Five Young Men Part 5

Even so, this young man did not despair. "Be of good cheer," He cried.

"I have overcome the world." He was speaking in antic.i.p.ation, but He was so sure of it that He used the past tense as of a thing accomplished. "I have overcome the world." He had kindled a fire which would never go out. He had lodged a bit of yeast in the heart of the race which would finally leaven the whole lump. He had saturated a few men with His ideas and spirit, and they would set in motion a process which one day would cause every knee to bow before Him and every tongue to confess that He is Lord.

He was to change the history of the world--how did He go about it? In the first place He changed men's thoughts about G.o.d. Men are influenced by their environment--they are transformed by the renewing of their minds. They are moulded by the thoughts they think and the desires they cherish. As a man thinketh in his heart touching the things that matter, so he becomes.

This is true as regards all our prevailing habits of mind, but the potency of right thought is to be found at its best when we come to a man's thought of G.o.d. How shall we think about ultimate reality? What is behind all these changing, pa.s.sing phenomena? Who is back of it all? Is anybody? If so, is he wise or blind? Is he good or evil or morally indifferent? Does he mean anything by it all, or is he only an unreasoning, purposeless force? You cannot ask yourself or your fellows a more important question than this--"How shall we think about G.o.d?"

Men had been filling their minds with all sorts of wild and foolish guesses about G.o.d. This young man placed upon the lips of the race and within its heart that great word "Father." "When ye pray say, 'Our Father.'" Begin with those words on your lips, with that thought in your mind and with the filial spirit in your heart. When you worship "Worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him." When you would turn away from the evil of your life say, "I will arise and go to my Father." When you want a.s.surance say, "No man can pluck me out of my Father's hand." When you come to die say, "Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." Death is the act of a tired child falling back into the arms of his Father. He showed us the Father and it sufficed us.

This great truth was the heart of this young man's message to the race--G.o.d is our Father. G.o.d combines the strength and the tenderness, the authority and the devotion, the responsible control and the capacity for self-sacrifice which belong to fatherhood at its best.

Take the highest you have ever seen in fatherhood and raise it to the _nth_ power, and then trust that, for that is G.o.d.

How many of you believe that? It is the easiest thing in the world to say, "I believe in G.o.d the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and earth,"

but do you really believe it? Are you striving to live it? If G.o.d is your Father, then you are His children, heirs of G.o.d, joint heirs with Jesus Christ! Your interests are His interests. Your life and His life, your destiny and His destiny, are not things apart--they are all one.

In the light of that great overarching, underlying, interpenetrating truth, there is no duty more commanding, no privilege more resplendent than that of living daily and hourly in the filial spirit before Him.

When a man really believes that, he goes about saying by word and by deed, "I am not alone, the Father is with me. I come not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me. I must be about my Father's business." When that great sublime truth is set within the heart of the race, as it was set within the heart of this young man, it changes the history of the world.

He also changed men's thoughts about goodness. What does it mean to be good? When may we call any man good? There were men who felt that being good meant obeying the law, keeping the rules, ordering one's life in accordance with the endless specifications outlined in the Sacred Books. If a man could get through the day without having gotten off the path for an inch, then he might be esteemed good. And the race groaned under the burdens which this system had bound upon the consciences of men. It was all outward, formal, mechanical, impossible.

Jesus set Himself against that whole conception and method of goodness.

"Except your righteousness exceeds that," He said to the men of His day, "you will not in any wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven." Goodness must be inward, vital, spontaneous. A good tree brings forth good fruit. It cannot otherwise. It does it as naturally as a bird sings.

Therefore, make the tree good and let the fruit come as it will--it will be all right. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good deeds. He does it spontaneously. Therefore, make the heart right and let the man do as he pleases. Love G.o.d with an honest heart and love your neighbours as well as yourself, and then do as you like. Love works no ill, either G.o.dward or manward; therefore, love is the fulfilling of all law. Here is the great underlying principle of all righteousness to which all our ethical considerations must be adjusted. As men rise from the practice of keeping outward rules into the more exacting but more joyous liberty of the spirit, they become genuinely good.

In the third place Jesus put within our reach a power which would change our hearts. If you are made as I am, and as I have found hundreds of other men, you feel oftentimes that your life is weak and thin and mean. You do not love G.o.d with an honest heart and strive to be what He would have you. You do not love your neighbours as you ought, and give expression to that love in unselfish action. You lag back when you ought to be forging ahead. You lie down where you ought to climb. You muddle along in a dull, commonplace way when your aspirations and your high resolves should be mounting up with wings like eagles.

When you are frankly honest with yourself you say, as I have said to myself, and as Paul said before us, "The good that I would I do not, and the evil that I would not, that I do. O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me!"

Here was One who knew that men are weak and thin and mean, yet He believed that every one of them through faith in Him could have a life strong and rich and fine, He actually believed that men who have b.u.mped their way clear down to the bottom of the moral stairs could climb up again. He believed that the woman of the street, whom the bigots of that day were ready to stone, could "go and sin no more," her sins forgiven because she loved much.

The publicans and harlots would go into the Kingdom--they would go in, Jesus said, ahead of some of those respectable, cold-hearted Pharisees who were scandalized at such talk. He knew the capacity for moral renewal which lies in waiting in every heart, and He knew His own power to call that capacity into effective action. "I am the door," He said, "to newness of life. By Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved. He shall go in and out and find pasture." Security, liberty, sustenance, they would all be his!

My mind goes back to a man in one of my former parishes. He kept a little store, but he neglected his business in order to get drunk. The wolf was often at his door. He had a good wife and two lovely daughters, but he had broken their hearts by his evil ways. He would become so intoxicated that he would not know his own name nor the street he lived on. When he was coming out of such debauches he would go about dirty, blear-eyed, trembling, asking every man he met to give him money to get another drink.

Then there came a day when that man's heredity was not changed, his environment was not changed, but his heart was changed. He put his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and was turned into another man. He became at once sober, reliable, industrious, affectionate, aspiring.

He put a smile on his wife's face which is there yet. He began to take care of his store and of his family. He became an honoured and useful citizen, chosen to positions of trust by his fellow men. He has now gone to his reward, but if he hears what I am saying he would tell you that it is all true. He would tell you also that he owed this change to the transforming power of the Son of G.o.d, the Saviour of men.

How the world changes and for the better! When Jesus Christ was here they said of Him, "He receiveth sinners and eateth with them." They said it with a sneer. When William Booth, the head of the Salvation Army, did the same thing they said of him, "He receiveth sinners," but they regarded it as the glory of his life. The first century saw the Son of Man scorned and spat upon for receiving sinners and eating with them. The twentieth century saw William Booth received at court by King Edward VII and honoured with a degree from Oxford University for receiving sinners. The world moves; there is sunrise everywhere and the promise of a brighter day! And this great change has been wrought by the One who brought upon the earth a finer form of spiritual energy to renew the hearts of men.

And finally this young man set in the sky of human aspiration a fixed star of hope. You cannot change the world by scolding it. You cannot change the world by petting it. You must set before its eyes a vision of G.o.d and in its heart a pa.s.sion for goodness, and in its will a form of strength that will not accept defeat, and in its sky a star of hope.

"Strong Son of G.o.d, Immortal Love Whom we that have not seen Thy face By faith and faith alone embrace Believing where we cannot prove."

Jesus Christ has done that for us all--"Believing where we cannot prove!" He has taught us how to hope and to trust and in that sign to conquer.

He tasted the whole human situation for every man. He was tempted in all points like as we are, and tried by those ordeals which culminated on Calvary. "In this world," He said, "ye shall have tribulation." The word He used means literally "pressure." Life is not all music and refreshments. Every honest life must be lived under pressure. It is compelled to do its work under the steady weight of duty, obligation, responsibility. It is compelled to fight a good fight in order to keep its faith and finish its course.

In the end that is the making of any life. Steam does all its work under pressure. Turn it loose in the air to go where it will and it becomes useless. In this world we must live under pressure. But Jesus bade men face it all undaunted and radiant. He planted in their lives an eternal hope, "Be of good cheer. I have overcome--you can."

He knew that His own purposes were entirely right--"I do always those things that please the Father." He knew that He was strongly entrenched in the love and confidence of those who knew Him best. He knew that the great moral order was on His side and that He could afford to wait for results. In that high confidence He moved ahead as serene as the sun shining in its strength. "Be of good cheer," He cried, when He stood within a hundred yards of Calvary.

His victory was not meant to be exceptional, it was meant to be representative. It was to be shared and repeated by all those who walk in fellowship with Him. How much it means when a man is making his way through some dark forest or climbing some stiff mountainside to find the faintest sort of a trail. "Other men have pa.s.sed this way," he cries, "and what men have done, men can do again."

Here is a trail of spiritual victory, reaching on and up through all manner of untoward situations! His own patient, bleeding feet marked it out and thousands of His faithful followers have traversed it in their turn. "Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can tribulation or distress or persecution or famine, or peril or sword?

Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither life nor death nor angels, nor princ.i.p.alities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of G.o.d, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

When the long, hard, dark days come it means everything to a man to know that there is that within him which cannot go down in final defeat. His real life, his best life, his enduring life, is hid with Christ in G.o.d, and that life will yet have its way.

The earth is another place when it is seen to have a sky above it.

This earthly life is another thing when it is seen to have a heaven above it and beyond it. We are saved by hope, by the hope of life abundant, life enduring, life eternal, which shines on and on, no matter how earth's clouds may come and go.

When all else seems to fail we look up and hear this young man say, "Let not your heart be troubled. Believe in G.o.d, believe also in Me.

In My Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you that where I am there ye may be. Be of good cheer, I have overcome and by My grace you will."

Here then is my case! Here is my own tribute of loyalty and affection for that young man who changed the history of the world. He did it by changing men's thoughts about G.o.d--"To us there is but one G.o.d, the Father." He did it by changing men's conception of goodness--to be good is to be like Him, simple, genuine, spontaneous, in our love and practice of the right life. He did it by changing the hearts of men from within--"If any man is in Christ he is a new creature." He did it by setting in our human sky a fixed star of hope to shine on until the day dawns and the shadows flee away.

In the face of it all how can any man of sense and conscience do less than follow Him and act with Him until His will is done on earth as it is done in Heaven!

"If Jesus Christ is a man And only a man, I say That of all mankind I cleave to Him And to Him will I cleave alway.

"If Jesus Christ be G.o.d And the only G.o.d, I swear I will follow Him through Heaven and h.e.l.l, The earth, the sea, the air."

_Printed in the United States of America_

BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES

JAMES M. LUDLOW, P.P., Litt.D.

_Author of "The Captain of the Janizaries," "Deborah," etc._

Along the Friendly Way

Reminiscences and Impressions. Frontispiece, 12mo, cloth, net

Dr. Ludlow has observed keenly, and thought wisely and deeply; he has read extensively, traveled widely, and rubbed elbows and wits with men great and little of many nations and under varying conditions. He is the "full man" of which the philosopher speaks. And all these intellectual and spiritual riches garnered from many harvests he spreads before the reader in a style that is remarkable for its felicity of phrasing, the color of its varied imagery, and its humor, warmth, and human sympathy.

HERBERT H. GOWEN, F. R. G. S.