Part 6
An old Hebrew prophet called upon men to prepare to meet God. We have assumed that this meeting is to be at an indefinite future date, called the Judgment Day. We greatly need to understand that our meeting with Him is not only a future but also a present event. Each of us is repeatedly face to face with God. All through the years we have been meeting Him every day and hour. He is the Silent Partner in all our upward struggles. He is the Inevitable Factor with which we must reckon in all our considerations. He is the Absolute Quantity to which we must relate ourselves, and to whose standards we must conform. These obligations do not belong to some far future time. They belong to the present. We are not dealing with a static order, but with a progressive one. We are the children of One who takes into consideration but one tense. His word is _NOW_.
We are not facing the future in blindness to these things. The curtain has been drawn back from their real nature that we might behold it. We know that the events of the future closely impend. The tomorrows are at our finger-tips. No dam can hold back the stream of destiny. It hurries along the years so rapidly that there is never too much time to prepare for the coming of whatever its current may sweep to our feet.
The hand of prophecy never draws back the veil that we may look upon a lie. The Almighty does not trifle with us. The revelation of the Scriptures is of inevitable things. The events which they disclose are more certain than the course of the stars and planets. The sun may falter in its path, but the plans of God never do.
One of the most serious and significant things the Scriptures disclose is the fact that the gates of the future are not far removed. They open directly before us. Even now our hands are upon them. Our feet are upon the threshold of the tomorrows.
Objectively, this earthly existence is merely a rapid succession of events. The holidays to which we look forward with expectation, the meetings for which we can hardly wait, the partings that give us pain, the joys and the woes that make up life’s intermingling of sunshine and shadow, the birthdays that register our years, love, toil, death—all are things that “shortly come to pass.” The years hurry onward. Therefore, whatever one would do he must do quickly.
Children and the Church (1922)
The strength and membership of the Christian Church are great, but they are not what they should be. After all, the Church is only a comparatively small fraction of the sum total of human society. The plans of Jesus will not have been realized and the Kingdom of God will not have become an actual fact until the Church and the race are one.
The Church is growing, but one of the evidences why there remains a great deal of ground to be possessed by the Kingdom is to be found in the fact that the race is growing more rapidly than the Church is. It is possible for an institution to be growing and yet losing ground if its problems are growing more rapidly than its power to meet them.
Viewed alone, the reports on Church membership for any single year look somewhat encouraging. When one reflects, however, upon the growth of the race and the encroachments of paganism, the encouragement is diminished. The Church is supposed to represent a leavening force. It is quite proper to consider its mission in that light. A leavening force, however, must not remain such. Its work is to leaven the whole lump.
A degree of failure is involved somewhere in the question. Otherwise, the mission of Christianity would have been achieved before this time. The difficulty is not in the matter of learning, for Christian leaders were never so well trained for their work as now. It does not relate to wealth, for it has been a long while since the Church could truly protest its poverty of silver and gold. It is not even in the matter of service, for there were never so many people working in the Kingdom as now.
=The Vital Point=
The trouble does not lie in our failure to work, though it does lie in our failure to work to the best advantage. We have toiled with the problems, but we have not yet unitedly attacked it at the vital point. That point is childhood.
This word of warning does not seem to be needed by the Roman Catholic branch of Christendom, for that church grows rapidly. The reason for the following it has does not lie in the quality of its preaching, for it does not emphasize the sermon. It is not to be found in its form of worship, for that is in a strange tongue and according to antiquated formulae. The secret most largely lies in the persistent nurture of children in the faith of their fathers.
In this regard Protestantism is lacking. We have cultivated too little conviction on the question of a child’s relation to the Church and the Christian faith. We have kept our minds free and easy on the question, until a situation has arisen to remind us that the real fruit which we desire for the Kingdom comes not as the result of indifference but of intense effort.
Even a democratic conception may be carried to such an extreme that it counts for nothing. While Bolshevism and Anarchy have been tolerated under the protection of the State, they have also been fostered about the very firesides of many homes. We have tried to place Protestantism upon a democratic basis, but we must not forget that the principle of democracy does not diminish the necessity for conviction and fidelity. The disregard of obligation is not freedom.
The mistaken notion that there is no place for religion in the child mind is already bringing forth its pitiful harvest. Its fruit is a generation of younger people dwelling largely apart from the Church, more vitally concerned with other than religious questions, and living for ideals which are chiefly moulded by the standards of the present world.
Whatever the Church has meant in the progress of the race, and many thoughtful people believe that has been much, it will not be able to permanently maintain itself and its work unless this situation is reversed. It will not normally be able to realize upon the product of any home in which no definite emphasis has been laid upon the things for which it stands. We can hardly expect sustained support for the one institution dedicated to the saving of men in both this world and the world to come, unless each generation accepts the responsibility of teaching the next a wholesome love for and a genuine devotion to its teaching and its activity.
One cannot say that the parents of today are not concerned about their children. In most ways children were never so well cared for. In this particular thing, however, there is a distressing neglect. This is not true because parents mean to neglect any vital thing, nor is it true because they are antagonistic to this necessity. It is true because many fail to see that it is a necessity for childhood. People simply blind themselves to the fact that spiritual growth requires food as imperatively as does physical development.
In some cases, perhaps, it is the result of simple neglect. People are busy about so many things in these days that it does not always seem easy to give their children training in all the points requiring it. Some assume that the matter of religious training may properly be left to the church and the Sunday School.
=The Necessity for Religious Nurture in the Home=
Religious nurture is, however, a matter which requires the cooperation of the home. Some phases of it cannot be so successfully promoted anywhere else as there. Pastors and Sunday School teachers have a part to play in the religious education of the young, but certain great life lessons can never issue from any other source quite so appropriately as from the loved lips of fathers or mothers.
Nothing can be more groundless than the notion that a child should not be influenced religiously until he is old enough to settle such questions for himself. Ultimately he will settle them, but his decision will be largely the result of early training. Home teaching and influence affect every decision one makes through life.
One might as well refuse to feed a child until he could declare his own choice of food as to starve his religious nature until he could choose its satisfaction in his own way. Certain fundamental necessities are too constant and imperative to justify waiting. A life must be fed or it must perish, and this principle holds as true with childhood as it does with age. Indeed the necessities of a growing life are only the more acute.
Occasionally parents will insist that their failure to bring their children up in the ways of the Church is the result of their own rearing. They declare that it is a reaction against the strictness with which they were sent to Church in their own childhood. First, this is a calumny against good parents who tried to lay in the lives of their children the foundations of happiness and success. Second, it looks to the spiritual starvation of the younger generation, the decadence of a fundamental instinct, and the strangling of a necessary social institution. They probably owe much of their success to the thing for which they unjustly blame their parents. Whoever is not physically equal to an hour or two in the sanctuary is hardly a fit candidate for the world’s responsibilities.
We should assume a universal Church. By this I mean that we should assume that every child is born into the church, to be reared in its ways and teachings, and to be included among its numbers until he wilfully forsakes it. In other words, we should throw the chances on the right side instead of the wrong one as we have been doing. It is well enough to save lost sheep, but it is better to keep them from being lost. The religious experience will take care of itself if the religious life is properly nurtured.
Children are born for the kingdom of better things. Their Maker meant us to keep them true to it. He will care for their regeneration, if we will keep them in line for it by protecting them from blighting influences.
The Church’s Fourfold Program (1922)
To-day the Church has her face toward the future. She has a great purpose throbbing in her soul. She is directed by leaders of wisdom and vision. She has a program as broad as life itself. That program is fourfold.
It is, first, a program of evangelism. The Church is everywhere reminding herself that the winning of souls is her prime duty. This is true for many reasons, among which two are outstanding. This is the thing she has been set to do as the one means of ever really establishing the kingdom of God. Moreover, it is the one hope she herself has of surviving to continue her work.
It is, second, a program of education. One of the first commands God gave to nature was, “Let there be light.” That command has been ringing through the creative process all the ages. As the sun of warmth and light brought new strength to created things, so the sum of knowledge brings a new blessing to the inner life of man. The Church’s program of Christian education in the home, the Church, the school, and the college, is already bearing fruit. It will do so more and more as time passes.
It is, third, a program of social welfare. The Church is striving in this day to make itself known and felt for better things in the community. The organized life of the world as well as the individual life of men must be bettered by it. The apostolic Church was not a temple but a community. It must be the same with the modern Church.
It is, fourth, a program of finance. It is a great thing to-day to walk about Zion, tell her towers, and consider her bulwarks. Back of all of it is the money given by faithful servants of the kingdom. What many people need for blessing of their own lives as well as for the growth of the kingdom is an adequate financial standard and program.
Newer Conceptions of Religion (1922)
We can never have a new set of principles of truth, but we can have new discoveries of old ones and new attitudes toward them. We can never change the constitution of life and nature, but we can learn more about it and better adapt ourselves to it. We cannot alter the divine plan of life and redemption, but we can make progress in our understanding and use of it. Not to do so would be an inexpressible pity. We do not have a new religion, but we do have newer and more adequate conceptions of the old faith.
The older type of religious thinking was largely derived from the speculations of the cloister. That of the present is taken directly from the facts of life. The Bible was the basis of the old, and is the basis of the new; but in the one case it was viewed from the quiet shadows of the cell, while in the other it is seen from the viewpoint of the dusty road, the busy market place, and the domestic hearthstone.
In so far as the older religious thinking did take its conclusions from life, it tended to place the stamp of divinity only on the unusual phases and outstanding experiences. It saw God in the violence of the thunder and lightning, but it did not always sense him in the gentle sunshine of the ordinary day. It recognized him in the ecstasy of the mountaintop, but it did not always find him in the duty of the valley. It connected him with the exceptional moments, but not with quiet hours, prosaic tasks, and drab days.
The older religious thinking tended to glorify every tense except the present. It had its good old days on which it looked back with loving tenderness, and its Golden Age, toward which it looked forward with longing hope. The newer thinking recognizes the value of the past and the importance of the future, but lays its supreme emphasis upon the present. It glorifies only one tense, and that is the Golden Now.
The International Religion (1923)
The Book of Revelation is full of significant pictures, but none is more so than that presented in the Ninth Chapter. It is drawn in climaxes. The first part might seem disturbing if considered alone. As to whether God proposes to save the many or the few, it would seem to favor the first answer. John says that he heard the number of them that were sealed, and there were only twelve thousand from each of the tribes of Israel.
But let us not form our conclusions too hastily. John has more to say. He follows the above assertion with this: “And after these things I saw, and behold a great multitude which no man could number, out of every nation and of all tribes, and peoples, and tongues standing before the throne and before the Lamb arrayed in white robes; and palms in their hands.” This second part of the vision is the answer as to whether God proposes to save the many or the few.
From this point one might move out along any one of many lines of thought. He might think of Christianity as the religion of the masses. He might think of it as the religion of the long ago with their changes and their progress. He might see it as the religion of the nations. This leads to the outstanding significance of the passage under discussion. Christianity is the international religion. It is potentially so today. It will be actually so tomorrow.
This means something finer than that Christ will become the temporal or political ruler of nations. It means more than that he will become the king or lord of any land. It means he will become King of kings and Lord of lords. He will become the spiritual ruler of the hearts of men. No power can go beyond that. He will be enthroned in the hearts of peoples everywhere. The New Jerusalem will be world-wide in its scope.
The Great Teacher (1925)
One day long ago a young man stepped out from the throng, took a place on a hillside, and began to teach the people. He did it in such a way that they were amazed. They said he taught as one having authority, and not as their scribes. Consequently, the common people heard him gladly.
From that day he has been known as a teacher. The years have taught us to call him the Great Teacher, for they have shown us how well that title is deserved.
I. Jesus is a great teacher because he teaches vital things. The shallow and inconsequential have no place in his curriculum. Some spend years learning what is hardly worth the trouble, but not in the school of Christ. Whatever is presented there must really count. His test of subject-matter is, “Is it worth-while?”
II. He is a great teacher because he teaches in ways so simple and plain that none can mistake his meaning. Sometimes he speaks in the plainest expository form with nothing of embellishment and utterly void of the tricks of the rhetorician. Sometimes he makes it a story. The narrative is always one with familiar settings and characters, and it always makes a vital point before it is through. Jesus introduces a man and a truth to each other and sees that they become friends. The person who can do this well is a master instructor.
III. He is a great teacher because he always makes his own position clear and lets the force of his own influence fall on the right side. In these days, there are teachers who consider it a mark of scholarship to present various sides of a question and then leave the helpless student to make his own choice—and often a wrong one. Whether or not this is a scholarly procedure, it certainly is not a helpful one. Jesus never followed it. He went after the one vitally true viewpoint, committed himself to it without reserve, and sought to influence his hearers to do the same. It is such a teacher who builds history.
What Can We Believe? (1928)
One is made or unmade by his beliefs. They determine his doings and shape his destiny. Therefore, what we believe is a matter of vital importance. The demands upon our credulity are confusing. We wish to be receptive to truth, but on our guard against error. What may we believe with a reasonable degree of assurance and conviction? What may safely enter into the making of one’s personal faith?
A considerable number of claims upon our credulity may be put aside and disposed of once and for all. Among them are the claims which violate the evident laws of truth, the merely controversial claims of the various Christian groups, the superficial formalities of observance and organization, the vagaries of popular thought and personal opinion, and the mental effects of the shifting tides of emotion. Certain things we are driven to accept by the very facts of life.
One of them is that back of all the wonder of the universe and of life is a great Source, a First Cause, a Divine Something that we have named God. This Architect of the universe has not always dwelt among clouds and thick darkness. He has given us one revelation of Himself in human terms. It is the sweet spirit, the rugged strength, and the simple life of the Peasant of Galilee. It is not difficult to believe in God when one has contemplated the story of Jesus.
Another is that life has its consequences, that the results of right and wrong action are cumulative and reactive, and that each person now and forever reaps the reward of his doings. Some call it the law of cause and effect. Others call it judgment. Whatever it be called, it is not a penalty imposed, but a result arrived at. The goal one reaches depends upon the road he chooses and the direction in which he goes. The day one arrives at his destination is his judgment day.
Another is the everlastingness of spiritual values, the chief of which is the human soul. If nature treasures each atom of matter, and across long ages does not permit one of them to be destroyed, shall not that which transcends matter be even more jealously guarded and preserved? Nothing else in the universe can be destroyed. How, then, can life be done away?
The Christ of the Sea (1929)
It is an old and well-known story, recounted anew each Christmas time, that the Wise Men from the East were led to the cradle of the infant Jesus by a star. That fact has taken a large place in Christian imagery and symbolism. But of what is a star a symbol? It is suggestive of an ideal. How appropriate that a star should have shown the world to the cradle of one who set it thinking about ideals?
Jesus was a dreamer. His spiritual lineage ran far back into the life of the Jewish race. The nature of Esau was such that wherever he went, he was haunted by his physical desires. The nature of Jacob was such that wherever he lay down at night, even though his head were pillowed upon a stone, he dreamed of heaven and of angels. Jesus was of the line of Jacob. He lived with His head among the stars.
He wasted no time in getting the current of idealism under way. He began at once promoting the kind of thing the practical world calls impossible because it is right. The night He was born angels sang of glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, and good will among men. It was a warring and hating world to which they sang, but their song was a note in the new harmony He had come to establish.
This man who walked with His head among the stars did and said all kinds of impractical things. He said a kingdom of happiness was at hand, but that a man had to be born again in order to see it. He said the best way to save one’s life was to lose it. He said one should treat others as he wished them to treat him. He said one should love his neighbor as well as he loved himself. He told a rich, young man to give away everything he had and consecrate his life to service. The world is slowly catching the idea. You cannot conquer an ideal. Some time it will win.