Part 5

It is desirable that this new period shall be really an evolution of the old. The best of the past should survive, having added to it the best thought and talent the new age can furnish. Those revolutionary minds who think the new order will be some sudden substitution for an old one wrecked by the hand of annihilating violence are in the hopeless minority. Sound judgment will prevail, but a change is on the way. In fact it is already partially realized.

In such a time of social unrest and upheaval as this, it is easier than at other times to make blunders. Other lands have felt this fever before ours, and some of them at that time wrote pages into their history which they have spent all the years since wishing they could erase. Just now the popular mind needs in an unusual degree the steadying influence of a great faith. The Christian faith is sufficiently conservative to be careful, and sufficiently progressive to be fearless in the face of vision. It is, therefore, supremely adapted to meet the needs of the times.

The Christian Gospel is the great solvent of modern problems. The problems of the age are ethical and social. Fundamental to ethical and social problems are spiritual conditions. The Christian Gospel is an ethical and social message based on spiritual principles.

The Gospel should, therefore, be spread to-day with such an earnestness as its prophets have never known before. From pulpit, in Bible school, and by means of printed page, it should be given the freest possible course to the minds of men. It should certainly be made a more common topic of everyday conversation. Let no one think it is unwelcome. The human race realizes its present situation, and it is anxious to hear about anything that holds out any hope or promise. The world is strangely Gospel hungry at the present time. It is impatient of substitutes, but anxious for the real article.

In years past the forces of the Kingdom have been an incalculable support to the government. The church has carried the interests of the nation to the throne of grace. When necessary it has given men to defend the flag. The Bible and the flag have advanced together. It is safe to assume that in the present time the nation will find all the old-time help in the church and in the religion for which it stands.

The Christian Program (1920)

Jesus loved to set forth the nature of the Kingdom in terms of growing things. He likened it to a grain of mustard seed which grew into a tree, and to a lump of leaven which leavened the whole of three measures of meal.

These are both apt pictures of the Kingdom and His plan for its growth. Its realization depends upon the germination and final fruition of the truth. It therefore depends upon the passing from one to another of its master secret.

The dream of Jesus was a pretentious one. It meant not only the conquest of the planet but the conquest of it at its most difficult point. In such a conquest guns and navies are helpless. A greater than a military program is necessary. Jesus chose the greatest of all plans—the passing of the message from lip to lip through the channels of everyday conversation. Under his plan, each person is charged to be a witness of what he knows.

The result of any problem in progression is startling. It is surprising how quickly a whole planet could be evangelized if the message grew in its sweep according to such a mathematical law. If each person who knows Jesus passed the knowledge of his experience on to two others, the outward rim of things could be touched in a little while. Such a plan is not only numerically adequate, but it is the only plan which is numerically adequate.

The Christian program tends to the making of more and better Christians because the plan of personal evangelism makes every believer an evangelist. One is a little more wholly committed to the gospel he has passed on to others. A philosophy of words is very apt to become a philosophy of life. The sense of being a witness has steadied many a trembling Christian to a new strength and resolution. Responsibility is a wonderful tonic.

Contributed essay to a symposium on “The Church and Young People” (1920)

The status of the church in its relation to youth to-day is generally disappointing. Unless it is improved, the kingdom will become a victim of race suicide. In certain larger lines, the world seems to be advancing; in the simpler matters of personal ideals and moral standards, many people think it to be losing ground.

The origin of our problem is threefold. It comes, first, from a growing reign of carnality in the world—the seeking of wealth and pleasure at any cost. It comes, secondly, from the surrender of erstwhile righteous as well as indifferent homes to the notion that, since one is young but once, he should be encouraged to spoil the only youth he is to have. It comes, thirdly, from a condition in social institutions and community life which makes it difficult for one to live the better life without severing the social ties that bind him to others.

Young people cannot pass through the public schools of the average city without making a choice between being worldly and being wall flowers. It even seems that a young man cannot go through a great war for humanity without having the tobacco habit forced upon him as a part of a great propaganda for commercial purposes. Boys and girls can hardly attend a social function without seeing indecent attire and being invited to participate in things which deteriorate faith and ideals.

Our equipment for meeting the situation is generally inadequate. We have plenty of organization, but it is too general, too miscellaneous, and too much interested in funds and reports. We have too many young people’s organizations and too little life in any of them. This is a general trouble with Methodism. We would do better with one tenth of our present machinery and nine times more use of that one tenth.

Our program should probably cover the following points, all of which are old and simple: _(1) A warm spiritual life and a high personal ideal for all_. There are no exceptions for age or youth in the standards of the kingdom. _(2) An emphasis on family faith and practice, with a revival of proper parental authority_. If the children must rule, let the parents at least retain veto power in the interest of right living. _(3) A program of community reconstruction_ which will ultimately make schools and other public institutions as respectful of the ideals of evangelical Christians as they now are of those of Jews and Roman Catholics. _(4) Simple but effective organization for the recognition of the young people of the church as a normal social group_ and for their development along the lines indicated in the growth of Jesus—wisdom, stature, favor with God, and favor with man. There is no better program of training than that which includes mind, body, religious instinct, and social relationships.

Beyond this I see little that the church and its agencies can do. Nothing is to be gained by compromising with the mind of the flesh, which is death. We should get the right kind of attitude, organization, and equipment. We should use them at their best and then stand our ground. The right-minded will respond to nothing less than a Christian appeal. The wrong-minded we shall not win anyway—until a revolution has taken place in their point of view.

The Message of an Empty Tomb (1920)

One Sunday morning twenty centuries ago a woman stood musing beside an empty grave. She had come there early in the morning to bring the tribute of a final service to a departed friend whose name was Jesus. He had died on a cross the preceding Friday. Being poor, his body had received the hospitality of a kind-hearted citizen of Arimathea.

The visitor at the grave of the Nazarene met with a surprising situation. She did not find things as she expected—if she really expected anything. Probably her thoughts were little more than vague impressions, and she was taking it for granted that the grave still claimed its own.

She did not find it so. The seal was broken; the door was open; and the former occupant was gone. The garden was silent, but not with the silence of the dead. Its stillness seemed rather to speak of life. It was like a battlefield upon which a great struggle has taken place, and a great principle vindicated. The very voicelessness seemed eloquent of victory.

Mary need not have been surprised. Jesus had often told his friends that such a thing would happen. His emphasis had never been upon dead people nor dead things. His life had been a message of life triumphant. He had even released others from the fetters of the grave.

The world has always had strange ways, however, of putting an indefinite construction upon the words of Jesus. Men often remark upon the wonder of them, but living the truth of them is quite another thing. People are willing to admit their beauty. Here and there are those who are even willing to admit their truth. They are not so many, however, who venture to take them for a life program.

The same old story was repeated in this case. The assurance of Jesus that the tomb should be but a temporary habitation had been listened to with respect, but it had not been really taken seriously. It had become a forgotten promise. Whether Mary disbelieved, or only failed to believe, she acted upon the assumption that Jesus was dead. Others had remained in their graves. She took it for granted that she would find him in his. She had not learned her right to expect marvelous things. She cannot be blamed much. She only did what most people do. To her credit it must be said that she learned that day that hers was not a dead, but a living Lord. It is to be hoped that others have learned as much.

The silences were eloquent, aided as they were by the shock of a great surprise. They spoke very clearly to Mary as she stood thoughtfully by the vacant tomb that morning. Indeed, they spoke so clearly that across all the intervening generations we can still hear some of the things they said.

They told her that life laughs at fetters. Whoever thinks to bind it with stones and seals plans the impossible. It is made for the universal spaces and for the everlasting years. The life of Jesus possessed altogether too much vitality to long remain hidden behind the stone walls of a sepulcher.

The world is strewn with graves. We have dug them in countless numbers, and departed generations made so many that the vast majority of them have long been forgotten. They are all as empty as was the tomb of Jesus that Sunday morning. We look at the earth and think of it as hiding those whom we have loved when we ought to look upward and think of them as in the keeping of another world. We look backward and think of their lives as belonging to the past when we ought to look onward and think of them as belonging to the boundless future.

The silences of the garden must have told her, too, that the Lord had reached one of the final points in his leadership of men. His was largely a mission of demonstration. For ages men had been frankly doubting that true godliness and actual immortality were possible. Jesus demonstrated the fact that the divine spirit fits normally into both the affairs of life and the experiences of the hour of death. He proved that it was possible not only to live like a god, but also to die like one.

He had led the way through the most trying experiences that life can bring. He had gone ahead into the valley and the shadow of death. On the first Sunday morning after his crucifixion he demonstrated his power to lead the world out of the grave as well as into it. Mary was the first witness to that demonstration.

A few days later he led the way to one still farther point in the ascending scale of human experience—the gate of glory. He gained each of these points in order to show men that it is possible to reach them. It is for others not merely to admire, not merely to admit, not even merely to worship, but to follow. Wherever Jesus has gone, he has gone that others might also come.

Not all the places by which his footprints lead may seem pleasant. They lie along paths of sacrifice, daring, and suffering. With an unfailingly majestic spirit, he faced whatever presented itself as incident to the fulfilling of a great mission.

A valley of pain matters much less, however, when a mountain of achievement lifts its head beyond. It seems an insignificant thing that one must follow him into the chill of the grave when one knows that he has already broken the way through on the other side. It is not a permanent condition. It is almost too swift in its passing to even be called a temporary experience. A sunset would be a tragedy did one not know that the sun will rise again. We cease to dread the twilight when we reflect that it is but the pathway to another dawn.

The silences of the resurrection morning said still another thing. They answered the old question as to whether the soul can exist when separated from the body. The physical frame of Jesus had seemed that of a dead man when it was taken from the cross three days before, and laid in the hospitable tomb of the kind-hearted Joseph. Now it was again inhabited by the same spirit which had shone from its eyes in other days.

This was no new miracle. Its like had been repeatedly performed by the power of Jesus. The body and soul of his friend, Lazarus, had been reunited after an even longer separation. Other spirits had been rewedded to the tenements which they had inhabited, each time by the wonderful will of this man who himself lived in such positive fashion and for such abiding things that the hand of death could not permanently enchain him.

Let it be as it will with these earthly frames of ours. The sooner they return to dust, after we are gone, the better. The human soul, however, was not made to perish. It is a thing of universal interests and eternal possibilities. It is life in its highest terms, and it was life with which Jesus was essentially concerned.

The silences were eloquent as Mary stood by the tomb that morning. They told her that immortality was not a dream, but a fact. They declared that everlasting life was not a baseless hope, but a wonderful reality. They gave an unspoken answer to an age-long question. They proclaimed the glorious fulfillment of a precious promise.

They spoke with a reminding voice, and it can still be heard across the years. They bid us not to think of the words of Jesus too vaguely. The greatest beauty of the gospel is its truth. The ideal of Jesus will remain unrealized until men have learned to accept his words at their face value, and to act upon the assumption that they are true. Faith knows no other testimony so worthy as that of obedience. The wonder of Jesus is the fact that his power so far outreaches the limits of our experience.

The Laboratory Test (1921)

We may argue about the Christian faith all we will, but the only way to appraise its real merits is to apply the laboratory test. An ancient singer challenges: “Oh, taste, and see that the Lord is good.” This is an invitation to possess the knowledge of experience.

Certain things about Christianity must be taken by faith. Its practical value, however, is demonstrable. It is demonstrated in our civilization. It is seen in the new life of mission lands. It is revealed in the personal experiences of twice-born men.

The testimony of opinion is uncertain. The testimony of experience is final and unanswerable. Arguments on the existence of love do not count with one who loves. The thing experienced demands no proof by logical processes.

A laboratory test of anything demands two things. First, one must enter the laboratory with an open mind. One does not go there to confirm his prejudices, but to discover the truth. He must be willing to accept the truth which he discovers. One cannot alter the truth to suit himself. He must conform himself to the truth.

Second, the honest investigator in the laboratory must put a thing to a complete and honest test. He must do so regardless of his own opinions or desires. The explorer must fulfil all the conditions of discovery before he announces his conclusions. One has no right to deny Christianity until he knows it fully, and has proven it a failure by actual test.

Were this condition fulfilled there would be no unbelievers. The faith has nothing to fear from being tested. Indeed, the more it is tested the better. Whoever tries it honestly will find that it works. It can afford to invite the pragmatic test, for it is supremely a workable religion. The best things never can be adequately appraised at the first glance. They must be tried.

The Nearness of Destiny (1921)

In the opening sentence of the Book of Revelation John states that in it are related the things which must shortly come to pass. In that sentence he indicates an attitude toward the events of life which it is worth while for all to hold. He appreciates the fact that the future is not remote. With at least some of its events we are face to face. From none of them are we very far removed. Destiny is no far distant thing. The processes that build it are continually going on.

The events of life are like the landmarks on a highway. Some of them may look to be very far ahead, but they are approaching us very swiftly. We travel the journey of life at great speed. The tomorrows are never long in arriving. We may not know what the future has in store for us, but one thing we do know. Whatever it has in store will not be long in arriving.

To the eyes of childhood the day of maturity seems very far away. To the young the days drag slowly. The time of independence, maturity, and responsibility seems to creep toward one at the pace of a snail.

One by one the days pass, and each seems to pass a little more swiftly than the last. Maturity finally comes, and then it seems that the years that brought it have been altogether too short. Our natures are so constituted that the morning is always calling for the noon. Then the noontime is always regretting that the morning has passed by.

Only to the idle and the aimless do the passing days seem long. To one who possesses a commanding purpose in life they are very brief indeed. There is never time enough to do a great life work. Few great servants of their times pass out of this world feeling that they have completed their task to their own satisfaction.

The worker who has a great deal of ground to cover before he ceases his toiling often learns this fact to his regret. He is called to his task by the sunrise, and he feels that the day is long. He goes about his work in leisurely fashion, feeling that there is no occasion for haste. As the day wears on he begins to measure his task by the vanishing hours. He begins to hasten, but the sun declines in the West all too soon. As the shadows lengthen he grows feverishly hurried, but it is generally too late. The sun goes down upon an unfinished task. The only thing that would have saved the day would have been an early morning sense of the swiftly hurrying hours.

Some years ago a distinguished leader of thought in America remarked in the last public address he made before he died that the longest time is short when it is past. His words were true. The years always look long as they lie ahead of us, but when they have passed we are always saying how short a time it was.

It has been the human habit to think of the Kingdom of God as a distinct thing. We have kept it far from us both in space and time. We have so thought of it in spite of the fact that we were told by Him of Galilee that the Kingdom is at hand. We have waited and waited for the Kingdom, sometimes half doubting that it would ever come, and all the while it was at our very finger-tips. We had only to lay hold upon it, feel it, realize it, and live it, to make it ours.

We have assumed, too, that eternity lies somewhere in the uncertain reaches of the infinitely distant future. In this also we have been mistaken. Eternity has been going on all the while. We have simply taken a little section of eternity and arbitrarily named it time. It is still a part of eternity, just the same. Every day that goes by is just that much of eternity. Therefore, everything that a day holds bears an eternal significance. Its every event is built into the walls of destiny. All the issues with which we ever have to do are eternal.

Such is the process of judgment. Another name for it is the law of cause and effect. Causes and effects swiftly succeed each other in life. The effect is as inevitable as the cause is definite. Moreover, it is not long delayed.

I once knew a teacher who had inscribed in large letters over the door of his classroom these words: “What you are to be you are now becoming.” He understood this principle. The judgment is going on all the while. We can never hope to be in the future anything else than what we are allowing ourselves to become in the present.

The mills of God do not grind so slowly as one might think. From the larger point of view it may be seen that they do some of their work with surprising swiftness. We cannot afford to dream away our days in the ease of thinking that life’s responsibilities and tests lie far in the future. We are very apt to find ourselves mistaken. Often they lie just ahead.

The events of the life of Jesus came and went with a tragic and growing swiftness. During the last few days of His life in Jerusalem they seemed borne upon the current of a swiftly rushing stream. To Him things always shortly came to pass. The Christ of revelation was the same who had walked in Galilee. He had the same habits of thought.

This is the reason why He was able to crowd ages into years. Before He had fairly passed the threshold of maturity, He had already succeeded in living the biggest life of all the centuries. He simply understood the nearness of destiny. He realized that time will not wait.