of Christ. History has vindicated it. We believe it with all our hearts–that He always did the things that pleased God. But I have got on to a level that I can touch now. The great ideal has come from the air to the earth. The fair vision has become concrete in a Man. Now, I want to see that Man; and if I see that Man I shall see in Him a revelation of what God’s purpose is for men, and I shall see, therefore, a revelation of what the highest possibility of life is. Now this is a tempting theme. It is a temptation to begin to contrast Him with popular ideals of life. I want to see Him; I want, if I can, to catch the notes of the music that make up the perfect harmony which was the dropping of a song out of God’s heaven upon man’s earth, that man might catch the key-note of it and make music in his own life. What are the things in this Man’s life? He says: “I have realized the ideal–I do.” There are four things that I want to say about Him, four notes in the music of His life.
First, spirituality. That is one of the words that needs redeeming from abuse. He was the embodiment of the spiritual ideal in life. He was spiritual in the high, true, full, broad, blest sense of that word.
It may be well for a moment to note what spirituality did not mean in the life of Jesus Christ. It did not mean asceticism. During all the years of His ministry, during all the years of His teaching, you never find a single instance in which Jesus Christ made a whip of cords to scourge Himself. And all that business of scourging oneself–an attempt to elevate the spirit by the ruin of the actual flesh–is absolutely opposed to His view of life. Jesus Christ did not deny Himself. The fact of His life was this–that He touched everything familiarly. He went into all the relationship of life. He went to the widow. He took up the children and held them in His arms, and looked into their eyes till heaven was poured in as He looked. He didn’t go and get behind walls somewhere. He didn’t get away and say: “Now, if I am going to get pure I shall do it by shutting men out.” You remember what the Pharisees said of Him once. They said: “This man receiveth sinners.” You know how they said it. They meant to say: “We did hope that we should make something out of this new man, but we are quite disappointed. He receives sinners.”
And what did they mean? They meant what you have so often said: “You can’t touch pitch without being defiled.” But this Man sat down with the publican and He didn’t take on any defilement from the publican. On the other hand, He gave the publican His purity in the life of Jesus Christ. Things worked the other way. He was the great negative of God to the very law of evil that you have–evil contaminates good. If you will put on a plate one apple that is getting bad among twelve others that are pure, the bad one will influence the others. Christ came to drive back every force of disease and every force of evil by this strong purity of His own person, and He said: “I will go among the bad and make them good.” That is what He was doing the whole way through. So His spirituality was not asceticism. And if you are going to be so spiritual that you see no beauty in the flowers and hear no music in the song of the birds; if the life which you pass into when you consent to the crucifixion of self does not open to you the very gates of God, and make the singing of the birds and the blossoming of the flowers infinitely more beautiful, you have never seen Jesus yet.
What was His spirituality? The spirituality of Jesus Christ was a concrete realization of a great truth which He laid down in His own beatitudes. What was that? “Blest are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Now, the trouble is we have been lifting all the good things of God and putting them in heaven. And I don’t wonder that you sing:
My willing soul would stay
In such a frame as this,
And sit and sing itself away
To everlasting bliss.
No wonder you want to sing yourself away to everlasting bliss, because everything that is worth having you have put up there. But Jesus said: “Blest are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” If you are pure you will see Him everywhere–in the flower that blooms, in the march of history, in the sorrows of men, above the darkness of the darkest cloud; and you will know that God is in the field when He is most invisible.
Second, subjection. The next note in the music of His life is His absolute subjection to God. You can very often tell the great philosophies which are governing human lives by the little catchwords that slip off men’s tongues: “Well, I thank God I am my own master.” That is your trouble, man. It is because you are your own master that you are in danger of hell. A man says: “Can’t I do as I like with my own?” You have got no “own” to do what you like with. It is because men have forgotten the covenant of God, the kingship of God, that we have all the wreckage and ruin that blights this poor earth of ours. Here is the Man who never forgot it.
Did you notice those wonderful words: “I do nothing of myself, but as my Father taught me, I speak.” He neither did nor spoke anything of Himself. It was a wonderful life. He stood forevermore between the next moment and heaven. And the Father’s voice said, “Do this,” and He said “Amen, I came to do thy will,” and did it. And the Father’s voice said, “Speak these words to men,” and He, “Amen,” and He spoke.
You say: “That is just what I do not want to do.” I know that. We want to be independent; have our own way. “The things that please God–this Man was subject to the divine will.” You know the two words–if you can learn to say them, not like a parrot, not glibly, but out of your heart–the two words that will help you “Halleluiah” and “Amen.” You can say them in Welsh or any language you like; they are always the same. When the next dispensation of God’s dealings faces you look at it and say: “Halleluiah! Praise God! Amen!” That means, “I agree.”
Third, sympathy. Now, you have this Man turned toward other men. We have seen something of Him as He faced God: Spirituality, a sense of God; subjection, a perpetual amen to the divine volition. Now, He faces the crowd. Sympathy! Why? Because He is right with God, He is right with men; because He feels God near, and knows Him, and responds to the divine will; therefore, when He faces men He is right toward men. The settlement of every social problem you have in this country and in my own land, the settlement of the whole business, will be found in the return of man to God. When man gets back to God he gets back to men. What is behind it? Sympathy is the power of putting my spirit outside my personality, into the circumstances of another man, and feeling as that man feels.
I take one picture as an illustration of this. I see the Master approaching the city of Nain, and around Him His disciples. He is coming up. And I see outside the city of Nain, coming toward the gate a man carried by others, dead, and walking by that bier a mother. Now, all I want you to look at is that woman’s face, and, looking into her face, see all the anguish of those circumstances. She is a widow, and that is her boy, her only boy, and he is dead. Man can not talk about this. You have got to be in the house to know what that means. But look at her face–there it is. All the sorrow is on her face. You can see it.
Now, turn from her quickly and look into the face of Christ. Why, I look into His face–there is her face. He is feeling all she is feeling; He is down in her sorrow with her; He has got underneath the burden, and He is feeling all the agony that that woman feels because her boy is dead. He is moved with compassion whenever human sorrow crosses His vision and human need approaches Him. And now I see Him moving toward the bier. I see Him as He touches it. And He takes the boy back and gives him to his mother. Do you see in yon mountain a cloud, so somber and sad, and suddenly the sun comes from behind the cloud, and all the mountain-side laughs with gladness? That is that woman’s face. The agony is gone. The tear that remains there is gilded with a smile, and joy is on her face. Look at Him. There it is. He is in her joy now. He is having as good a time as the woman. He has carried her grief and her sorrow. He has given her joy. And it is His joy that He has given to her. He is with her in her joy.
Wonderful sympathy! He went about gathering human sorrow into His own heart, scattering His joy, and having fellowship in agony and in deliverance, in tears and in their wiping away. Great, sympathetic soul! Why? Because He always lived with God, and, living with God, the divine love moved Him with compassion. Ah, believe me, our sorrows are more felt in heaven than on earth. And we had that glimpse of that eternal love in this Man, who did the things that pleased God, and manifested such wondrous sympathy.
Fourth, strength. The last note is that of strength. You talk about the weakness of Jesus, the frailty of Jesus. I tell you, there never was any one so strong as He. And if you will take the pains of reading His life with that in mind you will find it was one tremendous march of triumph against all opposing forces. About His dying–how did He die? “At last, at last,” says the man in his study that does not know anything about Jesus; “At last His enemies became too much for Him, and they killed Him.” Nothing of the sort. That is a very superficial reading. What is the truth? Hear it from His own lips: “No man taketh my life from me. I lay it down of myself. And if I lay it down I have authority to take it again.” What do you think of that? How does that touch you as a revelation of magnificence in strength? And then, look at Him, when He comes back from the tomb, having fulfilled that which was either an empty boast or a great fact–thank God, we believe it was a great fact! Now He stands upon the mountain, with this handful of men around Him, His disciples, and He is going away from them. “All authority,” He says, “is given unto me. I am king not merely by an office conferred, but by a triumph won. I am king, for I have faced the enemies of the race–sin and sorrow and ignorance and death–and my foot is upon the neck of every one. All authority is given to me.”
Oh, the strength of this Man! Where did He get it? “My Father hath not left me alone. I have lived with God. I have walked with God. I always knew him near. I always responded to his will. And my heart went out in sympathy to others, and I mastered the enemies of those with whom I sympathized. And I come to the end and I say, All authority is given to me.” Oh, my brother, that is the pattern for you and for me! Ah, that is life! That is the ideal! Oh, how can I fulfil it? I am not going to talk about that. Let me only give you this sentence to finish with, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” If Christ be in me by the power of the Spirit, He will keep me conscious of God’s nearness to me. If Christ be in me by the consciousness of the spirit reigning and governing, He will take my will from day to day, blend it with His, and take away all that makes it hard to say, “God’s will be done.”
CADMAN
A NEW DAY FOR MISSIONS
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
S. Parkes Cadman is one of the many immigrant clergymen who have attained to fame in American pulpits. He was born in Shropshire, England, December 18, 1864, and graduated from Richmond College, London University, in 1889. Coming to this country about 1895 he was appointed pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Metropolitan Tabernacle, New York. From this post he was called to Central Congregational Church, Brooklyn, with but one exception the largest Congregational Church in the United States. He has received the degree of D.D. from Wesleyan University and the University of Syracuse. The sermon here given, somewhat abridged, was delivered before the National Council of Congregational Churches, in Cleveland, Ohio, and is from Dr. Cadman’s manuscript.
CADMAN
Born in 1864
A NEW DAY FOR MISSIONS
_God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world_.–Gal. vi., 14.
The pivotal conception of missionary enterprise is the conception of Christ as the eternal priest of humanity. If any need of the world’s heart is before us now, it is the need of the Cross. There is a deep and anxious desire in men for the saving forces of sacrificial Christianity. The ideals of the New Testament concerning Gethsemane and Calvary are being thrust upon our attention by the upward strugglings of the people. They, at any rate, have not forgotten the forsaken Man in the night of awful silence in the garden, nor His exceeding bitter agony, nor the perfect ending that made His death His victory. The wastes of eccentricity, whether orthodox or heterodox, and the over curious speculations of theologies remote from the habitations of men, have had little influence upon the multitudes we seek to serve. And if I had to choose a sphere where one could rediscover the central forces of Christian life and of Christian practise, I would lean toward the enlightened democracies which to-day are vibrant with the plea that the shepherdless multitudes shall have social ameliorations and new incentives and selfless leaders.
We are all very jealous for the honor and success of the propagandism we sustain at home and abroad, and I hold that its honor and success alike depend upon the priesthood and redemptive efficacies of Jesus. These sovereign forces are correlated with His victories for the twenty past centuries, and they constitute the distinctive genius of the faith.
We shall gain nothing for the rule or for the ethics of Jesus by derogating that peculiar office of the divine Victim which is, to me, at any rate, the most sublime reason for the Incarnation and the ineffable height and depth and mystery of all love and all strength blessedly operative in every ruined condition by means of sacrifice. The missionary fields confessedly can not be conquered by the unaided teacher; he must have more than a system of truth, more than a program, more than a reasoned discourse. Their vast inert mass demands vitalization; and the life which is given for the life of men, the divinest gift of all, is alone sufficient for this regeneration.
Moreover, can we rest the absolutism and finality of Jesus upon anything less than the last complete outpouring of His soul unto voluntary death for men’s salvation? I do not think we can, and it is a requisite that we place larger emphasis upon this holy mystery of our life through Christ’s death, the substantial soul and secret of all missionary progress in all ages of the Church.
Before we can see the miracle of nations entering the kingdom of God, before we can dismiss the black death of apathy which rests on so many professedly Christian communities, before we can dominate the social structure in righteousness and justice, the Church must be raised nearer to the standards of New Testament efficiency. And New Testament efficiency rested upon the perfect divinity and all-persuasive mediatorship of “Christ and him crucified.” The personality of Christ involves for many of us the entire relation of God to His universe; He is “the central figure in all history,” and Pie is “the central figure of our personal experience,” creative in us, by His inaugural experience, of all we are in Him and for our fellows. Thus we make great claims for the Lord of the harvest, and we make them soberly, and we know them true for our spiritual consciousness, and we are prepared to defend them.
Yet I, for one, do not hesitate to admit that the theological necessities of missionary work are many, and that they must be recognized and met before it can fully accomplish its infinite design. Indeed, the rule of Jesus in all these aspects of His mission clarifies and simplifies the gospel. It is plain that such a gospel, wherein the living personality of the Christ deals with the living man to whom we minister, is not to be beset by complications and abstractions. Its spiritual topography embraces the height of good, the depth of love, the breadth of sympathy, and the width of catholicity. It was meant for the race and for the far-reaching reciprocities and inexpressible necessities of the race. It is attuned to the cry of the common heart. Its interpretations have the sanctions of an authoritative human experience which has never failed in its witness. Sometimes I have challenged these honored servants of the evangel who have come back to us from quarters where they were busy on the errands of the cross. Almost pathetically, with the painful interest of one inquiring for a long absent friend of whom no news has been received, I have solicited the missionaries. They came from the south of our own dear land, where they administered to the negro; from the arctic zone, from the farther East. Their wider vision, their more imperial instinct, were plain to me, and my usual question was, “What do you teach the impulsive colored man and the stolid Eskimo and the pensive Hindu and the inscrutable Asiatic?” And they replied, “We teach them, that God is a personal spirit and Father, whose character is holiness and whose heart is love; that Jesus Christ is the designed and supreme Son of God, who lived in sinlessness and died in perfect willing sacrifice for the eternal life of all men, that by the will of God and in the power of His spirit men may have everlasting life and, better still, everlasting goodness, if they will accept and trust in Jesus Christ for all.”
And this gospel obtains the day of overcoming for which we plead and pray. For tho an angel from heaven had any other, men do not respond; the charisma rests on no other message. Possest of it, and possessing it, under the covenant of heaven and led by the Shepherd and Bishop of souls, we shall go forth determined to give it place in us and in our presentations as never before. May nothing mar the solemn splendor of such a message from God unto men. Let us subordinate our undue intellectualism and place our boasted freedom under restraints, so that the evangel may be preached without reserve and with abandon. “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all.”
Such in one grand passage is the creed that breathes the very life and spirit of the most significant and overwhelming missionary period in the history of the Christian Church.
There is a new day due in missions because of the immense superiority in missionary methods. The _personnel_ of our administrations has been superb, and of nearly all the honored servants of God who have labored in domestic and foreign departments it could be said, “Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity.” But I presume these seasoned veterans would be the first to show us how the whole conception of propagandism has been readapted, and its vehicles of communication multiplied in various directions. The onfall and sally of the earler evangelistic campaigns are now aided by the investment and siege of educational and medical work.
The trackways of a policy embedded in the wider interpretation of the gospel are laid and the new era takes shape before our comprehension. Travel, exploration, and commerce have demanded and obtained the _Lusitania_ on the sea; the railroad from the Cape to Cairo on the land, and they have left no spot of earth untrodden, no map obscure, no mart unvisited. Keeping step with this stately and unprecedented development, and often anticipating it, the widening frontiers of our missionary kingdom have demonstrated again and again how the Church can make a bridal of the earth and sky, linking the lowliest needs to the loftiest truths. And best of all in respect of methods is the dispersal of our native egotism. We have come to see that the types of Christianity in Europe and America are perhaps aboriginal for us, but can not be transplanted to other shores. “Manifest destiny” is a phrase that sits down when Japan and China wake up. Not thus can Jesus be robbed of the fruits of His passion in any branch of the human family. We are to plant and water, labor in faith, and die in hope, scattering the seed of the gospel in the hearts of these brothers of regions outside. But God will ordain their harvests as it pleaseth Him. What will be the joy of that harvest? Throw your imagination across this new century, and as it dies and gives place to its successor, review the race whose devotion has then fastened on the divine ruler and the federal Man, Christ Jesus. For nearly a hundred years the barriers that segregated us will have been a memory. The Church will have discovered not only fields of labor, but forces for her replenishing. Then will our posterity rejoice in the larger Christ who is to be. The virtuous elements of all other faiths will be placed under the purification and control of the priesthood and authority of Jesus. And tho in these ancient religions that await the Bridegroom, the mortal stains the immortal and the human mars the beauty of the divine, in the light of His appearing they will assume new attitudes and receive His quickening and thrill with His pulse. When I conceive of this reward for our Daysman I protest that all other triumphs seem as tinsel and sham. The Desire of all nations shall then see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied. The subtle patience of China, the fierce resistance of Japan, the brooding soul that haunts the Ganges valley, the tumult of emotion of the Ethiopian breast, all are for His appearing; they must be saved unto noble ends by His sanctification. For that time there will be a Church whose canonization of the infinite is beyond our dreams, enriched on every side, with common allegiance and diversity of gifts, and every gift the boon of all, and Christ’s dower in His bride increased beyond compare.
This is the ideal of the new day; may it become our personal ideal. Then shall we fight with new courage for the right, and abhor the imperfect, the unjust, and the mean. Our leaders will care nothing for flattery and praise or odium and abuse. Enthusiasm can not be soured, nor courage diminished. The Almighty has placed our hand on the greatest of His plows, in whose furrow the nations I have named are germinating religiously. And to drive forward the blade if but a little, and to plant any seed of justice and of joy, any sense of manliness or moral worth, to aid in any way the gospel which is the friend of liberty, the companion of the conscience and the parent of the intellectual enlightenment–is not that enough? Is it not a complete justification of our plea?
We shall do well to remember that no evangel can prosper without the evangelical temper. The parsing of grammarians is of little avail here, and to have all critical knowledge of the prophets and apostles of the faith without their fervor and consecration is profitable merely for study, and useless mainly for the larger life. Our culture must be the passion-flower of Christ Jesus. To be more anxious about intellectual pre-eminence or ecclesiastical origins than about “the trial of the immigrant” and the condition of the colored races is not helpful. “There is a sort of orthodoxy that revels in the visions of apocalypses and refuses to fight the beast,” says Dr. Nurgan. Such barren indulgence is excluded from any glory to follow. Technicalities, niceties, knowledge remote and knowledge general must be appropriated and made dynamic in this life-and-death conflict; any that can not be thus used can be sent to the rear for a further debate.
Diplomacies in church government and adjustments in church creeds can wait on this consecration, this baptism of unction. I never heard that the statesman who formulated the peace at Paris in 1815 got in the way of the Household Brigades and the Highlanders at Waterloo and Hougomont. They played their commendable game, but they could not have swept that awful slope of flame in which Ney and the Old Guard staggered on at Mont St. Jean.
Let us redeem our creeds at the front, and prove the welding of our weapons and their tempered blades upon every evil way and darkness and superstition that afflict humankind.
And have you not seen with moistened eyes and beating hearts the pathetic surgings of harassed and broken sons and daughters of God toward His son Jesus Christ? I have watched them until I felt constrained to cry aloud and spare not; and while viewing them here and yonder, and refusing to be localized in our love toward them, have not our spirits been rebuked, have they not known fear for ourselves, have they not pensively echoed the charge of some that we have no real roots in democracy, but are as plants in pots, and not as oaks in the soil of earth? If independency is a barrier to the essence of which it is supposedly a form, if superiority shuts us off from assimilation with popular movements and delivers us over to cliques, then these churches of ours[1] will end in a record of shame and confusion. While we are busy in trivial things, our energy and our might will be deflected, and the living God will hand over the crusade to those who have proven worthier and who knew the day when it did come, even the day of their visitation.
[Footnote 1: The special reference is to the Congregational churches.]
We must arise with courage undismayed, and join in the cry of the ages:
When wilt thou save the people,
O God of mercy, when?
The people! Lord, the people!
Not crowns, nor thrones, but men.
Flower of thy heart, O Lord, are they, Their heritage a sunless day.
Let them like weeds not fade away; Lord, save the people.
If our hearts are thus enlarged, we shall run in the way of His commandments; fatherhood and brotherhood and sonship will not be symbols, shibboleths of pious intercourse, but ways of God’s reaching out through us for the total brotherhood. We shall silence the caviler against missions; we shall raise the negro in the face of those who say he can not be raised; we shall see the latter-day miracles, and the lame man healed and rejoicing at the Temple gate. Thus may the breath of God sweep across our pastorates and dismiss timidity, provincialism, ease, and narrowness of outlook. And thus may the power be demonstrated as of heaven because it is the power unto salvation. Let us fear not men who shall die, nor be content to fill our peaceful lot and occupy a respectable grave. The new world needs the renewed baptism, and the “modernism” of which medievalists complain is the robe of honor for the Christ of this epoch. So that there shall come unto the Church the flame of sacred love, and, kindling on every heart and altar, there shall it burn for the glory of Christ, the High Priest, with inextinguishable blaze. We can rest content, for, behold! the day cometh and in its light. Let us go hence.
JOWETT
APOSTOLIC OPTIMISM
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
John Henry Jowett, Congregational divine, was born at Barnard Castle, Durham, in 1864, and educated at Edinburgh and Oxford universities. In 1889 he was ordained to St. James’s Congregational Church, Newcastle-on-Tyne, and in 1895 was called to his present pastorate of Carr’s Lane Congregational Church, Birmingham, where he has taken rank among the leading preachers of Great Britain. He is the author of several important books.
JOWETT
Born in 1864
APOSTOLIC OPTIMISM[1]
[Footnote 1: Reprinted by permission of A.C. Armstrong & Son.]
_Rejoicing in hope_.–Romans xii., 12.
That is a characteristic expression of the fine, genial optimism of the Apostle Paul. His eyes are always illumined. The cheery tone is never absent from his speech. The buoyant and springy movement of his life is never changed. The light never dies out of his sky. Even the gray firmament reveals more hopeful tints, and becomes significant of evolving glory. The apostle is an optimist, “rejoicing in hope,” a child of light wearing the “armor of light,” “walking in the light” even as Christ is in the light.
This apostolic optimism was not a thin and fleeting sentiment begotten of a cloudless summer day. It was not the creation of a season; it was the permanent pose of the spirit. Even when beset with circumstances which to the world would spell defeat, the apostle moved with the mien of a conqueror. He never lost the kingly posture. He was disturbed by no timidity about ultimate issues. He fought and labored in the spirit of certain triumph. “We are always confident.” “We are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.” “Thanks be unto God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This apostolic optimism was not born of sluggish thinking, or of idle and shallow observation. I am very grateful that the counsel of my text lifts its chaste and cheery flame in the twelfth chapter of an epistle of which the first chapter contains as dark and searching an indictment of our nature as the mind of man has ever drawn. Let me rehearse the appalling catalog that the radiance of the apostle’s optimism may appear the more abounding: “Senseless hearts,” “fools,” “uncleanness,” “vile passions,” “reprobate minds,” “unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, hateful to God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, unmerciful.” With fearless severity the apostle leads us through the black realms of midnight and eclipse. And yet in the subsequent reaches of the great argument, of which these dark regions form the preface, there emerges the clear, calm, steady light of my optimistic text. I say it is not the buoyancy of ignorance. It is not the flippant, light-hearted expectancy of a man who knows nothing about the secret places of the night. The counselor is a man who has steadily gazed at light at its worst, who has digged through the outer walls of convention and respectability, who has pushed his way into the secret chambers and closets of life, who has dragged out the slimy sins which were lurking in their holes, and named them after their kind–it is this man who when he has surveyed the dimensions of evil and misery and contempt, merges his dark indictment in a cheery and expansive dawn, in an optimistic evangel, in which he counsels his fellow-disciples to maintain the confident attitude of a rejoicing hope.
Now, what are the secrets of this courageous and energetic optimism? Perhaps, if we explore the life of this great apostle, and seek to discover its springs, we may find the clue to his abounding hope. Roaming then through the entire records of his life and teachings, do we discover any significant emphasis? Preeminent above all other suggestions, I am imprest with his vivid sense of the reality of the redemptive work of Christ. Turn where I will, the redemptive work of the Christ evidences itself as the base and groundwork of his life. It is not only that here and there are solid statements of doctrine, wherein some massive argument is constructed for the partial unveiling of redemptive glory. Even in those parts of his epistles where formal argument has ceased, and where solid doctrine is absent, the doctrine flows as a fluid element into the practical convictions of life, and determines the shape and quality of the judgments. Nay, one might legitimately use the figure of a finer medium still, and say that in all the spacious reaches of the apostle’s life the redemptive work of his Master is present as an atmosphere in which all his thoughts and purposes and labors find their sustaining and enriching breath. Take this epistle to the Romans in which my text is found. The earlier stages of the great epistle are devoted to a massive and stately presentation of the doctrines of redemption. But when I turn over the pages where the majestic argument is concluded, I find the doctrine persisting in a diffused and rarefied form, and appearing as the determining factor in the solution of practical problems. If he is dealing with the question of the “eating of meats,” the great doctrine reappears and interposes its solemn and yet elevating principle: “destroy not him with thy meat for whom Christ died.” If he is called upon to administer rebuke to the passionate and unclean, the shadow of the cross rests upon his judgment. “Ye are not your own; ye are bought with a price.” If he is portraying the ideal relationship of husband and wife, he sets it in the light of redemptive glory: “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it.” If he is seeking to cultivate the grace of liberality, he brings the heavenly air around about the spirit. “Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that tho he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor.” It interweaves itself with all his salutations. It exhales in all his benedictions like a hallowing fragrance. You can not get away from it. In the light of the glory of redemption all relationships are assorted and arranged. Redemption was not degraded into a fine abstract argument, to which the apostle had appended his own approval, and then, with sober satisfaction, had laid it aside, as a practical irrelevancy, in the stout chests of orthodoxy. It became the very spirit of his life. It was, if I may be allowed the violent figure, the warm blood in all his judgment. It filled the veins of all his thinking. It beat like a pulse in all his purposes. It determined and vitalized his decisions in the crisis, as well as in the lesser trifles of the common day. His conception of redemption was regulative of all his thought.
But it is not only the immediacy of redemption in the apostle’s thought by which I am imprest. I stand in awed amazement before its vast, far-stretching reaches into the eternities. Said an old villager to me concerning the air of his elevated hamlet, “Ay, sir, it’s a fine air is this westerly breeze; I like to think of it as having traveled from the distant fields of the Atlantic!” And here is the Apostle Paul, with the quickening wind of redemption blowing about him in loosening, vitalizing, strengthening influence, and to him, in all his thinking, it had its birth in the distant fields of eternity! To the apostle redemption was not a small device, an afterthought, a patched-up expedient to meet an unforseen emergency. The redemptive purpose lay back in the abyss of the eternities, and in a spirit of reverent questioning the apostle sent his trembling thoughts into those lone and silent fields. He emerged with, whispered secrets such as these: “fore-knew,” “fore-ordained,” “chosen in him before the foundation of the world,” “eternal life promised before times eternal,” “the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Brethren, does our common thought of redemptive glory reach back into this august and awful presence? Does the thought of the modern disciple journey in this distant pilgrimage? Or do we now regard it as unpractical and irrelevant? There is no more insidious peril in modern religious life than the debasement of our conception of the practical. If we divorce the practical from the sublime, the practical will become the superficial, and will degenerate into a very lean and forceless thing. When Paul went on this lonely pilgrimage his spirit acquired the posture of a finely sensitive reverence. People who live and move beneath great domes acquire a certain calm and stately dignity. It is in companionship with the sublimities that awkwardness and coarseness are destroyed. We lose our reverence when we desert the august. But has reverence no relationship to the practical? Shall we discard it as an irrelevant factor in the purposes of common life? Why, reverence is the very clue to fruitful, practical living. Reverence is creative of hope; nay, a more definite emphasis can be given to the assertion; reverence is a constituent of hope. Annihilate reverence, and life loses its fine sensitiveness, and when sensitiveness goes out of a life the hope that remains is only a flippant rashness, a thoughtless impetuosity, the careless onrush of the kine, and not a firm, assured perception of a triumph that is only delayed. A reverent homage before the sublimities of yesterday is the condition of a fine perception of the hidden triumphs of the morrow. And, therefore, I do not regard it as an accidental conjunction that the psalmist puts them together and proclaims the evangel that “the Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in them that hope in his mercy.” To feel the days before me I must revere the purpose which throbs behind me. I must bow in reverence if I would anticipate in hope.
Here, then, is the Apostle Paul, with the redemptive purpose interweaving itself with all the entanglements of his common life, a purpose reaching back into the awful depths of the eternities, and issuing from those depths in amazing fulness of grace and glory. No one can be five minutes in the companionship of the Apostle Paul without discovering how wealthy is his sense of the wealthy, redeeming ministry of God. What a wonderful consciousness he has of the sweep and fulness of the divine grace! You know the variations of the glorious air: “the unsearchable riches of Christ”; “riches in glory in Christ Jesus”; “all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ”; “the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long-suffering.” The redemptive purpose of God bears upon the life of the apostle and upon the race whose privileges he shares, not in an uncertain and reluctant shower, but in a great and marvelous flood. And what to him is the resultant enfranchisement? What are the spacious issues of the glorious work? Do you recall those wonderful sentences, scattered here and there about the apostle’s writings, and beginning with the words “but now”? Each sentence proclaims the end of the dominion of night, and unveils some glimpse of the new created day. “But now!” It is a phrase that heralds a great deliverance! “But now, apart from the law the righteousness of God hath been manifested,” “But now, being made free from sin and become servants to God.” “But now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh in the blood of Christ.” “But now are ye light in the Lord.” “Now, no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” These represent no thin abstractions. To Paul the realities of which they speak were more real than the firm and solid earth. And is it any wonder that a man with such a magnificent sense of the reality of the redemptive works of Christ, who felt the eternal purpose throbbing in the dark background and abyss of time, who conceived it operating upon our race in floods of grace and glory, and who realized in his own immediate consciousness the varied wealth of the resultant emancipation–is it any wonder that for this man a new day had dawned, and the birds had begun to sing and the flowers to bloom, and a sunny optimism had taken possession of his heart, which found expression in an assured and rejoicing hope?
I look abroad again over the record of this man’s life and teachings, if perchance I may discover the secrets of his abiding optimism, and I am profoundly imprest by his living sense of the reality and greatness of his present resources. “By Christ redeemed!” That is not a grand finale; it is only a glorious inauguration. “By Christ redeemed; in Christ restored”; it is with these dynamics of restoration that his epistles are so wondrously abounding. In almost every other sentence he suggests a dynamic which he can count upon as his friend. Paul’s mental and spiritual outlook comprehended a great army of positive forces laboring in the interests of the kingdom of God. His conception of life was amazingly rich in friendly dynamics! I do not wonder that such a wealthy consciousness was creative of a triumphant optimism. Just glance at some of the apostle’s auxiliaries: “Christ liveth in me!” “Christ liveth in me! He breathes through all my aspirations. He thinks through all my thinking. He wills through all my willing. He loves through all my loving. He travails in all my labors. He works within me ‘to will and to do of his good pleasure.'” That is the primary faith of the hopeful life. But see what follows in swift and immediate succession. “If Christ is in you, the spirit is life.” “The spirit is life!” And therefore you find that in the apostle’s thought dispositions are powers. They are not passive entities. They are positive forces vitalizing and energizing the common life of men. My brethren, I am persuaded there is a perilous leakage in this department of our thought. We are not bold enough in our thinking concerning spiritual realities. We do not associate with every mode of the consecrated spirit the mighty energy of God. We too often oust from our practical calculations some of the strongest and most aggressive allies of the saintly life. Meekness is more than the absence of self-assertion; it is the manifestation of the mighty power of God. To the Apostle Paul love exprest more than a relationship. It was an energy productive of abundant labors. Faith was more than an attitude. It was an energy creative of mighty endeavor, Hope was more than a posture. It was an energy generative of a most enduring patience. All these are dynamics, to be counted as active allies, cooperating in the ministry of the kingdom. And so the epistles abound in the recital of mystic ministries at work. The Holy Spirit worketh! Grace worketh! Faith worketh! Love worketh! Hope worketh! Prayer worketh! And there are other allies robed in less attractive garb. “Tribulation worketh!” “This light affliction worketh.” “Godly sorrow worketh!” On every side of him the apostle conceives cooperative and friendly powers. “The mountain is full of horses and chariots of fire round about him.” He exults in the consciousness of abounding resources. He discovers the friends of God in things which find no place among the scheduled powers of the world. He finds God’s raw material in the world’s discarded waste. “Weak things,” “base things,” “things that are despised,” “things that are not,” mere nothings; among these he discovers the operating agents of the mighty God. Is it any wonder that in this man, possessed of such a wealthy consciousness of multiplied resources, the spirit of a cheery optimism should be enthroned? With what stout confidence he goes into the fight! He never mentions the enemy timidly. He never seeks to underestimate his strength. Nay, again and again he catalogs all possible antagonisms in a spirit of buoyant and exuberant triumph. However numerous the enemy, however subtle and aggressive his devices, however towering and well-established the iniquity, however black the gathering clouds, so sensitive is the apostle to the wealthy resources of God that amid it all he remains a sunny optimist, “rejoicing in hope,” laboring in the spirit of a conqueror even when the world was exulting in his supposed discomfiture and defeat.
And, finally, in searching for the springs of this man’s optimism, I place alongside his sense of the reality of redemption and his wealthy consciousness of present resources his impressive sense of the reality of future glory. Paul gave himself time to think of heaven, of the home of God, of his own home when time should be no more. He loved to contemplate “the glory that shall be revealed.” He mused in wistful expectancy of the day “when Christ who is our life shall be manifested,” and when we also “shall be manifested with him in glory.” He pondered the thought of death as “gain,” as transferring him to conditions in which he would be “at home with the Lord,” “with Christ, which is far better.” He looked for “the blest hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,” and he contemplated “that great day” as the “henceforth,” which would reveal to him the crown of righteousness and glory. Is any one prepared to dissociate this contemplation from the apostle’s cheery optimism? Is not rather the thought of coming glory one of its abiding springs? Can we safely exile it from our moral and spiritual culture? I know that this particular contemplation is largely absent from modern religious life, and I know the nature of the recoil in which our present impoverishment began. “Let us hear less about the mansions of the blest and more about the housing of the poor!” Men revolted against an effeminate contemplation, which had run to seed, in favor of an active philanthropy which sought the enrichment of the common life. But, my brethren, pulling a plant up is not the only way of saving it from running to seed. You can accomplish by a wise restriction what is wastefully done by severe destruction. I think we have lost immeasurably by the uprooting, in so many lives, of this plant of heavenly contemplation. We have built on the erroneous assumption that the contemplation of future glory inevitably unfits us for the service of man. It is an egregious and destructive mistake. I do not think that Richard Baxter’s labors were thinned or impoverished by his contemplation of “The Saint’s Everlasting Rest.” When I consider his mental output, his abundant labors as father-confessor to a countless host, his pains and persecutions and imprisonments, I can not but think he received some of the powers of his optimistic endurance from contemplations such as he counsels in his incomparable book. “Run familiarly through the streets of the heavenly Jerusalem; visit the patriarchs and prophets, salute the apostles, and admire the armies of martyrs; lead on the heart from street to street, bring it into the palace of the great king; lead it, as it were, from chamber to chamber. Say to it, ‘Here must I lodge, here must I die, here must I praise, here must I love and be loved. My tears will then be wiped away, my groans be turned to another tune, my cottage of clay be changed to this palace, my prison rags to these splendid robes’; ‘for the former things are passed away.'” I can not think that Samuel Rutherford impoverished his spirit or deadened his affections, or diminished his labors by mental pilgrimages such as he counsels to Lady Cardoness: “Go up beforehand and see your lodging. Look through all your Father’s rooms in heaven. Men take a sight of the lands ere they buy them. I know that Christ hath made the bargain already; but be kind to the house ye are going to, and see it often.” I can not think that this would imperil the fruitful optimisms of the Christian life. I often examine, with peculiar interest, the hymn-book we use at Carr’s Lane. It was compiled by Dr. Dale. Nowhere else can I find the broad perspective of his theology and his primary helpmeets in the devotional life as I find them there. And is it altogether unsuggestive that under the heading of “Heaven” is to be found one of the largest sections of the book. A greater space is given to “Heaven” than is given to “Christian duty.” Is it not significant of what a great man of affairs found needful for the enkindling and sustenance of a courageous hope? And among the hymns are many which have helped to nourish the sunny endeavors of a countless host.
There is a land of pure delight
Where saints immortal reign;
Infinite day excludes the night, And pleasures banish pain.
What are these, arrayed in white,
Brighter than the noonday sun?
Foremost of the suns of light,
Nearest the eternal throne.
Hark! hark, my soul! Angelic songs are swelling O’er earth’s green fields and ocean’s wave-beat shore. Angelic songs to sinful men are telling Of that new life when sin shall be no more.
My brethren, depend upon it, we are not impoverished by contemplations such as these. They take no strength out of the hand, and they put much strength and buoyancy into the heart. I proclaim the contemplation of coming glory as one of the secrets of the apostle’s optimism which enabled him to labor and endure in the confident spirit of rejoicing hope. These, then, are some of the springs of Christian optimism; some of the sources in which we may nourish our hope in the newer labors of a larger day: a sense of the glory of the past in a perfected redemption, a sense of the glory of the present in our multiplied resources, a sense of the glory of tomorrow in the fruitful rest of our eternal home.
O blest hope! with this elate
Let not our hearts be desolate;
But, strong in faith and patience, wait Until He come!
GENERAL INDEX
INDEX TO PREACHERS AND SERMONS
Abbott, Lyman, The Divinity in Humanity Abraham’s Imitators; or The Activity of Faith. By Thomas Hooker Affection, The Expulsive Power of a New. By Thomas Chalmers Argument, The, from Experience. By Robert William Dale Arnold, Thomas, Alive in God
Ascension, The, of Christ. By Girolamo Savonarola Assurance in God. By George Adam Smith
Atonement, Eternal. By Roswell Dwight Hitchcock Atonement, The Prominence of the. By Edwards Amasa Park Augustine, St., The Recovery of Sight by the Blind
Bacon, Leonard Woolsey, God Indwelling Basil “The Great,” The Creation of the World Baxter, Richard, Making Light of Christ and Salvation Beecher, H.W., Immortality
Beecher, Lyman, The Government of God Desirable Bible, The, vs. Infidelity. By Frank Wakely Gunsaulus Blair, Hugh, The Hour and the Event of All Time Blind, The Recovery of Sight by the. By St. Augustine Bones, The Valley of Dry. By Frederick Denison Maurice Bossuet, Jacques Benigne, The Death of the Grande Conde Bounty, The Royal. By Alexander McKenzie Bourdaloue, Louis, The Passion of Christ Broadus, John A., Let us Have Peace with God Brooks, Memorial Discourse on Phillips. By Henry Codman Potter Brooks, Phillips, The Pride of Life
Bunyan, John, The Heavenly Footman
Burrell, David James, How to Become a Christian Bushnell, Horace, Unconscious Influence
Cadman, S. Parkes, A New Day for Missions Caird, John, Religion in Common Life
Calvin, John, Enduring Persecution for Christ Campbell, Alexander, The Missionary Cause Carlyle, Thomas,–In Memoriam. By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley Carpenter, William Boyd, The Age of Progress Chalmers, Thomas, The Expulsive Power of a New Affection Charming, William Ellery, The Character of Christ Chapin, Edwin Hubbell Nicodemus: The Seeker after Religion Character, The, of Christ. By William Ellery Charming Christ and Salvation, Making Light of. By Richard Baxter Christ Among the Common Things of Life. By William James Dawson Christ Before Pilate–Pilate Before Christ. By William Mackergo Taylor Christ, Enduring Persecution for. By John Calvin Christ, The Ascension of. By Girolamo Savonarola Christ, The Character of. By William Ellery Channing Christ, The First Temptation of. By John Knox Christ, The Loneliness of. By Frederick William Robertson Christ, The Passion of. By Louis Bourdaloue Christ–_The_ Question of the Centuries. By Robert Stuart MacArthur
Christ, The Spirit of. By Charles H. Fowler Christ, What Think ye of. By Dwight Lyman Moody Christ, Zeal in the Cause of. By William Morley Punshon Christ’s Advent to Judgment. By Jeremy Taylor Christ’s Real Body not in the Eucharist. By John Wyclif Christ’s Resurrection an Image of our New Life. By Frederich Ernst Schleiermacher
Christian, How to Become a. By David James Burrell Christian Victory. By Christopher Newman Hall Christianity, The Mysteries of. By Alexander Vinet Christianity, The Transient and Permanent in. By Theodore Parker Chrysostom, Excessive Grief at the Death of Friends Church, The Mother. By Ernest Roland Wilberforce Church, The Triumph of the. By Henry Edward Manning Clifford, John, The Forgiveness of Sins
Colonization, The, of the Desert. By Edward Everett Hale Common Life, Religion in. By John Caird
Common Things of Life, Christ Among the. By William James Dawson Conde, The Funeral Sermon on the Death of the Grande. By Jacques Benigne Bossuet
Creation, The, of the World. By Basil Creation, Work in the Groaning. By Frederick William Farrar Crosby, Howard, The Prepared Worm
Cuyler, Theodore Ledyard, The Value of Life
Dale, Robert William, The Argument from Experience Day, A, in the Life of Jesus of Nazareth, By Francis Wayland Dawson, William James, Christ Among the Common Things of Life Death, Glorification Through. By Francis Landey Patton Desert, The Colonization of the. By Edward Everett Hale Divinity, The, in Humanity. By Lyman Abbott Drummond, Henry, The Greatest Thing in the World Dwight, Timothy, The Sovereignty of God
Earth, The Shaking of the Heavens and the. By Charles Kingsley Education and the Future of Religion. By John Lancaster Spalding Edwards, Jonathan, Spiritual light
Elect, The Small Number of the. By Jean Baptiste Massillon Eternal Atonement. By Roswell Dwight Hitchcock Eucharist, Christ’s Real Body not in the. By John Wyclif Evans, Christmas, The Fall and Recovery of Man Event, The Hour and the, of all Time. By Hugh Blair Experience. By Alexander Whyte
Experience, The Argument from. By Robert William Dale Expulsive Power, The, of a New Affection. By Thomas Chalmers
Faith, Constructive. By Charles Henry Parkhurst Faith, The Activity of; or, Abraham’s Imitators. By Thomas Hooker Faith, The Story of a Disciple’s. By Henry Scott Holland Fall, The, and Recovery of Man. By Christmas Evans Farrar, Frederick William, Work in the Groaning Creation Fenelon, Francois de Salignac de la Mothe, The Saints Converse with God Footman, The Heavenly. By John Bunyan
Forgiveness, The, of Sins. By John Clifford. Fowler, Charles H., The Spirit of Christ Funeral Sermon, The, on the Death of the Grande Conde, by Jacques Benigne Bossuet
Gethsemane, The Rose Garden of God. By William Robertson Nicoll Gladden, Washington, The Prince of Life
Glorification Through Death. By Francis Landey Patton God, Alive in. By Thomas Arnold
God Calling to Man. By Charles John Vaughan God Indwelling. By Leonard Woolsey Bacon. God, Marks of Love to. By Robert Hall
God, Preparation for Consulting the Oracles of. By Edward Irving God, The Government of, Desirable. By Lyman Beecher God, The Image of, in Man. By Robert South God, The Saints Converse with. By Francois Fenelon God, The Sovereignty of. By Timothy Dwight God the Unwearied Guide. By Newell Dwight Hillis God’s Love to Fallen Man. By John Wesley God’s Will the End of Life. By John Henry Newman Gordon, George Angier, Man in the Image of God Government, The, of God Desirable. By Lyman Beecher Grace, The Method of. By George Whitefield Greatest Thing, The, in the World. By Henry Drummond Grief, Excessive, at the Death of Friends. By Chrysostom Guide, God the Unwearied. By Newell Dwight Hillis Gunsaulus, Frank Wakely, The Bible vs. Infidelity Guthrie, Thomas, The New Heart
Hale, Edward Everett, The Colonization of the Desert Hall, Christopher Newman, Christian Victory Hall, John, Liberty only in Truth
Hall, Robert, Marks of Love to God
Heart, The New. By Thomas Guthrie
Heavens, The Shaking of the, and the Earth. By Charles Kingsley Hillis, Newell Dwight, God the Unwearied Guide Hitchcock, Roswell Dwight, The Eternal Atonement Holland, Henry Scott, The Story of a Disciple’s Faith Holy Spirit, Influence of the. By Henry Parry Liddon Hooker, Thomas, The Activity of Faith; or Abraham’s Imitators Hour, The, and the Event of all Time. By Hugh Blair Howe, John, The Redeemer’s Tears over Lost Souls Humanity, The Divinity in. By Lyman Abbott
Ideal of Life, The Perfect. By George Campbell Morgan Immortality. By H.W. Beecher
Infidelity, The Bible vs. By Frank Wakely Gunsaulus Influence, Unconscious. By Horace Bushnell Influences of the Holy Spirit. By Henry Parry Liddon Inheritance, The Heavenly. By John Summerfield Irving, Edward, Preparation for Consulting the Oracles of God
Jefferson, Charles Edward, The Reconciliation Jesus of Nazareth, A Day in the Life of. By Francis Wayland Jowett, John Henry, Apostolic Optimism
Judgment, Christ’s Advent to. By Jeremy Taylor Judgment, The Reversal of Human. By James B. Mozley Justification, The Method and Fruits of. By Martin Luther
Kingsley, Charles, The Shaking of the Heavens and the Earth Knox, John, The First Temptation of Christ Knox-Little, William John, Thirst Satisfied Latimer, Hugh, Christian Love
Life, Christ’s Resurrection an Image of our New By Frederich Ernst Schleiermacher
Life, God’s Will the End of. By John Henry Newman Life, The Perfect Ideal of. By George Campbell Morgan Life, The Pride of. By Phillips Brooks
Life, The Prince of. By Washington Gladden Life, The Value of. By Theodore Ledyard Cuyler Liberty only in Truth. By John Hall
Liddon, Henry Parry, Influences of the Holy Spirit Light, Spiritual. By Jonathan Edwards
Loneliness, The, of Christ. By Frederick William Robertson Lord, The Resurrection of Our. By Matthew Simpson Lorimer, George C. The Fall of Satan
Love, Christian. By Hugh Latimer
Love, Marks of, to God. By Robert Hall Luther, Martin, The Method and Fruits of Justification MacArthur, Robert Stuart, Christ–The Question of the Centuries McKenzie, Alexander, The Royal Bounty
Maclaren, Alexander, The Pattern of Service Macleod, Norman, The True Christian Ministry Magee, William Connor, The Miraculous Stilling of the Storm Man, God Calling to. By Charles John Vaughan Man, God’s Love to Fallen. By John Wesley Man in the Image of God. By George Angier Gordon Man, The Fall and Recovery of. By Christmas Evans Man, The Image of God in. By Robert South Manhood, The Meaning of. By Henry Van Dyke Manning, Henry Edward, The Triumph of the Church Martineau, James, Parting Words
Mason, John Mitchell, Messiah’s Throne Massillon, Jean Baptiste, The Small Number of the Elect Maurice, Frederick Denison, The Valley of Dry Bones Melanchthon, Philip, The Safety of the Virtuous Memorial Discourse on Phillips Brooks. By Henry Codman Potter Messiah’s Throne. By John Mitchell Mason Ministry, The True Christian. By Norman Macleod Missions, A New Day for. By. S. Parkes Cadman Missionary Cause, The. By Alexander Campbell Missionary Work, The Permanent Motive in. By Richard S. Storrs Monster, A Bloody. By Thomas DeWitt Talmage Moody, Dwight Lyman, What Think ye of Christ? Morgan, George Campbell, The Perfect Ideal of Life Motive, The Permanent, in Missionary Work. By Richard S. Storrs Mozley, James B., The Reversal of Human Judgment Mysteries. The, of Christianity. By Alexander Vinet
Newman, John Henry, God’s Will the End of Life Nicodemus: The Seeker after Religion. By Edwin Hubbell Chapin Nicoll, William Robertson, Gethsemane, The Rose Garden of God
Optimism, Apostolic. By John Henry Jowett Optimism. By John Watson
Oracles, Preparation for Consulting the, of God. By Edward Irving
Park, Edwards Amasa, The Prominence of the Atonement Parker, Joseph, A Word to the Weary
Parker, Theodore, The Transient and Permanent in Christianity Parkhurst, Charles Henry, Constructive Faith Passion, The, of Christ. By Louis Bourdaloue Patton, Francis Landey, Glorification Through Death Paul Before Felix and Drusilla. By Jacques Saurin Peace with God, Let us Have. By John A. Broadus Permanent, The Transient and the, in Christianity. By Theodore Parker Persecution for Christ, Enduring, John Calvin Pilate Before Christ–Christ Before Pilate. By William Mackergo Taylor
Potter, Henry Codman, Memorial Discourse on Phillips Brooks Pride, The, of Life. By Phillips Brooks
Prince, The, of Life. By Washington Gladden Progress, The Age of. By William Boyd Carpenter Punshon, William Morley, Zeal in the Cause of Christ
Reconciliation, The. By Charles E. Jefferson Recovery, The Fall and, of Man. By Christmas Evans Redeemer’s Tears, The, over Lost Souls. By John Howe Religion, Education and the Future of. By John Lancaster Spaldin Religion in Common Life. By John Caird
Religion, Nicodemus: The Seeker after. By Edwin Hubbell Chapin Resurrection, Christ’s, an Image of our New-Life. By Frederick Ernst Schleiermacher
Resurrection, The, of Our Lord. By Matthew Simpson Resurrection, The Reasonableness of a. By John Tillotson Reversal, The, of Human Judgment. By James B. Mozley Robertson, Frederick William, The Loneliness of Christ Royal Bounty, the. By Alexander McKenzie
Sackcloth, The Transfigured. By William L. Watkinson Saints Converse with God, The. By Francis Fenelon Salvation, Making Light of Christ and. By Richard Baxter Satan, The Fall of. By George C. Lorimer Saurin, Jacques, Paul Before Felix and Drusilla Savonarola, Girolamo, The Ascension of Christ Schleiermacher, Frederick Ernst, Christ’s Resurrection an Image of our New Life
Seiss, Joseph A., The Wonderful Testimonies Service, The Pattern of. By Alexander Maclaren Shaking, The, of the Heavens and the Earth. By Charles Kingsley Sight, The Recovery of, by the Blind By St Augustine Simpson, Matthew, The Resurrection of Our Lord. Sins, The Forgiveness of By John Clifford Smith, George Adam Assurance in God
Songs in the Night By Charles Haddon Spurgeon Souls, The Redeemer’s Tears Over Lost By John Howe South, Robert, The Image of God in Man
Sovereignty, The of God By Timothy Dwight Spalding, John Lancaster, Education and the Future of Religion Spiritual Light By Jonathan Edwards
Spurgeon, Charles Haddon Songs in the Night Stalker, James Temptation
Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn, In Memoriam–Thomas Carlyle Stilling of the Storm, The Miraculous By William Connor Magee Storm, The Miraculous Stilling of the By William Connor Magee Storrs, Richard S. The Permanent Motive in Missionary Work Summerfield, John The Heavenly Inheritance
Talmage, Thomas DeWitt A Bloody Monster Taylor, Jeremy Christ’s Advent to Judgment Taylor, William Mackergo Christ Before Pilate–Pilate Before Christ Temptation By James Stalker
Temptation, The First, of Christ By John Knox Testimonies The Wonderful By Joseph A Seiss Thirst Satisfied By William John Knox Little Time, The Hour and the Event of all By Hugh Blair Tillotson, John, The Reasonableness of a Resurrection Transfigured Sackcloth, The By William L. Watkinson Transient, The, and Permanent in Christianity. By Theodore Parker Triumph, The, of the Church. By Henry Edward Manning Truth, Liberty Only in. By John Hall
Valley, The, of Dry Bones By Frederick Derrison Maurice Van Dyke, Henry, The Meaning of Manhood
Vaughan, Charles John, God Calling to Man Victory, Christian By Christopher Newman Hall Vinet, Alexander, The Mysteries of Christianity Virtuous, The Safety of the. By Philip Melanchthon Voice, I am a. By Charles Wagner
Wagner, Charles, I am a Voice
Watkinson, William L, The Transfigured Sackcloth Watson, John, Optimism
Wayland, Francis, A Day in the Life of Jesus of Nazareth Weary, A Word to the. By Joseph Parker
Wesley, John, God’s Love to Fallen Man. Whitefield, George, The Method of Grace
Whyte, Alexander, Experience
Wilberforce, Ernest Roland, The Mother Church Words, Parting By James Martineau
Work in the Groaning Creation. By Frederick William Farrar World, The Greatest Thing in the. By Henry Drummond Worm, The Prepared. By Howard Crosby
INDEX TO TEXTS
VOLUME
Genesis i., 2 I
i., 27 II
i., 31 VII
i., 31 VII
iii., 9 VI
xxxvii., 33 VIII
I Kings x., 13 VII
x., 36 IX
II Kings vi., 1,2 IX
Esther iv., 2 VIII
Job xxxiii., 4 IX
xxxv., 10 VIII
Psalms xvi., 16 X
xlii., 2 VIII
cxix., 45 VII
cxix., 129 VII
Proverbs xi., 30 IV
Isaiah xl., 1-31 X
l, 4 VII
lvii., 15 VII
Jeremiah vi., 14 III
x., 23 III
Ezekiel xxxvi., 26 V
xxxvii., 1-3 V
Jonah iv., 7 VII
Matthew iv., 1 I
vi., 10 IV
viii., 25, 26 VII
xii., 12 IX
xiii., 24 VI
xvi., 17 III
xvii., 5 IV
xix., 30 V
xx., 30 I
xxii., 5 II
xxii., 32 IV
xxii., 42 VIII
xxii., 42 IX
xxvi., 26 I
xxvii., 22 VII
xxviii., 19 IX
Mark vii., 33 VII
xvi., 15 VI
Luke iv. 27 III
ix., 10-17 IV
x., 18 VIII
xix., 41, 42 II
xxi., 33 V
xxiii., 27, 28 II
xxiv., 51 I
John i., 23 X
iii. 1, 2 VI
iii., 8 VII
v., 39 IV
v., 42 III
vi., 38 IV
vi., 63 VIII
vi., 64 IX
viii., 28-30 X
x., 28 I
x., 34-36 VIII
xii., 24 IX
xiv. 27 V
xv., 12 I
xvi., 31, 32 VI
xvii., 1 III
xvii., 20, 21 V
xx., 8 IV
xx., 8 IX
xxi., 9, 12 X
Acts iii., 15 VIII
xix., 23 IX
xxiv., 24, 25 III
xxvi., 8 II
xxvi., 8 IX
Romans iv., 12 II
v., 1 IX
v., 4 VIII
v., 15 III
v., 15 III
vi., 4 III
viii., 9 VIII
viii., 22 VII
xii., 11 VI
xii., 12 X
I Corinthians ii., 2 V
ii., 9 IV
ix., 24 II
xiii., X
xiv., 10 X
xv., 3 X
xv., 19 VI
xv., 20 V
xx., 13 IX
II Corinthians ii., 14-16 V
v., 10 II
v., 13-15 VI
Galatians iv., 1-7 I
vi., 14 X
I Thessalonians iv., 13 I
v., 17 II
Hebrews i., 18 III
xii., 26-29 VI
xiii., 13 I
II Peter i., 11 IV
I John, ii., 16 VIII
v., 15 IV
Revelations ii., 17 VI
xiii., 8 VI
xxii., 3 VII
Apostles’ Creed VIII