Mornings in the College Chapel Part 14

LXXVIII

FREEDOM IN THE TRUTH

_John_ viii. 32.

"The truth shall make you free;"--that is one of the greatest announcements of a universal principle which even Jesus Christ ever made.

But the Jews began to ask of him: "How can one be a disciple of your truth and yet be free? Is not that discipleship only another name for bondage? We are free already. We are in bondage to no man. Why then should we enter into the servitude of obedience to your truth?" And to this Jesus seems to answer: "That depends upon what it is to be free.

It is a question of your definition of liberty. You seem to believe that to be free one must have no authority or leadership or master.

But I say unto you that there is no such liberty. You must be the servant of something. You must be under the authority of your law, or your superst.i.tion, or your G.o.d, or yourself. Freedom on any other terms is not freedom, it is lawlessness. {196} Indeed it may be more like slavery than freedom."

What is a free country? Not a country without law,--a country of the anarchist,--but a country where the law encourages each citizen to be and to do his best. A free country gives every man a chance. It opens life at the top. It invites one's allegiance from the things which enslave to the things which enlarge. And that is the only liberty,--a transfer of allegiance, a higher attachment, which sets free from the lower enslavements of life. Suppose a man is the slave of a sin, how does he get free? He frees himself from his sin by attaching himself to some better interest. Sin is not driven out of one's life; it is crowded out. Suppose a man is the slave of himself, sunk in the self-absorbed and ungenerous life, how does he get free? He gets free by finding an end in life which is larger than himself. He becomes the servant of the truth, and the truth makes him free. Suppose a man asks himself, "What can religion do for me? It does not solve all my problems, or satisfy all my needs. What then does religion do?" Well, first of all, it gives one liberty. It detaches one's life from {197} the things which shut it in, and attaches it to those ideal ends which give enlargement, emanc.i.p.ation, range to life. G.o.d speaks to you of duty, of self-control, of power in your prayers, and then you go out into the world again, not as if all were plain before you, but at least with a free heart, and a mind not in bondage to the world of circ.u.mstance or of trivial cares. The truth of G.o.d, so far as it has been revealed to you, has made you free. You have found the perfect law, the law of liberty.

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LXXIX

THE SOIL AND THE SEED

_Matthew_ xiii. 1-9.

It takes two things to make a seed grow. One is a good seed, and the other is a good soil. One is what the sower provides, and the other is what the ploughman prepares. G.o.d's best seed falls in vain on a rock.

Man's best soil is unfruitful till the sower visits it. Now the tilling of the soil of life is what in all its different forms we call culture, and the expansion of G.o.d's germinating influence is what we call religion. Some people think that either of these alone is enough to insure a good crop. Some think that culture makes a man fruitful, and some think religion is a spontaneous growth; and some even talk of a conflict between the two. But culture does for a man just what it does for a field. It deepens the soil and makes it ready, and that is all. The merely cultivated man is nothing more than a ploughed field which has not been sown, and when it comes to the proper time of harvest has a most {199} empty and untimely look. And religion alone does not often penetrate into the unprepared life. Sometimes, indeed, it seems to force its way as by a miracle, and take root, as we see a tree or shrub growing as it seems without any soil in which to cling.

But in the normal way of life the seed of G.o.d falls in vain upon a soil which is not deepened and softened to receive it. It waits for preparedness of nature, for the obedient will, the awakened mind, the receptive heart;--and all these forms of self-discipline are comprehended in any genuine self-culture.

Culture and religion--here they meet in university life. Most of your time is given to culture. What are you doing? You are enriching and spading up the soil of life. That is the test of culture. Is it quickening, deepening, stimulating the mind? Is it opening the imagination and training the will? Then it is true culture and not that spurious cultivation which spreads over life gravel instead of fertilizers. Culture prepares the soil; and then in sacred moments, perhaps in your worship here, perhaps in the solitude of your own experience, or perhaps in the busiest moments of your day, G.o.d, the sower, comes, scattering {200} His seeds of suggestion and His minute influences for good over the heart, and what He needs is a receptive mind and an awakened heart; the life of man ready for the life of G.o.d, and the descending influences of G.o.d finding depth of earth within the life of man.

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Lx.x.x

THE LORD'S PRAYER, I [1]

_Matthew_ vi. 1-15.

From day to day we gather here and repeat together the Lord's Prayer.

One is tempted sometimes to wonder whether in this daily repet.i.tion the prayer keeps its freshness and reality. I will not say that even if it becomes a mere form it is useless in our worship. It is something even to have a form so rich in the a.s.sociations of home and of church, of the prayers of childhood, and the centuries of Christian worship. And yet this prayer is first of all a protest against formalism. "Use not vain repet.i.tions," says Jesus, and then he goes on to give this type of restrained, unswerving, concentrated prayer.

While the prayer, however, is a protest against formalism it is itself extraordinarily beautiful in form. When a clear mind {202} expresses a deep purpose its expression is always orderly, and the pet.i.tions of the Lord's Prayer do not unfold their quality until we consider the form in which they are expressed. Look for a moment at the order of these pet.i.tions. There are two series of prayers. The first series relate to G.o.d, His kingdom, and His will; the second series deal with men, their bread, their trespa.s.ses, and their temptations. The Lord's Prayer, that is to say, reverses the common order of pet.i.tion. Most people turn to G.o.d first of all with their own needs. The Lord's Prayer postpones these needs of bread and of forgiveness, and asks first of all for G.o.d's kingdom and His will. Thus it is, first of all, an unselfish prayer. When a man comes here and prays the Lord's Prayer, he, first of all, subordinates himself; he postpones his own needs. He subdues his thoughts to the great purposes of G.o.d. He prays first for G.o.d's kingdom, however it may come, whether through joy and peace or through much trouble and pain; and then, in the light of that supreme and self-subordinating desire for the larger glory, the man goes on to ask for his own bread and the forgiveness of his own sin.

[1] See also, F. D. Maurice, _The Lord's Prayer_, London, 1861; Robert Eyton, _The Lord's Prayer_, London, 1892; H. W. Foote, _Thy Kingdom Come_, Boston, 1891.

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Lx.x.xI

THE LORD'S PRAYER, II

OUR FATHER

_Matthew_ v. 21-25.

I have said that the Lord's Prayer is by its very form an unselfish prayer. This same mark of it is to be seen in another way by the word with which it begins. It does not pray: "My Father, my bread, my trespa.s.ses." It prays throughout for blessings which are "ours." Not my isolated life, but the common life I share is that for which I ask the help of G.o.d. Even when a man enters into his inner chamber and shuts the door, and is alone, he still says: "Our Father." He takes up into his solitary prayer the lives which for the moment are bound up in his. He thinks of those he loves and says: "Our Father." He sets himself right with those he does not love, reconciles himself with his brother, and says: "Our Father." He joins himself with the whole great company of those who have said this prayer in all the ages, and have found peace {204} in it, and with that great sense of companionship the solitude of his own experience is banished, and he is compa.s.sed about with a cloud of witnesses, living and dead, as he bends alone, and in his half-whispered prayer begins to say: "Our Father."

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Lx.x.xII

THE LORD'S PRAYER, III

FATHER AND SON

_Galatians_ iii. 26; iv. 6.

The fatherhood of G.o.d has become so familiar a phrase that we hardly realize what a revolution of thought it represents. In the whole Old Testament, so the scholars say, G.o.d is spoken of but seven times as Father; five times as Father of the Hebrew people, once to David as the father of his son Solomon, and once as a prediction that sometime men would thus pray. And so when Jesus at the beginning of his prayer says: "After this manner pray, Our Father," he is opening the door into a new conception of G.o.d's relation to man.

And what is this conception? It is the recognition of kinship. It is the conviction that the spiritual life in man is of the same nature as the spiritual life in G.o.d. The child's kinship to the parent involves the natural inheritance of capacity and destiny. "If children," says St. Paul, "then heirs, heirs of G.o.d, and {206} joint heirs with Christ." "Because we are sons we cry, Abba, Father." We are not Greek philosophers interpreting the causes of nature or the world of ideas; we are not Hebrew prophets representing a sacred nation; we are children, with the rights and gifts of children, and the a.s.surance of a father's confidence and love. All this great promise the humblest Christian claims when he begins to pray the Lord's Prayer. He says, "I am not a brute, I am not a clod, I am a partaker of the Divine nature; I claim the promise of a child. And that sense of kinship summons me to my best. I pray as my Father's son, and as his son I bear a name which must not be stained. _n.o.blesse oblige_. There are some things which I cannot degrade myself to do because my position forbids them.

There are some things to which I could not attain of myself, but which are made possible to me as my Father's son. I accept the unearned privilege of my descent; I claim the great inheritance of the kinship of G.o.d, and out of my self-distrust and weakness I turn to self-respect and strength, when I pray: 'Our Father.'"

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Lx.x.xIII

THE LORD'S PRAYER, IV

HALLOWED BE THY NAME

_Exodus_ xx. 1-7.

I suppose that to many a reader the prayer: "Holy be Thy name," means little more than: "Let me not be profane; help me to keep myself from blasphemy." But it is not likely that Jesus began his prayer with any such elementary desire as this; or that our first prayer need be only a prayer to be kept from irreverence. The name of G.o.d to the Hebrews was much more than a t.i.tle. His name represented all His ways of revelation. The Hebrews did not speak the name of G.o.d. It was a word too sacred for utterance. Thus the man who begins the Lord's Prayer in that Hebrew spirit first summons to his thought the things which are the most sacred in the world to him, the thoughts and purposes which stand to him for G.o.d; the a.s.sociations, memories, and ideals which make life holy, and asks that these may lead him into his own prayer. {208} What he says is this: "My Father, and the Father of all other souls, renew within me my most sacred thoughts and all the holy a.s.sociations which are to me the symbol of Thyself. Give to me a sense of the sanct.i.ty of the world. Set me in the right mood of prayer. And as I thus reverently look out on Thy varied ways of revelation and of righteousness, help me to bring my own spirit into this unity with Thyself, to make a part of Thy holy world, and humbly to begin my prayer by hallowing Thy name."