Part 7

What was this ethereal, star-like dream that so commanded His life? It was a race redeemed from its sin, ignorance, littleness, and woe. He saw how His people were fettered by their own tendencies. He dreamed of a day of freedom to be and achieve their best. And it will come. Some day the world will be a picture of the vision of the Man who lived with His head among the stars. The light of the Bethlehem star falls across the centuries lighting the way to a new heaven and a new earth.

The Comrade Perfect: An Appreciation (1929)

In the “Passage to India,” Walt Whitman speaks of the longing of the soul for the “Comrade Perfect,” and asks if somewhere such a comrade does not wait for us. We all know perfectly well that life is not all that it ought to be without the presence of the Personality which completes us.

There is such a comrade, and He does something better than wait for us. He comes to us. The abstraction of the idea of God found concrete realization in Him who was called Immanuel, or God with us. All this was made more intimate still by the coming of the spirit divine, which brought God not only to us but into us.

God does not rule the world from some distant throne but from the dusty road. He does not occupy a height and frown upon His people in patronizing condescension. He seeks a warm place in their hearts, where He may guide their thoughts and actions. The divine plan looks only to the constant narrowing of the chasm between man and God.

The philosophers and theologians dispute whether God is transcendent or immanent, whether He rules from above us or beside us. As is true of many arguments, both viewpoints are right. God transcends us in all power, all knowledge, and all goodness. At the same time, He is immanent in the ministry of Jesus, in the guidance of Providence, and in the presence of the Holy Spirit. The life of Jesus makes that plain, for Jesus is a picture of God going where men go, living where men live, and meeting the struggles that men meet.

And so He is the Comrade Perfect. No one needs to be friendless in this world. No one needs to be lonely. We are always within speaking distance of an unfailing Friend. We need to search neither across the years nor across the miles. We need only to look and listen, and He is there. We need only to open the way, and He enters our hearts in response to our silent welcome. We need only to make a place, and He walks beside us, whatever our way may be. He is the great completing element in our otherwise incomplete lives.

Four Addresses to Young People (1929) (Ages 16 to 22)

1. Heralds of the Name.

In one of his letters John speaks of those who for the sake of the Name went forth, taking nothing of the Gentiles. He was thinking of the already growing army of heralds of that Name which is above every name. Probably, too, he was remembering that day by the Sea of Tiberius when Jesus came by and he heard and answered the challenge to life’s highest adventure.

No one should offer his life for special Christian service merely because he thinks it would be nice work to do, nor because it has been done by someone he likes or admires, nor because someone he would like to please wishes him to do it, nor because he thinks he can speak well or has an attractive personality for social contacts, nor because he thinks it will serve him as a stepping stone to something else. To begin on any such a basis means to be doomed to failure from the beginning. It also means injustice to the work itself.

Least of all should one enter special Christian service because he thinks it easy. That is one of the greatest possible mistakes. Whoever goes out to serve Christ must prepare his soul to endure hardness as a good soldier. He will discover that it is a real warfare into which he is going. If he likes the thrill of adventure, if he enjoys doing difficult things, if privation appeals to him, if he does not mind standing up to duty in the face of opposition and danger, then he will like soldiering for Christ. Otherwise, he will not.

Only one thing should lead one to dedicate his life to Christian work. It is the great compulsion. One has it when he is conscious that he cannot do anything else and be quite content. That was the feeling that drove Moses to the end of the wanderings of his people, that sent Jeremiah to thunder the warning to a nation drifting to its ruin, and that impelled Jesus to the tears of Gethsemane and the anguish of Calvary.

The person who does not find it in his soul to give his life wholly to Jesus is to be congratulated. He will pluck many thorns, but each thorn will bear a rose. He will travel many hard paths, but he will have the joyous consciousness of being a world builder for God.

2. The Conditions of Communion.

One day in 737 B.C. a young man of high social standing was in the temple at Jerusalem. There he saw a vision of the Lord upon His throne. The experience humbled the young man’s soul, cleansed his lips, and sent him forth to sound a warning to a people swiftly rushing to their doom. The temple atmosphere furnished Isaiah with the conditions of communion.

About 625 B.C., when the storm clouds were still hovering near Judah, a young priest named Jeremiah saw in the presence of the Scythian army on Syrian soil the possibility of invasion by them and their Assyrian allies. He warned his people of coming destruction, at the bidding of Jehovah, who told him that he had been set apart for the task since before his birth. The peril he saw drawing near his people furnished Jeremiah with the conditions of communion.

One day a young man named Jesus, His as custom was, entered the little synagogue at Nazareth. He was one who took part in the meeting. Taking the roll of the prophet Isaiah, He read from it the words of a commission to proclaim the day of God under the compulsion of the divine spirit. As He read, His heart told Him that commission was His own. Jesus heard His great challenge to duty as He stood in the place of worship reading the words of those who in earlier centuries had intimately known God.

One day, still later, John saw the curtains of eternity drawn aside to reveal to him the things that must shortly come to pass. Three things made his vision possible. He was in a quiet and secluded place. It was the Lord’s Day. He was in the spirit. Such a situation is very apt to carry anyone within seeing and hearing distance of God. John met God face to face by the fulfilment of certain fundamental psychological conditions of vision and communion.

On the evening of the twenty-fourth of May 1738, a young man who had believed in God all his life, but had sought vainly for a heart experience of faith, went into a meeting in Nettleton Court, on the East side of Aldersgate Street, in London. At a quarter before nine o’clock he knelt at an altar and felt his heart strangely warmed. The altar of a church furnished John Wesley with the conditions of communion.

3. The Kingdom Partnership.

On the day when Moses enjoyed that high privilege, direct communion with the Great I Am, he heard the call of heaven to high duty and responsibility. He shrank from it, as greatness usually does. True worth is seldom a candidate. In church and state alike, things go better when the office seeks the man.

Among the reasons Moses offered why he should not be chosen to lead Israel from its bondage was one very commonly heard given in reply to calls to religious duty. Moses said he was not eloquent.

God was ready with a counter proposition. After having a man in training for forty years the Almighty was not to be put off so easily. He proposed that Moses should undertake the task of leadership as a man of action, while his brother Aaron should share it with him as a man of speech.

It was the old but ever-new combination of the man of deeds and the man of words—the practical leader and the spiritual one. We see it later in the case of Ezra and Nehemiah, and still later in the necessary partnership between the modern minister and laymen in the work of the kingdom. Neither type of service can be at its best unless it is in cooperation with the other.

In fact, each type of service is so necessary that the kingdom suffers when these two types of Christian workers get their functions confused. It is usually a mistake for a minister to forsake the altar to serve tables, and just as much so for a layman to forsake the things for which he is peculiarly qualified and usurp the place of the minister. In the work of the kingdom, Moses and Aaron each has his own function, and his highest ministry is to perform his own function well.

The work of the minister is with the dynamics of Christianity, while that of the layman is with the mechanics of it. Too often each stands and debates with the other that his part is most important, or else each envies the other his task and neglects his own. The mechanics of the kingdom could not exist if the dynamics were not maintained, and the dynamics would be wasted if the mechanics were not intelligently promoted.

4. The Institutionalization of Religion.

The selection of Aaron as priest was a step toward religious organization. As nearly as such things can be determined among the mixed currents of human history, it was the beginning of the institutionalization of religion. What has been gradually growing up in the form of spiritual vision now began to take the form of a system of rites and ceremonies, housed in an especially designed building, held at fixed times and under specified conditions, and presided over by men especially selected, qualified, and prepared for their task.

Subsequently, this became a stumbling block to many people. A certain type of mind easily becomes confused in its thinking and fails to recognize the difference between an institution and the thing it represents. On the one hand, the priest has sometimes made the mistake of regarding the institution as an end rather than a means. On the other hand, the man on the street has sometimes assumed that the church pretends to be the sum and substance of the faith and has, consequently, failed to use it as a clearing house for the service he should have rendered to God and his fellow men.

Any great idea or interest, however spiritual in its nature, must be incarnated in an institution or it will die. The life of the race could not be nurtured without the family. Commerce would die without the market place and the transportation system. Government could not be maintained without the state. Education could not be effected without the school. Religion would long ago have perished without the temple and the altar. Spiritual ideas do not cling to human custom. An institution must make them visual, real, and effective. Such is the reason for the existence of the church.

The final vision of the Book of Revelation is of a social order without a temple. We are led to think that such a day will come, but that it will come only because the whole world shall have taken on the spirit and viewpoint of the house of worship. The mission of the church is to make itself unnecessary. It will be dispensable when all the world shall at last have conformed to the purposes of God.

What Is Happening to Religion? (1929)

A recent book makes the point that the old notion that science had defeated religion has been banished more by what has happened in the field of science during the last twenty-five years than by what has happened in the fields of religion and theology. Certain implications in this statement are worthy of consideration.

With all its vaunted moral ideals, the boasted Victorian age did develop a rather marked and dangerous hostility to religion. It was the age of Darwin, Spencer, and Huxley and, therefore, an age of discovery. The newness of some of the conclusions it reached caused the public mind to be carried away by its own enthusiasm. The pendulum is gradually coming to rest, and the scientist now understands that a new discovery is not a substitute for God.

The greatest sobering influence science has known has been its own constant success in the field of discovery. The theory of development, at first thought to have overturned God’s throne, when studied was found to be full of previously unsuspected implications of the divine. Science discovered that it was not a substitute for God, but only a new theory of divine creation.

The only dogmatism as prejudiced and unreasonable as that of some religionists is that of some scientists. No one is more prone than the scientist to assume the finality of what is as yet only a hypothesis, and to offer himself as a martyr to the cause of some fantastic phase of scientific fundamentalism. The knowledge of science can grow, even as may that of religion.

It appears to be a fact that unless the theologians gird themselves anew, they may find the very gospel they were raised up to champion more zealously and loyally defended by the scientists than by themselves. Eminent scientists announcing their faith in and support of religion are a growing company. The technique of the scientific laboratory forbids compromise. The scientist discovers what is true and stands by it. The theologian must do the same.

Has the Day of Great Preachers Passed (1921)

Every little while we hear anew the question, “Has the day of great preachers passed?” Sometimes it is asked in a sincerely interrogatory spirit. In other cases it is meant as an implication that the times of great preaching are no more.

All keen observers of social and spiritual influences know that the prophet is one of the most potent factors in the building of our destiny, both as a nation and as a race. It is, therefore, important that we should occasionally stop and take account of our situation as to ministerial supply. The invoice should, of course, be qualitative as well as quantitative. Especially do we need to do this in a time of crisis and need like the present.

The past has indeed boasted some great preachers. Paul, Savonarola, Wesley, Whitefield, Edwards, Beecher, and Brooks—these are all men whose names stand out upon the scroll of fame with a luster which any soldier or statesman might envy. They will continue to occupy an honored place in the memory of men when the names of many soldiers and statesmen have been obscured by lapse of time.

There is no reason, however, why the average of ability should vary much from one age to another. Changing times mold men into different types and call for new forms of service, yet the force with which they rise to the occasions that confront them is about the same in one period as in another. The preachers and the preaching of one age measure with those of another without much of discredit to either. They differ in type, but not in ability or purpose. This being true, those of the present average creditably with those of any period of the past.

Of course, this is doubted by some good and sincere people. A number of things give seeming basis to their doubts. However, a second look at these conditions is worth while.

First of all, we must recognize the common human tendency to glorify the past to the disadvantage of the present. We all have reason to look out for this disposition, but it especially besets older people. Something about human nature makes it prone to live in the past. We are continually hearing it said or suggested that the great statesmen, the great poets, the great scholars, the great preachers, the great virtues, and the good days are all dead and gone. One may read something of this sort in the literature of ancient as well as modern ages. Yet the progress of the world has gone right on.

The fact is that we quickly forget what the past actually was. When to-day becomes yesterday, we forget its troubles and glorify its redeeming features. It is well enough that we do, yet the habit often leads us far afield of the truth. If people were really called upon to live again some of the good old days they talk about so much, they might soon conclude that the change was for the worse.

Next, we must remember that the standard of greatness constantly lifts. It takes more to make a great man to-day than it did in other years. The judgment of those who pass upon the question of a man’s greatness and accord him his place in history was never so exacting. The Harvard of Emerson’s day represented about the grade of scholarship obtainable now in a good high school. What then was exceptional scholarship is now commonplace. It is the same with statesmen. Men who were outstanding in their day would seem altogether mediocre in the face of the demands of this present period. In this time of widely diffused knowledge, it takes more than it ever did before to win the name of greatness in the pulpit.

Next, we must remind ourselves that the minister occupies a very different place in the community from that which he held in other days. He is, therefore, judged by very different standards. Of old he was apt to be the chief educator of the community, and was judged by his learning. That place is now filled by the expert educator with the best equipment money can place at his disposal. He was the chief commentator on current affairs, and was judged by the wideness of his information. That place has been taken over by the editor. He was often the only trained public speaker in the town, and was judged by the polish of his oratory. Now the land overflows with capable public speakers.

The conclusion of it all is that the work of the minister has narrowed down to the one specific thing to which he is called, the specialized service for which society must look to him alone. He is not to be judged by his learning, his familiarity with public affairs, or his ability as a speaker, altho he needs to possess them all. The one standard by which he is measured is the question of his ability as an exponent of the Christian religion.

Again, the greatness of the preacher as a prophet to-day must be in spite of certain influences which militate against it. Strange to say, one of them is the general economic development of the country, together with the prevalence of ease and prosperity. Our ministers, as a rule, have come from the poorer class of homes and from the more poorly developed sections of the country, especially from the hills, plains, and deserts where solitude prevails. One little hill section in the middle west has supplied most of the ministers for its own and the surrounding States. There is a reason. In fact, there are two.

One is the fact that in the poorer home and countryside there is not much to compete against God for a boy’s thought and attention. Young people brought up there do not enjoy many compensations. They have little to make them pleasure-mad. They live in a very narrow world, and they hunger to get out and do something worth while.

The other is the fact that the religious consciousness is best developed in the solitudes. God has often to look to the hills and the desert for men to be his leaders. Abraham learned to be a friend of God partly because he walked so much in the vast silences. Moses met the great I Am on the mountain side. It was in the hill country that Elkanah and Hannah reared the little lad who was to be the successor of Eli. Our religion itself was cultivated in one of the poorest sections of the old world. With fertile river valleys all about it, barren Palestine gave us our richest heritage of religious literature and leadership. The men living in the richer sections might have done so, but they were too preoccupied with wealth-getting. They had no time to listen among the silences for the voice of God.

Unfortunately, the temper of the present age is not so conducive as it might be to great preaching. There is a tendency to discount the value of the prophetic function manifest even on the part of some quite religious people. One may find in almost any current publication a statement or inference that it is not the spoken word but the acted deed that counts. The fact is that both count. It took both Moses, the man of deeds, and Aaron, the man of words, to lead Israel to the realization of its hope. It took both Ezra, the scribe, and Nehemiah, the cupbearer to the king, to rebuild the walls and the temple of Jerusalem. It has always taken the prophet and the toiler together to achieve human progress in the best sense.

We have great preachers to-day. They have terrific competition to meet, but when one closes his ears to the clash of the noises about him he can still hear the voice of the prophet lifted clear and distinct. As of old, there are small prophets and false ones. As of old, at the same time, there are great prophets and true. However, if we are to keep preachers and preaching great they must have every encouragement that can be given them.

The Heart Interest in Preaching (1922)

A great deal of otherwise good preaching fails of its purpose. It may be that no flaw can be found in it from the purely homiletic viewpoint, yet it fails to get the verdict for God and righteousness. Often this happens because the sermon has been considered as an end within itself. The preacher has failed to take into account the human values involved in his work. He has prepared his sermon with the one idea of making a perfect product.

His more successful brother has gone at the task in quite another way. He has worked no less earnestly and persistently, but he has seen more than the paper before him. He has looked past his study table and beyond his book shelves out into the busy world where his people live. He has seen them toiling, hoping, struggling, and suffering. He has thought of their heartaches and problems, of their aspirations and difficulties, of the drag that sordid situations and drab years put upon their souls. He has felt their temptations, their discouragements, and their limitations. His heart has gone out and felt the weight of their burden with them.