{198}

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. God'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 God'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 God 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, God, 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 God, and the descending influences of God finding depth of earth within the life of man.



{201}

LXXX

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 repetition 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 associations 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 repetitions," 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 petitions 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 petitions. There are two series of prayers. The first series relate to God, His kingdom, and His will; the second series deal with men, their bread, their trespasses, and their temptations. The Lord's Prayer, that is to say, reverses the common order of petition. Most people turn to God 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 God'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 God. He prays first for God'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.



{203}

LXXXI

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 trespasses." 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 God. 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 compassed about with a cloud of witnesses, living and dead, as he bends alone, and in his half-whispered prayer begins to say: "Our Father."



{205}

LXXXII

THE LORD'S PRAYER, III

FATHER AND SON

Galatians iii. 26; iv. 6.

The fatherhood of God 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, God 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 God'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 God. The child's kinship to the parent involves the natural inheritance of capacity and destiny. "If children," says St. Paul, "then heirs, heirs of God, 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 assurance 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. Noblesse 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 God, and out of my self-distrust and weakness I turn to self-respect and strength, when I pray: 'Our Father.'"



{207}

LXXXIII

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 God to the Hebrews was much more than a title. His name represented all His ways of revelation. The Hebrews did not speak the name of God. 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 God; the associations, 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 associations which are to me the symbol of Thyself. Give to me a sense of the sanctity 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."



{209}

LXXXIV

THE LORD'S PRAYER, V

THY KINGDOM COME

Luke xvii. 21.

The prayer that the kingdom of God might come had long been familiar to the Hebrews. They had been for centuries dreaming of a time when their tyrants should be overcome and their nation delivered and their God rule. But all this desire was for an outward change. Some day the Romans and their tax-gatherers should be expelled from the land and then the kingdom would come. Jesus repeats the same prayer, but with a new significance in the familiar words. He is not thinking of a Hebrew theocracy, or a Roman defeat; he is thinking of a human, universal, spiritual emancipation. There dawns before his inspired imagination the unparalleled conception of a purified and regenerated people. Never did a modern socialist in his dream of a better outward order surpass this vision of Jesus of a coming kingdom of God.

{210}

But to Jesus the means to that outward transformation were always personal and individual. The golden age, as Mr. Spencer has said, could not be made out of leaden people. The first condition of the outward kingdom must be the kingdom within. The new order must be the product of the new life. That is the doctrine of the social order in the Lord's Prayer.

We too are looking for outward reform in legislation and economics. It is all a part of the movement to the kingdom of God. Yet any outward transformation which is to last proceeds from regenerated lives. The kingdom of God is within before it is without. Do you want a better world? Well, plan for it, and work for it. But, first of all, enter into the inner chamber of your prayer, and say: "Lord, make me a fit instrument of thy kingdom. Purify my heart, that I may purify thy world. I would live for others' sakes, but first of all that great self-sacrifice must be obeyed: 'For their sakes I sanctify myself, Reign thus in me that I may rationally pray: Thy kingdom come!'"



{211}

LXXXV

THE LORD'S PRAYER, VI

THY WILL BE DONE

Luke xxii. 39-46.

The Lord's Prayer begins as a prayer for the great things. It prays for a sanctified world: "Holy be Thy name." It gives form to that great hope: "Thy kingdom come." It deals with the means of that great coming: "Thy will be done." The coming of the kingdom and the hallowing of the name are to happen through the doing of the will.

I suppose that most prayers which ask that God's will may be done are prayers of passive acquiescence and resignation. We are apt to pray "Thy will be done," as though we were saying: "Let it be done in spite of us and even against our wills, and we will try to bear it." But that is not the teaching of the Lord's Prayer. "Thy will be done;"—by whom? By the man that thus prays! He prays to have his part in the accomplishment of God's will, even as Jesus prays in the Garden: "Thy will be done," and then rises and {212} proceeds to do that will. The prayer recognizes the solemn and fundamental truth that the will, even of God Himself, works, in its human relations, through the service of man. Here, for instance, is a social abuse. What is God's will toward it? His will is that man should remove it. Here is a threat of cholera, and people pray that God's will be done. But what is God's will? His will is that the town shall be cleansed. And who are to do His will? Why, the citizens. Typhoid fever and bad drainage are not the will of God. The will of God is that they should be abolished. Social wrongs are not to be endured with resignation. They simply indicate to man what is God's will. And who is to do God's will in these things? We are. The man who enters into his closet and says: "Thy will be done," is asking no mere help to bear the unavoidable; he is asking help to be a participator in the purposes of God, a laborer together with Him, first a discerner and then a doer of his will. "Our Father," he says, "accomplish Thine ends not over me, or in spite of me, but through me,—Thou the power and I the instrument,—Thine to will and mine to do."



{213}

LXXXVI

THE LORD'S PRAYER, VII

DAILY BREAD

The Lord's Prayer begins with the desire for the great things, the universal needs; a holy world, a kingdom of righteousness, the will of God fulfilled. Then, in the light of these great things it goes on to one's personal needs, and prays, first of all, for the present, then for the past, then for the future. The prayer for the present is this: "Give us our daily bread,"—our bread, that is to say, sufficient for to-day, enough to live on and to work by, just for today. The prayer is limitative. It puts restraint on my desire and limit on my ambition. It does not demand the future. It looks only to this present unexplored and unknown day. "Give us in this day what is necessary for us, fit to sustain us,—strength to do thy will, patience to bring in thy kingdom, grace to hallow thy name."

Into the midst of the restless anticipations of modern life, its living of to-morrow's life in {214} to-day's anxiety, its social disease which has been described as "Americanitis," and which, if it is not arrested, will have to be operated on some day at the risk of the nation's life, there enters every morning in your daily prayer the desire for quiet acceptance of the day's blessings, the dismissal of the care for the morrow, the sense of sufficiency in the bread of to-day:—

"Lord, for to-morrow and its needs I do not pray, Keep me from stain of sin, just for to-day. Let me both diligently work, and duly pray, Let me be kind in word and deed, just for to-day. Let me no wrong or idle word unthinking say, Set thou a seal upon my lips, just for to-day. Let me be slow to do my will, prompt to obey, Help me to sacrifice myself, just for to-day. So for to-morrow and its needs, I do not pray, But help me, keep me, hold me, Lord, just for to-day."



{215}

LXXXVII

THE LORD'S PRAYER, VIII

FORGIVENESS

Luke xii. 1-3.

We come to the petition in the Lord's Prayer which is the easiest to understand and the hardest to pray,—the prayer that we may be forgiven as we forgive. This prayer does not, of course, ask God to measure His goodness by our virtues. We should not dare to ask that God would deal with us just as we have dealt with others. It is the spirit of forgiveness for which we pray. "Give us forgiveness," we ask, "because we come in the spirit of forgiveness." The spirit of forgiveness, that is to say, is the condition and prerequisite of the prayer for forgiveness. If you do not love your brother whom you have seen, how can you truly pray to God whom you have not seen? If a man comes to his prayer with hate in his heart, he makes it impossible for God to forgive him. He is shutting the door which opens into the spirit {216} of prayer. Right-mindedness to man is the first condition of right prayer to God.

The traveler in Egypt sometimes looks out in the early morning and sees an Arab preparing to say his prayers. The man goes down to the river-bank and spreads his little carpet so that he shall look toward Mecca; but before he kneels he crouches on the bank, and cleanses his lips, his tongue, his hands, even his feet, so that he shall bring to his prayer no unclean word or deed. It is as if he first said with the Psalmist: "Wash me thoroughly of my iniquity; purge me of my sin; make me a clean heart; renew in me a right spirit;" and then with a right spirit in him, he bends and rises and bows again in his prayer. The petition for a forgiving spirit prepares one in the same way to say his morning prayer. It cleanses the tongue; it washes the motives; it purifies the thoughts of their uncharitableness; and then, in this spirit of forgiveness even toward those who have wronged him, the Christian is clean enough to ask for the forgiveness of his own sin.



{217}

LXXXVIII

THE LORD'S PRAYER, IX

TEMPTATIONS

James i. 12-17.

This passage from the Epistle of James is a commentary on the last petition of the Lord's Prayer. When we pray: "Lead us not into temptation," it is, as James says, not God who tempts, for God tempteth no man. The temptation comes through our misuse of the circumstances which God offers us as our opportunity. We turn these circumstances into temptations.

Every condition of life has these two aspects. It is on the one hand an opportunity, and it is on the other hand a temptation. God gives it as an opportunity and we misuse the opportunity and it becomes our temptation. The rich have their special and great opportunity of generous service for the common good, and yet through that very opportunity comes their special temptation. The poor are saved by their lot from many temptations of self-centred and frivolous luxury, but are much tempted {218} by their poverty itself. The healthy have a great gift of God, but they are tempted by that very gift to recklessness, inconsiderateness and self-injury. The sick receive peculiar blessings of patience and resignation, but are much tempted to selfishness and discontent. The business man is tempted by his very knowledge of the world to the hardness of materialism; the minister is tempted by his very indifference to the world to unsophisticated imprudence. Wherever on earth a man may be he must scrutinize his future, and calculate his powers, and face his problems, and pray: "My God, prevent my vocation from becoming my temptation. Let me not put myself where I shall be tried over much. Save me from the peculiar temptation of my special lot. Deliver me from its evils and lead me not round its temptations, but through them into its opportunity and joy."



{219}

LXXXIX

SIMPLICITY TOWARD CHRIST

2 Corinthians xi. 3.

In listening, as we have done, from day to day to Bishop Vincent, there has repeatedly come to my mind this phrase: The simplicity that is in Christ; or, as the Revised Version more accurately translates it, the simplicity that is toward Christ,—the power which is often so much greater than eloquence, of an obviously genuine, sincere, simple Christian life.

But when one inquires into the nature of this Christian simplicity, which is one of the fairest blooms of character, it turns out to be, so to speak, not so simple a trait as it at first appeared. Of course, there is a kind of simplicity which is a survival of childhood, a guileless, childish ignorance; but when a man is simple in a childish way, he is only what we call a simpleton. Christian simplicity is not a survival but an achievement, wrought out of the struggles and problems of maturer life. It is not an infantile but a masculine trait.

{220}

What then is simplicity? The Latin word means singleness, unmixedness, straightforwardness. It is sometimes used of wood which is straight-grained. What simplifies life is to have a single, specific direction in which to grow, a straight-grained, definite intention, the possibility of a straightforward life. The scattered, divergent, wavering life,—what is this but what we call the dissipating career? It abandons self-concentration and steadiness; it dissipates its energy. It does not mean to begin wrong, but because it has no fixity of direction it becomes, as we say, dissipated. And what is it, once more, which gives direction, unity, simplicity, to life? That is made plain in this same passage. It is the simplicity, says the New Version, which is toward Christ. What gives straightforwardness is not the condition in which we are, but the ideal toward which we are heading. What simplifies life is to say something like this: "I do not pretend to know all about religion, or duty, or Christ, but I do propose to live along the line of life which I will call toward Christ. I propose to think less of what I may live by, and more of what I may live toward." When a man makes this decision he has not indeed {221} solved all the problems of life, but he has amazingly simplified them. Many things which had been perplexing, disturbing, confusing, now fall into line behind that one comprehensive loyalty. He has, as it were, come out of the woods, and found a high road. It is not all level, or easy; there is many a sharp ascent in it, and many a shadowy valley. But at least the way is clear, and he knows whither it leads, and he has found his bearings, and he trudges along with a quiet mind, even though with a weary step, for he has emerged from the bewildering underbrush of life into the simplicity which is toward Christ.



{222}

XC

OPEN OUR EYES

2 Kings vi. 17.

(END OF COLLEGE TERM)

This young man did not see things as they really were, because, as we say in smaller matters, he did not have his eyes open. He saw the horses and chariots of Syria round about him, and the enemy seemed too strong for him, and then Elisha prayed: "Lord, open his eyes," and the young man saw that over against his enemies there was a host of spiritual allies, so that "They that be with us are more than they that be with them."

As we look back over this closing college year with all its problems and duties, its conflicts and fears, it is with something of this same sense that we have not half known the powers which were on our side. Sometimes we have thought the enemy too strong for us, and it looked as if cares and fears, troubles and misunderstandings were likely to defeat us, and the battle of life might be lost. The {223} problems of the world about us have seemed very grievous, and the perplexities of the life within very perilous. And now God comes to us at last and opens our eyes, and we look back and say: "What a good year, after all, it has been." There never has been so good a year for the college as this. There never has been so good a year for the world. With all the social problems and agitations that seem so threatening about us, this is, after all, the best year that God has ever made. And in our personal conflicts, how plain it is that the forces of heaven have been behind us. No man has thought a true thought, or done an unselfish deed this year without a backing which now discloses itself as very real. Behind our doubts and fears have been the horses and chariots of fire. Lord, open our eyes, that we may see these spiritual allies and enlist ourselves in the ranks of their omnipotence.



{224}

XCI

THE WORD MADE FLESH

John i. 1-14.

(END OF COLLEGE TERM)

I do not enter into the deeper philosophical significance of this great chapter, but any one can see on the very surface of it the general truth on which Christianity rests its claim. God's government of the world is here described as operating through His word. God simply speaks, and things are done. God says: "Let there be light," and there is light. The universe is God's language. History is God's voice. By His word was everything made that is made. Then, when the fullness of time has come this language of God is made life. What God has been trying to make men hear through his word, He now lets them see through his life. His word becomes flesh. The life becomes the light of men. That is the most elementary statement of the doctrine of the incarnation. It is the transformation of language into life.

{225}

Let us take this great truth into our own little lives as we part on this last day of common worship. God has been speaking to us His word in many ways through our worship here; in our silence and in our song, in Bible and in prayer, in the voice of different preachers, and in the voice of our own consciences and hearts. And now what is our last prayer but this, that this word may be made flesh, that this worship may be transformed into life, that these messages of courage, of hope, of composure, of self-control, may be incarnated in this life of youth; that out of the many words here spoken in the name of God, here and there one may become flesh and walk out of this chapel and out of these college grounds in the interior life of a consecrated young man. The life is the light of men. May it be so with us here. May the spirit of him in whose life is our light, enlighten the lives which have gathered here, and lead them through all the obscurities of life, and brighten more and more before them into a perfect day.



{227}

LIST OF BIBLE PASSAGES

Address. Page.

Genesis iv, 9 LXX 176 Exodus xx, 1-7 LXXXIII 207 Deut. xxxiii, 27 XXXIII 83 I Ks. xix, 1-13 LXXV 187 II Kings vi, 17 XC 212 Mat. ii, 1-11 XXIX 74 iv, 1-11 XLVIII 171 v, 3 XXII 58 v, 4 XXIII 60 v, 5 XXIV 62 v, 6 XXV 64 v, 7 XXVI 67 v, 8 XXVII 69 v, 16 IV 9 v, 17 XV 41 v, 21-25 LXXXI 203 vi, 1-15 LXXX 201 vii, 1 XII 32 viii, 5-11 V 12 xii, 38-45 LVI 138 xiii, 1-9 XLV 113 xiii, 1-9 XLVI 116 xiii, 1-9 XLVII 118 xiii, 1-9 XLVIII 120 xiii, 1-9 XLIX 122 xiv, 23 VII 18 xxi, 17-23 LX 148 xxii, 11-14 LXXIV 185 xxiii, 24 LXXVI 189 xxv, 14-30 L 124 xxv, 14-30 LI 127 xxv, 14-30 LII 129 xxv, 22 LIII 131 xxv, 24 LIV 133 xxv, 29 LV 136 Mark iv, 27 XVIII 49 iv, 27 XLIX 122 viii, 34 XXI 56 x, 35-45 II 4 Mark xii, 30 LXIX 174 xiii, 1-9 LXXIX 198 Luke ii, 8-10 XXIX 74 ii, 8-14 XXX 76 ii, 30-35 XXXI 78 iii, 16 XXVIII 71 xii, 1-5 LXXXVII 215 xv, 17 LIX 146 xvi, 1-10 LVIII 143 xvi, 1-12 LVII 140 xvii, 5-15 LXXXIV 209 xvii, 7-10 XIII 35 xvii, 21 XIX 52 xix, 37-43 LX 148 xx, 19-38 LXI 151 xxii, 39-46 LXXXV 211 xxii, 39-48 LXIII 156 xxiii, 20-26 LXVII 168 John i, 1-14 XCI 224 iv, 10 LXXIII 182 vi, 35 XI 29 viii, 32 LXXVIII 195 xiv, 6 XXXVI 89 xiv, 14, 16 XXXIV 85 xvi, 32 LXXII 180 xvii, 22 III 7 xviii, 28-38 LXIV 159 xix, 30 LXV 163 xx, 8 VIII 21 xxi, 22 IX 25 Acts xxvi, 19 X 27 Romans xii, 1 XIV 38 I Cor. xii, 31 LXXI 178 II Cor. iv, 10 XX 54 xi, 3 LXXXIX 219 Galatians iii, 26 LXXXII 205 iv, 6 LXXXII 205 iv, 9 LXXVII 192 Ephes. iv, 13 XVII 48

{228}

Address. Page.

Ephes. iv, 14-17 XXXV 87 Phil. iii, 11 LXVI 166 II Tim. ii, 3 XVI 44 iv, 8 VI 15 Hebrews xii, 1 I 1 James i, 12-17 LXXXVIII 217 Rev. ii, 1-7 XXXVII 96 ii, 8-10 XXXVIII 93 Rev. ii, 12-17 XXXIX 90 ii, 18-28 XL 99 iii, 1 XLI 102 iii, 8 XLII 105 iii, 20 XLIII 107 xxi, 7 XLIV 110 xxii, 17 XI 29

THE END