Five Young Men Part 4

If any man will seek for moral renewal at the hands of G.o.d he will find. If he will knock at any one of these doors it will open. Here is the Gospel as it stands recorded on the pages of the Old Testament--"The spirit of the Lord shall come upon thee and thou shall be turned into another man." Here is the same Gospel as it stands recorded on the pages of the New Testament--"If any man is in Christ he is a new creature. Old things are pa.s.sed away and all things are become new."

In the joy of moral renewal this well-born, well-reared, well-trained young man gave himself in eager consecration to the highest he saw. "I heard the voice of the Lord say, Whom shall I send? Who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I, send me."

His nation, now robbed of its great king by the hand of disease, was facing a crisis. The national church to which he belonged was steeped in formalism and insincerity. The divine voice was uttering a heartfelt lament over the unfaithfulness of the chosen people. "Israel doth not know! My people do not think. The whole head is sick and the whole heart is faint."

There was a loud cry for men of large build with wise heads and sound hearts to furnish moral leadership. And in the face of that demand this son of good fortune did not allow the divine spirit to go out into the highways and hedges in order to compel some sort of man, any sort of man, to come in that the ranks might be filled. He answered to his name with a clear-cut consecration of himself. "Here am I, send me."

When war comes to any country, there are rich men who give money, millions of it, that the war chest may be full. There are great manufacturers who promptly place their plants at the disposal of the government for the making of munitions. There are ship owners who turn over their vessels to the Navy that they may be sent to do business in the great waters of national defense. There are wise men who think hard upon the problems of finance and statecraft that they may provide that counsel which is more precious than rubies. All this is in the highest degree praiseworthy.

But the only men who give what Lincoln called at Gettysburg "the last full measure of devotion" are the men who give themselves. These men do not go on horseback nor in automobiles. They walk. They eat the hardtack. They sleep on the ground. They dig the trenches and fight in them. They march out at the word of command to be shot at. They keep right on doing those plain things until the war is ended and victory achieved. These are the men who awaken our warmest feeling of admiration and grat.i.tude. "Here am I, send me"--nothing can take the place of that!

In that sterner war where there is no discharge, in that age-long, world-wide fight against the evils of earth this same sound principle holds. Money is needed; counsel is needed; organization and administrative ability are needed. The bringing in of that kingdom which is not meat and drink, nor shot and sh.e.l.l, but righteousness and peace and joy in the divine spirit, requires all these fine forms of effort. But nothing can ever take the place of that personal consecration of each man's own soul to the service of the living G.o.d.

In that high hour when Isaiah saw the G.o.d of things as they are, high and lifted up, sitting on His throne, he did not say, "Here are any number of fine people, send them. Here is a man who could perform the task better than I--send him." He said what every man must say who means to stand right in the Day of Judgment, "Here am I, send me."

He was the son of good fortune, and his life was bright and rich with many an advantage. But this did not prompt him to claim any sort of exemption from the call for volunteers. His vision of the awful difference between the earthly majesty of that king who sank so swiftly into a leper's grave and the heavenly majesty which rose above it sovereign and eternal, made him feel that nothing would suffice but the gift of himself.

What shall it profit a man, this man, that man, any man, to gain the largest measure of earthly success you may choose to name, if in the process he loses himself, his real self, his best self, his enduring self? What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, but feels within himself a capacity for higher things unrealized? In the great outcome nothing really matters save the devotion of the personal life to the highest ends.

In the year 1840 near the city of Louvain a child was born, who came of good stuff. He was educated for a business career, and there in prosperous little Belgium the outlook at that time for wealth, for social position, and for a life of joy was very bright. But at the age of eighteen this boy offered himself for the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church. He joined the Society of the Sacred Heart. He went out to the Hawaiian Islands as a missionary and was ordained as a priest in the city of Honolulu.

He was at once impressed with the sad condition of the leper settlement on the island of Molokai. He resolved to give his life to those poor, diseased, horror-stricken people. He knew that to live among them would mean banishment from his ordinary a.s.sociations and the loss of all possible preferment in the church. He knew that he might himself contract that terrible disease and suffer a lingering, painful, frightful death. "No matter," he cried, "I am going." And he went.

He not only preached to those lepers the Gospel of the Son of G.o.d and ministered to them in spiritual things--his own labours and his appeals to the Hawaiian government secured for them better dwellings, an improved water supply, and a more generous provisioning of the unhappy settlement. For five years he worked alone, but for the occasional a.s.sistance of a priest who came to the colony for a single day. He finally succ.u.mbed to the dread disease of leprosy and in his forty-ninth year died a martyr to humane devotion. His name was Father Damien, and he shed fresh l.u.s.ter upon the Christian ministry.

The young man who was born to the purple, called now to be a prophet of G.o.d, seized upon the vital elements of religion and uttered them with power. "What does it mean to be religious?" men were asking. Some of the dull, blind priests of that day were saying, "It means sacrifice and burnt offering. It means the careful and showy observance of the forms of worship." Israel did not know; the people did not think.

Then this young prophet gave them the word of G.o.d with an edge on it.

He showed them the folly of all those outward signs of devotion apart from the inward spirit of righteousness. "To what purpose is the mult.i.tude of your sacrifices? Who hath required this at your hands?

When you spread forth your hands I will hide my eyes. When you make many prayers I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean. Put away the evil of your doings. Cease to do evil, learn to do well. Then though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow."

"Salvation by righteousness--this is the message of the Old Testament,"

Matthew Arnold used to say. "Righteousness through Jesus Christ," this is the message of the New Testament! And this nineteenth century man of letters was but echoing the words which fell from the lips of those prophets in the eighth century before Christ.

"Wherewith shall I come before the Lord?" said Micah. "Will the Lord be pleased with a thousand rams or with ten thousand rivers of oil? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy G.o.d."

"Seek justice," Isaiah said; "relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. If ye be willing and obedient ye shall eat the good of the land. If ye refuse and rebel ye shall be devoured." This was the heart of his message. It was the call of G.o.d to personal righteousness.

He represents the Almighty as sitting upon the throne of the universe, summoning His people into friendly conference with Him. "Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord." Religion is not a thing of magic.

There is no sleight-of-hand or hocus-pocus in the benefits it seeks to confer. Religion is rational and moral. It is a reasoned form of intercourse between an intelligent and moral being who is finite and the Intelligent and Moral Being who is Infinite. Its benefits are to be realized in that direct impress of the spirit of G.o.d upon the soul of the man who has made an intelligent and honest approach to his Maker.

The young prophet saw his country threatened with disaster from both sides. He saw upon the south the selfish and cruel designs of Egypt.

He saw the encroachments of mighty a.s.syria from the north. He saw the madness of those Israelites who thought they could combine wickedness and worship, the observance of religious forms with lives of moral unconcern. And in that hour the truths he lifted before them were "The majesty and authority of G.o.d, the everlasting obligation of personal righteousness, the certainty of the ultimate triumph of G.o.d's Kingdom over the wrath of man." These were the mighty truths by which he sought to inspire the hearts of men to do their duty, come what might.

Have we not great need at this very hour of just such men! It has been given to you and to me to live through one of the great, searching crises of human history. The world has never seen a struggle so gigantic. We have been patient for more than two years with a certain nation across the sea--patient clear up to the border of what has seemed to some of our neighbours like a lazy acquiescence in lawlessness. We have seen that nation referring contemptuously to her own treaties as mere sc.r.a.ps of paper, and then openly disregarding her solemn obligations.

We saw the outrage perpetrated upon Belgium, an outrage which men who know their histories better than I know mine are saying will go down as the greatest crime in the annals of the race. We saw the drowning of hundreds of helpless women and children in the sinking of the _Lusitania_ without warning and in flat defiance of international law.

We saw the judicial murder of women like Edith Cavell and of men like Captain Fryatt. We have seen the Zeppelins engaged in the dastardly business of hurling down bombs upon unfortified towns for the killing of old women and little children--heretofore when decent nations have gone to war men have fought with men. We have seen thousands of helpless Armenians butchered by the Moslem allies of that so-called Christian power,--it is all but universally believed, with its own connivance and under its direction. We have witnessed a frightful record of brutality and outrage, investigated and established by the competent testimony of such men as James Bryce and Cardinal Mercier.

We have seen the sinking of hospital ships loaded with wounded men and the sinking of relief ships carrying provisions to the famine-stricken children of Belgium, no matter what flag they flew, or what cargo they bore.

We have had our own rights as a neutral trampled upon by that government with the arrogant a.s.sumption that her necessities knew no law. And now to crown it all we have detected the official representatives of that country with protests of friendship upon their false lips actually plotting with Mexico and seeking to extend that plot to j.a.pan with the unholy purpose of destroying the peace between this country and its neighbours.

The men of our country who have red blood in their veins and the sense of justice in their hearts are saying, "How long, O Lord, how long!"

War is a terrible thing and no honest man ever speaks lightly of war.

But there are things which are worse than war. The loss of all capacity for moral indignation is worse. The easy, lazy, cowardly acquiescence in lawlessness and crime is worse. The loss of the readiness to sacrifice one's very life, if need be, for those ends which are just and right, is infinitely worse.

There are interests which are worth fighting for and, if need be, they are worth dying for. The sanct.i.ty of womanhood and the safety of little children, the security of those interests which are essential to human well-being and the protection of our homes, the honour and integrity of our country, and the maintenance of those majestic principles of righteousness which underlie all social advance--these ends are worth dying for. If these high ends can be secured by persuasion and moral appeal, well and good. But if they cannot, if their very existence is threatened by lawlessness and hate, then let men of sound mind and honest heart stand ready to do battle for the right.

In these hours of stress which have come upon our country, we have need of men who possess the necessary moral courage to stand forth and meet the crisis. There is a loud call everywhere for those who are prepared to face duty without flinching. It is for every man to say touching his own measure of ability, "Here am I, send me."

If the cause of democracy is not to fail in those hard years which will come at the close of this war, there is need not only of wise and honest leaders--there is need of ranks upon ranks of plain men who are ready to give their best strength to the service of that government which is "of the people, for the people, and by the people."

"O beautiful, my country, ours once more, What were our lives without thee; What all our lives to save thee.

We reck not what we give thee, We will not dare to doubt thee, But ask whatever else and we will dare."

V

The Young Man Who Changed the History of the World

Why do you write it 1917? "April 1, 1917," that was the way you wrote it this afternoon in your letter to her.

There was a time when it was not so. The Hebrews were dating their calendars from what they supposed to have been the period of the creation. The Romans reckoned their time from the founding of the city on the seven hills. The Greeks reckoned their time from the first Olympic games.

But to-day if you meet a Hebrew, or an Italian, or a Greek in any part of the world and ask him, "What year is it?" he will reply instantly, "Nineteen seventeen." It is just that long since a certain Child was born in Bethlehem of Judea.

How strange it is, when you come to think of it, that the birth of a child in an out-of-the-way village in Palestine should change the calendars of the world! We find in this commonplace fact a prophecy of His radical transforming power in every department of life. He was destined to take the moral government of the race upon His shoulder as none other ever has. He was to alter the flow of the spiritual currents in human society and ultimately to change the history of the world.

He did it all while He was still a young man. He was only thirty-three years old when they put Him to death upon the Cross. He had used thirty of those thirty-three years in quiet preparation for the great tasks which were to come. No wonder the three years of which we know so much were mighty when we think of the thirty years of preparation standing behind them! Ten years of training and discipline for one of public action! Ten days of study and devotion for one day of healing, redemptive effort! Ten hours of silence and prayer before G.o.d for one hour of speech in the ears of men!

He did it all in His youth and when He died at the age of thirty-three He did not look down and say, "I have failed because My life is cut off all too soon." He looked up and said, "I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do."

How marvellous was the life of this young man who changed the history of the world! If we could get away from the idea that He is a stained-gla.s.s window or a marble statue or a lovely story in a book which most men seldom read--if we could only see Him as He was, the Word made flesh, real, warm, alive, our hearts would leap.

He was born in the manger of a stable. He grew up in a carpenter's home and in a carpenter's shop. He never saw the inside of a college, yet somehow He learned to think straight and to speak as never man spake. He lived with the birds and the flowers, the trees, the hills and the stars. He thought deeply upon the interests and needs of men until He knew what was in man and needed not that any should tell Him--He told them. He looked up with pure eyes and a pure heart until He saw G.o.d. Therefore, when He spoke His word was with power; and when He lived His life was with power; and when He stretched forth His hand, His touch had healing in it.

His mind was exceedingly broad. He had never been outside the borders of His own little country, which is about the size of the State of New Hampshire. He had never seen the mighty cities in Egypt to the south of Him, nor Antioch in Syria to the north. He had never looked upon Athens nor upon Rome. The man who thinks Broadway, New York, is the center of the solar system would have called Him provincial. His feet knew nothing save the narrow streets of Jerusalem and the still narrower lanes of Galilee.

Yet He moved about with a dream of world-wide empire in His head and the vision of a Kingdom Everlasting in His heart. "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me." When He sent forth His disciples to do the work He had taught them to do, this is the way their commission read: "Go into all the world. Make disciples of all nations. Baptize everybody into My name and the name of the Father." He had courage--think of His standing there, a young peasant in little Palestine, talking about a world-wide empire over which He would rule by His own unseen spirit!

He found little in His environment to add strength to His hope. He lived under a government which was tyrannical and corrupt. The Jewish Church to which He belonged was formal and lifeless. He faced a society which was ruled by men like Herod, and by women like the shameless wife of Herod, who cut off a poor man's head for telling her the truth about herself. He saw the religious leaders of His day straining at gnats of difficulty in their formal worship and then swallowing camels of moral fault in their every-day conduct. The situation might well have frightened the boldest heart. It never frightened Him. "The spirit of the Lord is upon Me," He said at the beginning of His ministry, "because He hath anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He hath sent Me to bind up the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captive, and to set at liberty them that are bruised." And when He came to the close of His ministry, He said, "Behold, I make all things new, a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." He was undaunted.

He was an optimist. By that I do not mean one of those silly, short-sighted individuals who goes about saying, "Look always on the bright side." Jesus looked at both sides. He went about with His eyes open. He saw everything. He saw the struggle and the sorrow of human life and felt it as if it had been all His own. He looked upon the tired, sad, sin-stained face of the race. He knew it as He knew His own face, and He saw the heart of pain which had made it so. He was no schoolboy shouting himself hoa.r.s.e in a thoughtless enthusiasm which had never tested its strength against the graver difficulties of life. He saw it all, felt it all, understood it all, yet He lived and died in a great, sweet, serene hope for the race. You cannot find one hateful, cynical or despairing word falling from His lips.

He stood once where the shadow of the Cross was already drawing a black line across His path. He had twelve disciples to whom for the past two years He had given the best part of His time, His thought and His love.

One of them had already betrayed Him, bargaining away his poor measure of loyalty for thirty pieces of silver. In the next hour another disciple would deny Him three times over with an oath. Another would doubt Him straight in the face of all those pledges of genuineness which they had received at first hand. And when the hour of trial struck His disciples would all show themselves cowards and quitters.