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ILllMISJTOf
Anonymous Gift
THE
Will of God
and a man's
LIFEWORK
Henry B. Wright
"Christ is ... . the true, the living way of access to God. Give
up yourselves therefore to him with a cordial confidence and
the great work of life is done."
Timothy Dwight, Baccalaureate Sermon, at Yale in 1814.
New York
The Young Men's Christian Association Press
1911
Copyright, 1909,
The International Committee of Young Men's
Christian Associations.
To
MY FATHER and MY MOTHER
PREFACE
These studies were originally prepared by laymen to meet
the needs of students in the Association Bible Classes for
Seniors of the Academic and Scientific Departments of Yale
University. It was hoped that they might prove helpful in
giving to young men about to enter upon their life work in
many different professions a conception of the highest ideals
which these careers could embrace.
Largely as a result of the failure to distinguish clearly
between the decision to do God's will and the act of volunteer¬
ing there exists among many college students today an erron¬
eous impression that the doing of God's will is synonymous
solely with the Clerical and Missionary careers. The call of
God is popularly interpreted as a call to the Professional
Ministry; Law, Business, Teaching, Medicine, Engineering
and like professions are distinguished as secular. They are
regarded as fields into which man may enter without relation
to God's will—realms in which more latitude is allowed to the
individual in personal morals and in manner of life, and within
which he is largely released from responsibility for the ad¬
vancement of the Kingdom of God.
Jesus Christ and his Apostles, however, entertained no
such conception of the so-called "secular" professions. Our
Lord and his followers were themselves laymen, not members
of the professional clergy of the day. To them all honorable
careers were ministries and service in these so-called "secular"
careers seemed to them to demand not less, but more, consecra¬
tion to God than the organized church required of its leaders.
This great truth, which more than any other was the
secret of the mighty advances of Christianity in the first
centuries, has been long obscured; but during the last decade
more than at any other time it has been rediscovered and
applied in America and the result has been a great leavening
and purification of our public and private life. Professor
vi
PREFACE
Peabody's "Jesus Christ and the Social Question" and Pro¬
fessor Jenks' "Studies in the Political and Social Significance
of the Life and Teaching of Jesus"—the method of which
has been largely followed in these outlines—are noteworthy
in this regard. Other studies which are to follow on the
significance of the teaching of Jesus and his Apostles to the
Physician, to the Teacher, to the Lawyer, as well as a course
on the scientific significance of Jesus' teaching, will do much
to spread and apply the great and vital truth still further.
The present outlines are a modest attempt to give a
basis in experience for all such practical and more general
applications of Christianity to modern life. They do not, for
an instant, seek to discredit the preaching ministry at home or
abroad to which all other careers must ever look for higher
leadership and inspiration. But they do insist and strive to
demonstrate that this career is not the only field of human ac¬
tivity in which God's will may be done fully and completely.
Every young man in America today ought undoubtedly to sub¬
scribe to the declaration, "I will be a clergyman at home or
abroad if God so directs." But just as surely should he at the
same time subscribe to the declaration, "I will be a doctor,
lawyer, business man, teacher, or what not, at home or abroad,
if God so directsThe first declaration alone is not absolute
but partial surrender to God's will. Only the two together
comprise unconditional enlistment in God's service.
To make clear the great fact of God's will and its
part in human life in a set of studies is no easy task, for
the underlying truth is one of the most difficult in the world
of ideas to grasp. Even when clearly apprehended by the indi¬
vidual, it is wellnigh impossible of demonstration by him to
others as a mere intellectual proposition. It is a truth which
must be imparted, not taught. Drummond fully realized this
when he wrote: "The end of life is to do God's will. Now
that is a great and surprising revelation. No man ever found
that out. It has been before the world these eighteen hun¬
dred years yet few have even found it out today." If only
partially apprehended it is capable of the most grotesque
and dangerous distortion, especially regarding the gifts
PREFACE
vii
promised as the issues of obedience. There exists, however,
a wide and for the most part sane literature on the general
subject and on its particular phases which has never been
brought together and arranged for daily study. These
outlines attempt to systematize and render usable to students
the material already at hand rather than to make any
original contribution to the subject itself. Hence the copious
quotations from previous writers.
To nearly fifty Bible students and Christian workers in
all parts of the country, who were kind enough to review the
book before it went to press, in the light of their own experi¬
ence and of the needs of their constituents, and whose sugges¬
tions played a very important part in the final revision, the
author desires to express his sincere gratitude. The names
of John G. Magee and Joseph W. Roe would have appeared
on the title page as joint authors of the studies, had they per¬
mitted it. To the inspiration of their lives and to their many
suggestions the idea and plan of the book owes much.
In conclusion, I would that these studies might be privi¬
leged to do a little something toward dissipating a prevalent
idea that the doing of God's will is synonymous with a narrow,
difficult and disagreeable life work. He who has willed to
do God's will completely as it has been revealed in nature
and humanity, and as it will daily be revealed in the path
of duty, has for the first time fully found himself. The
issues of such a life—and of such a life only—are freedom,
joy and peace.
Taunton, Mass., July 24, 1909.
CONTENTS
A. Introductory
Study I.
God has a Plan for Every Human Life.
Study II.
Jesus and the Will of God.
Study III.
The Apostles and the Will of God.
Study IV.
The Principle of Surrender of Self Involved in Doing God's
Will a Reasonable One and Fundamental in Other Depart¬
ments of Life.
B. The Decision to Do God's Will
Study V.
The Relation of the Act of Surrender of Self to Other Reli¬
gious Rites and Spiritual Experiences.
Study YI.
The Alternatives to Doing God's Will as a Life Purpose.
Study VII.
The Spiritual Crisis Involved in Facing the Issue of Sur¬
render of Self. Its Symptoms and its Course.
Study VIII.
To Find Out and to Do God's Will for One's Life is an
Achievement Possible for Any Man.
Study IX.
God's Will may be Done in Any Honorable Trade or Pro¬
fession, either at Home or Abroad.
Study X.
The Necessity for Absolute Surrender of Self.
C. The Finding Out of God's Will
Study XI.
Willingness to Do God's Will the Necessary Condition for
Knowledge of It.
Study XII.
The Universal Will of God for All Men.
*
PAGE
3
13
23
31
43
53
63
77
87
101
117
131
x
CONTENTS
PAGE
Study XIII. 141
The Particular Will of God for Each Individual Man.
Study XIY. 153
How to Find Out the Particular Will of God. (a) The
Views of Modern Religious Leaders.
Study XV. 167
How to Find Out the Particular Will of God (concluded),
(b) The Fourfold Touchstone of Jesus and the Apostles.
Study XVI. 177
The Fourfold Touchstone, (a) The First Test—Purity.
Study XVII. 187
The Fourfold Touchstone (continued). (b) The Second
Test—Honesty.
Study XVIII 197
The Fourfold Touchstone (continued). (c) The Third
Test—Unselfishness.
Study XIX. 207
The Fourfold Touchstone (concluded). (d) The Fourth
Test—Love.
D. The Issues of Facing the Problem of Doing God's Will
Study XX. 221
The Issues of Rejection and Disobedience.
Study XXI. 233
The Issues of Obedience, (a) Knowledge.
Study XXII 245
The Issues of Obedience (continued), (b) Protection from
Harm and Provision for All Needs.
Study XXIII. . 255
The Issues of Obedience (continued), (c) Assurance as to
One's Duty and Power to Achieve Results.
Study XXIV 263
The Issues of Obedience (continued), (d) Constant Com¬
panionship.
Study XXV 271
The Issues of Obedience (concluded), (e) Eternal Life.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
(The arrangement is chronological.)
The Bible. American Revised Version.
Whenever a number of passages are cited from the New Testament
in the daily studies they have been arranged in the probable order
of the historical composition of the books from which they are taken.
Passages from the Old Testament are generally enclosed in brackets,
inasmuch as the studies are based on the teaching of Jesus and the
Apostles.
Bushnell, Horace. Sermons for the New Life. No. I.—"Every
Man's Life a Plan of God."
Robertson, F. W. Sermons. Second Series, No. VII.—"Obedi¬
ence the Organ of Spiritual Knowledge."
Ibsen, H. Brand.
Macdonald, George. Robert Falconer.
Mozley. Sermons before the University of Oxford. No. 13.—
"The True Test of Spiritual Birth."
Drummond, Henry. The Ideal Life. Last six chapters in the
book.
Brooks, Phillips. The Influence of Jesus. I. "On the Moral
Life of Man."
Moody, D. L. Secret Power. (Colportage Library, No. 8.)
MacNeil. The Spirit Filled Life. (Colportage Library, No. 49.)
Meyer, F. B. The Secret of Guidance. (Colportage Library, No.
32.)
James, William. The Will to Believe and other essays in Popu¬
lar Philosophy.
Murray, Andrew. Absolute Surrender. (Colportage Library,
No. 54.)
Smith, G. A. Life of Henry Drummond. Close of Chapter V.
Murray, Andreiv. The School of Obedience. (Colportage
Library, No. 73.)
Speer, R. E. "Remember Jesus Christ." No. 4.—"The Rule of
the Royal Life."
Starbuck. The Psychology of Religion.
Coe. The Spiritual Life.
Royc-e, J. The World and the Individual. Vol. II., Lectures
8-10.
Chapman. The Power of a Surrendered Life. (Colportage
Library, No. 40.)
Davidson, A. B. The Called of God.
James, William. Varieties of Religious Experience.
xii
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Speer, B. E. The Principles of Jesus. Chapter III.—"Jesus and
the Will of God."
Stanton. Article "Will" in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible.
Gordon, S. D. Quiet Talks on Power.
McConkey, James H. The Surrendered Life. (To be obtained
free from Box 218, Harrisburg, Pa.)
Peabody, F. G. Jesus Christ and the Christian Character.
Pages 99-102.
Richards. God's Choice of Men.
Gilman. The Open Secret of Nazareth.
Little. The Lady of the Decoi-ation.
Gordon, S. D. Quiet Talks on Personal Problems.
Speer, B. E. The Marks of a Man.
Boyce, J. The Philosophy of Loyalty.
Mott, J. B. "Our Religion Primarily a Matter of the Will."
Becord of Christian Work, September, 1908.
It is assumed that all students have access to Speer,'s Man Christ
Jesus and his Principles of Jesus, to both of which frequent reference
is made. In the daily studies based on these books the pages have
been purposely left blank in order that the student may copy in an
outline of the assigned paragraphs.
Where the Scripture references are numerous the more import¬
ant ones have been specially designated for the benefit of those
whose time for each day's study is limited.
In the studies the following order has been taken as the
probable one for the dates of composition of the books of the New
Testament. Within the four main groups which may be regarded as
practically certain the order of the several documents is of course in
many instances wholly arbitrary. For the general purposes of a his¬
torical study of the development of the teaching regarding God's
will, however, it is essential that some order be taken and until more
evidence is at hand the decision between two alternatives must lie
with the individual investigator.
I. The Pauline Writings. I Thess., II Thess., Gal., I Cor.,
II Cor., Rom., Col., Eph., Philem., Phil., [I Tim., II Tim., Titus.]
II. The Biographies of Jesus and Paul. Mark, Matt., Luke,
Acts.
III. Post Pauline Writings. * [James], Heb., I Peter.
IV. The Johannine Writings. Rev., John, I John, II John,
III John.
V. II Peter, Jude.
♦There seems to be no means of dating the book of James.
- A. INTRODUCTORY
Study I. God has a Plan for Every Human Life.
Study II. Jesus and the Will of God.
Study III. The Apostles and the Will of God.
Study IV. The Principle of Surrender of Self Involved in
Doing God's Will a Reasonable One and Fundamental in Other
Departments of Life.
STUDY I
God has a Plan for Every Human Life
"I will gird thee, though thou hast not known me."—Isaiah ^5: 5.
"For who withstandeth his will? Nay but, O man, who art thou
that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that
formed it, Why didst thou make me thus? Or hath not the potter a
right over the clay, from the same lump to make one part a vessel
unto honor and another unto dishonor?" —Bom. 9: 19-21.
"Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?"
—Matt. 20:15.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bushnell. The New Life. I.—"Every Man's Life a Plan of
God."
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
5
Study I. God has a Plan for Every Human Life
FIRST DAY
God has a Plan for the Development of the World which Extends to
all Departments of Life and to all Spheres of Human Activity
[Isaiah 44 24"28; Jer. 18 5' 6.]
I Cor. 12 4-6- 12; II Cor. 10 13; Rom. 9 17 (cf. Ex. 9 16) ;
Col. 1 16; Eph. 2 10.
Mark IS 20-32 ; Matt. 6 25'3i, 10 29- 30, 15 13, 25 3i; Acts
1 7, 17 26.
Irleb. 1 10"12, 3 4; Rev. 17 17.
"Man advances in the execution of a plan which he has
not conceived and of which he is not even aware. He is the
free and intelligent artificer of a work which is not his own.
.... Conceive a great machine, the design of which is cen¬
tred in a single mind, though its various parts are intrusted
to different workmen, separated from, and strangers to one an¬
other. No one of them understands the work as a whole, nor
the general result which he concurs in producing; but every
one executes with intelligence and freedom, by rational and
voluntary acts, the particular task assigned to him."
Guizot: Lectures on the History of Civilization, XI.
"We need to know not merely what the essential quali¬
ties of civilization and of our social nature really are; but we
require to know the general course in which they are tending.
The more closely we look at it, the more distinctly we see that
progress moves in a clear and definite path; the development
of man is not a casual or arbitrary motion; it moves in a regu¬
lar and consistent plan. Each part is unfolded in due order—
the whole expanding like a single plant."
Frederic Harrison: The Meaning of History, page 15.
"It is my conviction .... that capabilities of a peculiar
character exist in almost every one and that a man's value to
society depends to a large extent upon his discovering and
developing his special talent."
Gulick: The Efficient Life, page 11.
6
THE WILL OF GOD
Study I. God has a Plan for Every Human Life
SECOND DAY
Yet God has Decreed that this Plan shall not Advance without the
Voluntary and Freely Given Cooperation of Mankind—"We are
God's Fellow-workers"
I Cor. 3 6-9; II Cor. 5 20, 6 1; Rom. 8 28 (marginal note) ;
Phil. 2 12' 13.
Mark 6 5> 6, 16 20; Matt. 23 37; Luke 1 76, 10 2> 3, 11 5"13,
18 i'*.
Heb. 2 °'8, 13 21; Rev. 3 20; John 5 17' 36, 8 10.
Just as it is easier for any parent or teacher to do an
appointed task himself than to guide patiently the stumbling
efforts of his charges, so we might have expected that God
would have completed himself the development of the
kingdom of God on earth. Only infinite love could have
decreed that this work should wait for every one of its ad¬
vances upon the voluntary cooperation of blind, stubborn,
whimsical human wills. Yet this is the deeper meaning of
the Fatherhood of God as revealed on Calvary. There are
two parts to every advance in human civilization—God's part
and man's part. God is ever ready with his plan—and the
complete means for its realization—in establishing the happy
home, the efficient school, the righteous town or city. Yet
he never forces or compels this plan. Patiently and un¬
complainingly he waits while the pupil in the school of life
experiments with his own little stubborn, selfish schemes,
comforting him without reproach in his failures, until finally
love, as revealed in the teacher, awakens confidence and desire
to be led in the child (Rom. 2 4~),
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
7
Study I. God has a Plan for Every Human Life
THIRD DAY
God has a Particular Part for Every Man to Perform in this Plan
[Isaiah 49 1; Jer. 1 5.]
Gal. 1 15' 10; I Cor. 1 17, 1 7' 17, 12 4 f (esp. v. 11) ; Rom.
9 "• 12; Eph. 2 10, 4 7' 8; Phil. 3 12.
Mark IS34; Matt. 11 10, 19 11, 20 1"1C' 23, 25 15; Luke
j g 32, 33
John 15 16, 17 4, 18 37.
"What now shall we say of man, appearing as it were in
the center of this great circle of uses? They are all adjusted
for him; has he, then, no ends appointed for himself? Noblest
of all creatures and closest to God as he certainly is, are we
to say that his Creator has no definite thoughts concerning
him, no place prepared for him to fill, no use for him to serve
which is the reason for his existence? ....
"God has a definite life-plan for every human person,
girding him, visibly or invisibly, for some exact thing which it
will be the true significance and glory of his life to have ac¬
complished And all men may have this: for the
humblest and commonest have a place and work assigned them
in the same manner and have it for their privilege to be always
ennobled in the same lofty consciousness They [the
Scriptures] show us how frequently, in the conditions of
obscurity and depression, preparations of counsel are going
on by which the commonest offices are to become the necessary
first chapter of a great and powerful history—David among
the sheep; Elisha following after the plough; Nehemiah
bearing the cup: Hannah, who can say nothing less common
than that she is the wife of Elkanah and a woman of sorrowful
spirit—who that looks on these humble people, at their humble
post of service, and discovers at last how dear a purpose
God was cherishing in them, can be justified in thinking that
God has no particular plan for him, because he is not signal¬
ized by any kind of distinction. .... God is guiding every
8
THE WILL OF GOD
man for a place and calling, in which, taking it from him, even
though it be internally humble, he may be as consciously
exalted as if he held the rule of a kingdom."
Bushnell: The New Life, pages 10-13.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
9
Study I. God has a Plan for Every Human Life
FOURTH DAY
Man may Find out what his Particular Part is and it is the True Pur¬
pose of his Existence to Discover and Do it
[II Sam. 7 8' 9; Psalm 32 8' 9; Jer. 1 4"10.]
Acts 26 12"19.
"Every human soul has a complete and perfect plan
cherished for it in the heart of God—a divine biography
marked out, which it enters into life to live. This life, rightly
unfolded, will be a complete and beautiful whole, an experi¬
ence led on by God and unfolded by his secret nurture, as the
trees and the flowers by the secret nurture of the world, a
drama, cast in the mould of a perfect art with no part wanting;
a divine study for the man himself and for others; a study that
shall forever unfold, in wondrous beauty, the love and faith¬
fulness of God; great in its conception, great in the Divine
skill by which it is shaped; above all, great in the momentous
and glorious issues it prepares."
Bushnell: Ibid.
"God's will concerning foreordination, election, the plan
of salvation and the problems of eschatology may be stated
in highly technical and abstract phraseology and is doubtless
susceptible of many shades of interpretation. God's will
however as it applies to home life, social intercourse, the
training of children, the doing of honest work and the
making of a fair bargain, the care of the poor, the reform
of the vicious, the encouragement of the unfortunate, the
casting of the ballot, the administration of office, participation
in plans for village improvement, cooperation in methods of
social reform, does indeed require painstaking thought and
laborious study to discover it; but once clearly apprehended,
it is not difficult to state it in clear and convincing terms.
. . . . Theological education has been disproportionately
abstract, linguistic and antiquarian. It has taught God's will
for Israel, rather than for the American Republic."
William D. Hyde: Forum, June, 1892, page 52Jf..
10
THE WILL OF GOD
Study I. God has a Plan for Every Human Life
FIFTH DAY
Yet God Forces no Man to Accept the Divine Plan for his Life. Man
may Refuse or Neglect to Find it out, or Having Found it out he
may Refuse to Perform it and Follow Plans of his own Making
Rom. 2 4, 8 20 ' 21; Col. 4 17.
Matt. 19 10-22; Luke 6 35 (end) ; Acts 14 15"17^ 17 24~27 (esp.
v. 27).
John 3 20, 5 40, 10 17' 1S.
"God has a life plan for every human life. In the
eternal counsels of his will, when he arranged the destiny of
every star and every sand-grain and every grass blade and
each of those tiny insects which live but for an hour, the
Creator had a thought for you and me. Our life was to be
the slow unfolding of this thought, as the cornstalk from
the corn or the flower from the gradually opening bud. It
was a thought of what we were to be, of what we might
become, of what he would have us to do with our days and
years or influence with our lives. But we all had the terrible
power to evade this thought and shape our lives from another
thought, from another will if we chose. The bud could only
become a flower, and the star revolve in the orbit God had
fixed. But it was man's prerogative to choose his path, his
duty to choose it in God. But the divine right to choose at all
has always seemed more to him than his duty to choose in
God, so, for the most part, he has taken his life from God and
cut out his career from himself."
Drummond: The Ideal Life, page S05.
Man's opportunity to choose freely is the deeper meaning
of the temptation of Jesus. Before Jesus enters upon his
life work the Spirit (Mark 1 12>13) leads him to the wilder¬
ness and allows him to decide freely for or against God.
God never forces himself upon us. He always respects man's
personality.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
11
Study I. God has a Plan for Every Human Life
SIXTH DAY
Yet God's Great Plan for the World will be Ultimately Perfected
Despite the Delays and Disorder Introduced by Human Perversity
[Daniel 4 32.]
II Cor. 13 8; Rom. 3 3, 9 17' 18' 28, 11
Mark 4 26"29' 30"32; Matt. 13 24"S0' 31"33- 37'43, 15 13.
Acts 1 7, 5 38' 39; James 5 1_8.
"Most of them, even the idiots and criminals, do a little
something towards progress. The world is so happily ordered
that it is impossible for one man to do much harm or to
avoid doing some good, and one of the greatest forces for
good is the power of a bad example."
George H. Lorimer.
"And then when he cannot use us any more for our own
good, he will use us for the good of others—an example of the
misery .... to which any soul must come, when all the
good ends and all the holy callings of God's friendly and
fatherly purpose are exhausted. Or, it may be now that,
remitting all other plans and purposes in our behalf, he will
henceforth use us, wholly against our will, to be the demonstra¬
tion of his justice and avenging power before the eyes of
mankind."
Bushnell: The New Life, page 15.
"Suppose two men before a chessboard—the one a novice,
the other an expert player of the game. The expert intends
to beat. But he cannot foresee exactly what any one actual
move of his adversary may be. He knows, however, all the
possible moves of the latter; and he knows in advance how to
meet each of them by a move of his own which leads in the
direction of victory. And the victory infallibly arrives, after
no matter how devious a course, in the one predestined check¬
mate to the novice's king Let now the novice stand for
us finite free agents, and the expert for the infinite mind in
12
THE WILL OF GOD
which the universe lies The Creator's plan of the
universe would thus be left blank as to many of its actual
details, but all possibilities would be marked down But
the rest of the plan including its final upshot would be rigor¬
ously determined once for all Of one thing, however,
he [the Creator] might be certain; and that is that his world
was safe and that no matter how much it might zigzag, he
could surely bring it home at last."
James: The Will to Believe, pages 181, 182.
Study I. God has a Plan for Every Human Life
SEVENTH DAY—REVIEW
1. Is it right to say that the life of every man who ever
lived in the world, sinner or saint, was lived as planned by
God; or that God had a plan for every man which may or
may not have been realized?
2. Have cripples and the insane a part in God's plan
for the world?
3. Have criminals a part also? Have sin and tempta¬
tion ?
4. Why is the theory that God has a plan for the world
so common in history and science today?
5. Why are men often unwilling to find out God's plan
for their lives ?
6. Has God a plan for the development of every town
and city in the world? (Jer. 18 5' 0; Matt. 23 s7) for every
school and university? for every home? Have any of these
ever been fully realized ? What is the test ?
7. Can God use his enemies for the accomplishment of
his purposes? (Cf. Acts 4 27> 28, 25 9~12 -\- Rom. 1 13.)
STUDY II
Jesus and the Will of God
"For I am come down from heaven, not to do mine own will,
but the will of him that sent me." —John 6:38.
"My Father .... not as I will, but as thou wilt."
—Matt. 26 : 39.
"My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to accomplish
his work." —John ^:3
"I do always the things that are pleasing to him."
—John 8: 29 (end).
"Our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he
might deliver us out of this present evil world, according to the will
of our God and Father." —Gal. 1:3, 4.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Speer. Principles of Jesus. Chapter III.—"Jesus and the Will
of God."
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
15
Study II. Jesus and the Will of God
FIRST DAY
The Idea that the Doing of God's Will is the Supreme Purpose of Life
was not Originated by Jesus but was Restated and Emphasized
by Him
" Tho' truths in manhood darkly join
Deep-seated in our mystic frame,
We yield all blessing to the name
Of him that made them current coin."
Tennyson: In Memoriam.
[Psalms 40 7'8, 139 2i, 143 10; Daniel 4 17. Read also
Gen. 22 x"12.]
Matt. 13 35.
Heb. 10 7.
"Almost everything Christ said was old. Christ's teach¬
ing was almost all taken out of the Old Testament. Almost
all of the Sermon on the Mount could be constructed from the
Old Testament. Many of Christ's parables have their roots
in suggestions in the Old Testament. Some of Christ's
miracles are clearly only the working out of Old Testament
teachings. The body and substance of Christ's doctrine was
borrowed, with a new spirit and life, of course, from the Old
Testament He was constantly telling those who took
him for a novel instructor, that everything was in their own
records and temples if their eyes were only open to see it."
Speer: Remember Jesus Christ, page 197.
"This was largely Christ's own method. He dealt with
principles. His teaching was mainly excavation—the dis¬
interring of hidden things, the bringing to light of the pro¬
found ethical principles hidden beneath Rabbinic subtleties
and Pharisaic forms."
Drummond: The New Evangelism, pages 70, 71.
"Innumerable men had passed by, across the universe,
with a dumb, vague wonder, such as the very animals may
16
THE WILL OF GOD
feel or with a painful, fruitlessly inquiring wonder such as
men only feel:—till the great thinker came—the original
man, the seer; whose shaped spoken thoughts awake the
slumbering capability of all into thought. It is ever the way
with the thinker, the Spiritual Hero. What he says all men
were not far from saying, were longing to say."
Carlyle: Heroes and Hero Worship.
"Although it was known in Old Testament times and
expressed in Old Testament books, it was reserved for Jesus
Christ to make the full discovery to the world and add to his
teaching another of the profoundest truths which have come
from heaven to earth—that the mysteries of the Father's will
are hid in this word 'obey.' "
Drummond; The Ideal Life, page 811.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
17
Study II. Jesus and the Will of God
SECOND DAY
To Find God's Will for His Life and to Do it, was the Ruling Principle
and the Energizing Purpose of Jesus' Life
Gal. 1 4; Rom. 15 3; Matt. 4 10, 6 10, 26 38-42; Heb. 10 5"t0;
John 4 34, 5 30, 6 38, 9 4-
This principle
Was the reason for the Incarnation. John 6 38.
Settled the Temptation. Matt. 4 10.
Is a central thought in the Lord's Prayer. Matt. 6 10.
Was the energizing cause of Jesus' marvelous ministry
of service. John 4 34.
Inspired the sacrifice of the Crucifixion. Gal. 1 4; Matt.
26 38"42.
"The Will of God was Jesus' North Star."
John R. Mott.
"What he [Jesus] desires first of all to communicate is
not a system of doctrine or a rush of feeling but an ethical
decision. Before his public ministry begins he withdraws
from human companionship and faces the special temptations
of conscious power, of self display and of worldly glory
which threaten him. Once and for all time he fortifies his
will against them, and from that time to the day when he
gives back his life to God, saying, 'Not my will but thine
be done,' the dominating factor, both in his experience and
his teaching, is not intellectual achievement or emotional ex¬
altation but ethical decision."
F. G. Peabody: Jesus Christ and the Christian Char¬
acter, pages 100, 101,
18
THE WILL OF GOD
Study II. Jesus and the Will of God
THIRD DAY
He Faced the Alternatives to doing God's Will as Definite, Conscious,
Spiritual Temptations, and Successfully Overcame Them
Matt. 4 1-11; Luke 4 1_13.
The temptation in the Wilderness was the crisis when
Jesus came face to face with the three alternative life purposes,
which a man may choose other than that of a life of complete
surrender to God's will. The four possible choices may all
be found in the narrative given by Matthew and Luke:
1. The life of mere physical self-indulgence. Matt.
4 3; Luke 4 3.
2. The life of mere wealth-amassing. Matt. 4 8' 9; Luke
4 5"8.
3. The life of mere fame-seeking. Matt. 4 5' 6; Luke
4 9"u.
4. The life wholly surrendered to God. Matt. 4 10,
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
19
Study II. Jesus and the Will of God
FOURTH DAY
There were Certain Definite Ways in which He Learned the Will of
God for His Life
Matt. 6 28, 18 12'14, 26 39"44; Heb. 10 7; John 5 30, 6 39,
7 17, 8 28.
A careful study of the way in which Jesus learned the
definite will of God for each particular event in his life will
be taken up later. It is sufficient at this time to note some of
the more general and outwardly discernible ways by which he
came in touch with God's leading:
1. Through willingness to obey any order which might
come from God before he knew what it was. Robertson has
said that obedience not mind is the organ of spiritual knowl¬
edge. "He that is willing shall know." John 7 17.
2. From God's revelation of himself in such human
types as the shepherd and the father. Matt. 18 12"14; John
6 39. <
3. From God's revelation of himself in nature. Matt.
6 28.
4. From God's revelation of himself in Scripture and in
history. Heb. 10 7; Luke 13 1~5.
5. By the definite act of listening for God. "As I hear."
"As the father taught me." John 5 30, 8 28.
6. By repeated prayer until sure conviction came. Mark
1 35"40; Matt. 26 39"44.
20
THE WILL OF GOD
Study II. Jesus and the Will of God
FIFTH DAY
There were Definite and Immediate Issues of this Obedience in Jesus'
Earthly Life
Phil. 2 5"8; Matt. 26 38"42.
1. Ceaseless activity to accomplish his work—"that I
should lose nothing." John 6 30, 4* 34' 35, but
A strong support to work with—"my meat." John 4 34.
2. The cup of suffering. Matt. 26 38. "Obedient even
unto death." Phil. 2 5"8, but
A sweet fellowship therein which transcends all pain—
"brother, sister, mother." Matt. 12 50.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
21
Study II. Jesus and the Will of God
SIXTH DAY
The Ultimate Results
Phil. 2 8"11 (cf. I John 2 17). "He is exalted"—fullest
self-realization.
Heb. 10 2"10. "We have been sanctified"—the joy of
having helped others.
22
THE WILL OF GOD
Study II. Jesus and the Will of God
SEVENTH DAY—REVIEW
1. How early was Jesus conscious that the doing of
God's will should be the purpose of a man's life? (Cf. Luke
2 49; John 8 29.)
2. Today we have the example and teaching of Jesus
as revealed in the New Testament to show us what the will
of God is. From what sources did Jesus learn?
3. Which one of the Hebrew patriarchs first grasped
this idea? Trace its growth in the later books of the Old
Testament. (See Davidson, The Called of God.)
4. Has every man, even without intellectual effort, some
faint leading of what God's will for his life is? Is the dis¬
tinction between right and wrong inborn or acquired? What
are some indications of such leading common to both Christian
and non-Christian people?
5. What is the teaching of Socrates on the subject of
obedience to God's will in the Apology, Crito and Phaedo?
6. May a man unconsciously do the will of God and yet
get the same results as if he had chosen to do it?
7. Did Jesus ever rebel against the will of God in the
earlier years of his life?
STUDY III
The Apostles and the Will of God
"Ye are witnesses of these things."
Jesus to the Twelve—Luke 24 :$8.
"Christ .... in whom also we were made a heritage, having been
foreordained according to the purpose of him who worketh all things
after the counsel of his will." —Eph. 1:10,11.
"And be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye trans¬
formed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the
good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God."
Paul to the Roman Christians—Rom. 12:2.
24
THE WILL OF GOD
Study III. The Apostles and the Will of God
FIRST DAY
To the Apostles and Immediate Followers of Jesus Was Intrusted the
Interpretation and Practical Application of His Teaching Regarding
the Will of God
Matt. 13 51»52; Luke 24 48; Acts 10 4°-43.
To his apostles and immediate followers Jesus left the
difficult and responsible task of interpreting and practically
applying to the age in which they lived, the great eternal
principle that obedience to God's will is the one purpose of
life; a principle which, as we have already seen, although
stated in the Old Testament, Jesus had unearthed and for the
first time fully made clear (John 8 12). The revelation and
dissemination of this new truth carried with it grave dangers
(John 15 22'24; 9 41), and the apostles undoubtedly realized
the importance of their task. Many of the letters are con¬
cerned with correcting of false teaching regarding God's will.
So thorough was their preaching of it that there are few
chapters in the entire New Testament which are not dominated
by the general idea, and few books or letters which do not
deal with it directly. The manifold growth of the idea under
the different conditions which presented themselves in widely
diverse communities, and the interpretation of each new situa¬
tion by the different Christian leaders forms a most interest¬
ing study but one too long to be attempted here. We must con¬
fine ourselves to the working out of the principle in the lives
of the leaders of the early church.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
25
Study III. The Apostles and the Will of God
SECOND DAY
The Early Church and the Will of God
Acts 1 6'u, 2 x-4- 41, 4 32-35.
In Acts we have the story of the obedience of the early-
church to God's call and leading, with the record of its tri¬
umphant results. The early Christian leaders had no doubt as
to their own mission (Acts 10 40"43). Study the power of the
early church in winning converts in spite of great persecution
(8 lf 5 41, 19 20) ; also the difficulty which was sometimes ex¬
perienced in making clear to men what surrender to God's will
meant (19 1_6). Note also that the form in which God's will
was revealed to men was through compelling convictions (cf.
19 21). "I must." "We must."
Ananias (910"18), Philip (8 26), Agabus (11 28, 21 1]),
early disciples (13 2, 15 2S, 21 4), Cornelius (10 3- 22' 30, 31),
Peter (10 10, ll12, 12 7), Paul (9 4"7, 16 6'9-10, 18 9-10, 19 81,
22 7- 10- 17> 18'21, 23 26 14, 2 7 23).
26
THE WILL OF GOD
Study III. The Apostles and the Will of God
THIRD DAY
Peter and the Will of God
John 21 15"22.
Perhaps the most complete change that takes place within
the circle of Jesus' followers after the resurrection is in Peter.
Review briefly the main facts in his career from his call to
Jesus' crucifixion (John 1 40 f; Matt. 14 29"31, 17 1 f; 26 37 f;
Mark 14 68). What indications of self-will in his life? What
motives generally influenced his actions in this period? Study
the passage given for today's study as the crisis in his spiritual
career. What does verse 22 indicate regarding God's will for
the individual? After the ascension what change in his atti¬
tude? (Acts 5 29"32.) When had Jesus foreseen and predicted
this change? (Luke 22 81> 32,)
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
27
Study III. The Apostles and the Will of God
FOURTH DAY
John and the Will of God
Matt. 4 21» 22; Mark 3 17; John 19 25"27, 21 20"23.
The career of John is another striking instance of the
power of God in transforming a man's life, when that life has
become completely obedient to the Divine Will. The Son of
Thunder of the early chapters of Mark is the Disciple Whom
Jesus Loved in the last chapters of John. Read carefully the
passages in the gospels and epistles which refer to him (John
1 40; Luke 5 8 B1, 9 28; Mark 13 3, 14 33f; Luke 9 54; Mark
10 35; Luke 22 8, 9 49; John 13 23, 19 26, 20 2; Acts 3 lff, 8 14;
Gal. 2 *' 9). Why does his life escape the storm and stress of
Peter's? Why does Jesus entrust his mother to John rather
than to any other of the disciples? When did John grasp the
idea of complete surrender?
28
THE WILL OF GOD
Study III. The Apostles and the Will of God
FIFTH DAY
Paul and the Will of God
Acts 9 x"22.
What do we know about Paul's career before the spiritual
crisis on the Damascus road? (Acts 8 1_3.) What was his at¬
titude toward the Christians ? Study carefully the passage for
today's study. How account for the completeness of his sur¬
render of self to Jesus? Through what means was God's will
for the immediate future revealed to him? Where did he work
out the more complete details? (Gal. 1 16' 17.) What were some
of the issues of this crisis in Paul's later life?
"There is the outline of a wonderful development here,
from the young Jew who superintended Stephen's martyrdom
to the prophet of the Gentiles, tender, strong, leaning like a
little child on the mercy and help of Christ, meeting his own
martyrdom with no anger at human sin, no shrieks of fanatic
disappointment, but the secret confidence that even in death he
was being led in triumph in Christ."
Speer: The Man Paul, page 88.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
29
Study III. The Apostles and the Will of God
SIXTH DAY
Paul and the Will of God (concluded)
I Thess. 4 2"12.
In his letters Paul gives many practical expositions and
applications to different situations of the principle of surrender
of self to God, which had transformed his life. In I Thessa-
lonians, the earliest of the epistles, he defines the will of God
(4 2"12). In Galatians he sounds a protest against the attempt
to substitute moral living for this life of absolute surrender of
self. In I Corinthians he demonstrates that God's will can be
done in all professions (7 20'2i, 10 31), and by all kinds of
men (1 26"31^ 7 7). Romans contains his protest against the
attempt to substitute membership in an established religious
body for the life of absolute self-surrender (6 13, 8 14 >15, 12 x).
In Colossians he demonstrates the relation of obedience to wis¬
dom (1 9' 10, 2 3). In Ephesians he restates again in practical
terms what God's will is (4 25—5 17). In Philippians he as¬
serts that God can use everything which befalls a man who is
living the surrendered life—suffering, opposition, death—so
that he will rejoice and glory in his sufferings and feel that,
for Jesus' sake, even to die is gain (1 21, 2 5"11). He also
demonstrates in this letter that a sure issue of obedience is a
mighty power to achieve results (4 13),
30
THE WILL OF GOD
Study III. The Apostles and the Will of God
SEVENTH DAY—REVIEW
1. How did John's acceptance of the principle of sur¬
render of self to God differ from that of Peter or Paul?
(John 21 20"22.)
2. Did Jesus ever force this principle upon others?
(Matt. 23 3T.)
3. How many of the Apostles had made the act of
surrender at the time of the crucifixion?
4. Trace the working of this principle in the lives of
Thomas and Judas. (Cf. John SO24"29.)
STUDY IV
The Principle of Surrender of Self Involved in Doing God's Will a
Reasonable One and Fundamental in Other Departments of Life
"Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth
by itself alone: but if it die, it beareth much fruit." —John 12:24-
"Know ye not, that to whom ye present yourselves as servants
unto obedience, his servants ye are whom ye obey; whether of sin
unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness." —Bom. 6:16.
"The nations owe their existence to the willingness of the best
and the most unselfish, the strongest and the purest, to offer them¬
selves for sacrifice. Whatever humanity possesses of the highest
good has been achieved by such men."
Paulsen: System of Ethics, page 159.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Peabody. Jesus Christ and the Christian Character, page 200 ff.
Palmer. The Nature of Goodness. Chapter VI.—"Self-Sacrifice."
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
33
Study IV. The Principle of Surrender of Self Involved in Doing
God's Will a Reasonable One
FIRST DAY
Self-development the Primary Law of Life
Matt. 25 14-30; Luke 2 52.
Heb. 11 6- 26.
James, William: Principles of Psychology (1890), I.,
page 307 ff.
IVa)0i aeavrov—"Know thyself" (Inscription at Delphi).
"A knowledge of his own heart .... that is the best
of all keys to a knowledge of the hearts of others."
Plummer: Expositor's Bible, James, page 859.
"Self-realization is the primary law of life. It is not
selfish to cultivate one's faculties or to utilize one's oppor¬
tunities. Faculties and opportunities are possessed only as
they are developed and used, and without cultivation shrivel
and disappear. Jesus himself teaches this truth with unusual
elaboration in the parable of the talents. The gifts of life,
according to this impressive picture, increase in the using
and shrink through disuse. To cultivate one's powers is to
multiply them, and from him who fails to increase his stock
is taken away that which seemed his own."
Peabody: Jesus Christ and the Christian Character, pages
199, 200.
34
THE WILL OF GOD
Study IV. The Principle of Surrender of Self Involved in Doing
God's Will a Reasonable One
SECOND DAY
Yet Self-sacrifice Alone Satisfies the Moral Demands of Life
I Cor. 8 12- 13, 9 22; II Cor. 11 23"29; Phil. 3 7"11.
Mark 8 34; Matt. 10 38, 16 24; Luke 9 23, 14 27.
John 12 25.
"Instead of the sagacious maxims of self-interest there
is heard the call to the heroic, the self-forgetting, the larger
good Self-abnegation, self-effacement, even the scorn
of self, becomes the mark of positive morality; and the self-
considering, computing, prudential spirit is a sign that positive
morality has not yet begun."
Peabody: Jesus Christ and the Christian Character, pages
201, 202.
"Self-sacrifice is an everyday affair. By it we live. It
is the very air of our moral lungs. Without it society could
not go on for one hour I mean by self-sacrifice any
diminution of my own possessions, pleasures or powers in
order to increase those of others .... the greatest conceiv¬
able sacrifice is when I give myself; when, that is, I in some
way allow my own powers to be narrowed in order that those
of some one else may be enlarged Yet this is what is
going on all over the country where devoted mother, gallant
son, loyal husband are limiting their own range of existence
for the sake of broadening that of certain whom they hold
dear."
Palmer: The Nature of Goodness, pages 16Jf.-166.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
35
Study IV. The Principle of Surrender of Self Involved in Doing
God's Will a Reasonable One
THIRD DAY
The Solution of the Dilemma; Full Self-realization Possible Only
Through Self-surrender
Mark 8 35 ; Matt. 6 33, 10 39, 16 25; Luke 9 2i-
"What, then, is my duty, cries out, in grave perplexity,
this life which finds itself rent by opposing motives—to de¬
velop myself or to deny myself; to hear the command of Jesus
bidding me invest my talents prudently, or to hear his other
command bidding me sell all I have, take up my cross
and follow? .... Jesus meets the issue with his paradcx
of sacrifice. There is, he teaches, no such schism in life
between gain and loss, self-cultivation and self-abnegation,
the finding of life and the losing of it. The field of duty-doing
is not a battlefield where duties to one's self contend against
duties to others; it is a field where human life like other living
things is growing; and growth by its very nature, means
transmission, expansion, the giving of the root to the stalk,
and of the stalk to the flower—a loss which is gain and a
death which is life. In short, when Jesus announces the
paradox that to save life is to lose it, and that to lose it is
to save it, he is transferring to conduct the general law which
the process of Nature had disclosed to his observant eye."
Peabody: Jesus Christ and the Christian Character, pages
202, 203.
36
THE WILL OF GOD
Study IV. The Principle of Surrender of Self Involved in Doing
God's Will a Reasonable One
FOURTH DAY
The Witness of Science and of Nature
I Cor. 15 36; John 12 24.
"Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strong¬
est manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian
conception of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down
before fact as a little child; be prepared to give up every
pre-conceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever
abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have
only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have
resolved at all risks to do this."
Huxley: Life and Letters of Huxley (1900), Vol. I,
page 285.
"The same paradox is observed in biological organisms, in
physiological tissues, in intellectual achievements, even in
economic progress. Physical health, which seems to depend
on that which the body receives, depends in fact quite as much
on what is exhaled and excreted."
Peabody: Jesus Christ and the Christian Character, page
203 ff.
"The life alike of the corn and of the conscience, was, as
Jesus saw it, a process of development through service, of
self-realization through self-sacrifice. The life that with¬
held itself was checked and dwarfed; the life that yielded
itself was enriched and confirmed. Assimilation and elimina¬
tion, receiving to give, dying to live—such was the rhythm
of nature which Jesus discovered alike in the fields of Galilee
and in the life of men."
Ibid., page 203.
"Question. What is the duty of man? Answer. To
assist his fellows, to develop his own higher self, to strive
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
37
towards good in every way open to his powers and generally to
seek to know the laws of nature and to obey the will of God
in whose service alone can be found that harmonious exercise
of the faculties which is synonymous with perfect freedom."
Sir Oliver Lodge: The Substance of Faith, page 138.
In bridgebuilding, even a weak girder or beam, if placed
so as to bear its load in conformity with the laws of nature,
will support an immense weight. The strongest girder, on
the other hand, if set contrary to these laws, will soon give
way beneath the pressure.
38
THE WILL OF GOD
Study IV. The Principle of Surrender of Self Involved in Doing
God's Will a Reasonable One
FIFTH DAY
Tbe Witness of History and of Human Experience
[Eccl. 11 \]
II Cor. 9 6; Mark 10 43-44; Rev. 7 13'17, 14 13.
"The nations owe their existence to the willingness of the
best and the most unselfish, the strongest and the purest, to
offer themselves for sacrifice. Whatever humanity possesses
of the highest good has been achieved by such men."
Paulsen: System of Ethics, page 159.
"Life stripped to its essentials offers but two alternatives
to the man of action. He may work for himself alone, build¬
ing his little selfish walls across the advancing path of civiliza¬
tion and making them stumbling-blocks in the way of progress.
Then, however successful he may be, ultimately the stern
mills of the gods will grind him and his structures to dust,
and he and his work will vanish from the earth. Or having
the eyes that see, he may place his effort parallel with the
eternal lines of force that mark the purposes of God and
then what he builds will endure."
Herbert Knox Smith: To Yale Alumni of Hartford,
Feb. 8, 1907.
"He who would understand a painting must give himself
to it." Ruskin.
"Intellectual growth seems a matter of accumulated
learning; but an undigested mass of erudition leaves one a
bookworm rather than a scholar, and productive expression
alone clarifies and sifts the scholar's mind. The movement
of trade is on its surface a mere scramble of self-seeking; but
in its total action economic life is a vast tidal process of pro¬
duction and distribution, of multiplying by investing, of in¬
crease through use. To hoard one's possessions is to lose their
increment."
Peabody: Jesus Christ and the Christian Character, page
201
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
39
Study IV. The Principle of Surrender of Self Involved in Doing
God's Will a Reasonable One
SIXTH DAY
The Witness of the Life of Jesus
Phil. 2 B-"; Mark 10 45.
"If we estimate the greatness of a man by the influence
which he has exerted on mankind, there can be no question,
even from the secular point of view, that Christ is much the
greatest man who has ever lived."
Romanes: Thoughts on Religion, page 169.
"Many followers of Jesus and many critics of his teach¬
ing have conceived that the character derived from him is a
stunted and truncated type which flings itself away in self-
abandoning and self-scorning altruism. The fact is, on the
contrary, that the paradox of sacrifice indicates the only way
of deliverance from the stunted and truncated life. Nothing
shuts in a life and shuts out satisfaction and joy like the self-
considering temper and the self-centered aim. Such a life,
though it may seem to itself self-developing, is in fact self-
deceived. Instead of growing richer in its resources, it finds
itself growing poorer. The more it cultivates itself, the more
sterile it grows; the more it accumulates, the less it has; the
more it saves, the more it is lost. The paradox of Jesus is
the picture of a character which is enriched by spending, de¬
veloped by serving, happier itself because it makes a happier
world, finding itself in losing itself, discovering the unity of
the moral world, where sacrifice is growth and service is free¬
dom."
Peabody: Jesus Christ and the Christian Character, page
20 G.
40
THE WILL OF GOD
Study IV. The Principle of Surrender of Self Involved in Doing
God's Will a Reasonable One
SEVENTH DAY—REVIEW
1. When duties to self and duties to others appear to be
in conflict which shall we fulfil?
2. Is a man's ability to serve others proportional to his
physical, mental and spiritual talents ?
3. Was Jesus' life a narrow one?
4. Can a man grow narrow by overmuch service of
others ?
5. When is a man justified in turning from service to
develop or conserve his own powers?
B. THE DECISION TO DO GOD'S WILL
Study V. The Relation of the Act of Surrender of Self to
Other Religious Rites and Spiritual Experiences.
Study VI. The Alternatives to Doing God's Will as a Life
Purpose.
Study VII. The Spiritual Crisis Involved in Facing the Issue
of Surrender of Self. Its Symptoms and its Course.
Study VIII. To Find Out and to Do God's Will for One's Life
is an Achievement Possible for Any Man.
Study IX. God's Will may be Done in Any Honorable Trade
or Profession Either at Home or Abroad.
Study X. The Necessity for Absolute Surrender of Self.
STUDY V
The Relation of the Act of Surrender of Self to Other Religious Rites
and Spiritual Experiences
"Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into
the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father
which is in heaven." —Matt. 7:21.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bowne. The Christian Life, pp. 89-119.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
45
Study V. The Relation of the Act of Surrender of Self to Other
Religious Rites and Spiritual Experiences
FIRST DAY
Every Man Must, Sooner or Later, Face the Issue of his Personal
Relation to God, and When Once the Question is Raised, Perfect
Peace of Mind and Soul can be Thereafter Secured, only by the
Deliberate Decision to do God's Will Unconditionally, Whenever
it shall be Clearly Revealed
[Ps. 129 x-24.]
Investigation shows that there are three ideas which
no human being, savage or civilized, is without; the distinction
between right and wrong, the desire for eternal life and the
conception of a supreme being or God. The problem of man's
relation to God is, therefore, a universal and eternal one, and
for the purpose of settling this question our life on this earth
seems to have been given us (Acts 17 2C' 27). In the Old
Testament we find many attempts of man to justify himself
before God through outward form of sacrifice or ritual, and
through the meditation of a priest (Ps. 51). But even the
prophets of those days saw clearly that such impersonal and
external methods would not suffice to bring peace (Hosea 6 6;
Isaiah 58 3~u), inasmuch as religion is a vital personal matter,
"the life of God in the soul of man." What then is this vital,
personal act of self-surrender whereby the life of God enters
the soul of man (Gal. 2 20 ; II Cor. 616; John 3 3, 14 2S),
and which, being the final settlement of the greatest life prob¬
lem, brings perfect peace?
46
THE WILL OF GOD
Study V. The Relation of the Act of Surrender of Self to Other
Religious Rites and Spiritual Experiences
SECOND DAY
Is this Act Necessarily the Same Thing as the Decision to Live a
Moral Life ?
I Cor. 4 4; Rom. 3 21- 22> 81, 10 3; Eph. 2 8.
Matt. 19 10-22; Acts 11 16, 19 x"7.
There are two great facts in the world—sin and right¬
eousness. Conversion is popularly regarded as the breaking
away from sin—generally from some one particular sin like
intemperance, or impurity, or dishonesty. With most of us
life is a series of such breaks.
In such a break with wrong-living a man often gives up
one particular sin to God but he still retains his own control
over the rest of his life. It is true that some men—especially
those in middle life—who are converted from some desperate
sin which has made them outcasts, surrender themselves en¬
tirely to God when they are converted and this explains such
lives of power as Jerry McAuley and S. H. Hadley. But it is
perfectly possible for a man to have broken with one of his
besetting sins and yet live an unsurrendered life.
The book of Galatians is a protest against the attempt
to substitute moral living for the self-surrendered life. Paul
realizes the value of morality. The struggle for it is the first
step toward self-surrender (Gal. 3 2l), but as the writer of
Hebrews urges we are to pass on further (Heb. 5 X1"14, 6 2).
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
47
Study V. The Relation of the Act of Surrender of Self to Other
Religious Rites and Spiritual Experiences
THIRD DAY
Is it Always the Same Thing as Such Rites of Confession as Baptism, or
Uniting with the Church, or Partaking of the Communion?
I Cor. 13 1; Rom. 8 9 (end), 9°; II Tim. 3 5.
Mark 7C'"8, 12 32> 33; Matt. 3 9, 21 28"31; Luke 3 8, 6 "8,
13 25-27, 18 9"14.
It is not alone necessary to break with sin—man must
lay hold on righteousness. Through the outward rites of con¬
fession, such as baptism, uniting with the church, and par¬
taking of the Lord's Supper, man is brought into the fellow¬
ship of Christians and into the presence of God (Luke 13 26).
But all such rites may be the act of our going into God's pres¬
ence, not of our letting him come into ours. It is one
thing to "eat and drink in his presence" where we still have
the say as to the running of things, and another and very
different thing to "open the door and let him come in" to
direct the feast (Rev. 3 20). It is true that many men do
make the entire surrender when they join the church (Gal. 3:
27); there are others who yield to God when very young,
through the mediation of a mother's Christian nurture; others
still at the first communion or even in baptism. This explains
such lives of power as Drummond and Brooks which seem
to have laid hold on God with no cataclysmic break from sin.
But it is perfectly possible for a man to embrace the forms
of righteousness and yet never have given God complete con¬
trol of his life. Furthermore it is conceivable that a man, as
for instance in pioneer country, without opportunity for public
confession such as uniting with the church, might be doing
God's will perfectly outside the church. A man who joins
a rival church to spite his opponent or for self-interest is cer¬
tainly not doing God's will. Hence, here again, the attempt
to make the act of self-surrender synonymous with public
confession is not inclusive enough.
48
THE WILL OF GOD
Study V. The Relation of the Act of Surrender of Self to Other
Religious Rites and Spiritual Experiences
FOURTH DAY
Is it Necessarily the Same Thing as the Decision to Live a Life of
Philanthropy, Giving Money and Time for the Uplifting of Man¬
kind P
I Cor. 13 3 (first half) ; Matt. 7 22' 23; Luke 10 38"42.
Acts 8 20' 21; Heb. 10 1.
The great commandment enjoins not only love to God
but also love to man (Mark 12 28"31). Through the service
of humanity, by gifts of money and by the expenditure of
talents and time for philanthropic ends, we fulfil at least one
half of the great law of love. In the service of man we may
find God. True we may, but do we always? "If I bestow all
my goods to feed the poor and have not love, it profiteth me
nothing."
What is this love? It is no human trait, but the actual
Spirit of God moving in the heart of man, inspiring him to
help others and answering unerringly that most difficult of
all questions—when and how to help. There is no sadder or
more disquieting sight than an unadapted or misdirected gift
or deed of philanthropy—huge palatial workingmen's pleas¬
ure houses, erected by well-meaning employers, which stand
idle because the workingmen will not frequent them-—be¬
quests that are a burden to a community rather than a foun¬
dation of helpfulness (cf. Peabody, Jesus Christ and the So¬
cial Question, page 339).
It is true that many men do make their entire surrender
to God through some great gift or act of service (cf. the
possibility which lay before the rich young ruler. Matt. 19
16"22), but it is perfectly possible for a man to give away all his
property and devote all his time to philanthropic work and
yet never have opened his heart to let the inspiring and guid¬
ing force—Love, God—come in. Furthermore, if the doing
of God's will embraces merely the making of great gifts, a
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
49
man without money or intellectual talents or physical health
could not do God's will. Hence, again, the attempt to make
the act of self-surrender synonymous with philanthropy is
not inclusive enough.
Study V. The Relation of the Act of Surrender of Self to Other
Religious Rites and Spiritual Experiences
FIFTH DAY
Is it Always the same Thing as "Volunteering"—the Consecration of
One's Life to Foreign Missionary Service?
I Cor. 13 3 (second half).
Jesus' last command was that the gospel should be
preached to every nation. There is no more apparent form of
consecration or self-sacrifice than Foreign Missionary service.
Yet some lives of missionaries might be cited which have been
utter failures, both in achievement and in their moral re¬
sults. It is true that it is possible for any man to make the
complete surrender to God when he makes the decision to
"go to the foreign field if God permitshe may do so when
he decides to live his life in a particular place in response to
a particular need; but it should always be distinctly pointed
out that this latter decision, alone, in itself is not a complete
surrender of a man's whole self to God—his pride, his beset¬
ting sin, his laziness, his unfilial attitude toward objecting
parents. Furthermore, the act of complete self-surrender
must obviously also include the willingness not to be a mis¬
sionary but a ditch-digger if God so wills, for God's will is to
be done in business, teaching, law and medicine at home just
as much as abroad. For one, therefore, to regard the act of
self-surrender as synonymous with "volunteering" is again
not inclusive enough in that it confuses an act which should be
the mainspring of every occupation and profession at home or
abroad with the act which decides the geographical location of
one's profession.
50
THE WILL OF GOD
Study V. The Relation of the Act of Surrender of Self to Other
Religious Rites and Spiritual Experiences
SIXTH DAY
The Act of Self-surrender
II Cor. 8 5; Matt. 11 28>29 ; Heb. 11 ®; Rev. 3 20; John
1 12, 5 40.
The act of self-surrender is a definite, conscious, personal
compact between a man and God alone, entirely independent
of all outward religious rites, forms or services, and for
which no outward form, rite or sacrifice can be substituted.
Man voluntarily gives God absolute possession of his life
and God comes in. This act is often coincident with such
outward manifestations of spiritual experiences as conver¬
sion, baptism, uniting with the church or volunteering, but it
need not be; and it is perfectly possible for a man to enter
into any or all of the above states without surrender to the will
of God at all. Right living, public confession and ceaseless ser¬
vice are the subsequent issues of a decision to do God's will
not the substitutes for it, and without the previous energizing
and life-giving impetus within of a decision to do God's will
they are merely an artificial and laborious human manufacture
and not a healthy, spontaneous, and continuous natural
growth.
"One man will tell you that the end of life is to be true;
another will tell you that it is to deny self; another will say
it is to keep the Ten Commandments; a fourth will point you
to the Beatitudes. One will tell you it is to do good, another
that it is to get good, another that it is to be good. But
the end of life is none of these things. It is more than all
and it includes them all. The end of life is not to deny self,
nor to be true, nor to keep the Ten Commandments—[it is]
simply to do God's will. It is not to get good, nor be good,
nor even to do good—[it is] just what God wills, whether
that be working or waiting, or winning or losing, or suffer-
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
51
ing or recovering, or living or dying It is not to be
happy or to be successful or famous, or to do the best we can
and get on honestly in the world. It is something far higher
than this, to do God's will We do not mean, Are we
doing God's work?—preaching or teaching or collecting
money—but God's will. A man may think he is doing God's
work when he is not even doing God's will. And a man may be
doing God's work and God's will quite as much by hewing
stones or sweeping streets as by preaching or praying. So
the question means just this—Are we working out our com¬
mon everyday life on the great lines of God's will? This is
different from the world's model life—'I come to push my
way'—this is the world's idea of it. 'Not my way, not my
will but thine be done'—this is the Christian's 'Thy
will be done'—now mark the emphasis on done. He
prays that God's will may be done. It is not that God's
will may be borne, endured, put up with. There is activity
in his prayer. It is not mere resignation The ideal
man .... does not want a bed of roses or his pathway
strewn with flowers. He wants to do God's will. He does
not want health or wealth, nor does he covet sickness or
poverty—just what God sends. He does not want success—
even success in winning souls—or want of success. What God
wills for him, that is all. He does not want to prosper in
business or to keep barely struggling on. God knows what is
best. He does not want his friends to live, himself to live or
die. God's will be done! The currents of his life flow far
deeper than the circumstance of things. There is a deeper
principle in it than to live to gratify himself. And so he
simply asks that in the ordinary round of his daily life there
may be no desire of his heart more deep, more vivid, more
absorbingly present than this, 'Thy will be done.' "
Drummond; The Ideal Life, pages 229-23$ (passim).
52
THE WILL OF GOD
Study V. The Relation of the Act of Surrender of Self to Other
Religious Rites and Spiritual Experiences
SEVENTH DAY—REVIEW
1. Is the act of self-surrender a necessary, or merely
a higher spiritual experience?
2. Are only those who do God's will saved? (Matt. 7 21.)
3. Need a person lead a moral life to do God's will?
4. Need a person join the church to do God's will?
5. Need a person be baptized to do God's will?
6. Need a person partake of communion to do God's
will ?
7. Which of these rites did Jesus engage in?
8. In how far were the Anabaptists of Luther's day
right in their doctrine? What was their error?
9. Has the act of making a public confession in a revival
meeting a relation to God's will? Is public confession
necessary? Should it come before or after surrender to
God's will in one's own closet?
10. Study the following deed of consecration in the light
of the week's study:
"This sixteenth day of November, 1895, I, Hugh McA.
Beaver, do of my own free will, give myself, all that I am
and have, entirely, unreservedly, and unqualifiedly to him,
whom having not seen I love, on whom, though now I see him
not, I believe. Bought with a price, I give myself to him
who at the cost of his own blood, purchased me. Now com¬
mitting myself to him who is able to guard me from stumbling.
I trust myself to him, for all things to be used as he
shall see fit where he shall see fit. Sealed by the Holy Spirit,
filled with the peace of God that passeth understanding, to
him be all glory, world without end. Amen."
Speer: A Memorial of a True Life, page 136.
STUDY VI
The Alternatives to Doing God's Will as a Life Purpose
"But he said unto him, A certain man made a great supper; and
he bade many: and he sent forth his servant at supper time to say
to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready. And
they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto
him, I have bought a field and I must needs go out and see it: I
pray thee have me excused. And another said, I have bought five
yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me excused.
And another said, I have married a wife and therefore I cannot
come." —Luke 14:16-20.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Newman, J. H. Plain and Parochial Sermons. Vol. II., No. 1.—
"The World's Benefactors."
Moody, D. L. Select Sermons. "Excuses."
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
55
Study VI. The Alternatives to Doing God's Will as a Life Purpose
FIRST DAY
God or Mammon. Enlistment with One or the Other Inevitable.
There is no Middle Course. Refusal to Enlist with God is
Enlistment with Mammon
Gal. 1 10; Rom. 6 15"23, 8 14> 15; Col. 3 22; II Tim. 3 4.
Matt. 6 22-24 ; Luke ll23; Rev. 3 15< 16; II Peter 2 19.
Many men object to the word "surrender" in connection
with the decision to do God's will on the ground that it
characterizes us as rebels against God, and that such an act
must take away all personal liberty. That this is in fact
not so will be demonstrated later. (Study VII—Sixth Day.)
But even if it were could we object? Are we in a position
to demand rights of God or do we not rather, from the very
start, owe him obligations? (Rom. 919"21; Luke 17 7"10; cf.
also Isaiah 4>5 9, 64 8.)
God's wonderful love and regard for man's personality
is nowhere more apparent than in the fact that, in spite of
our obvious obligations to him, he has granted to every one of
us absolute liberty to accept or reject his service. In some
cases perhaps the term "enlistment" is better than "surren¬
der." Paul uses the phrase "adoption as sons" (Gal. 4 5). A
man like Jesus, who had not previously been in the service
of Mammon, "surrenders" himself when he enters God's
service in the same sense in which a soldier voluntarily "sur¬
renders" or "consecrates" his all to the nation when he
enlists; or as husband and wife "surrender" or "devote" or
"present" themselves to each other in the marriage vow
(Rom. 6 1S).
If however a man has been in the enemy's service before
he enters the service of God—this was the case with Paul
(Gal. 1 13; Acts 22 °"10) and is probably the case with most
of us—he needs in a more truly literal sense to surrender
himself and take an oath of allegiance to the new ruler before
56
THE WILL OF GOD
he can be counted as a loyal subject in the free service of
God (Rom. 5 10, 6 16"23).
It is obvious that man must be in the service of either
God or Mammon. Does the service of Mammon—by which
Jesus must mean the alternatives to doing God's will as a
life purpose—offer more freedom and liberty than that of
God? (Rom. 616.)
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
57
Study VI. The Alternatives to Doing God's Will as a Life Purpose
SECOND DAY
The Service of Mammon—Three Possible Aspects
Matt. 4 1-11; Luke 14 1G'20; I John 2 16.
"Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." By "Mammon"
Jesus must mean whatever other possible alternatives offer
themselves as life purposes outside of complete surrender to the
will of God. The service of Mammon has at least three
different aspects. Jesus faced and rejected all three in the
temptation and afterwards discussed the same three in the
parable of the rejected invitations.* If a man refuses to live
the life surrendered to the will of God he has three other
possible alternatives, to the bondage (Rom. 61G; II Tim.
2 26; John 8 34; II Peter 2 19) of one or the other of which he
may devote his life—-(1) the life surrendered to self-indul¬
gence; (2) the life surrendered to wealth-getting; (3) the life
surrendered to fame-seeking, f
*In this parable the owner of the oxen is seeking: fame rather than wealth. It
is the number—five yoke—on which he lays emphasis.
tit is an interesting confirmation of the depth and soundness of Jesus' obser¬
vations regarding human nature that these alternatives of his parable were the
identical three presented to Paris by the Goddesses Aphrodite, Athena and Hera in
the old Greek myth connected with the Trojan war. Aphrodite offered self-indul¬
gence, Athena fame in war, Hera the wealth of empire.
58
THE WILL OF GOD
Study VI. The Alternatives to Doing God's Will as a Life Purpose
THIRD DAY
The Life Surrendered to Self-indulgence
Rom. 8 6-8; Matt. 4 2- 3> 4; Luke 14 20.
Read also carefully Matt. 24 48-51 ; Luke 17 26"30, 21 34.
Many men who possess the capacity to attain neither
fame nor wealth and others who, though possessing the
capacity, are not attracted by these things, surrender their
lives to some form of self-indulgence. Let us begin with
one of the commonest which although not generally regarded
as such Jesus recognized (Matt. 4 4) and often warned men
against. "Every one can recall individuals who are so tied
to their three good meals a day that they make themselves
and everyone else miserable the moment their habits are
broken into by circumstances" (Griggs, Moral Education,
page 150). Of such Paul speaks when he mentions
those "whose God is their belly" (Rom. 16 18; Phil. 3 19).
A man may be a slave to self-indulgence in any one of many
other forms—sleep, drinking, smoking, gambling, the theatre,
sport, dress, or, as was the case in the parable of the rejected
invitations, in subtler forms which concern domestic life.
Mark Antony might have been the ruler of the world
had he not surrendered himself to self-indulgence. Surely
there is no more pitiable sight than a man created by God to
be a master who is a slave of habit. How free Jesus was
from slavery to any form of appetite or artificial
stimulant (Mark 15 23 ; John 4 31_34) and yet how calm and
effective was his life without it! (Mark 1 32-35} 4 35"41.) Paul
learned from Jesus the true place of self-indulgence (I Cor.
6 12, 8 8, 9 27; Rom. IS11"14, 14 17; Col. 2 20"23).
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
59
Study VI. The Alternatives to Doing God's Will as a Life Purpose
FOURTH DAY
The Life Surrendered to Wealth-getting
Matt. 4 8-10; Luke 14 18.
Read also carefully I Tim. 6 7-10' 17; Mark 10 17-31; Matt.
6 19-21, 19 16-22; Luke 12 13-21; James 5 1-6.
Though free from the slavery of self-indulgence a man
is often tempted to yield his life to selfish acquisition. He
buys a field and he must needs go and see it, no matter what
are the calls of home or of citizenship or of church. He
makes the exchange, which Jesus refused, of a surrender of
principle for all the kingdoms of the world. The slavery of
such a life, whether it concerns itself with the amassing of
money and of property, or of other forms of wealth, such as
learning and culture, needs no special demonstration. The
city and the university furnish plenty of examples of learn¬
ing-hoarding as well as money-hoarding misers. Are riches
essential to, and productive of, happiness? (Matt. 19 22;
Phil. 4 1:l.) Do they enslave or free their possessor? (Rev.
3 17' 18.)
60
THE WILL OF GOD
Study VI. The Alternatives to Doing God's Will as a Life Purpose
FIFTH DAY
The Life Surrendered to Fame-seeking
Matt. 4 5-7; Luke 14 19.
Read also carefully Mark 9 33"35, 10 35-45 ; Luke 2 2 24"2S;
John 5 44, 12 43.
Milton characterizes the desire to attain fame as "that
last infirmity of noble minds." It masters men who are slaves
neither to self-indulgence nor to the passion for wealth. It
is perhaps the subtlest of all the three alternatives to doing
God's will as a life purpose. Many a religious worker who
has completely mastered his passions and appetites, and is
willing to work for a mere pittance, falls a victim to the
ambition for leadership in his special field of work. To
receive the applause of men, to see one's name in the news¬
paper, to be known as the possessor not of one but of five
yoke of oxen, these are the enslaving life purposes of many
men.
DeTocqueville says of Napoleon that he attained to the
greatest height that any man ever can attain without virtue.
Napoleon's sole ideal was his own fame. What might
not his genius have accomplished for the world, had it not
been enslaved to fame-seeking? Note how free Jesus was
from the craving for notoriety (Phil. 21"11; Mark 7 36 ;
Luke 514"16; John 6 15) and yet how truly a leader among
men. Who was the slave and who was the master as we study
the careers of Napoleon and Jesus?
a man's lifework
61
Study VI. The Alternatives to Doing God's Will as a Life Purpose
SIXTH DAY
Pleasure, Wealth and Fame are not Wrong in Themselves, but They
must be Our Servants not Our Masters
I Cor. 6 12; Matt. 6 21- 33.
Read also carefully II Cor. 98"15; Mark 4 19, io 29-30;
Matt. 19 28; Luke 18 28-30; [Psalm 1
"Seek ye first his kingdom and his righteousness
and all these things shall be added unto you." In this verse
Jesus is speaking of the temporal pleasures of life. Only
the life surrendered to God which seeks first his kingdom
is the free and happy life (see a fine passage on the joyfulness
of Jesus in Peabody, Jesus Christ and the Christian Character,
page 47 ff).
When a man surrenders his life to any one of the three
alternatives he becomes a slave; but when he surrenders to
God we have the resulting paradox that by the act he becomes
absolutely free and a master of pleasure, wealth and fame;
because God is love, and love is freedom (Rom. 8 14-17, I John
418).
62
THE WILL OF GOD
Study VI. The Alternatives to Doing God's Will as a Life Purpose
SEVENTH DAY—REVIEW
1. Does Matt. 6:33 hold out a selfish motive for the
service of God? Should we serve to obtain a reward? (Cf.
James 4 10; Heb. 11 6-26; I Peter 3 9> 10"12.)
2. Should godliness ever be allowed to be a way of gain?
(I Tim. 6 5; cf. Mark 9 35, 10 28"31.)
3. In how far is it true that the good are prosperous ?
4. "Be good and you will be great." Is this true?
5. What do Jesus and the Apostles mean by the terms
wealth and riches?
STUDY VII
The Spiritual Crisis Involved in Facing the Issue of Surrender of Self
—Its Symptoms and its Course
"And straightway the Spirit driveth him forth into the wilder¬
ness. And he was in the wilderness forty days tempted of Satan."
—Mark 1:12,18.
"The gospel of the kingdom of God is preached, and every man
entereth violently into it." —Luke 16:16.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
"Cases" of this Spiritual Crisis
Jesus Christ. Matt. 3:13—4:11.
The Rich Young Ruler. Luke 18:18-23.
Paul. Gal. 1:13-17; Acts 26:1-19.
Bushnell, Horace. Life and Letters of Horace Bushnell
{Cheney), pages 53-60.
Robertson, F. W. Life and Letters of F. W. Robertson
{Brooke), Vol. I., pages 109 and 110.
(N. B. There are several editions of this book and the pages do
not agree. The passage in question is in the account of his wander¬
ings in the Tyrol.)
Kingsley, Charles. His Letters and Memories of His Life
{Mrs. Kingsley), chapter III.
Beaver, Hugh. A Memorial of a True Life {Speer), pages 136,
137.
Brooks, Phillips. Life of Phillips Brooks {Allen), pages 89,
90, 96, 97, 120, 121, 140.
Drummond, Henry. The last four chapters of the "Ideal Life"
are his own experiences told impersonally. See G. A. Smith's Life for
the proof of this.
Little, Frances. The Lady of the Decoration.
In selecting the above cases from the large number which history
and literature aiford, I have chosen what might be termed "pure"
cases. I have purposely avoided two classes: (1) Those in which this
spiritual crisis which accompanies the act of complete self-surrender
to God is closely connected with a break from positive sin (cf.
Augustine, Bunyan, and numerous instances cited in the discussions
of Starbuck, Coe and James); and (2) those in which it is associated
with a decision to enter Foreign Missionary Service (which would
include practically the whole range of missionary biography).
I have done this deliberately, in an attempt to demonstrate that
a personal, conscious surrender of self to God,—involving beforehand
a frank consideration and recognition of certain temporary ad¬
vantages which self-indulgence, self-seeking and wealth-amassing
have to oifer but culminating in their deliberate renunciation in the
face of these advantages,—is the normal preparation for all lives of
power. I would not do injustice to gradual consecration, but would
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
65
raise the question whether there is not a positive loss to the world if
a man allows his decision as to his attitude toward these matters
to hang fire for many years. This decision as to attitude—one's
working basis for life—is an entirely distinct thing from breaking
with sins which have once fastened themselves upon one. Jesus had
no cataclysmic break with sin; but he had a cataclysmic decision in
regard to his attitude toward it. A sudden break with sin should
be the abnormal thing • men ought to be born into, and grow into
righteousness. But I fail to see how most human freewill agents
can lay their life plans with two possibilities before them, reject
the alluring alternative, and definitely enlist the forces of righteous¬
ness on their side, without being aware of it. If a man thinks he
has already arrived at this state of absolute surrender of self
to God's will by what he terms the process of gradual consecration
why should he then object to sealing it with a definite, personal
compact? Was not that precisely the trouble with the rich young
ruler ?
66
THE WILL OF GOD
Study VII. The Spiritual Crisis Involved in Facing the Issue of
Surrender of Self
FIRST DAY
The Facing of the Problem of Self-surrender—to do God's Will with¬
out Reservation—the Great Soul Crisis in most Lives of Spiritual
Power
Matt. 4 1.
" Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide
In the strife of truth with falsehood,
For the good or evil side."
Lowell: The Present Crisis.
Wherever we have the complete biography of the great
leaders of Christian civilization, we find that most of their
lives show a marked resemblance in the steps of the spiritual
crisis through which they passed before entering upon their
lives of power. Beginning with Jesus and Paul and passing
down through the centuries we find the same successive stages
so clearly marked in each case as to establish a general law of
the process of self-surrender. Inasmuch as Jesus went
through the same crisis .in all its aspects at the beginning of
his career, we can safely assume that not only the rebellious
sinner but most men who would attain to a life of spiritual
power must have a similar struggle; for as Pascal said, "It
is the lot of every Christian to have those things happen to
him which happened to our Lord Jesus Christ." Whether,
then, they enlist with or surrender to God, few who would be
true leaders of men can expect to escape this experience.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
67
Study VII. The Spiritual Crisis Involved in Facing the Issue of
Surrender of Self
SECOND DAY
The Decision is Preceded by a Period of Lonely Struggle and
Uncertainty
Matt. 4 2; Gal. 1 15'17.
Jesus: "In the wilderness" (Luke 41; Matt. 41; Mark
1 12) "fasted forty days and forty nights."
Paul: "Straightway I communed not with flesh and
blood .... but I went away into Arabia" (Gal. 1 16> 17).
Charles Kingsley: "I have been for the last hour on the
seashore not dreaming but thinking deeply and strongly."
Horace Bushnell: Loneliness (see Life, pp. 53-60).
F. W. Robertson: Loneliness (see Life, pp. 109, 110).
Hugh Beaver: (See Life, pages 136, 137).
Frances Little: The Lady of the Decoration, pp. 209-211.
Macdonald: Robert Falconer, Chap. LI., "In the Desert."
68
THE WILL OF GOD
Study VII. The Spiritual Crisis Involved in Facing the Issue of
Surrender of Self
THIRD DAY
The Various Alternatives to Doing God's Will Present Themselves
with Unwonted Attractiveness and There is Often a Feeling of
Great Repulsion and Obstinacy toward Everything Christian
Matt. 4 3' c' 8' 9; Acts 26 9; Rom. 7 15"25, 9 20- 21.
Jesus: "Being tempted of the devil" (Matt. 4 x).
Paul: "I persecuted the church of God and made havoc
of it." Gal. 1 13' 14. (Paul has left no detailed record of his
soul struggle during the lonely period in Arabia. Perhaps
Titus 3 3 is an echo of it.)
Horace Bushnell: Fascination for law (see Life).
F. TV. Robertson: Repugnance for theology (see Life);
so also Phillips Brooks.
"I fit into this life out here like a square peg in a round
hole. I am not consecrated, I was never called to the foreign
field, I love the world and the flesh even if I don't care
especially for the devil, I don't believe the Lord makes the
cook steal so I may be more patient, and I don't pray for
wisdom in selecting a new pair of shoes."
Frances Little: The Lady of the Decoration, page 1J/.7.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
69
Study VII. The Spiritual Crisis Involved in Facing the Issue of
Surrender of Self
FOURTH DAY
The Final Act of Surrender or Enlistment is a Definite Conscious Act
of Ethical Decision Between the Man and God Personally, Made
without Reservation, in the Path, not of Inclination but of Duty;
and is Generally Preceded by the Darkest Moments of Doubt,
Obstinacy, and Fascination for the Other Life
Matt. 4 10 (cf. vs. 8, 9, and Luke 12 57).
Jesus: "Get thee hence, Satan" (fascination recognized,
cf. Matt. 16 23) ; "the Lord and him only"—without reserva¬
tion; "thou shalt serve"—the path of duty.
Paul: "What shall I do, Lord?" Acts 22 10.
Horace Bushnell in the privacy of his college room.
John Wesley: "I resolved to devote all my life to God—
all my thoughts, words and actions."
F. TV. Robertson in the Tyrol.
Phillips Brooks at Alexandria Seminary.
Frances Little: The Lady of the Decoration, pp. 209-
211.
It should be noted that this decision must be made per¬
sonally. Jesus refused to let a third person intervene and tell
him what God's will was (Matt. 47). So later, in the deter¬
mining as to what God's will was in a specific case, Jesus re¬
fuses to let Peter intervene (Matt. 16 22, 23). Paul refused to
let the brethren decide for him (Acts 21 11_14) and taught inde¬
pendence (Phil. 2 12). Jesus' last rebuke was for this same
reason (John 21 21'22).
70
THE WILL OF GOD
Study VII. The Spiritual Crisis Involved in Facing the Issue of
Surrender of Self
FIFTH DAY
The Results of this Decisive Act are not Immediately Apparent
although the Act of Decision Brings Peace and the Feeling of
Revulsion Against Religion Begins to Fade Away
Col. 1 6.
Matt. 4 11; Luke 8 15, 21 19, 24 49.
Acts 26 15' 1G' 19' 20' 29; James 5 7' 8.
Heb. 11 13; I Peter 1 6' 7.
Rev. 2 3.
Note that the result in Jesus' case was not immediate
peace, immediate certainty, and complete victory. The doubts
and fascination of the other life are not completely swept
away but return (Luke 4 1S, for a season. Cf. also Luke 22 28,
"Ye are they that have continued with me in my tempta¬
tions"). But by the great decision their force has been
broken. This decision often brings with it victory over some
sin which had not before been overcome.
Matt. 4 11, "angels"—"the joy of the uncommitted sin."
"It is true that this was not realized at once. It grew
with the natural growth of years. The doubts were not yet
all gone. The whole history of these struggling years can¬
not be better rendered than in these words of Tennyson,
loved for their very familiarity:—
"' Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,
At last he beat his music out.
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
"' He fought his doubts and gathered strength,
He would not make his judgment blind,
He faced the spectres of the mind
And laid them; thus he came at length
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
71
"'To find a stronger faith his own;
And power was with him in the night
Which makes the darkness and the light,
And dwells not in the light alone.'"
"His manner of dealing with mental questions, as he de¬
scribes it, seems the most sincere and reasonable one
possible:—
" 'Never be in a hurry to believe; never try to conquer
doubts against time. Time is one of the grand elements in
thought as truly as in motion. If you cannot open a doubt
today keep it till tomorrow; do not be afraid to keep it for
whole years. One of the greatest talents in religious dis¬
covery is the finding how to hang up questions; and let them
hang, without being at all anxious about them. Turn a
free glance on them now and then as they hang; move freely
about them, and see them first on one side and then on
another, and by and by when you turn some corner of thought
you will be delighted and astonished to see how quietly and
easily they open their secret and let you in. What seemed
perfectly insoluble will clear itself in a wondrous revelation.
It will not hurt you, nor hurt the truth, if you should have
some few questions left to be carried on with you when you
go hence, for in that more luminous state, most likely they
will soon be cleared, only a thousand others will be springing
up even there, and you will go on dissolving still your new
sets of questions, and growing mightier and more deep-seeing
for eternal ages.' "
Cheney: Life and Letters of Horace Bushnell, pages
59, 60.
"Entire satisfaction to the intellect is unattainable about
any of the greater problems, and if you try to get to the bot¬
tom of them by argument, there is no bottom there; and there¬
fore you make the matter worse .... the moment you cut
off one, a hundred other heads will grow in its place. It
would be a pity if all these problems could be solved. The
joy of the intellectual life would be largely gone. I would not
rob a man of his problems nor would I have another man rob
72
THE WILL OF GOD
me of my problems. They are the delight of life, and the
whole intellectual world would be stale and unprofitable if
we knew everything."
Drummond: Dealing with Doubt.
"Another frequent mistake to be carefully avoided is
that, while you surrender and renounce all thought of making
up a plan or choosing out a plan for yourself, as one that you
had set by your own will, you also give up the hope or ex¬
pectation that God will set you in any scheme of life where
the whole course of it will be known or set down beforehand.
If you go to him to be guided, he will guide you, but he will
not comfort your distrust or half-trust of him by showing
you his chart of all his purposes concerning you. He will only
show you into a way where, if you go cheerfully and trustfully
forward, he will show you on still further. No contract will
be made with you, save that he engages, if you trust him, to
lead you into the best things all the way through. And if
they are better than you can either ask or think beforehand,
they will be none the worse for that."
Bushnell: The New Life, page 21.
See Grenfell: A Man's Faith, pages 11-1
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
73
Study VII. The Spiritual Crisis Involved in Facing the Issue of
Surrender of Self
SIXTH DAY
A Man's own Individuality and Personality is not Lost by thus
Conforming to the Divine Will but on the Contrary it is Marvel-
ously Intensified
Gal. 4> 5"7; I Cor. 3 c; John 8 32' 36, 15 2' 5; I John 2 5.
Jesus, who was perfectly obedient, had the most unique
and individual personality that the world has ever seen.
"However irregular the forms of this conversion accord¬
ing to some theological standards, there can be no doubt
as to its reality as a conversion in the original sense of that
word. It was a complete turning about of the life. It
changed not only the outward purpose (for he [Horace
Bushnell] gave up the law for the gospel), but the very fibre
and tissues of his being. No, it did not change, but, rather,
breathed into his mortal frame the breath of an immortal life
and vigor, vitalized and inspired his intellect, gave luminous
insight in place of 'desolating doubts' and set him free. The
effect was not to neutralize but to heighten his individuality.
If he was before Horace Bushnell, he was doubly Bushnell
now. No salient point, no rugged, racy trait, was lost. He
seemed, indeed, now first to have found himself."
Cheney: Life and Letters of Horace Bushnell, pages
59, 60.
Note the originality of the man who lives the surrendered
life.
"The other-worldliness of such a character is the thing
that strikes you; you are not prepared for what it will do
or say or become next, for it moves from a far-off centre
and in spite of its transparency and sweetness that presence
fills you always with awe. A man never feels the discord
of his own life, never hears the jar of the machinery by
74
THE WILL OF GOD
which he tries to manufacture his own good points till he has
stood in the stillness of such a presence. Then he discerns
the difference between growth and work."
Drummond: Natural Law in the Spiritual World,
pages 18J/., 135 (Potts Edition).
"Now the ideal man has no deeper prayer than that.
He wants to get into the great current of will which flows
silently out of Eternity and swiftly back into Eternity again.
His only chance of happiness, of usefulness, of work is to
join the living rill of his will to that. Other Christians miss
it or settle on the bank of the great stream; but he will be
among the forces and energies and powers, that he may link
his weakness with God's greatness and his simplicity with
God's majesty, that he may become a force, an energy, a
power for duty and God. Perhaps God may do something
with him. Certainly God will do something with him—for
it is God who worketh in him both to will and to do of his
good pleasure You give everything to God. God
gives it all back again and more. You present your body a
living sacrifice that you may prove God's will. You shall
prove it by getting back your body—a glorified body."
Drummond: The Ideal Life.
"Nor is it any detraction from such a kind of life that
the helm of its guidance is, by the supposition, to be in God
and not in our own will and wisdom. This, in fact, is its
dignity How different, how inspiring and magnificent,
instead, to live by holy consent, a life all discovery; to see it
unfolding, moment by moment, a plan of God, our own life-
plan conceived in his paternal love; each event, incident,
experience, whether bright or dark, having its mission from
him and revealing, either now or in its future issues, the
magnificence of his favoring counsel; to be sure, in the dark
day, of a light that will follow, that loss will terminate in
gain, that trial will issue in rest, doubt in satisfaction, suffer¬
ing in patience, patience in purity, and all in a consummation
of greatness and dignity that even God will look on with a
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
75
smile! How magnificent, how strong in its repose, how full
of rest is such a kind of life God will lead every man
into a singular, original and peculiar life, without any study
of singularity on his part."
Bushnell: The New Life, page ff.
76
THE WILL OF GOD
Study VIL The Spiritual Crisis Involved in Facing the Issue of
Surrender of Self
SEVENTH DAY—REVIEW
1. If most great leaders have this soul struggle is
there such a thing as the unconscious doing of God's will?
2. For example, in how far can the following men be
said to have been doing the will of God: Socrates? (Cf. Matt.
IS17.) Augustus? (Cf. Luke 2 1'5.) Napoleon? (Cf. Isaiah
44 24"28^ 45 1'7, especially vs. 5 and 7.) Judas?
3. Why the preliminary period of loneliness ?
4. Can a Christian's soul life be right if he is afraid to
listen to a missionary talk or read a missionary biography?
5. Was the old idea of hereditary trades right?
6. What is the meaning of the descent of the Holy
Spirit? (Acts 2 1"4.) Is it coincident with or a subsequent
issue of self-surrender? May it be long delayed? (Luke
24 48.)
STUDY VIII
To Find Out and to Do God's Will for One's Life is an Achievement
Possible for Any Man
"But unto each one of us was the grace given according to the
measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, When he as¬
cended on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men
. . . . till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowl¬
edge of the Son of God, .... unto the measure of the stature of the
fullness of Christ." —Eph. 4-7,8,13.
"Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my
voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him,
and he with me." —Rev. 3:20.
"If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching,
whether it is of God, or whether I speak of myself." —John 7:17.
"Have ye not read even this scripture; The stone which the
builders rejected, the same was made the head of the corner."
—Mark 12:10.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Drummond. Stones Rolled Away. "To the Man Who is Down."
Richards. God's Choice of Men. Chapter V.—"A Call for All."
Shaler. The Masters of Fate.
Wright. A Life with a Purpose. Chapter I.—"The Miracle of
Obedience."
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
79
Study VIII. To Find Out and to Do God's Will for One's Life is
an Achievement Possible for Any Man
FIRST DAY
The Execution of God's Great Plan Requires the Most Brilliant Powers
of Body, Mind, Heart and Soul of Which Man is Capable
I Cor. 14 20; Matt. 10 16, 22 X1-14' 46.
The founder of Christianity stands unmatched among the
great men of history in the even balance of his physical, in¬
tellectual, social and spiritual powers. We have no record
of illness in Jesus' life. He was never outwitted in an intel¬
lectual encounter. No call upon his friendship ever went un¬
answered. What he exemplified in himself he set as the ideal
of his followers. They were to serve God with the full powers
of body, mind, heart and soul. Waste, undeveloped possi¬
bilities, misused opportunities, received from him the most
severe condemnation. He was constantly teaching that the
kingdom of God demanded the best that men could give.
80
THE WILL OF GOD
Study VIII. To Find Out and to Do God's Will for One's Life is
an Achievement Possible for Any Man
SECOND DAY
Yet this Task Has Never Been Reserved for Those Alone Whom the
World Regards as Specially Gifted
I Cor. 1 2°-20, 12 4"30; II Cor. 8 "■ 12; Col. 1 28; Matt. 11
25, 2g^ 20 i-ie^ 22 1-10; James 2 5.
In direct contrast to this stern demand of Jesus is his
constant practice of enlisting the frailest and most unpromis¬
ing lives for his great undertaking.
"When one thinks of the enterprise to be committed to
their hands, and considers the low estate of the Twelve, his
feeling is amazement and disappointment Were there
no men of standing and education, who had enough faith in
Jesus and enough devotion to religion to undertake this high
office? .... Why should he not have called Nicodemus . . . .
that high-minded and ingenuous young ruler .... and that
nameless scholar .... Jairus .... Joseph of Arimathea
. . . . the nobleman of Cana .... Manaen .... the
goodman of Galilee whom Jesus used as father in the Parable
of the Prodigal Son .... Gamaliel .... Saul .... the
host of the 'upper room' and that gentle soul Lazarus ? So the
Master would have had twelve apostles whom the nation would
have trusted, and whom the council would not have flouted."
Watson: The Life of the Master, pages 190, 191.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
81
Study VIII To Find Out and to Do God's Will for One's Life is
an Achievement Possible for Any Man
THIRD DAY
God Enlists and Uses Mightily for the Execution of His Plan Those
Who are Frail in Body and Mind
I Cor. 12 22; II Cor. 13 4 f; Rom. 4 17; Matt. 11 2B"29.
Luke 14 13; Heb. 12 12'13.
Study carefully the Scripture references for today's les¬
son. With what physical drawbacks did Paul have to con¬
tend? (II Cor. 12 7'8.) Read during this week, if possible,
the biography of some of the world's "masters of fate in the
physical realm"—David Brainerd, R. L. Stevenson, Francis
Parkman, Henry Martyn, William Johnson of Liberia, Helen
Keller or others.
For a wonderful instance of God's mighty use of the
frail-minded see Sutter, A Colony of Mercy, which tells the
story of Pastor von Bodelschwingh's work with this class in
Germany.
82
THE WILL OF GOD
Study VIII. To Find Out and to Do God's Will for One's Life is
an Achievement Possible for Any Man
FOURTH DAY
God has a Place in His Plan for the Timid and Unpopular as Well as
for Those Whom the World Has Rejected Because of Misfortune
or Sin
Rom. 5 G, 9 25' 26 (cf. Hosea 1 10- 2 23); I Tim. 1 12"10;
Mark 2 17,12 10' 11.
Matt. 9 13, 10 6, 11 28> 29, 18 12"14, 20 6- 7, 21 16.
Luke 1 48' 52, 3 5, 6 35 (margin), 9 49' 50> 15 (entire chap¬
ter).
Heb. 11 32"40 (esp. v. 34) ; I Peter 2 4; John 6 3T.
A far more difficult problem than that of the physically-
frail or the weak-minded in any community is that of the out¬
cast—both the self-ostracised, the timid and sensitive, and the
social outcast, the breaker of moral or civil law. Jesus not
only welcomes all such men into the circle of his followers,
but his life was given to them. He was the friend of publi¬
cans and sinners. He came not to call the righteous but
sinners. From such men the mightiest instruments for good in
his kingdom have been made. In connection with this day's
study consult the biography of Jerry McAuley and S. H.
Hadley's "Down in Water Street."
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
83
Study VIII. To Find Out and to Do God's Will for One's Life is
an Achievement Possible for Any Man
FIFTH DAY
Regeneration and Transformation Come into a Human Life Giving it
Sufficient Power for its Tasks, no Matter how Frail and Weak
it May Have Been, when that Life has Willed to Know and to Do
the Exact Work for which God had Intended it
I Cor. 1 30; Rom. 11 23, 14 4; Eph. 1 19, 2 1"10, 4 13.
Mark 4 8- 20, 6 2- 3, 10 27;~M~att. 21 42; Luke 5 30"32, 19 10.
Heb. 7 25 ; I Peter F2^
Jesus brings to the world a message of hope. No man
has fallen beyond possibility of regeneration. The simple
question is whether or not the individual is willing to be
transformed and will pay the price of complete surrender to
God's transforming power. What is that price?
"If any man .... takes this seriously and means busi¬
ness ; if he means for the future not to keep up the sham fight
that he has been pretending to wage and means to get to the
bottom of things, let me ask him for a few days from this
time to treat himself as a man who has been very ill and
dare not do anything. Let him consider himself as a conval¬
escent for a few weeks and take care where he goes, what he
reads, what he looks at, and the people he speaks to. He is
not strong enough for the outer air. When he first begins the
new life he is young and tender. Therefore let him beware
of the first few days. Mortality is greatest among children
for the first few hours; then it is greater for the first few
days; then it is great for the next few months and lessens as
the children grow older. If you are careful not to catch cold
for the first few weeks after you begin to lead a new life, you
will succeed; but if you do tomorrow what you did today,
you will go wrong, because you are not strong enough to resist.
You will have to build up this new body, cell by cell, day by
day, just as the old body of temptation has been built up. If
any man .... knows any other man who is in that conval-
84
THE WILL OF GOD
escent condition, let him take care, and neither by jest or
word, or temptation, throw that man back. Stand by him if
you know such a man. If you are such a man, do not be
ashamed to get somebody else to back you and go along with
you. Very few men can live a solitary Christian life. You
will find it a great source of strength to get another man's life
wound about you. You can help each other."
Drummond; Stones Rolled Away, pages 78, 74-
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
65
Study VIII. To Find Out and to Do God's Will for One's Life is
an Achievement Possible for Any Man
SIXTH DAY
The Miracle of Obedience
I Cor. 2 9; II Cor. 5 17; Rom. 6 4; Eph. 3 20; Phil. 3 20' 21;
Luke 21 14' 15; I Peter 1 23.
John 3 3, 5 20, 1412.
See Drummond, TKe Ascent of Man, Chapter X.—"In¬
volution."
"Is there then a mighty, miraculous law of God, under¬
lying the life of men, the processes of which may be observed,
a law whereby weak men are made strong, whereby the ordi¬
nary man can become extraordinary, a law which no man can
create or master but a law of which any man may avail him¬
self if he will? Are the phrases which were so constantly on
Paul's lips, 'Him that enabled me,' 'The strength which God
supplieth,' 'Newness of life,' 'My God shall fulfil every need/
'I can do all things through him,' 'His working which work-
eth in me mightily' mere empty phrases of rhetoric, or are
they the genuine witnesses to a mysterious power which had
made of Paul a new creature? When such a thought first
dawns upon one its possibilities are well-nigh overwhelming.
President Jordan tells us that one half of the nominal strength
of the young men of America is today wasted in dissipation,
gross or petty But what of the fourfold or the tenfold
strength which God intended to supply to men which they have
never claimed, and which, after all, was really their normal
strength in God's thought for their life?"
A Life with a Purpose, page 19.
86
THE WILL OF GOD
Study VIII. To Find Out and to Do God's Will for One's Life is
an Achievement Possible for Any Man
SEVENTH DAY—REVIEW
1. If Jesus will accept all classes of men why are there
so many outcasts in the world today?
2. With what different kinds of criminals did Jesus have
dealings ?
3. Against what class of men were his fiercest denuncia¬
tions hurled?
4. What was the object of these denunciations?
STUDY IX
God's Will May be Done in any Honorable Trade or Profession,
Either at Home or Abroad
"Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to the whole
creation." —Mark 16:15.
"The hour cometh when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusa¬
lem, shall ye worship the Father." —John 4:21.
"The kingdom of God is in the midst of you."
—Luke 17:21 (margin).
"Let each man abide in that calling wherein he was called.
Brethren, let each man, wherein he was called, therein abide with
God." —I Cor. 7:20,24.
"If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the
whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God
set the members each one of them in the body, even as it pleased
him." —I Cor. 12:17,18.
"Wherefore also we make it our aim, whether at home or absent,
to be well pleasing unto him. For we must all be made manifest
before the judgment-seat of Christ; that each one may receive the
things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether
it be good or bad." —II Cor. 5:9,10.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mathews, Shailer. "The Christian Church and Social Unity."
American Journal of Sociology, January, 1900, pages 456-469.
Hepworth. Hiram Golf's Religion or the "Shoemaker by the
Grace of God."
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
89
Study IX. God's Will May be Done in any Honorable Trade
or Profession
FIRST DAY
Jesus and the Apostles Laymen, not Members of the Professional
Clergy
Matt. 13 54-56; John 7 15 (Jesus).
1 Thess. 2 9; II Thess. 3 8"12; I Cor. 4 12, 9 lml*; II Cor.
11 7, 12 13; Acts 18 1"t, 20 33"35 (Paul).
I Thess. 4 n- 12; I Peter 4 10.
When we compare the religious leaders of the first
century with those of the twentieth we notice one striking
difference. The leaders of the first century did not regard
religious work as a regular paid profession. Jesus received
no money in payment for his work as an evangelist. He was
known not as a professional clergyman but as "the carpenter"
(Mark 61"0). Paul expressly states (see eight references
cited above) that he took no remuneration for his ministry
although it would have been right to have done so, but that
he supported himself entirely by his trade, which we know was
that of tentmaking (Acts 18 1"t). In the early church it was
taken for granted that a Christian should have his regular
trade (II Thess. 3 n' 12) ; the extent of his ministry in the
church and its nature was to be regulated by the gifts which he
possessed (I Peter 4 10).
Jesus and the Apostles, then, were laymen, not members
of the professional clergy. Jesus' ministry was one, not
primarily through the channel of the synagogue and the
established clergy, but rather through that of the field, the
hillside, the marketplace and the layman.
90
THE WILL OF GOD
Study IX. God's Will May be Done in any Honorable Trade
or Profession
SECOND DAY
No Honorable Profession or Trade Secular in God's Plan. All Must
be Ministries
I Cor. 720,2^ 1031^ 124-n# 1231. II Cor. 510; Rom.
12 6"8, 16 23.
Col. 3 17, 4 14; Eph. 4 x-16; I Tim. 4 4- 5; Titus 3 1S.
Matt. 9 9"13; Luke 3 10'14, 5 3-lx; John 21 1"6.
Jesus emphasized a great truth which had so far made but
little impression upon men—that the professions and trades
of men should not be divided into two hostile camps—the
religious and the secular; but that every honorable occupation
should be a Christian ministry. John the Baptist had grasped
this idea when he advised the tax collectors and soldiers who
came to him in repentance not to renounce their callings but
to make these latter ministries to men by the example of
honorable living in them. James, John, Peter and Andrew
had been fishers before Jesus called them; they returned to
theii trade afterwards. (John 21 1~G.) Matthew, it is true,
left his old occupation, probably because he did not trust him¬
self to continue in it; we are certainly to suppose that he took
up some new occupation for his support. In Paul's circle of
associates were a physician, a lawyer and a city treasurer
(see verses cited above). Jesus nowhere more clearly em¬
phasizes this truth of the lay ministry than in Luke 8 38' 39.
"Though we may never be famous or powerful or called
to heroic suffering or acts of self-denial which will vibrate
through history .... though we are neither intended to be
apostles, nor missionaries, nor martyrs, but to be common
people living in common houses, spending the day in common
offices or common kitchens; yet doing the will of God there, we
shall do as much as apostle or missionary or martyr, seeing
that they can do no more than do God's will where they are,
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
91
even so we can do as much where we are—and answer the
end of our life as truly, faithfully, triumphantly as they."
Drummond: The Ideal Life, page 264-.
"You are never to complain of your birth, your training,
your employments, your hardships, never to fancy that you
could be something if only you had a different lot and sphere
assigned you Hence it was that an apostle required
his converts to abide, each one in that calling wherein he
was called; to fill his place till he opens a way, by filling it,
to some other: the bondman to fill his house of bondage with
love and duty, the laborer to labor, the woman to be a woman,
the men to show themselves men—all to acknowledge God's
hand in their lot, and seek to cooperate with that good design
which he most assuredly cherishes for them."
Bushnell: The New Life, pages 19, 20.
92
THE WILL OF GOD
Study IX. God's Will May be Done in any Honorable Trade
or Profession
THIRD DAY
The Professional Clergyman Necessitated by the Need of Expert
Leadership among the Laymen Who without Such Stimulus
Were Either Unable or Unwilling to Grasp the Idea of Their
Responsibility
I Tim. 4 x-16.
Whence, then, in this ministry of laymen arose the
necessity for the professional clergyman who receives a
regular salary for his work? The rightful place of the
church and of the professional clergyman Jesus recognized
in his day (see Speer, Principles of Jesus, "Jesus and the
Church of God") ; and he explicitly teaches that a Christian
minister may receive salary for his services (Matt. 10 10).
Was not the professional clergyman in the Christian
church called into being by the need of expert leadership felt
among the laymen? So long as Jesus was on earth he supplied
this need. After an interval Paul served without pay as in-
spirer and instructor of the disciples. But as the greatest
of the Apostles approaches the end of his life he sees clearly
the necessity for a successor who can give more time to the
organization and leadership of the fast growing church than
has been required in the past. In the 4th chapter of First
Timothy we have the story of Paul's selection and instruction
of one such leader. The laymen have been either unwilling or
unable to grasp the conception of their trades as ministries.
Some have fallen away. Practical efficiency in the church
requires another leader. Timothy is henceforth to give him¬
self wholly (I Tim. 4 15) to the instruction of others (mainly
by that most potent of all methods of instruction—his own
example, I Tim. 4 12). It is noteworthy that in neither
of the letters to Timothy does Paul make reference to the
fact that he received no pay for his religious work, but he
expressly directs that henceforth compensation is to be paid
for genuine expert leadership (I Tim. 5 17'18).
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
93
Study IX. God's Will May be Done in any Honorable Trade
or Profession
FOURTH DAY
The Place of the Church and of the Professional Clergyman
I Cor. 914; I Tim. 517'18; Matt. 10 10; John 102'5;
jy 18, 19
1. The church is not a close corporation which alone has
the right to dispense salvation—demonstrated by Luther.
2. Seminary training and ordination does not necessarily
give spiritual authority—proved by cases of D. L. Moody,
R. E. Speer, J. R. Mott.
S. The clergy are not an opposition party or society to
the secular occupations.
4. The church is not the place to which the great mass of
the world comes to be converted. The great mass of the world
has never come to church except when compelled to, and it
never will. It is perfectly natural that it should not.
5. The clergyman is not a convenience to whom the lay¬
man can delegate all his heart work that calls for sym¬
pathy—care of poor, outcast, bereaved, etc.
6. The church is not the place to which the layman
is to come to get culture and aesthetic enjoyment.
The function of the professional clergyman in the
church is that which busied Jesus in his relations with the
Twelve. The church is a training school in method and
a centre of inspiration for the Christian layman and for him
only. It aims not primarily to do the direct evangelization
and to bring the kingdom of God itself without a medium, but
rather to train and inspire the Christian layman to go forth
as its representative into his trade and evangelize that. The
test of the efficiency of a church is not the numbers who
come to it but its answer to the question whether any laymen
go out from it to Christianize their respective professions.
The test of the efficiency of our work in the Christian
Associations is not the number of unconverted men who come
94
THE WILL OF GOD
to our meetings. They never have been many and they never
will be. The test is the number of Bible groups and men we
have actually working in the dormitories and the fraternities.
Missions in the Foreign Field have been reorganized along this
line in recent years and almost all the evangelization is now
done by the native lay workers in their own trades and com¬
munities. The missionary is mainly the trainer of these native
workers. The wonderful success of the Young Men's Chris¬
tian Association is largely due to the fact that it represents
Jesus' own method—evangelization directly by the layman,
and indirectly by the clergyman.
Should the leader of this group of evangelizing laymen
be paid for his services in the highly professional work of
training leaders? Certainly, but only those who receive the
benefit of the training should be asked to pay. Should he
receive a theological training? In general, yes. He ought
to be intellectually the superior of all his students. Should he
be ordained? Yes, in general, in order that there may be a
check upon unworthy men getting into places of leadership.
Should the laymen accept pay for their heart work with
their unconverted mates? Never. Only when called upon
for executive work in leading or to teach other Christian
laymen how to do the work should they accept pay.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
95
Study IX. God's Will May be Done in any Honorable Trade
or Profession
FIFTH DAY
The Evangelization of the World to be Directly Accomplished by
Laymen
I Thess. I8; I Cor. 12 1T- 18; II Cor. 2 14; I Tim. 28;
Luke 17 21 (margin) ; John 4 21.
If Jesus and his twelve Apostles represent the model
church it becomes at once apparent that it must be God's
plan to accomplish the evangelization of the world directly
not by clergymen but by laymen. The clergyman gathers the
laymen about him, instructs them in methods and inspires
them with motive; the laymen go forth into the world having
caught the meaning of the great truth of Jesus—"the king¬
dom of God is in the midst of you"—i.e. that not in the
church edifice nor in a Zion city (John 4 21) but right in
one's own profession, wherever one has intercourse with
men, there is the place where he, not the clergyman, can best
accomplish the coming of the kingdom of God. The tent-
maker among the tentmakers; the fisherman among the other
fishermen casting their nets; you, the teacher among your
colleagues and pupils as you teach; you, the physician or
lawyer, among your patients or clients as you practice; you,
the engineer, among your assistants, especially among the
Italians who dig the ditches for your survey—wherever a
layman is in contact with a body of men, there is his parish
for active evangelization. And why is this evangelization by
laymen God's chosen method? The Christian layman who is
a specialist in his line alone has access to the minds and hearts
of his associates. He alone can translate the life and teaching
of Jesus into terms which his associates can understand and
will respect. Such work as Professor Jenks' will have more
effect on the sociologists of the country than many sermons.
The next generation will see the extension of Professor Jenks'
idea into all the callings and trades by Christian laymen in
96
THE WILL OF GOD
these trades. To expect one clergyman to preach the gospel
acceptably to the unconverted of forty different kinds of
specialized callings, each with its own viewpoint and special
vernacular, is as ridiculous as to expect him to be able to preach
acceptably in forty different languages.
And how is the layman to accomplish this evangelization?
Is he to preach and pray and scatter tracts or give Christian
counsel or lead a Bible class? Not at first. The greatest
joy of his life as years go by and as he comes to have the
complete soul-confidence of his associates will be in just such
services. His work can never be complete without such a
climax. But his first step in evangelization is to become a
master in his special calling and in the life and teaching of
Jesus translated into his own calling and his own life, so
that he may have the complete respect and confidence of his
associates. For their sakes he sanctifies himself oftentimes
by hard technical study (John 17 19). Then he consecrates
his life to the accomplishment of three things among his as¬
sociates—that they may be righteous, happy and contented,
not only on the surface but in their heart life within—in the
Holy Ghost (Rom. 1417). In the little circle where his
calling is he makes it his ideal that so far as lies in his power
there shall henceforth be no sin-bound men, no sad men and
no disheartened men.
"He who cannot feel the humanity of his neighbor be¬
cause he is different from himself in education, habits, opin¬
ions, morals, circumstances, objects, is unfit, if not unworthy,
to aid him."
Macdonald: Robert Falconer, page 37£.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
97
Study IX. God's Will May be Done in any Honorable Trade
or Profession
SIXTH DAY
The Task of a Christian Layman Therefore as Difficult as that of
a Minister or Missionary. No Greater Hypocrite than a Sham
Christian Layman
Matt. 7 13' 14; Luke 13 23'30; John 21 15"22.
THE SHEEP LOOK UP
"The sheep look up and are not fed."—Lycidas.
" Beating the air with threat'ning hands,
The Demagogue defiant stands,
Shouting beside the busy street,
While round him hundreds hungry bleat,—
'The sheep look up and are not fed.'
" With eyes on manuscript attent,
On theologic doctrine bent,
The Preacher often scowls his views,
Nor knows the starving in his pews,—
'The sheep look up and are not fed.'
" And oft in academic halls,
Hid from the world by cloist'ring walls,
The Teacher, in his learning's pride,
Forgets the pupil at his side,—
'The sheep look up and are not fed.'
" O men of Christ, sent forth to preach
The Better Way, the truth to teach,
Still is He asking, 'Lov'st thou me?'
Still is our proof of loyalty
That those who hunger shall be fed."
John Finley: Outlook, 16 December, 1905.
The difference, then, between the clergyman and the Chris¬
tian layman is the same as the difference between the in¬
structor at West Point and the cadets under him. The
98
THE WILL OF GOD
instructor should, perhaps, have been a fighter in the past in
order to give the most practical instruction and to command
respect; he should be able at any time, perhaps, to take the
field himself. But his business is not to fight. He is not
expected to fight. He is expected to teach men how.
The prevalent modern idea that, if a man decides not to
be a missionary or a minister he is relieved from all further
responsibility for Christian work, is utterly false and per¬
nicious. The decision not to be a clergyman, if a man be a
Christian at all, is in fact his act of enlistment in active
evangelization. The clergyman may spend much time in his
study with the theory of religion. We shall find no fault
with him if he does. But the layman must evangelize. The
idea that all the Christian layman is under obligations to
do is to be an officer in the church, make a regular contribu¬
tion or hold down a pew on Sunday, is pagan. It is just as
ridiculous as if at the outbreak of a war the cadets at West
Point and all the graduates should club together and hire the
instructors there to go to the front and do the fighting while
they either sit and look on, hear the reports from the
front or listen to the military band.
Two deductions follow from the hypothesis that Jesus
and the Twelve are the model for us to follow. The first is
that the task of the ordinary Christian layman in bringing
righteousness, joy and peace in his profession is the highest
trust in the world. It is not a matter of inclination whether
a man shall undertake it or not; it is his duty. Only in this
way at home and abroad can the evangelization of the world
be accomplished. Such work is often more difficult than that
of the ordained minister or missionary. It requires a daily
battle with indulgence, greed and pride which the clergyman,
surrounded by the safeguards of his profession, often escapes.
It is as difficult to be a layman as to be a clergyman.
The second deduction is this. There is no greater hypo¬
crite than a sham Christian layman—the man who says that
there is so much work to be done at home that he will not go
abroad and then, instead of living the life of heroism and
martyrdom in his own profession against self-indulgence,
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
99
ambition and greed in the attempt to bring righteousness, joy
and peace among men, settles down to amass, and then to
spend his income. Such a man does far more to retard the
progress of God's kingdom than the clergyman who falls into
sin. The latter is easily detected and universally scorned.
The sham Christian layman can rarely be detected or shown
up in this life. He is answerable only to God. The world
can never know his motive in purchasing the three or four or
five yoke of oxen, in buying the field or in marrying the wife.
Was it in order better to serve men or merely to serve self?
Either alternative is possible in every case. Which it was in
his case God and he alone know.
You have said that you do not feel qualified or good
enough to be a clergyman or missionary. You rightly assert
that God's will can and must be done in every honorable
trade or profession; hence you will be a layman. Good! but
do you dare to be a layman, to leave the protected path of the
ministry for the hardest of all paths? It is a narrow way.
If you are a hero, "strive to enter in," says Jesus (Luke
13 24) ; but he also asks, "Are you able?" (Mark 10 88,)
100
THE WILL OF GOD
Study IX. God's Will May be Done in any Honorable Trade
or Profession
SEVENTH DAY—REVIEW
1. In organizing a church after Jesus' method should
the Christian laymen seek their leader or should the leader
enlist the laymen?
2. Has a group of laymen thus organized the right to
partake of the Lord's Supper among themselves?
3. What gives to one layman l-ather than to any other in
a group the right to assume the leadership of that group ?
4. Can God's will be done in every profession, e.g. liquor-
selling, saloon-keeping, etc. ?
5. Should one ever receive money for the conversion of
others? (I Peter 5 2.)
6. Outline in a few sentences the relations that should
exist between a layman and his clergyman; between a lay¬
man and his constituents.
STUDY X
The Necessity for Absolute Surrender of Self
"And Jesus looking upon him loved him, and said unto him, One
thing thou lackest." —Mark 10:21.
"So therefore whosoever he be of you that renounceth not all
that he hath, he cannot be my disciple." —Luke 14:33.
"Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even
Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for
a burnt offering And Abraham .... took .... Isaac his son
. . . . and went Abraham, .... Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
neither do thou anything unto him: for now I know that thou fearest
God, seeing that thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son,
from me." —Gen. 22:2,3,11,12.
"Thy will be done forever and ever, O Lord, without if or but
St. Fhancoise de Chantal.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Murray. Absolute Surrender.
James, William. "The Moral Equivalent of War." Inter¬
national Conciliation, February, 1910, No. 27.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
103
Study X. The Necessity for Absolute Surrender of Self
FIRST DAY
If God's Will may be Done in any Profession, Why not then Select
the First Career That Presents Itself, or the Pleasantest, Without
Facing the Possibility of the Dangerous and Disagreeable Careers
[Isaiah 53 6.]
Luke 14 28"32, 22 33> 34.
In the preceding lesson we tried to establish the propo¬
sition that God's will can and must be done in every pro¬
fession. Why then, asks the perplexed inquirer, all this hue
and cry about the dangerous and disagreeable professions—
the missionary question, for example? Let each man adopt
whatever calling he prefers, or better still let him take the
first work that presents itself. Must every man, whether he
ultimately goes or not, face this bothering missionary ques¬
tion before he decides on his life work?
To this we answer unreservedly, yes. In the first place
it is obvious on reflection that if everybody took the attitude
just mentioned there would be no missionaries at all, and
Jesus certainly laid back on us (Mark 16 15) the burden of
the foreign world which we in our selfish wilfulness had left
to him alone (Isaiah 53 6). Again, many careers which at the
start appear to be dangerous and disagreeable, in time turn
out to be the pleasantest possible, and vice versa. Many a
man who has merely gratified his own desires in the choice
of his career confesses after the lapse of years that he has
made a failure of it all. Clearly then we have omitted some
factor in our discussion of the layman's work and ministry.
What is this factor?
104
THE WILL OF GOD
Study X. The Necessity for Absolute Surrender of Self
SECOND DAY
God's Will may be Done in any Profession, but Unless the Man is in
That Profession by God's Appointment it will not be
I Cor. 7 20' 24, 12 17> 18; Rom. 1 6-7; John 4 34, 5 30, 6 38.
In order to do God's will in even the humblest occupation
—shoemaking, for example—a man must be there by God's
appointment. In other words the lawyer, doctor, teacher,
merchant as well as the clergyman must be called to his pro¬
fession. It is true that Paul says that we are to remain in our
secular callings, but men fail to note that he presupposes that
we have been "called" to those callings (I Cor. 7 24). The
eye is not to desire to be the ear or the nose. Why ?
Because God set each one of the members in the body even as
it pleased him (I Cor. 12 1S).
Only one thing can give a man complete joy and power
in his work. That one thing is the sure conviction that he is
in that work—medicine, law, teaching, business, ministry,
at home or abroad—"called of God." Nearly every letter of
Paul begins with just such a burning conviction about himself.
("Paul called to be an apostle. An apostle through the will
of God. An apostle not from men but through Jesus Christ
and God. An apostle of Jesus Christ through the command¬
ment of God." Rom. 1 1; I Cor. 1 1; II Cor. 1 1; Gal. 1 1;
Eph. 1 1; Col. 1 1; I Tim. 1 1; II Tim. 1 x). The best test
a man can put to himself is to ask and to answer fairly this
question: "Dare I assert that I am a lawyer, teacher, business
man, doctor, 'not from men but through Jesus Christ—called
of God—according to the commandment of God' ?"
This conviction of mission which brings joy and power can
only come to a man who has enlisted with no reservations
for any service that his general may see fit to assign to him,
and who knows that he has received a particular order from
that commander which assigns him a specific task to do.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
105
Study X. The Necessity for Absolute Surrender of Self
THIRD DAY
The Parallel from the Enlistment of the Soldier
I Tim. 6 12"14; II Tim. 2 4; Luke 9 57"02; Heb. 11 8.
No parallel illustrates so well the duty of the true Chris¬
tian in this matter as that of the soldier. When the soldier
enlists, he does not make his choice of guard duty, camp duty
or service at the front, but he pledges his willingness to do
anything, to make any sacrifice, to give his life if need be,
whenever and wherever his commander may see fit. Now as
a matter of fact the majority of soldiers who enlist are never
called upon to make the supreme sacrifice of their lives.
Nine tenths receive only the glory and the spoils at the end
of the campaign. But it is absolutely necessary that when
they started out every one of the ten tenths should have been
willing to make this sacrifice had it been necessary. What
would an army ever accomplish whose soldiers said: "We will
drill and parade as long as there is no danger, but when the
enemy appears please excuse us"? Such men are no more
soldiers than sutlers, camp hangers-on.
In the same way it stands to reason that nine tenths of
those who enlist in Jesus' army will not be compelled to
make supreme sacrifices. The majority must work in routine
paths. They will share his glory and the spoils of his con¬
quests (peace, art, literature, culture), but every one of these
nine tenths who does not go must have been willing to go
when he started out had the orders come from the commander.
Otherwise he was not an enlisted soldier in the army of Jesus.
He was rather a sutler, a camp hanger-on, the sort of man of
whom John speaks (I John 2 19), "They went out from us but
they were not of us." Luke has preserved for us a picture of
Jesus enlisting soldiers for his army. His method, which has
sometimes been characterized as cruel (see Study V, Fifth
Day), becomes clear and is seen to be absolutely just when we
106
THE WILL OF GOD
consider the matter in this light (Luke 9 57"62). No soldier on
service entangleth himself in the affairs of this life—he is
always ready to march at a moment's notice; and no man hav¬
ing put hand to the plough and turning back is fit for the
kingdom of God.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
107
Study X. The Necessity for Absolute Surrender of Self
FOURTH DAY
God Does not Ask all Men to Make the Supreme Sacrifice or to
Endure Great Suffering but He Requires that all be Willing to
do so
Mark 5 18> 19.
John 7 17.
Gen. 22 1_18.
Here is the matter stated in its simplest terms. God
does not in fact ask all men to make the supreme sacrifice but
he requires unconditionally that they all be willing to do
so. The story of Abraham and Isaac teaches this truth so
vividly that little further explanation is necessary. Read
the whole account (Gen. 22 1"18) and study carefully the re¬
quirement of God and the attitude of Abraham.
"Our God is a jealous God. He will be either Lord of
all or Lord not at all." John R. Mott.
"A heart not quite subdued to God is an imperfect ele¬
ment in which his will can never live."
Drummond: The Ideal Life, page 316.
108
THE WILL OF GOD
Study X. The Necessity for Absolute Surrender of Self
FIFTH DAY
The Spirit of the Hero and of the Martyr Needed in Every Profession
II Cor. 1 1 23-27 ; Eph. 6 1Q-20.
Mark 831"38, 10 29' 30; Matt. 510'12, 10 1G'39, 16 24 ; Luke
21 17.~~
Heb. 121"4; 10 32"35, 13 12' 13; John 12 15 18 f (esp.
v. 20).
"It is the lot of every Christian to have those things
happen to him that happened to our Lord Jesus Christ."
Pascal.
Beware of the man who has no enemies. He is a time-
server with his weathervane up to follow every wind that
blows. Jesus Christ had enemies. Paul had enemies. Henry
Drummond had enemies. Washington and Lincoln had ene¬
mies. Every man who attacks sin either by word or example
has enemies. God and mammon do not go together, and the
fight against sin in one's own profession will furnish the moral
substitute for actual war which Professor James asserts that
the young men of the present day need if they are to remain
strong and virile.
A man may have enemies without being an enemy to a
single individual in the world. It was in that sense that
Jesus and Paul and Drummond had enemies. To be an
enemy to another man is pagan; but to have enemies may be
Christian. We are not responsible for our enemies but for
our enmities. In regard to enmities Jesus gives specific
teaching (Matt. 5 23' 2i, Matt. 18 15"17; Luke 12 58). As re¬
gards enemies he teaches us to expect and rejoice in them
(Matt. 5 12). A servant is not greater than his lord. "If
they persecuted me they will also persecute you."
Every profession today needs its heroes and martyrs—
the teacher who will battle for a truth against adverse public
opinion and who will give of his own soul experience to his
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
109
pupils; the doctor who will stand against illegal practices;
the lawyer who refuses to distort truths to win his case; the
merchant who will not drive a sharp bargain; the statesman
who will fight against corruption. It is easy enough to make
a feeble protest for the right and then subside. That is the
coward's method. The hero "resists unto blood—striving
against sin." Only one impetus will ever inspire a man to do
this for more than a short time. It is the sure conviction
that he is a soldier on duty and has received an order from
his commander which he cannot and will not disobey because
he is an enlisted mail.
110
THE WILL OF GOD
Study X. The Necessity for Absolute Surrender of Self
SIXTH DAY
Enlist without Reservation or Condition and Await Orders. God a
Commander in Whom His Followers can Trust
I Thess. 5 24; I Cor. 1 9, 9 24"27; Rom. 4 21, 8 28, 12 x"12;
II Tim. 1 7- 12, 2 4- 13; Mark 10 29' 30; Matt. 6 33.
Luke 14 2G' 2T' 33; Acts 5 29; James 5 11; I John 5 3.
"I dare not enlist because I am afraid that, although the
chances are overwhelmingly against it, I still might be one
out of the one tenth whom God will fix upon for some supreme
sacrifice." This is the secret thought of many a timid heart,
as this great question of surrender is faced. What shall we
reply? Shall those of us who have found our places in the
firing line taunt with cowardice the faltering recruits ? Never !
Such a thought is absolutely natural and all of us if we are
honest with ourselves have had just the same. It came to
Jesus in Gethsemane, "O my Father, if it be possible let this
cup pass from me," and it is the lot of every Christian to
have those things happen to him which happened to our Lord
Jesus Christ.
We will simply call attention to two facts. (1) God will
never force you to make the supreme sacrifice unless you are
perfectly willing to do it; in other words, even after you have
enlisted he never forces you by driving. He does not come
into the army and order a certain company to march to cer¬
tain death with death penalty for hesitation, while he stays
behind and watches the manoeuvre; but he comes and says
as it were, "Those of the army who will follow me on this
dangerous undertaking step forward three paces from the
ranks." In Jesus' army the ultra-dangerous work is always
done by the freewill volunteers and our Leader is always one
of the company; and the marvel of it is—a thing which
Napoleon could not understand—he always has men enough
for his work and to spare.
(2) God is a loving Father and he will not call upon you
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
111
to make unnecessary sacrifices. It pains him more to see his
children in suffering than it does them to experience it. He
is a commander in whom his followers may trust. Do not
fear to enlist without reservation or conditions and await
orders. What those specific orders for each individual are
and how one may learn them with exactness is the subject of
the next nine studies.
"When God puts down his great will beside me telling
me to do it, he puts down just beside it as great a thing, his
love. And as my soul trembles at the fearfulness of will, love
comes with its calm omnipotence and draws it to himself;
then takes my timid will and twines it around his, till mine
is fierce with passion to serve, and strong to do his will. Just
as if some mighty task were laid to an infant's hand and the
engine-grasp of a giant strengthened it with his own. Where
God's law is, is God's love. Look at law—it withers your
very soul with its stern inexorable face. But look at love or
look at God's will, which means look at love's will, and you
are reassured and your heart grows strong."
Dhummond: The Ideal Life, page 375.
112
THE WILL OF GOD
Study X. The Necessity for Absolute Surrender of Self
SEVENTH DAY—REVIEW
1. Does God always want a man to go where the need is
greatest ?
2. Cite instances of men who have taken up what they
supposed to be disagreeable tasks and afterwards found the
greatest joy in them.
3. Cite instances of the reverse—supposed agreeable
tasks turning out to be delusions.
4. Can a life lived in accordance with God's will ever
be a failure? (See W. W. Story, Poems, Vol. II., page 177,
"Io Victis.")
5. Is a life in which all but one thing is surrendered a
Christian life? Can it ever be a happy life? (Mark 10 22.)
6. Is the old idea that each son should follow his
father's trade possible under the Christian dispensation? Is
this the reason why the Jewish religion of the Old Testament
was never a missionary religion?
7. Why should any man be afraid to face the missionary
question or to listen to missionary addresses?
8. Can a man near middle life, who becomes convinced
that he entered his profession when God was calling him to
some other, get a new grip on his work, and, indeed, turn it
into a divine calling? (I Cor. 7 20"24,)
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
US
We have now reached a point in our studies which is, in
a very true sense, a parting of the ways. Hitherto the truths
which we have examined have been simple intellectual propo¬
sitions—a statement of the Christian conception of God's plan
for the world and for the individual, and of the sort of de¬
cision which God requires of his followers. The remaining
studies—on the Finding Out of God's Will by each individual
and on the Issues of Obedience—concern truths which must
primarily be spiritually apprehended by the will, not accepted
merely as intellectual propositions by the mind. He who, at
this point, before entering upon the further studies will
dedicate his life absolutely and unreservedly to God—and
mean it—to do God's will promptly and without conditions,
no matter where it may lead, as soon as it shall be clearly
revealed, shall know of the teaching that follows—at least of
the Scripture passages—whether it be of God or whether the
various teachers speak of themselves. He who continues the
studies without this decision may find some things that are
interesting, even convincing, but the subject as a whole will be
as much of an enigma to him as before. It will have no part
in his life and he will not know,
114,
THE WILL OF GOD
Study your answer to the request for decision on the pre¬
ceding page in the light of the following paragraph:
"In nearly all the important transactions of life, indeed
in all transactions which have relation to the future, we have
to take a leap into the dark. If we waver .... that too is a
choice .... we stand on a mountain pass in the midst of
whirling snow and blinding mist, through which we get
glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive. If
we stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take the
wrong road, we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not cer¬
tainly know whether there is any right one. What must we
do? 'Be strong and of a good courage.' Act for the best,
hope for the best, and take what comes. Above all, let us
dream no dreams, and tell no lies, but go our way, wherever
it may lead, with our eyes open and our heads erect. If death
ends all, we cannot meet it better. If not let us enter whatever
may be the next scene like honest men with no sophistry in our
mouths, and no masks on our faces."
Stephen: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (1882), pages
331, 883. (Quoted in James: The Will to Believe,
page 31.)
G. THE FINDING OUT OF GOD'S WILL
Study XI. Willingness to Do God's Will the Necessary Con¬
dition for Knowledge of It.
Study XII. The Universal Will of God for All Men.
Study XIII. The Particular Will of God for Each Individual
Man.
Study XIV. How to Find Out the Particular Will of God.
(a) The Views of Modern Religious Leaders.
Study XV. How to Find Out the Particular Will of God (con¬
cluded). (b) The Fourfold Touchstone of Jesus and the Apostles.
Study XVI. The Fourfold Touchstone, (a) The First Test—
Purity.
Study XVII. The Fourfold Touchstone (continued), (b) The
Second Test—Honesty.
Study XVIII. The Fourfold Touchstone (continued), (c) The
Third Test—Unselfishness.
Study XIX. The Fourfold Touchstone (concluded), (d) The
Fourth Test—Love.
STUDY XI
Willingness to Do God's Will the Necessary Condition for Knowledge
of It
"If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching,
whether it is of God, or whether I speak of myself." —John 7:17.
"Why do ye not understand my speech? Even because ye can¬
not hear my word." —John 8:43.
"And none of the wicked shall understand: but they that are
wise shall understand." —Daniel 12:10.
"Now the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of
God: for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them,
because they are spiritually judged. But he that is spiritual judgeth
all things, and he himself is judged of no man." —I Cor. 2:14,15.
"For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your ad¬
versaries shall not be able to withstand or to gainsay."—Luke 21:15.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Robertson, F. W. Sermons. Second Series, No. VII.—"Obedi¬
ence the Organ of Spiritual Knowledge."
Drummond. The Ideal Life—"How to Know the Will of God."
Peabody, F. O. Jesus Christ and the Christian Character, pages
99-102.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
119
Study XI. Willingness to Do God's Will the Necessary Condition
for Knowledge of It
FIRST DAY
God's Will may be Known, not only for the Rare Great Occasions,
but for the Ordinary Circumstances of Life
I Cor. 4 19; Acts 2 28, 18 21, 22 14; James 4 15; Heb. 13 21;
John 8 29.
"There is a will for where—in what place, viz. in this
town or another town—I am to become like God as well as
that I am to become like God. There is a will for where I
am to be and what I am to be and what I am to do tomorrow.
There is a will for what scheme I am to take up, and what
work I am to do for Christ, and what business arrangements
to make and what money to give away. This is God's private
will for me, for every step I take, for the path of life along
which he points my way; God's will for my career
Every day, indeed, and many times a day the question rises
in a hundred practical forms, 'What is the will of God for
me?' What is the will of God for me today, just now, for
the next step, for this arrangement and for that, and this
amusement, and this projected work for Christ? For all
these he [the Christian] feels that he must consult the will of
God; and that God has a will for him in all such things, and
that it must be possible somehow to know what that will is,
is not only a matter of hope but a point in his doctrine and
creed."
Drummqnd: The Ideal Life, pages 80J/., 308.
120
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XI. Willingness to Do God's Will the Necessary Condition
for Knowledge of It
SECOND DAY
God's Will is not a Mysterious and Obscure Thing Impossible to
Comprehend. Any Man may Find it out and Furthermore, We
are All Bidden to do so
[Ps. 25 9] ; Rom. 12 2; Col. 1 9; Eph. 1 9, 5 17.
Matt. 6 10, II 25' 20; John 7 17.
"You have thought about the will of God and read and
thought, and thought and read, and you have come to this con¬
clusion that the will of God is a very mysterious thing . . . .
which some people may have revealed to them but does not
seem in any way possible to you One or two special
occasions, indeed, you recall, when you thought you were near
the will of God, but they must have been special interpositions
on God's part. He does not show his will every day like that;
once or twice only in a lifetime, that is as much of this high
experience as one ever dare expect.
"Now of course .... it is clearly no use going on to
find out what God's will is if the thing is impossible. If this
experience is correct and we cannot know God's will for the
mystery of it, we may as well give up the ideal life at once.
But if you examined this experience even cursorily, you would
find how far away from the point it was It is some¬
thing worse than unreasonable .... to say that we think it
hopeless even to know God's will. On the contrary, indeed,
there is a strong presumption that we should find it out. [Jesus
says "any man" may know (John 7 17). Paul says we must
find it out; it is our duty (Eph. 5 17).] For if it is so im¬
portant a thing that the very end of life is involved in it, it
would be absurd to imagine that God should keep us even the
least in the dark as to what his will may mean. And this
presumption is changed into a certainty when we balance our
minds .... on the terms of this text, 'The God of our fathers
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
121
hath chosen thee that thou shouldest know his will.' It is
not simply a matter of presumption, it is a matter of election.
. ... We are called to know his will.
"How are you to know this secret will of God? It is a
great question. We cannot touch it now. Let this suffice. It
can be known. It can be known to you. The steps of a good
man are ordered by the Lord. 'I will guide thee with mine
eye.' Unto the upright in heart he shall cause light to arise
in darkness. This is not mysticism, no visionary's dream. It
is not to drown the reason with enthusiasm's airy hope or su¬
persede the word of God with fanaticism's blind caprice. No,
it is not there. It is what Christ said, 'The sheep hear his
voice, and he calleth his own sheep by name and leadeth
them.' "
Drummond: Ibid., pages 264-266, 282.
122
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XI. Willingness to Do God's Will the Necessary Condition
for Knowledge of It
THIRD DAY
The Failure to Understand God's Will due to the Employment of
Wrong, or at Best Only the Secondary and Contributory, Instru¬
ments of Spiritual Apprehension
I Cor. 1 18'31, 2 II Cor. 4 3"6; John 8 43; I John 4 5' e.
"Jews ask for signs [appeal to the emotions] and Greeks
seek after wisdom [appeal to the intellect] but we preach
Christ crucified [appeal to the will], unto Jews a stumbling-
block and unto the Gentiles foolishness, but unto them that
are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God
and the wisdom of God." (I Cor. 1 22"24.)
I. There are many instruments for finding out God's will.
"It may simply be affirmed that there are a number of instru¬
ments for finding out God's will. One of them [the human
will] is a very great instrument, so far surpassing all the rest
in accuracy that there may be said to be but one which has
never been known to fail."
II. The secondary or contributory instruments which
often fail.
"The others are smaller and clumsier, much less deli¬
cate indeed, and often fail. They often fail to come
within sight of the will of God at all, and are so far astray
at other times as to mistake some other thing for it. Still
they are instruments, and notwithstanding their defects have
a value by themselves, and when the greater instrument
employs their humbler powers to second its attempts, they
immediately become as keen and unerring as itself."
(a) Reason. "God is taking your life and character
through a certain process, for example. He is running your
career along a certain chain of events It is God's will
for you to use this thought and to elevate it through regions
of consecration into faith."
(b) Experience. "There are many paths in life which
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
123
we all tread more than once. God's light was by us when
we walked there first But the next time .... he
knew the side lights should be burning still and let us walk
alone."
(c) Circumstance. "God closes things around us till
our alternatives are all reduced to one. That one, if we must
act, is probably the will of God just then."
(d) Advice of others. Take the advice of others freely—
the advice of a non-Christian may have God's leading in it;
but never regard such advice as final. Jesus often disregarded
the advice of others.
(e) Welfare of others. As a general thing we should
guide our conduct by its effect on "the other fellow" but not
always. Jesus often disregarded the apparent welfare of
others.
(f) Example to others. Generally a safe guide but not
always. Jesus often disregarded the effect of his example on
others.
These secondary instruments "if not strong enough
always to discover what God's will is, are not too feeble often¬
times to determine what it is not" but not always.
Drummond: The Ideal Life, pages 808, 809.
Astronomy is one of the most daring sciences which the
human mind has ever formulated. But it must never be for¬
gotten that without another organ—that of sight—it would
never have been possible. Had mankind been born blind we
should never have had astronomy, and anyone who had sug¬
gested such an idea would probably have been laughed to
scorn. But once granted the primary organ of sight, the
secondary organ of reason has been able to build up the whole
marvelous system.
Once granted the primary organ of spiritual apprehen¬
sion, by which he saw God, Paul was able to reason out with
his secondary instrument the grandest system of theology
which the world has seen. But the latter organ, as in the
case of astronomy, was helpless without the former.
124
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XI. Willingness to Do God's Will the Necessary Condition
for Knowledge of It
FOURTH DAY
The Limits of Criticism and Reasoning Processes as Instruments of
Spiritual Apprehension
Acts 18 24'28.
"The geometer might as well expect to solve his problems
by the function of smell as a responsible soul to find God by
the understanding."
Bushnell: The New Life, page 182.
See Phillips Brooks: The Candle of the Lord. Hugh
Black: "The Paralysis of Criticism," Outlook, March 17,
1906.
If the mind were the final means of apprehending God
we should be reduced at once to the position of Cicero with
reference to the Roman religion—that only the intellectually
gifted can be saved. Inasmuch as intellectual brilliance is
largely a matter of education or inheritance, and this in turn
is often a matter of chance, such an ordering of the world
would involve great injustice. In the passage quoted above
from Acts the case of Apollos shows clearly that spiritual ap¬
prehension cannot depend upon intellect alone. It also demon¬
strates the limits of a brilliant intellect until steered by a con¬
secrated will. Intellect alone was able to make small progress.
But the combination of consecration plus intellect was invin¬
cible.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
125
Study XI. Willingness to Do God's Will the Necessary Condition
for Knowledge of It
FIFTH DAY
The Human Will the Organ of Spiritual Knowledge
John 7 17.
"The one great instrument which uses them [the second¬
ary instruments] in turn .... and which supplements their
discoveries or even supplants them if it choose by its own
superior light and might and right .... is obedience.
Obedience, as it is sometimes expressed, is the organ of
spiritual knowledge. As the eye is the organ of physical
sight; the mind of intellectual sight; so the organ of spiritual
vision is this strange power obedience."
Drummond: The Ideal Life, page 310.
Robertson was the first to apprehend this truth in
modern times, and he coined the phrase, "Obedience the
Organ of Spiritual Knowledge." Drummond was keen
enough to see that Jesus did not say this and that there is
a contradiction in Robertson's expression. He wrote:—
"It appears almost as if a contradiction were involved.
To know God's will is as much as to say do God's will. But
how are we to do God's will until we know it? To know
it, that is the very dilemma we are in. And it seems no way out
of it to say, Do it and you shall know it. We want
to know it in order to do it and now we are told to do it in
order to know it."
Drummond: Ibid., pages 312, 313.
Drummond pointed out that Jesus did not say if any
man do he shall know—this would lead to blind fanaticism,
going ahead without orders—but if any man be willing to do
he shall know.
"The being willing comes first, and then the knowing;
and thereafter the doing may follow: the doing, that is to say,
if the will has been made sufficiently clear to proceed."
Drummond: Ibid., page 313.
126
THE WILL OF GOD
We therefore revise Robertson's statement to read—
Willingness to Do God's Will the Necessary Condition
for Knowledge of It.
Just as a man who will not open or yield his eyes to a
beautiful picture, will not see; just as a man who will not
open or yield his mind to a thought, will not understand; so
a man who will not open or yield his will to God's will, will
not know, or see spiritually. The completely surrendered or
open human will is the means of highest knowledge.
"To be willing is a rarer grace than to be doing the will
of God. For he who is willing may sometimes have nothing
to do, and must only be willing to wait; and it is easier to
be doing God's will than to be willing to have nothing to do—
it is easier far to be working for Christ than it is to be
willing to cease. No, there is nothing rarer in the world
today than the truly willing soul, and there is nothing more
worth coveting than the will to do God's will. There is no
grander possession for any Christian life than the trans¬
parently simple mechanism of a sincerely obeying heart."
Drummond: Ibid,, page 819.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
127
Study XI. Willingness to Do God's Will the Necessary Condition
for Knowledge of It
SIXTH DAY
"He That is Willing Shall Know"
A practical case to illustrate. The German law requires
that every foreigner entering a city must be announced to
the city police by his landlord within six days after arriving.
The landlord alone is responsible for this announcing and if
he neglects to do it he is heavily fined. Suppose the foreigner
stays four weeks and when he is ready to go the landlord
comes and privately says to him: "When you come to the
next city don't say that you spent four weeks here; just say
that you have been traveling all the time. I neglected to
announce you. I saved fifty cents for myself by so doing. If
you let it be known I shall be heavily fined."
The foreigner is in a decidedly embarrassing position.
Shall he not lie to save his friend? How shall he know God's
will? Suppose he consults the secondary instruments.
Reason says, Go ahead and deceive—don't make so much
fuss over a little matter.
Experience says, It is better not to get mixed up in a
foreign police case.
Circumstance says, It is the only way out of the hole,
you must lie.
Advice of others says, Lie every time, we do it regularly.
Welfare of others says, You have no right to involve this
landlord who has done so much to make it comfortable for
you. It is a case of conflict of duties and the highest love
requires that you lie.
Example to others says, You don't want to get the repu¬
tation of selfishly sticking to a principle to save your own
little mean soul when the financial welfare of another man is
concerned.
The Christian, however, is not satisfied with any one of
these. By himself alone he decides: "I will tell the exact truth
if asked, no matter what the result is. Truth I know to be
128
THE WILL OF GOD
God's will. If my friend gets fined I will pay his fine for
him." Unselfishness is God's will. In other words he "is
willing" to make any sacrifice personal or otherwise for
God's will. When he has made this decision he goes forward
in perfect peace; and before long God reveals some way out
of the difficulty which he recognizes as the perfectly right
one. And he "knows."
"Let us but get our hearts in position for knowing the
will of God—only let us be willing to know God's will in
our hearts that we may do God's will in our lives, and we
shall raise no question as to how this will may come, and
feel no fears in case the heavenly light should go."
Drummond: Ibid., page 319.
"Who of us has not bowed his will to some supreme law,
accepted some obedience as the atmosphere in which his life
must live, and found at once that his mind's darkness turned
to light and that many a hard question found its answer."
Brooks: The Influence of Jesus, page 281.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
129
Study XI. Willingness to Do God's Will the Necessary Condition
for Knowledge of It
SEVENTH DAY—REVIEW
1. Is it true that if any man be willing lie shall know?
How much intellect is necessary to grasp spiritual truth?
2. Where does Jesus teach that God takes an interest
in even the smallest details of our life?
3. Why is the impression prevalent that God's will is
a mystery?
4. In how far are reason, experience and circumstance
safe guides to a knowledge of God's will? Are we some¬
times called upon to do the irrational thing? the seemingly
irrational thing? an entirely new and untried thing?
5. When all alternatives seem to be reduced to one, is
that one surely God's will? May there still be others?
6. When did Jesus disregard the advice of others?
7. When did Jesus disregard the apparent welfare of
others ?
8. When did Jesus disregard his example to others?
9. Were the lonely nights which Jesus spent in the
mountains times when he was getting himself ready to obey ?
10. Does willingness always require immediate action?
(Does enlisting necessarily presuppose immediate fighting?)
130
THE WILL OF GOD
TO FIND OUT GOD'S WILL
1. Pray.
2. Think.
3. Talk to wise people, but do not regard their decision
as final.
4. Beware of the bias of your own will but do not be
too much afraid of it (God never unnecessarily thwarts a man's
nature and likings, and it is a mistake to think that his will
is in the line of the disagreeable).
5. Meanwhile do the next thing (for doing God's will in
small things is the best preparation for knowing it in great
things).
6. When decision and action are necessary, go ahead.
7. Never reconsider the decision when it is finally acted
upon;and
8. You will probably not find out till afterwards, perhaps
long afterwards, that you have been led at all.
Smith: The Life of Henry Drummond, pages 127 3128.
STUDY XII
The Universal Will of God for All Men. "God's Will for the World
—for Character"
"Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is per¬
fect." —Matt. 5:48.
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who
hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing .... making known
unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which
he purposed in him unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times,
to sum up all things in Christ." —Eph. 1:3,9,10.
"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven
and the first earth are passed away; and the sea is no more. And
I saw the holy city* new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven
from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I
heard a great voice out of the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle
of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them, and they shall be
his peoples, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God;
and he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall
be no more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain,
any more: the first things are passed away. And he that sitteth on
the throne said, Behold, I make all things new." —Rev. 21:1-5.
"For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but right¬
eousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." —Rom. 14:17.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Drummond. The Ideal Life—"What is God's Will?"
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
133
Study XII. The Universal Will of God for All Men
FIRST DAY
The Universal and the Particular Will of God
Universal. Acts 17 24-27 ; Isaiah 44 24"28.
Particular. Acts 22 10_1^ 13 22.
"There is a part of God's will which everyone may
know [so far as it has been revealed]—a universal part;
[there is also] a part no one knows but you—a particular
part. A universal part for everyone: A particular part for
the individual There is God's will for the world and
God's will for the individual. There is God's will written
on tables of stone for all the world to read. There is God's
will carved in sacred hieroglyphic which no one reads but
you. There is God's will rolling in thunder over the life of
universal man. There is God's will dropped softly on the
believer's ear in angel whispers or the still small voice of
God."
Drummond: The Ideal Life, pages 268, 278.
134
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XII. The Universal Will of God for All Men
SECOND DAY
The Entire Universal Will of God for the World Cannot as yet be
Fully Known, Since, in the Process of Evolution, it has not yet
been Fully Disclosed. We may only Know that Part of it
Which has been Revealed in Nature and through History up to
the Present Day
I Cor. 13 12; Phil. 3 12; Matt. 13 17; I John 3 2.
"Through the ages one increasing purpose runs."
Tennyson: Locksley Hall.
"In one sense, of course, no man can know the will of
God, even as in one sense no man can know God himself.
God's will is a great and infinite mystery—a thing of mighty
mass and volume, which can no more be measured out to
hungry souls in human sentences than the eternal knowledge
of God or the boundless love of Christ."
Deummond: Ibid,, page 267.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
135
Study XII. The Universal Will of God for All Men
THIRD DAY
God's Revelation of His Universal Will for the World in Nature.
" The Physical Contents of God's Will"
Matt. 6 2S.
"There is a part of God's will which every one may know.
It is written in divine characters in two sacred books, which
every man may read. The one of them is the Bible, the
other is Nature. The Bible is God's will in words, in
formal thoughts, in grace. Nature is God's will in matter
and tissue and force. Nature is not often considered a part
of God's will, but it is a part, and a great part, and
the first part. And perhaps one reason why some never
know the second is because they yield no full obedience
to the first. God's law of progress is from the lower to the
higher; and scant obedience at the beginning of his will means
disobedience with the rest. The laws of nature are the will
of God for our bodies. As there is a will of God for our
higher nature—the moral laws—as emphatically is there
a will of God for the lower—the natural laws. If you would
know God's will in the higher, therefore, you must begin with
God's will in the lower, which simply means this—that if you
want to live the ideal life you must begin with the ideal body.
The law of moderation, the law of sleep, the law of regularity,
the law of exercise, the law of cleanliness—this is the law or
will of God for you. This is the first law, the beginning of
his will for you. And if we are ambitious to get on to do
God's will in the higher reaches, let us respect it as much
in the lower; for there may be as much of God's will in minor
things, as much of God's will in taking good bread and
pure water, as in keeping good conscience or living a pure
life. Who ever heard of gluttony doing God's will, or laziness,
or uncleanness, or the man who was careless and wanton of
natural life? Let a man disobey God in these, and
you have no certainty that he has any true principle for
136
THE WILL OF GOD
obeying God in anything else: for God's will does not only
run into the church and the prayer meeting and the higher
chambers of the soul, but into the common rooms at home
down to the wardrobe and larder and cellar, and into the
bodily frame down to blood and muscle and brain."
Ibid., pages 268, 269.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
137
Study XII. The Universal Will of God for All Men
FOURTH DAY
God's Revelation of His Universal Will for the World in Jesus, the
Living Word, and in the Bible, the Written Word. "The Moral
Contents of God's Will "
Matt. 5 17"20; Heb. 1 2; John 1 14 15' 21"24.
"From the moral side there are three different depart¬
ments of God's will. Foremost, and apparently most rigid
of all, are the Ten Commandments. Now the Ten Command¬
ments contain in a few sentences one of the largest known
portions of God's will. They form the most strict code of
morality in the world; the basis of all others; the most
venerable and universal expression of the will of God for man.
Following upon this there come the Beatitudes of Christ.
This is another large portion of God's will. This forms the
most unique code of morality in the world, the most complete
and lovely additional expression of the will of God for
Christians. Passing through the human heart of Christ, the
older commandment of the Creator becomes the soft and
mellow beatitude of the Saviour—passes from the colder
domain of law, with a penalty on failure, to the warm region
of love, with a benediction on success. These are the two
chief elements in the moral part of the will of God for man.
But there is a third set of laws and rules which are not to
be found exactly expressed in either of these. The Ten
Commandments and the Beatitudes take up most of the room
in God's will, but there are shades of precept still unexpressed
which also have their place. Hence we must add to all this
mass of law and beatitude many more laws and many more
beatitudes which lie enclosed in other texts, and other words
of Christ which have their place like the rest as portions of
God's will." Ibid., pages 270, 271.
Cf. Gal. 5 22' 23; I Cor. 13 4 7; Col. 312"17; Eph. 613"18;
Phil. 4 8; I Tim. 6 11; James 3 17; II Peter 1 5"7 for other like
collections of beatitudes.
138
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XII. The Universal Will of God for All Men
FIFTH DAY
Can We ever Hope to Fulfil All These Laws ?
Gal. 5 14; I Cor. 16 14; Rom. 10 3"10, IS 8"10; Phil. 39;
Matt. 7 12, 22 34-40.
James 2 8; John 13 34; I John 5 3.
"How can we do God's will?—this complicated mass of
rules and statutes, each bristling with the certainty of a
thousand breakages Can God know how weak we
are, and blind and biased toward the breakages, ere ever we
thought of him? Can he think how impossible it is to keep
these laws, even for one close-watched, experimental hour?
Did Christ really mean it—not some lesser thing than this—
when he taught in the ideal prayer that God's will was to be
done on earth even as it is done in heaven?
"There can be but one answer. 'God hath chosen thee,
that thou shouldest know his will.' .... There by the side of
our frailty, he lays down his holy will—lays it down con¬
fidingly as if a child could take it in its grasp, and, as if
he means the child to fondle it and bear it in his breast, he
says, 'If a man love me he will keep my words.' "
Ibid., pages 272, 273.
"When God puts down his great will beside me telling
me to do it, he puts down just beside it as great a thing, his
love. And as my soul trembles at the fearfulness of will, love
comes with its calm omnipotence and draws it to himself;
then takes my timid will and twines it around his, till mine
is fierce with passion to serve, and strong to do his will. Just
as if some mighty task were laid to an infant's hand and the
engine-grasp of a giant strengthened it with his own. Where
God's law is, is God's love. Look at law—it withers your
very soul with its stern inexorable face. But look at love or
look at God's will, which means look at love's will, and you
are reassured and your heart grows strong So the
Christian keeps that will or the laws of God because of the
love of God." Ibid., pages 274-, 275, 277.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
139
Study XII. The Universal Will of God for All Men
SIXTH DAY
Although God's Universal Will for the World—His Will for Character
—Cannot Be Fully Known; His Particular Will for Each Individual
—His Will for Career—may be Fully Known by that Individual,
and it is This Which We are Bidden to Know and Do
Rom. 12 2; Eph. 5 17.
"In the Ten Commandments, in conscience, in the
Beatitudes of Christ, God tells all the world his will It
is as universal as his love. It is the will on which the character
of every man is to be formed and conformed to God's
But there is a will for career as well as for character
If I have God's will in my character, my life may become great
and good. It may be useful and honorable and even a monu¬
ment of the sanctifying power of God. But it will only be a
life. However great and pure it is, it can be no more than a
life. And it ought to be a mission. There should be no such
thing as a Christian life, each life should be a mission.
"Now those .... who are simply living in the world
and growing character, however finely they may be develop¬
ing their character, cannot understand too plainly that they
are not fulfilling God's will. They are really outside a great
part of God's will altogether. They understand the universal
part, they are moulded by it, and their lives as lives are in
some sense noble and true. But they miss the private part,
the secret whispering of God in the ear, the constant message
from earth to heaven, 'Lord, what will thou have me to do?' "
Ibid,, page 306.
140
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XII. The Universal Will of God for All Men
SEVENTH DAY—REVIEW
1. Have we received the highest revelation of character
which it is possible for God to give?
2. Is it possible for a man to know God's will for career
without knowing his will for character?
3. Has a Christian the right to transgress deliberately
the laws of health?
4. Did Jesus ever do so?
5. How far can we learn God's universal will from the
ancient classics ? from modern literature ? from secular
biography and autobiography? from history? from tradition?
from public opinion? from natural science?
6. Is a man who has lived up to God's universal will
for character as far as it has been revealed a perfect man?
Is he a blameless man?
7. Is any other instrument than the intellect necessary
to grasp the universal will of God for the world? (Cf. James
2 19> 20 ^
8. Is it possible for a man to do the broad, universal
will of God for all men but not the particular for himself?
9. Is the soul struggle and the definite conscious act of
ethical decision necessary to know and do the universal will
of God? (Luke 9 49'50; Matt. 10 4°-42, 25 37"40.)
10. Is this struggle necessary to know and do the par¬
ticular will? (Luke ll23; John 8 43'47; John 5 30; Matt. 19
16-22 IJ 22, 23 ^
11. Which is referred to in Matt. 7 21—the universal or
the particular ? Does the universal include the particular ?
12. Can a person do God's universal will by imitating
another person who is doing God's will? (1 Cor. 4 16, 11 1;
Phil. 3 17, 4 9; I Peter 5 3.) by imitating God? (Eph. 5 \)
13. Can he do the particular will of God for himself in
that same way? (John 21 21'22.)
STUDY XIII
The Particular Will of God for Each Individual Man. "God's Will
for the Individual—for Career"
"I will guide thee with mine eye." —Ps. 82:8.
"The sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name,
and leadeth them out." —John 10:3.
"The God of our fathers hath appointed thee to know his will."
—Acts 22:14.
"A man after my heart, who shall do all my will."
—Acts 13:22.
"But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will."—I Cor. 4:19.
"Come now, ye that say, Today or tomorrow we will go into
this city, and spend a year there, and trade, and get gain: whereas
ye know not what shall be on the morrow For that ye ought
to say, If the Lord will, we shall both live, and do this or that."
—James 4-'13,15.
"And a voice came out of heaven, Thou art my beloved Son;
in thee I am well pleased." —Luke 8:22.
"And behold, angels came and ministered unto him."
—Matt. 4:11•
"And behold, a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved
Son in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him." —Matt. 17:5.
"And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee
that thou heardest me." —John 11:41.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Drummond. The Ideal Life—"What is God's Will?" "The
Relation of the Will of God to Sanctification," "How to Know the
Will of God."
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Study XIII. The Particular Will of God for Each Individual Man
FIRST DAY
What Do We Mean by the Particular Will of God for the Individual
Man ?
Acts 22 3-21 (esp. vs. 14, 17, 18, 21).
"It is a reasonable expectation that we may find it
[God's will] so fully as to know at any moment whether we be
in the line of it or no; and when difficulty arises about the next
step of our life, we may have absolute certainty which way
God's will inclines."
Drummond: The Ideal Life, pages 266, 267.
"There is an unknown part of God's will—at least, a
part which is known only to you. There is God's will for the
world and God's will for the individual. There is God's
will written on tables of stone for all the world to read. There
is God's will carved in sacred hieroglyphic which no one reads
but you. There is God's will rolling in thunder over the life
of universal man. There is God's will dropped softly on
the believer's ear in angel whispers, or the still small voice of
God."
Ibid., page 278.
"Now this region may be distinguished from the other
regions .... by its secrecy. It is a private thing, between God
and you. You want to know what to do next—your calling
in life, for instance. You want to know what action to take
in a certain matter. You want to know what to do with your
money. You want to know whether to go into a certain
scheme or not. Then you enter into this private chamber of
God's will, and ask this private question, 'Lord, what
wouldest thou have me to do ?' "
Ibid., pages 278, 279.
"There is a will for career as well as for character. There
is a will for where—in what place, viz. in this town or another
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THE WILL OF GOD
town—I am to become like God as well as that I am to become
like God. There is a will for where I am to be, and what I
am to be, and what I am to do tomorrow. There is a will for
what scheme I am to take up, and what work I am to do for
Christ, and what business arrangements to make, and what
money to give away. This is God's private will for me, for
every step I take, for the path of life along which he points
my way: God's will for my career." Ibid., page SOJf.
"There is a will of God for me which is willed for no
one else besides. It is not a share in the universal will in
the same sense as I have a share in the universal love. It is a
particular will for me, different from the will he has for
anyone else—a private will—a will which no one else knows
about—which no one can know about but me."
Ibid., pages 803, 30J/..
"The secret joy of asking a question like this ['Lord,
what wilt Thou have me to do?'], the wonderful sense in ask¬
ing it of being in the counsels of God, the overpowering
thought that God has taken notice of you, and your question—
that he will let you do something, something peculiar, per¬
sonal, private, which no one else has been given to do—this
which gives life for God its true sublimity, and makes a per¬
petual sacrament of all its common things."
Ibid., page 306.
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Study XIII. The Particular Will of God for Each Individual Man
SECOND DAY
Does God Actually Communicate With Men to Energize and Guide
Them ?
Gal. 1 12, 2 2 (Acts 15 2); I Cor. 15 8; II Cor. 12 1"10;
Eph. 3 1'3.
Matt. 3 13"17, 4 10>ll, 16 13"17, 16 21—17 8, 2 6 36"4G, 27 46.
Acts 8 26.
Acts 9 1-19 (cf. 22 3"21, 26 2"19; I Cor. 15 8), 10 9~16, 12%
16 6-10, 18 20- 21, 19 21, 2 0 22> 23, 27 21"25.
John 10 3- 4, 14 10- 20, 15 2G, 16 7> 13' 14; I John 3 24.
"This is a distinct addition to the other parts—an ad¬
dition, too, which many men ignore and other men deny. But
there is such a region in God's will—a region unmapped in
human charts, unknown to human books, a region for the pure
in heart, for the upright, for the true. It is a land of
mystery to those who know it not, a land of foolishness and
weaknesses, and delusive sights and sounds. But there is a
land where the Spirit moves, a luminous land, a walking in
God's light. There is a region where God's own people have
their breathing from above, where each saint's steps are
ordered of the Lord." Ibid., page 278.
Of the fact of some sort of communication between God
and man there cannot be the slightest doubt. The verses
cited above are sufficient in number to establish the fact with
reference to Jesus and the Apostles. That many men have
never had such intercourse is no argument against the pos¬
sibility of it unless it can be shown that these men have ful¬
filled the conditions under which, according to Jesus and
Paul, such communication is possible, and that then there has
been no intercourse. What are these conditions and how are
we to expect the messages of God to come to us?
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Study XIII. The Particular Will of God for Each Individual Man
THIRD DAY
The Human Will the Receiving Instrument of Divine Communication
John 7 1T.
"The model life is not to be mystically attained. There is
spirituality about it but no unreality." Ibid., page 231.
"This is not mysticism, no visionary's dream. It is
not to drown the reason with enthusiasm's airy hope or su¬
persede the word of God with fanaticism's blind caprice.
No, it is not that. It is what Christ said: 'The sheep hear his
voice, and he calleth his own sheep by name and leadeth
them.' " Ibid., page 277.
Man learns God's will, not primarily through the five
physical senses and the mind, but through the organ of
spiritual apprehension, the human will. It is with reference to
this point that many men go astray at the very start. The
people of earlier and more primitive ages expressed their
experience when God communicated with them in the only
terms which they had—the terms of human communication—
vision and the voice. Their experience was real but they
could only imperfectly express it, and they needed to express
impelling conviction in some such way that it would not be con¬
fused with an ordinary thought or idea. It is significant that
when God communicates with man in these Gospel records
his words are generally either a conviction of sin, a command
to service, or an assurance, i.e. an irresistible conviction, im¬
pelling and energizing a man either to go ahead or to stop
short.
It is in the realm of the will, then, that God communi¬
cates with men, even as Jesus said: "If any man be willing,
he shall know." We are to expect no hand reaching down
from heaven, no human voice—only the unmistakable, irresis¬
tible conviction energizing the human will.
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Study XIII. The Particular Will of God for Each Individual Man
FOURTH DAY .
The Significance of the Compelling Conviction
Rom. 9 1; Matt. 16 17; James 3 17; 1 John 4 1> 13; Rev.
17 17; II Peter 1 21.
How are we to explain the sense of mission in all the
great leaders of the world's civilization—their irresistible con¬
viction that they were in the right and their instant willing¬
ness to die for such convictions? Napoleon had no such con¬
viction about his work—he did not die on the field of Water¬
loo but fled from it, and it is just this lack of "mission" in
his career that has caused him to be denied a place among the
leaders of the world's civilization. But Socrates, Joan of
Arc, Abraham Lincoln had this very thing. Socrates has left
on record the description of his "Daemonium"—the inward
impulse which, as distinguished from conscience, "referred only
to future actions and did not approve or condemn the past."
For Jesus and Paul this same phenomenon expresses itself in
the ever recurring phrase, "I must." And the interesting thing
to note is that extensive education is not necessary to such a
conviction. Any man (John 7 1T) may have such assurance
with reference to his course not only about great things but also
about the little things—every step of his life. Any man may
have this sure conviction, but before he will, two things are
essential for the most of us—the receiving instrument must be
cleaned, and it must be made strong in order most fully to
receive the communications.
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THE WILL OF GOD
Study XIII. The Particular Will of God for Each Individual Man
FIFTH DAY
How May We Prepare Ourselves to Receive the Compelling Con¬
viction ?
(a) The cleaning of the receiving instrument—The sig¬
nificance of right living and a clear conscience.
"Which of you convicteth me of sin?" John 8 46.
[Prov. 21 2] ; I Thess. 4 3-12; I Cor. 1 8, 4 4; II Tim. 2 19.
Mark 3 11; Matt. 5 8' 23' 24, 13 15; Acts 8 21, 23 1, 2416;
James 4 8; Heb. 9 9' 14 > 10 22, 13 18; I Peter 1 13~16^ 3 16; I John
3 19"24; II Peter 3 14.
"Wisdom will not enter into a soul that deviseth evil, nor
dwell in a body that is held in pledge by sin."
Wisdom of Solomon 1: Jf..
"It requires a well-kept life to know the will of God,
and none but the Christlike in character can know the Christ¬
like in career."
Drummond: The Ideal Life, page 807.
"The practical object of the first process is mainly to put
the thing in position where God can use it A man is
consecrated that God may use him. It is the process by which
he is got into position for God." Ibid., page 285.
Intercourse of God with man in the Bible is always pre¬
ceded, either immediately or in the more remote past, by a
moral victory. It is the "pure in heart" who see God. Those
who have been faithful in that which is least are entrusted
with the true riches. He who loses his life in deeds of un¬
selfishness "finds it." Examine all the instances of the com¬
munication between God and Jesus in the New Testament
and see if Jesus has not won some moral victory just before
each instance.
It is here that the universal will of God is connected
with the particular. Transgression of the universal will of
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149
God—the laws of nature and morality so far as they have been
revealed—is sin and sin blocks the channel of communication.
In other words, obedience to the universal will of God is the
first step toward knowing the particular will of God.
"Does it seem to you impossible that you can ever find
your way into a path prepared for you by God and be led
along in it by his mighty counsel? Let me tell you a secret.
It requires a very close, well-kept life to do this; a life in
which the soul can have confidence always toward God; a life
which allows the Spirit always to abide and reign; driven
away by no affront of selfishness. There must be a complete
renunciation of self-will."
Bushnell: The New Life, pages 26, 27.
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THE WILL OF GOD
Study XIII. The Particular Will of God for Each Individual Man
SIXTH DAY
How May We Prepare Ourselves to Receive the Compelling Con¬
viction? (concluded)
(b) The strengthening of the receiving instrument—The
training and developing of the human will.
"I do always the things that are pleasing to him."
John 8 29.
Mark 10 32"34; Matt. 21 28"31; Luke 9 51"62, 14 25"35 (esp.
v. 33).
Not only is a clean instrument necessary to receive the
divine communication. We must also have a strong instru¬
ment. "The real organ of knowing God's will/' says Drum-
mond (page 316), "[may be] so out of order from disuse that
even reason would be biased in its choice. A heart not quite
subdued to God is an imperfect element in which his will can
never live; and the intellect which belongs to such a heart is
an imperfect instrument and cannot find God's will unerringly
—for God's will is found in regions which obedience only
can explore."
The human will can be trained and strengthened so that
the mind will have greater sensibility in apprehension of con¬
viction. Once granted the foundation of right living and a
clear conscience, the delicacy of perception of God's commu¬
nications is directly proportionate to the development and
strength of the human will. God's messages and missions
have never been given to weak men. But a word of caution
should be inserted here. There is a difference between a
strong will (I Cor. 7 37) and a stubborn will (Titus 1 7).
A stubborn will is, in reality, a weak will. A strong will
is a will that has been trained to be master of itself by self-
denial; and, inasmuch as absolute surrender is the highest
form of self-denial (Luke 14 33), it follows that absolute sur¬
render is the strongest exercise of which the human will is
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151
capable. This seems like a paradox but it is a fact, and it
explains why the apparent weakness and submissiveness of
Christianity has produced so many physical and moral heroes.
Are there means for increasing the power of the human
will as there are for increasing the power of the human eye
and the human mind? There certainly are. Prof. William
James in his "Psychology" [Briefer Course], page 149, at
the close of the chapter on "Habit" gives a most effective
method. "Be ascetically heroic and self-denying about some
one little thing each day," he says. Pick out some one thing,
some article of diet or habit and deny yourself it without ex¬
ception, not because you need to but because you have once
decided to. Jesus himself followed this same method. In
certain matters he never allowed an exception: (John 8 29)
"I do always the things that are pleasing to him."
Can we combine the cleaning and strengthening of the
human will into one process? Can we set before us some
absolute moral standards of right living which we can apply
to every question that arises, from which we allow ourselves
no right of deviation? and will the practice of this process
result in undoubted, compelling convictions from God? In
the next lesson we shall give the result of such an attempt
on the part of six modern religious leaders; in the lesson after,
the teaching of Jesus and the Apostles on the same point.
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THE WILL OF GOD
Study XIII. The Particular Will of God for Each Individual Man
SEVENTH DAY—REVIEW
1. How far can we learn God's particular will for us
individually from nature? from the Bible? from the ancient
classical writers? from the modern literature? from secular
biography and autobiography? from another man? (Phil. 4 9.)
2. Carlyle says of the religious leader: "It is ever the way
with the thinker, the Spiritual Hero. What he says all men
were not far from saying, were longing to say." Have you
not had this experience—where some great preacher put into
words a thought which you had had vaguely in your mind for
a long time, but which was not clear enough to be expressed?
Why was he able to express it and you were not?
3. Can convictions take on such reality as to be regarded
as visions ?
4. What assurance have we in Scripture that God cares
for the smallest details of our life and career?
5. How distinguish compelling convictions from ordinary
impulses? (I John 4 James 3 1T.)
6. Do doubts have a moral root? If so can they be
cured by right action, i.e. by running back to the switch where
we ran off the main line of obedience?
"If you have lost the blessing .... go back and search
for it, and you will find it where you lost it! Just there and
nowhere else. Have you found the spot where your obedi¬
ence failed? Yield and obey just there, pick up your obedi¬
ence where you dropped it, and there you may obtain the
blessing again as you obtained it at the first; but just there
and nowhere else."
MacNeil: The Spirit-Filled Life, page 12Jf..
STUDY XIV
How to Know the Particular Will of God (a) The View# of Modern
Religious Leaders
1. Horace Bushnell: "Do the right."
2. Canon Mozley: "Love."
3. F. W. Robertson: "Be generous, chaste, true, brave."
4. Henry Drummond: "Practice I Cor. 13:4-6."
5. Robert E. Speer: "Practice John 6:29; I Thess. 4:3; Matt.
18:14."
6. Lyman Abbott: "Follow Christ in your life."
Can we combine the cleansing ahd developing of our
instrument for knowing God's will into one process? Can we
set before us some absolute moral standards of right living,
which we can apply to every question, great or small, that
arises, and from which we allow ourselves no right of devi¬
ation? And will the practice of this process result in un¬
doubted compelling convictions from God? As the universal
will of God passes in review each day before us in the revela¬
tions of nature and humanity will he, through the instrumen¬
tality of these standards, lay unmistakably upon our hearts
those particular phases of this universal will which are his
particular will for us ?
Let us trace chronologically the history of this attempt in
modern times. Six men who no one doubts were led of God
have given us, each one, the story of his experience and in
nearly every instance the result.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
155
Study XIV, How to Know the Particular Will of God. (a) The
Views of Modern Religious Leaders
FIRST DAY
Horace Bushnell—"Do the Right"
"Have I ever consented to be, and am I really now, in
the right, as in principle and supreme law; to live for it;
to make any sacrifice it will cost me; to believe everything it
will bring me to see; to be a confessor of Christ as soon as
it appears to be enjoined upon me; to go on a mission to the
world's end if due conviction sends me; to change my occu¬
pation for good conscience's sake; to repair whatever wrong
I have done to another; to be humbled if I should before my
worst enemy; to do complete justice to God, and if I could
to all worlds—in a word, to be in wholly right intent, and
have no mind but this forever?"
Cheney: Life and Letters of Horace Bushnell, pages 57,
58.
Bushnell has left us the story of how he came to accept
this standard and what it meant in his later life in a sermon on
"Dissolving of Doubts," first delivered to the students of
Yale College.
"Suppose that one of us, clear of all the vices, having
a naturally active-minded inquiring habit, occupied largely
with thoughts of religion; never meaning to get far away
from the truth, but, as he thinks, to find it, only resolved to
have a free mind, and not allow himself to be carried by force
or fear, or anything but real conviction—suppose that such a
one, going on thus, year by year, reading, questioning, hear¬
ing all the while the gospel in which he has been educated,
sometimes impressed by it, but relapsing shortly into greater
doubt than before, finds his religious beliefs wearing out and
vanishing, lie knows not how, till, finally, he seems to really
believe nothing. He has not meant to be an atheist; but he
is astonished to find that he has nearly lost the conviction of
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THE WILL OF GOD
God, and cannot, if he would, say with any emphasis of con¬
viction that God exists. The world looks blank, and he feels
that existence is getting blank also to himself. This heavy
charge of his possibly immortal being oppresses him, and he
asks again and again, 'What shall I do with it?' His hunger
is complete, and his soul turns every way for bread. His
friends do not satisfy him. His suns do not rise but only
climb. A kind of leaden aspect overhangs the world. Till,
finally, pacing his chamber some day, there comes up sud¬
denly the question, 'Is there, then, no truth that I do believe?
Yes, there is this one, now that I think of it; there is a dis¬
tinction of right and wrong that I never doubted, and I see
not how I can; I am even quite sure of it.' Then forthwith
starts up the question, 'Have I, then, ever taken the prin¬
ciple of right for my life? I have done right things as men
speak; have I ever thrown my life out on the principle to
become all it requires of me? No, I have not, consciously
I have not. Ah! then here is something for me to do! No
matter what becomes of my questions—nothing ought to be¬
come of them if I cannot take a first principle so inevitably
true, and live in it.' The very suggestion seems to be a kind
of revelation; it is even a relief to feel the conviction it
brings. 'Here then,' he says, 'will I begin. If there is a
God, as I rather hope there is, and very dimly believe, he is a
right God. If I have lost him in wrong, perhaps I shall find
him in right. Will he not help me, or perchance, even be
discovered to me?' Now the decisive moment is come. He
drops on his knees, and there he prays to the dim God, dimly
felt, confessing the dimness for honesty's sake, and asking for
help that he may begin a right life. He bows himself on it,
as he prays, choosing it to be henceforth his unalterably
eternal endeavor.
"It is an awfully dark prayer in the look of it; but the
truest and best he can make, the better and the more true
that he puts no orthodox colors on it; and the prayer and the
vow are so profoundly meant that his soul is borne up into
God's help, as it were, by some unseen chariot, and permitted
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
157
to see the opening of heaven even sooner than he opens his
eyes. He rises and it is as if he had gotten wings. The whole
sky is luminous about him. It is the morning, as it were, of
a new eternity. After this all troublesome doubt of God's
reality is gone, for he has found him! A being so profoundly
felt must inevitably be.
"Now this conversion, calling it by that name as we prop¬
erly should, may seem, in the apprehension of some, to be a
conversion for the gospel, and not in it or by it—a conversion
by the want of truth more than by the power of truth. But
that will be a judgment more superficial than the facts per¬
mit. No, it is exactly this; it is seeking first the kingdom of
God and his righteousness—exactly that, and nothing less.
And the dimly groping cry for help, what is that but a feel¬
ing after God, if, haply, it may find him, and actually finding
him not far off? And what is the help obtained but exactly
the true Christ-help? And the result, what, also, is that, but
the kingdom of God within, righteousness and peace and joy
in the Holy Ghost?
"There is a story lodged in the little bedroom of one of
these dormitories which I pray God his recording angel may
note, allowing it never to be lost."
Ibid., pages 58, 59.
158
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XIV. How to Know the Particular Will of God. (a) The
Views of Modern Religious Leaders
SECOND DAY
Canon Mozley—"Love"
"The New Testament describes, in various parts, what
spiritual character is, its expressions and manifestations; but
there is one gift which sums up all the features of it,—the
gift of love or charity. This is a comprehensive term in
Scripture, to denote a combination of qualities of mind, and
there is a description of such a person, given by St. Paul
in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, which has stood as the
great Christian portrait in all ages There are those
who stand out from among the crowd, which reflects merely
the atmosphere of feeling and standard of society around it,
with an impress upon them which bespeaks a heavenly birth.
Their criterion of what is valuable, and to be sought after, is
different from that of others. They do not press forward for
the prizes of this world; they stand apart from the struggle
in which common minds are absorbed. But they do this with¬
out spiritual pride, they think little of themselves and much of
others, and they have a love of their brethren and of all
whom God has made after his own image. They have these
and other great common characteristics, though they have
differences of natural disposition, and exhibit the action of
divine grace, each in the form in which his natural character
is adapted to show it."
Mozley: Sermons before the University of Oxford, page
HO.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
159
Study XIV. How to Know the Particular Will of God. (a) The
Views of Modern Religious Leaders
THIRD DAY
Frederick W. Robertson—"Be Generous, Chaste, True, Brave"
"It is an awful moment when the soul begins to find that
the props on which it has blindly rested so long are, many of
them, rotten, and begins to suspect them all; when it begins to
feel the nothingness of many of the traditionary opinions
which have been received with implicit confidence, and in that
horrible insecurity begins also to doubt whether there be any¬
thing to believe at all. It is an awful hour—let him who has
passed through it say how awful—when this life has lost its
meaning, and seems shriveled into a span; when the grave
appears to be the end of all, human goodness nothing but a
name, and the sky above this universe a dead expanse, black
with the void from which God himself has disappeared. In
that fearful loneliness of spirit, when those who should have
been his friends and counsellors only frown upon his mis¬
givings, and profanely bid him stifle doubts which, for aught
he knows, may arise from the fountain of truth itself; to ex¬
tinguish, as a glare from hell, that which, for aught he knows,
may be light from heaven, and everything seems wrapped in
hideous uncertainty, I know but one way in which a man may
come forth from his agony scathless; it is by holding fast to
those things which are certain still—the grand, simple land¬
marks of morality. In the darkest hour through which a soul
can pass, whatever else is doubtful, this at least is certain.
If there be no God and no future state, yet even then it is
better to be generous than selfish, better to be chaste than li¬
centious, better to be true than false, better to be brave than
to be a coward. Blessed beyond all earthly blessedness is the
man who, in the tempestuous darkness of the soul, has dared
to hold fast to these venerable landmarks. Thrice blessed is
he who—when all is drear and cheerless within and without,
when his teachers terrify him, and his friends shrink from
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THE WILL OF GOD
him—has obstinately clung to moral good. Thrice blessed
because his night shall pass into clear,, bright day.
"I appeal to the recollection of any man who has passed
through that hour of agony, and stood upon the rock at last,
the surges stilled below him, and the last cloud drifted from
the sky above, with a faith and hope and trust no longer tra¬
ditional but of his own—a trust which neither earth nor hell
shall shake thenceforth forever."
Brooke: Life and Letters of F. W. Robertson, Vol. I.,
Chapter III.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
161
Study XIV. How to Know the Particular Will of God. (a) The
Views of Modern Religious Leaders
FOURTH DAY
Henry Drummond—"Practice I Cor. 13: 4-6"
"How many of you will join me in reading this chapter
[I Cor. 13] once a week for the next three months? A man
did that once and it changed his whole life. [This is one of
Drummond's impersonal allusions to himself. H. B. W.]
Will you do it? It is for the greatest thing in the world. You
might begin by reading it every day, especially the verses
which describe the perfect character, 'Love suffereth long, and
is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself.' Get these
ingredients into your life. Then everything that you do is
eternal. It is worth doing. It is worth giving time to. No
man can become a saint in his sleep; and to fulfil the condi¬
tion required demands a certain amount of prayer and medi¬
tation and time, just as improvement in any direction, bodily
or mental, requires preparation and care. Address yourself to
that one thing; at any cost have this transcendent character
exchanged for yours. You will find as you look back upon
your life that the moments that stand out, the moments when
you have really lived, are the moments when you have done
things in a spirit of love. As memory scans the past, above
and beyond all the transitory pleasures of life, there leap for¬
ward those supreme hours when you have been enabled to do
unnoticed kindnesses to those round about you, things too
trifling to speak about, but which you feel have entered into
your eternal life. I have seen almost all the beautiful things
God has made: I have enjoyed almost every pleasure he has
planned for man: and yet as I look back I see standing out
above all the life that has gone, four or five short experiences
when the love of God reflected itself in some poor imitation,
some small act of love of mine, and these seem to be the things
which alone of all one's life abide. Everything else in all our
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THE WILL OF GOD
lives is transitory. Every other good is visionary. But the
acts of love which no man knows about or can ever know
about—they never fail."
Drummond: The Greatest Thing in the World, pages
59-61.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
163
Study XIV. How to Know the Particular Will of God. (a) The
Views of Modern Religious Leaders
FIFTH DAY
Robert E. Speer—"This is the Will of God: (1) That Ye Believe in
Christ, John 6:29. (2) That Ye be Sanctified, I Thess. 4: 3. (3)
That No One Should Perish, Matt. 18: 14"
"So clearly that we may never miss it, the Bible suggests
the three great outlines of God's will. All the rest is com¬
paratively unimportant detail. The will of God for every
man and woman is this, first of all: 'This is the work (or the
will) of God, that ye should believe on him whom God hath
sent.' That is first. No one of us can ever discover any¬
thing else about the will of God until we have taken that first
step. The first will of God for every man and woman is that
the child of God should enter into Christ's life, and believe
on him. There are many ways of stating this truth. Jesus,
of course, chose the best of them all: that the will of God
consisted in believing in him, consisted in entering into his
friendship, in getting into moral and spiritual sympathy with
him, in making a complete surrender of life to him. That is
the will of God for each of us.
"What is next ? 'This is the will of God, even your sancti-
fication,' your holiness of life; that we should go in Christ's
fellowship to a life of Christ's fullness, to a life enriched with
all that Christ came to bring, to a life in which Christ him¬
self is all that he can be to the souls of men.
"And what is third? 'It is not God's will that any man
should perish.' It is God's will that all should come unto
life. However narrow you and I may be, God has a heart of
universal love. He would save every man if he could. His
love is so large that every soul in the world is embraced in
it, and only those fall out of it who antagonize his will."
Speer; "Remember Jesus Chri&tJ' pages 105-107.
164
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XIV. How to Know the Particular Will of God. (a) The
Views of Modern Religious Leaders
SIXTH DAY
Lyman Abbott—"Follow Christ in Your Life"
"What shall I do to get this fellowship with the Great
Companion and the fruits of this fellowship? Follow Christ
in your life, and leave him to bring to you the fellowship and
its fruits Forget yourself, and think only of your
duty. Do what Christ bids you do, regardless of the question
whether he gives you peace for doing it or not. Read the
Sermon on the Mount, and then try to live it. 'Let your light
so shine.' Do you know, or can you find, any darkened home?
Go into it and carry the illumination of a bright and cheery
presence. 'Love your enemies.' Do you know any one who
has done you an ill turn? Study how you can do him a good
turn. Give the whole of your mind to doing each hour the
duty which lies next to you. And when the day is over, waste
no time in an idle review to see whether you have done your
duty well or not. Put your thoughts on the morrow, on the
question what you can find to do to make some one happier
and better for your being in the world. If you have peace
be glad of it. If you have no peace, go on just the same, re¬
solved to show yourself, the world, and your Master how loyal
you can be to your own life, to your fellowmen, and to him."
Abbott; The Great Companion, pages 118, 119,128,124..
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
165
Study XIV. How to Know the Particular Will of God. (a) The
Views of Modern Religious Leaders
SEVENTH DAY
There can be no doubt that each one of these six men
found God as a present counselor and companion through
that standard which he himself selected. Which one of the six
shall we select as our absolute standard to recommend to all
men? Bushnell says, "Do the right"—but what is the right?
Different men have different standards; Bushnell's standard
is comprehensive but too general. Mozley says, "Love"—but
do the majority of men understand love in the sense in which
he meant it? This again is comprehensive but too general.
Robertson says, "Be generous, chaste, true and brave"; here
is an attempt to analyze Bushnell's "The right" into its
elements; but are not these mostly of one sort—the aggressive
rather than the self-effacing virtues? Henry Drummond says,
"Practice I Cor. 13 4~6." Just the opposite objection may be
brought to this; it is not complete in that it is concerned al¬
most entirely with the self-effacing virtues at the expense of
the aggressive. Speer says, "Sanctify yourself, believe on
Christ, and devote yourself to his program for the salvation of
the world"; here we have the aggressive and the self-effacing
virtues brought together, but in too technical terms to be
practical for the novice. "What," he asks, "is sanctification,
and what is it to believe on Christ, what creed and what method
of work am I to follow?" Lyman Abbott says, "Follow Christ
in your life"; everything is contained in this, but the ordinary
man needs more specific and detailed instruction.
Placing these six proposed standards before us, studying
the full meaning of all the words used in them, can we re¬
duce them to three of four basic fundamental principles
which will include them all and which their respective pro¬
posers found or read into them from innate moral standards?
Are there absolute standards of right and wrong? How
did Jesus find out the particular will of God for himself?
He says that "he did always the things which were pleasing
166
THE WILL OF GOD
to God" (John 8 29) and the result was that he was sure of
God's presence and guidance (John 8 29, first half). What
were these things that were pleasing to God?
Let us go back then to the teaching of Jesus and the
Apostles to see if we can reconstruct the touchstone which they
must have applied to every question which arose, to discover
the particular will of God for each step in their lives.
STUDY XV
How to Know the Particular Will of God (b) The Fourfold Touch¬
stone of Jesus and the Apostles
Jesus \ PuRITY—Matt. 5: 29. Unselfishness—Luke 14: 33.
I Honesty—Luke 16: 11. Love—John 15: 12.
"For this is the will of God .... that ye abstain from forni¬
cation, that each one of you know how to possess himself of his own
vessel in sanctification and honor [purity] .... that no man over¬
reach and wrong his brother in the matter [honesty] .... but con¬
cerning love of the brethren ye have no need that one write unto you
[love] .... and that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own busi¬
ness and to work with your hands [unselfishness].—I Thess. 4-' 3-12.
"Wherefore, putting away falsehood, speak ye truth each one
with his neighbor .... let him that stole steal no more [honesty]
and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving each
other [unselfishness] .... and walk in love, even as Christ ....
gave himself [love] .... but fornication, and all uncleanness, let
it not even be named among you .... nor filthiness [purity] . . . .
wherefore be ye not foolish, but understand, what the will of the
Lord is." —Eph. 4:25—5:17.
"Set your mind on the things that are above .... put to death
therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, un¬
cleanness, passion, evil desire [purity] .... lie not one to another
[honesty] .... put on therefore .... a heart of compassion,
kindness, lowliness, meekness, longsuffering; forbearing one another
and forgiving each other, if any man hath a complaint against any
[unselfishness]; .... and above all things put on love [love]."
—Col. 3:2-14.
"But the wisdom that is from above is first pure [purity], then
peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy [unselfishness]
and good fruits [love], without variance, without hypocrisy [hon¬
esty]. —James 3:17.
"Do not kill, do not commit adultery [purity] : do not steal,
do not bear false witness, do not defraud [honesty], honor thy
father and mother, .... go, sell what thou hast [unselfishness],
give to the poor, .... and come, follow me [love]."
Jesus to the Rich Young Ruler—Mark 10:19-21.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Principles of Jesus. Chapter VI.—"Jesus and
Standards."
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
169
Study XV. How to Know the Particular Will of God. (b) The
Fourfold Touchstone of Jesus and the Apostles
FIRST DAY
The Absolute Standards of Jesus
Purity—Matt. 5: 27-32.
Honesty—John 8: 44, 45, 46; Luke 16: 11.
Unselfishness—Luke 14: 33.
Love—John lo: 12.
Read carefully Speer, The Principles of Jesus. Chapter
VI.—"Jesus and Standards."
Are there absolute standards of right and wrong? How
did Jesus find out the will of God for himself? He says
that he did always [i.e. without exception] the things which
were pleasing to God. (John 8 2<J.) We are to infer that
through this act of his he cleaned and strengthened his will
to receive the compelling conviction from God. The result
was that he was sure of God's presence and guidance (John
8 29, first half). But what were these things that were pleas¬
ing to God ?
Mr. Robert E. Speer has reconstructed from the teaching
of Jesus the four standards in regard to which he never
allowed himself an exception and with reference to which his
teaching is absolute and unyielding. Jesus gives us no direct
teaching in regard to such things as smoking, drinking, card
playing, theatre, dancing, etc. He recognized that some men
could decide one way and others j ust the opposite on like ques¬
tions and yet both sides be true Christians. But in regard
to four things there was no such option. A man must be
pure, he must be honest, he must be unselfish, he must express
himself in deeds of love or else he cannot see the kingdom of
God. There is no exception to be made on these four counts.
170
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XV. How to Know the Particular Will of God. (b) The
Fourfold Touchstone of Jesus and the Apostles
SECOND DAY
These Standards can be Easily Comprehended by all Men. They are
Unanswerable when once Stated
John 7: 53—8: ll = Purity an unanswerable standard.
Matt. 21: 28-32=Honesty an unanswerable standard.
Mark 10: 17-22=Unselfishness an unanswerable standard.
Luke 10: 25-37=Love an unanswerable standard.
The peculiarity of these four standards is that, in the first
place, they are so simple that any man can understand them
himself when they are once stated, no matter how simple he
may be; and that in the second place they are so fundamental
that no man dares deny that they should be followed by others,
no matter how clever and wicked he may be. They need no
explanation or defense when once stated. The reason is that
there is inborn in all humanity the distinction between right
and wrong and these standards are the four elements of
right.
"If there be no God and no future state, yet even then
it is better to be generous than selfish, better to be chaste
than licentious, better to be true than false, better to be brave
than to be a coward."
F. W. Robertson.
THIRD DAY
Their Comprehensiveness, and Jesus' Teaching about Their Acceptance or Rejection
Absolute Standards
of Jesus
are
Purity
Honesty
Unselfishness
Love
Jesus Increased
(Luke 2: 52)
in
Stature
Wisdom
Favor with man
Favor with God
The Great
Commandment
is to Love God
(Mark 12: 28-Sl)
with
Strength
Mind
Heart
Soul
The Full Grown Man
(cf. Eph. 4: 13)
is
Body—Physical
Mind—Intellectual
Heart—Social
Soul—Spiritual
The Laws of the Kingdom Do Not
Lessen, but Emphasize the
Sinfulness of
Passion—Matt. 5: 21-32.
Dishonesty—Matt. 5: 33-37.
Selfishness—Matt. 5: 38-42.
Lovelessness—Matt. 5: 43-48.
No man will develop physically who is impure.
No man will develop intellectually who is dishonest.
No man will develop socially who is selfish.
No man will develop spiritually who will not express himself in deeds of love.
The Issues of Acceptance or Rejection of these Standards.
Purity
Honesty
Unselfishness
Love
Acceptance.
"Shall see God."—Matt. 5: 8.
"Shall be entrusted with the true riches."—Luke
16: 10-12.
"Shall save his life."—Luke 9: 24.
"Shall inherit the kingdom."—Matt. 25: 34.
Rejection.
"Be cast into hell."—Matt 5: 29
"Shall not be entrusted with true riches."—
Luke 16: 11, 12.
"Shall lose his life."—Luke 9: 24.
"Depart into the eternal fire."—Matt. 25: 41.
172
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XV. How to Know the Particular Will of God. (b) The
Fourfold Touchstone of Jesus and the Apostles
FOURTH DAY
Their Interpretation and Practical Application by the Apostles as the
Means of Determining God's Will
I Thess. 4: 3-12.
Romans 12: 1—13: 10.
Col. 3: 2-14.
Eph. 4: 25—5: 17.
James 3: 17.
I Peter 1st and 2d chapters.
Introductory
Phrase.
Purity
Honesty
I Thess. 4: 3-12 Col. 3: 2-14. Eph. 4: 25—5: 17. James 3: 17,
"This is the "Set your "Understand "Wisdom
will of God." minds on" what the will from above"
verseS verse 2 oftheLordis."
5: 17
verses 3-5
verse 6
verses 5-8
verses 9-11
Unselfishness verses 11, 12 verses 12, 13
Love verses 9, 10 verse 14
5: 3-14
4: 25-30
4: 31, 32
5: 1, 2
"Pure"
"Without
variance,
without
hypocrisy"
"Peaceable,"
etc.
"Good fruits"
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
173
Study XV. How to Know the Particular Will of God. (b) The
Fourfold Touchstone of Jesus and the Apostles •
FIFTH DAY
Their Practical UseToday as a Touchstone to Determine the Particular
Will of God for Each Step of Our Career
To every problem, great or small, which presents itself—
in a small matter like one's bearing in a game of sport, in a
large matter like the choice of a life career—the Christian
who is absolutely surrendered to God asks himself this
question: "Is the step which I had planned to take an ab¬
solutely pure one? is it an absolutely honest one? is it the
most unselfish one? is it the fullest possible expression of my
love? If it is every one of these four, it must be the will of
God for me. If it fails to measure up to any one of these four
standards it cannot be God's will and I must not take it, no
matter what the refusal may cost me in suffering, mental or
physical." As he holds his instrument of apprehension—the
human will—resolutely to this standard, the Christian is
conscious of its becoming strong both to know and to do
God's will and there comes the undoubted, the compelling
conviction which guides and impels him forward.
This seems like a simple thing, but in it lies the secret of
the miracle of obedience. "It has been before the world these
eighteen hundred years yet few have even found it out today."
(Drummond, The Ideal Life, page 229.) It is like the story
in the Old Testament. "My father, if the prophet had bid
thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it ? how
much rather when he saith to thee, Wash and be clean."
(II Kings 5 13.)
"How this finite and this infinite are brought to touch,
how this invisible will of God is brought to the temporal
heart, must ever remain unknown. The mysterious meet-
174
THE WILL OF GOD
ing place in the prepared and willing heart between the
human and divine—where precisely the will is finally moved
into line with God's—of these things knoweth no man, save
only the spirit of God."
Drummond: The Ideal Life, page 818.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
175
Study XV. How to Know the Particular Will of God. (b) The
Fourfold Touchstone of Jesus and the Apostles
SIXTH DAY
The Paradox of the Touchstone—an Absolutely Rigid Touchstone to
Which no Exception may be Made and yet an Infinite Variety of
Results, Some Exactly Opposite
Luke 7 31"35.
This touchstone helps young men to reach a decision in
the most perplexing question as to what to do in regard to the
so-called doubtful pleasures—smoking, drinking, theatre,
dancing, etc. Let a young man ask himself, Can I do these
things and remain pure, honest, unselfish and loving? A man
must be absolutely honest with himself, however, in deciding
whether he is pure, honest, unselfish and loving. Let us take
a practical example, e. g. smoking.
Shall I smoke? 1. Does it affect my purity—excite the
sensual? If it does it must go—the alternative is given in
Jesus' own words (Matt. 5 29'30).
2. Does it affect my honesty? Granted that I can re¬
main pure, am I deceiving some parents or relatives who hold
narrower views about it? If so, I must stop—a lie is damning.
3. Does it affect my unselfishness? Granted that I am
pure and honest in it, do I forget the rights of others in my
own personal self-gratification? am I selfish or irritable with¬
out it? If so I must stop—selfishness is the death of the
soul.
4. Does it affect my active service of others? Granted
that I am pure and honest and unselfish in it, does it take
my time and energy? Life is short—one must use all the mo¬
tive power. Waste is a crime and lovelessness is death
176
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XV. How to Know the Particular Will of God. (b) The
Fourfold Touchstone of Jesus and the Apostles
SEVENTH DAY—REVIEW
1. Was Jesus ever impure?
2. Was Jesus ever dishonest?
3. Was Jesus ever selfish?
4. Was Jesus ever unloving?
Cite instances.
STUDY XVI
The Fourfold Touchstone—(a) The First Test—Purity
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God .... with all thy strength."
—Mark 12: 30.
"If thy right eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out, and cast
it from thee." —Matt. 5:29.
"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God."
—Matt. 5:8.
"For this is the will of God .... that ye abstain from forni¬
cation; that each one of you know how to possess himself of his own
vessel in sanctification and honor." —I Thess. 4: 3, 4.
"But fornication, and all uncleanness .... let it not be named
among you .... nor filthiness nor foolish talking, or jesting.
.... Wherefore be ye not foolish, but understand what the will of
the Lord is." —Eph. 5:3, 17.
"Set your mind on the things that are above Put to death
therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, un¬
cleanness, passion, evil desire." —Col. 3:2,5.
"But the wisdom that is from above is first pure."—James 3:17.
"But if thou .... gloriest in God, and knowest his will ....
thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou com¬
mit adultery?" —Rom. 2: 17, 18, 22.
"And they that are in the flesh cannot please God."—Bom. 8:8.
Is the step which I had planned to take an absolutely pure
one? If it is not it cannot be God's will for my life.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bushnell. The New Life. No. XIV.—"The Lost Purity Re¬
stored."
Speer. The Marks of a Man. "Purity.—A Plea for Ignorance."
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
179
Study XVI. The Fourfold Touchstone, (a) The First Test—Purity
FIRST DAY
What Do We Mean by Purity ?
Matt. 5 8- 27-32 ; II Peter 2 14.
"If we go to analogy, purity is, in character, what trans¬
parency is in the crystal. It is water flowing, unmixed and
clear, from the mountain spring. Or it is the white of snow.
Or it is the clear open heaven, through which the sparkling
stars appear, hidden by no mist of obstruction. Or it is the
pure light itself in which they shine. A pure character is
that, in mind and feeling and spirit of life, which all these
clear, untarnished symbols of nature, image, in their lower
and merely sensible sphere, to our outward eye."
"Labor then with all closest, most passionate application
to conceive purity, what it would be to you if your soul were
in it; the consciousness of it; the essential peace; the elevation
above all passion and all unregulated impulse; the singleness
and simplicity of it; the glowing shapes and glorified visions
of a pure imagination; the oneness of your soul with God;
the conscious participation of what is highest in God—his
untemptable chastity in goodness and truth."
Bushnell: The New Life, pages 263-Jf., 273.
If carried to its full meaning absolute purity would in¬
clude victory over every sin (Matt. 5 48 ; Gal. 5 19' 21). Prac¬
tically we confine it to the mastery of the animal, fleshly
instincts in our nature. Impurity is yielding our will to the
animal either in the realm of thought or of act. Purity is the
mastery of the animal (not the extinction of the sexual) by
the human will.
An absolutely pure man from the Christian standpoint:
1. May have sexual suggestions and images come to his
mind (John 7 53-—8 11). Impurity enters with the act of will
which allows them to stay in artificial contexts.
2. Is controlled in his married life by considerations of
efficiency in his work, of health, of unselfishness and of love
180
THE' WILL OF GOD
(I Cor. 7 1-7; Mark 10 6~12). Questions of purity may arise in
marriage as without; as in relation to the avoidance of children,
etc.
"Fastidiousness .... is not any evidence of purity but
the contrary When any disciple, therefore, calls it
purity to be shocked or repelled by the scripture names of sins
or the practical works of mercy needed in a world of shame
and defilement, he reveals therein a bad imagination and a mind
that is itself defiled."
Bushnell: Ibid., page 278.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
181
Study XVI. The Fourfold Touchstone, (a) The First Test—Purity
SECOND DAY
Subtle Forms of Impurity
I Cor. 3 3, 10 7; Rom. 1 24"*2, 16 17' 18; Eph. 2 2'3, 5 3> 4;
II Tim. 2 22 ; Titus 1 15.
Mark 4 24; Matt. 14 8~10.
"[The impure man] before he does wrong makes all
manner of subtle excuse."
Fragment of a Lost Gospel (Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Pt. V.,
page 7, 1907).
"Foul stories and impure jests and innuendoes, more
clearly than oaths and curses befoul the souls of those who
utter them while they lead the hearers into sin. Such things
rob all who are concerned in them, either as speakers
or listeners, of two things which are the chief safeguards of
virtue—the fear of God and the fear of sin. They create an
atmosphere in which men sin with a light heart, because the
grossest sins are made to look not only attractive and easy,
but amusing. What can be made to seem laughable is sup¬
posed to be not very serious."
Plummer: Expositor's Bible, James, page 188.
Impure imaginations and thoughts.
Objects pure in themselves which by association recall
impure images.
Slighting references to women.
Ballet—Many forms of vaudeville and much in modern
drama.
Many modern so-called physical culture publications.
Biographs and living pictures.
Advertisements which appeal to the passions and much
which goes under the name of "art" in modern magazines.
Certain forms of souvenir postal cards.
Some fiction, art, and dress styles.
Flirtation where no true bond of love is intended.
182
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XVI. The Fourfold Touchstone, (a) The First Test—Purity
THIRD DAY
The Physical, Intellectual, Social and Spiritual Results of Impurity
I Cor. 3 1C' 17, 6 9' 12-20; Rom. 1 26> 27> 32, 6 16"21; Matt.
5 29' 30; James 1 14' 15; Rev. 21 8' 27, 22 15; II Peter 2 9- 10> 18> ]9.
"But give heed lest ye also suffer the same things as they;
for the evil doers among men receive their reward not among
the living only but also await punishment and much torture."
Fragment of Lost Gospel, Ibid.
Physical, loss of full efficiency of bodily powers.
Gal. 6 8; I Cor. 6 18; Rom. 7 5—the impure man is only
one tenth of a man:
"My good blade carves the casques of men,
My tough lanee thrusteth sure,
My strength is as the strength of ten
Because my heart is pure."
Tennyson: Sir Oalahad.
Intellectual, loss of mind powers (Rom. 7 23).
"The passions are loose upon the reason, the will over¬
turns the conscience, the desires become unruly, the thoughts
are, some of them, suggested by the natural law of the mind,
and some are thrust in by the disorders of vitiated feeling,
corrupt imagination, disordered memory and morbid im¬
pulse The man is corrupted, as we say, and the word
corrupt means broken together, dissolved into mixture and
confusion."
Bushnell: Ibid., page 265.
Social, lack of self-respect, hence morbid self-conscious¬
ness (Rom. 7 18).
Spiritual, cowardly shrinking from service of others and
from duty, and separation from God (Rom. 7 19, 8 8; Eph. 5 6;
I Peter 2 11; I John 2 16> 17; Rev. 22 14' 15).
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
183
"It was not the mere muscle of the Teuton which enabled
him to crush the decrepit and debauched slave nations
It had given him more, that purity of his: it had given him,
as it may give you, gentlemen, a calm and steady brain, and
a free and loyal heart; the energy which springs from health;
the self-respect which comes from self-restraint; and the spirit
which shrinks from neither God nor man, and feels it light
to die for wife and child, for people and for Queen."
Kingsley: The Roman and the Teuton, page Jf.6.
Study XVI. The Fourfold Touchstone, (a) The First Test—Purity
FOURTH DAY
The Purity of Jesus
Heb. 2 18, 4 15, 7 26 ; John 8 40.
See Speer, The Principles of Jesus. Chapter XVII.—
"Jesus and Women."
184
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XVI. The Fourfold Touchstone, (a) The First Test—Purity
FIFTH DAY
Is a Conflict Possible Between the Demands of Purity and Those of
Honesty, Unselfishness or Love (Self-expression)?
1. True purity presupposes honesty (Rom. 1 2i' 25).
2. True purity presupposes victory over self (Eph. 419;
Mark 7 20'23; 1 Peter 4 x> 2).
3. True purity presupposes love (self-expression) (I Tim.
I5).
"There are no fires that will melt out our dross and
corrupt particles like God's refining fires of duty and trial,
living as he sends us to live, in the open field of the world's
sins and sorrows—its plausibilities and lies—its persecutions,
animosities, and fears—its eager delights and bitter wants.
. . . . How necessary it is for the soul to be aired in the
outward exposures of the world Here alone in these
common exposures of work and contacts of duty is true
Christian purity itself successfully cultivated. Alas for the
man who is obliged to be shut up to himself, as in the convent
life, to face his own lusts, disorders and passions, and strangle
them, in direct conflict, with nothing else to do or to occupy
the soul."
Bushnell: Ibid., pages 275.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
185
Study XVI. The Fourfold Touchstone, (a) The First Test—Purity
SIXTH DAY
How to Grow in Purity
Gal. 5 24; II Cor. 10 3"6; Rom. 6 12' 13, 8 10, 12 2, 13 14;
Col. 2 20-23; II Tim. 2 ".
Matt. 26 41; Acts 15 9; James 1 21, 4 7' 8; John 8 36 ; 15 3.
I John 3 2' 3.
"The way to purity is difficult of discovery only to those
who practically do not care to find it."
Bushnell: Ibid., page 27 S.
"Can the soul's chastity, lost once, ever be recovered? . . .
Let no such doubt be harbored God has undertaken
to redeem the fall of sin and restore the soul to purity
Browned by sin, mottled by the stains of a corrupted life,
he has undertaken still to give it the whiteness of snow
God can raise it to a purity that is higher even than the
purity of an intact virtue. He can make us untemptably
pure." Bushnell: Ibid., pages 271, 272.
"Christ in other words, may be so completely put on that J
the whole consciousness may be of him, and all the motions
of sins give way to the dominating efficacy of his harmonious
and perfect mind .... the very current of thought, as it is
propagated in the mind, may become so purified that, when
the will does not interfere and the mind is allowed, for an
hour, to run in its own way, without hindrance, one thing
suggesting another as in revery, there may yet be no evil, 1
wicked or foul suggestion thrust into it. Or in the state of
sleep, where the will never interferes, but the thoughts rush j
on by a law of their own, the mixed causes of corruption may !
be so far cleared away, and the soul restored to such sim- j
j)licity and pureness, that the dreams will be only dreams of ;
love and beauty; peaceful and clear and happy, somewhat as
we may imagine the waking thoughts of angels to be." J
Bushnell: Ibid., pages 267, 270.
186
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XVI. The Fourfold Touchstone, (a) The First Test—Purity
SEVENTH DAY—REVIEW
1. What other religions beside Christianity require chas¬
tity of their followers ?
2. The problem of the nude in art. (Titus 1 15; Matt.
5 -'9, 30 ^
3. To what extent should a Christian be ignorant of evil?
Is knowledge power? (II Cor. 6 17; Rom. 16 19; Eph. 5 11"13.)
(Cf. Speer, Marks of a Man. "Purity—A Plea for Igno¬
rance.")
4. How subtle are the degrading influences of impurity
on even the most surrendered lives? (John 7 53—8 11; Mark
2 15> 17; John 17 15; I Cor. 15 33; II Thess. 3 6.)
5. Can a man ever reach a point where he will not be
tempted to impurity ? Where he will not yield to impurity ?
6. The human mind is like a camera film. After exposure
to an impure thought or suggestion it is possible to do one of
two things; either to delay and develop the plate which fixes
the picture permanently or instantly to flood the plate with
the light of Jesus—then the picture is forever destroyed.
This latter is what is meant by putting on Jesus. Pray in¬
stantly for him to come and take possession of that particular,
specific thought or picture; and mean it when you pray. Do
not pray the prayer of the temporizer, "Lord, make me pure,
but not now."
7. For practical suggestions regarding the physical helps
to a pure life see
Scudder: Handbook for Young Men, Chapters VIII., IX.
Sperry: Talks with Young Men, Chapters XV., XVI., XVII.
Stall: What a Young Man Ought to Know, Hindrances and
Helps.
Hall: Reproduction and Sexual Hygiene, Chapter V., Hy¬
giene.
STUDY xvn
The Fourfold Touchstone—(b) The Second Test—Honesty
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God .... with all thy mind."
—Mark 12: SO.
"He that is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and
he that is unrighteous in a very little is unrighteous also in much.
If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon,
who will commit to your trust the true riches?" —Luke 16:10, 11.
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you
free." —John 8:32.
"Without are the dogs, and the sorcerers, and the fornicators,
and the murderers, and the idolaters, and every one that loveth and
maketh a lie." —Rev. 22:15.
"For this is the will of God .... that no man transgress
(m. r., overreach) and wrong his brother in the matter."
—I Tliess. 6*
"Wherefore, putting away falsehood, speak ye truth each one
with his neighbor .... let him that stole steal no more
Wherefore be ye not foolish, but understand what the will of the
Lord is." —Eph. 4:25, 28; 5:17.
"Set your mind on the things that are above .... lie not one
to another; seeing that ye have put off the old man with his doings."
—Col. 3:2, 9.
"But the wisdom that is from above is ... . without variance,
without hypocrisy." —Jarnes 3:17.
"But if thou .... gloriest in God, and knowest his will ....
thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal?"
—Rom. 2:17, 18, 21.
"Fear them not, therefore: for there is nothing covered that
shall not be revealed; and hid that shall not be known.
—Matt. 10:26.
Is THE STEP WHICH I HAD PLANNED TO TAKE AN ABSOLUTELY HON¬
EST ONE? IF IT IS NOT IT CANNOT BE GOD'S WILL FOR MY LIFE.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Trumbull. A Lie Never Justifiable.
Speer. The Marks of a Man.—"Truth."
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
189
Study XVII. The Fourfold Touchstone, (b) The Second Test—
Honesty
FIRST DAY
What Do We Mean by Honesty ?
Mark 14 61'62; Titus 1 2; Rev. 19 u*16.
"Character is wliat a man is in the dark."
If carried to its full meaning absolute honesty would also
include victory over every sin, for a man ought to be honest
with himself and his God as well as with his neighbors. Prac¬
tically we limit it to the relations of a man with other men
and divide its transgression into two main divisions—lying
and stealing. A common element in both is deception, and
the question of honesty concerns itself with the motive—the
voluntary act.
(a) A lie is a story told or a part acted with the intention
to deceive.
(b) Stealing—"It will at once be seen that there are only
three ways in which man can come into possession of any¬
thing; either by the free gift of another person, or by toil
which receives something as legitimate return, or by theft,
the taking that from another which belongs to him."
Morgan: The Ten Commandments, page 90.
An absolutely honest man from Jesus' standpoint may
have secrets which he refuses to tell—dishonesty comes when
he tells the facts other than they are or leads people to believe
they are other than they are.
"One of the most beautiful examples of Mr. Lincoln's
rigid honesty occurred in connection with the settlement of
his accounts with the post office department several years after¬
wards. It was after he had become a lawyer and had been a
legislator. He had passed through a period of great poverty,
had acquired his education in the law in the midst of many
perplexities, inconveniences and hardships, and had met with
temptations such as few men could resist, to make a temporary
190
THE WILL OF GOD
use of any money he might have in his hands. One day, seated
in the law office of his partner, the agent of the post office
department entered and enquired if Abraham Lincoln was
within. Mr. Lincoln responded to his name, and was informed
that the agent had called to collect a balance due to the depart¬
ment since the discontinuance of the New Salem office. A
shade of perplexity passed over Mr. Lincoln's face which did
not escape the notice of friends who were present. One of
them said at once: 'Lincoln, if you are in want of money, let
us help you.' He made no reply, but suddenly rose, and pulled
out from a pile of books a little old trunk, and, returning to
the table, asked the agent how much the amount of his debt
was. The sum was named, and then Mr. Lincoln opened the
trunk, pulled out a little package of coin wrapped in a cotton
rag, and counted out the exact sum, amounting to something
more than seventeen dollars. After the agent had left the
room, he remarked quietly that he never used any man's money
but his own. Although the sum had been in his hands during
all these years, he had never regarded it as available even for
any temporary purpose of his own."
Holland: Life of Abraham Lincoln, pages 55, 56.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
191
Study XVII. The Fourfold Touchstone, (b) The Second Test—
Honesty
SECOND DAY
Subtle Forms of Dishonesty
Gal. 2 12' 13; II Cor. 12 1G"18; Rom. 28; Luke 3 12'14;
James 5 4; John 10 1.
All bluffing in recitation. Copying essays or outlines.
Cribbing words on the pages of text-books. Unauthorized
helps. (The final test as to whether they are honorable or not
—ask the instructor.)
All gambling or betting.
Refusing to consult a doctor when one knows something
is wrong; unwillingness to face the whole truth.
Purposely obscure handwriting when one does not know
how to spell a word.
All hypocrisy and all self-repression. "There are two
forms of hypocrisy; one is pretending to be more than you
are: the other, which is just as truly hypocrisy, is pretending
to be less than you are" (John 12 42' 43; John 8 ou).
Taking credit for ideas or achievements which do not be¬
long to one. Not keeping engagements and promises.
Letting someone else suffer for one's transgressions and
crimes. Evasions of taxes, customs-duty, etc. (Rom. 13 7).
Debts (Rom. 13s).
Sharp dealing in trade (Luke 16 10' 11; Prov. 20 14).
Exaggeration or play of fancy on facts (II Cor. 4> 2, 12 °).
Mixing money accounts.
Sending mail under a cheaper class than is right.
Telling the truth in such a way that it deceives others.
Evasion of railway or trolley fare.
Disclosing of personal confidences.
192
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XVII. The Fourfold Touchstone, (b) The Second Test—
Honesty
THIRD DAY
The Physical, Intellectual, Social and Spiritual Results of Dishonesty
I Cor. 6 10; II Cor. 13 8.
Physical. Nervousness due to fear of discovery (John
3 20 - 21; 8 34).
Intellectual. A deceiver soon comes to distrust himself
and his mental judgments (John 8 43-45 ; 3 20' 21). "Just in so
far as [distrust] prevails in any life, even in the most heroic,
the man fails and his work will have to be done over again."
Hughes: Manliness of Christ.
Social. (Eph. 4 25.) "You hold that a lie is sometimes
justifiable. How can I know when you think it is ? The circum¬
stances may be such as to lead me to feel that at whatever cost
or pain to you, you owe me the truth and you may think that
they are such as to warrant your lying to me. This transfers
the moral foundations of society from solid principle to the
utterly precarious and unreliable basis of individual caprice."
Speer: The Marks of a Man, page 23.
Spiritual. (Rom. 28'9; Rev. 21 27.) "The Bible opens
with a picture of the first pair in Paradise to whom God tells
the simple truth and to whom the enemy of man tells a lie;
and it shows the ruin of mankind wrought by that lie and the
author of the lie punished because of its telling. The Bible
closes with a picture of Paradise into which are gathered the
lovers and doers of truth and from which is excluded every
one that loveth and doeth a lie, while all liars are to have their
part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone, which
is the second death."
Trumbull.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
193
Study XVII. The Fourfold Touchstone, (b) The Second Test—
Honesty
FOURTH DAY
The Honesty of Jesus
[Isaiah 53 9].
John 1 17.
See Speer, Principles of Jesus. Chapters XXXIX., XL.
—"Jesus and Veracity," "Jesus and Falsehood."
194
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XVII. The Fourfold Touchstone, (b) The Second Test—
Honesty
FIFTH DAY
Is a Conflict Possible Between the Demands of Honesty and Those of
Purity, Unselfishness or Love (Self-expression)?
Gal. 4 16.
1. True honesty presupposes purity (John 8 44 ).
2. True honesty presupposes mastery of self (II Thess.
3 8; Eph. 4 28; Titus 3 8. Cf. margin "profess honest occu¬
pations.") The selfish man lets others do his rightful work
for him and is thus dishonest, getting something for nothing.
The selfish man can never tell the exact truth because uncon¬
sciously his own prejudices color all he says (John 8 45).
3. True honesty presupposes love (Eph. 415; James
3 14"16). The question as to whether or not to deceive
a sick man about his condition or the death of others may well
be raised here. As a matter of fact the problem is not such an
excruciating one as it is sometimes made out. If a man tells
the truth selfishly, without love, just because of the innate
passion of some men to be the first to impart news it may be
such a shock as to kill the sick man. In reality the gossiper
is not telling the truth. He is overstating. But the exact
truth, if told in love, with sympathy, in such a loving way
that the sick man lets us share part of the grief, is less
dangerous than suspension due to deceit and the necessity of
bearing one's burden alone.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
195
Study XVII. The Fourfold Touchstone, (b) The Second Test—
Honesty
SIXTH DAY
How to Grow in Honesty
[Psalm 139]; I Cor. 6 11; II Cor. 5 9'10; Heb. 4 13.
Heb. 12 1; John 8 31- 32> 36, 18 37.
Realize that Jesus is always at your side although you
do not see him. He knows everything we do (John 4 17, 2 25).
Dishonesty is always done in what men think is the dark. In
reality this is not so (Ps. 139). God and Jesus and those
of our friends who belong to the great crowd of witnesses see
everything we do. When the latter were on earth—father,
mother, sister, brother, husband, wife, son, daughter—we
could conceal our dishonesty and sin from them. But now do
not they see everything? When the temptation to dishonesty
comes pray that Jesus and they may see what you are about
to do. In other words, put on Jesus.
196
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XVII. The Fourfold Touchstone, (b) The Second Test—
Honesty
SEVENTH DAY—REVIEW
1. Is strategy and deception in athletics right, e.g. curve-
pitching, feint-attack, etc. ?
2. What does Paul mean by II Cor. 68? Does this
justify deception?
3. Is the alternative of death, either of self or others, a
sufficient justification for not telling the truth?
4. Is it ever right to lie "that good may come"? for
country's sake ? in war ? in court ? in the sickroom ? Does good
always come as a result of the lie of necessity or expediency?
5. Was Martin Luther's position in regard to lying jus¬
tifiable—"What is the harm of a good, plump lie for the sake
of the Christian church?" (See Henderson, A Short His¬
tory of Germany, Vol. I., page 372.) What was the historical
result of this lie?
STUDY xvm
The Fourfold Touchstone—(c) The Third Test—Unselfishness
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart."
—Mark 12:30.
"So therefore whosoever he be of you that renounceth not all
that he hath, he cannot be my disciple." —Luke 14:38.
"If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and
take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever would save
his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake,
the same shall save it." —Luke 9:23, 24.
"For this is the will of God .... that ye study to be quiet,
and to do your own business, and to work with your hands . . . .
that ye may walk becomingly toward them that are without, and
may have need of nothing." —I Thess. 4:3, 11, 12.
"Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and rail¬
ing, be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind one to
another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other Wherefore be ye
not foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is."
—Eph. 4:31, 32; 5:17.
"Set your minds on the things that are above Put on
therefore .... a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, meek¬
ness, ,longsuffering; forbearing one another, and forgiving each
other, if any man have a complaint against any."
—Col. 3: 2, 12, 13.
"But the wisdom that is from above is ... . peaceable, gentle,
easy to be entreated, full of mercy." —James 3:17.
Is the step which I had planned to take the most un¬
selfish one? If it is not it cannot be God's will fok my life.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bushnell. The New Life. No. XXI.—"The Efficiency of the Pas¬
sive Virtues."
Drummond. The Greatest Thing in the World.
The difference between Unselfishness and Love.
I. Jesus' teaching makes a clear distinction between
unselfishness and love.
Unselfishness is passive (Luke 14 33, 9 23' 24)—self-
mastery, self-renunciation, the effacement of self when self is
tempted to express itself in what we may call the sins of the
heart (as distinct from those of the body and mind), i.e. in
Anger, Pride, Suspicion, Envy, etc. Bushnell has well charac¬
terized this as "Patience."
Love, on the other hand, is always active. It is the ex¬
pression, the pouring forth of the mastered, controlled, re¬
nounced, effaced self in God-inspired and God-directed deeds
of love. Self has been got out of the way and God works
through the unchoked channel. Jesus always used love in
this sense as implying action, not a mere emotion (Luke 10
25-37 ; John 21 15~17; Matt. 25 31"4G). Only in such a sense can
a man love God with body, mind, heart and soul (Mark 12 30).
Speer has well characterized this as "Service."
II. Paul's analysis of love in I Cor. 13, on the contrary,
embraces both of Jesus' conceptions of unselfishness and of
love (of patience and of service, of self-effacement and of
self-expression) under a more general term "Love." In the
analysis there are seven self-effacing virtues (i.e. the traits
of Jesus' "unselfishness")—Patience, Freedom from Envy,
Humility, Courtesy, Waiving of One's Rights, Good Temper,
Guilelessness; and two self-expressing virtues (i.e. the traits
of Jesus' "love")—Kindness, Championing of Righteous¬
ness and Truth.
In our present study, "Unselfishness," we concern our¬
selves with the first seven; in the next study, "Love," with the
last two.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
199
Study XVIII. The Fourfold Touchstone, (c) The Third Test—
Unselfishness
FIRST DAY
What Do We Mean by Unselfishness?
I Cor. 8 9; Rom. 14 13"28; Matt. 5 38"42; John 3 29> 30, 17 19.
"I only design to exhibit what many are so apt to overlook
or forget, the sublime efficacy of those virtues which belong
to the receiving, suffering, patient side of character. They are
such as meekness, gentleness, forbearance, forgiveness, the
endurance of wrong without anger and resentment, content¬
ment, quietness, peace, and unambitious love To bear
evil and wrong, to forgive, to suffer no resentment under
injury, to be gentle when nature burns with a fierce heat, and
pride clamors for redress, to restrain envy, to bear defeat with
a firm and peaceful mind, not to be vexed or fretted by cares,
losses or petty injuries, to abide in contentment and serenity
of spirit, when trouble and disappointment come—these are
conquests, alas, how difficult to most of us! Accordingly it
will be seen that a true Christian man is distinguished from
other men, not so much by his beneficent works as by his
patience."
Bushnell: The New Life, pages JfOO, Jfil.
If carried to its full meaning absolute unselfishness would
also include victory over every sin. Unselfishness is mastery
or effacement of self, and all impurity, dishonesty and self-
repression are selfish. Practically we limit it to the traits of
the heart. Unselfishness is to think of the results of your
action on the other fellow, to curb yourself in so far as it
might injure others. Wherever self asserts itself to the injury
of others in impatience, envy, pride, discourtesy, greed, tem¬
per or suspicion, there is selfishness.
An absolutely unselfish man according to Jesus' standpoint:
Can be righteously impatient (Luke 19 45'46).
Can be righteously jealous (Luke 9 59~62).
200
THE WILL OF GOD
Can be righteously proud (Luke 10 17"20).
Can disregard polite formalities (Luke IS32; 7 44"47).
Can be righteously self-assertive (John 8 12).
Can be righteously angry (Matt. 23 13"3G).
Can be righteously suspicious (John 2 24' 25).
But only when he has so completely surrendered his own will
to God and so effaced self that he is absolutely sure that there
is no selfish motive in his action and that God is working
through him for the good of other men.
For example: if I personally am insulted I have no right
to be angry, I must bear the insult in patience; but if a poor
defenceless woman is insulted I have a right to assert my
righteous wrath to protect her.
I have no right to be proud of my achievement but I
have a right to be proud of what my friends do. If my work
is delayed by others I have no right to be impatient, but if
my friend's is delayed I have a right to be impatient.
Unselfishness does not mean that a man becomes a
nonentity. It means merely that for the future the goal or
object of all his exertions is changed from self to others.
An unselfish man lives up to Gen. Horace Porter's maxim:
"Never underrate yourself in action, and never overrate your¬
self in your official report."
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
201
Study XVIII. The Fourfold Touchstone, (c) The Third Test—
Unselfishness
SECOND DAY
Subtle Forms of Selfishness
Rom. 12 9"21; Matt. 23 x"12 (cf. also 13"39), 6 31.
How many of us live up daily to the following definitions
of unselfishness? In what respects did Jesus fail to live up
to them?
"It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is
one who never inflicts pain. He is mainly occupied in merely
removing the obstacles which hinder the free and unembar¬
rassed action of those about him, and he concurs with their
movements rather than takes the initiative himself. He carefully
avoids whatever may cause a j ar or a j olt in the minds of those
with whom he is cast—all clashing of opinion or collision of
feeling, all restraint or suspicion, or gloom, or resentment;
his great concern being to make every one at his ease and
at home. He has his eyes on all the company; he is tender
towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant and merciful
towards the absurd. He guards against unseasonable allu¬
sions, or topics which may irritate. He has no ear for slander
or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who in¬
terfere with him and interprets everything for the best."
Newman.
"The forbearing use of power does not only form a
touchstone, but the manner in which an individual enjoys
certain advantages over others is the test of a true gentle¬
man. The power which the strong have over the weak, the
magistrate over the citizen, the employer over the employed,
the educated over the unlettered, the experienced over the
confiding, even the clever over the silly, the forbearing or in¬
offensive use of all this power or authority, or a total absence
of it when the case admits it will show the gentleman in a plain
light. The gentleman does not needlessly or unnecessarily re¬
mind an offender of a wrong he may have committed against
202
THE WILL OF GOD
him. He can not only forgive; he can forget; and he strives
for that nobleness of soul and mildness of character which im¬
parts sufficient strength to let the past be the past. A true
gentleman of honor feels humbled himself when he cannot help
humbling others."
Robert E. Lee, Outlook, 22 December, 1906, page 968.
Subtle forms of selfishness.
Personal uncleanliness and slovenliness.
Impatience—with physical pain or delay.
Disappointment and sorrow brooded over.
Envy.
Pride.
Unwillingness to let others do for you.
Greed.
Ambition.
Discourtesy, especially to inferiors, e.g. servants.
Conceit.
Anger—bitterness—temper.
Suspicion.
Prejudice.
Insincerity.
Cruelty—abuse of children—catting j ests and nicknames.
Unwillingness to forgive (Matt. 1821f).
Boisterousness and roughness.
Stubbornness.
Gloominess—"grouch."
Anxiety and nervousness.
Unwillingness to share another person's grief.
Overeating and overdrinking.
Overindulgence in pleasure (theatre, sport, etc.).
Show and display.
Lawlessness—not observing regulations (I Peter 2 13"15).
L-" Smoking in the presence of strangers, e.g. trolley car,
grand stand, etc.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
Study XVIII. The Fourfold Touchstone, (c) The Third Test—
Unselfishness
THIRD DAY
The Physical, Intellectual, Social and Spiritual Results of Selfishness
Luke 9 23'24.
Physical. A man can make himself sick and become a
physical wreck by thinking of himself all the time. The
best means of keeping well is to get the mind off of self.
Intellectual (Matt. 13 22, 25 14~30)=unproductivity.
Social (Matt. 23 38; Luke 15 28; John 13 S0)=loneli-
ness.
Spiritual (Matt. 18 3; Luke 9 24; John 12 25 )= loss of
the life of God in the soul of man.
204
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XVIII. The Fourfold Touchstone, (c) The Third Test-
Unselfishness
FOURTH DAY
The Unselfishness of Jesus
Phil. 2 s"8; Rev. 1 9.
See a little pamphlet, "Paul's Analysis of Love as Il¬
lustrated in Christ's Life and Teaching" which can be ob¬
tained from the Bible Study Department, 124 East 28th Street,
New York City. (Price, ten cents.)
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
205
Study XVIII. The Fourfold Touchstone, (c) The Third Test—
Unselfishness
FIFTH DAY
Is a Conflict Possible Between the Demands of Unselfishness and Those
of Purity, Honesty or Love (Self-expression)?
1. True unselfishness presupposes purity. Impurity is
always gratification of self. Paul gives the selfish results of
impurity in Rom. 1 24-32 (esp. 29' 30 f).
2. True unselfishness presupposes honesty. Dishon¬
esty is always selfish—on the very face of it when a man
is dishonest to save himself or to procure gain for himself.
When a man lies or steals for another this is either because
he is afraid of the other man and does not dare to face his
anger by refusal to be dishonest; or because he is not willing
to suffer in the other man's place, by taking the other man's
sins on himself in his position of mediator. In either case it
is a very obvious form of selfishness.
3. True unselfishness presupposes love or self-expression.
"By a little different process the Christian monks were turned
to fiends of blood without being savages. Exercised day
and night in a devotion that was aired by no outward
social duties, waiting only on the dreams and visions of
a cloistered religion, all the gentle humanities and social
charities were absorbed or taken away. And then their very
prayers would draw blood, and they would go out from the
real presence itself to bless the knife or kindle the fire."
Bushnell: The New Life, pages 176, 177.
206
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XVIII. The Fourfold Touchstone, (c) The Third Test-
Unselfishness
SIXTH DAY
How to Grow in Unselfishness
II Cor. 5 17; Phil. 2 5~8, 4 8>9; James 1 4; John 8 38.
Study in Jesus' life and teaching that particular trait
in which you are weak (Heb. 4 12). Collect all the Scripture
references and arrange them under heads, i.e. forms in which
it manifests itself; what did Jesus teach about it? etc. Culti¬
vate the habit when the selfish impulse comes, of stopping
short before acting and picturing Jesus in the same situation
(Matt. 28 20; John 14 23). Then act the way the picture tells
you, praying for his help.
There is no sin, no matter how great or of how long
standing it may be, which cannot be conquered by Jesus'
help in this way, if one means business,
SEVENTH DAY—REVIEW
1. To what extent is the doctrine of non-resistance to be
carried? Is Tolstoi's theory right?
2. Is war ever justifiable? the use of force in discipline?
S. Has a man a right to defend himself when attacked
by a robber? Is he fighting for himself alone or for the
community ?
STUDY XIX
The Fourfold Touchstone—(d) The Fourth Test—Love
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God .... with all thy soul. Thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." —Mark 12:30,31.
"This is my commandment, that ye love one another, even as
I have loved you." —John 15:12.
"Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is pre¬
pared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry and ye did
not give me to eat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink. I was a
stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick
and in prison and ye visited me not Inasmuch as ye did it not
unto one of these least, ye did it not unto me." —Matt. 25: 41-//3, 45.
"For this is the will of God .... concerning love of the breth¬
ren ye have no need that one write unto you." —I Thess. 4 '• $> 9.
"And walk in love, even as Christ also loved you, and gave
himself Wherefore be ye not foolish, but understand what
the will of the Lord is." —Eph. 5:2,17.
"Set your mind on the things that are above .... and above
all these things put on love." —Col. 3:2,14.
"But the wisdom that is from above is ... . full of ... . good
fruits." —James 3:17.
Is THE STEP WHICH I HAD PLANKED TO TAKE THE FULLEST POS¬
SIBLE EXPRESSION OF MY LOVE, i.e. OF MY SELF IN SERVICE OF OTHERS?
IF IT IS NOT IT CANNOT BE GOD'S WILL FOR MY LIFE.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bushnell. The New Life. IX.—"Capacity of Religion Extir¬
pated by Disuse."
Drummond. The Greatest Thing in the World.
Jordan. The Call of the Twentieth Century.
Speer. The Marks of a Man. "Service."
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
209
Study XIX. The Fourfold Touchstone, (d) The Fourth Test—Love
FIRST DAY
What Do We Mean by Love or Self-expression?
Matt. 25 31"46; Luke 10 25-37 ; Heb. 13 16; I Peter 4 8"10.
John 13 34, 21 15"17; I John 3 16> 17.
"In the Book of Matthew, where the Judgment Day is
depicted for us in the imagery of one seated upon a throne
and dividing the sheep from the goats, the test of a man then
is not, 'How have I believed?' but 'How have I loved?'
The test of religion, the final test of religion, is not religious¬
ness but love. I say the final test of religion at that great
day is not religiousness but love; not what I have done, not
what I have believed, not what I have achieved, but how I
have discharged the common charities of life. Sins of com¬
mission in that awful indictment are not even referred to. By
what we have not done, by sins of omission, we are judged.
It could not be otherwise. For the withholding of love is the
negation of the spirit of Christ, the proof that we never
knew him, that for us he lived in vain. It means that he
suggested nothing in all our thoughts, that he inspired noth¬
ing in all our lives, that we were not once near enough to
him to be seized with the spell of his compassion for the world.
It means that
"' I lived for myself, I thought for myself,
For myself and none beside—
Just as if Jesus had never lived,
As if he had never died.'
"It is the Son of man before whom the nations of the
world shall be gathered. It is in the presence of humanity
that we shall be charged. And the spectacle itself, the mere
sight of it will silently judge each one. Those will be there
whom we have met and helped; or there the unpitied multi¬
tude whom we neglected or despised. No other .witness need
be summoned. No other charge than lovelessness shall be pre-
210
THE WILL OF GOD
ferred. Be not deceived. The words which all of us shall one
day hear sound not of theology but of life, not of churches and
saints, but of the hungry and the poor, not of creeds and doc¬
trines, but of shelter and clothing, not of Bibles and prayer
books, but of cups of cold water in the name of Christ. Thank
God, the Christianity of today is coming nearer the world's
need. Live to help that on."
Drummond: The Greatest Thing in the World, pages
61-6%
^ Tf carried to its full meaning absolute love or self-expres¬
sion would also include victory over every sin (Rom. 13 8'10).
Love is-full self-expression and an impure, dishonest or sel¬
fish man never expresses himself fully. Practically we liifiit
love to the service of mankind. It is the active pouring out
^of self in contrast to unselfishness which is the hidden, pas¬
sive mastery of self. "Have you ever noticed how much of
Jesus' life was spent in doing kind things—in merely doing
kind things?"
The fullest expression of love according to Jesus' stan¬
dard (1) Does not mean working beyond one's powers all the
time, taking up every task that comes along (Jesus took va¬
cations) ; but it does mean doing those things which no one but
you can do; e.g. if you receive a gift you are the only one who
can express thanks for it. (2) Does not mean simply senti¬
mental, pliable agreeableness. True love often acts with a
sternness that hurts. (Love is not only kind—love rejoiceth
not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth in the truth.)
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
211
Study XIX. The Fourfold Touchstone, (d) The Fourth Test—Love
SECOND DAY
Subtle Forms of Repression of One's Best Self
Luke 7 44"4T, 17 11_18.
Laziness.
Cowardice.
Not expressing thanks for gifts or favors (especially
tuition scholarship in college).
Never telling your parents or friends—those in the
intimate circle—how much you think of them (i.e. tell your
mother that you love her and appreciate what she has de¬
prived herself of for your sake).
Neglect of prayer and church attendance.
Neglect of duties as citizen—voting, protest, etc.
Refusal to help (not necessarily to give money to) beg¬
gars and tramps because they are probably fakes.
"It is easy to become suspicious of everything that calls
itself charity, to harden the heart because we can point to
endless cases where we have been imposed on Benevo¬
lence may have often been abused, but worse than that is
callous indifference to the calls on benevolence. A man who
boasts of never having been taken in is advertising his own
hardness of heart. Charity organization is dearly bought at
the expense of the extinction of charity itself."
Hugh Black: "The Paralysis of Criticism," Outlook, 17
March, 1906, page 607.
Avoidance of marriage and children.
Neglect of correspondence with family or friends.
212
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XIX. The Fourfold Touchstone, (d) The Fourth Test—Love
THIRD DAY
The Physical, Intellectual, Social and Spiritual Results of Self-repression
Matt. 25 (entire chapter).
Physical. [Isaiah 40 31] ; John 4 31-34; I Peter 4 11 ("the
strength which God supplieth"). A man misses the tenfold
strength which is his birthright.
Intellectual. Matt. 2 5 26*28. "The same paradox is ob¬
served .... in intellectual achievements The life
that withheld itself was checked and dwarfed. The life that
yielded itself was enriched and confirmed."
Peabody: Jesus Christ and the Christian Character,
page 203.
"I have said that in one respect my mind has changed
during the last twenty or thirty years I have tried
lately to read Shakespeare and found it so intolerably dull
that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste
for pictures and music My mind seems to have become
a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of a large
collection of facts, but why this should have caused the
atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher
tastes depend, I cannot conceive If I had to live my
life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry
and listen to some music at least once every week; for per¬
haps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have
been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a
loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intel¬
lect, and more probably to the moral character by enfeebling
the emotional part of our nature."
Francis Darwin: Life and Letters of Charles Darwin,
pages 81, 82.
(Cf. also James' Psychology, Briefer Course, pages
147, 148.)
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
213
Social. Matt. 2 5 28"30. Separation from others.
Spiritual. Luke 16 19"31. A man misses the greatest joy
in the world—the joy of service. Ill John 4.
"I wonder why it is that we are not all kinder than we
are? How much the world needs it. How easily it is done.
How instantaneously it acts. How infallibly it is remembered.
How superabundantly it pays itself back."
Drummond: The Greatest Thing in the World, page 23.
214)
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XIX. The Fourfold Touchstone, (d) The Fourth Test—Love
FOURTH DAY
The Love or Self-expression of Jesus
John 21 25.
Speer. Principles of Jesus. Chapters XXXI., XXXII.
—"Jesus and Love/' "Jesus and Work."
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
216
Study XIX. The Fourfold Touchstone, (d) The Fourth Test—Love
FIFTH DAY
Is a Conflict Possible Between the Demands of Love (i. e. Service 01
Self-expression) and Those of Purity, Honesty and Unselfishness?
1. True love presupposes purity.
John 7 53—8 11 (contrast the attitude of the pure Jesm
and the impure Pharisees toward the woman in need of help)*
Matt. 7 18 (end of verse), 12 34; I Peter 1 22.
It is not true that men living in sin are sympathetic
toward those who are worse off, and that pure and honest
people are cold and unsympathetic. The one thing that gives
a man great love and desire to help others is to have won his
own struggle himself. Men living in sin are cruel. Many
people who pretend to be pure are cruel, but it can be taken
as an almost invariable rule that when a man is bitter and
uncharitable against those who have fallen in sin that he
is thereby striving to cover a sin of the same sort. (Rom.
2 1; Matt. 7 *.)
2. True love presupposes honesty.
Rom. 12 9; I John 3 18.
Discuss here the question of one man helping another
to be dishonest in examination "out of love."
"Out of love!" What is love? A flabby, pliable agree-
ableness because you are a coward and are afraid that the
other man will not like you if you object; or is it an affection¬
ate concern for the future of your friend so faithful and
true that it cuts you to the heart to think of such a damning
trait as deception becoming rooted in him? Perhaps your
kindly, loving refusal explained fully with great gentleness
afterwards may be the turning point of his life. (2 Tim.
2 24"26.) At the least he will love and admire you for it.
If you help him on in his career of deception and he
later becomes a bank defaulter, who is in part responsible?
216
THE WILL OF GOD
"By a change of divisions in the summer term, I came to
sit next to Charlie Fielding, and was glad of the chance to
become more intimate with him. But before long I began to
think my privilege a doubtful one. For Charlie, although
gifted with a keen mind and an extraordinary power of con¬
centration, was loath to apply them to preparation for class
work: instead, he would be constantly whispering to me,
"What's this?" or "How do you do that?"—endeavoring in
this way to keep far enough in advance of the reciter to avoid
being flunked when called upon. To this practice I have always
most strongly objected, not selfishly, but on grounds of self-re¬
spect. In school and in college there are those who seem to
consider it an honor to have the more prominent men lean upon
them in this way for support. But never, never, was popularity
acquired by such sorry subserviency. Outside of class the great
man notices not his friend in time of need, or if so, only to
fleer him for a 'grind' or a 'greaser.' Much as I admired
Charlie Fielding (who was by this time grown to something of
a figure in the school world), I would not endure this un¬
equal arrangement. So one day after recitation, I put the
matter to him plainly. Perhaps his fault had been one more of
thoughtlessness than of deliberate intent; for he immediately
apologized most handsomely, and we parted with mutual
respect From this day forward our friendship pro¬
gressed so rapidly, that shortly before the close of the term
(when his present room-mate and mine would both graduate),
we arranged to room together for the next year."
Struly: My Three Years at Andover, pages 59-61.
3. True love presupposes unselfishness. I Cor. 13 3.
"We see in this subject how it is that many persons are
so abundantly active in religion with so little effect
Thus a man may be very active in warnings, exhortations,
public prayers, plans of beneficence, contributions of time
and money, and it may seem, when you look upon him, that
he is going to produce immense effects by his life. But
suppose him to be very much of a stranger to the patient
virtues of Christ—railing at adversaries, blowing blasts of
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
217
scorn upon those whom he wishes to reform in their practices,
impetuous, wilful, irritable, hot—how much good is that man
going to do by all his activity? What can he do but irritate
and vex, and, as far as he is concerned, render the very name
of religion, or possibly of Christ himself, odious ?"
Bushnell: The New Life.
Study XIX. The Fourfold Touchstone, (d) The Fourth Test—Love
SIXTH DAY
How to Attain to Love or Self-expression
I Peter 1 22; John 8 36, 15 12 ; I John (entire book).
The surest means is by the daily study of the life and ex¬
ample of Jesus. We are to be finally judged not so much by
the sins we have committed as by our sins of omission. Read
each day in the Gospels until a kind act of Jesus suggests a
similar one that you can and should do. Then shut the Bible
up at once and go out and do it, before you read further.
218
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XIX. The Fourfold Touchstone, (d) The Fourth Test—Love
SEVENTH DAY—REVIEW
1. How can a man know whether or not he is doing enough
active Christian work?
2. Is it ever right to work beyond one's physical
powers ? to wreck one's health deliberately in service of others ?
e.g. Keith Falconer. Father Damien and lepers.
Yes, if you are the only one who can do the work. It is
just as right to sacrifice one's life in this unpoetic but as
truly heroic way as to die at the head of a charge of troops
to save the nation.
3. Can love be commanded?
4. Does love require lovableness in its object?
D. THE ISSUES OF FACING THE PROBLEM
OF DOING GOD'S WILL
Study XX. The Issues of Rejection and Disobedience.
Study XXI. The Issues of Obedience, (a) Knowledge.
Study XXII. The Issues of Obedience (continued), (b) Pro¬
tection from Harm and Provision for all Needs.
Study XXIII. The Issues of Obedience (continued), (c) As¬
surance as to Duty and Power to Achieve Results.
Study XXIV. The Issues of Obedience (continued), (d) Con¬
stant Companionship.
Study XXV. The Issues of Obedience (concluded), (e) Eter¬
nal Life,
STUDY XX
The Issues of Rejection and Disobedience
"And that servant, who knew his lord's will, and made not
ready, nor did according to his will, shall be beaten with many
stripes." —Luke 12: Jfl-
"But what think ye? A man had two sons; and he came to the
first, and said, Son, go work today in the vineyard. And he
answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented himself,
and went. And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he
answered, and said, I go, sir; and went not. Which of the two did
the will of his father? They say, The first. Jesus saith unto them,
Verily I say unto you, that the publicans and harlots go into the
kingdom of God before you." —Matt. 21:28-31.
"And Jesus looking upon him loved him, and said unto him,
One thing thou lackest But his countenance fell at the saying,
and he went away sorrowful." —Mark 10:21,22.
"Destruction and misery are in their ways; and the way of
peace have they not known." —Rom. 3:16,17.
"Every one that falleth on that stone shall be broken to pieces;
but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will scatter him as dust."
—Luke 20:18.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bushnell. The New Life. I.—"Every Man's Life a Plan of God."
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
223
Study XX. The Issues of Rejection and Disobedience
FIRST DAY
What is Disobedience?
Eph. 4 17"24; Titus 3 3; Acts 7 51.
Disobedience is a deliberate, voluntary transgression of
purity, honesty, unselfishness or love; the refusal (not neces¬
sarily the failure) to obey one's conviction of the right.
"Things all serve their uses and never break out of their
place. They have no power to do it. Not so with us. We
are able as free beings to refuse the place and duties God
appoints; which if we do we then sink into something lower
and less worthy of us. That highest and best condition for
which God designed us is no more possible. We are fallen
out of it, and it cannot be wholly recovered."
Bushnell: The New Life, page 1J/..
"In the eternal counsels of his will when he arranged the
destiny of every star .... the Creator had a thought for
you and me But we all had the terrible power to
evade this thought, and shape our lives from another thought,
from another will if we chose. The bud could only become
a flower, and the star revolve in the orbit God had fixed.
But it was man's prerogative to choose his path, his duty
to choose it in God. But the divine right to choose at all has
always seemed more to him than his duty to choose in God,
so for the most part he has taken his life from God and cut
out his career from himself."
Drummond: The Ideal Life, page SOB.
224
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XX. The Issues of Rejection and Disobedience
SECOND DAY
Honest Ignorance, Honest Openmindedness, Defiant Refusal to Obey,
Indecision and Wilful Ignorance
Honest ignorance is not disobedience—Jesus freely for¬
gives those who sin through ignorance (Luke 23 34). Cf. the
case of Paul (Acts 26 9' 19).
Honest openmindedness and refusal to act until convinced
is not disobedience. Jesus never forces a man against his
frank, although perhaps mistaken, convictions; he invites
honest, searching investigation of his claims. (John 1 39,
20 24"29.)
Defiant refusal to obey is disobedience but it is the most
hopeful form (Matt. 21 28~29). A defiant rebel against God
often makes the most devoted subject if he can be brought to
see his error.
Indecision, apathy, or disobedience-become-a-habit, is the
subtlest and most dangerous form of disobedience (Matt.
21 30' 31). While good and often necessary in intellectual
matters it is never right in a question of conscience. It is
a form of disobedience which blinds and deafens (John 8 4S,
12 30"43). Jesus' energies were often directed against this
most alarming form of sleeping sickness of the soul.
Wilful ignorance (2 Peter 3 5' 16), the refusal to learn,
is the atrophy of the soul.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
225
Study XX. The Issues of Rejection and Disobedience
THIRD DAY
The Testimony of Psychology to the Results of Disobedience, Especially
in the Form of Indecision
James 2 19' 20.
"No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may
possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if
one have not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity
to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the
better. With mere good intentions hell is proverbially paved.
And this is an obvious consequence of the principles we have
laid down. A 'character,' as J. S. Mill says, 'is a completely
fashioned will'; and a will, in the sense in which he means it,
is an aggregate of tendencies to act in a firm and prompt and
definite way upon all the principal emergencies of life. A
tendency to act only becomes effectively ingrained in us in
proportion to the uninterrupted frequency with which the
actions actually occur and the brain 'grows' to their use.
When a resolve or a fine glow of feeling is allowed to evapor¬
ate without bearing practical fruit it is worse than a chance
lost; it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and
emotions from taking the normal path of discharge. There is
no more contemptible type of character than that of the nerve¬
less sentimentalist and dreamer who spends his life in a
weltering sea of sensibility and emotion but who never does
a manly, concrete deed. Rousseau, inflaming all the mothers
of France by his eloquence to follow nature and nurse their
babies themselves, while he sends his own children to the
foundling hospital, is the classical example of what I mean.
But every one of us in his measure, whenever, after glowing
for an abstractly formulated good, he practically ignores
some actual case among the squalid 'other particulars' of
which that same good lurks disguised, treads straight on
Rousseau's path. All goods are disguised by the vulgarity of
their concomitants in this work-a-day world, but woe to him
226
THE WILL OF GOD
who can only recognize them in their pure and abstract form.
The habit of excessive novel-reading and theatre-going will
produce true monsters in this line. The weeping of the
Russian lady over the fictitious personages in the play while
her coachman is freezing to death on his seat outside is the
sort of thing that everywhere happens on a less glowing scale.
Even the habit of excessive indulgence in music for those
who are neither performers themselves nor musically gifted
enough to take it in a purely intellectual way has probably a
relaxing effect upon the character. One becomes filled with
emotions which habitually pass without prompting to any
deed and so the inertly sentimental condition is kept up. The
remedy would be never to suffer one's self to have an emotion
at a concert, without expressing it afterward in some active
way. Let the expression be the least thing in the world—
speaking genially to one's grandmother, or giving up one's
seat in a horse-car if nothing more heroic offers—but let it
not fail to take place."
James; Psychology, Briefer Course, pages 11^,11+8.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
227
Study XX. The Issues of Rejection and Disobedience
FOURTH DAY
The Certainty of Failure of a Disobedient Life
Rom. 3 17; Col. 3 6; Mark 10 22, 12 14 81; Matt. 6 23,
18 7, 19 22, 23 3T'38; Luke 3 9, 6 49, 12 20- 21- 47, 14 33-35, 19 27;
Acts 13 46; Heb. 2 2.
"Seek the kingdom of God first. I promise you but a
miserable existence if you seek it second."
Drummond.
"Do I hear thy soul confessing, with a suppressed sob
within thee, that, up to this time, thou hast never sought God's
chosen plan at all? Hast thou, even to this hour and during
so many years, been following a way and a plan of thine own,
regardless hitherto of all God's purposes in thee? Well, if
it be so what hast thou gotten? How does thy plan work?
Does it bring thee peace, content, dignity of aim and feeling,
purity, rest; or does it plunge thee into mires of disturb¬
ance, scorch thee in flames of passion, worry thee with
cares, burden thee with bitter reflections, cross thee, disap¬
point, sadden, sour thee ? And what are thy prospects ? What
is the issue to come? After thou hast worked out this hard
plan of thine own, will it come to a good end? Hast thou
courage now to go on and work it through?"
Bushnell: The New Life, page 2J/..
"Whole years, possibly many years of that great and
blessed biography which God designed for you, occupied by
a frivolous and foolish invention of your own, substituted for
the good counsel of God's infinite wisdom and love."
Bushnell: Ibid., page 25.
"Life stripped to its essentials offers but two alternatives
to the man of action. He may work for himself alone, build¬
ing his little selfish walls across the advancing path of
civilization and making them stumbling blocks in the way of
228
THE WILL OF GOD
progress. Then however successful he may be, ultimately
the stern mills of the gods will grind him and his structures
to dust and he and his work will vanish from the earth. Or
having the eyes that see, he may place his effort parallel with
those eternal lines of force that mark the purposes of God
and then what he builds will endure."
H. K. Smith.
"All men living without God are adventurers out upon
God's world, in neglect of him, to choose their own course.
Hence the sorrowful sad-looking host they make. Oh, that I
could show them whence their bitterness, their dryness, their
unutterable sorrows come. Oh, that I could silence, for one
hour, the noisy tumult of their works, and get them to look in
upon that better, higher life of fruitfulness and blessing to
which their God has appointed them."
Bushnell: Ibid.,, page 26.
"All these centuries the human animal has fought with
the human soul. And step by step the soul has registered
her victories. She has won them only by feeling for the
law and finding it—uncovering, bringing into light, the firm
rocks beneath her feet. And on these rocks she rears her
landmarks—marriage, the family, the State, the Church.
Neglect them, and you sink into the quagmire from which
the soul of the race has been for generations struggling to
save you. Dispute them! overthrow them,—yes, if you can!
You have about as much chance with them as you have with
the other facts and laws amid which you live—physical,
or chemical, or biological."
Ancrum to David Grieve. (Quoted Powell: Christian
Science, page 129.)
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
229
Study XX. The Issues of Rejection and Disobedience
FIFTH DAY
No Disobedience so Great that it Cannot be Rectified before God by
a Single Act of the Human Will
Luke 23 89"43; John 6 37, 7 S7'53—8 u.
The "unpardonable sin" can be committed only by the
man who won't be saved. It is unpardonable, not because
God is not ready to pardon but simply and solely because
the man won't let himself be pardoned. There are two parts
to salvation, God's part and man's part. God is always ready,
but he cannot act without man's permission, man's free will.
"For the Spirit of God lies all about the spirit of man
like a mighty sea, ready to rush in at the smallest chink in the
walls that shut him out from his own."
Macdonald; Robert Falconer, page 209.
230
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XX. The Issues of Rejection and Disobedience
SIXTH DAY
Why not, then, Sow One's Wild Oats? Although Completely Recti¬
fied Spiritually, all Disobedience must be Atoned for Physically,
Mentally and Socially, and When Man has once Disobeyed, only
"the Next Best Plan" is Thereafter Possible. He can never be
what he Might Have Been, Had he not Disobeyed, yet God
has an Honorable Part though not so Great a One for him in
His Plan Still
Gal. 67'6", Rom. 6 21*23, 11 23.
God forgives and rectifies the spiritual results of sin in
the individual if he repents, and that is the main thing; but
physically, intellectually and socially a man must reap what
he has sown. In these three realms a man can never be again
what he might have been; for even if he restores his body, for
example, to its state at the time he fell, we must remember that
this same body might have developed a tenfold greater strength
in the interval had the means necessary for its restoration been
devoted to its further development from the first with no
lapse.
"And yet, as that was the best thing possible for us in
the reach of God's original counsel, so there is a place de¬
signed for us now which is the next best possible. God calls
us now to the best thing left, and will do so until all good
possibility is narrowed down and spent."
Bushnell: The New Life, pages 1^, 15.
"And what shall I say to the older man, who is further on
in his course and is still without God in the world? The
beginning of wisdom, my friend, you have still to learn. You
have really done nothing as yet that you were sent into
the world to do. All your best opportunities, too, are gone
or going by. The best end, the next best, and the next are
gone and nothing but the dregs of opportunity are left. And
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
231
still Christ calls even you. There is a place still left for
you; not the best and brightest but an humble and good one.
To this you are called. For this you are apprehended of
Christ Jesus still."
Bushnell: Ibid., pages 25, 26.
232
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XX. The Issues of Rejection and Disobedience
SEVENTH DAY—REVIEW
1. In how far are Jesus' figures of punishment for
disobedience to be taken literally? e.g. "Beaten with many
stripes." "Cast forth into outer darkness."
2. In most of the parables is the penalty of exclusion in
outer darkness pronounced upon those guilty of sins of omis¬
sion or of commission?
STUDY XXI
The Issues of Obedience—A. Knowledge
"Jesus therefore answered them, and said, My teaching is not
mine, but his that sent me. If any man willeth to do his will, he
shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I
speak from myself." —John 7:16, 17.
"I can of myself do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judg¬
ment is righteous; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of
him that sent me." —John 5:30.
"And when they bring you before the synagogues, and the
rulers, and the authorities, be not anxious how or what ye shall
answer, or what ye shall say: for the Holy Spirit shall teach you in
that very hour what ye ought to say." —Luke 12:11,12.
"But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will
send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring to your
remembrance all that I said unto you." —John 14:26.
"For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your ad¬
versaries shall not be able to withstand or to gainsay."—Luke 21:15.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Robertson. Sermons, Second Series. No. VII.—"Obedience the
Organ of Spiritual Knowledge."
Bushnell. The New Life. IX.—"Capacity of Religion Extirpated
by Disuse."
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
235
Study XXI. The Issues of Obedience, (a) Knowledge
FIRST DAY
The Mental Power and Insight of Jesus
Col. 22'3; Matt. 7 28' 29, 22 46; Luke 2 47; John 2 zs,
IJ 14, 15
See Peabody, Jesus Christ and the Christian Character,
Chapter II., pages 56-64.
What weapons of the scholar did Jesus use?
Cite instances of his deep insight and ability to get at
the essential point on which the issue was to be determined.
Was Jesus a critic? Was his mind scientific?
Contrast the mind of Jesus with that of Paul.
On what occasions did Jesus make use of playfulness as
a weapon of reasoning?
"Here is intellectual insight matching spiritual authority.
This is no recluse or peasant or passive saint, but an intel¬
lectual as well as moral leader, who may be rejected indeed,
but who cannot be despised."
Peabody: Ibid., pages 68, 6J/..
"One of the strongest pieces of objective evidence in fa¬
vor of Christianity is not sufficiently enforced by apologists.
Indeed, I am not aware that I have ever seen it mentioned.
It is the absence from the biography of Christ of any doc¬
trines which the subsequent growth of human knowledge—
whether in natural science, ethics, political economy, or else¬
where—has had to discount."
Romanes: Thoughts on Religion, page 167.
236
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XXI. The Issues of Obedience, (a) Knowledge
SECOND DAY
The Infinite Capacity and Possibilities of the Human Mind
[Ps. 139 14-]
"The human mind is the brightest display of the power
and skill of the infinite mind with which we are acquainted.
It is created and placed in this world for a higher state of
existence. Here its faculties begin to unfold and those
mighty energies which are to bear it forward to unending
ages, begin to discover themselves [Some imagine that
it is] dangerous to task the mind too often lest her stores
be exhausted or her faculties become weakened But
you need have no such fears; you may call upon your mind
today for its highest efforts and stretch it to the utmost in
your power and you have done yourself a kindness. The mind
will be all the better for it. Tomorrow you may do it again
and each time it will answer more readily to your calls."
Todd: The Student's Manual, pages 13,86,37.
"If we take, for example, the faculty of memory, how
very obvious it is that as we pass eternally on we shall have
more and more to remember and finally shall have gathered
more into the great storehouse of the soul than is now con¬
tained in all the libraries of the world. And there is not one
of our faculties that has not, in its volume, a similar power
of expansion."
Bushnell: The New Life, pages 310, 311.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
237
Study XXI. The Issues of Obedience, (a) Knowledge
THIRD DAY
Is Genius Chance, Inheritance or Character ?
Col. 2 2- 3.
"Genius is nine parts character; the prize is to him who
dares, not merely to him who can; the supreme desideratum is
self - f ulfilment.
R. L. Hartt: Atlantic Monthly, Vol. LXXXIII., 1899,
page 717.
Is genius chance? The principle of evolution teaches
us plainly that it never can be. It may appear suddenly and
apparently unaccountably in an unexpected place, but this
must be either inheritance appearing after several generations
or the result of characteristics acquired by the man himself in
his environment.
Is genius inheritance? Often. But inherited what?
Inherited character. Some one else up the line has wrought
and labored (John 4 38) and hammered out a character, and
the gifted man is the one who has entered into this labor by
inheritance, even if he has not labored himself. I am con¬
fident that we shall some day be able to show how the gifted
man derived the genius from a blend of the patient characters
hammered out by his ancestors, with his own.
Is genius then character? In the final analysis, always—
either one's own acquisition or inherited. A man with a long
line of ancestors of character from whom to inherit naturally
starts higher up in the scale at the beginning, but it is possible
for any man to make marvelous intellectual advances by his
own advance in character if he will only obey. We can at
least hammer out, each one of us, in his own life one of the
strands which some descendant will unite with others and thus
make the blend for genius in his life. What form the genius
will take, we do not of course know at the start. All men
cannot be musical geniuses. But every man has in him or can
238
THE WILL OF GOD
acquire the capacity to reveal to the world some mighty
eternal truth of science or humanity. Every human life was
intended to be some thought of God incarnate. The question
is, Will we let him express it?
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
239
Study XXI. The Issues of Obedience, (a) Knowledge
FOURTH DAY
The Relation of Obedience to Intuition and Mental Growth
[Dan. 12 10] ; I Cor. 1 5"7; Col. 1 9; Luke 2 47' 49, 21 15;
Acts 6 10; James 1 5"8.
I Peter 411; John 3 34, 5 30, 7 17; I John 2 20'27;
II Peter 1 21.
"It follows in the same manner that there is no genuine
character, no proper education which does not include re¬
ligion. Much indeed of what is called education is only a
power of deformity, a stimulus of overgrowth in the lower
functions of the spirit, as a creature of intelligence which
overlooks and leaves to wither, causes to wither, all the metro¬
politan powers of a great mind and character. The first
light of the mind is God, the only genuine heat is religion,
imaginative insight is kindled only by the fervors of holy
truth, all noblest breadth and volume are infolded in the
regal amplitude of God's eternity and kingdom, all grandest
energy and force in the impulsions of duty and the inspira¬
tions of faith. All training, separated from these, operates
even a shortening of faculty as truly as an increase. It is
a kind of gymnastic for the arm that paralyzes the spine.
It diminishes the quantity of the subject where all sovereign
quantity begins and increases it only in some lower point,
where it ends; as if building the trunk of a lighthouse staunch
and tall were enough without preparing any light and revolv¬
ing clock for the top. Hence it is that many scholars, most
bent down upon their tasks and digging most intently into
the supposed excellence, turn out, after all, to be so miserably
diminished in all that constitutes power. Hence also that
men of taste are so often attenuated by their refinements and
dwarfed by the overgrown accuracy and polish of their
attainments. No man is ever educated in due form, save
as being a man; that is, a creature related to God, and having
240
THE WILL OF GOD
all his highest summits of capacity unfolded by the great
thoughts, and greater sentiments and nobler inspirations of
religion."
Bushnell: The New Life, page 181.
"He [Jesus] never taught that the cultivation of the
understanding would do all but exactly the reverse. And so
taught his apostles. St. Paul taught 'The world by wisdom
knew not God.' His Master said, not that clear intellect will
give you a right life, but that a right heart and a pure life
will clarify the intellect. Not, become a man of letters and
learning and you will attain spiritual freedom; but do rightly
and you will judge justly; obey and you will know."
Robertson: Sermons, Second Series, No. VII. "Obedi¬
ence the Organ of Spiritual Knowledge."
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
241
Study XXI. The Issues of Obedience, (a) Knowledge
FIFTH DAY
The Marvelous Growth in Knowledge Possible to any Man Who
Obeys God's Will
John 8 31"34.
Why should not obedience free the mind for larger
things ? Does sin ever help to make a man more of a genius,
more brilliant intellectually? If so let us know what particu¬
lar form is helpful and all cultivate it assiduously. Let us
at once establish professorships of the particular form of sin
which leads to genius in our schools and universities. Does
impurity develop memory or imagination or taste and
delicacy of perception? Does dishonesty improve the power
of impartial judgment, or does selfishness help breadth of
vision? Does repression of one's sympathies—one's best self
—help power of observation or insight? Wherein does great¬
ness in literature and life lie if not in just those traits which
are the issues of purity of mind, honesty of judgment, un¬
selfishness of heart and pouring forth of soul?
24,2
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XXI. The Issues of Obedience, (a) Knowledge
SIXTH DAY
"If any Man Willeth to do His Will, he Shall Know"
John 7 11, 16 13.
If God is perfect knowledge (Prov. 2 6) and if sin clogs
the channel of our intercourse with him is it unreasonable to
suppose that if a man could clear his mind of the sensual,
remove the screens which deception, prejudice, anger, and
selfishness rear between him and truth, and awaken the torpor
of the soul; is it unreasonable to suppose that under such con¬
ditions revelations of higher truth—which are the marks of
true genius—might come to him as we are told that they came
to the prophets, to Jesus and the Apostles of old? At
least is it unreasonable to hold that they are more liable
to come to such a man than if his receiving instrument is
clogged and choked? Such a way of arriving at the truth
does not minimize the intellectual. It requires hard work of
the mind and of the will as well.
"Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strong¬
est manner the great truth which is embodied in the Chris¬
tian conception of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit
down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up
every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to
whatever abysses nature leads or you shall learn nothing."
Huxley: Life and Letters, Vol. I, page 235.
"Masaccio can by no means be taken as a fair instance
of the painters of his age. Gifted with exceptional powers
he overleaped the difficulties of his art, and arrived intuitively
at results whereof as yet no scientific certainty had been se¬
cured. His contemporaries applied humbler talents to severe
study and wrought out by patient industry those principles
which Masaccio had divined."
Symonds: Renaissance in Italy. III.—The Fine Arts,
page 231.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
243
"But his [Drummond's] discoveries were always derived
from intuition rather than from reason, and although we can
only speak from the lay point of view, we may suggest that
evolutionists may in time, by laborious work, reach the point
which Drummond attained without being well able to say how
he got there."
Lennox: Practical Life Work of Henry Drummond,
page 172.
SEVENTH DAY—REVIEW
1. Is true vision from God ever possible without an act
of the human will and earnest work to realize it?
STUDY
The Issues of Obedience (continued)—B. Protection from Harm and
Provision for All Needs
"And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that
kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But
I warn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, who after he hath killed
hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him. Are
not five sparrows sold for two pence? and not one of them is for¬
gotten in the sight of God. But the very hairs of your head are
all numbered. Fear not: ye are of more value than many sparrows."
"But seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness, and all
"Jesus answered him, Thou wouldest have no power against me
"Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and
killed them, think ye that they were offenders above all the men
that dwell in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but except ye repent, ye
—Luke 12:4-7.
these things shall be added unto you."
—Matt. 6: 33.
except it were given thee from above."
—John 19:11.
shall all likewise perish."
—Luke 13:4,5.
"For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall both live,
and do this or that." —James 4:15.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Harnack. What is Christianity? pages 72-76.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
247
Study XXII. The Issues of Obedience, (b) Protection and Provision
FIRST DAY
The Indifference of Jesus to Earthly Privations, Opposition and Physi¬
cal Danger
Mark 435-41; Matt. 619"34; Luke 429'30, 13 s1"33; John
7 6"9, 11 8' 9, 12 33, 13 % 17 \
See Speer, The Man Christ Jesus, pages 53-57, 62-67,
94-99-
What was the attitude of Jesus toward opposition? mis¬
representation ? popular opinion ?
Did he disregard the formal conditions of success?
On what supposition only can this be explained?
Did he ever alter plans or purposes?
What was his attitude toward his own death?
248
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XXII. The Issues of Obedience, (b) Protection and Provision
SECOND DAY
No Life That Stands for any Real Principle can Expect to Escape
Privation, Opposition and often Physical Peril in This Life
Phil. 1 29; Matt. 5 "• 12, 10 22, 24 9; Acts 20 19> 22"24.
Heb. 210, 10 32"39, 13 12; I Peter 317, 414; Rev. 713'17;
John 7 7.
No true man can expect to pass through the world without
encountering privation, opposition and often physical peril
for the sake of principle. Jesus told his disciples, "Woe
unto you when all men shall speak well of you," and the
apostolic teaching reiterated the same idea when it asserted
that as many as live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer per¬
secution. Reproduction and growth are only possible in the
physical world through sacrifice and suffering. The same
principle holds true in the mental, social and spiritual realms.
We have, of course, no right to deliberately court privation,
opposition and physical peril when no essential principle is at
stake (Acts 21 17*26). We are to remember, too, that these
things are a part of the world order and come to Christians
and non-Christians alike, and that they are only unendurable
when one has to endure them alone without God's help. As
a part of his plan, these things are a benediction and a joy
(Matt, 5 »•
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
249
Study XXn. The Issues of Obedience, (b) Protection and Provision
THIRD DAY
What are Privation, Suffering and Death P
John 13—17.
See Charles Cuthbert Hall, Does God Send Trouble?
See Lyman Abbott, The Other Room.
See Robert E. Speer, Marks of a Man, page 34.
Read through these chapters of John and collect all the
phrases Jesus uses for his approaching death, and then study
Jesus' idea of death.
"On either hand [of life] we behold a birth, of which, as
of the moon, we see but half. We are outside the one, wait¬
ing for a life from the unknown; we are inside the other,
watching the departure of a spirit from the womb of the
world into the unknown. To the region whither he goes, the
man enters newly born. We forget that it is a birth, and
call it a death. The body he leaves behind is but the placenta
by which h6 drew his nourishment from his mother Earth.
And as the childbed is watched on earth with anxious expec¬
tancy, so the couch of the dying, as we call them, may be
surrounded by the birth-watchers of the other world, waiting
like anxious servants to open the door to which this world
is but the wind-blown porch."
Macdonald: Robert Falconer, page 388.
250
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XXII. The Issues of Obedience, (b) Protection and Provision
FOURTH DAY
God's Promise of Provision for Our Needs and of Protection from
Harm does not Exclude Privation, Suffering or Death if His Plan
for the World Requires such Sacrifice on Our Part. But He
Promises Us that if We Entrust Our Lives Unreservedly to Him,
such Things Will Only Come to Us as a Part of His Plan and
that We Shall be Amply Provided for and Protected in the Path
of Obedience in all Other Instances
I Thess. 3 3; I Cor. 49; II Cor. 4"; Rom. 8 28, 148;
Phil. 1 12> 13.
II Tim. 3 10"12, 4 6> 17> 18; Luke 10 19; Acts 18 9- 10, 22 l7' 18.
Heb. 11 32"36, 13 5- 6; I Peter 4 19; John 10 29.
God's dispensations of provision for needs and protec¬
tion are not to all men. He does not force even these upon
men unless they wish to have them (Luke 13 1"5). It is not
true that all things work together for good for all men. Paul
never said that. He said that to them that love God all things
work together for good, even to them that are called accord¬
ing to his purpose. If a man prefers to live his own life
alone, apart from God, God grants him the same opportunities
from which to make a happy life as he grants his own fol¬
lowers (Matt. 5 45). If, however, man allows God to direct
his life unreservedly there is another element which enters in.
"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow
me My Father, who hath given them unto me, is
greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the
Father's hand Thou wouldst have no power against
me, except it were given thee from above."
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
251
Study XXII. The Issues of Obedience, (b) Protection and Provision
FIFTH DAY
The Relation of Obedience to Escape from Peril and Provision for
Our Needs
II Cor. 1 Mark 10 28'31; Luke 13 1"9; Acts 22 17"21.
II Tim. 4> 18.
When a man surrenders his life unconditionally to God
he, for the first time, makes it possible for God to provide for
his needs or save him from possible peril, if such be God's
will, inasmuch as . provision and protection not only pre¬
suppose the act of the giver but also acceptance by the re¬
ceiver. Since God forces no man against his will, before the
dedication of lives to him there is no assurance that the indi¬
vidual will let God act in a given case—the channel of com¬
munication being now open, now closed. After the dedication
the truly surrendered man has made a contract with God to be
always pure, always honest, always unselfish, always loving in
deeds of self-expression; he may fail now and then, but he
corrects his mistake as soon as he realizes it and presses on, so
the channel is always open. Through compelling convictions
of purity, honesty, unselfishness or service, which his vow
requires him to translate at once into action, he can now be
led into fields of provision and out of paths of danger. Jesus
teaches plainly several truths regarding this great subject in
Luke 13 1~9. (1) Accidents and calamities are not visitations
of divine justice to punish sinners. (2) When a building falls
it falls alike upon the morally good and the morally bad who
are under it. (3) But if a man has put himself in God's
hands, God makes provision that he shall not be in that build¬
ing unless the plan of God required his sacrifice there (John
1911).
What I mean is this. If a building is about to fall as a
sure consequence of the great invariable laws of nature which
God created and which he knows, he can detain me from going
under it as I might naturally have done through some appeal
252
THE WILL OF GOD
to my purity, honesty, unselfishness or love, which coming as
an interruption halts or detains me before I reach the place.
If God can always count on what I will do at any moment,
why cannot he lead me into any fields of provision or out of
any path of danger at any time, perhaps even unconsciously
on my part? Is not the variableness of the human will the
only thing that stands in the way of a rational system of pro¬
vision and protection, once granted that God can communi¬
cate with men?
I like to continue in fancy the story of the Good Samari¬
tan. I like to think that after the robbers had finished with
their victim and left him by the roadside they went on a few
miles and lay in wait for other travelers. The priest and the
Levite came by, and the warning from God that would have
saved them from the possibility of peril in the shape of the
appeal to their unselfishness and love to help the injured man
and take him back to the inn was unheeded. They went on
and were robbed. But the Samaritan turned aside at the
appeal to his unselfishness—the compelling conviction that
he ought to stop and help. Thus he was saved from the trap
laid for him though he never knew that danger lurked ahead.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
253
Study XXII. The Issues of Obedience, (b) Protection and Provision
SIXTH DAY
" Fear Not, Ye are of More Value than Many Sparrows"
Mark 6 8' 9.
Why, then, should we ever be worried or afraid in the
path of obedience? May it not be, nay, must it not be that a
path is prepared for each one of us through life where every
necessary provision is made for our needs, where harm abso¬
lutely cannot enter if we will but walk in it—a charmed life,
if you will—as long as God wishes it to last ?
"When I went to Europe thirty years ago for a two
years' absence and left you a little fellow of three months
with your mother, I never felt any anxiety about myself or my
family, for it seemed to me a part of God's plan for me and
mine. And I knew He would care for us. So I feel now
about you and yours."
A Father's Steamer Letter, August 27, '07.
"But why fear at all? If we keep spending ourselves
for the general good, fear has no place. God will take care
not to lose his partner."
Patton : New Basis of Civilization.
254
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XXII. The Issues of Obedience, (b) Protection and Provision
SEVENTH DAY—REVIEW
1. What is the fundamental difference between Jesus'
doctrine of protection and fatalism?
2. Which recognizes a human side to the question—an
act of will?
3. If you like Paul were to be put in prison unjustly, in
the prime of life, as he was in Caesarea, would you doubt God's
fairness and goodness?
STUDY XXIII
The Issues of Obedience—C. Assurance as to One's Duty and Power
to Achieve Results
"He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also;
and greater works than these shall he do; because I go to the
Father." —John 14:12.
"And this is the boldness which we have toward him, that, if
we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us."
—I John 5:14.
"So then, my beloved, even as ye have always obeyed, not as in
my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out
your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who work-
eth in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure."
—Phil. 2:12,13.
"God also bearing witness with them, both by signs and wonders,
and by manifold powers, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit, according
to his own will." —Heb. 2:4•
"If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask what¬
soever ye will, and it shall be done unto you." —John 15: 7,
"For as through the one man's disobedience the many were
made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the
many be made righteous." —Rom. 5:19.
"And such confidence have we through Christ to God-ward:
not that we are sufficient of ourselves: .... but our sufficiency is
from God." —II Cor. 3:4,5.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Moody. Secret Power.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
257
Study XXIII. The Issues of Obedience, (c) Assurance and Power
FIRST DAY
The Unfaltering Assurance and Mighty Achievements of Jesus
Gal. 1 3> *; Matt. 26 53; Luke 4 36, 9 20 2.
John 4 32> 34, 5 1T- 20-36, 8 14.
See Speer, The Man Christ Jesus, pages 28-40.
With what social disadvantages did Jesus enter upon his
work ?
What social conventions did he dare to disregard?
In what way were his plans revolutionary?
Did he finish his work?
What social and political changes in history can be
traced to his influence?
25 8
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XXIII. The Issues of Obedience, (c) Assurance and Power
SECOND DAY
Assurance and Sure Conviction as to Duty, the Prerequisites for all
Great Achievements, Possible to Those Who Obey
I Thess. I4-5; I Cor. I1; Col. 412; Eph. 312; Matt.
18 14; Acts 4 13.
The one essential for all successful work is conviction
that a man is in the right place. Just as surely as one doubts or
distrusts his mission his work fails. This assurance was the
secret of Paul's mighty achievements (I Cor. 1 1; Gal. 1 15* 16).
It is the key to Jesus' life (Luke 19 10; Matt. 18 14). Both
were lives with a definite purpose. Only when a man knows
that he is in his work called of God can he successfully over¬
come the difficulties and face the disappointments that always
accompany a great task. If a man is God's represen¬
tative and knows that he is obeying orders he dares go
ahead since the responsibility for the result lies not with him
but with God,
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
259
Study XXIII. The Issues of Obedience, (c) Assurance and Power
THIRD DAY
The Infinite Possibilities of Achievement of Which Man is Capable
Rev. 14 1S.
"Only a few years ago he [man] lay in his cradle, a
barely breathing principle of life He conquers now
the sea and its storms. He climbs the heavens and searches
out the mysteries of the stars. He harnesses the lightning. He
bids the rocks dissolve and summons the secret atoms to give
up their names and laws. He subdues the face of the world
and compels the forces of the waters and the fires to be his
servants. He makes laws, hurls empires down upon empires
in the fields of war, speaks words that cannot die, sings to
distant realms and peoples across vast ages of time: in a word,
he executes all that is included in history, showing his tre¬
mendous energy in almost everything that stirs the silence and
changes the conditions of the world. Everything is trans¬
formed by him even up to the stars. Not all the winds and
storms and earthquakes and seas and seasons of the world
have done so much to revolutionize the world as he, the power
of an endless life, has done since the day he came forth upon
it and received, as he is most truly declared to have done,
dominion over it And yet we have in the power thus
developed, nothing more than a mere hint or initial sign of
what is to be the real stature of his personality in the process
of his everlasting development."
Bushnell: The New Life, pages 809, 310.
260
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XXm. The Issues of Obedience, (c) Assurance and Power
FOURTH DAY
"The Strength Which God Supplieth"
[Isaiah 40 28"31] ; II Cor. 517; Eph. 1 17> 18> 19; Phil.
4 13, 19~
I Tim. 1 12; II Tim. 1 7; Matt. 4 4; Luke 1 49.
Acts 1 8, 26 22; I Peter 4 11; John 4 32"34.
Spend this day's study on a careful consideration of all
the Scripture passages given above. How does this strength
make itself felt and what is its source? To what extent may
it be called upon?
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
261
Study XXin. The Issues of Obedience, (c) Assurance and Power
FIFTH DAY
The Relation of Obedience to Assurance and Achievement
[Lev. 26 3- 8] ; II Cor. 12 9' 10, 13 8; Rom. 5 19; Col. 1 29;
Mark 9 ® 10 29> 30, 11 23; Matt. 21 21"^22; Luke 6 47"49. ~
John 15 5; I John 4 17> 18, 5 4.
"The world has yet to see what God can accomplish
through a man who will give himself up wholly to His will."
"He that hath clean hands shall wax stronger and
stronger."
In an actual physical contest the bully with big muscles
and a knowledge that he is in the wrong is no match for the
man with average muscles and truth on his side.
"They therefore can who will what ought to be."
Leonardo da Vinci.
"The ordinary man who wills to have a mind freed from
the shackles of impure imagery, an eye that looks at things
squarely and brooks deception neither of self nor of others, a
hand that will not spare itself in work, and a heart that will
express without reserve its honest convictions and genuine
affections, will often even in this earthly life outstrip the
brilliant genius, who though starting far ahead in the race
because of inherited gifts, is shackled and ultimately over¬
thrown by impurity, dishonesty, selfishness or atrophy of
heart. And who can doubt the ultimate result when we enter
upon real living when these days of preparations and layings
of foundations are over."
A Life with a Purpose, pages 2If., 25.
262
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XXIII. The Issues of Obedience, (c) Assurance and Power
SIXTH DAY
"He (i. e. any Man) That Believeth in Me Greater Works
than These Shall He Do"
John 14 12.
What are the limits of the work I might accomplish in
this brief life if I could lay hold on the strength which God
supplieth? Is it possible that God has a plan already pre¬
pared, conditional only upon my acceptance of it, to use me,
weak as I am, for some mighty task here or to prepare me for
some mightier service in the next world?
"We may not be able today to think Plato's thought,
create Shakespeare's Hamlet or live with the moral sublimity
of Lincoln, but give us eternity and infinite opportunity and
there is no limit to our possible growth in these directions."
Griggs: Moral Education, page 23.
SEVENTH DAY—REVIEW
1. What is finished work?
2. Is it to be judged by quality or quantity?
S. Has a young man who dies at the age of seventeen
finished his work?
4. Is any work finished, no matter how complete it may
be, that is not pure, honest, unselfish or the fullest expres¬
sion of one's self?
STUDY XXIV
The Issues of Obedience—D. Constant Companionship
"For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother,
and sister, and mother." —Mark 3:85.
"If a man love me, he will keep my word: and my Father will
love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him."
—John 1^:23.
"But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to be¬
come children of God, even to them that believe on his name: who
were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will
of man, but of God." —John 1:12,13.
"The friendship of Jehovah is with them that fear him; and he
will shew them his covenant." —Psalm 25:1^.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abbott, Lyman. The Great Companion.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
265
Study XXTV. The Issues of Obedience, (d) Constant Companionship
FIRST DAY
The Constant Fellowship of Jesus with God
John 5 20, 8 16> 29> 54' 55, 10 30- 38, 16 32.
See Speer, Principles of Jesus, Chapter I.—"Jesus and
the Father."
What names does Jesus use for God?
Was his fellowship with God real? On what occasions
did he address him as a person? Was he ever without the
sense of God's presence?
266
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XXTV* The Issues of Obedience, (d) Constant Companionship
SECOND DAY
Man is a Social Being Who can only Exist in Society
Mark 15 34; Luke 23 4S.
"The next tiling that the ideal man needs is society. Man
is not made to be alone. He needs friendships. Without so¬
ciety the ideal man would'be a monster, a contradiction. You
must give him friendship. Now whom will you give him?"
Drummond: The Ideal Life, page 23J/..
"No statements about God can satisfy the soul in this its
quest after God. Nothing can take the place of the personal
finding of him; personal communion with him; personal friend¬
ship with him Nothing can satisfy the quest after
God except God himself. We must come to know him as
Abraham knew him, as David knew him, as Isaiah knew him,
as Paul knew him, or our quest will never be satisfied. 'O that
I knew where I might find him!' is the cry of humanity, and
only God himself can satisfy it."
Abbott: The Great Companion, pages 2J/., 26.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
267
Study XXIV. The Issues of Obedience, (d) Constant Companionship
THIRD DAY
Loneliness or Isolation Impossible to the Surrendered Life even though
it be Deserted by all Earthly Friends
II Cor. 4 9> 16"18; Rom. 8 38> 39; II Tim. 4 16> 17; Mark 6 48.
John 1418' 21'23, 15 15, 16 32.
The reason why true Christians have always been able to
accomplish so much under the most difficult conditions and in
the most lonely spots is that they are never in reality alone.
An isolated Christian is an impossibility even in solitary con¬
finement. He has always the companionship of another per¬
sonality—God.
FOURTH DAY
"For Whosoever Shall do the Will of My Father Who is in Heaven,
He is My Brother, and Sister, and Mother"
Matt. 12 50.
"Yes, my brother, and my sister, and my mother
Some young man here is suffering fierce temptation. Today
he feels strong but tomorrow his Sabbath resolutions will
desert him. What will his companions say if he does not
join them? He cannot face them if he is to play the Christian.
Companions! What are all the companions in the world to
this? What are all the friendships, the truest and the best,
to the dear and sacred brotherhood of Christ? 'He that
doeth the will of my Father the same is my brother.' "
Drummond: The Ideal Life, pages 235, 286.
268
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XXIV. The Issues of Obedience, (d) Constant Companionship
FIFTH DAY
The Relation of Obedience to Fellowship with God
Rev. 3 20; John 12 26 ; I John 1 s- 6' 7, 2 4.
Purity. Matt. 5 8.
Honesty. Rev. 22 1B.
Unselfishness. Heb. 12 14.
Love. Matt. 25 41-46; I John 4 12.
"Study yesterday in order to learn wisdom for tomorrow,
but when the lesson has been learned study it no longer. We
ought to learn wisdom from our mistakes; we ought to acquire
virtues from our sins. Why this act of folly which we lament?
Spend no time in repining; but spend all the time that is
necessary in order to learn its lesson. Was it due to vanity?
or greed? or appetite? or self-conceit? or a weak and way¬
ward will? Find out. Then be on guard against the same
enemy to your honor when he attacks you at a new point and
under new circumstances. We all make mistakes; we all com¬
mit transgressions. But we ought not to repeat the same
mistakes—that is to blunder; we ought not to commit the same
transgressions—that is doubly dishonorable. Forget the
things which are behind, and stretch forward to the things
which are before No man ought to allow the memory
of the past to prevent his peace and joy in present fellowship
with God."
Abbott: The Great Companion, pages 137-139.
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
269
Study XXIV. The Issues of Obedience, (d) Constant Companionship
SIXTH DAY
"Lo, I am with You Alway"
Matt. 18 20, 28 20; I John 1 3.
What a motive to the highest and noblest in life this
promise is! We are never alone. Is this too great a thought
for me to realize—Jesus by my side as I write, in the lecture
room with me tomorrow, on the train as I journey alone?
"This is the value of those quiet hours which the night
sometimes affords us. Insomnia has lost its dread since I
learned the meaning of the Psalmist's declaration: 'My mouth
shall praise thee with joyful lips when I remember thee upon
my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches.' The
man who spends his sleepless hours in such remembrance makes
them joyful hours. He does not lie tossing to and fro, won¬
dering whether he shall ever fall asleep again, anxious lest he
shall prove unfitted for the morrow's duties, trying to put
himself to sleep by endless combinations of numbers or by
repeating senseless rhymes: he lies restfully and reads in the
book of his remembrance the record of his Father's love, or
looks calmly at the morrow's duties or the morrow's perils
because he looks at them through his Father's eyes, or com¬
munes with his own heart and in its uninterpretable experi¬
ences hears the voice of his Father, or simply is still and
knows that God is God."
Abbott: The Great Companion, pages 157, 158.
270 THE WILL OF GOD
Study XXIV. The Issues of Obedience, (d) Constant Companionship
SEVENTH DAY—REVIEW
1. Does God reveal himself to mankind today in the same
way as before the incarnation ?
2. What is the meaning of John 20 29 ?
3. What passages in Paul's letters attest a living fellow¬
ship with God?
STUDY
The Issues of Obedience—E. Eternal Life
"And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that
doeth the will of God abideth forever." —I John 2:17.
"Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into
the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father
who is in heaven." —Matt. 7:21.
"And this is the will of him that sent me, that of all that which
he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the
last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone that
beholdeth the Son, and believeth on him, should have eternal life;
and I will raise him up at the last day." —John 6:39,40.
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my word, he
shall never see death." —John 8:51.
"He that soweth unto the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap eternal
life." —Gal. 6:8.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bushmll. The New Life. XVI.—"The Power of an Endless
Life."
Abbott, Lyman. The Other Room.
A MAN'S LIFEWOEK
273
Study XXV. The Issues of Obedience, (e) Eternal Life
FIRST DAY
The Power of an Endless Life
Rom. 6 23; Heb. 2 14-15, 7 10.
"The difference between the mortal and immortal life is
not made by death. The immortal life is the life which pain,
sickness, and death cannot terminate. It is the life of faith,
of hope, of love. Such life is immortal life, because mortality
cannot touch it. The body is always dying; it is in an ever-
perpetual process of decay; but the spirit of faith, hope, and
love is in no process of decay; it is not mortal. It is eternal
because it stands in no time-relation Christ was as
immortal when hanging apparently helpless on the cross as
when he rose from the tomb."
Abbott: The Other Room, pages 99, 100.
274
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XXV. The Issues of Obedience, (e) Eternal Life
SECOND DAY
Eternal Life may Begin Here and Now on This Earth through the
Act of Obedience
Rom. 6 4' 8- "• 13; I Tim. 6 12' 19; II Tim. 1 10.
Luke 10 20, 17 21; Heb. 11 5, 12 % 13 14; Rev. 21 3.
John 3 14.157^736^ 4>U} 5 24-40^ g 54-57, j Q 27, 28^
U 25, 26 ^ 3. J John g 25^ g M 5 11, 12, 20_
"Not all men wish for immortality. They wish to live
forever, but living forever is not immortality. Immortality
is living the life that cannot die, because it is the life of the
spirit. If we wish to believe in such a life as a life hereafter,
we must believe in it as the life worth living here; if we wish
to possess it hereafter, we must wish to possess it here. Do
we? .... If I would have a right to the tree of life, if I
would have a right to know that there is a tree of life, I must
seek this immortal life here, and seek it from the God who is
here, and seek it through the channel that he opens for us.
. ... If we are to pluck the fruit from the tree of life,
we must have a right to it. If we would have a rational
hope in life hereafter, we must have the immortal life here.
To have faith in immortality we must practice immortality."
Abbott: Ibid,, pages 101-107 (passim).
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
275
Study XXV. The Issues of Obedience, (e) Eternal Life
THIRD DAY
The Evidences of Eternal Life Which We may Enjoy through
Obedience Here and Now (Rom. 14: 17). (a) The Freedom of
Righteousness
Gal. 24> 51'13; I Cor. 10 29; II Cor. 3 17; Rom. 8 2> 21,
14 17.
James 1 25, 2 12; I Peter 2 15' 16; John 8 31' 32' 36; I John
4 17> 18.
Study carefully the Scripture passages given for this
day's study, grouping your results under the heads of—
(a) The exact meaning of Freedom.
(b) How is it to be obtained?
(c) The results of its possession on the individual.
276
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XXV. The Issues of Obedience, (e) Eternal Life
FOURTH DAY
The Evidences of Eternal Life Which We may Enjoy through
Obedience Here and Now (Rom. 14: 17). (b) Joy
Rom. 14 17; Matt. 6 22; Acts 2 48* 47.
Heb. 1 9; I Peter 1 8; John 15 16 2°-24, 17 13.
I John 1 4.
(Follow directions under Third Day substituting "Joy"
for "Freedom.")
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
277
Study XXV. The Issues of Obedience, (e) Eternal Life
FIFTH DAY
The Evidences of Eternal Life Which We may Enjoy through
Obedience Here and Now (Rom. 14: 17). (c) Peace
I Cor. 7 15b; Rom. 5 1, 8 e, 14 1T; Luke 2 14, 19 41' 42.
Acts S 19, 9 31b; John 14 27, 16 33.
(Follow directions under Third Day, substituting "Peace"
for "Freedom.")
278
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XXV. The Issues of Obedience, (e) Eternal Life
SIXTH DAY
"He That Doeth the Will of God Abideth Forever"
I John 2 17.
Can we even faintly grasp the full meaning of these
words, "He that doeth the will of God abideth forever"?
Abideth how? In infinite knowledge, with infinite provision
made for all wants, with infinite power to achieve and op¬
portunity for development, in everlasting companionship, in
perfect freedom, perfect joy, perfect peace.
No man, who through the deliberate act of surrender of
the human will to absolute standards of purity, honesty, un¬
selfishness and love, has once felt the coursing of these im¬
mortal powers in his spirit can ever after find any experi¬
ence of this new life tame or commonplace.
Why should we hesitate to make the act of enlistment or
surrender complete? Just the other side of complete sur¬
render is God and the power of an endless life.
"Laid on thine altar, O my Lord divine,
Accept this gift today for Jesus' sake:
I have no jewels to adorn thy shrine,
No far-famed sacrifice to make;
But here within my trembling hand I bring
This will of mine—a thing that seemeth small.
But thou alone, O Lord, canst understand
How when I yield thee this, I yield mine all.
"Hidden within, thy searching gaze can see
Struggles of passion, visions of delight,
All that I have or am or fain would be—
Deep loves, fond hopes and longings infinite.
It has been wet with tears and hushed with sighs,
Crushed in my grasp till beauty it hath none;
Now from thy footstool where it vanquished lies,
The prayer ascendeth, 'May thy will be done.'
A MAN'S LIFEWORK
279
"Take it, O Father, ere my courage fail,
And merge it so in thine own will, that e'en
If in some desperate hour my cries prevail
And thou give back my gift it may have been
So changed, so purified, so fair have grown,
So one with thee, so filled with grace divine,
I may not feel or know it as my own,
But, gaining back my will, may find it thine."
THE WILL OF GOD
Study XXV. The Issues of Obedience, (e) Eternal Life
SEVENTH DAY—CONCLUSION
"Now the God of peace, who brought again from the
dead the great shepherd of the sheep with the blood of an
eternal covenant, even our Lord Jesus, make you perfect in
every good thing to do his will, working in us that which is
well-pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom
be the glory, forever and ever. Amen."
—Hebrews 13:20,21.
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