USTIAN
PRINCIPLES
G.CAMPBELL MORGAN

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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James Hillhouse, B.A. 1773
James Abraham Hillhouse, B.A. 1808
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Manor Mouse in Sachem's Wood
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CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLES

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CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLES

BY
G. CAMPBELL MORGAN
"' THE BIBLE ANALYZED," " PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM,"
" THE PRACTICE OF PRAYER," ETC

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CONTENTS PAGE
Foreword  9
CHAPTER I. The Spiritual Nature of Man . . 13
II. The Direct Dealing of Man with
God a Right and an Obligation . 35
III. The Relation of Reason and Faith 58
IV. The Preliminary Adjustment —
Self Lost and Found .... 85
V. The Realization of the Christ
Life — Centre and Sphere . . 108
VI. The Passion of Christ and His
Church for the Kingdom of God 134

FOREWORD
The difference between principles and rules
is radical. Rules can be made, and therefore
broken. Principles cannot be made, and can
not be broken. Rules are things of time.
Principles are matters of eternity. Rules are
accidental. Principles are essential.
In this series of lectures on Christian Prin
ciples my desire is to interpret those matters
that obtain, subconsciously at least, in the
thinking of all Christian souls, and of which
it may be affirmed that the measure in which
they do obtain, and the measure in which they
are the master things of the life, is the measure
in which Christianity is a living experience,
and exerts a living influence.
The historic facts and fundamental doc
trines of the Christian faith will be taken for
granted, and the lectures will consist of state-
9

io Foreword
ments of the principal principles of life and
service resulting therefrom.
The authority to which these studies appeal
is revelation; the things that God has said to
man through His Word ; the things which He
has spoken in time past to the fathers by the
prophets in divers places and divers portions,
and the things He has said finally and per
fectly in these latter days through His Son.
Revelation is the declaration of things undis-
coverable by investigation, but which harmon
ize finally with the things so discoverable.
Speculation is unscientific, and not to be
trusted in the search after truth. Investiga
tion is a privilege and a duty. " The secret
things belong unto the Lord our God, but the
things that are revealed belong unto us and to
our children," and the measure of our ability
to discover the secret things is the measure in
which we have the right to enquire. But after
all our enquiry, and all our investigation, there
are still secret things, and out of the midst of
these God has spoken to men, so much as it is

Foreword 1 1
necessary for them to know, and which they
could not have discovered along the line of
their own investigation.
I repeat, therefore, that investigation is both
a privilege and a duty. On the way it often
halts, but honestly persisted in is always in
harmony with revelation. There is no ascer
tained and absolutely established fact of
science out of harmony with the revelation of
the Bible. Of course that statement needs this
qualification; we must be perfectly sure that
we are dealing with established facts, and not
with hypotheses, and we must be perfectly
sure that we are dealing with the Bible, and
not with some private interpretation of it. But
wherever there is careful and honest investiga
tion, even though it halt by the way, and has
to wait, at last the truth discovered harmon
izes with the truth revealed.
We have to do in this series of lectures, not
with the things which men have discovered by
investigation, but with the things which God
has revealed to us, for Christianity is supremely

12 Foreword
a revelation; with the things discovered in so
far as they harmonize with the things re
vealed, but with things revealed for the cor
rection and interpretation of the things discov
ered.

THE SPIRITUAL NATURE OF MAN
Revelation assumes the spiritual nature of
man. It may be said that the Bible never for
mulates the doctrine, but reveals it in the ac
count it gives of the origin of man, in the per
petual reference it makes to the nature of man,
and in the whole of its teaching concerning
the redemption of man. The psalmist, after
contemplation of the vastness of the universe,
exclaimed :
" When I consider Thy heaven, the work of Thy
fingers,
The moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained,
What is man?"
The question was not asked in order to sug
gest the inferiority of man, but to introduce a
statement which reveals his superiority to that
13

14 Christian Principles
universe, with which the psalmist suggested
the comparison.
"For Thou hast made him but little lower than God,
And crownest him with glory and honour."
The same question was asked by quotation, by
the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, and he
answered finally thus : " But now we see not
yet all things subjected to him. But we be
hold Him Who hath been made a little lower
than the angels, even Jesus, because of the suf
fering of death crowned with glory and hon
our, that by the grace of God He should taste
death for every man." In each case the an
swers reveal man's relation to the spiritual
world primarily and fundamentally.
The answer of the psalmist declares that
man is but little lower than God, and affirms
his superiority even to .that vast universe,
which had made the psalmist enquire " What
is man ? " The outstanding words of the
Bible agree with this central statement. The
story of creation declares that after all prelim-

The Spiritual Nature of Man 15
inary processes, God "breathed into his nos
trils the breath of life, and man became a liv
ing soul." At the very heart of New Testa
ment teaching the great apostle describes man
as " spirit, soul, and body." In these passages
to which I am only making passing reference
it is evident that the Bible recognizes the fact
that man is essentially spirit. In making ref
erence to the passage in Thessalonians, in
which the apostle speaks of " spirit, soul, and
body," we need to be careful not to imagine
that three absolutely distinct entities are re
ferred to as existing within man's being. The
apostle speaks of the spirit of the soul or mind,
and of the body. He begins with the essential,
which is the spirit; he then refers to the con
sciousness, the mind, the soul; and finally to
the body. There is the most intimate inter
relation between the three. The spirit is the
essential, the bqdy is the expressional, and the
mind is the consciousness, which is either
spiritual or fleshly, according to whether spirit
pr flesh is in the ascendant in the life. The

1 6 Christian Principles
distinction between spirit and soul is sharply
maintained throughout the Scriptures. In one
of the hours of his greatest anguish, Job broke
out into these words,
" I will speak in the anguish of my spirit,
I will complain in the bitterness of my soul."
In the great Magnificat Mary sang,
"My soul doth magnify the Lord,
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.''
In the psalm of perfect praise there is a sub
conscious recognition of the same distinction,
" Bless the Lord, O my soul,
And all that is within me, bless His holy name.''
The speaker there is not the soul. The soul is
addressed. The essential personality is that
of the one speaking to the soul. In the final
injunction of the Roman letter concerning
worship, the apostle wrote, " I beseech you
therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to
present your bodies," so that neither is the
body the final fact in personality. The body

The Spiritual Nature of Man 17
is to be presented by the person, the body is
the property of the person, but it is not the
person. The marginal reading of the passage
already quoted runs, "present your bodies a
living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which
is your spiritual worship." The essential fact
in personality is thus seen to be that of spirit ;
and the spirit's highest act of expressed wor
ship is the dedication of the body, and in the
dedication of the body by the spirit there is a
renewing of the mind.
The difference between soul and spirit is
recognized in the words of our Lord Himself.
At the coming of the Greeks He said, " Now
is My soul troubled," and a little later as He
came nearer to the darkness of the awful pas
sion, John declares that " He was troubled in
the spirit."
The teaching of revelation concerning the
nature of man was most lucidly expressed by
Justin Martyr, " As the body is the house of
the soul, so is the soul the house of the spirit."
In that sentence is crystallized the conception

1 8 Christian Principles
of man which the Bible presents. For the sake
of illustration only, think of the ancient. He
brew Tabernacle, with its outer court, with its
holy place, with its holy of holies. I do not say
that it was intended so to be, but it certainly
may be used as a representation of individual
human life. There is the outer court of the
material, the physical, the body. There is the
holy place of the consciousness, the mental, the
soul. But there is the holy of holies, the spirit
ual essence, the central fact. Man essentially
is spirit. He possesses a body and a mind;
that mind being fleshly or spiritual, according
to whether in the inner spiritual life he yield
to the cry of the flesh, or answer the upward
call of the spirit. God is a Spirit, and requires
spiritual worship, which can only be rendered
by spirit. Man is offspring of God. Man is
therefore a spirit, and can worship God. Man
is made in the image and likeness of God. God
is Spirit, and man therefore essentially is not
material, but spiritual.
We are in the habit of using the word spirit-

The Spiritual Nature of Man 19
ual as an adjective, qualifying life, and de
scribing it at its best ; but everyone is living a
spiritual life, all life finally being spiritual. I
do not desire for a moment to deny the im
portant and necessary distinction between the
carnal and the spiritual life which Paul makes,
but the carnal life is spiritual life, degraded to
carnal things. At the centre of all human life,
motiving it, impulsing it, driving it, is the
spiritual fact. We may prostitute the spiritual
to base uses. We may degrade the high and
noble and essential to devilish purposes, but
the supreme truth of human life, according to
the teaching of the Word of God, is that as
God is a Spirit, man also is a spirit.
Now let us enquire, what are the connota
tions of spirit, or in other words, what is the
aggregation of attributes expressed by the
word? This is a question which it is very
difficult to answer, perhaps impossible in words
that must necessarily be uttered by material
lips. Our word spirit has come to us through
processes from the Latin word spiritus, which

20 Christian Principles
simply means a breathing, and is therefore the
exact translation, as to intention, of the Greek
word, which is a parabolic word. A parable
consists of the placing of something by the side
of something else. Here is something that I
cannot see or understand perfectly, and I place
by the side of it something similar to it, in
order that I may understand the thing I can
not see. " The wind bloweth where it listeth,
and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest
not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth;
so is everyone that is born of the Spirit." In
that passage the Greek word for " wind " and
the Greek word for " Spirit " are exactly the
same. Yet it is perfectly evident that Jesus
was using the wind as a parable of the Spirit,
something put by the side of the Spirit which
Nicodemus could not see, in order that he
might understand something of His law, and
something of His working. Canon Liddon
with fine imagination has suggested that as
Jesus sat on the housetop with Nicodemus in
the silent hours of the night, the moaning of

The Spiritual Nature of Man 21
the wind was heard down the narrow streets
of Jerusalem, and Christ, with that perfect and
artless naturalness which always characterized
His parabolic teaching, said in effect, Listen,
you hear the wind as it blows. You hear the
sound thereof, but know not whence it cometh
and whither it goeth, so is everyone that is
born of the Spirit. Spirit is a word signifying
breathing. The wind is laid by the side of this
tremendous and essential fact, in order that we
may have some faint idea of its meaning.
Yet wind, breath, air, are gross material
things in the last analysis. We hear to-day
of ether, permeating all material things, and
scientists tell us that we may speak of the ether
as a medium, which nevertheless permeates all
substances, and is the medium of light and
heat. Ether is far finer and rarer and more
wonderful than air, and yet it also is gross
and material by the side of spirit. It is, how
ever, the simplest symbol of spirit for common
man, that which most easily enables him to
grasp the true idea.

22 Christian Principles
Spirit then, is immaterial being, but it is be
ing. Immaterial, that is, imponderable, we
cannot weigh it; intangible, the hand of the
material cannot touch it; invisible, with the
eyes of sense it cannot be seen. Then, says
the materialist, it is non-existent, but does that
follow ?
What are the evidences that man is spirit
ual? The very things which to-day are as
serted as demonstrations of personality in man
are as a matter of fact demonstrations that he
is spiritual. Let us take three of these. First,
unity; secondly, continuity; and finally, ac
tivity. These are the peculiar qualities of per
sonality. The psychologist in his analysis of
personality speaks of these things, not in such
simple and easy terms, and consequently in
more accurate terms. I claim that the very
things that demonstrate personality are those
which demonstrate spirituality.
Think first of its unity. I am told that man
has power to think, to love, and to choose. But
these are not three separate and distinct mat-

The Spiritual Nature of Man 23
ters, for they are three powers, or to use the
term of the older metaphysicians, faculties.
They are faculties possessed by one person
ality, and whether I think, or love, or choose,
it is I who think and love and choose. I can
not think and love and choose out of harmony
with myself. I may contradict my thinking in
my loving, I may violate my loving in my
choosing; but it is I who have done it, and I
am greater than my thinking, loving, or choos
ing. Every man is in himself a unity. The
personality of any man may be broken up into
its component parts, but the unity remains, and
it is not fleshly, for this body of mine may be
mutilated without the unity of my personality
being disturbed by a hair's breadth. It has
often been pointed out, and is I know an old
and commonplace illustration, but I use it
again without hesitancy, that there is not one
single material particle standing confronting
you in the speaker which would have con
fronted you if the same man had occupied this
position seven years ago. But the preacher is

24 Christian Principles
the same man. What is this then, which
sloughs off the effete and reconstructs the new
temple every seven years? Personality, and
that is not material. I am not that at which
men look. I am hidden by the things they see,
a spiritual being. I can do without my body.
My body cannot do without me. I am not my
body. My body is not me. It is this doc
trine of the spiritual nature of man that
illumines for us the day of bereavement and
sorrow. Then there is activity. All activity is pri
marily and fundamentally spiritual. I shall cer
tainly carry you with me when I say that you
have not exercised your hand within the last
twenty-four hours without an activity of per
sonality prior to the physical. There is an old
riddle which we used to ask when we were
children, Why does a man cross the road ? the
answer being, To get to the other side. That
illustrates my argument. Crossing the road
is not an accidental activity of the material,
neither is it the result of wish or will within

The Spiritual Nature of Man 25
the realm of the physical. It is the result of
thought preceding action, and because I do not
believe that the seat of thought is the brain,
but the spirit, the brain being the instrument
only, I affirm that all activity is fundamentally
spiritual, and that whatever a man does, he
does as the result of spiritual decision. Deny
the spiritual existence, and think of man as
matter merely, then where is the principle of
unity? where the secret of continuity? and
where the origin of activity?
The spiritual nature of man has its essen
tial manifestations of thought and feeling and
choice; or if we may once more make use of
Kant's analysis of personality, spiritual nature
is intellectual, emotional, and volitional. All
these act in concert, and we name the result
reason. They act under a sense of a standard of right
and wrong, and we name the result conscience.
They recollect things of the past, and we call
the result memory. They forecast the future,
and we call the result anticipation. They are

26 Christian Principles
not the powers of the material, they are the
activities of the spiritual.
What then is the relation between spirit and
body according to the revelation of Scripture ?
The body is the instrument of the spirit, its
medium of impression and expression, that
through which the spirit to-day gives expres
sion of itself to things beyond itself, through
other material media to other spiritual beings.
Death, therefore, is simply the laying aside of
a medium of expression, the act by which the
spirit lays down the body. The Christian doc
trine of resurrection declares, not that the self
same body will be raised, but that out of the
same body a new one will be formed. By some
mysterious process that I do not profess to
understand, out of the same body there will
come another. The apostle's argument by il
lustration from the bare grain in Corinthians,
teaches that life clothes itself with that bare
grain, and yet the bare grain dies, and out of
itself reconstructs another and a fuller, and a
larger medium of manifestation. Not the same

The Spiritual Nature of Man 27
grain comes again, but another out of it. So
also concerning the resurrection of the body.
He does not teach the actual and absolute resto
ration of the same particles, for if he did, we
might with reason enquire which particles,
those of to-day, or of seven years ago? He
does, however, teach that out of this very body,
by a method which he cannot explain, will
come the new. If it be affirmed that this is
beyond the possibility of belief, it is perfectly
fair to enquire whether we believe that the bare
grain reproduces itself a hundred fold. There
is no necessity for me here to stay to discuss
the question of bodily resurrection. I have but
referred to it in order to emphasize the truth
that man is not a body, that death is but an
event in which the spirit lays down one
medium of manifestation. It may be that in
what we speak of as the intermediate state, the
spirit holds communion only and actually with
spiritual things, and consequently does not
need anything in the nature of a material
medium. Out in the ultimate, in the life which

28 Christian Principles
is to come, the spirits are to be " clothed upon,"
to use Paul's great word, with a new medium.
It may be on the other hand that between the
unclothing that we call death, and the ultimate
clothing at the resurrection, there is some
spiritual body in which the departed spirits
dwell. I cannot tell, but this I know, that
when my loved one lays down the body, that
casket of clay is not my loved one. For forty-
four years these eyes had looked at one face
with reverence and with love, and I looked at
it for the last time on the last day of 1907, and
I said, No, that is not my father. Dear sacred
dust, very precious, but my father broke the
fetter, and passed on. That was all. During
the last few days of his life he did not see quite
clearly, and did not know perfectly those who
stood about him. Oh, yes, says the material
ist, everything was ending. No, says the
Christian, the instrument was becoming im
perfect, that is all. There are times when I
cannot see quite clearly because the rain has
fallen upon, or the fog has blurred the glasses

The Spiritual Nature of Man 29
that I wear. Do not blame me, blame the in
strument. Thank God for the hour in which
my father escaped from the worn-out medium
of the earthly body, and went into life.
I am not now dealing with the things which
lie beyond, but it is well to remember that man
makes his destiny in the period in which his
spirit inhabits the body in this earth. The
breaking of the medium and the flinging of it
away may be an awful thing. It may be a
great and gracious thing.
A closing word. We have touched the
fringe of all this, but if it be true, if — and
allow me once again to go back to Justin
Martyr — if, as the body is the house of the
soul, the soul is the house of the spirit, if in
very deed and truth the essential and final
thing is the spirit, what then? Then the mes
sage of Christianity is the supreme message,
and all the things we preach are the supreme
things. Then the first business of every human
life is not to enquire What shall I eat, or what
shall I drink, or wherewithal shall I be clothed ?

30 Christian Principles
The first business of human life is the culture
of the spirit; and because of sin the very first
necessity thereto is the salvation of the spirit.
A far more important thing than that I should
have a place to lay my head, or bread to eat, is
that this spirit of mine should be right with
God. That is the meaning of the Bible; that
is the message of Christianity; that is the
reason of Calvary; that is the value of Pente
cost. All these recognize the dignity of human life.
They protest against the degrading influences
of the materialistic ideal which treats a man as
merely dust. What then of the body? This
conception does not issue in the degradation
of the body. It demands its ennoblement.
" Know ye not that ye are a temple of God,
and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you ? "
was spoken to saints. But how does the body
become the temple of the Holy Spirit ? By the
fellowship of the spirit of a man with the
Spirit of God. The obvious deduction is that
the body must be fitted for the spirit, and used

The Spiritual Nature of Man 31
by the spirit. The body is the medium through
which the spirit, which is the essential life,
makes its impression on others, and receives
its impression from others. Then how careful
I should be of the body. It must be guarded
from all abuse, in order that it may be the
fitting instrument of the spirit. And rela
tively, what is the application of this truth? If
man is a spirit, the offspring of God Who is
Spirit, the supreme thing in every human life
is that man should answer God in fellowship of
friendship, of service, of suffering if need be,
and of ultimate victory. Some people pro
fessed irritation with a little card which was
widely circulated in England during a great
evangelistic campaign, conducted there a little
while ago, on which was printed the words,
" Get right with God." But that is the essence
of the message which Christianity gives, and
which the world needs to-day, in individual,
social, and national life. All life out of har
mony with God issues in dire disaster.
And yet again, a man who is right with God

32 Christian Principles
is always right with his brother. A man who
speaks about being right with God, yet who
has had no consciousness or care about being*
right with others is a liar. I borrow that force
ful description from inspired Writ, and it is
interesting to remember that it was not Peter
who wrote it. It was John of the mystic
vision, of the beating heart, the man who wrote
of love perpetually. It was he who said that
a man who declares he loves God and does not
love his brother, is a liar. Let the word burn
itself upon our conscience, in case we forget
it. The basis of brotherhood is not material,
but spiritual. No man will have learned what
it is to live as he ought to live with his fellow
man until he has discovered his own spiritual
nature, and that of his brother, in the discov
ery of the spiritual relationship between man
and God.
Here, as always, everything centres in
Christ. He is the Revelation of the spiritual.
Listen to His words, not merely His set dis
courses, but those incidental things that fell

The Spiritual Nature of Man 33
from His lips, and it will be seen how He lived
perpetually in the spiritual, recognizing His re
lation to God, seeking first His Kingdom,
speaking of Him as of His Father, for ever
more at the centre of His life related to Him,
and recognizing that relationship. It will be
seen moreover, how that recognition of the
fact affected His relation to others. He was
no ascetic, shutting himself away from the af
fairs of men, and attempting to realize His
own sanctity by the guardianship of bricks and
stones and mortar. He mixed familiarly
among men, and so lived that the ascetics of
His age said of Him that He was a gluttonous
man and a wine bibber. Yet by His spiritual
relationship He made things material flame
and flash with glory, and shine in radiant
purity. But He did more. He not only gave us a
revelation, He acted in mediation, and when
He through the eternal Spirit offered Himself
to God, He made a way by which His ban
ished ones might return, by which the spirits

34 Christian Principles
who had lost their way through their own re
bellion might be brought back again into fel
lowship, and in the reconsciousness of the
spirituality of their nature might begin to live
from the true centre, and so affect in truth the
whole circumference.

II
THE DIRECT DEALING OF MAN WITH GOD
A RIGHT AND AN OBLIGATION
When Professor James of Harvard Uni
versity published his Gifford Lectures under
the title of " The Varieties of Religious Ex
perience: A Study in Human Nature," the
book created widespread interest. This was to
be accounted for principally because of its
standpoint, and on account of its conclusion;
and also, of course, because of all the valuable
matter presented and dealt with in its process.
The standpoint of the book Professor James
indicated in these words,
" I am neither a theologian, nor a scholar
learned in the history of religions, nor an an
thropologist. Psychology is the only branch
of learning in which I am particularly versed.
To the psychologist the religious propensities
35

36 Christian Principles
of man must be at least as interesting as any
other of the facts pertaining to his mental con
stitution." And a little further on, still in the introductory
part of the book he wrote,
" Religion, therefore, as I now ask you ar
bitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feel
ing, acts, and experiences of individual men in
their solitude, so far as they apprehend them
selves to stand in relation to whatever they
may consider the divine."
As Christian believers we go a great deal
further than either of these quotations seems
to suggest ; but the value of the book consisted
in the fact that at last a scientific teacher was
willing to admit that the people likely to know
most about religion are religious people. It
was an entirely new admission on the scientific
side. Then after having gathered together all

Direct Dealing of Man with God 37
kinds of religious experience, Professor James
stated his conclusions, and these may for our
purpose be expressed in one very brief quota
tion, " We and God have business with each
other; and in opening ourselves to His influ
ence our deepest destiny is fulfilled."
This is not the dictum of a professor in a theo
logical college, neither is it the statement of a
Christian preacher from his pulpit. It is the
deliberate and scientific conclusion of one of
the most eminent psychologists of this age;
and, moreover, it is his conclusion after careful
examination of all kinds of religious experi
ences. The conclusion of the scientist is the com
monplace of Christianity, and when I say com
monplace I do not mean anything unimportant,
but rather one of the fundamental axioms of
Christianity. That conclusion is the reason of
the Bible. It is the message of the Bible. It

3 8 Christian Principles
is the Bible in brief. All the men who wrote
aforetime in divers places and portions, wrote
because they believed they had business with
God. That great truth is the explanation of
the purpose of Incarnation. It is the ultimate
reason in Atonement. Not that it explains the
method of Atonement, but it accounts for
Atonement. Accept that truth, and we begin
to understand what sin is. Recognize that fact,
and we may commence our study of the great
subject of salvation. To believe that truth, and
to live in the power of it, is Christianity.
Having affirmed in our previous study the
spiritual nature of man, we now proceed to
consider that which is the first necessary deduc
tion, namely, that the direct dealing of man
with God is both his right and his obligation.
I desire at the very commencement to place
emphasis upon the two sides of that subject.
Not merely is direct dealing on the part of man
with God his right, it is also his obligation. Or
to state the case from the other side, not merely
is it his obligation, it is his birthright.

Direct Dealing of Man with God 39
The subject thus stated suggests to us the
natural divisions for our consideration. First,
man's right of direct dealing with God; and
secondly, man's obligation to have direct deal
ing with God.
In dealing with man's right, I suggest three
very simple lines of consideration. First, the
nature of the case; secondly, the grace of the
case ; and finally, an application of the facts of
the case.
We begin in the simplest way by saying
that in the very nature of the case, in the na
ture of God and in the nature of man, it fol
lows by a sequence from which there can be no
possibility of escape, that man has the right of
direct, immediate, and personal access to God.
The affirmation that God is a Spirit announces
His essential Being, rather than reveals His
character. It declares that God is free from
the limitations of time and of space. But it is
equally true that man is a spirit, that the cen
tral fact in human personality is not flesh,
which is but a medium of expression; not the

40 Christian Principles
mind, which is but the consciousness; but the
spirit. Man is essentially a spirit. He tran
scends his material nature, and immediately
touches God. Man is more than physical, and
in the more, lies all the mystery that perplexes
him, baffles him, startles him, makes him afraid
within himself. We do not, neither can we
know ourselves. We have often said to our
selves in hours of loneliness, What is this
strange new mystery of possibility breaking
out within my consciousness? We may ac
count for it in the language of the hour by
speaking of the over-soul; but in the simpler
language of Scripture, it is the spiritual fact in
man. The moment consciousness transcends
material life, which it does perpetually, it is in
the very neighbourhood, in the atmosphere, in
the presence of God. The apostle expressed
the truth far more simply when in the midst
of the culture and learning of Athens he said,
" In Him we live, and move, and have our
being." Our being, then, is spiritual.
The deduction of these truths has been most

Direct Dealing of Man with God 41
exquisitely made for us in language which so
appeals to human nature in its deepest and
truest, as to have become almost commonplace
by quotation.
" Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with
spirit can meet —
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands
and feet."
The sublimity of Tennyson's teaching in that
quotation lies in the simplicity of the one dec
laration, " Spirit with spirit can meet." It is
no new discovery. It is as old as the oldest
book in the Bible. Eliphaz gave utterance to
the same truth when he said to Job,
" Acquaint now thyself with Him, and be at peace,
Thereby good shall come unto thee."
While misinterpreting the condition in which
Job found himself, Eliphaz nevertheless be
sought him to rise superior to all the material
limitation and suffering, and in himself to be
come acquainted with God and be at peace.
The final illustration of the truth fell from the

42 Christian Principles
lips of our Lord when He said to the woman
of Samaria, " God is a Spirit, and they that
worship Him must worship in spirit and in
truth." " In spirit," that is, in the essential
part of them, and " in truth," that is, in all life
harmonizing with the spirit in the attitude of
worship. The writer of the letter to the He
brews expressed the same idea when he said,
" He that cometh to God must believe that He
is, and that He is a Rewarder of them that
seek after Him." First then, the very neces
sities of the case, in the nature of God and
man, make it evident that man can have direct
access to God.
But think of the grace of the case, which is
even more wonderful for us as sinning men.
Let me cite another statement from Professor
James' book. When he states his conclusions,
he writes these very remarkable words. Re
ferring to all religious experiences the world
over he says :
" There is a certain uniform deliverance in

Direct Dealing of Man with God 43
which religions all appear to meet. It con
sists of two parts: first, an uneasiness; and
secondly, its solution. The uneasiness reduced
to its simplest terms, is a sense that there is
something wrong about us, as we naturally
stand. The solution is a sense that we are
saved from the wrongness by making proper
connection with the higher powers."
A most significant and remarkable conclu
sion, as the result of the examination of all
kinds of religious experience, gathered from
East and West, North and South, both emo
tional and intellectual. This man of science,
reducing everything to the minimum, seeking
not for the greatest common measure, but the
least common multiple, says that he finds in all
religions these two things, an uneasiness which
consists of a sense that there is something
wrong; a solution, which consists of a convic
tion that the wrong may be set right by proper
connection with the higher powers.
Christianity recognizes the wrong, and

44 Christian Principles
names it sin. Christianity declares that it is
possible to make connection with the higher
powers through the infinite grace, operating
through the work of Jesus Christ. Conse
quently our declaration is that man may have
access to God, notwithstanding the something
wrong which perhaps he may not be able to
explain, or the history of which he may not be
perfectly sure, through the mediation of God
in His Son, and by His Spirit.
It is necessary that we should see the con
nection between this second statement and the
first. By nature man can have access to God.
I do not use the word nature now as Paul used
it, but in a simpler way. That is not to criticise
Paul. He, speaking of the natural man, means
man fallen, or in Professor James' words, man
with " something wrong " about him. For
the moment I do not so use the word, but
rather as describing that which lies behind, the
first ideal of man. Natural man has access to
God, because God is a Spirit, and man is spirit,
and " Spirit with spirit can meet." But ex-

Direct Dealing of Man with God 45
perimentally the spirit of man does not meet
with the Spirit of God. The truer language of
experience is that of Job, " Oh, that I knew
where I might find Him." I hear the infinite
music of the eternal Spirit sobbing through the
shell of human life, but I cannot speak and
know I am heard, and I cannot hear so as to
be perfectly sure that the speech was His. I
have lost ability somehow, somewhen, some
where. If I am a spirit, and He is a Spirit,
and it is true that " Spirit with spirit can
meet," then, to quote once again the language
of the scientist, " there is something wrong
about us." Whether you name it " something
wrong " somewhere ; or whether you call it
" continuous abnormality," and that also is a
quotation from a scientific writer; or whether
you call it " a kink in the moral nature," and
that is a quotation from magazine literature;
or whether you call it in the sublime and dig
nified and awful language of Christian teach
ing, " sin," I care nothing. It is the fact that
I have to deal with.

46 Christian Principles
Now the Christian revelation declares, " God
was in Christ reconciling the world unto Him
self," making it possible — may I quote the
scientific language again — for man to make
"proper connection with the higher powers,"
to find his way back into the immediate and
conscious fellowship which somehow he has
lost. " God was in Christ reconciling the
world unto Himself," meeting humanity in In
carnation for the sake of humanity's conscious
ness, revealing to humanity in the mystery of
His dying the infinite process of His own pain
whereby humanity's sin is dealt with and put
away. That mediation is perfected in the
Spirit. " Who among men knoweth the things
of a 'man, save the spirit of the man, which is
in him ? even so the things of God none know
eth, save the Spirit of God."
"Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not,
And which entered not into the heart of man,
Whatsoever things God prepared for them that love
Him."
The deep things, the profound things, the

Direct Dealing of Man with God 47
things of God, eye hath not seen. They are not
discovered by looking with the look of sense.
They are not heard by the listening which is
merely the listening of the flesh. And into the
heart of man with its emotion, and its intellect,
and its volition, these things have not come.
How strange it is that we so constantly quote
that verse and leave it there, as though the
statement in the New Testament is the state
ment of the Old, that the deep things of God
man cannot know. The New Testament quotes
it to correct it, enlarge it, carry it on, and the
final word is this, that " unto us God revealed
them through the Spirit." So that the teach
ing of Christianity is that the deep things of
God are revealed by the Spirit. Thus through
the mediation of the Son there is the media
tion of the Spirit, and into the spiritual nature
of a man there comes the light of the Spirit of
God. Thus not only upon the basis of man's
nature by Divine intention, for that is lost,
but upon the basis of God's grace mediat
ing through His Son, whereby the lost is

48 Christian Principles
found, once again, " Spirit with spirit can
meet." Now what is the application of these facts?
First I simply state the case I have been at
tempting to argue. Every human being by
nature and by grace may have direct dealings
with God, and that both in the crises and in
the commonplaces of life. In the crises we all
more or less realize it. I think I have yet to
meet the man who has any residuum of belief
in religion, who will not admit that in some
crisis of pain and anguish, of dire necessity, of
awful choice, he has suddenly become conscious
of God and of the fact that he could speak to
Him. Many a soldier will tell you how that
upon the battlefield in the hour of supreme
peril, he suddenly knew and spoke to God.
Many a surgeon will tell you, as one told me in
referring to the actual case of an operation
upon myself, that in the moment of supreme
crisis he knew God's presence and power. In
a great crisis the spirit of man becomes naked
to God, and knows it. I remember when I first

Direct Dealing of Man with God 49
became supremely conscious, awfully conscious
of the spirituality of my own being. It was not
in a prayer meeting, it was not in a convention.
It was in the crisis of that awful dynamite ex
plosion in New York, when my own wife was
in the hotel that rocked and reeled. Never can
I forget how when climbing the two stories
over the wreckage and ruin and debris in order
to reach the place of peril in which I knew she
was, I became conscious that my body was a
weight which I fain would have flung away to
speed me in my effort to reach her. It was a
crisis, and in the midst of it I knew that I was
spirit, and that I could touch God, and speak
to Him. The philosophy has yet to be invented
that can rob me of that conviction.
Not merely in the crises, however, is such
access possible. It is equally so in the com
monplaces. Perhaps I have no right to make
the distinction between crisis and commonplace.
Those are great words in which Elizabeth Bar
rett Browning teaches us that such distinction
is false.

So Christian Principles
" ' There's nothing great
Nor small,' has said a poet of our day,
Whose voice will ring beyond the curfew of eve
And not be thrown out by the matin's bell,
And truly I reiterate, nothing's small !
No lily-muffled hum of a summer bee,
But finds some coupling with the spinning stars,
No pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere,
No chaffinch, but implies the cherubim,
And (glancing on my own thin, veined wrist)
In such a little tremor of the blood
The whole strong clamour of a vehement soul
Doth utter itself distinct."
Let that truth be recognized, and then remem
ber that man has the right of access to God in
the commonplaces, in the matter of friend
ships, of habits, of whether we shall read this
book or not, of whether we will take our amuse
ment thus or so. Nothing's small. Issues that
make up destiny hang upon the trifles of the
passing moments, and man can get to God
about all such trifles. That is the heart and
centre of Christian experience.
If that be one side of the truth of man's
right of access, there is another, and it is this :

Direct Dealing of Man with God 51
that because he has such right, he must refuse
to permit anyone to interfere between himself
and God. This is a necessary sequence. We
cannot escape it, and we ought not to attempt
to escape it. In the " Comments of Bagshot "
I read, " Rights are ideals in terms of action. Man
first becomes formidable in action when he con
ceives his ideals as his rights."
Are these things which we have been stating
our ideals ? Do we believe that the soul of man
can speak to God immediately and directly?
Do we believe that in the very nature of the
case, " Spirit with spirit can meet " ? Do we
believe that in the infinitude of grace as re
vealed in the Christian fact, a man can have
communion with God? Is that our ideal?
Then let us make it our right. When we do
so we become formidable, we become strong.
It is our duty to make our protest against all
symbols which interfere between the spirit and
God, and to make angry protest against men

52 Christian Principles
or spirits, who ask to stand between us and
God. That is the essence — I had almost said
of Puritanism. I will use a larger speech. It
is the essence of Christianity that the spirit of
a man has access to God, and must avail itself
thereof. This principle is the destruction of
priestism, whether Roman, Anglican, or Free.
Man's obligation of access is the second half
of our consideration, although we have already
touched upon it necessarily in considering the
right of access. If man be spirit and God be
Spirit, and man may find his way to God, he
ought to find his way to God. First he owes
it to God that he should do so. Surely it will
be granted that there ought to be given to God
the right to adjust his own. " Will a man rob
God ? " asked the prophet. It is still the ques
tion. The application in Malachi is very
narrow, though quite sufficient for the time.
A man may rob God far more terribly than in
tithes and offerings. We rob God when we do
not hold communion with Him, when we do
not remit to Him for adjustment the spirit

Direct Dealing of Man with God 53
which is His, offspring of His very life and
essence and nature.
Old King Lear in his madness said,
"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child."
That is very human, it is on the ordinary hu
man level, and even there it is an awful truth,
but in the highest application it tells the trag
edy in the heavens of a godless life. It is that
of God with a thankless child. I go back to
Genesis and I read, " Adam, where art thou? "
and I never read it to-day without thinking of
what my beloved friend, Dr. Henry Weston of
Crozer, a man of whom I speak with reverence
as a teacher, once said of that passage, that it
was not the shout of a policeman, but the wail
of a Father after His lost child. " The God
in Whose hand thy breath is, and Whose are
all thy ways, hast thou not glorified," was the
charge against Belshazzar. We should in all
likelihood have charged him with drunkenness,
and asked him to sign a pledge, and in the in-

54 Christian Principles
terests of his nobles we might have started a
Social Purity Crusade in Babylon. The
prophet of God said that the root sin was
neither drunkenness nor fornication, but that
he had failed to glorify God. Every man who
attempts to manage his life commits the sin of
robbing God, and thus of harming Him. We
owe it to God, moreover, because of the satis
faction which we ought to give Him in love.
He hungers for love, He delights to bestow
gifts in love, and we wound and wrong love
when we do not find our way to Him in grati
tude and in worship.
But our obligation is not merely one toward
God. We have an obligation to ourselves. If
the spirit be the central thing in our lives, then
the mental and the physical are concentric, and
where this is so, there is perfect harmony. But
if we make the physical the central in life, or
if we make the mental the central, we become
eccentric. It is the habit of the man of the
world to speak of Christian men as eccentric.
As a matter of fact, the Christian man is con-

Direct Dealing of Man with God 55
centric, his spiritual life recognized as supreme,
and set in right relation to the Spirit of God,
then all the other circles are in their proper
place. But if we put the centre of life in the
flesh, or in the mind, we are necessarily ec
centric. And yet once more. The obligation is not
merely to God and self, but also to the universal
order. If it be true that in my neglect of God
I become eccentric, mark the far-reaching ef
fect of one eccentricity in the spherical order.
It is the history of all the false life of the city,
of the country, of the world. It is all eccen
tric. I do not use the word as merely suggest
ing a relationship which is of no consequence.
Eccentricity is chaos, ruin, disaster. We owe
it then to the universal order that we bring
our lives into right relationship to God.
We may summarize quite briefly. Man can
have dealings with God, and man must have
dealings with God. Man can have such deal
ings. If I am asked for a final solution of
how, I can no more give one than I can give

56 Christian Principles
the final explanation of the fact of my being,
and that is a proper and fair comparison. I
cannot explain the final mystery of my being.
There are reaches of which I am conscious,
but which I have not yet discovered, and which
I am almost afraid to invade. As we cannot
say the last things concerning ourselves, while
yet we are certain of the fact of our existence,
so neither can we say the last thing as to the
method of our access to God, but the testimony
of scientific investigation agrees with the dec
laration of revealed religion, that we have busi
ness with God, and that we can find our way
to Him.
It is equally true that man must have such
dealings with God. Now at this point it is
well that we should recognize a peculiar and
subtle peril. There is a danger in freedom.
When we claim the right of appeal to God, do
we exercise that right? It is not enough that
we sweep aside all the priests who fain would
interfere. We must get to God for ourselves.
We must ask Him about the habits of our

Direct Dealing of Man with God 57
lives. We must remit to Him all questions.
One is sometimes afraid lest in the very ve
hemence of our protest against priestism there
should lurk the danger of neglecting to remit
all things to God for His arbitrament and ar
rangement. The real balance of life may thus
be expressed, no interference between man and
God. Man always submitted to God that He
may govern. We rejoice that we are able to
find access to God. Let us never fail to yield
ourselves to the obligation of the great and
gracious privilege.^

Ill
THE RELATION OF REASON AND FAITH
There is a prevalent idea that the exercise
of faith is incompatible with the function of
reason. In relation to Christianity this has been
urged in offence and in defence. Those in op
position have treated the idea as axiomatic,
declaring that to exercise the function of faith
is to abandon the right to think, and to contra
dict the rational process. This attitude of mind
has been indicated by the assumption of the
name free-thinker on the part of such as declare
that they refuse to believe in anything that
cannot be demonstrated by the process of rea
son. The attitude is understandable in such
cases, even though one may not agree with the
reasonableness of the proposition.
On the other hand, it has been affirmed by
certain who declare that they stand in defence
58

Relation of Reason and Faith 59
of the Christian position, that faith and reason
are finally unrelated. They declare that we
have no right to apply the reason in matters
of faith, that it is necessary to receive cer
tain statements and believe them to be true,
even though they have no basis in reason.
These people declare that in matters of religion
intellect is a peril, and that while men are
justified in every other realm in making use
of reason, they must turn away therefrom al
together in matters of faith.
Such an idea is absolutely false, and when
those in opposition declare it to be the Chris
tian position, they reveal an ignorance of the
facts of the case which makes it impossible
to enter into any rational discussion with them.
Yet on the other hand, when it is urged in
defence of the Christian position it practically
abandons the very citadel, and so leaves the
surrounding areas an easy prey to the enemies
of religion.
There is the closest inter-relation between
reason and faith. Faith which is irrational is

60 Christian Principles
irreligious. Reason which is unbelieving is
illogical. The relation between the two is so
intimate that it is almost difficult to find a fig
ure of speech which perfectly expresses it. Be
tween reason and faith there is not merely
friendly relation as between areas which are
contiguous but yet never identical, or between
parallel lines which move in the same direction
but never come together, or between hemi
spheres which, while constituting one whole,
are yet always divided, as North from South,
or East from West. None of these figures
suggests the true relationship between reason
and faith, that relationship being more imme
diate and perpetual than any of these. Per
haps we come nearer to an illustration if we
speak of the relation as that between two di
mensions in one whole, as on the plane surface
of things there is relation between length and
breadth. This relation cannot be escaped, not
withstanding Euclid's definition, which per
haps was necessary in order to an argument,
but was utterly false as a statement, namely

Relation of Reason and Faith 61
that a line is length without breadth. It is
inconceivable that there should be length with
out breadth, or breadth without length. Things
are not always as broad as they are long, but
if they are long they are broad, or if they have
breadth, they have length. As these two di
mensions are always present, each related to
the other, so that they cannot be separated, so
also are reason and faith.
In order that this inter-relationship may be
apprehended, I propose first a brief and quite
elementary discussion of the evident relation
between reason and faith in the ordinary con
sciousness, quite apart at first from the applica
tion of the subject to the Christian position;
and then secondly, as briefly and as simply, I
shall attempt to state the relation between rea
son and faith as suggested in Bible terms,
finally making an application of the relation as
a principle of Christian life.
We begin, then, with the discussion of the
relation in ordinary circumstances, and first of
all attempt to come to an understanding of our

62 Christian Principles
terms in the most elementary way possible by
enquiring first, What is reason? and secondly,
What is faith?
And first, then, What is reason? That en
quiry I propose to answer by quoting a simple
dictionary definition. The Century Dictionary
defines reason as,
" An idea acting as a cause to create or con
firm a belief."
I think it necessary parenthetically at this
point to draw attention to the fact that neither
I nor any Christian apologist inspired that
definition. A second definition reads,
" Reason ; an intellectual faculty, or such
faculties collectively."
The first of these definitions describes what we
should speak of in general terms as a reason,
that is, a statement made as accounting for
some result in action or in speech. The second

Relation of Reason and Faith 63
definition refers to what we should speak of
as the reason, that is, the capacity which appre
hends and states a cause.
In the presence of these definitions it is com
petent for us to enquire, How does the reason,
which is " an intellectual faculty, or such facul
ties collectively," act in order to create a rea
son, which is " an idea acting as a cause to
create or confirm a belief " ? In answer to this
enquiry let me first give you a quotation from
Dr. Oman's " Problems of Faith and Free
dom," in which he says :
" Reason is not the mere universal law, but
is a process by which we are always passing to
more detailed knowledge, to more concrete
conceptions, a process which is always widen
ing to embrace the whole fulness of the truth."
I am quite aware that this statement does
not explain the whole process of how the rea
son formulates a reason, but it indicates all
that is essential to my present argument,

64 Christian Principles
namely, that reason is for ever conscious of
vaster areas than it has apprehended, and is
that intellectual activity which is able, from
vantage ground already gained, to move on
ward and outward for the inclusion of larger
areas. When we speak then of reason as a
faculty, we refer to the ability to apprehend
truth, and to that which safeguards the con
sciousness from the acceptation of anything
which is untrue, and when we refer to a reason
we intend a truth apprehended.
Let us take our second question quite as sim
ply. What is faith ? This enquiry the diction
ary answers by the following definition :
" Faith is the assent of the mind to the truth
of a proposition or statement for which there
is not complete evidence."
Now even at the risk of being charged with
impertinence I venture to change one word in
that definition, and read, " Faith is the assent
of the mind to the truth of a proposition or

Relation of Reason and Faith 65
statement for which there is not complete
demonstration." This may appear to be a
mere quibbling with words, and yet whatever
the philological value of these words may be,
in our ordinary use of them there is a differ
ence of suggestion between the terms evidence
and demonstration. Taking the words only
according to the popular use made of them, I
maintain that there are many things for which
there is abounding evidence, but of which there
can be no final demonstration. Faith then is
the assent of the mind to the truth of a propo
sition or statement for which there is not com
plete demonstration, but for which there is
sufficient evidence. From that simple definition
I make the deduction that faith is conviction of
truth, resulting from the action of reason,
which truth nevertheless cannot be finally and
mathematically demonstrated. The reason ap
prehends a certain fact. Faith finding foothold
upon that apprehension, apprehends a still
larger matter than can be demonstrated by the
reason, but never consents to accept as true any-

66 Christian Principles
thing which is not finally founded upon the
reason. May I reverently make use of a very simple
illustration of what I mean, when I declare
that there are many things of which I am per
fectly certain by faith founded on reason, while
yet I cannot demonstrate to the logical satis
faction of any other person. The illustration
I suggest is quite a personal one, which I leave
every other man to make for himself. I look
into the face of my mother, and I know she is
my mother by the activity of faith based upon
reason. It is absolutely impossible to demon
strate the fact, but the evidence is over
whelming. The relation of reason and faith in matters
of everyday life may thus be stated: Faith
which has no foundation in reason is not faith.
It is rather credulity. It is innocence, or ig
norance, or insanity, in any case a negation of
knowledge. On the other hand, reason that
does not admit, or will not permit the larger
deduction based upon its own activity, is either

Relation of Reason and Faith 67
obtuse, or obstinate, or obscene, in any case
the limitation of the intellectual.
There is therefore the closest relationship in
ordinary life between reason and faith. Every
thing which a man believes in the highest and
most intelligent sense of that word, he believes
because  ; and in the moment in which the
word because is used, there is suggested and
admitted the fact of the activity of the reason,
leading up to, and compelling the faith. If I
believe this because of that, the that is the rea
son inspiring the faith, and the this is the truth
which faith apprehends as it answers the il
lumination of reason. Thus faith must be
based on reason, and reason must fulfil itself
in faith.
Thus it is evident that reason is compelled at
times to allow itself to admit of larger areas
than it is able perfectly to demonstrate, and in
that admission it becomes faith. Thus what
a man believes in the true sense of the word is
always founded upon reason, but it is never
theless a deduction including some truth more

68 Christian Principles
spacious than unaided reason is able to demon
strate. Mark then the relation between the two.
Reason is the creator of faith. Faith is always
created. It cannot be compelled. There is a
sense in which it is perfectly true that a man
can will to believe, but it is equally true that he
can only do so when the possibility of faith has
been created by the activity of reason. It has
been objected that the Christian declaration
that faith is the gift of God is a statement out
of harmony with the method of science. Yet
as a matter of fact faith is always the gift of
someone, or something, the result of a process.
To believe because  is a commonplace for
mula, expressing the fact of a cause or creator
antecedent to the belief. In this sense reason
creates faith. The appreciation of a fact, the
conviction of the fact, and the vision of the
fact, even though the fact be still unseen, are
due to the activity of reason. Reason proceed
ing along its proper line of scientific investiga
tion comes at last to a point where it is

Relation of Reason and Faith 69
impossible to proceed further unaided, but
from which it is necessary in honesty to include
as reasonable, things which cannot be logically
demonstrated. Let me at once confess that to my own mind
the relation between reason and faith becomes
more remarkably clear when we turn to the
terms of Scripture. It has been objected with
the smartness which can only be characterized
as ignorance, that the term reason is not a
. common one in Scripture. As a matter of fact,
the idea is repeated perpetually. The word
" reason " does occur in our Versions, and
is a translation of a word perpetually occurring,
though in the majority of instances translated
in another way. Peter in his first letter speaks
of being " ready always to give answer to every
man that asketh you a reason concerning the
hope that is in you." Now the word there
translated " reason " first occurs in somewhat
strange surroundings in the midst of the King's
Manifesto, as recorded by Matthew. I quote
the passage, not for the sake of its main state-

70 Christian Principles
ment of course, but that we may put our hand
upon this particular word. " Everyone that
putteth away his wife, saving for the cause of
fornication, maketh her an adulteress." In that
passage the word translated " reason " in the
letter of Peter, is rendered " cause." Later on
in his gospel Matthew tells us that Jesus said,
" Every idle word that men shall speak, they
shall give account thereof in the day of judg
ment." There again the word occurs, and is
translated "give account." In the house of
Cornelius Peter enquired, " I ask therefore,
with what intent ye sent for me?" Again
the same word, but rendered " intent." The
writer of the letter to the Hebrews declares,
" All things are naked and laid open be
fore the eyes of Him with Whom we have
to do." Here also is the identical word,
but translated " to do." Once again, in the
letter of Peter, from which we took our first
illustration, he says, " Who shall give ac
count to Him that is ready to judge the quick
and the dead," and " give account " is the

Relation of Reason and Faith 71
translation of the identical word. These are
instances only of one use of a great New Tes
tament word. A comparison of them will re
veal that it is a use that always indicated
reason. In some senses it would be interesting,
and even valuable in all these passages to trans
late in the same way. " Everyone that putteth
away his wife, saving for the reason of forni
cation, maketh her an adulteress." " Every
idle word that men shall speak, they shall give
a reason thereof in the day of judgment." " I
ask therefore, with what reason ye sent for
me ? " " All things are naked and laid open
before the eyes of Him with Whom we have
to reason." " Who shall give a reason to Him
that is ready to judge the quick and the dead."
Such rendering illuminates the passages, but
with them I have not now to deal. It certainly
enables us to realize the New Testament recog
nition of reason.
But now what is the word so translated ? It
is, as I have indicated, a common word in the
New Testament, namely the word logos. The

72 Christian Principles
same word is used in the opening statements of
the gospel according to John, " In the begin
ning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God."
This word is used in the New Testament in
two ways, the suggestiveness of each never be
ing wholly absent from either. Its first and
perhaps simplest meaning is that of speech as
language, the expression of truth for the under
standing of others. Its second and perhaps
deeper meaning, is that of the absolute Truth
itself, and as Thayer indicates, in that sense
the Greek word logos is the exact equivalent
to the Latin word ratio, from which we obtain
our words rational, and reason. Thus logos
is speech, and the truth spoken; or to state in
the other order, reason, and its expression. The
inter-relation of ideas in either use already
referred to, is that the Word incarnate was the
Speech of God, but being the Speech of God
was the Expression of eternal Truth. The
Word as Reason must express itself in a Speech
which is accurate and true. It is necessary in

Relation of Reason and Faith 73
the study of the New Testament carefully to
discriminate by reference to the context as to
which sense is intended, when this word is
used. Sometimes it refers to speech as a state
ment made, sometimes to the essential truth
out of which the statement came, sometimes
both ideas are most evidently present in the
use of the word.
Now the presence of the conception of reason
is demonstrated, and its place in relation to
faith is made perfectly clear. Ultimately
reason in God is the intellectual cause out of
which all His activity springs. In man it is the
inspiration of that faith which produces action.
The two ideas are brought into remarkable re
lation in the letter to the Hebrews, from which
I have already made quotation. When the
writer says, " All things are naked and laid
open before the eyes of Him with Whom we
have to do," he does so after having declared,
" the Word of God is living, and active, and
sharper than any two-edged sword, and pierc
ing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of

74 Christian Principles
both joints and marrow, and quick to discern
the thoughts and intents of the heart. And
there is no creature that is not manifest in His
sight, but all things are naked and laid open
before the eyes of Him with Whom we have
to do." If we take the first part of that whole
declaration and its last, and translate the Greek
word logos in the same way, we may read,
" The reason of God is living, and active . . .
all things are naked and laid open before the
eyes of Him with Whom we have to reason."
I do not suggest that that would be an abso
lutely accurate and full expression of the mean
ing of the earlier part of the passage, where
the phrase " the Word of God " does most evi
dently refer to His revelation of Himself, but
the other quality is most certainly included, for
the word logos as a revelation implies the ex
pression of the infinite Wisdom or Reason of
God. It is this which when expressed is " liv
ing — active — piercing — quick to discern," and
it is with that, man has to reason. Thus
the exercise of the human reason is, according

Relation of Reason and Faith 75
to the teaching of this passage, to be in the
light of the Divine Reason.
Reason, therefore, in the Bible, is ulti
mately the Wisdom of God, that absolute
Truth by which He for ever operates whether
in creation, or redemption; and in man, it is
the intellectual apprehension which produces
conviction, and inspires conduct.
But now turn to the New Testament word
for faith. Faith is fundamentally conviction
of truth. Romaine, in his book, " The Triumph
of Faith," says, " Faith signifies the believing
the truth of the Word of God." If we may
venture to interpret Romaine's use of the
phrase " the Word of God " in the double
sense indicated, we shall see what faith really
is. It is conviction of the truth of the Word
as the speech or revelation of God, and there
fore it is conviction of the certainty of those
larger areas which have expressed themselves,
and yet not finally. No speech can ever express
all the facts. It can express so much as to cre
ate a certainty of the existence of things unex-

76 Christian Principles
pressed. The Word in that sense is the revealed
demonstration of the " secret things." Faith
convinced by the Word which is speech, is the
certainty of things hoped for, the evidence of
things not seen.
In this connection it must of course be re
membered that in the New Testament presen
tation of the doctrine of salvation, the term
faith is always used in such a way as to indicate
the necessity for the action of will. The Greek
preposition eis used with the accusative al
ways denotes motion into ; and this is the uni
form method of referring to the faith that
saves. " He that believeth into the Son " is
the true formula, and this indicates more than
the conviction of truth which it presupposes,
namely, the answer of the will to that convic
tion. In the present study, however, we are not
dealing with this aspect of faith, but with that
which precedes the answer of the will, and
which in order to salvation must be expressed
in that answer of the will.

Relation of Reason and Faith 77
According to New Testament teaching then,
it is evident that the relation between reason
and faith is exactly the same as that already
dealt with as existing between them in the com
mon consciousness of ordinary human life.
The ultimate Reason in the Universe is the
Word of God, the thought of God, the intention
of God, or let me venture to say it, the reason
ableness of God; and this reasonableness of
God is the outcome of the absolute truth of
God. Thus the ultimate reason of everything
is the reasonableness of truth. When that is
seen, conviction is created, and that conviction
embraces those more spacious areas of the es
sential and eternal facts which are evidenced,
but which perhaps cannot be logically demon
strated. Thus faith is a deduction from rea
son expressed. Therefore faith is for ever
created by reason, and reason creating faith,
demands its rational deduction.
Let us finally attempt in all simplicity to
make an application of this relation as a prin
ciple of Christian life, and in order to do so,

78 Christian Principles
we will once again take the terms in separa
tion. Christianity affirms fundamentally that hu
man reason must for evermore be tested by the
Divine Reason. The necessity for this Milton
exquisitely expressed in " Paradise Lost."
" But God left free the will, for what obeys
Reason is free, and reason He made right,
But bid her well beware, and still erect,
Lest by some fair-appearing good surprised
She dictate false, and misinform the will
To do what God expressly hath forbid."
The Christian position therefore, is not that
man must not use his reason in matters of faith,
but rather that man's reason must for ever be
corrected by the essential and eternal Reason;
that all the thinking of man must be tested in
order to accuracy, by the thinking of God.
That thinking of God has been revealed to man
in the Logos, in the Word, which was made
flesh ; the Word which was the Reason, and of
which the Incarnation was an expression to
man within the sphere of the possibility of his

Relation of Reason and Faith 79
comprehension. Reason in God is infinite
Wisdom. Of that the king sang,
" I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning,
Or ever the earth was.
When there were no depths, I was brought forth,
When there were no fountains abounding with water.
Before the mountains were settled,
Before the hills was I brought forth,
While as yet He had not made the earth, nor the fields,
Nor the beginning of the dust of the world.
When He established the heavens, I was there,
When He set a circle upon the face of the deep,
When He made firm the skies above,
When the fountains of the deep became strong,
When He gave to the sea its bound,
That the waters should not transgress His command
ment,
When He marked out the foundations of the earth,
Then I was by Him, as a Master Workman,
And I was daily His delight,
Rejoicing always before Him,
Rejoicing in His habitable earth,
And My delight was with the sons of men."
Of that the apostolic seer declared, " In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was

80 Christian Principle's
with God, and the Word was God. The same
was in the beginning with God. All things
were made by Him, and without Him was not
anything made that hath been made. In Him
was life; and the life was the light of men
. . . There was the true Light, even the
light which lighteth every man, coming into
the world . . . And the Word became
flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld His
glory, glory as of the only begotten from the
Father), full of grace and truth." The infinite
and underlying Wisdom which operated in cre
ation became incarnate in Jesus, for revelation
and redemption; and the Christian position is
that the exercise of human reason needs to be
tested by that revelation of the eternal Reason.
In this sense faith in man is the gift of God.
The Word creates it. The Word spoken brings
conviction, and therein is the creation of faith
which for evermore knows God Whom to know
is life eternal. The exercise of faith is that of
obedience, and therein begins the responsibility
of man in the realm of conduct.

Relation of Reason and Faith 81
If it be affirmed that the Christian preacher
asks that men believe things he says because he
says them, it is absolutely untrue. Our appeal
is to the reason by the preaching of the Word.
Human reason, brought into activity by the
authority of the Revelation, exercises itself by
the larger conclusion, which is nevertheless for
evermore to react upon the details of conduct.
All belief must be based upon reason. All rea
son must ultimately proceed to the activity of
faith which apprehends an area larger than
reason can discover.
In conclusion let me make application of this
study to those which have preceded it. Man's
spiritual nature includes the fact of his right of
access to God, insisting upon it as obligatory.
How is this right of access to be exercised ? By
the inter-related activity of reason and faith.
Reason has to do with the things seen. Faith
has to do with the things unseen. " By faith
we understand that the ages were framed by
the Word of God, so that what is seen hath not
been made out of things which do appear."

82 Christian Principles
This larger conception is based upon a true un
derstanding of the things which do appear.
Reason deals with them, and compels the con
viction that they are the outcome of things
which are beyond the sphere of reason's demon
stration. " By faith . . . Moses endured
as seeing Him Who is invisible." His vision of
the invisible was the result of his true appre
hension of the meaning of things visible. The
conviction of his parents which had preserved
him, the observation of his people enslaved, the
approach to God through the solitudes of the
wilderness, the flaming glory of a burning bush,
were all things under observation. Reason
dealt with them, and discovered that there
were things with which it could not deal touch
ing all of them. Faith spread its wings, and
soared, where the fine and heroic marching of
reason ended, and thus he beheld the invisible
and endured. Reason can deal with all the
things that appear, but its final activity is the
creation of a conviction that these came not out
of themselves, but that behind the tangible is

Relation of Reason and Faith 83
the intangible, beyond the ponderable is the
imponderable, at the back of the revealed is
the secret. Thus reason merges into faith, not
by catastrophe, but necessarily. I cannot dem
onstrate, I cannot prove the existence of God,
but faith born out of reason, affirms, and I
know. I pass through the processes of reason
as it investigates creation until faith discovers,
for reason's illumination, the Creator.
God is a Spirit. Thus man has access to
God. His reason apprehends the Word of
God as an Expression. His faith has confi
dence in the essential truth, and knows the
larger thing which cannot be finally demon
strated. Reason and faith therefore are the warp and
woof in the fabric of the spiritual life. There
are many things in the presence of which rea
son can offer no explanation. In such places
let us ever be supremely careful not to make
the judgment blind. Let it rather accept the
deduction which it cannot emphatically demon
strate. The first call of God to the soul is the

84 Christian Principles
call of Reason. " Come now, and let us reason
together." He never asks for faith save on
that basis. When man has heard that call, and
has opened all the faculties of his being thereto
and is convinced, He demands the activity of
the faith which He has thus created. There
fore to the man who is enquiring, who finds
himself confronted by mystery and difficulty,
the word of the Christian faith is, Have no
hesitation or fear, bring to bear on all your
problems the whole fact of your mind; but
never forget that in Christ the ultimate Reason
has been revealed. He is God's Speech to man,
and as a man permits his reason to be tested
and corrected by Christ, he will find himself
led onward to the point where his reason passes
into confidence, and he finds a firmer faith his
own. The faith that does not come from rea
son is for evermore to be doubted. The reason
that never finds such faith is for evermore to
be feared.

IV
THE PRELIMINARY ADJUSTMENT— SELF
LOST AND FOUND
It is necessary that we take time to define
the central term in this subject. The word
self is in constant use, and has many shades of
meaning, which we express by coupling it with
other words, as we speak of a self-centred
man, or a self-denying life, of self-conscious
ness, of self-assertion, of self-abnegation. Our
enquiry then is as to the first and simplest
meaning of the word in such common use.
It comes into modern English from the An
glo-Saxon, having blood relations in all sec
tions of the Gothic or Teutonic branch of the
Aryan family, being found with some slight
modification of spelling in all of them. As
to its origin nothing definite or final is known.
Two suggestions have been made by philolo-
85

86 Christian Principles
gists of eminence, which I propose to name be
cause I think they may help us in our study.
Skeat suggested that the word comes from
the old form Selba, or Seliba, which again is
made up of two words, Se, and Liba, meaning
quite simply, left to self. But this, it is
at once evident, is a definition which in
cludes, in order to explanation, the word we
are attempting to define, with another word,
for se alone is the Gothic equivalent to the
Latin se, meaning self. The word Liba, which
radically means left, being added to se, intensi
fies the suggestiveness thereof by indicating
the fact that it is self, with all other facts ex
cluded. Seliba, therefore, means personality
alone, left alone, considered in its actual be
ing, without relation to other beings. The use
of the word being in that connection is also
suggestive, for the old Saxon word Liba is
first cousin of lifan, which not merely means
to leave, but to live. So that there is the sug
gestion in the word of existence, not merely ex
clusion of others, but the actuality and continu-

The Preliminary Adjustment 87
ity of the thing left. Self therefore according
to that definition, indicates some one being,
complete in its loneliness, without reference to
any other beings.
Kluge suggested that our word self has
come from the old Irish Selb, which radically
means possession, and that therefore the
thought suggested by the word is finally that
of lordship, ownership, and consequently of
power, that is, of doing, rather than of being.
According to this definition the word self sug
gests the realization of being, the exercise
thereof, but still within its own borders. The
difficulty of defining the word is discovered by
the fact that in attempting to do so, it is al
most impossible to avoid making use of the
word in the course of the definition. So that
finally one is inclined to say self is self.
For purposes of this study, however, I pro
pose that we incorporate the two suggestions
already referred to, for whatever the philolog
ical origin of the word may be, it is perfectly
certain that in our use of it we do combine

88 Christian Principles
both ideas. In that use self ever represents be
ing and doing, and these in their inter-relation
ships. It stands for the / am and the / can
which constitute the sum total of conscious in
dividual personality. I express the whole fact
of my life when I say, / am, I can. It may be
objected that there are other statements neces
sary to completeness of expression, such for
instance as I think, I love, I act, but a mo
ment's reflection will show that these but serve
to express the different possibilities of the I can,
for in each case the I do is the outcome of the
/ can, I think being the activity of I can think,
I love of / can love, I act of / can act. There
fore I repeat that the whole fact of conscious
individual personality is encompassed and ex
pressed in these two simplest of all sentences,
/ am, I can. In ordinary use, therefore, I
submit that this word, self, suggests being and
its necessary sequence of doing. Individual
ity has existence and potentiality. Self is that
in any given instance which can say, / am, I
can.

The Preliminary Adjustment 89
In our study, then, the word self is used as
indicating personality, such personality as has
been defined in our previous considerations.
Let these then be restated briefly. Every hu
man personality is spiritual in nature, has a
right of access to God, which is also an obli
gation, and has as the method of its intellectual
activity both reason and faith. Out of these
facts all the activity of human personality
proceeds. While man may live without recog
nition of the spirituality of his nature, and
without exercising the right or obeying the re
sponsibility of his access to God, he cannot
live and act save in the exercise of that spiritual
nature, and having relation to God either false
or true by his exercise of reason and faith.
Leaving for the moment the first two of these
principles it is perfectly patent that activity
proceeds from the exercise of reason. Whereas
the deepest truth of all is that as a man " reck-
oneth within himself, so is he," it is equally
and consequently true that as a man reckon-
eth within himself, so doeth he. It is impos-

90 Christian Principles
sible in the case of rational beings that they
should do anything which is not preceded by
thought. The thinking may be subconscious,
automatic, mechanical, but it is nevertheless
present. The simplest acts of life are preceded
by thought and decision. Therefore when we
speak of self in this study, we refer to being,
spiritual in nature, having a right of access
to God, which is also an obligation, and having
reason and faith as the method of the con
sciousness preceding all activity.
A still further word by way of definition is
necessary. The subject of the preliminary ad
justment, self lost and found must be under
stood not to indicate a discussion of the method
by which man has passed into the condition in
which he is conscious of something wrong, and
of how it may be possible for that to be set
right. Our subject is rather a discussion of
the second half of that larger whole. We are
to consider the subject of the preliminary read
justment of lives that are lost, the adjustment
which Christ distinctly described as self being

The Preliminary Adjustment 91
found by being lost, of life entered through
the gate of death. This must be clearly before
the mind even at the cost of tediousness of
statement. I am not about to discuss how a
man is lost in any evangelical sense of the word.
To that I shall have to make passing reference,
but in the whole argument it is taken for
granted. I am rather desirous of stating the teach
ing of Christianity as to how a man lost, in
the sense in which that word describes a com
mon, human experience, may be found. The
teaching of Christanity is that the lost life
may be found by being lost in a new sense, thus
ceasing to be lost in the sense already re
ferred to.
This, however, makes it necessary that we
should insist upon the fact that Christianity be
gins with man as lost. On that subject the
word of Jesus is all-inclusive and final. " The
Son of man came to seek and to save that
which was lost." That description of the con
dition of humanity harmonizes with the con-

92 Christian Principles
elusion of the scientist to which I have made
reference, when he said that one of the common
convictions of religious experience is that
there is something wrong about us as we nat
urally stand. Christianity accounts for that
fact by its doctrine of the fall, both the origi
nal fall and the continuous fall. That doctrine
I do not now discuss, but accept the fact by
whatever term it may be described. My pur
pose is to state the teaching of Christianity as
to how the " something wrong " may be set
right, how the lost may be found.
In this study for purposes of simplicity and
lucidity we confine ourselves exclusively to the
teaching of Christ. Let me first of all then, in
broad statement declare what that teaching
was. He consistently affirmed that in order
to man's restoration to right relationship
with God, it was necessary that self should be
lost. He declared, moreover, that whenever
man consented to the loss of self, self would
be found. These are the commonplaces and
simplicities of our holy religion, and yet there

The Preliminary Adjustment 93
are no truths which have greater need of new
and forceful statement, and insistent emphasis
than these. That man must lose in order to find
himself has long been emphasized, yet never
over-emphasized. The other side of Christ's
statement that a man losing himself does as
suredly find himself has certainly not had ade
quate enforcement in the general teaching of
recent years ; and yet it is the final truth of the
whole declaration that a man through the gate
way of death, does enter into life, by the proc
ess of losing self does find not life of another
quality, but his own life, the life he possesses
by the first creation of God.
But let us first give attention to this teach
ing concerning the necessity for the losing of
self. The fact of the necessity is emphasized
by the consistent and superlative demands of
Christ. It was the perpetual burden of His
teaching, and in some of His recorded words,
where it may not appear upon the surface, a
little thought and honest attention will reveal
the fact that the necessity was always present to

94 Christian Principles
His consciousness, and always emphasized in
His teaching. When after His baptism He set
His face toward public ministry. Matthew tells
us, " From that time began Jesus to preach, and
to say, Repent ye, for the Kingdom of heaven
is at hand." I do not propose here to enter into
any discussion of the long-continued con
troversy between the Roman and Protestant
theologians as to whether repentance evangel
ically is Recipiocentia or Poenitentia, but at
once declare my conviction that the Protestant
theologians were right, and that the word
which Christ is reported by Matthew to have
used at the beginning of His ministry is the
one that reveals the real meaning of repentance.
That word simply means a change of mind,
and we do no violence whatever to the text
if we read, From that time Jesus began to
preach and to say, Change your mind, for the
Kingdom of heaven is at hand. That is the
first call of the Master as He begins His work
with individual men. By no means the final
call, but it is always first, and the reason for

The Preliminary Adjustment 95
it is to be discovered in the recognition of a
truth already referred to in the present study,
namely, that as a man " reckoneth within him
self, so is he." If a man's character is to be
remade, his conduct must be remade, but if his
conduct is to be remade, it must be by the re
making of his creed. Of course it will be
recognized that I use the word creed in its sim
plest, and therefore its truest sense, not of a
statement compiled by some, and recited by
others, but referring to the conception, the con
viction of the mind. In this sense it will be
seen that the first word of Christ was revolu
tionary. He called men to change their creed,
their conviction, their conception. In effect
He declared that at the centre of their life men
were out of harmony with essential truth.
Therefore their conduct was wrong, their
character was wrong, and they were lost.
That being the keynote of His ministry, it
is interesting to follow Him, listening ever to
what He has to say, and watching closely the
effects He produces. Taking this latter first,

96 Christian Principles
one is impressed by the marvellous effect of
His perpetual attractiveness. Wherever He
went, men crowded after Him. But it is
equally patent that He was for evermore re
pelling them, holding them back. Whenever
the crowds gathered to Him, almost tumultu-
ously assembling with such irresistible force did
He draw them, He nevertheless withdrew from
them, or sifted them, consistently revealing how
hard a thing it really is for men to follow Him.
When He saw the multitudes He left them and
went up into a mountain, and as His disciples
gathered to Him He taught them, not the
multitudes, but the disciples ; and the manifesto
He gave them contains an ethic which, rightly
interpreted, from beginning to end insists upon
the necessity for a change of mind and a denial
of self. The multitude followed Him and He
turned and said to them, " If any man would
come after Me, let him deny himself, and take
up his cross, and follow Me." He saw men
trifling with sin, and revealed to them the only
attitude toward sin which can possibly count

The Preliminary Adjustment 97
in the tremendous process of remaking in or
der to righteousness, " If thy right eye causeth
thee to stumble, pluck it out, and cast it from
thee ... If thy right hand causeth thee to
stumble, cut it off, and cast it from thee." An
examination of the whole ministry of Christ
in order to an appreciation of His teaching,
will reveal the fact of His unvarying insist
ence upon the absolute necessity for denying
self. In this connection let me make a remark
which is old and almost commonplace, but yet
which needs to be clearly understood. There
may be all the difference in the world between
a certain practice of self-denial, and denying
self. The practice of self-denial may be cheap
and easy, and may even contribute to the
strengthening of the self-life. To deny self,
on the other hand, is to deal with the whole of
personality. When self is denied, neither wish,
nor desire, nor call of the self-life is to be con
sidered for a moment, save as it is yielded to
the supreme arbitrament of the will of God.
Thus in a word, radical, drastic, and revo-

98 Christian Principles
lutionary, Christ perpetually confronts human
nature as He comes in order to save it. This
is not a popular doctrine. Human nature says,
I am my own master, I can please myself, I
will not be a slave, and in answer Christ
replies, You are not your own master,
you cannot please yourself, you must be a
slave. So consistent and imperative a demand pro
claimed by Christ must be based upon some ab
solute necessity. Let it then be carefully noted
that wherever Christ declared the necessity
either directly or inferentially, He did so by
putting the man to whom He spoke, into com
parison with Himself. " If any man would
come after Me, let him deny himself, and take
up His Cross, and follow Me." The compari
son is self-evident. The man is to deny himself
in order to follow Christ, which most evi
dently means that Christ is moving in one di
rection, while the man has been going in the
other, which is but another way of saying
that Christ's ideal of life and that of the man

The Preliminary Adjustment 99
to whom He appeals are not identical. That,
moreover, is the profound significance of the
familiar passage, " Come unto Me, all ye that
labour and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn
of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and
ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My
yoke is easy, and My burden is light." His
appeal is to men who are wearing a false
yoke, and He calls them to wear His yoke;
and so throughout His teaching He perpetually
placed Himself in comparison with men, and
thus explained the meaning of the tremendous
claim He made that men must deny them
selves. What then is the revelation of this teach
ing? That the "something wrong" — and I
again quote Professor James' phrase — in hu
man life is that self has found itself in a wrong
way, and therefore the first necessity toward
restoration is the denial of self, and the loss
of life. Man having taken his being and doing,
the / am and the I can of him, out of relation-

ioo Christian Principles
ship to God, is out of orbit, is inarticulate.
Therefore the man who says, I am my own
master, I can please myself, I will be no man's
slave, is unable to master himself, never
pleases himself, becomes the slave of forces
which he does not know how to manage. To
that man Christ says, Lose your life, in order
that you may find it. Submit to the true Mas
ter that you may become master of yourself.
Please God that you may find the true pleasure
of life. Be His bond-slave in order that you
may become His freeman.
All this, however, becomes yet more clear as
we turn to the other side of the consideration
of the preliminary adjustment, and in this
connection let me at once attempt to make def
inite and forceful the positive side of Christ's
teaching as contained in His superlative prom
ise. " He that loseth his life shall find it." I
have sometimes thought that there would be
a value in a grotesque illumination of passages
of Scripture. By that I mean the printing
of a passage with one word which is generally

The Preliminary Adjustment 101
considered unimportant, made to flame in let
ters of fire. If I were illuminating this par
ticular text in this way, I would let all the
words be in small and ordinary characters un
til I came to that last one of two letters, mak
ing the " it " arrest the attention, and demand
consideration. Christ declares that a man los
ing his life shall find it. He does not say if
you will consent to crucify the flesh, and crush
the powers of your being, you shall find an
other being, another kind of life, a new order
of existence, but rather if you will lose your
life, with its intellectual capacity, and its emo
tional power, and its volitional ability, you
shall find it. Whatever may be the peculiar
quality or quantity of your life, whether it be
that of artistic temperament, or mechanical
skill, you shall find it. All that a man is in
his first creation by God, he becomes when he
obeys the call of Chirst, and denies him
self. This may be stated in another way. No self-
centred man can paint a picture. There will

102 Christian Principles
always be something about it of inexactitude,
of false impression, something of dust min
gling with the colours, and robbing them of
their brilliance. But if the artist will lose his
life and paint no picture from self-governed
motive, his picture will be true, in form and
colour, in suggestion and inspiration, a verit
able work of art. Christ has come to spoil no
picture, to make discord in the midst of no
music, to rob no man of his natural ability,
but rather to create the picture, to make the
music, and to find the man, and make him what
God meant him to be. Account for the sec
ond birth as you will psychologically, experi
mentally it means the realization of the
potentialities of the first birth.
To return to our definition, self is the / am
and the / can of individual conscious personal
ity. A man yielded to Christ finds the / am and
the / can. He finds the / am, that is the con
flicting elements of his life are merged into a
consistent and forceful whole, and instead of
being at war within himself — and war is al-

The Preliminary Adjustment 103
ways hell, whether in a man, or a nation — he
is at peace. He finds the I can, that is all his
powers act with ease, and to the accomplish
ment of purpose, he thinks, he feels, he does.
All this may best be apprehended by illustra
tion, and I shall take my illustration from the
New Testament, and from the experience of
the man who was perhaps in the apostolic age,
the most remarkable witness to the power of
Christ. Paul declared " By the grace of God
I am what I am," and " I can do all things
in Him which strengtheneth me." There
we have the / am and the / can of Paul's
fundamental personality. He found himself
when he lost himself on the way to Damas
cus. Blinded by the light that fell about him,
he heard the voice of the Nazarene, and in
answer to His call said, "What shall I do,
Lord?" That question is a revelation of the fact
that he denied himself. In that moment
Saul of Tarsus placed Another upon the throne
of his being, and handed the keys of all

104 Christian Principles
the chambers of the citadel to the Nazarene.
Judged by the standard of the lost world, Saul
of Tarsus in that moment lost himself, he
flung away his individuality, and gave up his
independence, and the world is true in its
thinking so far. But the years pass on, and I
find him writing the words of essential per
sonality, " By the grace of God I am what I
am." " I can do all things in Him which
strengtheneth me." His declaration " by
the grace of God I am what I am," is not
merely a declaration of the fact that Christ
has triumphed. It is also a challenge to men
to examine him, and find out what he really is,
and he affirms, " I am what I am." He was
a Hebrew, he was a Roman, he was a Greek.
By blood he was a Hebrew, describing himself
as " Hebrew of Hebrews." By citizenship he
was a Roman, claiming all the rights and privi
leges of such relationship. By sympathy he
was a Greek, speaking the language and pro
foundly interested in the philosophies. None
of these facts were ended by his relationship

The Preliminary Adjustment 105
to Christ. They were rather found and real
ized. I am Hebrew by the grace of God, and
in my experience there is fulfilled the religious
ideal which lay at the centre of Hebrew his
tory and purpose. By the grace of God I am
a Roman, and all Rome's passion for govern
ment and power of empire is consecrated to
the establishment of the Kingdom of God. By
the grace of God I am a Greek, and all the
Greek love of mystery and attempt to see to the
heart of things is in me, enabling me to cor
rect the false by the interpretation of the
true. Then he also says, " I can do all things."
And do not let us interpret the / can of Paul
in a small way. The context reveals his mean
ing. He does not say, I can write letters, I
can travel, I can preach. These were inciden
tal things. He rather affirms, " I know how
to be abased, and I know also how to abound."
I am able to do the small thing, or to take the
high situation. I can maintain my dignity in
the hour when I am oppressed. I can retain

106 Christian Principles
my humility in the hour when I am enthroned.
I can do all things. It is the word that tells
of a throne found, and a kingdom adminis
tered. This losing of self then means adjustment
to the essential and the eternal. It is return
to orbit, of that which had wandered there
from. It is articulation, the putting into joint
of that which was out of joint. The man who
claims to be his own master cannot realize
himself, or find himself. The man who sub
mits to Christ finds himself, and realizes his
life. In dealing with the text " They that have
turned the world upside down have come
hither also," a preacher of rare insight made
use of three divisions. First, the world is
upside down anyhow; secondly, to turn it up
side down therefore is to turn it right side
up ; thirdly, let us get at it. That is the whole
philosophy of our subject. Christ found men
upside down. He came to invert the order
and put them on their feet, that they might

The Preliminary Adjustment 107
see things in their true relationship, and live
as they ought.
This is preliminary only. There is much to
do after a man's order of life has been changed,
after it has become articulate, but nothing can
be done till that is done.

THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRIST LIFE-
CENTRE AND SPHERE
That preliminary adjustment, whereby
man finds his life, consists in his restoration
to God. That is made possible and accom
plished by the work of Christ, for " God was
in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself."
Man apprehends God through Christ. There
fore the restored or adjusted life of man is
the Christ life. By the denial of self, through
the infinite grace of God, man receives the
value of the death of Christ, and the virtue
of His life. Therefore he is correctly desig
nated a Christian; that is, one who has re
ceived the life of Christ and henceforth is
one with Him, in motive and in mind.
It is significant that the disciples were
called Christians first at Antioch. A study of
108

Realization of the Christ Life 109
the book of the Acts of the Apostles shows
that in consequence of the failure of the
Church in Jerusalem to carry out the commis
sion of Christ, God by the Holy Spirit moved
His base of missionary operations to Antioch,
laid an arresting hand upon a new instrument,
and made Saul of Tarsus the pioneer mis
sionary toward the uttermost part of the
earth. The disciples in Antioch responded to
the inspiration of the Christ life, and there
fore necessarily became the instruments
through which the witnesses were sent forth
in fulfilment of His purpose. Whatever the
attitude of the men of Antioch was toward the
Church, it is evident that as they observed the
disciples, they came to the conclusion that
there was only one name which could exactly
describe them, and that was the name Chris
tian. This designation of the disciples was
born of the fact that the outside world rec
ognized their relationship to Him. This is
only an illustration, but it is a striking one,
that the life adjusted to God through Christ,

no Christian Principles
becomes in the deepest and truest sense Chris
tian life.
In the same connection it is equally inter
esting to remember that this Saul of Tarsus,
who became Paul the apostle, has in his writ
ings consistently emphasized the fact that the
life of a believer is the life of Christ. As
to his own personal experience he declared in
one brief statement, full of beauty and of
suggestiveness, the whole story of his Chris
tian life. " To me to live is Christ." That is
an all-inclusive and exhaustive statement,
which Frederic W. Myers has beautifully il
lustrated in his poem, the opening and closing
lines of which tell the deepest story of the
life and labours of the great missionary
apostle.
"Christ! I am Christ's! and let the name suffice you,
Ay, for me too He greatly hath sufficed.
Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning,
Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ."
Moreover, in his writings, when he had oc-

Realization of the Christ Life in
casion to correct errors of any kind, Paul in
variably did so by positive teaching concerning
Christ, and by urging those to whom he wrote
to the realization of that life in their own ex
perience. This is seen in his correction of the
errors of practical life in the Corinthian
church ; of the errors resulting from the influ
ence of Judaizing teachers in the Galatian
church ; and of the errors existing as the result
of the mixture of Judaism and Greek gnos
ticism in the church at Colosse.
In the course of the letter to the Colossians
there are certain statements which may be
taken out of their context without doing any
violence to their value, and linked together
as revealing the all-inclusive truth concerning
Christian experience. First by way of illustra
tion, and not for a full examination, notice
the inter-relation between two of these. " It
was the good pleasure of the Father that in
Him should all the fulness dwell " ; and " in
Hipi ye are made full." The first is the apos
tle's all-inclusive declaration concerning Christ.

112 Christian Principles
The second is his all-inclusive declaration con
cerning the resources of the believer. In the
Christ all the fulness of God dwells. The be
liever is filled to the full in Him.
There is another connection of passages pos
sible from the same letter, which constitutes
the theme of our present study. In the course
of his argument in order to the correction of
what he terms "philosophy and vain deceit,"
the apostle made use of the words, " Christ in
you, the Hope of glory," as suggesting the
central, experimental mystery of Christian
life, and later he wrote the words already
quoted, " In Him ye are made full." If we
take these statements again yet more briefly
by the omission of some of the words unneces
sary to our present meditation, we see that
the apostle's conception of Christian life is
that Christ is its Centre and Sphere. " Christ
in you " indicates the fact that He is the Cen
tre. " Ye in Him " reveals the truth that He
is the Sphere. It is well to say at this point
that the word sphere is chosen, rather than

Realization of the Christ Life 113
circumference, or circle, because the use of the
latter term is permissible only in the descrip
tion of a plane surface, while a sphere is that
which absolutely surrounds whatever stands at
its centre, on every side and in every direction.
In this sense Christ is the Sphere of the be
liever's life.
Christianity then, if I may use the somewhat
mechanical and mathematical terms, is Christo-
centric, and Christo-spheric. Christ is at
the centre of the believer's life, the believer
is at the centre of His life. Now it is per
fectly evident that this statement is inclusive
and exhaustive, and therefore altogether be
yond the possibility of anything like detailed
exposition in the course of one address. All
I propose, therefore, is the statement of the
double truth in its barest outlines of applica
tion, and as to its first principles of value in
the life of the Christian. It is well that we
should remember that whichever of these as
pects we may consider, we are compelled to
use the same terminology. If we speak of the

114 Christian Principles
Christian life as being Christo-centric, then the
believer is the sphere of the Christ, because
Christ is the Centre of the life of the believer.
If we speak of Christian life as being Christo-
spheric, then the believer is the centre of the
Christ, because Christ surrounds the believer's
life. The fact that Christian life is Christo-cen
tric is the essential mystery and miracle and
might of Christian experience. To think of
Christianity only as a cult, which may be ac
cepted as presenting theories which are ac
ceptable to the intellectual comprehension, is
to fail utterly to understand the real meaning
thereof. To consider Christianity as the pres
entation of an ideal, or the enunciation of an
ethic, is to have caught some gleam of truth,
for both these things are so; but it is to fail
altogether to discover the profoundest fact and
meaning thereof. The consistent teaching of
Christ Himself and of His apostles is that
when self is denied Christ ascends the throne,
assumes the responsibility, and by His own in-

Realization of the Christ Life 115
dwelling through the Holy Spirit communi
cates all the power necessary to obedience.
Let us in the simplest way possible attempt
to understand the real meaning of this concep
tion. We may do this best by thinking of the
believer, that is, of one individual as consti
tuting the sphere of the life of Christ. Our
knowledge of men commences in the realm of
the physical. My first consciousness of a
person other than myself is necessarily that of
the physical. On the street or in the railway
train, or in the midst of a multitude we have
brief transitory acquaintance with human be
ings. If we happen to gaze into the eye of some
stranger, we may catch some gleam of the
spiritual nature, not enough to enable us to
form any correct estimate, but enough to pro
duce a sense of the mind, and therefore of the
spirit of the one on whom we look. Even
such illumination comes, however, through the
physical. Thus I repeat, that to deal with a
human being is first of all to be conscious of
the material, the external, the manifest.

116 Christian Principles
Nevertheless in doing so we are perfectly sure
of the fact, that what we are first conscious of,
is not the essential. The essential is that
which looks through the eye, listens through
the ear, makes us feel through the touch. Be
yond the physical medium is the spiritual es
sence. In dealing with that spiritual nature
we first communicate with the intellectual, and
thus approach the emotional, and finally reach
the volitional, which is the central citadel of
human personality. In dealing with the essen
tial spiritual nature of any human being we
necessarily first have to do with the intellectual,
which is capable of observation and compre
hension. The emotional is never reached save
through the intellectual. It is perfectly true
that the intellectual may be a spoiled instru
ment, flinging distorted visions upon the retina,
and thus producing false emotion. All that,
however, is not now under discussion, and
does not interfere with the accuracy of the
statement that the emotion of love or hate
is always the result of an intellectual concep-

Realization of the Christ Life 117
tion. Beyond, is that which is the final dignity
of human personality, the power to choose, to
decide, to elect, to determine. I need hardly
stay to argue that every man has such power ;
it is so patent and self-evident that man may
exercise his will as against the conviction of his
intelligence, and in a contrary direction to
that suggested by the driving power of the
emotion. There is a sense in which the in
tellect and the emotion affect the choice of
the will, but there is no escape from the fact
that man is able to will by choosing as between
the claims of conflicting emotions resulting
from apparently contradictory intellectual con
ceptions. The weak man is the man who al
lows his will to be wholly driven by his
emotion. The strong man is the man who is
able to say, What I would, I will not, I could
wish to keep Onesimus for my own benefit,
but I will send Onesimus back to Philemon.
That is strength, and at the centre of every life
is that capacity.
Turning back once more to the external or

118 Christian Principles
physical we have what we speak of as the
senses. The last home of sensation is the
spirit, but the medium of the senses is the flesh.
Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, are all the
servants of the intelligence. By each and all
of these man apprehends things external to
himself. That apprehension is intellectual
conception, which creates emotional conscious
ness. Thus the senses indicate to the intelli
gence, and through it influence the emotion,
and finally make their appeal to the will, but
they always await its decision. The weakened
will says to the emotion, Gratify yourself.
The strong will refuses the cry of the emotion
whenever it is out of harmony with eternal
principles. All this leads us in broadest and
barest outline to a conception of that sphere
of which in Christian life Christ is the Centre.
Therefore in the moment in which a man
denies himself, he yields that central citadel
of his personality to Christ, Who takes up His
abode at the centre of the life upon the throne
of the will, and from thence administers the

Realization of the Christ Life 119
whole life. He interprets the meaning of all
things for the intelligence. He inspires the
emotion with the true reasons for its activity.
He impulses the will in its choices toward con
formity to the will of God. I have named that
last, because it is last in the activity of human
personality, and yet it is supreme. The con
ceptions of the intelligence are wholly changed
when Christ at the centre of the life interprets
the meaning of all of which through the media
of the senses the intelligence becomes con
scious. This has the widest application, but we will
confine ourselves to human life. When one
man looks upon another, what does he see?
It depends entirely upon whether Christ sits
at the centre of his being, and interprets to him
the meaning of what he sees. If Christ be at
the centre, the man who sees another man, sees
the image of God, bruised it may be, almost
out of all recognition, but still there. The hall
mark of the Divine proprietorship is stamped
upon every face plainly to the eyes of those at

120 Christian Principles
the centre of whose life Christ lives and reigns.
That is what Christ always saw when He
looked at men, and He gives all men in whom
He dwells the same vision of others. But if
Christ be not in him, what does a man see,
when he sees a man? Well, it depends en
tirely upon what, out of his own self-life, he
has made the dominant factor at its centre.
If he is seeking for earthly wealth, when he
sees a man he sees " a hand." He speaks of
employing a thousand "hands." He looks
upon men as chattels to be possessed, instru
ments to be pressed into the work of enriching
himself. If on the other hand the master
passion of his life is the acquisition of knowl
edge, he looks upon man as a specimen, to be
dissected, analyzed, accounted for, placed. The
intelligence is far more under the control of
the will, and biassed by its purpose than we
often think. Where that will is the throne of
Christ, He interprets the Divine meaning of all
the things of which the intelligence is con
scious, setting them in their right place and

Realization of the Christ Life 121
proportion and perspective in the economy of
God. That is true ,not merely of the supreme
fact upon which human eyes can look, a hu
man being; but also of all things lower in the
creative order, animals, or fields, or flowers,
the mighty sea, or the dewdrop that glistens
in the morning light upon the blade of grass.
What is seen depends entirely upon whether
Christ is at the centre of the life. If He be
there, " the old things have passed away, be
hold, they are become new," a new God, a
new heaven, a new earth.
" Heaven above is softer blue,
Earth around is sweeter green!
Something lives in every hue
Christless eyes have never seen:
Birds with gladder songs o'erflow,
Flowers with deeper beauties shine,
Since I know as now I know,
I am His, and He is mine."
The whole intelligence is illuminated with the
new light of the Christ life. If someone shall
answer, I have never experienced anything like

122 ^ Christian Principles
that, it is perfectly evident that such an one
has not been born again. Christianity to such
may be a mere ethical convenience, which en
ables them to prevent other people defrauding
them, and themselves to escape the unprofitable
experience of imprisonment, or it may be the
inspiration of a certain form of philanthropy,
which is likely to be profitable. If Christ be
in the life, He is the " Hope of glory," and
the intelligence sees everywhere fringes of
gold upon the clouds, and through all creation
there flash and flame the beauties of the eternal
order. But Christ at the centre of the life does more
than interpret to the intelligence the meaning
of things. By so doing He inspires the
emotion, so that men are moved to approba
tion, and love of the things that harmonize
with the character of God. When He sits at
the centre of personality, man begins to love
the things of light, the pure and the high, the
noble and the true, and consequently all the
activity of love toward relations, friends, to-

Realization of the Christ Life 123
ward men generally, and toward the world, is
new. Said the apostle who understood the
mystic relationships between Christ and the
believer so perfectly, "Love not the world,
neither the things that are in the world." Yet
this same apostle chronicles for us the fact
that " God so loved the world." There seems
to be a contradiction between these two state
ments, and yet spiritual intelligence is at once
conscious that there is no contradiction.
When Christ is at the centre of the life the
emotions are purified, and act in consonance
with the eternal reason of the Eternal Love.
Then the love of the world is no longer the
love of dust, issuing in the attempt to find
spiritual satisfaction in material things. It is
rather such love of the world as through serv
ice and sacrifice attempts to restore it to con
sciousness of the love of God, and fellowship
therewith. And so finally, Christ being at the cen
tre of the life, interpreting the meaning of
the things of which the intelligence is made

124 Christian Principles
conscious, by setting them in the light of the
eternal order; inspiring the emotion, so that it
acts only in harmony with the love and holiness
of God, thus impulses the will in its choices.
Christ at the centre of a human life means
therefore His dominion over the external and
the manifest, and consequently all the senses,
and their medium the flesh, are under the do
minion of the spiritual nature of man, which
in turn is under the dominion of the Christ,
and so, therefore, these very senses are brought
into subjection to the will of Christ which is
the will of God. If Christ be seated at the
centre of the life, it is no longer possible for
the eyes to look at things at which once they
looked with eagerness, no longer possible for
the ears to listen to things to which once they
listened with interest, no longer possible for
the tongue to utter words which once it ut
tered with delight. All the senses of the
physical being brought under the dominion of
the spiritual, which is under the dominion of
the Christ, become Christian, and the conse-

Realization of the Christ Life 125
quence is that through the material life, truth
finds an expression when Christ Who is Truth
sits King at the centre of the being. All that,
however, is but the consideration in bare
outline of one side of our great theme, that
namely that Christian life is Christo-centric.
It is not only true that Christ is the Centre
of the believer's life, it is also true that He is
the Sphere of the believer's life. This is a
theme so vast that in the consciousness that I
am only able to touch the fringe of it, I rec
ommend to all interested in the truest spiritual
interpretation of it, a book by my friend Dr.
Arthur T. Pierson, entitled " In Christ
Jesus." In it he gathers up the teaching of
the seven groups of epistles, and with the aid
of diagrams graphically sets forth what the
phrase suggests according to New Testament
teaching. While I value everything that has
come from Dr. Pierson's pen, I venture to say
that nothing he has written in the department
of the devotional life is so full and illuminative
as this treatise.

126 Christian Principles
In this address we consider the fact only in
broad and general outline. The believer stands
in one great Sphere, which yet may be con
sidered in two departments, which for the sake
of illustration we may term concentric spheres.
There is first the temporal sphere, and beyond
that the eternal. These must not be thought
of as separated into compartments, for the be
liever already lives the life eternal. At the
same time there are limitations in present ex
perience, which after a while will cease. Now
whether we think of what we have just de
scribed as the temporal sphere, or of the eter
nal, we think of Christ, for in all the outlying
reaches of the believer's circumstances or sur
roundings, using either word in its broadest
sense, Christ is to be found. That is to say, that
He is not only dictating at the centre of the
believer's life, He is energizing at its utmost
extremity, and filling all the vast spaces which
stretch beyond. To the believer therefore all
interests are Christian, that is, having to do
with Christ. All spiritual interests are homed

Realization of the Christ Life 127
in Him. The service of the saints is service
rendered to the Christ, and indeed, the only
sufficient inspiration for unceasing and suffer
ing service, is love to Christ. By the Galilean
Sea with the light of morning breaking over its
waters, when Christ restored the wandering
apostle, before committing to him his work, He
did not say, Simon, lovest thou the men of the
world? but "Lovest thou Me?" Christ is
everywhere, so that the believer finds Him to
be inspiration as well as dynamic. All the re
lations of time and space are Christian. A
loved one leaves my side, and fellowship in
service, which is immediate, ends, as my com
rade passing over the seas enters upon some
new toil in China, in India, but I am never far
away from the absent one, because Christ in
me is there also, and Christ in the absent one
is around me. Thus all space is annihilated
in the fellowship of the saints by that deep
and profound consciousness. All the relations
of time, moreover, are interpreted by the same
fact. " Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and

128 Christian Principles
to-day, and for ever." All the relations of
force are governed by the same fact. There
is no blossom of beauty upon which the eyes
look, but that the Christ life is expressing it
self through it. He is the First-born of crea
tion, and therefore His nature manifests itself
in all the beauty of the earth.
Yet that is not all. Christ is far more than
One Who stands behind all the developments
of life, as originating Source. It is equally
true that in Him all things consist. The bond
of inter-relationship between all life and all
lives is His essential Being. All the rhythmic
order of the universe is created by the presence
of the Christ, so that He is immanent, the
Centre of the believer's life, and transcendant,
its Sphere. Wherever the Christian looks he
sees the Christ. At dawning of the morning
His face makes it more beautiful. When the
sun goes westering, and the shadows of the
evening are growing, the consciousness of His
presence is sleep. When the battle thickens,
He rides at the head of His battalions, and

Realization of the Christ Life 129
leads to victory. When peace is declared, it
is His benediction falling upon the sons of
men. Christ is everywhere, and to the man
who knows what it is to have Christ in him,
the Hope of glory, whether he look up or down
or out or back Christ's face is there.
Yet so far reference has only been made to
the first department, or to the sphere of the
temporal. It is equally and superlatively true
that He is the eternal Sphere. The believer
in common with all men, thinks at times of the
day of his passing, of that hour in which the
external fact is laid aside, of his crossing of a
boundary line, of a time when the ropes that
moor the vessel to the shore are cut, and the
life crosses the bar out to the limitless and im
measurable sea. Everyone so thinking, thinks
of God. It is the time when the spiritual
consciousness of man expects the unveiling of
God, looks to come into some more intimate
consciousness of, and relationship with Him.
This is the secret of the dread of death in the
heart of the sinner. The believer shares the

130 Christian Principles
conviction that beyond death there is a meet
ing with God, but the face that shines through
the gloom is the selfsame One which has been
seen through all the discipline of the pilgrim
age. Christ is the Image of the invisible God,
the Brightness of His Glory, the express Image
of His Person. The Christ with Whom we
have grown sacredly familiar in shop and of
fice and workshop is the God Who will meet us
when we cross the boundary line. I shall
" see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar,"
and He is God.
And then beyond, the ages, the continuously
born and awful ages. Sometimes when we
were children the thought of them filled us
with fear. I remember lying awake at nights,
and trying to think of what for ever meant,
until my child brain nearly turned with dread,
and it is still a thought filling the soul with
awe, that of these ages that cannot cease roll
ing one after another in majestic order. But

Realization of the Christ Life 131
the Christian knows that these also are under
the governance of God, and that referring to
Christ an inspired writer has said, " Through
Whom also He made the ages." I know not
what the ages will be, but they have lost their
terror for me. Sometimes I still endeavour
to think of them. This is the age of God's
grace. It has lasted for nineteen hundred
years. Presently it will end, and beyond it
what? Who shall tell? As to those imme
diately succeeding, our view may differ, but
the fact of them, and of their continuity and
succession none of us questions. Every ration
alist believes that. Man's rationalism only has
to do with his own small personality. Accord
ing to his own view it is he that ends, and not
the ages. Now I see them coming, ever com
ing, lit with their own distinctive glory, all
derived from the essential Being of Deity, but
they are fashioned by the Christ. Every new
age shall receive its quality, its quantity, its
value, its new unfolding of the essential mys
tery of God, under His direction. Thus

132 Christian Principles
Christ is the Sphere of the believer's life, so
that whether he looks to the bound of the
present and the temporal, or whether he looks
beyond seeking for the face of God, or whether
he thinks of the ages with their new creations
and revelations, Christ is everywhere, turning
the darkness of the present into the light of
morning, interpreting the nature of God by
the majesty and mercy of His own glance,
and assuring the perfection of the ages by the
fact that they are under His control.
Finally and in a word, if Christ is the Sphere
of the believer's life, the believer is at the cen
tre of His, compelling His consciousness, so
that the Christ is made joyful or sorrowful by
the believer, and compelling His activity in
which He is first true to Himself as God, and
therefore true to the believer. All language
fails, and therefore let me without hesitation
state this fact in such figurative terms as are
necessarily imperfect, and yet illuminative.
Christ has put the believer in His heart, where
the crimson blood of His eternal love finds its

Realization of the Christ Life 133
centre and its home ; and He has taken up His
abode at the centre of the believer's heart, for
the purification of the streams of life, and
the compelling of their conformity to the will
of God.

VI
THE PASSION OF CHRIST AND HIS CHURCH
FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD
Our final study takes for granted all that
have preceded it, and is intimately related to
the last two. In dealing with the subject of
preliminary adjustment we saw that the denial
of self issues in the enthronement of the Christ,
which includes the appropriation of His re
demption and the apprehension of His revela
tion. In dealing with the subject of the
realization of the Christ life we saw that the
believer is both Christo-centric and Christo-
spheric. Now it is a necessary outcome of
these facts that the measure in which they are
realized experimentally, is the measure of the
identity of the consciousness of Christ and His
Church. If Christ be indeed at the centre of
the life; interpreting in the light of essential
truth all the things of which the intelligence is
134

Passion of Christ 135
conscious, inspiring the emotion so that it acts
only in harmony with the love and holiness of
God, and by this redemption and readjustment
of natural processes, impelling the will; it fol
lows that the consciousness of the one so
indwelt must harmonize with that of the In-
dweller. This is the true explanation of the
mystery of the Christian Church ; revealing the
secret of its vision, the inspiration of its emo
tion, and the nature of its passion. The Church
is not an institution organized by the wit and
wisdom of man, of which Christ occasionally
makes use for the carrying on of His work.
That conception of the Church, however modi
fied the form in which it is expressed, is wholly
inadequate. The Church of Christ is His very
Body, the instrument through which He sees
and feels and works in the midst of human his
tory and activity. Therefore the consciousness
of Christ is the consciousness of the Church,
the consciousness of the Church is the con
sciousness of the Christ.
It should at once be admitted that the utter-

136 Christian Principles
ance of such a statement, which is that of an
apparently logical sequence, causes one almost
to blush with shame, because we all know full
well how often the consciousness of the Church
is not that of the Christ; or to state the fact
in the other way, the consciousness of the
Christ is not that of the Church. The reason
for this is that there are certain responsibilities
which being fulfilled, the consciousness of the
Church is that of the Christ, but being unful
filled, Christ is paralyzed in His own Body, be
cause the eye is dim, and the ear is heavy, and
the hand is nerveless.
While He was yet in the world, in the cir
cumstances of early limitation, He declared, " I
have a baptism to be baptised with; and
how am I straitened till it be accomplished ! "
Passing from that period of limited ministry
through His passion baptism, He emerged into
all the fulness of life beyond His Cross, and
baptised into union with Himself by the out
pouring of the Spirit a company of believing
men and women, in order that they might be-

Passion of Christ 137
come the instruments through which He should
continue His work in unstraitened and unlim
ited circumstances. Yet alas, how constantly
we have straitened, limited, hindered Him! I
do not propose, however, in this study to dwell
upon the fact of these failures and limitations,
sorrowful as they are, and demanding serious
attention, but rather to speak of the great ideal,
in order that we may see the Divine purpose
concerning the Church in its relationship to
Christ with regard to the Kingdom of God.
For the purpose of this study I propose again
to take two great statements of the New Testa
ment out of their context, in order that we may
consider them in the light of that context. In
the second chapter of his first letter to the Co
rinthians Paul ends a wonderful declaration
concerning the nature and theme of the Chris
tian ministry with these words, " We have the
mind of Christ." In the second chapter of the
Philippian letter, he lays upon those to whom
he writes as the supreme injunction of his com
munication this charge, " Have this mind in

138 Christian Principles
you, which was also in Christ Jesus." Notice
carefully the two statements, and the difference
between them. The first is a declaration, and
the second is an injunction. In the first the
apostle affirms " We have the mind of Christ."
In the' second he enjoins "Have this mind in
you, which was also in Christ Jesus." " We
have the mind," " Have the mind." It at once
becomes evident that these passages bring us
face to face with the thoughts of resource and
responsibility. Resource is indicated in the
declaration, " We have the mind of Christ."
Responsibility is revealed in the injunction,
" Have this mind in you, which was also in
Christ Jesus." While there is this difference,
it is nevertheless true that both passages must
be considered, each of them in the light of
their context, in order that we may understand
either the resource or the responsibility.
In the Corinthian letter, in the passage of
which this statement is the final declaration, the
apostle has been arguing that the Christian mes
sage is one of wisdom. These people had sepa-

Passion of Christ 139
rated themselves into small groups around the
names of Paul, Apollos, Cephas, and Christ.
He points out that such grouping results from
the mistake of supposing that some one empha
sis is the whole of truth. In the course of the
argument he makes use of the phrase, " wisdom
of words," which is most suggestive as it re
veals the fact that the habit of disputation
around words which obtained in the schools of
Corinth, had invaded the Christian Church.
In contradistinction to the " wisdom of words,"
Paul speaks of the " Word of the Cross,"
which gathers into the infinite music of its
speech all the tones and emphases of Paul, and
Cephas, and Apollos. The men of Corinth
think of the Word of the Cross as being fool
ishness, but he declares that it is a wisdom, not
of this age, nor of the rulers of the age, but the
infinite, the essential Wisdom of God. He then
shows that this can only be known by the inter
pretation of the Spirit of God. As none can
know the things of a man save the spirit of the
man which is within him, so none can know

140 Christian Principles
the deep things of God save the Spirit of God.
These things, however, which could not be seen
of the eye, or detected by the hearing of the ear,
or discovered by the ingenuity of the heart of
man, are revealed to us through His Spirit. Of
this line of argument the all-inclusive and final
word is, " We have the mind of Christ."
*In the Philippian letter he is urging upon
his children the necessity for unity of mind and
heart and purpose. It is in some senses the
most wonderful of all his letters. In the course
of it the word sin never occurs, the -flesh is only
mentioned to be dismissed, and there is no re
buke save the tender correction of disagree
ment between Euodia and Syntyche. It is a
letter that was written in prison, and yet rises
into anthem after anthem, and is bathed in the
spirit of praise. In fact it is Paul's great love
letter. Its supreme message is that of calling
his children to the true attitude of mind or con
sciousness, and when he expresses the pro
foundest desire of his heart for them, in briefest
and simplest language he writes, " Have this

Passion of Christ 141
mind in you; which was also in Christ Jesus."
Then immediately, in a passage of stately and
sublime grandeur he unveils before them that
mind. " Who being in the form of God,
counted it not a prize to be on an equality with
God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of
a servant, being made in the likeness of men,
and being found in fashion as a man, He hum
bled Himself, becoming obedient even unto
death, yea, the death of the Cross."
Having thus glanced at the context of the
passages, we pause to notice the fact that the
word translated mind in the Corinthian passage
is not the word which is translated mind in the
Philippian quotation. While the words are dif
ferent, and their intention is different, they are
not contradictory, but intimately related, and
indeed, complementary. The word made use of
in the Corinthian letter is one which refers to
mind essentially as understanding, as conscious
ness, not so much to the mind as an organ of
consciousness, as to the knowledge resulting
from its use. Indeed, we shall come nearest to

142 Christian Principles
the apostolic thought if we interpret the pas
sage as meaning that we have the knowledge
of Christ, that is to say that all He knows is
made over to us, His consciousness is at our
disposal. In the Philippian letter the word mind has
another value. While it still presupposes the
fact of intellectual apprehension, it suggests an
activity, and we may interpret the meaning of
the apostle by saying that he charges those to
whom he writes, to have Christ's exercise of
mind. The distinction between the two words
is thus evident. It is possible to have a knowl
edge which produces no effect, but this charge
of the apostle reveals the fact that the knowl
edge of Christ is active in producing results,
and he enjoins his Philippian children to have
the exercise of mind of Christ. Thus the two
thoughts with which we are brought face to
face in the two passages are those first of the
essential mind of Christ, His knowledge; and
secondly, of the exercise of the mind of Christ,
the activity which issues in definite results.

Passion of Christ 143
Let us now with great reverence attempt to
understand the mind of Christ. The contextual
exposition of the first quotation will reveal the
fact that the consciousness of Christ is that of
the Wisdom of God, the deep things of God,
known of the Spirit of God.
It is at once evident that a statement of what
these things are can only be made in general
terms. The mind of Christ was first the con
sciousness of the things of the eternal order.
His mind was that of truth and grace. I am
not now dealing with the subject of the wonder
ful redemptive work by which He placed grace
and truth at the disposal of a ruined race, but
with the primary fact that these things were of
the essence of His consciousness because they
are the deep things of God, the things of the
eternal order. So far as finite man is able to
encompass an infinite matter, it may be affirmed
that the profound essence of the consciousness
of God is that of the simplicity of absolute
truth, and the sublimity of overwhelming grace.
Of Christ the fullest statement of truth is, that

144 Christian Principles
He is grace and He is truth. Of that inclusive
whole, the part of which we think now, is that
His mind was necessarily therefore the mind of
grace and truth.
Therefore as He knew these things of the
eternal order He also and necessarily knew the
order of the eternal things. He knew the mean
ing of the Kingdom of God as to the principles
of His government, and the consequent exper
ience of its administration. To attempt to
break this up into such statement as shall enable
us to apprehend its suggestiveness is difficult,
because practically we have seen so little of the
realization of the Kingdom of God in human
history, even though nineteen centuries have
run their course since its principles were enun
ciated by Christ, and its beauty manifested in
the revelation of His life. It is nevertheless a
phrase which is full of music and full of mean
ing. In our growing apprehension of Christ,
we are coming increasingly to understand it.
This, however, for the moment is not our
theme, but rather insistence upon the fact that

Passion of Christ 145
He knew perfectly the whole meaning of the
rule of God, and therefore through all that was
contrary to it, He saw the essential and eternal
and glorious possibility. Here once more we
may take the simplest of all illustrations, that
of a single human life. When Christ looked at
a man He saw everything that other men saw,
but infinitely more. He knew what the King
dom of God established in a human life really
meant. He apprehended what the administra
tion of the Kingship of God would mean in all
the departments of human personality. That, as
I have said, is but an illustration. Carry the
thought out into the widest possible area, and
it will be seen that Christ stood in the midst of
discord, and was the more profoundly conscious
of the discord because He heard perpetually the
infinite harmony of the eternal music. In the
midst of things sadly and awfully out of joint,
He felt the pain and agony of it all, because He
knew the power and glory of things articulate.
Perfectly acquainted with the deep things of
God, the things of His truth and grace, the

146 Christian Principles
chaos was the more awful to Him. The sob
and the sigh and the sin in the midst of which
He lived were the more terrible to Him because
He heard the music of the Divine order sound
ing in infinite anthems through His Spirit. The
mind of Christ was the comprehension of the
deep things of God, the knowledge of the
breadth and beauty and beneficence of the
Kingdom of God.
The apostle declares " We have the mind of
Christ," and the statement is staggering and al
most overwhelming. The only interpretation
of it which brings anything like a sense of relief
is that contained in a declaration which we have
considered in a previous study, " Christ in you,
the Hope of glory." Christ's knowledge is at
our disposal, and is ours experimentally in the
measure in which we are true to Him, and able
to comprehend. There are spacious values and
far-reaching meanings, all of which were naked
and open to His mind, which we cannot include
within the clear consciousness of our finite con
ceptions. But we know that the things He

Passion of Christ 147
knows are true, and the measure in which He
has been able to interpret these to us is the
measure in our minds of the Hope of glory.
The mind of Christ is hope in the hour of de
spair, a song of victory in the midst of battle,
a vision of the ultimate in the process of the
travail. We turn now to the consideration of the
mind of Christ in its exercise, suggested by the
charge in the Philippian letter. In the passage
already quoted the apostle gives us insight into
Christ's exercise of mind, by declaring the
things resulting therefrom. As with subdued
and reverent spirits we see Christ in answer to
His mind, laying aside His glory, and stooping
to the lowest level of human woe, we come to
understand something of His mind exercise.
The first consciousness created by such contem
plation is that the mind of Christ in the presence
of human sin and sorrow is exercised by a pro
found discontent, born of a vast content. The
content of the mind of Christ was that of His
perfect satisfaction with the order of the eternal

148 Christian Principles
things. That we may put in another way, more
within the compass of our everyday speech.
Christ's content of mind consisted of perfect
rest in the will of God, of absolute conviction
that that will is good and perfect and ac
ceptable, of unquestioning certainty that if the
Kingdom of God be established in a man, in so
ciety, in a nation, in a world, in a universe,
therein is realized the highest and the noblest
and the best.
But such content issues necessarily in a pro
found and awful discontent with everything
that is contrary to that good and perfect and
acceptable will of God. The discontent is the
agony of loyalty in the presence of anarchy,
and it issues in a burning, consuming passion
to correct all that which is contrary to grace
and truth. This passion becomes a tremendous
and irresistible impulse, driving the one in
whom it burns out into strenuous grappling
with the things which are against the Kingdom
of God. That is the unveiling of the mind of
Christ, given in the apostolic picture of the

Passion of Christ 149
Philippian letter. The exercise of Christ's
mind is that of an overwhelming discontent,
with all that is unlike God, born of a perfect
content with the order of the Kingdom of God.
A mind thus exercised inspires a life to the line
of activity described in the passage. It is the
activity of stripping off all the things of per
sonal right and glory, of bending at infinite
cost to sacrificial service, of suffering even death
for the restoration of the true order of life. He
emptied Himself, laying aside that which was
His right in the mysterious and majestic rela
tionships He bore to His Father, and taking
upon Him the form of a servant, stooped still
lower, passing principalities and powers, the
unfallen servants, becoming man ; and bending
lower yet, shared his death, and that on its
basest level, the death of the Cross. For ever
flinging off the things of His own right, for
ever serving, for ever stooping, for ever suffer
ing, until He entered into a death grapple in
the darkness with all the forces which are
against the Divine order, and broke their

150 Christian Principles
power; until He had laid hold upon the central
poison which had spoiled the Kingdom and
neutralized it by the infinite pain of His passion.
This was the mind of Christ, essentially a
mind that knew the Divine order, and rejoiced
therein, actively a mind in revolt against every
thing which disturbed that order, and became
the inspiration of service even to suffering, un
til the wrong was righted, and the way made for
the restoration of the order. The mind of
Christ in the exercise growing out of its es
sence, constituted His passion for the Kingdom
of God.
In order that we may understand what all
this means to the Church as to responsibility,
let us first recognize what it actually does mean
experimentally as to resource. The first con
sciousness of the Christ life in the spirit of man
is that of a profound content with the will of
God. There takes possession of the entire be
ing a sense of peace. That is invariably imme
diately succeeded by a new discontent. The
content is due to the fact that the Christ illu-

Passion of Christ 15 1
mined life has caught the vision of the things
of the eternal order. This discontent is due to
the fact that this vision of order reveals the
tragedy of disorder. There is discontent with
things in the personal life, in the home, in the
city, in the nation, in the world, that are unlike
the Kingdom of God. Such content and dis
content demonstrate fellowship with the mind
of Christ, the content resulting from His essen
tial mind, and the discontent from His exer
cise of mind. The charge of the apostle, " Have
this mind in you, which was also in Christ
Jesus," is a call to the exercises of mind which
out of a great peace proceeds in a great war to
ward the establishment of the ultimate peace.
The Christian man is troubled and restless be
cause he is not what he would be. This is the
result of his vision of the beauty and the glory
of Christ. That vision flashes its light upon all
his own life, and gives him to know that there
is territory not perfectly subdued to the King
dom of God. Such consciousness creates a pro
found and restless discontent which issues in

152 Christian Principles
conflict through suffering in order to the estab
lishment of the Kingdom. The more the Chris
tian knows of the mind of Christ, the more he
finds himself in hot and fierce rebellion against
things in himself which are unlike Christ, —
tones, and tempers, and territory, not yet under
the perfect sway of the Kingship of God. That
discontent is the first evidence of the activity of
the mind of Christ in the believer.
That, however, issues invariably in a wider
discontent, that namely with everything that is
unsubdued in all the circles that surround the
individual life. Discontent with things in the
home, and in the circle of friendships, which
are not submitted to His government. Discon
tent with everything in the city and in the na
tion in rebellion against the Kingdom of God.
If we would know what that means we are al
ways safe if we take a little child and place it
in the midst. The child is ever the key to civic
and national life. Are we angry when we look
at the slum in which the child has to live ? If
not, then at best we are but cultured pagans,

Passion of Christ 153
even though we belong to some organized and
visible church of Christ. If there is no hot
anger in our hearts in the presence of the con
ditions in which children are born and live, even
in so-called Christian lands, we lack the mind
of Christ. Christ in the life, the Hope of glory,
is also enemy of all the things which postpone
the coming of the glory.
And finally, taking the widest and most stu
pendous outlook of all. The mind of Christ in
the believer produces discontent with every
thing in the world which is unlike God, and
contrary to His Kingdom. It does matter to
Christ that people are living in the habitations
of cruelty. It does matter to Christ that nations
are yet without the knowledge of God which
came to men through Him, and therefore have
not only not entered into, but have not yet be
gun to see the infinite beauty of the order of
His Kingship. Does it matter to us? If this
Christ life be in us, then our lives are charac
terized by perpetual restlessness in the presence
of the world's great need.

154 Christian Principles
But restlessness is not the ultimate. Discon
tent itself is of no avail. The restlessness must
be curbed and harnessed for endeavour. The
discontent must issue in stripping, serving, suf
fering. The Church of Christ, having the mind
of Christ, is for evermore laying aside her own
rights and privileges, stooping to sacrificial
service, suffering even to death, in order that
the Kingdom of this world may become the
Kingdom of our God and His Christ.
If our eyes have seen the glory of the King
dom, and we have the clear vision of the eternal
order of things, then as we turn to look at
things as they are in the world, at the sin, the
shame, the suffering, the heart becomes hot and
restless and angry. But that is useless save as
the fire becomes a force driving us into the
midst of all the disorder, to proclaim the evan
gel which will breathe new hope into the sad
despairing heart of humanity ; and to communi
cate the dynamic which will lift humanity out
of the disorder into the peace and glory of the
Kingdom of God.

Passion of Christ 155
My last word as to responsibility has to do,
not with the Philippian charge, but with the
Corinthian declaration, " We have the mind of
Christ," and mark the necessity for it. It is
indeed quite fashionable to-day to declare that
cultured humanity is independent of the Chris
tian religion. It is constantly affirmed that men
and women are now refined and beautiful, even
though they have turned entirely from Chris
tianity. How is it, it is asked, that so many
people are cultured and refined and beautiful
and patient and gentle even though they are
not Christians? Let me ask another thing.
Having spoken of all that these people possess,
what do they lack ? They lack the sense of the
necessity for worship, because they have lost
the spiritual vision. Now that is the supreme
tragedy of such life, not merely because human
nature devoid of spiritual consciousness is
blunted, but because the lack of spiritual vision
means the absence of discontent in the presence
of the sorrow and suffering of humanity. In
place of it there is a content with things as they

156 Christian Principles
are, or that baser content, which declines to look
upon suffering and sorrow. The content of
those who live in the suburbs, and forget the
slums ; who live in luxury, and forget Lazarus ;
who command that no sackcloth shall be seen in
the presence of the king, as did one of old.
That is not Christianity. Christ's mind brought
Him to the slum, brought Him to the sorrow,
brought Him to the sin, because it was the
mind that knew ¦ the deep things of God. If
we should have His exercise of mind, we must
have His vision of the infinite and the spiritual.
Our responsibility in this connection is that
having His mind, we take time to know it.
There is nothing the Church needs to-day more
than time for contemplation and meditation, in
order to dedication. That I may more force
fully apply this conviction to others, let me
speak in the first person singular, with all hon
esty and sincerity. I am often appalled and
affrighted in my own life, at the little time —
I will not say which I have, as though I would
blame others — at the little time I make for con-

Passion of Christ 157
templation and meditation. We cannot know
any human face perfectly until we gaze upon
it, and acquaint ourselves by contemplation
with all the facts concerning it ; and some of us
have grown so busy that our knowledge of
Christ is the occasional acquaintanceship with
a face that often passes and repasses. God
help us to sit down and look. The great word
of the Hebrew letter is " Consider Him." If
amid all the hurry and rush of service we will
but take time to gaze in order to know, it will
not be time wasted. When we rise from such
contemplation the discontent will be more
mighty because the vision is clearer, and the
anger will be hotter against evil because the
sense of God is acuter, and the compassion of
the heart will be more tender because the sense
of the Christ mind will be profounder.
To have the mind of Christ in its essence and
its exercise is to know no rest in the presence of
sin and sorrow, until God's day breaks, and His
Kingdom is established.

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