The Warriors - Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
Even so, looking out upon our own spirits, do we not some day rouse to
the distortion and deformity of sin? Do we wish to retain these
grimacing phases of ourselves? Do we not yearn eagerly for the dignity
and beauty of high virtue? Do we not long for the graces and perfections
which make up a radiant and happy life? If we could be born again, would
we not be born a more spiritual being?
It is to this new birth that Jesus calls our souls. All around the babe,
hid in its mother's womb, there lies a world of which it has neither
sight nor knowledge. The fact that the babe is ignorant does not change
the fact that the world is there. So about our souls there lies the
invisible world of God, which, until born of the Spirit, we do not see
or understand. It is a world in which God is everywhere; in which there
is no First Cause, except God; in which there is no will, except the
will of God; in which there is no true and perfect love, except from
God; no truth, except revealed by God; no power, except from Him.
Conversion is the outlook over a world which is arranged, not for our
own glory, but for the good of God's creatures; in which what we do is
necessary, fundamental, permanent--not because we ourselves have done it
well, nor, in truth, because we have done it at all--but because what we
have done is a part of the universe which God is building. We change
from a self-centre to a God-centre; from the thought of whether the
world applauds to whether God approves; from the thought of keeping our
own life to the thought of preserving our own integrity; from isolation
from all other souls to a sympathy with them, an understanding of their
needs, and a desire to help their lives. It is a turning from a delight
in sin, or an indifference to sin, or merely a moral aversion to it, to
a deep-rooted hatred of every thought and act of sin, to penitence, and
to an earnest desire to pattern after God.
4. Jesus calls us by our sorrows, Jesus calls us by our dreams. He
thrills us by each high aim that life inspires. His voice is one of
understanding, of tenderness, of human appeal. How could we love Jesus
if He did not sympathize with our ideals? But here is a Divine One in
whose sight we are not visionary; who lovingly guards our least hope;
who welcomes our faintest spiritual insight; who takes an interest in
our social plans, and points out to us the great kingdom that is to be.
Christ lays hold of the divine that is in us, and will not let us go.
5. Jesus calls us by our latent gifts and powers. Which of us has ever
exhausted his possibilities? Which of us is all that he might be?
It is an impressive thought, that nothing in the universe ever gets used
up. It changes form, motion, semblance,--but the force, the energy,
neither wastes nor dies away. Air--it is as fresh as the air that blew
over the Pharaohs. Sun--it is as undimmed as the sun that looked down on
the completion of Cheops. Earth--it is as unworn as the earth that was
trodden by the cavemen.
No generation can ever bequeath to us a single new material atom. The
race is ever in old clothes. Nor can we hand down to others one atom
which was not long ere we were born. Yet the vitality of the universe is
being constantly increased, and this increase is also permanent. God has
a great deal more to work with now than a thousand years ago.
For not all energy is material. With each birth there comes a new force
into the world, and its influence never dies. The body is born of ages
past, of the material stores of centuries; but the soul, in its living,
thinking, working power, is a new phase of energy added to the energy
of the race.
This fact confers on each individual man a strange impressiveness and
power. It gives a new significance to the fact that I am. I am something
different from what has been, or ever shall be. In the great whirling
myriads, I am distinguished and apart. I am an appreciable factor in
universal development and a being of elemental power. By every true
thought of mine the race becomes wiser. By every right deed, its
inheritance of tradition is uplifted; by every high affection, its
horizon of love is enlarged. We can bequeath to others this new
spiritual energy of our lives.
This thought gives us a new zest for life. There is an appetite which is
of the soul. It is this wish for growth, for the development of our
powers, for a larger life for ourselves and for those who shall
come after us.
Is there any one who wishes to stay always where he is to-day?--to be
always what he is this morning? Beyond the hill-top lies our dream. Not
all the voices that call men from place to place are audible ones. We
hear whispers from a far-off leader; we are beckoned by an unseen guide.
Out of ancestry, tradition, talent, and training each departs to
his own way.
What calls is not largeness of place--it is largeness of ideal. To each
of us, thinking of this one and that one who has taken a large part in
the shaping of the world, there comes a feeling: Beside all these I am
in a narrow way! What can I think that shall be worth the consideration
of the race? What can I do that shall be a stepping-stone to progress?
What can I hope that shall unseal other eyes to the universal glory,
comfort others in the universal pain? We say: I do not want to be mewed
up here, while others are out where thrones and empires are sweeping by!
I do not want to parse verbs, add fractions, and mark ledgers, while
others are the poets, the singers, the statesmen, the rulers, and the
wealth-controllers of the world! We wish to step out of the trivial
experience into that which is significant. Each day brings uneasiness of
soul. "Man's unhappiness," says Carlyle, "as I construe it, comes of his
greatness; it is because there is an infinite in him, which with all his
cunning he cannot quite bury under the finite." Says Tennyson:
"_It is not death for which we pant,
But life, more life, and fuller, that we want_."
These aspirations are prophetic. Does a clod-hopper dream? We move
toward our desires. The wish for growth is but the call of Jesus to our
souls. We sometimes hear of the "limitations of life." What are they?
Who set them? Man himself, not God. The call of Jesus urges the soul of
man to possibilities which are infinite.
A large life is the fulfilment of God's ideal of our lives--the life
which, from all eternity, He has looked upon as possible for us. Could
any career be grander than the one that God has planned for us? God does
not think petty thoughts: He longs for grandeur for us all.
6. Jesus calls us by the spirit of the times. There is a growing
recognition of the affinity between God and the human soul. Religion has
changed in spirit as well as in form. It used to be considered a tract
in one's experience, and now it is perceived to be all of life--its
impetus, its central moving force, the reason for being, activity,
development, for ethical conduct, and for unselfish and joyous
helpfulness. Religion is more and more perceived to be, not a thing of
feeble sentiment, of restraint, of exaction, of meek subordination and
resignation, but the unfolding of the free human spirit to the
realization of its highest possibilities and its allegiance to that
which is eternal and supreme. The nineteenth century closes with the
thinker who is also a man of meditation and devotion. We offer to Heaven
the incense of aspiration, hope, research, talent, and imagination.
The chief thing toward which we are moving is, I believe, the
Enthronement of the Christ. Christ has always been, in the hearts of the
few, enthroned and enshrined. Even in the dark years of mediaeval
superstition and unrest, there were the cloistered ones who maintained
traditions of faith and did works of mercy, as there were knightly ones
who upheld the ministry of chivalry, and followed, though afar, the
tender shining of the Holy Grail. But now all the signs point to a great
and general recognition of the Christ--Christ to be lifted high on the
hands of the nations, to His throne above the stars!
A new spiritual note is to be heard in modern subjects of study, is
noticeable in all paths of intellectual prestige. History is no more
looked upon as the story of the trophies of warriors, conquerors, and
kings. History, rising out of dim mists, is seen to be the marching and
the countermarching of nations in the throes of progress and of social
change. It is not the story of princes alone, but of peasants as well;
the result of myriads of small, obscure lives; of changing conditions;
of the movements of great economic, psychologic, and spiritual forces.
Looking backward over the moving processional of the nations of the
earth, we may see how, without rest, without pause, through countless
ages, the myriad legions of men have been passing across the scene of
life--passing, and fading away!
"_All that tread
The globe are but a handful of the tribes
That slumber in its bosom_."
Empires have risen, and empires have decayed; dynasties have been
buried, and long lines of kings, wrapping stately robes about them, have
lain down to die. Thrones have been overturned, armies and navies have
been mustered and scattered, land and sea have been peopled and made
desolate, as the thronging tribes and races have lived their little life
and passed away. Babylon and Assyria, India and Arabia, Egypt and
Persia, Rome and Greece,--each of these has had its lands and conquests,
its song and story, its wars and tumults, its wrath and praise. Under
all the tides of conquest and endeavor but one fact shines supreme: the
steady progress of the Cross.
One principle of growth and development is being slowly revealed,--an
approach to symmetry and civic form, which is seen in freedom, justice,
popular education, the rise of masses, the power of public opinion, and
a general regard for life, health, peace, national prosperity, and the
individual weal. The day has passed when men merely lived, slept, ate,
fought; they are now involved in an intricate and progressive
civilization. Sociology, ethics, and politics are newly blazed pathways
for its development, its guidance, and its ideals. We are moving on to
new dreams of patriotism, of statesmanship, and of civil rule.
Literature, instead of being considered as merely an expression of the
primitive experiences of a race in its sagas, glees, ballads, dramas,
and larger works and songs, is more and more revealing itself as an
appeal to the Highest in the supreme moments of life. It is the
unfolding panorama of the concepts of the soul in regard to duty,
conduct, love, and hope. Literature asks: What do I live for? as well
as, How shall I speak forth beauty? How ought the soul of man to act in
an emergency? What is the best solution of the great human problems of
duty, love, and fate? The voices of Dante, Milton, Shakespeare,
Tennyson, and Browning sweep the soul upward to spiritual heights, and
answer some of the deepest questionings of the soul of man. And hence
literature is no longer merely a thing of vocabulary, of phrase, of
rhythm, of assonance, of alliteration, or of metrical and philosophical
form. It is a revelation of the progress of the soul, of its standards,
of its triumphs, its defeats, and its desires. It is the unfolding of
one's intellectual helplessness before the unmoved, calm passing of
years; of one's emotional inadequacy without God for adjudicator. It is
a direct search for God. One finds wrapped within it the mystery,
aspiration, and spiritual passion of the soul.
Science, no longer a dry assembling of facts and figures, is an
increasing revelation of the imagination, the exactness, the
thoroughness, and the great progressive plans of God. Evolution has
become a spiritual formula. The scientist looks out over the earth and
sky and sun and star. Against his little years are meted out vast
prehistoric spans; against his mastery of a few forms of life, stands
Life itself. Back of all, there looms up the great Figure of the
Originator of life, and of the forms of life; the Maker and Ruler of
them all. Each scientific fact helps exegesis and evidence. Each new
aspiration after truth becomes a form of prayer.
Yes, the whole world is being subtly and powerfully drawn to the worship
of the Christ. Never before was there so deep, genuine, and widespread a
Revival of Religion. It has not come heralded with great outcries, with
flame and wind, and revolution and upheaval; it has come as the great
changes that are most permanent come, in stillness and strength.
Throughout the world there is being turned to the service of religion
the highest training, the most intellectual power. Wars are being
wrought for freedom; the Church and the university are joining hands;
the rich and the poor are drawing near together for mutual help and
understanding; industry is growing to be, not only a crude force, brutal
and disregarding, but a high ministry to human needs; the home is
becoming more and more the guardian of faith and the shrine of peace;
business houses are taking upon them a religious significance; commerce
and trade are perceiving ethical duties. Armies are marching in the
name of Jehovah, and a great poet has this one message: "Lest
we forget!"
7. Jesus calls us by the future of the race. Life proceeds to life.
Eternity is what is just before. Immortality is a native concept for the
soul. Beyond this hampered half-existence, the soul demands life,
freedom, growth, and power.
We stand between two worlds. Behind us is the engulfed Past, wherein
generations vanish, as the wake of ships at sea. Before us is the
Future, in the dawn-mist of hovering glory, and surprise. Looking out
over eternity, that billowy expanse, do we not see rising, clear though
shadowy, a vast Permanence, Completion, Realization, in which the soul
of man shall have endless progress and delight? This is the Promise held
out by all the ages, and the future toward which all the thoughts and
dreams of man converge. It is glorious to be a living soul, and to know
that this great race--life is yet to be!
At the threshold of each new century stands Jesus, star-encircled, with
a voice above the ages and a crown above the spheres,--Jesus, saying,
FOLLOW ME!
III. PROCESSIONAL: THE CHURCH OF GOD
[AURELIA]
_The Church's one foundation
Is Jesus Christ her Lord;
She is His new creation
By water and the Word:
From heaven He came and sought her
To be His Holy Bride;
With His own blood He bought her
And for her life He died.
Though with a scornful wonder
Men see her sore opprest,
By schisms rent asunder,
By heresies distrest;
Yet saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up, "How long?"
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song.
'Mid toil and tribulation,
And tumult of her war,
She waits the consummation
Of peace for evermore;
Till with the vision glorious
Her longing eyes are blest,
And the great Church victorious
Shall be the Church at rest._
SAMUEL JOHN STONE
FIRST: RECONSTRUCTION
The subject that is being carefully considered by many thinking men and
women to-day is this: the place and prospects of the Christian Church.
All about us we hear the cry that the Church is declining, and may
eventually pass away; that it does not gain new members in proportion to
its need, nor hold the attention and allegiance of those already
enrolled. Are these things true? If so, how may better things be brought
to pass? To share in the civilization that has come from nineteen
hundred years of the work of the Church, and to be unwilling to lift a
pound's weight of the present burden, in order to pass on to others our
precious heritage, is certainly a selfish and unworthy course. It is
better to ask, What is my work in the upbuilding of the Church? What can
I do to further the Royal Progress of the Church of God?
The root-failure of the organized Church to-day is its failure to share
in the growing life of the world. A growing life is one that is full of
new ideas, new experiences, new emotions, a new outlook over life--that
works in new ways, and that is full of seething and tumultuous energy,
enthusiasm, and hope. If we look out over the colleges, business
enterprises, periodicals, agriculture, manufacturing, and shipping of
the world, we find everywhere one story--growth, impetus, courage,
resources, vigorous and bounding life. Beside these things the average
church services to-day are both stupid and poky. The forces of religion
are neither guided nor wielded well. There is in most churches, however
we may dislike to own the fact, a decrease of interest and proportionate
membership, a waning prestige, a general air of discouragement, and a
tale of baffled efforts and of disappointed hopes.
The Church--and by this word I here mean the organized body of both
clergymen and laymen--is meant to be the supreme spiritual leader of the
world. It is meant to possess vigor, decision, insight, hope, and
intellectual power. But before it can accomplish its high and holy work,
a great reconstruction must begin. To help in this reconstruction, to
aid in vivifying, cooerdinating, and ruling the varied processes of
organized religion, is your work and mine.
1. The Church must rouse to a sense of its noble duties and exalted
powers. We underrate the Church. We are looking elsewhere for our
highest ideals, instead of claiming from the Church that spiritual
guidance and inspiration which should be its right to give. One of the
things that is a monumental astonishment to me, is that when we need
supplication, intercession, prayer for the averting of great personal or
national calamity, we flee to the Church, but we seldom think of the
Church when we need brains!
The Church should lead, and not follow, the great dreams of the world.
In the midst of our new national life we are sending all over the
country for the best-trained help and thought in every department of
government influence and control. Our problems of the day are
preeminently spiritual ones. Colonial control is not a question of
material ascendancy--it is a rule over the minds, hearts, and ideals of
men. Its moral significance is patent. We are called upon, not only to
import provisions, clothing, and household and industrial goods into our
new possessions; we are called upon to develop a higher sense of honor,
truth, honesty, and every-day morality. Scholars, working-men, business
men, farmers, and merchants are being consulted in regard to different
phases of our national advance, and every idea which their insight and
experience furnish is seized upon. But who is consulting the Church in
these concerns, except in reference to mere technical points? Who is
looking to the intellectual, moral, and spiritual standards of the
Church for guidance? We are to-day ruled spiritually, as well as
intellectually, by laymen, and in a way which is quite outside the
organized work of the Church.
2. The Church needs a more business-like organization and way of work.
It needs a more military spirit and discipline. The Church is diffuse
and loosely strung. There are in the United States alone about two
hundred and fifty-six kinds of religious bodies. There is no centralized
interest or work; there is no economic adjustment of funds; there is no
internal agreement as to practical methods. The result is a most
wasteful expenditure of force. Movements are not only duplicated, but
reproduced a hundred times in miniature, in one denomination after
another; special talent is restricted to a narrow field; buildings and
church-plants are multiplied, but lie largely disused; sects and
communities are at loggerheads on unessential points; all this--and the
world is not being saved! The Church fails to see openings for
aggressive work; it fails to seize strategic points; it does not carry a
well-knit local organization, with a husbanding of economic force; it
does not front the world in dead-earnest; it is not proud and honorable
in meeting its local debts; it loses progressive force, from lack of
knowledge as to how to judge men, and train them, and set them to work.
It also lacks greatly in office-force and in supplies. The gospel itself
is without price, but in the nature of things it cannot be proclaimed,
nor church-work efficiently carried on, without financial outlay. There
should be a more adequate equipment for this work. All other enterprises
need, without question, stationery, stenographers, literature for
distribution, office-rooms, office-hours, and a general arrangement
looking toward enlargement and progress. A busy pastor should have an
office-equipment just as much as a business man, and it should be
supported, as a business office is, out of the funds of the business
organization, _i.e._ the local church.
There should be, first of all, a united spirit, and a general
reorganization throughout the whole of evangelical Christendom, not
necessarily destroying denominational lines, with a view to quick
mobilization of energy in any direction most needed. What would a
general do, who, in looking over his troops, should find two hundred and
fifty-six provincial armies, not at ease or at peace with each other,
and yet expected to make war upon a common foe? Shall we not endeavor to
share in some broadly planned, magnificently executed scheme of
world-advance?
The Church has reached a point where a vast constructive work is to be
done. Its scattered parts must be knit into a powerful and aggressive
whole, to turn a solid front upon the evil of the world. The times are
ripe for a successor of Peter the Hermit, of Luther, Knox, Calvin,
Zwingli, Savonarola, Whitefield, Finney, Moody. Whether a great
preacher, theologian, or evangelist, he will certainly be a business
man, a man of vast energy and executive capacity, who shall perform this
miracle of organization of which many dream, and who shall set the
progress of the Church for a full century to come!
This united spirit should prevail, not only through the smaller bodies,
but between the Roman Catholic and Protestant communions. There has been
a distinct division between these two bodies, much mutual suspicion,
jealousy, and antagonism: it is only quite lately that Protestant and
Catholic leaders have been willing to work amicably together for great
common causes.
A new situation has arisen. In our new possessions we are confronted
with a large population who, whatever may be the reason, are
unquestionably not, as a whole, progressive, enlightened, educated, or
highly moral. The problem now is, not for Catholic and Protestant to
waste energy and spiritual strength in contending for mastery over each
other, but for them to unite in changing and bettering the condition of
our island peoples. What is past is past. Our present duty is to bring
peace, industry, intelligence, high ideals, and spiritual living to our
new countrymen. This is a work to fill the hands and heart of both
churches, and perhaps, in a common task, each may learn to understand
and regard the other as those should understand and regard each other
who have one Lord, one hope, one heaven.
3. The Church needs stronger and more gifted leaders. In every business
or intellectual enterprise to-day, there is an effort to place at the
head of each organization the most powerful and resourceful man whose
services can be obtained. Nothing in this age works, or is expected to
work, without the leadership of brains. A primary step, in a
far-reaching ecclesiastical policy, is to endeavor to draw into both
ministry and membership the most active and intellectual class. All
earnest souls can work, but not all can work equally effectively.
Particularly in the ministry, north, south, east, and west, men are
needed who are really _men_. This does not necessarily mean the men with
the longest string of academic degrees, the men who can write the best
poems or make the best speeches on public occasions; it means the
thinking men who are brave, talented, spiritual, and warm-hearted.
In the Report of one of the missionary Boards, I have recently read the
following stirring words. They refer to the work of missionaries in the
far north, one of whom has lately travelled a thousand miles over the
snow in a dog-sled: "He who follows that mining crowd must be more than
the minister, who would do well for towns in the west or elsewhere in
Alaska. He must be a man who, when night overtakes him, will be thankful
if he can find a bunk and a plate in a miner's cabin; he must travel
much, and therefore cannot be cumbered with extra trappings--must dress
as the miners do, and accept their food and fare. He must be no less in
earnest in his search for souls than they in search for gold. He must be
so 'furnished' that, without recourse to books or study-table, he can
minister acceptably to men who under the guise of a miner's garb hide
the social and mental culture of life in Eastern colleges and
professional days."