Part 4

A yoke does not demand the use of more energy than would otherwise be called into play. The beast of burden would expend the same amount of energy in a day’s time. If that strength were not expended in the performance of a useful task it would be wasted. The yoke concentrates the energy at command to the performance of a task worth while. The burden-bearer is no wearier, neither has it borne any greater burden. It has only borne the same burden with greater ease and to better purpose.

Laziness is often a harder taskmaster than industry, and sin is always a harder taskmaster than righteousness. Each life will, in the course of its passage through the world, exert itself to just about the same degree, whether it works or plays. Nature and life are sure to lay upon it some burdens to bear, and it must bear them whether it is willing or not. Whether the life takes its mission seriously or frivolously, the amount of energy expended will be about the same. However, the life has its choice between finding that expenditure difficult or easy, useful or useless.

For, early in its days, the Yoke Giver comes to it and offers His yoke as a means of bearing its burden more easily and usefully. It is pitiable how often the offer is misconstrued as an attempt to increase the burden when it really amounts to an offer to help in carrying it.

The Crowded Inn (1916)

If I were to try to paint a picture of that night in Bethlehem, there is one thing I would be sure not to omit.

I would paint the rifted sky, opened to release the mingled praise of angels. I would depict the shepherds, listening in their wonder.

I would hang the wondrous star in its place in the sky—heaven’s sign of hope to a broken world. The peaceful village, the lowly manger, the quiet cattle in their stalls—all these should have a place.

But somewhere in the distance I would set the inn with its lighted windows, its gayety within, and its crowded space—a house with a closed door, a place with room for all except the family of an artisan who was to be trusted with the rearing of a King.

Through the centuries this has been a most tragic story. It has been the most tragic because it has represented the most widespread condition. It has been the saddest because it has been the least realized.

Some have tried to drive the King from the world with violence, but no violence has even been able to match the strong, sweet, silent influence which pervaded His life and which He set adrift in the world, and which, in spite of opposition, grows from more to more.

The violence which sought His annihilation only aided Him in the fulfillment of His mission. There need be no fear of those who go out with swords and staves against Him.

There have been those, too, who have tried to banish Him from the world by persecution. They, too, have failed. Faith was never stronger nor did ever more immovable convictions burn in the hearts of His people than when they fled from the hand of persecution or perished for the faith before the eyes of scoffers.

From the Israelite down, the people of God have thrived on persecution. The real problems of Christianity arose after, and not before, the Roman state became its ally. Better far had been the bread of bitterness which they had eaten than the reduction to a system and a tool which they then suffered. The persecutor only speeds the day of the King’s dominion.

There have been those who have tried to drive Him from the world by argument. This, likewise, has been of no avail. Atheism, agnosticism, and skepticism all fail before the living fact of the power of His presence in the world.

One clear case of regeneration or one well-defined overruling of providence is sufficient to dispose of every argument of mere premise and conclusion which can be constructed against Him. The only argument against Him is an unfaithful follower, and that is refuted by a follower who is true.

For Him the sword has no terrors. He never will flee persecution. There is no danger that He will ever be driven out. If there is any danger for Him today, it is that He be crowded out.

There is one thing and one thing only which can defeat His purpose. That is the unwelcoming life, the closed heart, the master of the inn who says, “No room.”

Let us not blame the innkeeper of the long ago. He did [not] know whom he was turning from his doors. He did not act in the light which twenty intervening centuries have given us. He was simply an innkeeper to whom business was business, and whose preference was naturally for the richest guests. Let us be moderate in our censure of him. Let us turn to the present. Let us find whether the doors of the throne rooms of our own hearts are open.

Not many say they hate the Master or His Kingdom. Not many say they do not believe in Him. Not many are disposed to persecute. Not many even care to argue. But many say, “I haven’t time.”

Lose what else we may in this busy time, we must find a place for Him and His words and His ways. A good watchword for this day of opportunity might be: “Make room for Jesus!”

The Price of Liberty (1916)

On the old battlefield of Sempach, where in 1386 the Swiss won a notable victory over the Austrians, there stands a monument of recognition to Arnold von Winkelried, a Swiss peasant, who on the day of that battle gave his life as the price of victory for his country.

The Austrians were massed together with presented spears—“A living wall, a human wood.” There was only one hope of breaking through the armed line and that was for some one to dash against the phalanx and make an opening—at the cost of his life. Suddenly there was a cry: “Make way for liberty,” and Arnold von Winkelried rushed forward, gathering an armful of Austrian lances into his own breast, but opening a breach through which his comrades poured themselves against their foes.

The Swiss marched to victory that day, but it was over the dead body of a man who loved them and their cause even unto death, a man who was moved by the love which lays down its life for its friends.

There is another spot—a place unmarked by any monument—where earth’s supremest hero yielded up His life to make way for the liberty of His people. He gathered the wrath and the sting of a great world’s sin into His own heart, and led the way where others dared not tread.

In the hour that Jesus died, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom, and the breach was made through which every man might make his way to the feet of his God and to the glory of the eternities. The tragedy of Calvary opened up the way to liberty—the liberty of the truth, the liberty of pardon, the liberty of eternal life.

So through the ages His people have been marching to the supreme hour of joy in forgiveness and assurance, to success in the conquests of righteousness, and through the gates of glory at the last. Each step of the way they have found full of joy. But it has all been over the dead body of one whose love was too great to know a fear, and whose devotion was unfailing even in the hour of supreme agony.

Paul’s Ideal Sufficient (1918)

It is as easy as it is dangerous for those of us who have upon our hearts a work of reform to become victims of fads. When new principles, directly or indirectly related to religious work, are discovered and announced, it is not difficult for our appreciation of their worth to become so enthusiastic as to eclipse everything else in our system of reform with an overdeveloped sense of their importance.

They usually are important as having bearing upon the great problem we work to solve. The world, however, is apt to wonder if we know just what we are about when we lay one fad aside for another, just as we had laid earlier fads aside for the one, and it does not always place the most liberal construction upon our enthusiasm.

As a way out, we should properly appreciate and use each new discovery which has bearing upon our task. We should not, however, allow it to assume the proportions of a fad so far as we are concerned. Our attitude toward our ideal and its realization must be broad enough to take in more than one side of it at once.

So far as the Church and its task is concerned it will be found that the ideal Paul had for it is not likely to receive a successful addition. Each social institution has one task to perform, and it will be found to be unable to perform more than that one task well. We have agencies for the various forms of service to society. Not one of the others, however, approaches closely the field which the Church was designed to fill. Its ministry is purely spiritual and when it leaves that field and takes its stand in any other it is not only overlapping upon the work of other social agencies, but it is leaving undone a work which there is no other agency to do.

In other words, the Church will probably not be able to define a higher mission for itself than that expressed in one of the letters to Timothy—a pillar and ground of the truth—a stay and foundation of that which is everlasting.

The Religion of the New Age (1919)

The world is being torn down like an outworn and antiquated structure. When the work of wrecking it is completed, it will be built over. The result will be a world the builders of which will have tried to profit by the mistakes and experiences of the ages. A Bible prophecy heralds a new heaven and a new earth. The postbellum reconstruction period will help to realize at least the latter part of that hope.

It is already apparent that religion will share in the general readjustment. The war has stimulated the world’s thinking. It has seen, as it did not take time to see in the old days, the needs in the religious field. Any reform is rapid when men once get to thinking. The case is hopeless so long as apathy and lethargy prevail.

We probably need not look for any revolutionary change in the fundamentals of religion. These do not change. Being rooted and grounded in the truth, they are fixed and permanent. It is not with either the substance or the mission of religion that the difficulty lies.

The difficulty lies at the points of interpretation and application. It is possible for these to advance with growing knowledge, and the new world will unquestionably see to it that they do so. The earth has always been round, and it will remain round as long as it exists. Men have not, however, always understood the fact of its roundness. There was a time when geographical authority insisted that it was flat. Then there came a time when better knowledge existed. The fact had not changed in the least. Only human interpretation had undergone progress. The facts of religion can not change, but humanity can achieve progress in rightly interpreting them and in rightly adapting itself to them.

It need not be supposed, either, that the religion of the new age will be a denatured one. It bids fair, on the contrary, to be a positive and vital one. It will probably be less and less the fashion to parade moral laxity under the false banners of liberal thinking. The coming period will not be superficial. It will need a religion of power and significance. It will try religious principles to the limit, and if such a religion can not be had, it will have none at all. Fortunately, a definite and positive faith can be had. The people who are really living want a religion which is more than a fashion or a convenience. It must include a working program which means something and is not too easy.

The new religion will be composite, because it will be unified. Only in the reactionary centers is any real difference now apparent between Protestant Christian bodies. Now, under the unifying influence of a great common cause, Protestant, Catholic, and Jew are combining forces for the religious good of the soldier. That unity will probably increase and continue.

Most carefully thinking people stand together on the things which are really vital. All understand that no ecclesiastical body can possess a monopoly of the truth. We go on and work faithfully, each for his own church household, but we all understand that both good and bad and both truth and error dwell in each of our many camps.

All the world has been searching for the same God. Different peoples have called the Deity by different names and sought him in different ways. It is not the name or the method, but the spirit and motive that count most. Various peoples have reached various stages in their search. Probably all will, sooner or later, find the world’s one perfect image of the divine Father in Jesus. We must be patient, however, with those who are only on the way. In the finished faith, the chaff of all the world’s beliefs will have been cast away, and the abiding in them all will remain. There is nothing in the spirit of the cross to violate that which is good in any of them.

The new religion will be a religion of practical standards. It will find its expression in terms that men know about, and its form will be one which can really be adapted to the needs of everyday living. The tendency in this day of human problems is to bring each line of human thought and investigation down to earth. It is with religion just as with science or philosophy. The demand is that it shall be practical in all its standards and methods.

The world has not found the theology born upon a study table sufficient. The cry is for a theology based wholly upon the facts of life. Truth does not always follow the processes of formal logic. The tests of faith are not to be found in the syllogism but in life’s great laboratory. The authority of the great Teacher came largely from his fixed habit of talking about real things in practical terms. His only theology was life. In conforming our religion more and more to this principle, we shall not be getting away from Jesus. We shall rather be getting back to him.

The new religion will be a socialized religion. In this, it will but bear the fruit of agitation which has already been going on for years. Religion can not be worth while without a definite object. Its object is not the appeasing of an arbitrary Deity. It is rather to bring the touch of a tender Father’s grace into the lives of his children. In other words, the object of religion is humanity. For the good of men are all laws established, all warnings issued, and all promises given.

The achieving of the present and future salvation of people demands not the successful performance of some mystical process of indoctrination. It calls for the actual application of religious principles in everyday thinking and action. It has not achieved its end until testimony to its power and blessing is borne by all social life and by every social institution. It is nothing until it has come to be expressed in terms of life. Without surrendering any of its hope in the promise of a world to come, the religion of the future will lay a larger emphasis upon the life of the world in which we dwell. More and more men are realizing that the only hope we can have of gaining any other world depends upon our treatment of this one. The path to heaven lies directly through the earth. Two attitudes toward this world can never fit in with a thoughtful and reasonable faith. One is the attitude that this is a world of selfish opportunity and sensuous pleasure, and that the highest object of life is the satisfaction of the flesh. The other is the attitude that this is only a vale of tears to be endured, despised, and neglected until such time as we can get out of it into a happier realm. This is a life of opportunity, to be lived out with full appreciation and emphasis upon the sweetness and the worth-whileness of each day and hour. Real religion will strive to make it more and not less beautiful.

The new religion will be one of optimism. It will understand that nothing is so easy as cynicism and nothing so cheap as the continual discounting of other people. It will find its strength not in emphasizing the badness of people, but in believing in them. After all these years, it will come to realize that Jesus saved by believing in sinners. Whoever follows in his footsteps will certainly have to learn to do the same. The human heart shrivels under accusation. It blossoms under the radiant influence of someone’s confidence. The new religion—an evolved form of the old—will count the roses and forget the thorns, and it will strive to emphasize the divinity in every man.

The new religion will be the old reduced to its simplest and most workable terms. God will be upon its throne. Jesus will stand as his perfect expression in the flesh. The cross will overshadow all. It will be a religion of service, for there is much to do. It will be a religion of sacrifice, for this is a needy world. Reasonably interpreted, the Bible will be its message. Its aim will be to bring out the divinity implanted in all things, and its test will be its product.

Christianity and Americanism (1920)

Religion plays an important part in the making of any nation. The spirit of faith and the spirit of patriotism seem to have a genuine affinity for each other. The national hope of Israel was born in the heart of a man whose name has been handed down as that of the father of the faithful. It was finally realized under the leadership of a man chosen of God as the mouthpiece through which the law was given. Long before nationality was an achieved fact, the love of God and the hope of a country were intermingled in the hearts of the sons of Jacob. This is probably a chief reason for the deathlessness of the race.

Through the fabric of American history, the Christian religion is woven like a golden thread. Many things have contributed to the glory of our past, but nothing else has contributed quite so much as has this fact. Many things enter into the making of our hope for the future, but this is the most important among them all.

The Pilgrims came seeking a spiritual refuge. It was on bent knees that they first greeted the country which they had chosen for their home. Their memory is perpetuated by a monument which stands near the place where they landed. It carries five symbolic figures, representative of Pilgrim qualities. It is appropriate that the central one among them is the figure of Faith. It was in the spirit of faith that they laid the foundations of American life in their section of the country.

What was true of the northern settlements was true of the southern ones as well. Practically everything that was a part of the old Jamestown settlement is gone. It is significant that one of the most abiding of the old landmarks at Jamestown was the ruins of an old church in which the colonists first lifted their voices in the praise of God.

Among the American people, the church and state have always been organically separate, but they have always been spiritually united. The state has guaranteed protection to the church. In return, the church has given moral and spiritual support to the state.

The state can well afford to maintain such an attitude. It has no other bulwark so strong as is the church. The perpetuity of the state depends most largely upon the very things for which the Christian religion stands. Among them are virtue, loyalty, and fraternity.

Statesmanship is a necessity in the activities of a nation, but it is not the fundamental necessity. Diplomatic shrewdness may often be helpful, but it is not a foundation upon which rests the existence of any country. Rich economic development, splendid cities, cultured citizenship—all these are things that enter into the highest grade of national life, but they are not the fundamental requirements of existence and strength. The hardy virtues that make good men are the foundation stones upon which any sound national life must be built.

This is true because it is from the people that the national life flows. It does not come from executive offices, legislative chambers, nor judicial tribunals. These are only instrumentalities in the carrying on of its affairs. Its essence depends upon the people who make the state. It roots in the places where they live and work. It is never any better nor any worse than they are. It is tempered to the home life, the industrial life, and the social life of the land. It is as good as human virtue makes it, or as bad as the lack of human virtue leaves it. It is, therefore, more largely dependent upon Christian agencies than upon any other one influence.

Without the Christian church, the land would never have had these qualities that make life sound and strong. Deprived of the Christian church, it would soon cease to have them. With their departure, the sanctity would die out of family relations, the spirit of mutual helpfulness would perish from community life, and citizenship would be deprived of the attitude of loyalty to flag, country, and law. While these virtues are maintained, the state stands strong and firm. When they decay, the state goes to pieces as a barrel falls to staves when the supporting hoops are removed.

This is sufficient to indicate that the state can hardly place too high a value upon the church, and that it cannot place too high a value upon the faith for which the church stands. A few words should be now said to the point that since the church and the faith have served the country so well in years gone by, they cannot afford to miss the present supreme opportunity to serve it.

America is passing through a great transition stage. No one can say just what the outcome is to be, but every one recognizes the presence of a national ferment which is certain to result in something positive in the not distant future. There is probably small ground for alarm. Ours is a nation of thoughtful people. Whatever they do in the end will be tempered with wise judgment. As it has been in other days, they will choose the wise course, and we shall only find ourselves better situated than before. The fact stands, however, that we are now in a transition period. The whole world is entering into a new period in its existence.