Mornings in the College Chapel Part 4

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XXIII

THE MOURNERS

_Matthew_ v. 4.

Whom does Jesus call the blessed people? How strange it sounds when he answers: "Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted."

Blessed, that is to say, are not only the people who, as we say, are in sorrow; but blessed are all the burdened people, the people who are having a hard time, the people who are bearing their crosses, for they are the ones who will learn the deeper comfort of the Gospel. It is the same promise which is repeated later in another place: "Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." This does not mean that mourning is blessed for its own sake, or that the only way to be a Christian is to be sad. It simply calls attention to this fact, that every life is sure to have some hardness, or burden, or cross in it. If you have none, it simply shows that you have not really begun to live. And Jesus says that the farther you go into {61} these deep places of experience, the more you will get out of his religion. There are some phases of life where it makes little difference whether you have any religion or not. But let the water of trouble go over your soul, and then there is just one support which keeps you from going down. Religion, that is to say, is not a thing for holidays and easy times. Its comfort is not discovered until you come to a hard place. The more it is needed, the stronger it is. How strange it is that the people who seem most conscious of their blessings and sustained by a sense of grat.i.tude are, as a rule, people who have been called to mourn. It is not resignation only which they have found; it is light. They have been comforted through their sorrows. Their burden has been made easy and their yoke light.

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XXIV

THE MEEK.

_Matthew_ v. 5.

Whom does Jesus call the blessed people? Again he answers: "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." And who are the meek?

We think of a meek man as a limp and mild creature who has no capacity to hurt or courage to help. But that is not what the Bible word means.

Meekness is not weakness. The Book of Numbers says that Moses was the meekest man that ever lived; but one of the first ill.u.s.trations of his character was in slaying an Egyptian who insulted his people. The meek man of the Bible is simply what we call the gentle-man--the man without swagger or arrogance, not self-a.s.sertive or forthputting, but honorable and considerate. This is the sense in which it has been said of Jesus that he was the first of gentlemen. Now these people, the gracious and generous,--not the self-important and ostentatious,--are, according to Jesus, in the end to rule. {63} They are not to get what we call the prizes of life, the social notoriety and position, but they are to have the leadership of their time and its remembrance when they are gone.

Long after showy ambition has its little day and ceases to be, the world will remember the magnanimous and self-effacing leader. He does not have to grasp the prizes of earth; he, as Jesus says, "inherits the earth." It is his by right. The meek, says the thirty-seventh Psalm, shall inherit the earth and shall delight themselves in abundance of peace. The meek escape the quarrelsomeness of ambition. They live in a world of peace and good-will. And when we sing of peace on earth and good-will to men, we are only repeating the beat.i.tude of Jesus: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."

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XXV

THE HUNGER FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS

_Matthew_ v. 6.

Whom does Jesus call the blessed people? "Blessed," he goes on, "are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled." The New Testament repeatedly states this doctrine, which sounds so strangely in our ears. It is the doctrine that a man gets what he asks for--that his real hunger will be filled. We should say that just the opposite of this was true--that life was a continued striving to get things which one fails to get--a hunger which is doomed to stay unsatisfied. But Jesus turns to his followers and says: "Ask, and you shall receive; seek, and you shall find," and in the same spirit turns even to the hypocrites and says again: "They also receive their reward." Conduct, that is to say, fulfils its destiny. What you sow, you reap. The blessing which is sufficiently desired is attained.

What you really ask for, you get. The only reason why this does not {65} seem to be true is that we do not realize what the things are which we are asking for and what must be the inevitable answer to our demand. We ask, for instance, for money; and we expect an answer of happiness. But we do not get happiness, we only get money, which is a wholly different thing. We ask for popularity and reputation, and we expect these gifts, when received, to last; but we have asked for something whose very nature is that it does not last. It is like asking for a soap-bubble and expecting to get a billiard-ball. We cannot work for the temporary and get the permanent. If, then, it is true that we are to get what we want, then the secret of happiness is to want the best things and to want them very much. If we hunger and thirst for base things we shall get them. Oh yes, we shall get them; and get the unhappiness which comes of this awful discovery, that as we have hungered so we are filled. And if we are really hungry for righteousness, if we want to be good, as a thirsty man wants water, if, as Jesus says of himself, our meat is to do the will of Him who sends us, then that demand also will be supplied. "He satisfieth the longing soul," {66} says the Psalmist, "and filleth the hungry soul"--not with success, or money, or fame, but with that which the soul was hungry for--"with goodness." The longing soul has sought the best blessing, and it has received the best blessedness.

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XXVI

THE MERCIFUL

_Matthew_ v. 7.

Whom does Jesus call the blessed people? "Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy." This repeats in effect the later words of Jesus: "With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged." The merciless judgment pa.s.sed on others recoils upon one's own nature and makes it hard and mean and brutalized. The habit of charitable judgment of others is a source of personal blessedness. It blooms out into composure and hopefulness, into peace and faith. How wonderful these great calm affirmations of Jesus are! They are directly in the face of the most common views of life, and yet they are delivered as simple axioms of experience, as matters of fact, self-evident propositions of the reason. It is not a matter of barter of which Jesus is speaking. He does not say: "If you treat another kindly he will be kind to you. The merciful man will get mercy when he needs it." That {68} would not be the truth. The best of men are often judged most mercilessly. Jesus himself gives his life to acts of mercy, and is pitilessly slain. This beat.i.tude gives, not a promise to pay, but a law of life. To forgive an injury is, according to this law, a blessing to the forgiver himself. The quality of mercy blesses him that gives as well as him that takes. The harsh judge of others grows hard himself, while pity softens the pitier. Thus among the happiest of people are those whose grudges and enmities have been overcome by their own broader view of life. It is as though in the midst of winter the warmer sun were already softening the frost. They are happy, not because others are kinder to them, but because that softer soil permits their own better life to germinate and grow. The merciful has obtained mercy; the blesser has received the blessing.

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XXVII

THE PURE IN HEART

_Matthew_ v. 8.

"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see G.o.d." That, I suppose, is the highest and deepest proposition which ever fell from human lips. Without the least argument or reasoning about it, as a thing which is perfectly self-evident, Jesus announces that purity of heart leads to the knowledge of G.o.d. Your character clarifies your creed. A theologian who wants to be profound must be pure.

Consecration brings with it insight. The perfect knowledge of G.o.d is to be attained only by the perfectly consecrated life. The human soul is a mirror on which the light of G.o.d shines, and only the pure mirror reflects the perfect image. What a word is this to drop into the midst of the conflicting theologies and philosophies of the time, of the disputes between the people who think they know all about G.o.d, and the people who think they cannot know Him at all! Do you want to be {70} sure that G.o.d is directing and supporting you in all your perplexing experiences of life? You cannot see G.o.d in these things except through a perfectly purified heart. Clarify the medium of vision, and truth undiscerned before breaks on the observer's sight. A mile or two from here skilful artisans make those great object-gla.s.ses with which the mysteries of the stars are disclosed. The slightest speck or flaw blurs the image, but with the perfect gla.s.s stars unseen by any eye throughout the history of the world are to be in our days discovered.

It is a parable of the soul. Each film on the object-gla.s.s of character obscures the heavenly vision, but to the prepared and translucent life truth undiscernible by others breaks upon the reverent gaze, and the beatific vision is revealed to the pure in heart.

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XXVIII

THE TWO BAPTISMS

_Luke_ iii. 16.

THE WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS.

Among the persons who group themselves about Jesus, the most dramatic and picturesque figure is certainly that of John the Baptist. There is in him a most extraordinary combination of audacity and humility. He is bold, denunciatory, confident; but at the same time he is self-effacing and preparatory in his work. He never thinks of his service as final; after him is to come a man who is preferred before him. There is always the larger work than his to follow. There are in him the most beautiful humility and the most absolute bravery, and this makes perhaps the rarest combination of traits which a character can show. It is all summed up in his doctrine of the two baptisms: the baptism by water, which John is to bring, and the baptism by the Holy Ghost and by fire, which is to be brought by Jesus. Water is, of course, the symbol of cleansing, the washing away of {72} one's old sins, an expulsive, negative work. Fire is the symbol of pa.s.sion, enthusiasm, flame. It is illuminating, kindling, the work of the Holy Ghost. One of these baptisms prepares for the other. First a man must be clean and then he may be pa.s.sionate. First, the fire of his base affections must be washed away and then the fire of a new enthusiasm may be lighted. And only that second step makes one a Christian. It is a great thing to have life cleansed, and its conceits and follies washed away. But that is not safety. The cleansing is for the moment only. It is like that house which was swept and garnished, but because it was empty was invaded by tenants worse than the first. The only salvation of the soul lies in the kindling of a new pa.s.sion, the lighting of the fire of a new intention, the expulsive power, as it has been called, of a new affection.

So it is in our a.s.sociated life. We need, G.o.d knows, the baptism of John, the purifying of conduct, the washing away of follies and sins; but what we need much more is the fire of a moral enthusiasm to burn up the refuse that lies in the malarious corners of our college life, and light up the whole of it {73} with moral earnestness and pa.s.sionate desire for good. That is to pa.s.s from the discipleship of John to the discipleship of Jesus, from the baptism by water to the baptism by fire, from the spirit of the Advent season to the spirit of the Christmas time.

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XXIX

THE WISE MEN AND THE SHEPHERDS

_Matthew_ ii. 1-11; _Luke_ ii. 8-10.

One Gospel tells of one kind of people who saw a star in the East and followed it; and another Gospel tells the same story of quite an opposite kind of people. Matthew says that the wise men of the time were the first to appreciate the coming of Christ. Luke says that it was the plainest sort of people, the shepherds, who first greeted that coming. There is the same variety of impression still. Many people now write as if religion were for the magi only. They make of it a mystery, a philosophy, an opinion, a doctrine, which only the scholars of the time can appreciate, and which plain people can obey, but cannot understand. Many people, on the other hand, think that religion is for plain people only; good for shepherds, but outgrown by magi; a star that invites the superst.i.tious and ignorant to worship, but which suggests to scholars only a new phenomenon for science to explore.

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