Mornings in the College Chapel Part 10

_Luke_ xvi. 1-10.

Mammon means money, and the purpose of this parable is to teach Christians their relations to that world of which Mammon is the centre,--the world of business interests and cares. Jesus says that this world is neither very good nor very bad. It is simply unrighteous. It has no specific moral quality about it. He says further that you cannot serve this world of Mammon and serve G.o.d also.

You must choose. What then can you do in your relation to Mammon? You can do one of three things. You may, first, make an enemy of Mammon; or secondly, make a master of Mammon, or thirdly, make a friend of Mammon. Many people in Christian history have made an enemy of Mammon.

They have regarded the world of business as a G.o.dless world which should be shunned. They have run away from it to the ascetic, unworldly life. That is the spirit of the whole monastic retreat from the battle of {144} practical life,--a reaction full of the beauty of self-denial, but still a retreat. The battle of life has to go on, and the best troops have run away. On the other hand, a great many persons have made a master of Mammon. They are simply the slaves of money.

That is the vulgar materialism of the modern world. But Jesus says that neither of these att.i.tudes towards Mammon is the Christian relation. The Christian is to make a friend of Mammon; to welcome it, and to use it, to discover the good in it and learn its lessons; to mould it into the higher uses of life. Here is a potter working in his clay. It is a coa.r.s.e material which he uses and his hands grow soiled as he works; but it is not for him to reject it because it is not clean, but for him to work out through it the shapes of beauty which are possible within the limits of the clay. Just such a material is the modern world. It is not very clean and not very beautiful; but the problem of life is to mould out of its uncleanness the shapes of beauty which it contains. To run away from life--that is easy enough; to yield to its evil--that is still easier; but to be in the world and to mould it--that is the {145} real problem of the Christian life. And here is the real test of Christian character. The saints of the past have been for the most part men who fled from the world, but the saint of to-day is the man who can use the world. He is the man of business who amid looseness of standards keeps himself clean. He is the youth in college who without the least retreat from its influences moulds them to good. He is not the runaway from the world of Mammon, nor yet its slave; he makes a friend of Mammon for the service of G.o.d.

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LIX

COMING TO ONE'S SELF

_Luke_ xv. 17.

When he came to himself he said: "I will arise and go to my father."

This is one of those gospel sentences which contains within itself a whole system of theology, a doctrine of man and of G.o.d and of the relation of the one to the other. He came to himself. It was not then himself that had gone away into a far country. It was an unreal, fict.i.tious self. He had been insane, beside himself, and now, as his better life starts up in him, he comes to himself. As his father said of him, he had been dead and was alive again. The renewal of the good self in him was the resurrection of his true personality.

How deep that goes into one's doctrine of human nature! Never believe that the sinning self is the true self. Your real personality is the potential good in you. The moment that good springs into life you have a right to say: "Now I know what I was {147} made for. I have come to life. I have discovered myself." And then there is the religious aspect of this same self-discovery. No sooner does this boy come to himself than he says, "I will arise and go to my father." The religious need follows at once from the self-awakening. Nay, was not the religious need the source of the self-awakening? What was it that brought him to himself but just the homesickness of the child for his father's house? His self-discovery was but the answer of his soul to the continuous love of G.o.d. Before he ever came to himself the father was waiting for him. Antecedent to the ethical return was the religious quickening. That is the relation of religion to conduct.

You make your resolutions, but it is G.o.d that prompts them. Your self-discovery is the drawing of the Father. Your true self is his son. How natural it all is,--an infinite law of love at the heart of the universe--that is the centre of theology; a world that permits moral alienation through the free will of man,--that is the problem of philosophy; he came to himself,--that is the heart of ethics; I will go to my Father,--that is the soul of religion.

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LX

POPULARITY

_Luke_ xix. 37-43; _Matthew_ xxi. 17-23.

(Pa.s.sION WEEK--MONDAY)

The ministry of Jesus is as a whole not easy to arrange in any fixed chronology. The order of events seems often to vary in the different gospels, and sometimes these unstudied narratives seem in positive conflict. But as the story draws to its close the paths of narrative begin to converge, and as we approach the last days and enter on the last week the incidents of each day become perfectly distinct, and one can trace the life of Jesus as it moves on from his triumph of Palm Sunday to his tragedy of the cross. As we enter then to-day on the anniversary of the last week of the life of Jesus, the week before Easter Sunday, let us glance at some of the hurrying events. And for today consider the contrast which presents itself between the entrance of Jesus at Jerusalem on Sunday morning, and his return to the city by the same road on this Monday {149} morning of his last week. Yesterday he came over the brow of the Mount of Olives, surrounded by an enthusiastic throng, the centre of their popularity. To-day he comes along the same road, unattended and alone, the crowd slinking away from him, his popularity gone. And how does he bear himself through these shillings of opinion? He simply does not manifest any consciousness of change. He is as undisturbed by neglect as he was yesterday by success. On Sunday, while the people were spreading their branches beneath his feet, he looked across the valley to the city and wept as he looked; and to-day, coming with no popular applause, he enters straight into the city and a.s.serts to its leaders his supreme authority. In the midst of popularity he seems saddened, and in the midst of neglect he seems stirred to a defiant boldness. In short, he is unscathed alike by what seems to be success and what seems to be failure. He goes his way through it all with his eye on that great end which gives him peace amid the throng, and courage amid the solitude.

That is the only way in which one can maintain himself among the shifting currents {150} of popularity. It comes and goes like a tide.

The man who tries to lean on it is simply swept by the rising tide into self-conceit, and then stranded by the ebb of that same tide on the flats of despair. Popularity is as fickle as the April winds, and one can trust it as little as he dare trust the New England climate. It is only he who can be wholly self-controlled amid the triumphs of his Palm Sunday who can move on with equal self-control to the bearing of the cross with which that same week may close.

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LXI

TWO QUESTIONS ABOUT CHRISTIANITY

_Luke_ xx. 19-38.

(Pa.s.sION WEEK--TUESDAY)

The Sunday of the last week of Jesus was all triumph, the Monday was all neglect, the Tuesday was all controversy. He returns once more from Bethany to the city, and he finds the opposition at its height.

At once he is set upon by two kinds of people and asked two kinds of questions as to his mission and aim. One question was political, or as we now are saying sociological. What did he think about taxation?

What was his att.i.tude toward the government? Was he encouraging social revolt? Was he an anarchist or a socialist? The other question was theological. What did he think about the future life? How would marriage be arranged in heaven? Was his theology orthodox? All this must have seemed to Jesus malicious enough, but I think that the deepest impression he had of such questions {152} must have been of their stupidity. How was it possible that after months of public teaching any one could suppose that such problems were in the line of his intention. Here he was, trying to bring spiritual life among his people,--the life of G.o.d to the souls of men,--and here were people still trying to find in him a political schemer or a metaphysical theologian.

Yet there are questions of much this nature still being asked of Jesus.

Some honest persons are still insisting that Christ's religion is a system of theology, and some are trying to make of it a course in social science, and neither of them seem to notice that the last day of general teaching which was permitted to him on earth was largely devoted to demonstrating that he was neither a social agitator nor a theological professor. Christianity is not a scheme or arrangement, social or theological, like a railway which men might build either to accelerate the business of life or to take one straight to heaven.

Christianity provides that which all such mechanism needs. It is a power, like that electric force which makes the equipment of a railway move. A church is a power-house for the {153} development and the transmission of the power that makes things go. Cut off the power, and the theological creeds and social programmes of the day stand there paralyzed or dead. Communicate to them the dynamic of the Christian life, and the power goes singing over all the wires of life and sets its mechanism in motion, as though it sang upon its way: "I am come that these may have my life, and may have it abundantly."

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LXII

AN UNRECORDED DAY

(Pa.s.sION WEEK--WEDNESDAY)

We have traced from day to day the life of Jesus through the earlier days of its last week, its triumph of Sunday, its solitude of Monday, its controversies of Tuesday. On each of these days Jesus has come over the hill from Bethany into the city, and has returned to the village at night. And now we come to the last day before the Pa.s.sover and the betrayal; the last chance to meet his enemies and to enforce his cause. What then does Jesus do on this last Wednesday of his life?

So far as we know, he does nothing at all. It is a day without record.

There is no New Testament pa.s.sage from which I can read about it. He appears to have stayed at Bethany, perhaps with his friends, perhaps for a part of the day alone. His work was done, and he used this last day for quiet withdrawal.

What self-control and reserve are here! How would one of us have been inclined to conduct himself, if he found himself with just {155} one more day for active service? "One more day," he would have said; "then fill it with the best works and the best words; let me stamp my message on my time; let me fulfil the work which was given me to do." But Jesus has no such l.u.s.t of finishing. He simply commits his spirit to his Father, and awaits the trial and the cross. And perhaps on that unrecorded day his real agony was met, and his real cross borne.

Perhaps as he went up on that hillside, which still overlooks the little village of Bethany, and looked at his past and at his future, the real spiritual conquest was attained; for he comes back again to Jerusalem on Thursday morning, not with the demeanor of a martyr but with the air of a conqueror; and when Pilate asks him if he is a king he answers him: "Thou hast said it."

So it is with many a life. It has its great days,--its Palm Sundays of triumphs, its Good Fridays of cross-bearing, and these seem the epochs of its experience; but when one searches for the sources of its strength, they lie--do they not?--in some unrecorded day, as the sources of an abundant river lie hidden in some nook among the hills.

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LXIII

THE ANSWER TO PRAYER

_Luke_ xxii. 39-48.

(Pa.s.sION WEEK--THURSDAY)

On Thursday morning of his last week Jesus sends two of his friends before him into Jerusalem to prepare the Pa.s.sover meal, while he does not himself enter the city until the afternoon. There he meets his friends, and after the supper he takes the bread and wine and with entire naturalness asks them, as they eat and drink, to remember him.

Then he talks with them and prays with them, and they go out again on the road toward Bethany; and coming to a little garden at the foot of the hill called the Mount of Olives he bids his companions wait while he goes, as his custom was, to pray.