But unsnuffed candles and cobwebby window-panes seem to have been in evidence sometimes. The Christian Church in some lands has plainly lost its privilege of service, and lost its life, too. The old organizations are kept up, but all life has gone. There"s a grave danger threatening the American Church and the British Church just at this present time.
Long years ago, in the days before steam navigation, an ocean vessel came from a long sea voyage, up St. George"s Channel, headed for Liverpool.
When the pilot was taken on board, he cried abruptly to the captain, "What do you mean? You"ve let her drift off toward the Welsh coast, toward the shallows. Muster the crew." The crew was quickly mustered, and the pilot told the danger in a few short words, and then said sharply, "Boys, it"s death or deep water, hoist the mains"l!" And only by dint of hardest work was the ship saved.
If I could get the ear of the Church to-day, I would, as a great kindness to it, cry out with all the earnestness of soul I could command, "It"s death or deep water; deep water in this holy service of world-winning, or death from foundering."
Saved by Saving.
And then there"s a yet graver peril threatening. It"s quite the common thing to appeal to selfish motives. It is striking that the great strides that prohibition has made of recent years, have been due to a sort of legislation and to business regulation that appeal to selfish motives. The economic motive, and the disagreeable and injurious likelihood of a saloon being close to one"s own home, have had greater influence than higher moral motives. And we are glad of any motive that will put the d.a.m.nable traffic down and out.
Well, I"m going to come down a step here, and remind you of a yet graver peril that threatens. There is serious danger of a heathenized Christianity dominating our boasted Christian civilization and Christian lands. And in time that would be a serious menace to our pocket-books.
That is to say, there may be the energy and keen mental life without the mellowing and sweetening influence of the Christian spirit. The restless aggressiveness may come without the poise; the ceaseless activity without the deeper steadying quality; the keenness without the softening touch of the true life. In other words, if we don"t Christianize heathendom, they will exert an influence on us that will practically amount to their heathenizing Christendom.
Already such influences are seeping in at more than one crack.
Mohammedanism has an active propaganda in Great Britain. Heathen wedges are slipping their thin edges in, in our land. More and more it will extend, in time influencing our whole moral fabric, and affecting our whole national life.
During some recent researches among the ruins of Pompeii the explorers turned up a find that told its own story. It was the body of a crippled boy. He was lame in his foot. And around the body there was a woman"s arm, a finely shaped, beautiful, bejewelled arm. The mute find told its simple story. The great stream of fire suddenly coming from the volcano, the crowd fleeing for life, the little cripple unable to get along fast enough, the woman"s heart touched, her arm thrown about the boy to aid his escape; then the overtaking fire-flood, and both lost. The arm that was stretched out to save another was preserved, and only that. All the rest of the brave rescuer"s body had gone. The saving part was saved. Only that mercifully outstretched to save another was itself saved.
The Church or the man that selfishly saveth his life shall lose it. He that forgetteth about his own life in eagerly saving others shall find that he has saved his own life, and that it has grown into a new fulness and richness of life.
These are some of the dark ugly faces peering into ours. But there"s another face among them. It is a very bright face, with eyes all aglow, and features all shining with light. It is the face of victory over every danger and difficulty that threatens. Many believe that the emergency will be met. The victory will surely be achieved. But the fact to mark keenly, just now, is that it will be achieved only by a vigorous, masterful gripping of the present pressing emergency.
Ah! G.o.d, may Thy Church--we men who make Thy Church, who are Thy Church--may we see the emergency, and be gripped by it; for Jesus" sake; aye, for men"s sake; for the Church"s sake; for our own sake; in Jesus"
great name.
The Past Failure
Some of G.o.d"s Failures.
Where the Reproach of Failure Lies.
G.o.d"s Sovereignty.
The Church Mission.
"Christ also Waits."
"Somebody Forgets."
The Past Failure
Some of G.o.d"s Failures.
G.o.d fails, sometimes. That is to say, the plan He has made and set His heart upon fails.
Eden was G.o.d"s plan for man. A weedless, thornless, world-garden of great beauty and fruitfulness; a man and woman living together in sweet purity and strong self-mastery; their children growing up in such an atmosphere, trained for the highest and best; the earth with all its wondrous forces developed and mastered by man; full comradeship and partnership between man and all the living creation, beast and bird; and in the midst of all G.o.d Himself walking and working in closest touch with man in all his enterprises--that was G.o.d"s Eden plan for man. But it failed.
The Israel plan was a failure, too. The main purpose of Israel being made G.o.d"s peculiar people has failed up to the present hour. That plan originally was a simple shepherd people, living on the soil close to nature. They were to be, not a democracy ruled by the direct vote of the people in all things; nor a republic ruled by the vote of selected representatives; nor yet a kingdom ruled over by the will of an autocrat; but something quite distinct from all of these, what men have been pleased to call a theocracy.
That is to say, G.o.d Himself was to be their ruler in a very real, practical sense, directing and working with them in the working out of all their national life. They were to combine all the best in each of these forms of government, with a something added, not in any of them as men know them.
They were to be wholly unlike the other nations, utterly unambitious politically, neither exciting war upon themselves by others nor ever making war upon others. Their great mission was to be a teacher-nation to all the earth, teaching the great spiritual truths; and, better yet, embodying these truths in their personal and national life.
But the plan failed. The glitter of the other nations turned them aside from G.o.d"s plan. They set up a kingdom, "like all the nations," very much like them.
Then G.o.d worked with them where they would work with Him. He planned a great kingdom to overspread the earth in its rule and blessed influence, but not by the aggression of war and oppression. Their later literature is all a-flood with the glory light of the coming king and kingdom. Yet when the King came they rejected Him and then killed Him. They failed at the very point that was to have been their great achievement. G.o.d"s plan failed. The Hebrew people from the point of view of the direct object of their creation as a nation have been a failure up to the present hour.
G.o.d"s choice for their first king, Saul, was a failure, too. No man ever began life, nor king his rule, with better preparation and prospects. And no career ever ended in such dismal failure. G.o.d"s plan for the man had failed.
Jesus" plan for Judas failed. The sharpest contrasts of possible good and actual bad came together in his career in the most startling way. He failed at the very point where he should have been strongest--his personal loyalty to his Chief.
There can be no doubt that Jesus picked him out for one of His inner circle because of his strong attractive traits. He had in him the making of a John, the intimate, the writer of the great fourth Gospel. He might have been a Peter, rugged in his bold leadership of the early Church.
But, though coached and companioned with, loved and wooed, up to the very hour of the cowardly contemptible betrayal, he failed to respond even to such influence as a Jesus could exert. Jesus planned Judas the apostle. He became Judas the apostate, the traitor. He was to be a leader and teacher of the Gospel. He became a miserable reproach and by-word of execration to all men. Jesus" plan failed.
Where the Reproach of Failure Lies.
Will you please mark very keenly that the failure always comes because of man"s unwillingness to work with G.o.d? It always takes two for G.o.d"s plan--Himself and a man. All His working is through human partnership. In all His working among men He needs to work with men.
Some good earnest people don"t like, and won"t like, that blunt statement that G.o.d fails sometimes. It seems to them to cast a reproach upon G.o.d.
They may likely think it lacking in due reverence. But if these kind friends will sink the shaft of their thinking just a little deeper down into the mine of truth, they will find that the reproach is somewhere else.
There is reproach. Every failure that could have been prevented by honest work and earnest faithfulness spells reproach. And there is reproach here. But it isn"t upon G.o.d; it is upon man. G.o.d"s plan depends upon man. It is always man"s failure to do his simple part faithfully that causes G.o.d"s plan to fail.
There is a false reverence that fears to speak plainly of G.o.d. It seeks by holding back some things, and speaking of others with very carefully thought-out phrase, to bolster up G.o.d"s side. True love has two marked traits: it is always plain-spoken in telling all the truth when it should be known; and it is always reverential. It can"t be otherwise. The bluntest words on the lips combine with the deepest reverence of spirit.
G.o.d doesn"t need to be defended. The plain truth need never be apologized for.
It"s a false reverence that holds back some of the truth, lest stating it may seem to reflect on G.o.d"s character. Such false reverence is a distinct hindrance. It holds back from us some of the truth, and the strong emphasis that the truth needs to arouse our attention and get into our some-time thick heads. We men need the stirring up of plain truth, told in plainest speech. The Church has suffered for lack of plain telling of the truth. The deepest, tenderest reverence insists upon plain talk, and reveals itself in such talk.
It is irreverent to hold back some of G.o.d"s truth. For so men get wrong impressions of G.o.d. It is unfair as well as irreverent. Theology has sometimes been greatly taken up with adjusting its statements so as to defend G.o.d"s character. But the plainest, fullest telling of truth is the greatest revealer of His great wisdom and purity and unfailing love.
G.o.d"s Sovereignty.