., 300 pages (r889)

OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

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INTRODUCTION

point. It simply needs to be applied as we

are applying the other forces which are pro­

gressively being discovered for our uses.

This book is not a systematic treatise or ex­

position of Practical Christianity; it is rather

a series of short essays, which illustrate and

interpret phases of the Practical Christian

life, which indicate the method of the king­

dom and which seek to manifest the Spirit's

power in the life and society of our time.

Most of these chapters have already been

printed as editorials, but it is hoped that they

may have a further service in this collected

form. Chapter LII, on the Message of Quak­

erism is now printed for the first time. It is

not intended to be a complete interpretation

of Quakerism, nor is the point of view here

set forth confined to Quakersism by any means.

It is merely an attitude of life and teaching

which has been characteristic of Friends and

which for want of a better title is here called

the Message of Quakerism.

" Forgive them where they fail in truthAnd in thy wisdom make me wise."

Haverjord, Pennsyluania, I899'

CHAPTER I

THE SUPREME DEMONSTRATION

CHRISTIANS are continually being askedto prove that Christianity is true, and

they generally point to the various books of"evidences" as an answer. There are historicalproofs, monumental proofs, literary proofs, sothat the events of the life of Jesus are as wellauthenticated as any events of antiquity. Butwe are told that Christianity makes assump­tions of a Divine origin and a Divine mani­festation which no amount of historical evi-

. dence could ever prove after nineteen hundredyears. It claims an Incarnation, and it assumesthat through Christ God gives men eternallife. How call any book of evidence provesuch claims as that? Must we not admit thatno proof is possible? The two leading expo­nents of apostolic Christianity-Paul and John-have given us a method of proof or demon­stration which is peculiarly suited to the tem­per and spirit of our modern ways of thinkingand of testing truth. John says, "He thatbelieveth on the Son of God hath the witness

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,8 PRA CTICA.". G1R.'STIANITY THE SUPREME DEMONSTRATION 19

in himself," and Paul, on the top wave of hisgreat inspiration, says, " The Spirit itself bear­eth witness with our spirit, that we are thechildren of God." In other words the supremedemonstration of spiritual truths is an internalevidence-a witness within the soul itself,We know by immediate, first-hand knowledgethat two and two are four, or that the shortestdistance between two points is a straight line,or that a thing cannot both be and not be atthe same time. These things are self-evident,we say. The mind is of such a nature thatwe cannot doubt them. In the same way we" prove" our own existence-we have the wit­ness within ourselves, and no amount of argu­ment could ever shake us out of the conviction,for it is based on first-hand evidence. Nowour two apostles bring the whole content ofspiritual revelation-the mighty message ofeternal life-down to a test of a similar dem­onstration. It is not dependent upon histori­cal evidence alone; it is open to the sameproof as our axioms of mathematics, or evenour own existence.

Christianity professes to be a revelationfrom God; it proclaims salvation from sin,and a new life in Christ; it offers the privi­lege of sonship with God, and it promises tofill believers with the spirit of love. Now the

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only possible proof of such claims and pro­mises is the demonstration of personal experi­ence. "Try it and see," is all we can say to theskeptical. I t would be impossible to provethat two and two are four to a person who hadno internal faculty of perceiving mathemati­cal truth; it would, too, be impossible toprove to a man that he existed if he had noself-consciousness of it. So, too, the onlyproof that we have power through Christ" tobecome SOIlS of God," IS TO BEC01m ONE; theonly demonstration that He can save from sinand give new life is TO BECOME SAVED AND TO

RECEIVE THE NEW Lr:B'E. Does anybody wantany better evidence of the greatest spiritualtruths of Christianity? The only evidence ofthe sunrise is that you see it with your owneyes; the only evidence that one's mother isgood and loving is that one FEELS her love.

Thus in our last resort we fall hack uponthe "demonstration of the Spirit," and cryback with this witness within, "Abba, Father."We know Christ is Divine, for He has workeda divine work within us,. we know He haspower over sin, for He has taken away OW',s,.

we know that He brings spiritual life, for Hehas quickened us, and made us sit in heavenlyplaces; we know that the atonement is ~

reality, for we have been reconciled with God,

.0 PRACTiCAL CHRiSTlANiTl'

and are at peace with Him. Scholastic the­ology dealt with abstractions, and based itsdoctrines on logic and authority; apostolicChristianity bases itself on the demonstrationof the Spirit of God to the spirit of man, onthe witness within, the supreme evidence-thesoul's grasp of first-hand truth. The revivalof this apostolic position characterizes primi­

tive Q,uakerism. ,

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CHAPTER II

THINGS WHICH CANNOT BE SHAKEN

IN this world of ours all our spiritual truths,all our eternal realities, have to be expressed

in temporal, human and changing forms. Nomatter how pure and exalted the truths, itsembodiment must be more or less imperfect.In fact, it is absolutely impossible to find a per­manent and unvarying expression for anyidea. There have been stagnant centurieswhich have kept unchanged the crystallized'forms which they inherited, and they havesupposed that faith would cease to be if thisparticular form of truth should vanish away.The Pharisee could not imagine a true religionwithout circumcision and the blood of bullsand goats; the Roman Catholic of the fifteenthcentury could not believe that real religionwould survive if the doctrine of trans-substan­tiation-the real presence in the bread andwine-should be given up. The >;alvinistsupposed that his articles of faith were a per­manent embodiment of truth and hisplan ofsalvation the only possible one.

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22 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITYTHINGS WHICH CANNOT BE SHAKEN 23

They all conceived of truth as somethingwhich could' be expressed once for all ina form which all coming ages must keepunchanged. As well might we expect tobottle up the daylight to preserve it, or fix thisinfinite life about us in nature into oneunchanging form, to be preserved through allseasons, years and centuries. The moment ouetries to "fix" life and crystallize into a setshape, it ceases to be life. The characteristicof life is its power to make its own form andexpression, ever changing, ever developing, evermodifying its form, and yet keeping its essence.Truth is never some dead thing which can be"laid out;" it is living, moving, quickening,outgrowing its old forms, taking on new ex­pressions and preserving itself, as life does, byendless variations and by infinite embodiments.

There are transitions going on in every age.The things that can be shaken are removed,and the things that have waxed old vanishaway. These things always bring trial tofaith, for it is difficult for most persons to dis­tinguish between the temporary form- i. e.,the human embodiment-and the eternal andabiding truth which lives on in the midst ofchange and vanishing forms.

Here comes the great test of spiritual powerand insight. Those who have" short vision"

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and a traditional faith build on the temporal,and cling to the form IV hich has grown familiarand dear to them, bu t if anything shakes thistheir faith is shattered, and they suffer ship­wreck. Those, however, who have real spir­itual vision look through the temporal andfleeting, through the transitory forms andembodiments, and settle their hearts and theirfaith upon the eternal reality.c-sthe InfiniteSelf who abides and works through allchanges. Their faith blooms in the midst oftransition periods; they look calmly on while"the things that can be shaken" are beingcemoved, and they have no fear when tr.0things which have "waxed old" are vanish.ing away, for they know that those thingswhich cannot be shaken must remain. Thereis no safety in this present time of transitionand of changing form and expression. to befound by closing the eyes or hiding the headin the sand, as the ostrich is said to do. Theonly safe and sure course is to reach tlirouqh.the outward and find the eternal, to rest backupon the everlasting arms, to have a personalinitiation into the riches of the glory of this"mystery" "which is Christ in you, the hopeof glory," to get free in the living truth. Thethings which we see are temporal, the thingswhich the spiritual vision finds real are eternal,

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CHAPTER XIV

NO SIGN SHALL BE GIVEN

THERE is but one occasion on record' whichdrew a deep sigh of discouragement from

the heart of Jesus. Twice He wept; once insympathy with. mourners, though not in hope­less grief, because He was conscious at the sametime that He was the resurrection and the life,and again over Jerusalem, because He saw thatonly on the ruins of the Jerusalem He lovedcould the more perfect Jerusalem arise. Butthis "deep sigh" was different. It was calledout by a hopeless situation which came beforeHim in His ministry. The people who failedto feel the power of the truth He taught, andwere incapable of appreciating His spiritualrevelation, came demanding that He shouldauthenticate or prove His revelation by a physi­cal "sign." "He sighed deeply and said,, No sign shall be given.''' In fact, from thenature of the case no sign could be given.Spiritual truth must be taken at first-handor not at all. No physical sign could be givento prove, or authenticate Christ's message of

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NO SIGN SHALL BE GIVEN 6I

Divine love, of forgiveness of sin, of sonshipwith God, or the possibility of a life hid withChrist in God.

One of Christ's severest temptations wasthe suggestion that He should miraculouslymake bread for Himself out of stone. It wasa temptation to use His marvelous powers, butit threatened His very Messiahship, for if Hehad yielded He could have brought no redemp­tion to man. If bread is made out of stonesby a miracle for Him who comes as a Saviourof men, it at once puts Him out of relationswith those whom He came to save. Vve musttoil and struggle, and eat our bread in thesweat of our brows, and if He refuses to tasteman's hardship and want, and eats the breadof miracle, He ceases to be in all points likeus, and, not sharing our life, He cannot be ourcomplete Redeemer. He could not yield andstill be the Saviour.

The impossibility of yielding to the cry fora physical miraculous "sign" is made stillclearer during the crucifixion. The mockingpriests and scribes ask for a last sign: "If Hehe the Christ, let Him come down from thecross that we may believe." It was the verything which would have proved Him no Christat all. The gift of Himself, the manifestationof Divine love, His faithfulness unto death did

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prove His Sonship and attest His message, butthe sign they demanded was forever impossi­ole for Him, who even on the cross proves His;piritual power, not by coming down Himself,rut by lifting a dying thief out of his old,-uined life, up, up, until he sees the meaning)f love and sonship, and can BE WITH CHRIST

n paradise.This power to transform a life, and bring it

nto Divine relation, is the supreme sign; it ishe only sign by which Christ could attest Hispiritual message. Magdalen is a "sign;".imon, the wavering, fickle, impetuous fisher­ran, changed to Peter, the apostle of Jesus'hrist is a sign; .John, the son of thunder,-ishing to call down fire all the Samaritans,-ansforrned into the apostle of love, is a sign;aul, breathing out threatenings and slaughter,auling men and women to prison, changed toaul with his life hid with Christ in God, who,so "crucified with Christ," can say in truth,I live by the faith' of the Son of God, whoved me and gave himself for me," he is a~n. Every soul since, which through ChristIS turned from its prodigal 1ife, and cried,Abba, Father," has found Christ's truth true,rd has become a living sign to others. Noher sign shall be given to this or any otherneration,

" The God I never once behold,Above the cloud, beneath the clod;The unknown God, the unknown God."

-WILLIAM WATSON.

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Each generation in its own way asks for asign. Crowds gather around the spiritualistic" medium" to get a material "sign" that thesoul lives after death, but not thus shall thegreat truth of immortality be proved. Onegeneration expects the astronomer with histelescope to find an indisputable sign in thestarry heavens; another asks the geologist todig up one from the strata of the earth's crust,or the biologist to find a sign in the cells ofliving forms. It is because of the failure tofind God in material things tha t a modernpoet has cried out in hopelessness:

The trouble is, he is looking in the wrongdirection for Him, and he is asking for a signwhich cannot be given. " God is love," let usremember, and He can be found only wherelove can be, and the sign must be sought in ahuman heart that can feel and test a spiritualtruth .

That if the meaning of Tennyson's greatline" in "In Memoriam," written when hisown heart was yearning for a sign that God islove and that life goes on. He says;

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PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY52

This first-hand knowledge, by experience­is the only all-sufficient attestation of a spirit­ual truth, and however much we may long fortests through our senses, and for signs that aretangible, we must at last get where we canreceive His beatitude, "blessed are they thathave not yet seen, yet have believed," and cryout, because our hearts know Him, " my Lordand my God."

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64 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY

« I found him not in world or sun,In eagle's wing or insect's eye;Nor thro' the questions men may try,

The petty cobwebs we have spun.

" If e'er when faith hath fallen asleepI heard a voice, 'Believe no more'And heard an ever-breaking shore

That tumbled in the Godless deep;

" A warmth 'within the breast would meltThe freezing reason's colder part,And like a man in wrath, the heart

Stood up and answered, I I HAVE FELT.'"

CHAPTER XV

. ,prSGAH VIEWS OF LIFE

\" Now I see all of it,

Only I'm dying! "

WHAT lives we might live if we could onlybegin life with the wisdom which we

shall possess when we stand at its close,and lookback on it and realize that our earthly oppor­tunities are at an end! How trivial much ofone's life must seem viewed from its fartherend, and how strenuous and earnest it wouldbe if it could be lived over in the light of theexperience which these closing moments bring!It is not well to be haunted by the shadow ofdeath, and it is an indication of an unhealthyand morbid condition; but it might be welloccasionally, if we could take Pisgah views oflife, and see it-see our own lives--in whatthe philosophers call an "eternal aspect."

Most of us live for the hour; we do whatpleases us at the time. We see a pleasure or atask close at hand, and we enjoy the one andbrace ourselves to perform the other, and welive largely as the creatures of circumstance,

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CHAPTER XX

A RELIGION OF POWER

THERE have been many ways of regardingreligion, and different persons to-day

think of it differently. It is very common tospeak of it as some thing which one" gets" or"accepts." "He got religion," the neighborssay, or "he has always kept his religion throughevery trial." It is not uncommon to think of itas a statement of belief or faith which a personholds. "I accept the doctrine of the Trinity,of the atonement, and of eternal life, andeternal punishment, therefore I have religion;"thus many a person explains his religion. Tosuch a one it consists largely of correct defini­tions. Another class of persons care nothingfor definition; they consider religion to be agood life; they say: "I do about right, I liveup to my light and I do not believe God will

be hard on me."There is still another way of viewing religion.

It is the power of God manifested in life. Itdoes not begin with definitions, it does notconsist of living about right, it is not some-

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t.hing one "gets." It comes and gets the per­son. He does not keep his religion, but hisreligion keeps him. It is a power, a force,just as real and just as persistent as that whichwe call gravitation, and its effects are just assure. No definitions of electricity would everlight a man's house, or move a trolley car.The first step is to let the current in and thehouse becomes light, or the car moves. Every­thing bases itself on the ultimate, invisiblepower, which is simply RECEIVED. This istrue of religion as it is of mechanics. There isno religion apart from God, and until a mancomes to God ani! God gets him, the man isnot truly religious. It consists first and lastof possession-God's possession of us and ourjoy in the sense of His ownership. A religionwithout power would be like a gravitationwhich did not draw anything, or like electric­ity that had no force. Religion is spiritualgravitation. It draws the soul away fromeverything else to its true Central Sun. Thefirst effect of it on a person is to beget love.Love is the unfailing sign of religion. A love­less religion is as impossible as a waterlessocean, or a treeless forest. If a man's religiondoes not flood him with love, it is the wrongkind of religion.

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We have been speaking of what religionseems to us to be, now a word about how itcomes. There has been in our world but onePerson who was perfectly divine and perfectlyhuman. He revealed God and He showedwhat it means to be a son. He also showedhow to be a son, and he plainly said to thewhole race, "I am the Way." Religion meansgetting to God, Christ is the way and love is

the sign.

CHAPTER XXI

PENTEOOST IN OUR OHRISTIANITY

pENTECOST was a definite date and a defi-nite experience in the early church. It

came fifty days after the crucifixion, and thesecond chapter of Acts gives us all the inform­ation we have of the event, as there is no otherreference to it in the New Testament.

So far as we know, much that occurred onthat particular day has never been repeated.There were visible and audible phenomenawhich nobody can now clearly explain andwhich are generally considered to have been aspecial dispensation for the benefit of the littlegroup of believers who had it laid upon themto carry the Gospel to an unbelieving world.

The one feature of Pentecost which is aspossible for us to-day as for apostles and friendsof Jesus ten days after their :Master had lefttheirsight, is the reception of the Holy Ghost.We apparently do not need the gift of tongues,and the visible fire no longer sits on the headof a modern Christian. Every Christian does,however, need to have a consciousness of the

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PENTECOST IN OUR CHRISTIANITY84 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY

presence of the Spirit of God, and not one ofus can afford to miss the power which comeswhen the Divine Spirit breaks through ahuman life. All that was really vital in theJerusalem Pentecost may be repeated in theexperience of every Christian, and our belief isthat no one can be at his best until the Spiritof God floods his life and makes him see thatsalvat,ion is infinitely more than the mereescape from the just penalty of sin.

"He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit,"i.e .. he who apprehends Christ and puts Himon, he whose life is hid with Christ, finds thathis human spirit is taken up into the DivineSpirit and the Spirit-life becomes natural andhabitual, but the Pentecost experience doesnot mean that Christ has gone and that wehave gained something better. Christ is nevergone out of the Christian's life. The very wayto gain the full life of the Spirit is to be joinedto the Lord; there is no other way to it. Thosewho profess to get beyond the morality andthe teaching and the drawing of Christ into astate above law and order are sailing withoutchart or compass and are steering straight for

the rocks.We do not say that the minister needs a dif-

ferent kind of experience than the humblestmember of the body. No attainable degree of

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life or of baptism is too good for the Christianwith the one talent or the half of a talent, ifthey are ever divided. The ministers, theteachers, the evangelists, need a "gift" whichperhaps the ordinary member does not have.We call a man a 111 inister because we recognizehis gift, but the man who picks stones in thefield, who builds the house, who sits at thereceipt of custom in the bank, needs to be filledwith the fullness of God, as well as the ministerdoes, to enable him to lead the overcoming life,which is after all the only true life. There is astriking difference between the diamond, thesapphire and the opal, but it is the same lightwhich makes all three beautiful. We are alldifferent in our make-up and character, but thething which makes any Christian, in any walkof life, a man of power is his union withChrist, and his life in the Spirit. Whether wecan tell of the rushing, mighty wind or not,we all ought to be able to show that the Spirithas come and has made Pentecost a presentreality for us.

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and turmoil, the grind of labor, and the searchfor enjoyment, the clink of wine glasses andthe indulgence in dangerous pleasures-withno break or interruption-would leave mana distorted wreck. Upon every life under theblue sky the peace and quiet of the Lord'sDay should fall and let the reality of higherthings impress itself. Spiritual life demandsone day at least in seven, and rio people canremain long spiritual if the world gets every

day.This holy day is necessary for preserving

the sweet influences of the home circle; thehard pressed laborer must have it unless he isto be made a blind machine with no higher,sweeter life. Around this Lord's Day a circleof separation should be drawn. We must notlet it become like other days. It should be toour souls what the spring showers are to theflowers, and we should make it a Lord's Dayto all who are weary and heavy-laden. It isto save life, not to destroy. It is to lift heartsinto an ampler and diviner life. It is to makeearth a holier place, and though we cast nostone at him who picks up sticks on this day,as in the old dispensation, yet it is our sacredduty to make it' a day of holy uses for thehigher life.

132PRACTICAL cERISTIANIi'v

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CHAPTER XXXVII

THE GOSPEL OF THE SON OF GOD

SOLDIERS are always talking about theenormous "waste" of powder which is a

feature of every battle whether on land or sea.For every bullet that takes effect hundreds areshot into the air or into the ground. If thiswere not so an attacking army would beannihilated before it reached the position it isattempting to carry. The wildness of the aimis therefore one of the merciful features of abattle.

Strangely enough this wildness of aim, thissame waste of ammunition, characterizes allour great spiritual contests as well. In thehot and prolonged fight with the forces of sinnothing is more discouraging than this samefalse aim and waste of energy. Read the historyof our nineteen centuries of Christianity and seehow few of the shots have been straight at theenemy's head. Look at the militant churchto-day and see what a tremendous waste offorce there is. Christians seem bound to fighteverything but the rea] ep.emy, and when they

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find a man who does open fire on the centralfortress, the others are quite likely to open fireon him, because he isn't shooting nine-tenths

of his weapons into the air.Jesus Christ alway's refused the random

aims and went straight to the mark. The air­shooters of His day were al ways trying toturn Him off the main line to an attack onphantom enemies, but He never swerved aniota. They came with their metaphysicalquestion, whether hereditary sin made a poorman blind, or whether it was his own sin.Christ brushed away the whole logical quibbleand showed them that the main thing was thepresent opportunity to work the work of Godon the man who needed help. They neverceased to buzz about Him with hard problemsabout the Meesiauic kingdom. He refused towaste force on idle discussion with those whowere too blind in their own conceits to appre­ciate any new truth, and He simply announcedthat "the pure in heart see God," and thepoor in spirit are in the kingdom. Trickyquestions about the resurrection and tributemoney were simply occasions for Him to unfoldthe great truth that God is the God of theliving, whether in the visible or invisibleworld, and that we can safely trust Him, and

that neither is to be slighted.

THE GOSPEL OF THE SON OF GOD

'34PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY

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It is easy for us to get over our depth onevery subject connected with spiritual thingsif we only allow ourselves to tumble into theslough of speculation. But what is gained byit? Religion wants to keep out of all thesequicksands and deal with facts that can betested.

The Gospel of the Son of God is the mes­sage for to-day as it was when the "blessedfeet" trod the hills of Judea. Tell men as Hedid of the Father's love. Declare everywhereHis power and His readiness to forgive sin.Show as He did that the pure heart has animmediate evidence, an unmistakable proofof God. Herald the kingdom of God as afact, and make men see its reality. Preachthe Gospel of Redemption-Christ giving Hislife for sinners and in infinite love showinghow the Divine Heart yearns for every soul.Make men understand that Christianity is nota web of metaphysical and abstract theories,but God revealing Himself in a Son and sogiving Life to the world. Oh, friends, theGospel of the Son is too precious a truth to bewasted in sham battles. Let us present itstraight to men's hearts.

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CHAPTER XLIII

DOES GOD REALLY LOVE us?

THE main message of the Gospel is theLove of God to men. The proclamation

of this Love has always characterized genuineChristianity in every age and in every country.Nobody who rests his faith on the New Testa­ment revelation can doubt the fact of God'sLove. But there corne times in the personalexperience of many when this early faith inGod's Love and Goodness is severely tried,when they find themselves clinging in thedark to a single spar, while the billows ofdoubt break over them. Such times perhapsnever corne in prosperity. It seems very easyto believe in God's Love when He is giving usjust what we want, when all our prayers areanswered as soon as we ask.

But when the heavens are as brass and theearth bars of iron, when some hard trial settlesover us and we pray and plead for relief andnone comes, when the plowshare resistly tearsdown to our primitive rock and our cries andgroans prove ineffectual, then it is that the

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DOES GOD REALLY LOVE US? I53

sensitive heart finds it hard to go on with thehappy faith in God's Love, "If He loves me,why does He not help me? If He cares forme why does He not ease me of this too heavyburden? " Such words sometimes almost forcethemselves to the lips, when" He answers nota word." Those who have had no taste ofthis hard experience can hardly understandthe feeling, and they very naturally take theposition which Job's "comforters" did, butmany a heart knows what it means to stretchlame hands of faith.

Is there any way to help such perplexed soulswho are struggling to keep their faith in thefurnace of trial, when no rift seems to open inthe brazen sky? The first step must be toshow that God's Love is not to be measuredby the amount of temporal prosperity andcomfort which He bestows, nor would it be anevidence of His Goodness if He always gavejust what we want. Such treatment wouldmake" spoiled children," not saints I We muststrive, too, to help our perplexed friends seethe supreme importance of the spiritual overthe temporal. While in our short-sightednesswe clutch after things which would give ustemporary joy and comfort, God is training usto look only at the things which are unseenand eternal. His method of training often

'54 PRACTICAL CHRISTIA-YITY

seems like a hard one, but no other methodwould succeed in weaning us from the thingsof sense and in preparing us for the enjoymentof spiritual things. Finally we must help ourperplexed friends to interpret their lives in thelight of Christ's life. His life is the supremerevelation of God's Love and yet His Fathernever once relieved Him of a hard cup or of abaptism of trial. "If it is possible let this.cup pass" is immediately followed by thewords, "Thy will be done." The cry, "MyGod, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"gives place at once to the calm and trustfulwords, "Father, into thy hands I commendmy spirit." The whole mystery seems solvedin that remarkable sentence, "It became Himin bringing many sons to glory to make theCaptain.of their salvation perfect throughsuffering." If we suppose God has no ultimatepurposes in view for us, then of course thehard dispensations would indicate that He didnot love us or care for us, but as soon as welook beyond the moment and see His purpose,we can join the chorus: "All things work to­gether for good to them that love God! "

CHAPTER XLIV

THE INCARNATION

'I'he time draws near the birth of Christ.'

MEN in all ages have longed for a REVELA-

TION, for it has proved a baffling andhopeless struggle to climb up to God, and tofind out God by human searching. Platospoke for all the ancient searchers after truthwhen he said, " We shall never find the com­plete truth until God or some God-sent personcomes to us." The glory of Christianity is itsmessage that God has come to us. This is thecentral fact which gives Christianity its over­coming power, and it is this fact of the Incar,nation which opens for man the door to life,truth, salvation and spiritual victory.

The moment we make the Incarnation ametaphysical puzzle, the moment we drift outinto a sea of speculation about the Trinity,

.we lose the mighty significance of the fact.The New Testament nowhere treats it as apuzzle or a problem. It simply announces thecrowning fact that God tabernacled with men,and manifested His Grace and Glory, and it

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156 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY THE INCARNATION 157

sets forth the end and purpose of this Divineshowing-that we also may become sons.God comes to us that we may come to Him.The Word was with God; the Word was withman, and man with God completes the circle."I am come, that they might have life," sumsup the whole purpose of the Incarnation.

It can never be reduced to a cold and logicaldoctrine; it must never be pressed as a deadflower and put away in a collection of abstracttheological definitions. Let us keep it warmand vital, the perfect blossom whose fragrancestill comes as fresh and full of healing as whenit broke into flower under the "Syrian blue.""God with us" is the first half of the greatmessage; "we with God" is the second half,and no one fully comprehends the first halfuntil he experiences the second half as a factin his own life. He who comes to live his lifein God no longer wonders and puzzles over theproblem, How could God come to us? Herealizes that perfected humanity and Divinityare not alien terms. The Divine nature canexpress itself in a perfect human life. Goddoes not cease to be omnipresent and omnis­cient, though He at a definite period showsforth His glory and love in a Person whowalks among men and teaches with humanlips, who loves and suffers, who blesses and

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heals, who forever makes love and sacrificeand sympathy, and grace and gentleness thesupreme realities.

In no other way could God speak to us, andmake His revelation comprehensible. If Hewrote His thoughts on the vault of the skywe could not understand or interpret them.We must have some one, to reveal Him fully,who understands Him and us, and who speaksin terms common to both, one who completelycloses the gap, one who brings God to us andus to God. "He became flesh and dweltamong us." "As many as received Him, tothem gave He power to become the sons ofGod." These two sentences complete the cir­cuit. The Incarnation is a twofold revelation,­a revelation of God and a revelation of humannature, a manifestation of what God is, and arevelation of what man is to be when he comesto God. We know well enough of ourselveswhat we are, away from Him; the Incarnationreveals what is the hope of our calling, andwhat the riches of the glory of God's inheri­tance in us J

CHAPTER XLV

A RELIGION OF FOUP. "INCHORS

IN the midst of the racking storm on theAdrian waters, in the darkness of the

night, the captain of Paul's vessel cast outfour anchors, and waited for the day. It maybe only a fanciful symbol, but Paul's words onthe ship indicate that he, too, had put out fouranchors, which steadied him, and gave himhis SPIRITUAL SOLIDITY amid the storms of hislife. "I believe God;" "His I am;" "HimI serve j ': "God hath given me those who sailwith me." 'I'his is what we have called areligion of four anchors, and the person whohas those four cables out can calmly wait forthe day to "break.

All religious life and power of high qualityspring from a faith which believes God. Theold-time strength-the quality in Peter whichmakes Christ call him the rock-man-comesnot from a verbal faith, from a belief in second­hand testimony of any sort, or from "fleshand blood," but from a personal acquaintancewith God, and an experimental certainty of

(I58)

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A RELIGION OF FOUR ANCHORS '59

Him. The persons who are really anchoredare the ones who reach up through all thelower stages of belief and reliance, and restunshaken in a faith which goes behind thevail-" I believe God." That is the first stepin the making of a spiritual "rock-man."

The second anchor is hardly less important,and that is, the sense of possession-" His Iam." Our Quaker poet was expressing thissense when he said:

"I know not where God's islands liftTheir fronded palms in air,I only know I cannot driftBeyond His love and care."

What a life a man might live if he couldwalk the earth possessed of the unfailing con­viction, "I am God's I" It is not simply thathe cares for me, nor even alone 'that He lovesme, but "I belong to Him "-that sense ofrelationship ought to make a Christian asdifferent from ordinary men as a Prince isdifferent from a peasant, for it puts him atonce into the rank of nobility, and makes itincumbent upon him to live as a son, not as ahired servant. This consciousness of thedivine possession is surely the second step inthe making of a spiritual" reck-man."

Then out of our belief of God, and oursense of belonging to Him comes the beautiful

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certainty that He trusts us and gives us Hiswork to do-" whom I serve." Many personsnever get grounded in religious experiencebecause they never attain to this certainty thatGod trusts them and makes them co-workerswith Him. Hardly anything strengthens one'slife, and solidifies one's faith like active ser­vice of some sort. " Backsliders" are gener­ally those who never got to the point of beinggirded for service, and so never realized hownecessary they were to God. It is very signifi­cant that after Christ told Peter that he wasrock-like, he added also, "I will give untothee the keys," for the keys in Oriental coun­tries, were the the badge of a 0 trusted servant.Our fourth cable of spiritual strength is therealization that our personal faith is not con­fined in its effects to the narrow circle of ourown lives, but that it has a wonderful influenceover the destinies of others-Ii God has giventhee those who sail with thee." No man offaith can live unto himself. The mother'sfaith affects the destiny of her child; the saintin the neighborhood "affects" the neighborsas though holiness were contagious. Much ofthe power of singularly spiritual men andwomen comes from their realization that thedestiny of other lives is in some measure uponthem. This sends the missionary and the

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slum-worker to their task; this kindles the zealof the reformer and the prophet, and this is noslight element of strength in the religious lifeof every profoundly spiritual man. I believeGod, I ani God's, God trusts and uses me, andI am responsible for others,-these are fouranchors, and they are four strands of faithwhich make solid spiritual character.

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CHAPTER LI

THE TEST OF CHRISTIANITY

WE have learned that it is never safe toestimate the worth and value of a man

by the number of cubits which measure hisstature. No foot-rule test gives the realcapacity of a man, because personality cannot

be measured by the yard.Nevertheless the similar mistake is continu­

ally made of estimating a man's Christianityby some such inadequate foot-rule test. Itwould be well for us, if we could, to get backto the standards of Christ and the Apostlesand see how they tested religion. The ques­tion never is, What kind of a coat do youwear? or what are your" views" on creationand sin and inspiration? or what do you thinkabout the Sacraments? In fact, Christ neverasked a man a theological question during hiswhole ministry. "Art thou desiring to' bemade whole?" "Dost thou love God with allthy heart and thy neighbor as thyself? "Goand sin no more." "Her sins are forgiven,for she loved much," are some of the wonder-

( 184)

ful words which came from His lips when Hewas dealing with individual cases. When theJews tried to catch Him with metaphysicaland theological questions, such as "what sincaused this man to be blind?" or" whose wifewill this woman be in the resurrection s » Heimmediately brushed away the fruitless abstrac­tions and gave clear, practical answers: "Thisblind man is an occasion for the exhibition ofGod's power "-i. e. for working a work ofGod, and" If you read the Scriptures aright

'you would understand that God is the God ofthe living, and that you must not measure theheavenly life by the limitations of the earthlylife."

John's tests of Christianity are quite differentfrom those which we use to-day. He againmakes no reference to things which we con­sider tests of soundness: "Everyone thatloveth is born of God." " We know that wehave passed from death to life because welove." "We know that we dwell in Him, be­cause we have His Spirit." "Whatsoever isborn of God overcometh the world." " Who­soever is born of God sinneth not." "He thathath the Son of God hath life."

It can be quickly seen that these are nolight and easy tests, and that a man whocould .answer all our articles of belief and

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and tremble. The time has come when men'sminds must be left free to look at every fact inGod's world, and to come to the best conclu­sions they can upon them, and we must esti­mate their Christianity by New. Testamenttests, which are invariably spiritual tests, andmeasure the life and faith by Christ's standards.

186 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY

make a great display of theological orthodoxy,might at the same time fail in every point ofJohn's tests. He that loveth, he that has theSpirit in his heart and life, he that overcomeththe world, he that does not commit sin-what

a sifting!Now there has been and still is great danger

of making so much of theological tests ofsoundness that these deeper, truer and morespiritual tests-which are the only ones ofimportance to Christ and the Apostles-shouldbe overlooked. There are Christians to-daywho decide upon a man's Christianity by hisintellectual opinions and conclusions, ratherthan by the spiritual condition of his heartand his life, though it is an unscriptural posi­tion to take. The end and aim of religion­we cannot say it too often-is to bring men toGod and to make them Christlike, and religionhas never done its perfect work in a man untilit fills his life with. the Holy Spirit and hisheart with love. Right belief upon questionswhich directly affect the spiritual life is tre­mendously important, and faith is the veryhand by which we grasp and appropriate thedivine realities; but we have no more right torule men out of Christ's kingdom on the testof an intellectual shibboleth than we have tocount devils in, simply because they believe

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<l An Epistle.l'-Robert Browning.

"Think, Abib, dost thou think?So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too- .So, through the thunder comes a human voiceSaying, '0 heart I made, a heart beats here!Face, my hands have fashioned, see it in myself!Thou hast no power, nor may'st conceive of mine,But love I gave thee, with myself to loveAnd thou must love me who have died for thee!'" *

stone where bread is asked i and furthermore,such a religion becomes a dangerous hindranceto the advance of truth and a menace to a freeaccess of the individual soul to its living God.On the contrary, religion can never become afixed and unchangeable thing, for religion isthe soul's life in Goel and its response to Him;and therefore it must be as free as life, and itwill have its high tides and its low, its ebbsand its floods, as history shows us has beenthe fact.

Religion always begins with a manifestation,a revelation of God and the soul's answer to it.Heathen religions sprung from a sense of aweawakened in the presence of manifestations ofpower, in thunder and lightning, in mightystorms, in sun-rise, in the rush of a great river,in the sublimity of the dome of the sky. TheChristian religion begins with the revelationof God's love, in an Incarnation, in a Person­ality.

CHAPTER LII

EVERY great religious movement startsout of some single fundament religious

principle, but if it is to have extensive andpermanent effect upon human society, it mustultimately ramify and illumine the wholerealm of thought and the entire range of lifeand activity. The significant periods of his­tory are those ages when men have caught anew and clearer glimpse of God and have settheir lives by new and higher standards.There is a widely accepted theory that the truereligion is forever fixed and unchangeable.It is a rigid system of doctrines, mysteriouslycommunicated, not to be questioned by reason,to be accepted by faith and to be guarded asthe absolute truth, crystalized into a formsuited to every age and every race of men.

A very slight study of history underminesthat theory. The moment a religion becomesonly a system of thought or a crystalized truth,its service to the world is over, it can nolonger feed living souls, for it offers only a

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THE MESSAGE OF Q,UAKERISM

Christianity begins with the appearance ofa Being who is genuinely human so that hecan speak to human conditions and genuinelyDivine so that he can reveal God. Thisrevelation through Personality-the Wordmade flesh-shows the Divine thought i. e.

that man was meant to be in the Divine image,to be a son, and it shows the Divine heartbeating for us in our errors, our struggles, oursins. The whole gospel is summed up in thestory of the Prodigal who comes to himselfand goes to the Father and finds His love stillwarm and His arms still out for the embracethat welcomes to sonship, Christianity, then,was meant to be a free river to grace and lifeflowing from God through human lives andmaking all things new.

It soon crystalized into a church that waspartially paganized by contact .with the oldworld. It shut out all approach to God ex­cept through its narrow channels. It claimedthat God could speak only through the hier­archy of priests, that grace could come onlythrough certain fixed sacraments, that truthcould be found only in one book. God becamea distant being, Christ became a mysticalmessenger from Him to found an infallibleChurch. The Virgin and the saints becamethe real intercessors between human hearts and

the distant God. The glowing truths givento the world at such tremendous cost andsacrifice hardened into cold dogmas which hadto be accepted OIl pain of condemnation forheresy and those who thought were forced toagree with the interpretations of the past or tostop thinking altogether. The world sank in­to decrepitude, a condition still preserved inSpain. Christianity seemed dying a natural'death. Then came an age of awakening, anemancipation. A new world was discovered.Printing was invented and books were madefor rich and poor alike. Copernicus made acomplete revolution of thought by his dis­covery that the sun is the centre of our systemof worlds, and the earth only a planet whichrevol ves about it. This discovery made modernscience possible. Luther inaugurated anotherrevolution in thought in his profound spiritualdiscovery that "justification is by faith." Itseemed a simple truth, but it broke the powerand dominion of the Latin Church and exaltedat once the importance of the individual.Each man stands in an individual relation toGod and he is responsible directly for his souland for his faith. Protestantism is the gospelof individuality. Like the discovery of Coper- "nicus, it finds a new centre. Before, every­thing revolved about the Church and the

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hierarchy. Henceforth, Christ is the centreand each man's orbit is determined by hisrelation to Christ. But it was impossible forthe Reformers to break entirely with the his­toric Church. They were the creatures oftheir age, and their roots had grown deep inthe soil of mediaeval thought. The time hadnot then come, perhaps it has not yet fullycome for the realization of the Christian ideal.But in the middle of the 17th century in Eng­land, an honest effort was made to set forth aconstructive principle which should transformman and society and which, when worked outin practical life should affect the entire race,and it contains, I believe, the seeds of apostolicChristianity transplanted in new soil and afterlong centuries of waiting. .

The central note of Quakerism, as it wasoriginally promulgated, is the truth that man'ssalvation and higher life are personal mattersbetween the individual soul and God, thatthe living Christ brings .the soul into newnessof life in Him, and that there is a clear wit­ness of the fact established in the conscious­ness of the believer and in his changed lifeand nature. It is what the Apostle calls "the

demonstration of the spirit."It is the kind of evidence a man has of light

when he opens his eyes and the sunlight

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streams in. It is the kind of evidence an artisthas of beauty when he stands caught by theglory of a sunset; it is the kind of evidencean experimenter has of the power of electri­city when the current from the dynamo thrillsthrough him to the ends of his fingers and theroots of his hair. It is an evidence not from.external authority but from the immediateperception of the soul. Paul dates his religiouslife from an experience which he compares toa fiat lux of creation. "God," he says, "shinedinto our hearts to give the light of the know­ledge of the glory of God in the face of JesusChrist." In language which means almostprecisely the same thing, George Fox dates hisreligious crisis. "'When all my hope wasgone so that I had nothing outward to helpme, then O! then, I heard a voice which said'There is one, even Jesus Christ, that canspeak to thy condition' and when I heard itmy heart did leap for joy." The whole spirit­ual life springs immediately from God andthat is why there is no danger that religionwill come to an end. So long as God con­tinues to surround our lives and break inupon sensitive hearts, there will be those whofind in Christ an incarnation of God who isnear us all and who only waits for a windowto open when his light breaks in and makes

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life seem clear and real. As Sabatier has said,men are "incurably religious," and sincereand earnest souls will continue to find Godand know Him when He reveals Himself toto them in the face of Jesus Christ. We livein an age when the worth and meaning ofeverything are tested. We do not care howold a theory is, or how sacred it was in themiddle ages; we ask at once, is it true? Doesit meet our need, does it speak to our condi­tion? Now the message of Quakerism carriesmen beyond the props and scaffoldings andstands them face to face with a living God.It declares that men were meant for God andthat a man can never be his true self until Godpossesses him. That his darkness is made,like that of the earth, because he lives in hisown shadow. Wheel about and the light frontsyou, and has been shining all the time. Youmade your own darkness. Now, no amount ofceremony or of subscription to theological dog­mas will save a man who still keeps his faceaway from God, and still lives in the darkwhile he is holding in his lean hands the ragsof his external profession. Life, religion, son­ship begin with the creation of a new manwithin a man, and there is no substitute for this.The Christian religion is not a theory, not aplan, not a scheme, but a dynamic force, i.e. the

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power of God unto salvation, and every soulwho comes to himself and goes to the Fatherhas a more immediate consciousness of God asa reality than the most philosophical man hasof the reality of the earth on which his feetstand, for the earth must always be a foreignobject of inference, while the Quaker messagetells of a Christ who becomes a part of ourvery life and" is closer to us than breathing,nearer than hands and feet." There, then, theQuaker message comes with sure help to ouragnostic age, to men who have seen the oldland marks vanish one by one. It begins bysaying, put Christianity to a practical test.Try it as you try the great laws of science.How do you know that the law of gravitationis true? You feel it tug upon you. You seeevery particle of matter in the visible universeobey it. It swings satellites and planets beforeyour eyes. It draws the whole ocean anddashes it up the beach twice each day. Youcannot doubt it. How do you know there isany spiritual power, any Divine truth, anyGod of love, any Christ who can redeem fromsin? There is only one sure test. Try it.Throw yourself on God as you plant your footon the rock. Act as though God walked byyour side every minute. 'I'urn your face toChrist, follow Him, obey every gleam of light

PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY'94

gG PRACTICAL CHRISTiANITY

lOU get. Set yourself stubbornly against every:hadow of a sin that crosses your track and re­iolve that if there is a God in the universe,zou will find Him, know Him, \ove Him.I'he result is-the testimony is universal-theioul that does that always finds God, alwaysloes get led into the truth, always does become-enewed and transformed. Quakerism buildslpon this demonstration of the Spirit, and in:0 doing, it is in harmony with all the greateadem of modern philosophy, notably, Des­

Jartes, Kant, Fichte and Hegel, all of whommild their systems on the immediate testimonyif self_consciousness. No discovery of science,10 conclusion of criticism, no possible ad­ranees of thought, no separations by time fromDivine transactions on which the historicJhurch is builded, can for a moment ondan­ser this immediate and dynamic faith. Inolace of external sacraments, which at best.ould never be more than outward symbolsrf some reality, and which could only haveaad a use in the transition period when the::;hurch was hampered by its Jewish swaddling,lothes, the Quaker message substitutes an effi­rient baptism, a direct incoming of Divine forcesfor the transformation and control of the wholeman, and a feeding of the soul with spiritual

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bread which shows its effect in deepened lifeand an ever increased spirituality.

This means, then, that the Quaker messageis a call for a perfected man and a perfectedsociety. It builds on the belief that man was'not meant to live in sin. That salvation doesnot mean a scheme for escaping the penaltydue for our sins j but it is a power by which weare enabled to destroy sin itself, subdue it, putit down, triumph over it in the strength of a'new life which comes from participation in theLife-the Vine of which we should be organicbranches. Its goal is to put man in the con­dition Adam was in before he fell, or ratherinto a higher condition still, for the man whohas faced the moral struggle, who has tastedthe tree of knowledge of good and evil, andhas through Divine grace won his way up­ward to the shining height where he is a kingand priest-crowned and mitered-is almostinconceivably higher than a being that hasnot yet felt the tug of temptation.

Quakerism does not limit the promulgationo'fthis truth to any single channel. It drawsno hard and fast line between clergy and laity.Every person, whether male or female, whoreceives the demonstration of the Spirit andfinds himself joined the Lord, as a member, is apropagator of this holy order, this spiritual

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ociety, this City of God, this Kingdom ofleaven, this priesthood of saints.It is not dependent for its faith on anything

vhich investigation or criticism can touch orveaken. We stake our whole case on the facthat our lives are circled by the Divine Life,.hat the Christ who was in the flesh at a definite)eriod of history is a living Christ and formsHimself within all souls who turn to Him,.hat religion begins with an immediate con­;ciousness of our need of Him and a voluntary,hoosing that He shall be our Redeemer andControler. It mounts higher and higher asour creative faith lays hold of Him as a pres­ent reality and works its effects in transfor­mation, in victory over sin, in manifest power,in fruits of character and the production ofChristlikeness. Out of this consciousness ofChrist, already found and His will revealed tous, we have an absolute ground to build on.

Every line of Revelation, every lesson ofhistory, helps us see God's purpose. In theNew Testament we have revealed the life andmission of the Christ who still works as of old.We see there the Divine Heart, His sorrowfor sin, His method of redemption, His ideaof society, His estimate of the' worth of man.This whole story unfolds with overwhelmingpower upon those who know its truth in the

experience of their own lives, for it comes asthe word of the Father whom the child knowsalready. Everything about this religion isvital. Its test is life i it begins in a birth i itproves itself true by its increasing life and itis as sure of eternity as God is, for it is whatit is through living union in Him.

This is a religion which not only makes ussure of heaven ultimately, but free in thetruth now, conscious of His forgiveness andimmediate presence now, able to withstandtemptation now, victorious over sin now, pos­sessed of peace and secure from fears now,triumphant in the power of the living spiritand in present possession of an earnest ofeternal life.

We are not called to the other wordly butthis wordly. Here is our sphere, here is ourarena. We are not to stand gazing up intoheaven. We are rather to build in our layerin the walls of a new Jerusalem here on theearth. Our knighthood is not to be spent, orour spurs won in searching for some mysticalHoly Grail, some sacred cup which would healdisease, and transform society and usher in thenew and perfect order, if we could only findit. Weare rather called to manifest the.power of God in a practical Christian life.Let disease and misery find from our own

)8PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY

THE MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 199

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hands a healing and comforting touch. Letthe sore-tempted and erring learn from ourlife how sin can be conquered and victorygained. May our faith burn and glow so thatsome hard beset and doubting one may kindlehis faith from ours. Let our fight with sinand evil and corruption be so genuine andstrenuous that we shall use only the weaponsof righteousness and truth. Let us never for­get that we are serving God and truly engagedin religious service when we are working andstruggling to uplift and enlighten mankind,and to create a better and a truer citizenshipand a cleaner political life.

Religion is not a one-seated chariot, withhorses of fire to carry us safely to heavenabove and apart from the din and the stress ofthis imperfect world. The palm and the robeare won by the saints who fight the good fightand lift at the real burdens of the world.

It is a part of our business to demonstratethat modern thought, and scholarly researchdo not undermine religion and that Chris­tianity is not outdated and superseded. Wemust stand for and illustrate a type of Chris­tianity which affects and vitalizes the wholeman, which animates and vivifies every strataof society and which expands to meet thegrowing need of the world.

" Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,And the round ocean, and the living air,And the blue sky and in the mind of man-

Instead of closing our eyes let us see all thefacts and go where the truth leads us. Solong as God reigns and our Alpha and Omegais alive forever more we are not going to suffershipwreck simply because we are discoveringthat some of the notions which the medisevalchurch taught us must be revised in the lightof further thought. It used to be believedthat the earth rested on an elephant and theelephant on the back of a tortoise, Alas, wehave had to give up this childish theory, andnow we find that nothing holds us, except aninvisible and intangible power of gravitation,whatever that may be! But who would preferan elephant and tortoise and who feels afraidthat this unseen cord will break or that some­thing will unbind the sweet influence of thepleiades or loose the bands of orion?

Little by little we have been pushed backfrom one material outpost to another until atlast we find that our faith must ultimately restupon an invisible and intangible God, animpalpable Spirit of Life and Love, who neverwrites on the sky with His finger, who nevershows His face to telescope or microscope, whonever lets us catch Him at work ..

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202 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY

A motion and a spirit that impelsAll thinking things, all objects of all thought,And rolls through all things."

But who that has seen the light of theknowledge of the glory of God in the face ofJesus Christ, who that has felt his own heartdrawn by that manifestation of Love, whothat has had his own life transformed andmade victorious by that spiritual power wantsthe material sign, or feels afraid for his religionbecause he has only God left? No, the founda­tion stands sure, having this seal, the Lordknoweth them that are his. Let us

"Oorrect the portrait by the living face,Man's God by God's God in the mind of man."

CHAPTER LUI.

1'HE EFFECT OF DISCOURAGEMENT

FEW of us realize how much our view ofthings is affected by our sense of success

or of defeat. People who are .continuallyprosperous, and who have no knowledge of thedead strain of pushing on in the face of in­superable obstacles, naturally have differentviews of life from those who tug day after dayat a great burden which their human haudscannot roll off, and who see failure and defeatfollow their best efforts. The successful manfinds it hard to sympathize with those whoare steadily unsuccessful, for he cannot puthimself in their place, he cannot possibly feelas they feel, and consequently he does notunderstand how they can hold such views.

Consciously or unconsciously, our ideas ofGod and of heaven, and all our religious con­ceptions, grow colored as we look out throughsuccesses or through defeats. The theology ofthe Puritan was in harmony with the gloom andstruggle which filled such a place in his life.He found himself in a world where the good

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His nature, or that we are afraid to trust Him.The real trouble often is that we pray withoutthinking of what our words imply-we are notputting our real meaning into our words. Suchpraying will not help us grow spiritually, formere lip praying may easily become an emptyform. The lesson we all need most to learn ishow to make our prayers always voice the sin­cere purpose of our hearts.

OHAPTER LXIII.

THE PRAOTICE OF THE LOVE OF GOD.

THERE is one thing which even the simplessChristian of us may learn from the scien­

tist. He will never be satisfied with any theoryor hypothesis until he has tried it. He goesstraight to work to see if it can stand the strainand test of facts. Every page in the history ofscience is strewn with rejected theories anddead hypotheses. The laws and principleswhich are taught to-day are held because theyhave survived the hardest test of actual factswhich so far are known. Everything in theworld gains in value as it proves able to standtests. This is especially true of the great thingsby which we live. There is a whole worldof difference between second-hand accounts ofsomebody else's experience and first-hand expe­rience itself. We begin, of course, with truthswhich others have tested and which we accept onauthority, but we never quite possess our truthuntil we have worked it out in practice and putit to the strain of living by it. Little by littlewe pass over from mere views and opinions

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THE PRACTICE OP THE LOVE OF GOD 239

which have been given to us to the deeper, sol­ider faith which is the fruit and product of theactual practice of our principles and doctrines.Christianity first begins to be something mightywhen a person is found who goes beyond viewsand theories and really practises in his life thegreat truths which lie at its heart.

Every Christian creed which has held itsplace in the world has announced in one way oranother the Fatherhood and Love of Goel as acentral fact. For ages men have (laid, "I be­lieve in God the Father," but too often theyhave gone on living as though this belief madeno difference to them. It never seemed to occurto them that they had to practise it-i. e., thatthey ought to live as though they knew God as aFather. We all find it easy to say over John'sgreat words, "God is Love," but we are veryslow in practising this truth until it has all thereality of the things which we touch and see.Think what it means! Let us start out to trans­late all our creed, all oUT doctrines into actualpractice. "lVe will-Jive to-day, this week, thismonth, this year' 8.S though we knew that ourlife solidly rested on the love of God. I t is tobe as sure a fact for us as space or gravitation_W11erever we move we are enveloped in it.Well, the effect would be, first of all, to wipeout completely our anxiety and our worry. We

worry because we lack confidence in the future)but the man who lives in the love of God knowsthat He who clothes the lily and guides the birdis shaping his life toward good ends even when.he cannot see the way, and so he trusts and ishappy. He stops being burdened with him­self because this very practice ,of the love of·God makes him care more for others than forhimself, and he forgets his own troubles in hisjoy to help ease somebody else's trouble. Fur­thermore, if we actually realized what the loveof God means and lived as though we knew itsmeaning, we should stop sinning. We sin be­cause we want something for our own selves.Vie are blind to what our sin will make Gaelsuffer. We forget that the mightiest thing inthe universe is the love of God, and we blur thecost of His sacrifice for us in our desire to getsome petty thing for ourselves. The momentwe feel the tug of His love upon us and go toliving with a sense of the fact that every sin inthe world crucifies Him afresh and spoils His

. purpose for us and in us sin becomes a hideousthing, and His infinite love constrains us to livenot unto ourselves, but unto Him.

Then, too, he who truly practises the love ofGod can face the mysteries which look so darkfrom the outside. "I am not afraid," said thelittle fellow at sea in the storm, "because my

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father is the captain." That is the secret of alltriumph in this world of trial and loss-"Iknow my Father is pilot on this sea of life, eventhough the mists are thick." There can be noshipwreck for the soul that practises that faith.To live in the love of God is to win eternallyeverything which is lost in time and space. Hewho loves us to the death cannot bring into Ourlives anything which defeats or breaks our hu­man loves. That is impossible. His whole pur­pose is to perfect and heighten our love, neverto crush or weaken it. As we live in the con­fidence of His love and practise it we shall riseabove the faith which is only belief and opinionto the faith which is the very substance of thethings we hope for, the test of things not seen.

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ORAPTER LXIV.

HAS CHRISTIANITY BEEN TRIED ~

TH~ re:nark is s~metimes made that Ohri~-tianity has failed, On the contrary, It

has not yet been fairly tried. Wberever it hasreally been tried it has proved to be a trans­forming force of the highest order. "Give mefive hundred men," cried Phillips Brooks; "nay,give me one hundred men of the spirit that Iknow to-day in three men, and I will answer forit that the city shall be saved." Yes, so wouldwe all answer for it, if we could get the hundredmen. But Christianity means, or ought tomean, new men of this sort, the Spirit of Christreproduced in men's lives. That is just whatapostolic Christianity was, and does anybodythink that was a failure ~ Wby is it, then, thatwe look in vain for our hundred men who shallsave the city ~ Because so few of us realize atall that we are expected to re-live and reproduceOhrist's life in the world. Paul knew it, andJohn knew it, and they did it; and whereverthey went there were dynamic results.

But little by little Christianity became some-16 (24')

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242 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY HAS CHRISTIANITY BEEN TRIED? 243

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thing else,something quite different. The relig­ion of personal spiritual life, lived in the powerof the resurrected Christ, was changed into anInstitution, with elaborate machinery for dis­pensing everything essential to man's salvation.Oonformity to the Institution took the place ofobedience to the living Lord. The simple, liv­ing faith in a personal Christ was changed intoa system of thought, a body of intellectualviews, to be "held" as a creed. Priestly medi­ation took the place of the free intercourse ofthe soul with the loving, forgiving Father whomChrist had revealed at such infinite cost. Thisseemed a much easier religion than the originalapostolic type because it was not difficult tostand fairly well and yet be only a "nominal".Ohristian, i. e., a Christian in name. The badhabit grew, and alas, came right over into Prot­estantism. For 10, these hundreds of yearsChristians have been trying to settle a lot ofquestions which have no more bearing on real,essential ChTistianity than the question whetherMars is inhabited has. These questions havesteadily kept Christianity running off on sidetracks, and, worst of all, have continually pro­duced dissension and bad blood. '

JI'l:eantime, the world is losing all interest inthese quarrels and dissensions. They 'help no­body, they comfort nobody, they save nobody.

"The hungry sheep ,look up and are not fed."That sort of thing has failed. It does no goodwork in the world. Its knell is struck. Butthat does not mean that Christianity has failed.vVe are learning that the real question is, ','AmI manifesting Ohrist" ~ vVe are coming backto the early basis of Ohristianity, which wasfaith in Christ, and obedience to Rim. 'As soonas a man appears who has the Spirit of Christ,and whose life reflects the divine goodness andlove, he does what the apostolic men did-hemoves and influences and transforms men.Those who live in the power of God shake theworld as of old. The thing most needed now isjust a genuine trial of real Christianity, whichmeans HUMLl"f LIVES TRaNSFORMED BY OHRISTAND FILl.ED WITH GOD. Our cities, our ruraldistricts, aye, our nation itself can still be savedif we could get a living nucleus of such lives.Thou, dear Friend, who readest this, may beone of the hundred in thy community.

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