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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10395 ***
+
+JOY AND POWER
+
+
+Three messages with One meaning
+
+by
+
+Henry van Dyke
+
+
+
+
+1903
+
+
+
+
+Dedicated to my friend John Huston Finley
+President of the College of the City of New York
+
+
+
+
+THE PREFACE
+
+
+The three messages which are brought together in this book were given
+not far apart in time, though at some distance from one another in
+space. The one called Joy and Power was delivered in Los Angeles,
+California, at the opening of the Presbyterian General Assembly, May 21,
+1903. The one called The Battle of Life was delivered on Baccalaureate
+Sunday at Princeton University, June 7. The one called The Good Old Way
+was delivered on Baccalaureate Sunday at Harvard University, June 14. At
+the time, I was thinking chiefly of the different qualities and needs of
+the people to whom I had to speak. This will account for some things in
+the form of each message. But now that they are put together I can see
+that all three of them say about the same thing. They point in the same
+direction, urge the same course of action, and appeal to the same
+motive. It is nothing new,--the meaning of this threefold message,--but
+it is the best that I have learned in life. And I believe it is
+true,--so true that we need often to have it brought to remembrance.
+
+Henry van Dyke
+
+Avalon, July 5, 1903
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+i. Joy and Power
+
+ii. The Battle of Life
+
+iii. The Good Old Way
+
+
+
+
+JOY AND POWER
+
+    <i>St. John viii. 17: If ye know these things, happy are
+    ye if ye do them.</i>
+
+I ask you to think for a little while about the religion of Christ in
+its relation to happiness.
+
+This is only one point in the circle of truth at the centre of which
+Jesus stands. But it is an important point because it marks one of the
+lines of power which radiate from Him. To look at it clearly and
+steadily is not to disregard other truths. The mariner takes the whole
+heavens of astronomy for granted while he shapes his course by a single
+star.
+
+In the wish for happiness all men are strangely alike. In their
+explanations of it and in their ways of seeking it they are singularly
+different. Shall we think of this wish as right, or wrong; as a true
+star, or a will-o'-the-wisp? If it is right to wish to be happy, what
+are the conditions on which the fulfilment of this wish depends? These
+are the two questions with which I would come to Christ, seeking
+instruction and guidance.
+
+I. The desire of happiness, beyond all doubt, is a natural desire. It
+is the law of life itself that every being seeks and strives toward the
+perfection of its kind, the realization of its own specific ideal in
+form and function, and a true harmony with its environment. Every drop
+of sap in the tree flows toward foliage and fruit. Every drop of blood
+in the bird beats toward flight and song. In a conscious being this
+movement toward perfection must take a conscious form. This conscious
+form is happiness,--the satisfaction of the vital impulse,--the rhythm
+of the inward life,--the melody of a heart that has found its keynote.
+To say that all men long for this is simply to confess that all men are
+human, and that their thoughts and feelings are an essential part of
+their life. Virtue means a completed manhood. The joyful welfare of the
+soul belongs to the fulness of that ideal. Holiness is wholeness. In
+striving to realize the true aim of our being, we find the wish for
+happiness implanted in the very heart of our effort.
+
+Now what does Christ say in regard to this natural human wish? Does He
+say that it is an illusion? Does He condemn and deny it? Would He have
+accepted Goethe's definition: "religion is renunciation"?
+
+Surely such a notion is far from the spirit of Jesus. There is nothing
+of the hardness of Stoicism, the coldness of Buddhism, in Christ's
+gospel. It is humane, sympathetic, consoling. Unrest and weariness, the
+fever of passion and the chill of despair, soul-solitude and
+heart-trouble, are the very things that He comes to cure. He begins His
+great discourse with a series of beatitudes. "Blessed" is the word.
+"Happy" is the meaning. Nine times He rings the changes on that word,
+like a silver bell sounding from His fair temple on the mountain-side,
+calling all who long for happiness to come to Him and find rest for
+their souls.
+
+Christ never asks us to give up merely for the sake of giving up, but
+always in order to win something better. He comes not to destroy, but to
+fulfil,--to fill full,--to replenish life with true, inward, lasting
+riches. His gospel is a message of satisfaction, of attainment, of
+felicity. Its voice is not a sigh, but a song. Its final word is a
+benediction, a good-saying. "These things have I spoken unto you, that
+my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full."
+
+If we accept His teaching we must believe that men are not wrong in
+wishing for happiness, but wrong in their way of seeking it. Earthly
+happiness,--pleasure that belongs to the senses and perishes with
+them,--earthly happiness is a dream and a delusion. But happiness on
+earth,--spiritual joy and peace, blossoming here, fruiting
+hereafter,--immortal happiness, is the keynote of life in Christ.
+
+And if we come to Him, He tells us four great secrets in regard to it.
+
+i. It is inward, and, not outward; and so it does not depend on what we
+have, but on what we are.
+
+ii. It cannot be found by direct seeking, but by setting our faces
+toward the things from which it flows; and so we must climb the mount
+if we would see the vision, we must tune the instrument if we would hear
+the music.
+
+iii. It is not solitary, but social; and so we can never have it without
+sharing it with others.
+
+iv. It is the result of God's will for us, and not of our will for
+ourselves; and so we can only find it by giving our lives up, in
+submission and obedience, to the control of God.
+
+  For this is peace,--to lose the lonely note
+  Of self in love's celestial ordered strain:
+  And this is joy,--to find one's self again
+  In Him whose harmonies forever float
+  Through all the spheres of song, below, above,--
+  For God is music, even as God is love.
+
+This is the divine doctrine of happiness as Christ taught it by His life
+and with His lips. If we want to put it into a single phrase, I know not
+where we shall find a more perfect utterance than in the words which
+have been taught us in childhood,--words so strong, so noble, so
+cheerful, that they summon the heart of manhood like marching-music:
+"Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever."
+
+Let us accept without reserve this teaching of our Divine Lord and
+Master in regard to the possibility and the duty of happiness. It is an
+essential element of His gospel. The atmosphere of the New Testament is
+not gloom, but gladness; not despondency, but hope. The man who is not
+glad to be a Christian is not the right kind of a Christian.
+
+The first thing that commended the Church of Jesus to the weary and
+disheartened world in the early years of her triumph, was her power to
+make her children happy,--happy in the midst of afflictions, happy in
+the release from the burden of guilt, happy in the sense of Divine
+Fatherhood and human brotherhood, happy in Christ's victory over sin and
+death, happy in the assurance of an endless life. At midnight in the
+prison, Paul and Silas sang praises, and the prisoners heard them. The
+lateral force of joy,--that was the power of the Church.
+
+  "'Poor world,' she cried, 'so deep accurst,
+    Thou runn'st from pole to pole
+  To seek a draught to slake thy thirst,--
+    Go seek it in thy soul.'
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Tears washed the trouble from her face!
+    She changed into a child!
+  'Mid weeds and wrecks she stood,--a place
+    Of ruin,--but she smiled!"
+
+Much has the Church lost of that pristine and powerful joy. The furnace
+of civilization has withered and hardened her. She has become anxious
+and troubled about many things. She has sought earthly honours, earthly
+powers. Richer she is than ever before, and probably better organized,
+and perhaps more intelligent, more learned,--but not more happy. The one
+note that is most often missing in Christian life, in Christian service,
+is the note of spontaneous joy.
+
+Christians are not as much calmer, steadier, stronger, and more cheerful
+than other people as they ought to be. Some Christians are among the
+most depressing and worryful people in the world,--the most difficult to
+live with. And some, indeed, have adopted a theory of spiritual ethics
+which puts a special value upon unhappiness. The dark, morbid spirit
+which mistrusts every joyful feeling, and depreciates every cheerful
+virtue, and looks askance upon every happy life as if there must be
+something wrong about it, is a departure from the beauty of Christ's
+teaching to follow the dark-browed philosophy of the Orient.
+
+The religion of Jesus tells us that cheerful piety is the best piety.
+There is something finer than to do right against inclination; and that
+is to have an inclination to do right. There is something nobler than
+reluctant obedience; and that is joyful obedience. The rank of virtue is
+not measured by its disagreeableness, but by its sweetness to the heart
+that loves it. The real test of character is joy. For what you rejoice
+in, that you love. And what you love, that you are like.
+
+I confess frankly that I have no admiration for the phrase
+"disinterested benevolence," to describe the main-spring of Christian
+morals. I do not find it in the New Testament: neither the words, nor
+the thing. Interested benevolence is what I find there. To do good to
+others is to make life interesting and find peace for our own souls. To
+glorify God is to enjoy Him. That was the spirit of the first
+Christians. Was not St. Paul a happier man than Herod? Did not St. Peter
+have more joy of his life than Nero? It is said of the first disciples
+that they "did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart."
+Not till that pristine gladness of life returns will the Church regain
+her early charm for the souls of men. Every great revival of Christian
+power--like those which came in the times of St. Francis of Assisi and
+of John Wesley--has been marked and heralded by a revival of Christian
+joy.
+
+If we want the Church to be mighty in power to win men, to be a source
+of light in the darkness, a fountain of life in the wilderness, we must
+remember and renew, in the spirit of Christ, the relation of religion to
+human happiness.
+
+II. What, then, are the conditions upon which true happiness depends?
+Christ tells us in the text: If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye
+do them.
+
+This is the blessing with a double if. "If ye know,"--this is the
+knowledge which Christ gives to faith. "If ye do,"--this is the
+obedience which faith gives to Christ. Knowing and Doing,--these are the
+twin pillars, Jachin and Boaz, on which the house of happiness is built.
+The harmony of faith and life,--this is the secret of inward joy and
+power.
+
+You remember when these words were spoken. Christ had knelt to wash the
+disciples' feet. Peter, in penitence and self-reproach, had hesitated to
+permit this lowly service of Divine love. But Christ answered by
+revealing the meaning of His act as a symbol of the cleansing of the
+soul from sin. He reminded the disciples of what they knew by
+faith,--that He was their Saviour and their Lord. By deed and by word He
+called up before them the great spiritual truths which had given new
+meaning to their life. He summoned them to live according to their
+knowledge, to act upon the truth which they believed.
+
+I am sure that His words sweep out beyond that quiet upper room, beyond
+that beautiful incident, to embrace the whole spiritual life. I am sure
+that He is revealing to us the secret of happy living which lies at the
+very heart of His gospel, when He says: If ye know these things, happy
+are ye if ye do them.
+
+i. "If ye know,"--there is, then, a certain kind of knowledge without
+which we can not be happy. There are questions arising in human nature
+which demand an answer. If it is denied we can not help being
+disappointed, restless, and sad. This is the price we have to pay for
+being conscious, rational creatures. If we were mere plants or animals
+we might go on living through our appointed years in complete
+indifference to the origin and meaning of our existence. But within us,
+as human beings, there is something that cries out and rebels against
+such a blind life. Man is born to ask what things mean. He is possessed
+with the idea that there is a significance in the world beyond that
+which meets his senses.
+
+John Fiske has brought out this fact very clearly in his last book,
+Through Nature to God. He shows that "in the morning twilight of
+existence the Human Soul vaguely reached forth toward something akin to
+itself, not in the realm of fleeting phenomena, but in the Eternal
+Presence beyond." He argues by the analogy of evolution, which always
+presupposes a real relation between the life and the environment to
+which it adjusts itself, that this forth-reaching and unfolding of the
+soul implies the everlasting reality of religion.
+
+The argument is good. But the point which concerns us now is simply
+this. The forth-reaching, questioning soul can never be satisfied if it
+touches only a dead wall in the darkness, if its seeking meets with the
+reply, "You do not know, and you never can know, and you must not try
+to know." This is agnosticism. It is only another way of spelling
+unhappiness.
+
+"Since Christianity is not true," wrote Ernest Renan, "nothing interests
+me, or appears worthy my attention." That is the logical result of
+losing the knowledge of spiritual things,--a life without real interest,
+without deep worth,--a life with a broken spring.
+
+But suppose Renan is mistaken. Suppose Christianity is true. Then the
+first thing that makes it precious, is that it answers our questions,
+and tells us the things that we must know in order to be happy.
+
+Christianity is a revealing religion, a teaching religion, a religion
+which conveys to the inquiring spirit certain great and positive
+solutions of the problems of life. It is not silent, nor ambiguous, nor
+incomprehensible in its utterance. It replies to our questions with a
+knowledge which, though limited, is definite and sufficient. It tells us
+that this "order of nature, which constitutes the world's experience,
+is only one portion of the total universe." That the ruler of both
+worlds, seen and unseen, is God, a Spirit, and the Father of our
+spirits. That He is not distant from us nor indifferent to us, but that
+He has given His eternal Son Jesus Christ to be our Saviour. That His
+Spirit is ever present with us to help us in our conflicts with evil, in
+our efforts toward goodness. That He is making all things work together
+for good to those that love Him. That through the sacrifice of Christ
+every one who will may obtain the forgiveness of sins and everlasting
+peace. That through the resurrection of Christ all who love Him and
+their fellow-men shall obtain the victory over death and live forever.
+
+Now these are doctrines. And it is just because Christianity contains
+such doctrines that it satisfies the need of man.
+
+"The first and the most essential condition of true happiness," writes
+Professor Carl Hilty, the eminent Swiss jurist, "is a firm faith in the
+moral order of the world. What is the happy life? It is a life of
+conscious harmony with this Divine order of the world, a sense, that is
+to say, of God's companionship. And wherein is the profoundest
+unhappiness? It is in the sense of remoteness from God, issuing into
+incurable restlessness of heart, and finally into incapacity to make
+one's life fruitful or effective."
+
+What shall we say, then, of the proposal to adapt Christianity to the
+needs of the world to-day by eliminating or ignoring its characteristic
+doctrines? You might as well propose to fit a ship for service by taking
+out its compass and its charts and cutting off its rudder. Make
+Christianity silent in regard to these great questions of spiritual
+existence, and you destroy its power to satisfy the heart.
+
+What would the life of Christ mean if these deep truths on which He
+rested and from which He drew His strength, were uncertain or illusory?
+It would be the most pathetic, mournful, heartbreaking of all phantoms.
+
+What consoling, cheering power would be left in the words of Jesus if
+His doctrine were blotted out and His precept left to stand alone? Try
+the experiment, if it may be done without irreverence: read His familiar
+discourses in the shadow of agnosticism.
+
+'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is a hopeless poverty.
+Blessed are the pure in heart, for they know not whether they shall see
+God. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, for ye
+have no promise of a heavenly reward.
+
+'Enter into thy closet and when thou hast shut the door, keep silence,
+for thou canst not tell whether there is One to hear thy voice in
+secret. Take no thought for the morrow, for thou knowest not whether
+there is a Father who careth for thee.
+
+'God is unknown, and they that worship Him must worship Him in ignorance
+and doubt. No man hath ascended up into heaven, neither hath any man
+come down from heaven, for the Son of Man hath never been in heaven.
+That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the
+spirit is a dream. Man shall not live by bread alone, neither shall he
+listen for any word from the mouth of God. I proceeded forth and came
+from darkness, I came of myself, I know not who sent me. My sheep hear
+my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, but I can not give unto
+them eternal life, for they shall perish and death shall pluck them out
+of my hand. Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe not in God, ye
+need not believe in me. Keep my commandments, and I will not pray for
+you, and ye shall abide without a Comforter. In the world ye shall have
+tribulation, but be of good cheer, for ye know not whether there is a
+world to come. I came forth from darkness into the world, and again I
+leave the world and return to darkness. Peace I leave with you. If ye
+loved me ye would rejoice because I said, I go into darkness, and where
+I am there shall ye be also.'
+
+Is it conceivable that any suffering, sorrowing human soul should be
+comforted and strengthened by such a message as this? Could it possibly
+be called a gospel, glad tidings of great joy to all people?
+
+And yet what has been omitted here from the words of Christ? Nothing but
+what men call doctrines: the personality of God, the divinity of Christ,
+the Atonement, the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, the
+sovereignty of the Heavenly Father, the truth of the divine revelation,
+the reality of the heavenly world, the assurance of immortal life. But
+it is just from these doctrines that the teaching of Jesus draws its
+peculiar power to comfort and inspire. They are the rays of light which
+disperse the gloom of uncertainty. They are the tones of celestial music
+which fill the heart of man with good cheer.
+
+Let us never imagine that we can strengthen Christianity by leaving out
+the great doctrines which have given it life and power. Faith is not a
+mere matter of feeling. It is the acceptance of truth, positive,
+unchanging, revealed truth, in regard to God and the world, Christ and
+the soul, duty and immortality. The first appeal to faith lies in the
+clearness and vividness, the simplicity and joy, with which this truth
+is presented.
+
+There has not been too much preaching of doctrine in this age. There has
+been too little. And what there has been, has been too dull and cold and
+formal, too vague and misty, too wavering and uncertain.
+
+What the world wants and waits for to-day is a strong, true, vital
+preaching of doctrine. The Church must realize anew the precious value
+of the truths which Christ has given her. She must not conceal them or
+cast them away; she must bring them out into the light, press them home
+upon the minds and hearts of men. She must simplify her statement of
+them, so that men can understand what they mean. She must not be content
+with repeating them in the language of past centuries. She must
+translate them into the language of to-day. First century texts will
+never wear out because they are inspired. But seventeenth century
+sermons grow obsolete because they are not inspired. Texts from the Word
+of God, preaching in the words of living men,--that is what we need.
+
+We must think about the doctrines of Christianity more earnestly and
+profoundly. We must renew our Christian evidences, as an army fits
+itself with new weapons. The old-fashioned form of the "argument from
+design in nature" has gone out with the old-fashioned books of science
+which it used. But there is a new and more wonderful proof of God's
+presence in the world,--the argument from moral ends in evolution. Every
+real advance of science makes the intelligent order of the universe more
+sublimely clear. Every century of human experience confirms the Divine
+claims and adds to the Divine triumphs of Jesus Christ. Social progress
+has followed to a hair's breadth the lines of His gospel; and He lays
+His hand to-day with heavenly wisdom on the social wants that still
+trouble us, "the social lies that warp us from the living truth."
+Christ's view of life and the world is as full of sweet reasonableness
+now as it was in the first century. Every moral step that man has taken
+upward has brought a wider, clearer vision of his need of such a
+religion as that which Christ teaches.
+
+Let not the Church falter and blush for her doctrines. Let her not turn
+and go down the hill of knowledge to defend her position in the valley
+of ignorance. Let her go up the hill, welcoming every wider outlook,
+rejoicing in every new discovery, gathering fresh evidences of the
+truths which man must believe concerning God and new motives to the
+duties which God requires of man.
+
+But in doing this we must put the emphasis of our preaching to-day where
+it belongs, where Christ puts it, on the doctrines that are most
+important to human life and happiness. We can afford to let the fine
+metaphysical distinctions of theology rest for a while, and throw all
+our force on the central, fundamental truths which give steadiness and
+courage and cheer to the heart of man. I will not admit that it makes no
+difference to a man of this age whether or not he believes in the
+personal God and the Divine Christ. If he really believes, it makes all
+the difference between spiritual strength and spiritual weakness,
+between optimism and pessimism. I will not admit that it makes no
+difference to a learned scholar or a simple labourer to-day whether he
+accepts or ignores the doctrine of the atonement, the doctrine of
+personal immortality. If he knows that Christ died for him, that there
+is a future beyond the grave, it makes all the difference between
+despair and hope, between misery and consolation, between the helpless
+frailty of a being that is puffed out like a candle, and the joyful
+power of an endless life.
+
+My brethren, we must work and pray for a true revival of Christian
+doctrine in our age. We must deepen our own hold upon the truths which
+Christ has taught us. We must preach them more simply, more
+confidently, more reasonably, more earnestly. We must draw from them the
+happiness and the help, the comfort and the inspiration, that they have
+to give to the souls of men. But most of all, we must keep them in close
+and living touch with the problems of daily duty and experience. For no
+doctrine, however high, however true, can make men happy until it is
+translated into life.
+
+ii. Here is the second if, on which the power of religion to confer
+happiness depends: If ye know, happy are ye if ye do these things.
+
+Between the knowing and the doing there is a deep gulf. Into that abyss
+the happiness of many a man slips, and is lost. There is no peace, no
+real and lasting felicity for a human life until the gulf is closed, and
+the continent of conduct meets the continent of creed, edge to edge, lip
+to lip, firmly joined forever.
+
+It is not a blessing to know the things that Christ teaches, and then go
+on living as if they were false or doubtful. It is a trouble, a torment,
+a secret misery. To know that God is our Father, and yet to withhold
+our love and service from Him; to know that Christ died for us, and yet
+to deny Him and refuse to follow Him; to know that there is an immortal
+life, and yet to waste and lose our souls in the pursuit of sensual
+pleasure and such small portion of the world as we may hope to
+gain,--surely that is the deepest of all unhappiness.
+
+But the right kind of knowing carries in its heart the doing of the
+truth. And the right kind of doing leads to a fuller and happier
+knowing. "If any man will do God's will," declares Christ, "he shall
+know of the doctrine."
+
+Let a man take the truth of the Divine Fatherhood and begin to conform
+his life to its meaning. Let him give up his anxious worryings, his
+murmurings, his complainings, and trust himself completely to his
+Father's care. Let him do his work from day to day as well as he can and
+leave the results to God. Let him come to his Father every day and
+confess his faults and ask for help and guidance. Let him try to obey
+and please God for love's sake. Let him take refuge from the trials and
+confusions and misunderstandings of the world, from the wrath of men and
+the strife of tongues, in the secret of his Father's presence. Surely if
+he learns the truth thus, by doing it, he will find happiness.
+
+Or take the truth of immortality. Let a man live now in the light of the
+knowledge that he is to live forever. How it will deepen and strengthen
+the meaning of his existence, lift him above petty cares and ambitions,
+and make the things that are worth while precious to his heart! Let him
+really set his affections on the spiritual side of life, let him endure
+afflictions patiently because he knows that they are but for a moment,
+let him think more of the soul than of the body, let him do good to his
+fellow-men in order to make them sharers of his immortal hope, let him
+purify his love and friendship that they may be fit for the heavenly
+life. Surely the man who does these things will be happy. It will be
+with him as with Lazarus, in Robert Browning's poem, "The Epistle of
+Karshish." Others will look at him with wonder and say:
+
+  "Whence has the man the balm that brightens all?
+  This grown man eyes the world now like a child."
+
+Yes, my brethren, this is the sure result of following out the doctrines
+of Christ in action, of living the truths that He teaches,--a simple
+life, a childlike life, a happy life. And this also the Church needs
+to-day, as well as a true revival of doctrine.
+
+A revival of simplicity, a revival of sincerity, a revival of work: this
+will restore unto us the joy of salvation. And with the joy of salvation
+will come a renewal and expansion of power.
+
+The inconsistency of Christians is the stronghold of unbelief. The lack
+of vital joy in the Church is the chief cause of indifference in the
+world. The feeble energy, the faltering and reluctant spirit, the
+weariness in well-doing with which too many believers impoverish and
+sadden their own hearts, make other men question the reality and value
+of religion and turn away from it in cool neglect.
+
+What, then, is the duty of the Church? What must she do to win the
+confidence of the world? What is the best way for her to "prove her
+doctrine all divine"?
+
+First, she must increase her labours in the love of men: second, she
+must practice the simple life, deepening her trust in God.
+
+Suppose that a fresh flood of energy, brave, cheerful, joyous energy,
+should be poured into all the forms of Christian work. Suppose that
+Foreign Missions and Home Missions should no longer have to plead and
+beg for support, but that plenty of money should come flowing in to send
+out every missionary that wants to go, and that plenty of the strongest
+and best young men should dedicate their lives to the ministry of
+Christ, and that every household where His gospel is believed should
+find its highest honour and its greatest joy in helping to extend His
+kingdom.
+
+And then suppose that the Christian life, in its daily manifestation,
+should come to be marked and known by simplicity and happiness. Suppose
+that the followers of Jesus should really escape from bondage to the
+evil spirits of avarice and luxury which infect and torment so much of
+our complicated, tangled, artificial, modern life. Suppose that instead
+of increasing their wants and their desires, instead of loading
+themselves down on life's journey with so many bags and parcels and
+boxes of superfluous luggage and bric-a-brac that they are forced to sit
+down by the roadside and gasp for breath, instead of wearing themselves
+out in the dusty ways of ostentation and vain show or embittering their
+hearts because they can not succeed in getting into the weary race of
+wealth and fashion,--suppose instead of all this, they should turn to
+quiet ways, lowly pleasures, pure and simple joys, "plain living and
+high thinking." Suppose they should truly find and show their happiness
+in the knowledge that God loves them and Christ died for them and heaven
+is sure, and so set their hearts free to rejoice in life's common
+mercies, the light of the sun, the blue of the sky, the splendour of the
+sea, the peace of the everlasting hills, the song of birds, the
+sweetness of flowers, the wholesome savour of good food, the delights of
+action and motion, the refreshment of sleep, the charm of music, the
+blessings of human love and friendship,--rejoice in all these without
+fear or misgiving, because they come from God and because Christ has
+sanctified them all by His presence and touch.
+
+Suppose, I say, that such a revival of the joy of living in Christ and
+working for Christ should silently sweep over the Church in the
+Twentieth Century. What would happen? Great would be the peace of her
+children. Greater still would be their power.
+
+This is the message which I have to bring to you, my brethren, in this
+General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. You may wonder that it is
+not more distinctive, more ecclesiastical, more specially adapted to the
+peculiarities of our own denomination. You may think that it is a
+message which could just as well be brought to any other Church on any
+other occasion. With all my heart I hope that is true. The things that I
+care for most in our Church are not those which divide us from other
+Christians but those which unite us to them. The things that I love most
+in Christianity are those which give it power to save and satisfy, to
+console and cheer, to inspire and bless human hearts and lives. The
+thing that I desire most for Presbyterianism is that it should prove its
+mission and extend its influence in the world by making men happy in the
+knowing and the doing of the things which Christ teaches.
+
+The Church that the Twentieth Century will hear most gladly and honour
+most sincerely will have two marks. It will be the Church that teaches
+most clearly and strongly the truths that Jesus taught. It will be the
+Church that finds most happiness in living the simple life and doing
+good in the world.
+
+
+
+
+THE BATTLE OF LIFE
+
+    <i>Romans vii. 21: Overcome evil with good.</i>
+
+The Battle of Life is an ancient phrase consecrated by use in
+Commencement Orations without number. Two modern expressions have taken
+their place beside it in our own day: the Strenuous Life, and the Simple
+Life.
+
+Each of these phrases has its own significance and value. It is when
+they are overemphasized and driven to extremes that they lose their
+truth and become catch-words of folly. The simple life which blandly
+ignores all care and conflict, soon becomes flabby and invertebrate,
+sentimental and gelatinous. The strenuous life which does everything
+with set jaws and clenched fists and fierce effort, soon becomes
+strained and violent, a prolonged nervous spasm.
+
+Somewhere between these two extremes must lie the golden mean: a life
+that has strength and simplicity, courage and calm, power and peace. But
+how can we find this golden line and live along it? Some truth there
+must be in the old phrase which speaks of life as a battle. No conflict,
+no character. Without strife, a weak life. But what is the real meaning
+of the battle? What is the vital issue at stake? What are the things
+worth fighting for? In what spirit, with what weapons, are we to take
+our part in the warfare?
+
+There is an answer to these questions in the text: <i>Overcome evil with
+good.</i> The man who knows this text by heart, knows the secret of a life
+that is both strenuous and simple. For here we find the three things
+that we need most: a call to the real battle of life; a plan for the
+right campaign; and a promise of final victory.
+
+I. Every man, like the knight in the old legend, is born on a field of
+battle. But the warfare is not carnal, it is spiritual. Not the east
+against the west, the north against the south, the "Haves" against the
+"Have-nots"; but the evil against the good,--that is the real conflict
+of life.
+
+The attempt to deny or ignore this conflict has been the stock in trade
+of every false doctrine that has befogged and bewildered the world since
+the days of Eden. The fairy tale that the old serpent told to Eve is a
+poetic symbol of the lie fundamental,--the theory that sin does not mean
+death, because it has no real existence and makes no real difference.
+This ancient falsehood has an infinite wardrobe of disguises.
+
+You will find it pranked out in philosophic garb in the doctrines of
+those who teach that all things are linked together by necessity of
+nature or Divine will, and that nothing could ever have happened
+otherwise than just as it has come to pass. Such a theory of the
+universe blots out all difference between good and evil except in name.
+It leaves the fence-posts standing, but it takes away the rails, and
+throws everything into one field of the inevitable.
+
+You will find the same falsehood in a more crude form in the popular
+teachings of what men call "the spirit of the age," the secular spirit.
+According to these doctrines the problem of civilization is merely a
+problem of ways and means. If society were better organized, if wealth
+were more equally distributed, if laws were changed, or perhaps
+abolished, all would be well. If everybody had a full dinner-pail,
+nobody need care about an empty heart. Human misery the secular spirit
+recognizes, but it absolutely ignores the fact that nine-tenths of human
+misery comes from human sin.
+
+You will find the same falsehood disguised in sentimental costume in the
+very modern comedy of Christian Science, which dresses the denial of
+evil in pastoral garb of white frock and pink ribbons, like an innocent
+shepherdess among her lambs. "Evil is nothing," says this wonderful
+Science. "It does not really exist. It is an illusion of mortal mind.
+Shut your eyes and it will vanish."
+
+Yes, but open your eyes again and you will see it in the same place, in
+the same form, doing the same work. A most persistent nothing, a most
+powerful nothing! Not the shadow cast by the good, but the cloud that
+hides the sun and casts the shadow. Not the "silence implying sound,"
+but the discord breaking the harmony. Evil is as real as the fire that
+burns you, as the flood that drowns you. Evil is as real as the typhoid
+germ that you can put under a microscope and see it squirm and grow.
+Evil is negative,--yes, but it is a real negative,--as real as darkness,
+as real as death.
+
+There are two things in every human heart which bear witness to the
+existence and reality of evil: first, our judgments of regret, and
+second, our judgments of condemnation.
+
+How often we say to ourselves, "Would that this had not come to pass!"
+How often we feel in regard to our own actions, "Would that I had done
+differently!" This is the judgment of regret; and it is a silent witness
+of the heart to the conviction that some things are not inevitable. It
+is the confession that a battle has been lost which might have been won.
+It is the acknowledgment that things which are, but are not right, need
+not have been, if we and our fellow-men had seen more clearly and
+followed more faithfully the guiding star of the good.
+
+And then, out of the judgment of regret, springs the deeper judgment of
+condemnation. If the failure in duty was not inevitable, then it was
+base. The false word, the unjust deed, the foul action, seen as a
+surrender to evil, appears hateful and guilty. It deserves the
+indignation and the shame which attach to all treason. And the spirit
+which lies behind all these forms of disloyalty to the good,--the spirit
+which issues in selfishness and sensuality, cruelty and lust,
+intemperance and covetousness,--this animating spirit of evil which
+works against the Divine will and mars the peace and order of the
+universe is the great Adversary against whom we must fight for our own
+lives and the life of the world.
+
+All around us lies his dark, secret kingdom, tempting, threatening,
+assaulting the soul. To ignore it, is to walk blindfold among snares
+and pitfalls. Try if you will to shut it out, by wrapping your heart in
+dreams of beauty and joy, living in the fair regions of art or
+philosophy, reading only the books which speak of evil as if it did not
+exist or were only another form of goodness. Soon you will be shaken out
+of the dream into the reality. You will come into contact with evil so
+close, so loathsome that you can not deny it. You will see that it has
+its soldiers, its servants, its emissaries, as ardent and enthusiastic
+in its cause as if they were serving the noblest of masters. It inspires
+literature and supports newspapers; now intelligent and cultured,
+drawing the arts into its service; now coarse and vulgar, with pictures
+that shock the taste as much as they debase the conscience. It wins
+adherents and turns them into advocates. It organizes the dealers in
+drunkenness and debauchery into powerful societies for mutual
+protection. It creates lobbies and controls legislatures. It corrupts
+the government of great cities and rots out the social life of small
+towns. Even when its outward manifestations are repressed and its
+grosser forms resisted, it steals its way into men's hearts, eating out
+the roots of human trust and brotherhood and kindness, and filling the
+air with gossip and spite, envy, malice and all uncharitableness.
+
+I am glad that since we have to live in a world where evil exists, we
+have a religion which does not bandage our eyes. The first thing that we
+need to have religion do for us is to teach us to face the facts. No man
+can come into touch with the Divine personality of Jesus Christ, no man
+can listen to His teaching, without feeling that the distinction between
+good and evil to Him is vital and everlasting. The choice between them
+is to Him the great choice. The conflict between them is to Him the
+great conflict. Evil is the one thing that God has never willed. Good is
+the one thing that He wills forever. Evil is first and last a rebellion
+against His will. He is altogether on the side of good. Much that is,
+is contrary to His will. There is a mighty strife going on, a battle
+with eternal issues, but not an eternal battle. The evil that is against
+Him shall be cast out and shall perish. The good that overcomes the evil
+shall live forever. And those who yield their lives to God and receive
+His righteousness in Christ are made partakers of everlasting life.
+
+This is the teaching of Jesus: and I thank God for the honesty and
+virility of His religion which makes us face the facts and calls us to
+take a man's part in the real battle of life.
+
+II. But what is the plan of campaign which Christianity sets before us?
+In what spirit and with what weapons are we to enter the great conflict
+against the evil that is in the world?
+
+The natural feeling of the heart in the presence of evil is wrath, and
+the natural weapon of wrath is force. To punish crime, to avenge wrong,
+to put down wickedness with a strong hand,--that is the first impulse of
+every one who has the instincts of manhood.
+
+And as this is natural, so it is, also, within a certain sphere
+needful, and to a certain extent useful. Armies and navies exist, at
+least in theory, to prevent injustice among nations. Laws are made to
+punish wrong-doers. Courts, police-forces, and prisons are maintained to
+suppress evil with power.
+
+But while we recognize this method of dealing with evil as useful to a
+certain extent and necessary within a certain sphere, we must remember
+that it has its strict limitations.
+
+First, it belongs to the state and not to the individual. When the
+private man assumes to punish evil with force he sanctions lynch-law,
+which is a terror to the innocent as well as to the guilty. Then we have
+the blood-feud and the vendetta, mob-rule and anarchy.
+
+Second, the suppression of evil by force is only a temporary relief, a
+protection for the moment. It does not touch the root of the matter. You
+send the murderer out of the world by a regulated flash of lightning.
+But you do not send murder out of the world. To do that you must reach
+and change the heart of Cain. You put the thief in prison, but when he
+comes out he will be ready to steal again, unless you can purify his
+conscience and control his will. You assault and overthrow some system
+of misgovernment, and "turn the rascals out." But unless you have
+something better to substitute, all you have done is to make room for a
+new set of rascals,--a new swarm of mosquitoes with fresh appetites and
+larger capacities.
+
+Third, the method of fighting evil with force on its own ground often
+has a bad effect on those who follow it. Wrestle with a chimney-sweep
+and you will need a bath. Throw back the mud that is thrown at you, and
+you will have dirty hands. Answer Shimei when he curses you and you will
+echo his profanity. Many a man has entered a crusade against
+intemperance and proved himself as intemperate in his language as other
+men are in their potations. Many a man has attacked a bad cause with
+righteous indignation and ended in a personal squabble with most
+unrighteous anger.
+
+No, my brother-men, the best way to fight against evil is not to meet it
+on its own ground with its own weapons. There is a nobler method of
+warfare, a divine plan of campaign given to us in the religion of
+Christ. Overcome evil with good. This is the secret of the battle of
+life.
+
+Evil is potent not so much because it has command of money and the "big
+battalions," but because it has control of the hearts of men. It spreads
+because human hearts are lying fallow and ready to welcome the seeds of
+all kinds of weeds. It persists because too much of what we call virtue
+is negative, and selfish, and frost-bound,--cold storage virtue,--the
+poor piety which terminates in a trembling anxiety to save our own
+souls.
+
+The way to counteract and conquer evil in the world is to give our own
+hearts to the dominion of good, and work the works of God while it is
+day. The strongest of all obstacles to the advance of evil is a clean
+and generous man, doing his duty from day to day, and winning others, by
+his cheerful fidelity, to serve the same Master. Diseases are not the
+only things that are contagious. Courage is contagious. Kindness is
+contagious. Manly integrity is contagious. All the positive virtues,
+with red blood in their veins, are contagious. The heaviest blow that
+you can strike at the kingdom of evil is just to follow the advice which
+the dying Sir Walter Scott gave to his son-in-law, Lockhart: "Be a good
+man." And if you want to know how, there is but one perfect and supreme
+example,--the life of Him who not only did no evil but went about doing
+good.
+
+Now take that thought of fighting evil with good and apply it to our
+world and to ourselves.
+
+Here are monstrous evils and vices in society. Let intemperance be the
+type of them all, because so many of the others are its children.
+Drunkenness ruins more homes and wrecks more lives than war. How shall
+we oppose it? I do not say that we shall not pass resolutions and make
+laws against it. But I do say that we can never really conquer the evil
+in this way. I hold with Phillips Brooks that "all prohibitory measures
+are negative. That they have their uses no one can doubt. That they have
+their limits is just as clear."
+
+The stronghold of intemperance lies in the vacancy and despair of men's
+minds. The way to attack it is to make the sober life beautiful and
+happy and full of interest. Teach your boys how to work, how to read,
+how to play, you fathers, before you send them to college, if you want
+to guard them against the temptations of strong drink and the many
+shames and sorrows that go with it. Make the life of your community
+cheerful and pleasant and interesting, you reformers, provide men with
+recreation which will not harm them, if you want to take away the power
+of the gilded saloon and the grimy boozing-ken. Parks and play-grounds,
+libraries and music-rooms, clean homes and cheerful churches,--these
+are the efficient foes of intemperance. And the same thing is true of
+gambling and lubricity and all the other vices which drag men down by
+the lower side of their nature because the higher side has nothing to
+cling to, nothing to sustain it and hold it up.
+
+What are you going to do, my brother-men, for this higher side of human
+life? What contribution are you going to make of your strength, your
+time, your influence, your money, your self, to make a cleaner, fuller,
+happier, larger, nobler life possible for some of your fellow-men? I do
+not ask how you are going to do it. You may do it in business, in the
+law, in medicine, in the ministry, in teaching, in literature. But this
+is the question: What are you going to give personally to make the human
+life of the place where you do your work, purer, stronger, brighter,
+better, and more worth living? That will be your best part in the
+warfare against vice and crime.
+
+The positive method is the only efficient way to combat intellectual
+error and spiritual evil. False doctrines are never argued out of the
+world. They are pushed back by the incoming of the truth as the darkness
+is pushed back by the dawn. Phillips Brooks was right. It is not worth
+while to cross the street to break a man's idol. It is worth while to
+cross the ocean to tell him about God. The skilful fencer who attacks
+your doubts and drives you from corner to corner of unbelief and leaves
+you at last in doubt whether you doubt or not, does you a certain
+service. He gives you exercise, takes the conceit out of you. But the
+man who lays hold of the real faith that is hidden underneath your
+doubt,--the silent longing for God and goodness, the secret attraction
+that draws your heart toward Jesus Christ as the only one who has the
+words of everlasting life,--the man who takes hold of this buried faith
+and quickens it and makes you dare to try to live by it,--ah, that is
+the man who helps you indeed. My brothers, if any of you are going to be
+preachers remember this. What we men need is not so much an answer to
+our doubts, as more nourishment for our faith.
+
+The positive method is the only way of victory in our struggle with the
+evil that dwells in our own nature and besets our own hearts. The reason
+why many men fail, is because they thrust the vice out and then forget
+to lay hold on the virtue. They evict the unclean spirit and leave a
+vacant house. To cease to do evil is important, but to learn to do good
+is far more important. Reformation never saved a man. Transformation is
+the only way. And to be transformed, a man must welcome the Spirit of
+Good, the Holy Spirit, into his heart, and work with Him every day,
+doing the will of God.
+
+There are two ways of fighting fever. One is to dose the sick people
+with quinine and keep the fever down. The other is to drain the marshes,
+and purify the water, and cleanse the houses, and drive the fever out.
+Try negative, repressive religion, and you may live, but you will be an
+invalid. Try positive, vital religion, and you will be well.
+
+There is an absorption of good that guards the soul against the
+infection of evil. There is a life of fellowship with Christ that can
+pass through the furnace of the world without the smell of fire on its
+garments,--a life that is full of interest as His was, being ever about
+His Father's business; a life that is free and generous and blessed, as
+His was, being spent in doing good, and refreshed by the sense of God's
+presence and approval.
+
+Last summer, I saw two streams emptying into the sea. One was a
+sluggish, niggardly rivulet, in a wide, fat, muddy bed; and every day
+the tide came in and drowned out that poor little stream, and filled it
+with bitter brine. The other was a vigorous, joyful, brimming
+mountain-river, fed from unfailing springs among the hills; and all the
+time it swept the salt water back before it and kept itself pure and
+sweet; and when the tide came in, it only made the fresh water rise
+higher and gather new strength by the delay; and ever the living stream
+poured forth into the ocean its tribute of living water,--the symbol of
+that influence which keeps the ocean of life from turning into a Dead
+Sea of wickedness.
+
+My brother-men, will you take that living stream as a type of your life
+in the world? The question for you is not what you are going to get out
+of the world, but what you are going to give to the world. The only way
+to meet and overcome the inflowing tide of evil is to roll against it
+the outflowing river of good.
+
+My prayer for you is that you may receive from Christ not only the
+watchword of this nobler life, but also the power to fulfil it.
+
+
+
+
+THE GOOD OLD WAY
+
+    <i>Jeremiah vi. 16. Stand ye in the ways and see; and ask
+    for the old paths, where is the good way; and walk
+    therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.</i>
+
+This advice was given to people who were in peril and perplexity. The
+kingdom of Judah was threatened with destruction, which could be averted
+only by wise and prompt action. But the trouble was to decide in which
+direction that action should be taken. The nation was divided into loud
+parties, and these parties into noisy wings. Every man had a theory of
+his own, or a variation of some other man's theory.
+
+Some favoured an alliance with the East; some preferred the friendship
+of the West; others, a course of diplomatic dalliance; a few stood out
+for honest independence. Some said that what the country needed was an
+increase of wealth; some held that a splendid and luxurious court like
+that of Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar would bring prosperity; others
+maintained that the troubles of the land could be healed only by a
+return to "simpler manners, purer laws." Among the nobility and their
+followers all kinds of novelties in the worship of idols were in fashion
+and new gods were imported every season. The philosophers cultivated a
+discreet indifference to all religious questions. The prophets taught
+that the only salvation for the nation lay in the putting away of
+idolatry and the revival of faith in the living and true God.
+
+Judah was like a man standing at the cross-roads, on a stormy night,
+with all the guide-posts blown down. Meantime the Babylonian foe was
+closing in around Jerusalem, and it was necessary to do something, or
+die.
+
+The liberty of choice was an embarrassment. The minds of men alternated
+between that rash haste which is ready to follow any leader who makes
+noise enough, and that skeptical spirit which doubts whether any line of
+action can be right because so many lines are open. Into this atmosphere
+of fever and fog came the word of the prophet. Let us consider what it
+means.
+
+Stand ye in the ways and see: that means deliberation. When you are at a
+junction it is no time to shut your eyes and run at full speed. Where
+there are so many ways some of them are likely to be wrong. A
+turning-point is the place for prudence and forethought.
+
+Ask for the old paths, what is the good way: that means guidance. No man
+is forced to face the problems of life alone. Other men have tried the
+different ways. Peace, prosperity, victory have been won by the nation
+in former times. Inquire of the past how these blessings were secured.
+Look for the path which has already led to safety and happiness. Let
+history teach you which among all these crossing ways is the best to
+follow.
+
+And walk therein: that means action. When you have deliberated, when you
+have seen the guiding light upon the way of security and peace, then go
+ahead. Prudence is worthless unless you put it into practice. When in
+doubt do nothing; but as long as you do nothing you will be in doubt.
+Never man or nation was saved by inaction. The only way out of danger is
+the way into work. Gird up your loins, trembling Judah, and push along
+your chosen path, steadily, bravely, strenuously, until you come to your
+promised rest.
+
+Now I am sure this was good counsel that the prophet gave to his people
+in the days of perplexity. It would have been well for them if they had
+followed it I am sure it is also good counsel for us, a word of God to
+steady us and stimulate us amid life's confusions. Let me make it a
+personal message to you.
+
+Stand in the ways: Ask for the good way: Walk therein:--Deliberation,
+Guidance, Action,--Will you take these words with you, and try to make
+them a vital influence in your life?
+
+I. First, I ask you to stand in the ways and see. I do not mean to say
+that you have not already been doing this to a certain extent. The great
+world is crossed by human footsteps which make paths leading in all
+directions. Men travel through on different ways; and I suppose some of
+you have noticed the fact, and thought a little about it.
+
+There is the way of sensuality. Those who walk in it take appetite as
+their guide. Their main object in life is to gratify their physical
+desires. Some of them are delicate, and some of them are coarse. That is
+a matter of temperament. But all of them are hungry. That is a matter of
+principle. Whether they grub in the mire for their food like swine, or
+browse daintily upon the tree-tops like the giraffe, the question of
+life for those who follow this way is the same. "How much can we hold?
+How can we obtain the most pleasure for these five senses of ours before
+they wear out?" And the watchword of their journey is, "Let us eat and
+drink and be merry, for we do not expect to die to-morrow."
+
+There is the way of avarice. Those who follow it make haste to be rich.
+The almighty dollar rolls before them along the road, and they chase it.
+Some of them plod patiently along the highway of toil. Others are
+always leaping fences and trying to find short cuts to wealth. But they
+are alike in this: whatever they do by way of avocation, the real
+vocation of their life is to make money. If they fail, they are hard and
+bitter; if they succeed they are hard and proud. But they all bow down
+to the golden calf, and their motto is, "Lay up for yourselves treasures
+upon earth."
+
+There is the way of social ambition. Those who walk in it have their
+eyes fixed on various prizes, such as titles of honour, public office,
+large acquaintance with prosperous people, the reputation of leading the
+fashion. But the real satisfaction that they get out of it all is simply
+the feeling of notoriety, the sense of belonging to a circle to which
+ordinary people are not admitted and to whose doings the world, just for
+this reason, pays envious attention. This way is less like a road than
+like a ladder. Most of the people who are on it are "climbers."
+
+There are other ways, less clearly marked, more difficult to
+trace,--the way of moral indifference, the way of intellectual pride,
+the way of hypocrisy, the way of indecision. This last is not a single
+road; it is a net-work of sheep-tracks, crossing and recrossing the
+great highways, leading in every direction, and ending nowhere. The men
+who wander in these aimless paths go up and down through the world,
+changing their purposes, following one another blindly, forever
+travelling but never arriving at the goal of their journey.
+
+Through all this tangle there runs another way,--the path of faith and
+duty. Those who walk in it believe that life has a meaning, the
+fulfilment of God's will, and a goal, the attainment of perfect harmony
+with Him. They try to make the best of themselves in soul and body by
+training and discipline. They endeavour to put their talents to the
+noblest use in the service of their fellow-men, and to unfold their
+faculties to the highest joy and power in the life of the Spirit. They
+seek an education to fit them for work, and they do their work well
+because it is a part of their education. They respect their consciences,
+and cherish their ideals. They put forth an honest effort to be good and
+to do good and to make the world better. They often stumble. They
+sometimes fall. But, take their life from end to end, it is a faithful
+attempt to walk in "the way of righteousness, which is the way of
+peace."
+
+Such are some of the ways that lead through the world. And they are all
+open to us. We can travel by the road that pleases us. Heredity gives us
+our outfit. Environment supplies our company. But when we come to the
+cross-roads, the question is, "Boy, which way will you ride?"
+
+Deliberation is necessary, unless we wish to play a fool's part. No
+amount of energy will take the place of thought. A strenuous life, with
+its eyes shut, is a kind of wild insanity. A drifting life, with its
+eyes open, is a kind of mild idiocy.
+
+The real question is, "How will you live? After what rule and pattern?
+Along what way? Toward what end?"
+
+Will you let chance answer that question for you? Will you let yourself
+be led blindfold by the first guide that offers, or run stupidly after
+the crowd without asking whither they are going? You would not act so in
+regard to the shortest earthly journey. You would not rush into the
+railway station and jump aboard of the first train you saw, without
+looking at the sign-boards. Surely if there is anything in regard to
+which we need to exercise deliberation, it is the choice of the way that
+we are to take through the world. You have thought a good deal about
+what business, what profession you are to follow. Think more deeply, I
+beg you, about how you are to follow it and what you are to follow it
+for. Stand in the ways, and see.
+
+II. Second, I earnestly advise you to ask for the old paths, where is
+the good way.
+
+I do not regard this as a mere counsel of conservatism, an unqualified
+commendation of antiquity. True, it implies that the good way will not
+be a new discovery, a track that you and I strike out for ourselves.
+Among the paths of conduct, that which is entirely original is likely to
+be false, and that which is true is likely to have some footprints on
+it. When a man comes to us with a scheme of life which he has made all
+by himself, we may safely say to him, as the old composer said to the
+young musician who brought him a symphony of the future, "It is both new
+and beautiful; but that which is new is not beautiful, and that which is
+beautiful is not new."
+
+But this is by no means the same as saying that everything ancient is
+therefore beautiful and true, or that all the old ways are good. The
+very point of the text is that we must discriminate among
+antiquities,--a thing as necessary in old chairs and old books as in old
+ways.
+
+Evil is almost, if not quite, as ancient as good. Folly and wisdom,
+among men at least, are twins, and we can not distinguish between them
+by the grey hairs. Adam's way was old enough; and so was the way of
+Cain, and of Noah's vile son, and of Lot's lewd daughters, and of
+Balaam, and of Jezebel, and of Manasseh. Judas Iscariot was as old as
+St. John. Ananias and Sapphira were of the same age with St. Peter and
+St. Paul.
+
+What we are to ask for is not simply the old way, but that one among the
+old ways which has been tested and tried and proved to be the good way.
+The Spirit of Wisdom tells us that we are not to work this way out by
+logarithms, or evolve it from our own inner consciousness, but to learn
+what it is by looking at the lives of other men and marking the lessons
+which they teach us. Experience has been compared to the stern-light of
+a ship which shines only on the road that has been traversed. But the
+stern-light of a ship that sails before you is a head-light to you.
+
+You do not need to try everything for yourself in order to understand
+what it means. The writer of Ecclesiastes tells us that he gave his
+heart to know madness and folly; and that it was all vanity and vexation
+of spirit. It will be a wise economy for us to accept his lesson without
+paying his tuition-fee over again.
+
+It is perfectly safe for a man to take it as a fact that fire burns,
+without putting his hand into the flame. He does not need to try
+perilous experiments with his own soul in order to make sure that lust
+defiles, that avarice hardens, that frivolity empties, that selfishness
+cankers the heart. He may understand the end of the way of sensuality by
+looking at any old pleasure-seeker,
+
+  "Gray, and gap-toothed, and lean as death,"
+
+mumbling the dainties that he can no longer enjoy, and glowering with
+bleared eyes at the indulgences which now mock him even while they tempt
+him. The goal of the path of covetousness may be discerned in the face
+of any old money-worshipper; keeping guard over his piles of wealth,
+like a surly watch-dog; or, if perchance he has failed, haunting the
+places where fortune has deceived him, like an unquiet ghost.
+
+Inquire and learn; consider and discern. There need be no doubt about
+the direction of life's various ways.
+
+Which are the nations that have been most peaceful and noble and truly
+prosperous? Those that have followed pride and luxury and idolatry? Or
+those that have cherished sobriety and justice, and acknowledged the
+Divine law of righteousness?
+
+Which are the families that have been most serene and pure and truly
+fortunate? Those in which there has been no discipline, no restraint, no
+common faith, no mutual love? Or those in which sincere religion has
+swayed life to its stern and gracious laws, those in which parents and
+children have walked together to the House of God, and knelt together at
+His altar, and rejoiced together in His service?
+
+I tell you, my brother-men, it has become too much the fashion in these
+latter days to sneer and jeer at the old-fashioned ways of the
+old-fashioned American household. Something too much of iron there may
+have been in the Puritan's temper; something too little of sunlight may
+have come in through the narrow windows of his house. But that house had
+foundations, and the virile virtues lived in it. There were plenty of
+red corpuscles in his blood, and his heart beat in time with the eternal
+laws of right, even though its pulsations sometimes seemed a little slow
+and heavy. It would be well for us if we could get back into the old
+way, which proved itself to be the good way, and maintain, as our
+fathers did, the sanctity of the family, the sacredness of the
+marriage-vow, the solemnity of the mutual duties binding parents and
+children together. From the households that followed this way have come
+men that could rule themselves as well as their fellows, women that
+could be trusted as well as loved. Read the history of such families,
+and you will understand the truth of the poet's words:--
+
+  "Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,--
+  These three alone lead life to sovereign power."
+
+Look around you in the world and see what way it is that has brought
+your fellow-men to peace and quietness of heart, to security and honour
+of life. Is it the way of unbridled self-indulgence, of unscrupulous
+greed, of aimless indolence? Or is it the way of self-denial, of
+cheerful industry, of fair dealing, of faithful service? If true honour
+lies in the respect and grateful love of one's fellow-men, if true
+success lies in a contented heart and a peaceful conscience, then the
+men who have reached the highest goal of life are those who have
+followed most closely the way to which Jesus Christ points us and in
+which He goes before us.
+
+III. Walk therein and ye shall find rest for your souls. Right action
+brings rest.
+
+Rest! Rest! How that word rings like a sweet bell through the turmoil
+of our age. We are rushing to and fro, destroying rest in our search for
+it. We drive our automobiles from one place to another, at furious
+speed, not knowing what we shall do when we get there. We make haste to
+acquire new possessions, not knowing how we shall use them when they are
+ours. We are in a fever of new discoveries and theories, not knowing how
+to apply them when they are made. We feed ourselves upon novel
+speculations until our heads swim with the vertigo of universal
+knowledge which changes into the paresis of universal doubt.
+
+But in the hours of silence, the Spirit of Wisdom whispers a secret to
+our hearts. Rest depends upon conduct. The result of your life depends
+upon your choosing the good way and walking in it.
+
+And to you I say, my brother-men, choose Christ, for He is the Way. All
+the strength and sweetness of the best possible human life are embodied
+in Him. All the truth that is needed to inspire and guide man to noble
+action and fine character is revealed in Him. He is the one Master
+altogether worthy to be served and followed. Take His yoke upon you and
+learn of Him, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Joy & Power, by Henry van Dyke
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10395 ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10395 ***</div>
+
+<h1>Joy and Power</h1>
+
+<h2>Three messages with One meaning</h2>
+
+<h4>by</h4>
+
+<h2>Henry van Dyke</h2>
+
+<h4>1903</h4>
+
+
+
+<br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<h4>Dedicated to my friend John Huston Finley</h4>
+<h4>President of the College of the City of New York</h4>
+
+
+
+<br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="THE_PREFACE"></a><h2>THE PREFACE</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>The three messages which are brought together in this book were given
+not far apart in time, though at some distance from one another in
+space. The one called Joy and Power was delivered in Los Angeles,
+California, at the opening of the Presbyterian General Assembly, May 21,
+1903. The one called The Battle of Life was delivered on Baccalaureate
+Sunday at Princeton University, June 7. The one called The Good Old Way
+was delivered on Baccalaureate Sunday at Harvard University, June 14. At
+the time, I was thinking chiefly of the different qualities and needs of
+the people to whom I had to speak. This will account for some things in
+the form of each message. But now that they are put together I can see
+that all three of them say about the same thing. They point in the same
+direction, urge the same course of action, and appeal to the same
+motive. It is nothing new,&mdash;the meaning of this threefold message,&mdash;but
+it is the best that I have learned in life. And I believe it is
+true,&mdash;so true that we need often to have it brought to remembrance.</p>
+
+<p>Henry van Dyke</p>
+
+<p>Avalon, July 5, 1903</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CONTENTS"></a><h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>i. <a href="#JOY_AND_POWER">Joy and Power</a></p>
+
+<p>ii. <a href="#THE_BATTLE_OF_LIFE">The Battle of Life</a></p>
+
+<p>iii. <a href="#THE_GOOD_OLD_WAY">The Good Old Way</a></p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="JOY_AND_POWER"></a><h2>JOY AND POWER</h2>
+
+<blockquote class="poetry">
+<i>St. John viii. 17: If ye know these things, happy are
+ye if ye do them.</i><br>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>I ask you to think for a little while about the religion of Christ in
+its relation to happiness.</p>
+
+<p>This is only one point in the circle of truth at the centre of which
+Jesus stands. But it is an important point because it marks one of the
+lines of power which radiate from Him. To look at it clearly and
+steadily is not to disregard other truths. The mariner takes the whole
+heavens of astronomy for granted while he shapes his course by a single
+star.</p>
+
+<p>In the wish for happiness all men are strangely alike. In their
+explanations of it and in their ways of seeking it they are singularly
+different. Shall we think of this wish as right, or wrong; as a true
+star, or a will-o'-the-wisp? If it is right to wish to be happy, what
+are the conditions on which the fulfilment of this wish depends? These
+are the two questions with which I would come to Christ, seeking
+instruction and guidance.</p>
+
+<p>I. The desire of happiness, beyond all doubt, is a natural desire. It
+is the law of life itself that every being seeks and strives toward the
+perfection of its kind, the realization of its own specific ideal in
+form and function, and a true harmony with its environment. Every drop
+of sap in the tree flows toward foliage and fruit. Every drop of blood
+in the bird beats toward flight and song. In a conscious being this
+movement toward perfection must take a conscious form. This conscious
+form is happiness,&mdash;the satisfaction of the vital impulse,&mdash;the rhythm
+of the inward life,&mdash;the melody of a heart that has found its keynote.
+To say that all men long for this is simply to confess that all men are
+human, and that their thoughts and feelings are an essential part of
+their life. Virtue means a completed manhood. The joyful welfare of the
+soul belongs to the fulness of that ideal. Holiness is wholeness. In
+striving to realize the true aim of our being, we find the wish for
+happiness implanted in the very heart of our effort.</p>
+
+<p>Now what does Christ say in regard to this natural human wish? Does He
+say that it is an illusion? Does He condemn and deny it? Would He have
+accepted Goethe's definition: &quot;religion is renunciation&quot;?</p>
+
+<p>Surely such a notion is far from the spirit of Jesus. There is nothing
+of the hardness of Stoicism, the coldness of Buddhism, in Christ's
+gospel. It is humane, sympathetic, consoling. Unrest and weariness, the
+fever of passion and the chill of despair, soul-solitude and
+heart-trouble, are the very things that He comes to cure. He begins His
+great discourse with a series of beatitudes. &quot;Blessed&quot; is the word.
+&quot;Happy&quot; is the meaning. Nine times He rings the changes on that word,
+like a silver bell sounding from His fair temple on the mountain-side,
+calling all who long for happiness to come to Him and find rest for
+their souls.</p>
+
+<p>Christ never asks us to give up merely for the sake of giving up, but
+always in order to win something better. He comes not to destroy, but to
+fulfil,&mdash;to fill full,&mdash;to replenish life with true, inward, lasting
+riches. His gospel is a message of satisfaction, of attainment, of
+felicity. Its voice is not a sigh, but a song. Its final word is a
+benediction, a good-saying. &quot;These things have I spoken unto you, that
+my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>If we accept His teaching we must believe that men are not wrong in
+wishing for happiness, but wrong in their way of seeking it. Earthly
+happiness,&mdash;pleasure that belongs to the senses and perishes with
+them,&mdash;earthly happiness is a dream and a delusion. But happiness on
+earth,&mdash;spiritual joy and peace, blossoming here, fruiting
+hereafter,&mdash;immortal happiness, is the keynote of life in Christ.</p>
+
+<p>And if we come to Him, He tells us four great secrets in regard to it.</p>
+
+<p>i. It is inward, and, not outward; and so it does not depend on what we
+have, but on what we are.</p>
+
+<p>ii. It cannot be found by direct seeking, but by setting our faces
+toward the things from which it flows; and so we must climb the mount
+if we would see the vision, we must tune the instrument if we would hear
+the music.</p>
+
+<p>iii. It is not solitary, but social; and so we can never have it without
+sharing it with others.</p>
+
+<p>iv. It is the result of God's will for us, and not of our will for
+ourselves; and so we can only find it by giving our lives up, in
+submission and obedience, to the control of God.</p>
+
+<blockquote class="poetry">
+For this is peace,&mdash;to lose the lonely note<br>
+Of self in love's celestial ordered strain:<br>
+And this is joy,&mdash;to find one's self again<br>
+In Him whose harmonies forever float<br>
+Through all the spheres of song, below, above,&mdash;<br>
+For God is music, even as God is love.<br>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>This is the divine doctrine of happiness as Christ taught it by His life
+and with His lips. If we want to put it into a single phrase, I know not
+where we shall find a more perfect utterance than in the words which
+have been taught us in childhood,&mdash;words so strong, so noble, so
+cheerful, that they summon the heart of manhood like marching-music:
+&quot;Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Let us accept without reserve this teaching of our Divine Lord and
+Master in regard to the possibility and the duty of happiness. It is an
+essential element of His gospel. The atmosphere of the New Testament is
+not gloom, but gladness; not despondency, but hope. The man who is not
+glad to be a Christian is not the right kind of a Christian.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing that commended the Church of Jesus to the weary and
+disheartened world in the early years of her triumph, was her power to
+make her children happy,&mdash;happy in the midst of afflictions, happy in
+the release from the burden of guilt, happy in the sense of Divine
+Fatherhood and human brotherhood, happy in Christ's victory over sin and
+death, happy in the assurance of an endless life. At midnight in the
+prison, Paul and Silas sang praises, and the prisoners heard them. The
+lateral force of joy,&mdash;that was the power of the Church.</p>
+
+<blockquote class="poetry">
+&quot;'Poor world,' she cried, 'so deep accurst,<br>
+Thou runn'st from pole to pole<br>
+To seek a draught to slake thy thirst,&mdash;<br>
+Go seek it in thy soul.'<br>
+<br/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br/>
+<br/>
+Tears washed the trouble from her face!<br>
+She changed into a child!<br>
+'Mid weeds and wrecks she stood,&mdash;a place<br>
+Of ruin,&mdash;but she smiled!&quot;<br>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Much has the Church lost of that pristine and powerful joy. The furnace
+of civilization has withered and hardened her. She has become anxious
+and troubled about many things. She has sought earthly honours, earthly
+powers. Richer she is than ever before, and probably better organized,
+and perhaps more intelligent, more learned,&mdash;but not more happy. The one
+note that is most often missing in Christian life, in Christian service,
+is the note of spontaneous joy.</p>
+
+<p>Christians are not as much calmer, steadier, stronger, and more cheerful
+than other people as they ought to be. Some Christians are among the
+most depressing and worryful people in the world,&mdash;the most difficult to
+live with. And some, indeed, have adopted a theory of spiritual ethics
+which puts a special value upon unhappiness. The dark, morbid spirit
+which mistrusts every joyful feeling, and depreciates every cheerful
+virtue, and looks askance upon every happy life as if there must be
+something wrong about it, is a departure from the beauty of Christ's
+teaching to follow the dark-browed philosophy of the Orient.</p>
+
+<p>The religion of Jesus tells us that cheerful piety is the best piety.
+There is something finer than to do right against inclination; and that
+is to have an inclination to do right. There is something nobler than
+reluctant obedience; and that is joyful obedience. The rank of virtue is
+not measured by its disagreeableness, but by its sweetness to the heart
+that loves it. The real test of character is joy. For what you rejoice
+in, that you love. And what you love, that you are like.</p>
+
+<p>I confess frankly that I have no admiration for the phrase
+&quot;disinterested benevolence,&quot; to describe the main-spring of Christian
+morals. I do not find it in the New Testament: neither the words, nor
+the thing. Interested benevolence is what I find there. To do good to
+others is to make life interesting and find peace for our own souls. To
+glorify God is to enjoy Him. That was the spirit of the first
+Christians. Was not St. Paul a happier man than Herod? Did not St. Peter
+have more joy of his life than Nero? It is said of the first disciples
+that they &quot;did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart.&quot;
+Not till that pristine gladness of life returns will the Church regain
+her early charm for the souls of men. Every great revival of Christian
+power&mdash;like those which came in the times of St. Francis of Assisi and
+of John Wesley&mdash;has been marked and heralded by a revival of Christian
+joy.</p>
+
+<p>If we want the Church to be mighty in power to win men, to be a source
+of light in the darkness, a fountain of life in the wilderness, we must
+remember and renew, in the spirit of Christ, the relation of religion to
+human happiness.</p>
+
+<p>II. What, then, are the conditions upon which true happiness depends?
+Christ tells us in the text: If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye
+do them.</p>
+
+<p>This is the blessing with a double if. &quot;If ye know,&quot;&mdash;this is the
+knowledge which Christ gives to faith. &quot;If ye do,&quot;&mdash;this is the
+obedience which faith gives to Christ. Knowing and Doing,&mdash;these are the
+twin pillars, Jachin and Boaz, on which the house of happiness is built.
+The harmony of faith and life,&mdash;this is the secret of inward joy and
+power.</p>
+
+<p>You remember when these words were spoken. Christ had knelt to wash the
+disciples' feet. Peter, in penitence and self-reproach, had hesitated to
+permit this lowly service of Divine love. But Christ answered by
+revealing the meaning of His act as a symbol of the cleansing of the
+soul from sin. He reminded the disciples of what they knew by
+faith,&mdash;that He was their Saviour and their Lord. By deed and by word He
+called up before them the great spiritual truths which had given new
+meaning to their life. He summoned them to live according to their
+knowledge, to act upon the truth which they believed.</p>
+
+<p>I am sure that His words sweep out beyond that quiet upper room, beyond
+that beautiful incident, to embrace the whole spiritual life. I am sure
+that He is revealing to us the secret of happy living which lies at the
+very heart of His gospel, when He says: If ye know these things, happy
+are ye if ye do them.</p>
+
+<p>i. &quot;If ye know,&quot;&mdash;there is, then, a certain kind of knowledge without
+which we can not be happy. There are questions arising in human nature
+which demand an answer. If it is denied we can not help being
+disappointed, restless, and sad. This is the price we have to pay for
+being conscious, rational creatures. If we were mere plants or animals
+we might go on living through our appointed years in complete
+indifference to the origin and meaning of our existence. But within us,
+as human beings, there is something that cries out and rebels against
+such a blind life. Man is born to ask what things mean. He is possessed
+with the idea that there is a significance in the world beyond that
+which meets his senses.</p>
+
+<p>John Fiske has brought out this fact very clearly in his last book,
+Through Nature to God. He shows that &quot;in the morning twilight of
+existence the Human Soul vaguely reached forth toward something akin to
+itself, not in the realm of fleeting phenomena, but in the Eternal
+Presence beyond.&quot; He argues by the analogy of evolution, which always
+presupposes a real relation between the life and the environment to
+which it adjusts itself, that this forth-reaching and unfolding of the
+soul implies the everlasting reality of religion.</p>
+
+<p>The argument is good. But the point which concerns us now is simply
+this. The forth-reaching, questioning soul can never be satisfied if it
+touches only a dead wall in the darkness, if its seeking meets with the
+reply, &quot;You do not know, and you never can know, and you must not try
+to know.&quot; This is agnosticism. It is only another way of spelling
+unhappiness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Since Christianity is not true,&quot; wrote Ernest Renan, &quot;nothing interests
+me, or appears worthy my attention.&quot; That is the logical result of
+losing the knowledge of spiritual things,&mdash;a life without real interest,
+without deep worth,&mdash;a life with a broken spring.</p>
+
+<p>But suppose Renan is mistaken. Suppose Christianity is true. Then the
+first thing that makes it precious, is that it answers our questions,
+and tells us the things that we must know in order to be happy.</p>
+
+<p>Christianity is a revealing religion, a teaching religion, a religion
+which conveys to the inquiring spirit certain great and positive
+solutions of the problems of life. It is not silent, nor ambiguous, nor
+incomprehensible in its utterance. It replies to our questions with a
+knowledge which, though limited, is definite and sufficient. It tells us
+that this &quot;order of nature, which constitutes the world's experience,
+is only one portion of the total universe.&quot; That the ruler of both
+worlds, seen and unseen, is God, a Spirit, and the Father of our
+spirits. That He is not distant from us nor indifferent to us, but that
+He has given His eternal Son Jesus Christ to be our Saviour. That His
+Spirit is ever present with us to help us in our conflicts with evil, in
+our efforts toward goodness. That He is making all things work together
+for good to those that love Him. That through the sacrifice of Christ
+every one who will may obtain the forgiveness of sins and everlasting
+peace. That through the resurrection of Christ all who love Him and
+their fellow-men shall obtain the victory over death and live forever.</p>
+
+<p>Now these are doctrines. And it is just because Christianity contains
+such doctrines that it satisfies the need of man.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The first and the most essential condition of true happiness,&quot; writes
+Professor Carl Hilty, the eminent Swiss jurist, &quot;is a firm faith in the
+moral order of the world. What is the happy life? It is a life of
+conscious harmony with this Divine order of the world, a sense, that is
+to say, of God's companionship. And wherein is the profoundest
+unhappiness? It is in the sense of remoteness from God, issuing into
+incurable restlessness of heart, and finally into incapacity to make
+one's life fruitful or effective.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>What shall we say, then, of the proposal to adapt Christianity to the
+needs of the world to-day by eliminating or ignoring its characteristic
+doctrines? You might as well propose to fit a ship for service by taking
+out its compass and its charts and cutting off its rudder. Make
+Christianity silent in regard to these great questions of spiritual
+existence, and you destroy its power to satisfy the heart.</p>
+
+<p>What would the life of Christ mean if these deep truths on which He
+rested and from which He drew His strength, were uncertain or illusory?
+It would be the most pathetic, mournful, heartbreaking of all phantoms.</p>
+
+<p>What consoling, cheering power would be left in the words of Jesus if
+His doctrine were blotted out and His precept left to stand alone? Try
+the experiment, if it may be done without irreverence: read His familiar
+discourses in the shadow of agnosticism.</p>
+
+<p>'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is a hopeless poverty.
+Blessed are the pure in heart, for they know not whether they shall see
+God. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, for ye
+have no promise of a heavenly reward.</p>
+
+<p>'Enter into thy closet and when thou hast shut the door, keep silence,
+for thou canst not tell whether there is One to hear thy voice in
+secret. Take no thought for the morrow, for thou knowest not whether
+there is a Father who careth for thee.</p>
+
+<p>'God is unknown, and they that worship Him must worship Him in ignorance
+and doubt. No man hath ascended up into heaven, neither hath any man
+come down from heaven, for the Son of Man hath never been in heaven.
+That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the
+spirit is a dream. Man shall not live by bread alone, neither shall he
+listen for any word from the mouth of God. I proceeded forth and came
+from darkness, I came of myself, I know not who sent me. My sheep hear
+my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, but I can not give unto
+them eternal life, for they shall perish and death shall pluck them out
+of my hand. Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe not in God, ye
+need not believe in me. Keep my commandments, and I will not pray for
+you, and ye shall abide without a Comforter. In the world ye shall have
+tribulation, but be of good cheer, for ye know not whether there is a
+world to come. I came forth from darkness into the world, and again I
+leave the world and return to darkness. Peace I leave with you. If ye
+loved me ye would rejoice because I said, I go into darkness, and where
+I am there shall ye be also.'</p>
+
+<p>Is it conceivable that any suffering, sorrowing human soul should be
+comforted and strengthened by such a message as this? Could it possibly
+be called a gospel, glad tidings of great joy to all people?</p>
+
+<p>And yet what has been omitted here from the words of Christ? Nothing but
+what men call doctrines: the personality of God, the divinity of Christ,
+the Atonement, the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, the
+sovereignty of the Heavenly Father, the truth of the divine revelation,
+the reality of the heavenly world, the assurance of immortal life. But
+it is just from these doctrines that the teaching of Jesus draws its
+peculiar power to comfort and inspire. They are the rays of light which
+disperse the gloom of uncertainty. They are the tones of celestial music
+which fill the heart of man with good cheer.</p>
+
+<p>Let us never imagine that we can strengthen Christianity by leaving out
+the great doctrines which have given it life and power. Faith is not a
+mere matter of feeling. It is the acceptance of truth, positive,
+unchanging, revealed truth, in regard to God and the world, Christ and
+the soul, duty and immortality. The first appeal to faith lies in the
+clearness and vividness, the simplicity and joy, with which this truth
+is presented.</p>
+
+<p>There has not been too much preaching of doctrine in this age. There has
+been too little. And what there has been, has been too dull and cold and
+formal, too vague and misty, too wavering and uncertain.</p>
+
+<p>What the world wants and waits for to-day is a strong, true, vital
+preaching of doctrine. The Church must realize anew the precious value
+of the truths which Christ has given her. She must not conceal them or
+cast them away; she must bring them out into the light, press them home
+upon the minds and hearts of men. She must simplify her statement of
+them, so that men can understand what they mean. She must not be content
+with repeating them in the language of past centuries. She must
+translate them into the language of to-day. First century texts will
+never wear out because they are inspired. But seventeenth century
+sermons grow obsolete because they are not inspired. Texts from the Word
+of God, preaching in the words of living men,&mdash;that is what we need.</p>
+
+<p>We must think about the doctrines of Christianity more earnestly and
+profoundly. We must renew our Christian evidences, as an army fits
+itself with new weapons. The old-fashioned form of the &quot;argument from
+design in nature&quot; has gone out with the old-fashioned books of science
+which it used. But there is a new and more wonderful proof of God's
+presence in the world,&mdash;the argument from moral ends in evolution. Every
+real advance of science makes the intelligent order of the universe more
+sublimely clear. Every century of human experience confirms the Divine
+claims and adds to the Divine triumphs of Jesus Christ. Social progress
+has followed to a hair's breadth the lines of His gospel; and He lays
+His hand to-day with heavenly wisdom on the social wants that still
+trouble us, &quot;the social lies that warp us from the living truth.&quot;
+Christ's view of life and the world is as full of sweet reasonableness
+now as it was in the first century. Every moral step that man has taken
+upward has brought a wider, clearer vision of his need of such a
+religion as that which Christ teaches.</p>
+
+<p>Let not the Church falter and blush for her doctrines. Let her not turn
+and go down the hill of knowledge to defend her position in the valley
+of ignorance. Let her go up the hill, welcoming every wider outlook,
+rejoicing in every new discovery, gathering fresh evidences of the
+truths which man must believe concerning God and new motives to the
+duties which God requires of man.</p>
+
+<p>But in doing this we must put the emphasis of our preaching to-day where
+it belongs, where Christ puts it, on the doctrines that are most
+important to human life and happiness. We can afford to let the fine
+metaphysical distinctions of theology rest for a while, and throw all
+our force on the central, fundamental truths which give steadiness and
+courage and cheer to the heart of man. I will not admit that it makes no
+difference to a man of this age whether or not he believes in the
+personal God and the Divine Christ. If he really believes, it makes all
+the difference between spiritual strength and spiritual weakness,
+between optimism and pessimism. I will not admit that it makes no
+difference to a learned scholar or a simple labourer to-day whether he
+accepts or ignores the doctrine of the atonement, the doctrine of
+personal immortality. If he knows that Christ died for him, that there
+is a future beyond the grave, it makes all the difference between
+despair and hope, between misery and consolation, between the helpless
+frailty of a being that is puffed out like a candle, and the joyful
+power of an endless life.</p>
+
+<p>My brethren, we must work and pray for a true revival of Christian
+doctrine in our age. We must deepen our own hold upon the truths which
+Christ has taught us. We must preach them more simply, more
+confidently, more reasonably, more earnestly. We must draw from them the
+happiness and the help, the comfort and the inspiration, that they have
+to give to the souls of men. But most of all, we must keep them in close
+and living touch with the problems of daily duty and experience. For no
+doctrine, however high, however true, can make men happy until it is
+translated into life.</p>
+
+<p>ii. Here is the second if, on which the power of religion to confer
+happiness depends: If ye know, happy are ye if ye do these things.</p>
+
+<p>Between the knowing and the doing there is a deep gulf. Into that abyss
+the happiness of many a man slips, and is lost. There is no peace, no
+real and lasting felicity for a human life until the gulf is closed, and
+the continent of conduct meets the continent of creed, edge to edge, lip
+to lip, firmly joined forever.</p>
+
+<p>It is not a blessing to know the things that Christ teaches, and then go
+on living as if they were false or doubtful. It is a trouble, a torment,
+a secret misery. To know that God is our Father, and yet to withhold
+our love and service from Him; to know that Christ died for us, and yet
+to deny Him and refuse to follow Him; to know that there is an immortal
+life, and yet to waste and lose our souls in the pursuit of sensual
+pleasure and such small portion of the world as we may hope to
+gain,&mdash;surely that is the deepest of all unhappiness.</p>
+
+<p>But the right kind of knowing carries in its heart the doing of the
+truth. And the right kind of doing leads to a fuller and happier
+knowing. &quot;If any man will do God's will,&quot; declares Christ, &quot;he shall
+know of the doctrine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Let a man take the truth of the Divine Fatherhood and begin to conform
+his life to its meaning. Let him give up his anxious worryings, his
+murmurings, his complainings, and trust himself completely to his
+Father's care. Let him do his work from day to day as well as he can and
+leave the results to God. Let him come to his Father every day and
+confess his faults and ask for help and guidance. Let him try to obey
+and please God for love's sake. Let him take refuge from the trials and
+confusions and misunderstandings of the world, from the wrath of men and
+the strife of tongues, in the secret of his Father's presence. Surely if
+he learns the truth thus, by doing it, he will find happiness.</p>
+
+<p>Or take the truth of immortality. Let a man live now in the light of the
+knowledge that he is to live forever. How it will deepen and strengthen
+the meaning of his existence, lift him above petty cares and ambitions,
+and make the things that are worth while precious to his heart! Let him
+really set his affections on the spiritual side of life, let him endure
+afflictions patiently because he knows that they are but for a moment,
+let him think more of the soul than of the body, let him do good to his
+fellow-men in order to make them sharers of his immortal hope, let him
+purify his love and friendship that they may be fit for the heavenly
+life. Surely the man who does these things will be happy. It will be
+with him as with Lazarus, in Robert Browning's poem, &quot;The Epistle of
+Karshish.&quot; Others will look at him with wonder and say:</p>
+
+<blockquote class="poetry">
+&quot;Whence has the man the balm that brightens all?<br>
+This grown man eyes the world now like a child.&quot;<br>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Yes, my brethren, this is the sure result of following out the doctrines
+of Christ in action, of living the truths that He teaches,&mdash;a simple
+life, a childlike life, a happy life. And this also the Church needs
+to-day, as well as a true revival of doctrine.</p>
+
+<p>A revival of simplicity, a revival of sincerity, a revival of work: this
+will restore unto us the joy of salvation. And with the joy of salvation
+will come a renewal and expansion of power.</p>
+
+<p>The inconsistency of Christians is the stronghold of unbelief. The lack
+of vital joy in the Church is the chief cause of indifference in the
+world. The feeble energy, the faltering and reluctant spirit, the
+weariness in well-doing with which too many believers impoverish and
+sadden their own hearts, make other men question the reality and value
+of religion and turn away from it in cool neglect.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, is the duty of the Church? What must she do to win the
+confidence of the world? What is the best way for her to &quot;prove her
+doctrine all divine&quot;?</p>
+
+<p>First, she must increase her labours in the love of men: second, she
+must practice the simple life, deepening her trust in God.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose that a fresh flood of energy, brave, cheerful, joyous energy,
+should be poured into all the forms of Christian work. Suppose that
+Foreign Missions and Home Missions should no longer have to plead and
+beg for support, but that plenty of money should come flowing in to send
+out every missionary that wants to go, and that plenty of the strongest
+and best young men should dedicate their lives to the ministry of
+Christ, and that every household where His gospel is believed should
+find its highest honour and its greatest joy in helping to extend His
+kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>And then suppose that the Christian life, in its daily manifestation,
+should come to be marked and known by simplicity and happiness. Suppose
+that the followers of Jesus should really escape from bondage to the
+evil spirits of avarice and luxury which infect and torment so much of
+our complicated, tangled, artificial, modern life. Suppose that instead
+of increasing their wants and their desires, instead of loading
+themselves down on life's journey with so many bags and parcels and
+boxes of superfluous luggage and bric-a-brac that they are forced to sit
+down by the roadside and gasp for breath, instead of wearing themselves
+out in the dusty ways of ostentation and vain show or embittering their
+hearts because they can not succeed in getting into the weary race of
+wealth and fashion,&mdash;suppose instead of all this, they should turn to
+quiet ways, lowly pleasures, pure and simple joys, &quot;plain living and
+high thinking.&quot; Suppose they should truly find and show their happiness
+in the knowledge that God loves them and Christ died for them and heaven
+is sure, and so set their hearts free to rejoice in life's common
+mercies, the light of the sun, the blue of the sky, the splendour of the
+sea, the peace of the everlasting hills, the song of birds, the
+sweetness of flowers, the wholesome savour of good food, the delights of
+action and motion, the refreshment of sleep, the charm of music, the
+blessings of human love and friendship,&mdash;rejoice in all these without
+fear or misgiving, because they come from God and because Christ has
+sanctified them all by His presence and touch.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose, I say, that such a revival of the joy of living in Christ and
+working for Christ should silently sweep over the Church in the
+Twentieth Century. What would happen? Great would be the peace of her
+children. Greater still would be their power.</p>
+
+<p>This is the message which I have to bring to you, my brethren, in this
+General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. You may wonder that it is
+not more distinctive, more ecclesiastical, more specially adapted to the
+peculiarities of our own denomination. You may think that it is a
+message which could just as well be brought to any other Church on any
+other occasion. With all my heart I hope that is true. The things that I
+care for most in our Church are not those which divide us from other
+Christians but those which unite us to them. The things that I love most
+in Christianity are those which give it power to save and satisfy, to
+console and cheer, to inspire and bless human hearts and lives. The
+thing that I desire most for Presbyterianism is that it should prove its
+mission and extend its influence in the world by making men happy in the
+knowing and the doing of the things which Christ teaches.</p>
+
+<p>The Church that the Twentieth Century will hear most gladly and honour
+most sincerely will have two marks. It will be the Church that teaches
+most clearly and strongly the truths that Jesus taught. It will be the
+Church that finds most happiness in living the simple life and doing
+good in the world.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="THE_BATTLE_OF_LIFE"></a><h2>THE BATTLE OF LIFE</h2>
+
+<blockquote class="poetry">
+<i>Romans vii. 21: Overcome evil with good.</i><br>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The Battle of Life is an ancient phrase consecrated by use in
+Commencement Orations without number. Two modern expressions have taken
+their place beside it in our own day: the Strenuous Life, and the Simple
+Life.</p>
+
+<p>Each of these phrases has its own significance and value. It is when
+they are overemphasized and driven to extremes that they lose their
+truth and become catch-words of folly. The simple life which blandly
+ignores all care and conflict, soon becomes flabby and invertebrate,
+sentimental and gelatinous. The strenuous life which does everything
+with set jaws and clenched fists and fierce effort, soon becomes
+strained and violent, a prolonged nervous spasm.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere between these two extremes must lie the golden mean: a life
+that has strength and simplicity, courage and calm, power and peace. But
+how can we find this golden line and live along it? Some truth there
+must be in the old phrase which speaks of life as a battle. No conflict,
+no character. Without strife, a weak life. But what is the real meaning
+of the battle? What is the vital issue at stake? What are the things
+worth fighting for? In what spirit, with what weapons, are we to take
+our part in the warfare?</p>
+
+<p>There is an answer to these questions in the text: <i>Overcome evil with
+good.</i> The man who knows this text by heart, knows the secret of a life
+that is both strenuous and simple. For here we find the three things
+that we need most: a call to the real battle of life; a plan for the
+right campaign; and a promise of final victory.</p>
+
+<p>I. Every man, like the knight in the old legend, is born on a field of
+battle. But the warfare is not carnal, it is spiritual. Not the east
+against the west, the north against the south, the &quot;Haves&quot; against the
+&quot;Have-nots&quot;; but the evil against the good,&mdash;that is the real conflict
+of life.</p>
+
+<p>The attempt to deny or ignore this conflict has been the stock in trade
+of every false doctrine that has befogged and bewildered the world since
+the days of Eden. The fairy tale that the old serpent told to Eve is a
+poetic symbol of the lie fundamental,&mdash;the theory that sin does not mean
+death, because it has no real existence and makes no real difference.
+This ancient falsehood has an infinite wardrobe of disguises.</p>
+
+<p>You will find it pranked out in philosophic garb in the doctrines of
+those who teach that all things are linked together by necessity of
+nature or Divine will, and that nothing could ever have happened
+otherwise than just as it has come to pass. Such a theory of the
+universe blots out all difference between good and evil except in name.
+It leaves the fence-posts standing, but it takes away the rails, and
+throws everything into one field of the inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>You will find the same falsehood in a more crude form in the popular
+teachings of what men call &quot;the spirit of the age,&quot; the secular spirit.
+According to these doctrines the problem of civilization is merely a
+problem of ways and means. If society were better organized, if wealth
+were more equally distributed, if laws were changed, or perhaps
+abolished, all would be well. If everybody had a full dinner-pail,
+nobody need care about an empty heart. Human misery the secular spirit
+recognizes, but it absolutely ignores the fact that nine-tenths of human
+misery comes from human sin.</p>
+
+<p>You will find the same falsehood disguised in sentimental costume in the
+very modern comedy of Christian Science, which dresses the denial of
+evil in pastoral garb of white frock and pink ribbons, like an innocent
+shepherdess among her lambs. &quot;Evil is nothing,&quot; says this wonderful
+Science. &quot;It does not really exist. It is an illusion of mortal mind.
+Shut your eyes and it will vanish.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Yes, but open your eyes again and you will see it in the same place, in
+the same form, doing the same work. A most persistent nothing, a most
+powerful nothing! Not the shadow cast by the good, but the cloud that
+hides the sun and casts the shadow. Not the &quot;silence implying sound,&quot;
+but the discord breaking the harmony. Evil is as real as the fire that
+burns you, as the flood that drowns you. Evil is as real as the typhoid
+germ that you can put under a microscope and see it squirm and grow.
+Evil is negative,&mdash;yes, but it is a real negative,&mdash;as real as darkness,
+as real as death.</p>
+
+<p>There are two things in every human heart which bear witness to the
+existence and reality of evil: first, our judgments of regret, and
+second, our judgments of condemnation.</p>
+
+<p>How often we say to ourselves, &quot;Would that this had not come to pass!&quot;
+How often we feel in regard to our own actions, &quot;Would that I had done
+differently!&quot; This is the judgment of regret; and it is a silent witness
+of the heart to the conviction that some things are not inevitable. It
+is the confession that a battle has been lost which might have been won.
+It is the acknowledgment that things which are, but are not right, need
+not have been, if we and our fellow-men had seen more clearly and
+followed more faithfully the guiding star of the good.</p>
+
+<p>And then, out of the judgment of regret, springs the deeper judgment of
+condemnation. If the failure in duty was not inevitable, then it was
+base. The false word, the unjust deed, the foul action, seen as a
+surrender to evil, appears hateful and guilty. It deserves the
+indignation and the shame which attach to all treason. And the spirit
+which lies behind all these forms of disloyalty to the good,&mdash;the spirit
+which issues in selfishness and sensuality, cruelty and lust,
+intemperance and covetousness,&mdash;this animating spirit of evil which
+works against the Divine will and mars the peace and order of the
+universe is the great Adversary against whom we must fight for our own
+lives and the life of the world.</p>
+
+<p>All around us lies his dark, secret kingdom, tempting, threatening,
+assaulting the soul. To ignore it, is to walk blindfold among snares
+and pitfalls. Try if you will to shut it out, by wrapping your heart in
+dreams of beauty and joy, living in the fair regions of art or
+philosophy, reading only the books which speak of evil as if it did not
+exist or were only another form of goodness. Soon you will be shaken out
+of the dream into the reality. You will come into contact with evil so
+close, so loathsome that you can not deny it. You will see that it has
+its soldiers, its servants, its emissaries, as ardent and enthusiastic
+in its cause as if they were serving the noblest of masters. It inspires
+literature and supports newspapers; now intelligent and cultured,
+drawing the arts into its service; now coarse and vulgar, with pictures
+that shock the taste as much as they debase the conscience. It wins
+adherents and turns them into advocates. It organizes the dealers in
+drunkenness and debauchery into powerful societies for mutual
+protection. It creates lobbies and controls legislatures. It corrupts
+the government of great cities and rots out the social life of small
+towns. Even when its outward manifestations are repressed and its
+grosser forms resisted, it steals its way into men's hearts, eating out
+the roots of human trust and brotherhood and kindness, and filling the
+air with gossip and spite, envy, malice and all uncharitableness.</p>
+
+<p>I am glad that since we have to live in a world where evil exists, we
+have a religion which does not bandage our eyes. The first thing that we
+need to have religion do for us is to teach us to face the facts. No man
+can come into touch with the Divine personality of Jesus Christ, no man
+can listen to His teaching, without feeling that the distinction between
+good and evil to Him is vital and everlasting. The choice between them
+is to Him the great choice. The conflict between them is to Him the
+great conflict. Evil is the one thing that God has never willed. Good is
+the one thing that He wills forever. Evil is first and last a rebellion
+against His will. He is altogether on the side of good. Much that is,
+is contrary to His will. There is a mighty strife going on, a battle
+with eternal issues, but not an eternal battle. The evil that is against
+Him shall be cast out and shall perish. The good that overcomes the evil
+shall live forever. And those who yield their lives to God and receive
+His righteousness in Christ are made partakers of everlasting life.</p>
+
+<p>This is the teaching of Jesus: and I thank God for the honesty and
+virility of His religion which makes us face the facts and calls us to
+take a man's part in the real battle of life.</p>
+
+<p>II. But what is the plan of campaign which Christianity sets before us?
+In what spirit and with what weapons are we to enter the great conflict
+against the evil that is in the world?</p>
+
+<p>The natural feeling of the heart in the presence of evil is wrath, and
+the natural weapon of wrath is force. To punish crime, to avenge wrong,
+to put down wickedness with a strong hand,&mdash;that is the first impulse of
+every one who has the instincts of manhood.</p>
+
+<p>And as this is natural, so it is, also, within a certain sphere
+needful, and to a certain extent useful. Armies and navies exist, at
+least in theory, to prevent injustice among nations. Laws are made to
+punish wrong-doers. Courts, police-forces, and prisons are maintained to
+suppress evil with power.</p>
+
+<p>But while we recognize this method of dealing with evil as useful to a
+certain extent and necessary within a certain sphere, we must remember
+that it has its strict limitations.</p>
+
+<p>First, it belongs to the state and not to the individual. When the
+private man assumes to punish evil with force he sanctions lynch-law,
+which is a terror to the innocent as well as to the guilty. Then we have
+the blood-feud and the vendetta, mob-rule and anarchy.</p>
+
+<p>Second, the suppression of evil by force is only a temporary relief, a
+protection for the moment. It does not touch the root of the matter. You
+send the murderer out of the world by a regulated flash of lightning.
+But you do not send murder out of the world. To do that you must reach
+and change the heart of Cain. You put the thief in prison, but when he
+comes out he will be ready to steal again, unless you can purify his
+conscience and control his will. You assault and overthrow some system
+of misgovernment, and &quot;turn the rascals out.&quot; But unless you have
+something better to substitute, all you have done is to make room for a
+new set of rascals,&mdash;a new swarm of mosquitoes with fresh appetites and
+larger capacities.</p>
+
+<p>Third, the method of fighting evil with force on its own ground often
+has a bad effect on those who follow it. Wrestle with a chimney-sweep
+and you will need a bath. Throw back the mud that is thrown at you, and
+you will have dirty hands. Answer Shimei when he curses you and you will
+echo his profanity. Many a man has entered a crusade against
+intemperance and proved himself as intemperate in his language as other
+men are in their potations. Many a man has attacked a bad cause with
+righteous indignation and ended in a personal squabble with most
+unrighteous anger.</p>
+
+<p>No, my brother-men, the best way to fight against evil is not to meet it
+on its own ground with its own weapons. There is a nobler method of
+warfare, a divine plan of campaign given to us in the religion of
+Christ. Overcome evil with good. This is the secret of the battle of
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Evil is potent not so much because it has command of money and the &quot;big
+battalions,&quot; but because it has control of the hearts of men. It spreads
+because human hearts are lying fallow and ready to welcome the seeds of
+all kinds of weeds. It persists because too much of what we call virtue
+is negative, and selfish, and frost-bound,&mdash;cold storage virtue,&mdash;the
+poor piety which terminates in a trembling anxiety to save our own
+souls.</p>
+
+<p>The way to counteract and conquer evil in the world is to give our own
+hearts to the dominion of good, and work the works of God while it is
+day. The strongest of all obstacles to the advance of evil is a clean
+and generous man, doing his duty from day to day, and winning others, by
+his cheerful fidelity, to serve the same Master. Diseases are not the
+only things that are contagious. Courage is contagious. Kindness is
+contagious. Manly integrity is contagious. All the positive virtues,
+with red blood in their veins, are contagious. The heaviest blow that
+you can strike at the kingdom of evil is just to follow the advice which
+the dying Sir Walter Scott gave to his son-in-law, Lockhart: &quot;Be a good
+man.&quot; And if you want to know how, there is but one perfect and supreme
+example,&mdash;the life of Him who not only did no evil but went about doing
+good.</p>
+
+<p>Now take that thought of fighting evil with good and apply it to our
+world and to ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>Here are monstrous evils and vices in society. Let intemperance be the
+type of them all, because so many of the others are its children.
+Drunkenness ruins more homes and wrecks more lives than war. How shall
+we oppose it? I do not say that we shall not pass resolutions and make
+laws against it. But I do say that we can never really conquer the evil
+in this way. I hold with Phillips Brooks that &quot;all prohibitory measures
+are negative. That they have their uses no one can doubt. That they have
+their limits is just as clear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The stronghold of intemperance lies in the vacancy and despair of men's
+minds. The way to attack it is to make the sober life beautiful and
+happy and full of interest. Teach your boys how to work, how to read,
+how to play, you fathers, before you send them to college, if you want
+to guard them against the temptations of strong drink and the many
+shames and sorrows that go with it. Make the life of your community
+cheerful and pleasant and interesting, you reformers, provide men with
+recreation which will not harm them, if you want to take away the power
+of the gilded saloon and the grimy boozing-ken. Parks and play-grounds,
+libraries and music-rooms, clean homes and cheerful churches,&mdash;these
+are the efficient foes of intemperance. And the same thing is true of
+gambling and lubricity and all the other vices which drag men down by
+the lower side of their nature because the higher side has nothing to
+cling to, nothing to sustain it and hold it up.</p>
+
+<p>What are you going to do, my brother-men, for this higher side of human
+life? What contribution are you going to make of your strength, your
+time, your influence, your money, your self, to make a cleaner, fuller,
+happier, larger, nobler life possible for some of your fellow-men? I do
+not ask how you are going to do it. You may do it in business, in the
+law, in medicine, in the ministry, in teaching, in literature. But this
+is the question: What are you going to give personally to make the human
+life of the place where you do your work, purer, stronger, brighter,
+better, and more worth living? That will be your best part in the
+warfare against vice and crime.</p>
+
+<p>The positive method is the only efficient way to combat intellectual
+error and spiritual evil. False doctrines are never argued out of the
+world. They are pushed back by the incoming of the truth as the darkness
+is pushed back by the dawn. Phillips Brooks was right. It is not worth
+while to cross the street to break a man's idol. It is worth while to
+cross the ocean to tell him about God. The skilful fencer who attacks
+your doubts and drives you from corner to corner of unbelief and leaves
+you at last in doubt whether you doubt or not, does you a certain
+service. He gives you exercise, takes the conceit out of you. But the
+man who lays hold of the real faith that is hidden underneath your
+doubt,&mdash;the silent longing for God and goodness, the secret attraction
+that draws your heart toward Jesus Christ as the only one who has the
+words of everlasting life,&mdash;the man who takes hold of this buried faith
+and quickens it and makes you dare to try to live by it,&mdash;ah, that is
+the man who helps you indeed. My brothers, if any of you are going to be
+preachers remember this. What we men need is not so much an answer to
+our doubts, as more nourishment for our faith.</p>
+
+<p>The positive method is the only way of victory in our struggle with the
+evil that dwells in our own nature and besets our own hearts. The reason
+why many men fail, is because they thrust the vice out and then forget
+to lay hold on the virtue. They evict the unclean spirit and leave a
+vacant house. To cease to do evil is important, but to learn to do good
+is far more important. Reformation never saved a man. Transformation is
+the only way. And to be transformed, a man must welcome the Spirit of
+Good, the Holy Spirit, into his heart, and work with Him every day,
+doing the will of God.</p>
+
+<p>There are two ways of fighting fever. One is to dose the sick people
+with quinine and keep the fever down. The other is to drain the marshes,
+and purify the water, and cleanse the houses, and drive the fever out.
+Try negative, repressive religion, and you may live, but you will be an
+invalid. Try positive, vital religion, and you will be well.</p>
+
+<p>There is an absorption of good that guards the soul against the
+infection of evil. There is a life of fellowship with Christ that can
+pass through the furnace of the world without the smell of fire on its
+garments,&mdash;a life that is full of interest as His was, being ever about
+His Father's business; a life that is free and generous and blessed, as
+His was, being spent in doing good, and refreshed by the sense of God's
+presence and approval.</p>
+
+<p>Last summer, I saw two streams emptying into the sea. One was a
+sluggish, niggardly rivulet, in a wide, fat, muddy bed; and every day
+the tide came in and drowned out that poor little stream, and filled it
+with bitter brine. The other was a vigorous, joyful, brimming
+mountain-river, fed from unfailing springs among the hills; and all the
+time it swept the salt water back before it and kept itself pure and
+sweet; and when the tide came in, it only made the fresh water rise
+higher and gather new strength by the delay; and ever the living stream
+poured forth into the ocean its tribute of living water,&mdash;the symbol of
+that influence which keeps the ocean of life from turning into a Dead
+Sea of wickedness.</p>
+
+<p>My brother-men, will you take that living stream as a type of your life
+in the world? The question for you is not what you are going to get out
+of the world, but what you are going to give to the world. The only way
+to meet and overcome the inflowing tide of evil is to roll against it
+the outflowing river of good.</p>
+
+<p>My prayer for you is that you may receive from Christ not only the
+watchword of this nobler life, but also the power to fulfil it.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="THE_GOOD_OLD_WAY"></a><h2>THE GOOD OLD WAY</h2>
+
+<blockquote class="poetry">
+<i>Jeremiah vi. 16. Stand ye in the ways and see; and ask
+for the old paths, where is the good way; and walk
+therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.</i><br>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>This advice was given to people who were in peril and perplexity. The
+kingdom of Judah was threatened with destruction, which could be averted
+only by wise and prompt action. But the trouble was to decide in which
+direction that action should be taken. The nation was divided into loud
+parties, and these parties into noisy wings. Every man had a theory of
+his own, or a variation of some other man's theory.</p>
+
+<p>Some favoured an alliance with the East; some preferred the friendship
+of the West; others, a course of diplomatic dalliance; a few stood out
+for honest independence. Some said that what the country needed was an
+increase of wealth; some held that a splendid and luxurious court like
+that of Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar would bring prosperity; others
+maintained that the troubles of the land could be healed only by a
+return to &quot;simpler manners, purer laws.&quot; Among the nobility and their
+followers all kinds of novelties in the worship of idols were in fashion
+and new gods were imported every season. The philosophers cultivated a
+discreet indifference to all religious questions. The prophets taught
+that the only salvation for the nation lay in the putting away of
+idolatry and the revival of faith in the living and true God.</p>
+
+<p>Judah was like a man standing at the cross-roads, on a stormy night,
+with all the guide-posts blown down. Meantime the Babylonian foe was
+closing in around Jerusalem, and it was necessary to do something, or
+die.</p>
+
+<p>The liberty of choice was an embarrassment. The minds of men alternated
+between that rash haste which is ready to follow any leader who makes
+noise enough, and that skeptical spirit which doubts whether any line of
+action can be right because so many lines are open. Into this atmosphere
+of fever and fog came the word of the prophet. Let us consider what it
+means.</p>
+
+<p>Stand ye in the ways and see: that means deliberation. When you are at a
+junction it is no time to shut your eyes and run at full speed. Where
+there are so many ways some of them are likely to be wrong. A
+turning-point is the place for prudence and forethought.</p>
+
+<p>Ask for the old paths, what is the good way: that means guidance. No man
+is forced to face the problems of life alone. Other men have tried the
+different ways. Peace, prosperity, victory have been won by the nation
+in former times. Inquire of the past how these blessings were secured.
+Look for the path which has already led to safety and happiness. Let
+history teach you which among all these crossing ways is the best to
+follow.</p>
+
+<p>And walk therein: that means action. When you have deliberated, when you
+have seen the guiding light upon the way of security and peace, then go
+ahead. Prudence is worthless unless you put it into practice. When in
+doubt do nothing; but as long as you do nothing you will be in doubt.
+Never man or nation was saved by inaction. The only way out of danger is
+the way into work. Gird up your loins, trembling Judah, and push along
+your chosen path, steadily, bravely, strenuously, until you come to your
+promised rest.</p>
+
+<p>Now I am sure this was good counsel that the prophet gave to his people
+in the days of perplexity. It would have been well for them if they had
+followed it I am sure it is also good counsel for us, a word of God to
+steady us and stimulate us amid life's confusions. Let me make it a
+personal message to you.</p>
+
+<p>Stand in the ways: Ask for the good way: Walk therein:&mdash;Deliberation,
+Guidance, Action,&mdash;Will you take these words with you, and try to make
+them a vital influence in your life?</p>
+
+<p>I. First, I ask you to stand in the ways and see. I do not mean to say
+that you have not already been doing this to a certain extent. The great
+world is crossed by human footsteps which make paths leading in all
+directions. Men travel through on different ways; and I suppose some of
+you have noticed the fact, and thought a little about it.</p>
+
+<p>There is the way of sensuality. Those who walk in it take appetite as
+their guide. Their main object in life is to gratify their physical
+desires. Some of them are delicate, and some of them are coarse. That is
+a matter of temperament. But all of them are hungry. That is a matter of
+principle. Whether they grub in the mire for their food like swine, or
+browse daintily upon the tree-tops like the giraffe, the question of
+life for those who follow this way is the same. &quot;How much can we hold?
+How can we obtain the most pleasure for these five senses of ours before
+they wear out?&quot; And the watchword of their journey is, &quot;Let us eat and
+drink and be merry, for we do not expect to die to-morrow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There is the way of avarice. Those who follow it make haste to be rich.
+The almighty dollar rolls before them along the road, and they chase it.
+Some of them plod patiently along the highway of toil. Others are
+always leaping fences and trying to find short cuts to wealth. But they
+are alike in this: whatever they do by way of avocation, the real
+vocation of their life is to make money. If they fail, they are hard and
+bitter; if they succeed they are hard and proud. But they all bow down
+to the golden calf, and their motto is, &quot;Lay up for yourselves treasures
+upon earth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There is the way of social ambition. Those who walk in it have their
+eyes fixed on various prizes, such as titles of honour, public office,
+large acquaintance with prosperous people, the reputation of leading the
+fashion. But the real satisfaction that they get out of it all is simply
+the feeling of notoriety, the sense of belonging to a circle to which
+ordinary people are not admitted and to whose doings the world, just for
+this reason, pays envious attention. This way is less like a road than
+like a ladder. Most of the people who are on it are &quot;climbers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There are other ways, less clearly marked, more difficult to
+trace,&mdash;the way of moral indifference, the way of intellectual pride,
+the way of hypocrisy, the way of indecision. This last is not a single
+road; it is a net-work of sheep-tracks, crossing and recrossing the
+great highways, leading in every direction, and ending nowhere. The men
+who wander in these aimless paths go up and down through the world,
+changing their purposes, following one another blindly, forever
+travelling but never arriving at the goal of their journey.</p>
+
+<p>Through all this tangle there runs another way,&mdash;the path of faith and
+duty. Those who walk in it believe that life has a meaning, the
+fulfilment of God's will, and a goal, the attainment of perfect harmony
+with Him. They try to make the best of themselves in soul and body by
+training and discipline. They endeavour to put their talents to the
+noblest use in the service of their fellow-men, and to unfold their
+faculties to the highest joy and power in the life of the Spirit. They
+seek an education to fit them for work, and they do their work well
+because it is a part of their education. They respect their consciences,
+and cherish their ideals. They put forth an honest effort to be good and
+to do good and to make the world better. They often stumble. They
+sometimes fall. But, take their life from end to end, it is a faithful
+attempt to walk in &quot;the way of righteousness, which is the way of
+peace.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Such are some of the ways that lead through the world. And they are all
+open to us. We can travel by the road that pleases us. Heredity gives us
+our outfit. Environment supplies our company. But when we come to the
+cross-roads, the question is, &quot;Boy, which way will you ride?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Deliberation is necessary, unless we wish to play a fool's part. No
+amount of energy will take the place of thought. A strenuous life, with
+its eyes shut, is a kind of wild insanity. A drifting life, with its
+eyes open, is a kind of mild idiocy.</p>
+
+<p>The real question is, &quot;How will you live? After what rule and pattern?
+Along what way? Toward what end?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Will you let chance answer that question for you? Will you let yourself
+be led blindfold by the first guide that offers, or run stupidly after
+the crowd without asking whither they are going? You would not act so in
+regard to the shortest earthly journey. You would not rush into the
+railway station and jump aboard of the first train you saw, without
+looking at the sign-boards. Surely if there is anything in regard to
+which we need to exercise deliberation, it is the choice of the way that
+we are to take through the world. You have thought a good deal about
+what business, what profession you are to follow. Think more deeply, I
+beg you, about how you are to follow it and what you are to follow it
+for. Stand in the ways, and see.</p>
+
+<p>II. Second, I earnestly advise you to ask for the old paths, where is
+the good way.</p>
+
+<p>I do not regard this as a mere counsel of conservatism, an unqualified
+commendation of antiquity. True, it implies that the good way will not
+be a new discovery, a track that you and I strike out for ourselves.
+Among the paths of conduct, that which is entirely original is likely to
+be false, and that which is true is likely to have some footprints on
+it. When a man comes to us with a scheme of life which he has made all
+by himself, we may safely say to him, as the old composer said to the
+young musician who brought him a symphony of the future, &quot;It is both new
+and beautiful; but that which is new is not beautiful, and that which is
+beautiful is not new.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But this is by no means the same as saying that everything ancient is
+therefore beautiful and true, or that all the old ways are good. The
+very point of the text is that we must discriminate among
+antiquities,&mdash;a thing as necessary in old chairs and old books as in old
+ways.</p>
+
+<p>Evil is almost, if not quite, as ancient as good. Folly and wisdom,
+among men at least, are twins, and we can not distinguish between them
+by the grey hairs. Adam's way was old enough; and so was the way of
+Cain, and of Noah's vile son, and of Lot's lewd daughters, and of
+Balaam, and of Jezebel, and of Manasseh. Judas Iscariot was as old as
+St. John. Ananias and Sapphira were of the same age with St. Peter and
+St. Paul.</p>
+
+<p>What we are to ask for is not simply the old way, but that one among the
+old ways which has been tested and tried and proved to be the good way.
+The Spirit of Wisdom tells us that we are not to work this way out by
+logarithms, or evolve it from our own inner consciousness, but to learn
+what it is by looking at the lives of other men and marking the lessons
+which they teach us. Experience has been compared to the stern-light of
+a ship which shines only on the road that has been traversed. But the
+stern-light of a ship that sails before you is a head-light to you.</p>
+
+<p>You do not need to try everything for yourself in order to understand
+what it means. The writer of Ecclesiastes tells us that he gave his
+heart to know madness and folly; and that it was all vanity and vexation
+of spirit. It will be a wise economy for us to accept his lesson without
+paying his tuition-fee over again.</p>
+
+<p>It is perfectly safe for a man to take it as a fact that fire burns,
+without putting his hand into the flame. He does not need to try
+perilous experiments with his own soul in order to make sure that lust
+defiles, that avarice hardens, that frivolity empties, that selfishness
+cankers the heart. He may understand the end of the way of sensuality by
+looking at any old pleasure-seeker,</p>
+
+<blockquote class="poetry">
+&quot;Gray, and gap-toothed, and lean as death,&quot;<br>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>mumbling the dainties that he can no longer enjoy, and glowering with
+bleared eyes at the indulgences which now mock him even while they tempt
+him. The goal of the path of covetousness may be discerned in the face
+of any old money-worshipper; keeping guard over his piles of wealth,
+like a surly watch-dog; or, if perchance he has failed, haunting the
+places where fortune has deceived him, like an unquiet ghost.</p>
+
+<p>Inquire and learn; consider and discern. There need be no doubt about
+the direction of life's various ways.</p>
+
+<p>Which are the nations that have been most peaceful and noble and truly
+prosperous? Those that have followed pride and luxury and idolatry? Or
+those that have cherished sobriety and justice, and acknowledged the
+Divine law of righteousness?</p>
+
+<p>Which are the families that have been most serene and pure and truly
+fortunate? Those in which there has been no discipline, no restraint, no
+common faith, no mutual love? Or those in which sincere religion has
+swayed life to its stern and gracious laws, those in which parents and
+children have walked together to the House of God, and knelt together at
+His altar, and rejoiced together in His service?</p>
+
+<p>I tell you, my brother-men, it has become too much the fashion in these
+latter days to sneer and jeer at the old-fashioned ways of the
+old-fashioned American household. Something too much of iron there may
+have been in the Puritan's temper; something too little of sunlight may
+have come in through the narrow windows of his house. But that house had
+foundations, and the virile virtues lived in it. There were plenty of
+red corpuscles in his blood, and his heart beat in time with the eternal
+laws of right, even though its pulsations sometimes seemed a little slow
+and heavy. It would be well for us if we could get back into the old
+way, which proved itself to be the good way, and maintain, as our
+fathers did, the sanctity of the family, the sacredness of the
+marriage-vow, the solemnity of the mutual duties binding parents and
+children together. From the households that followed this way have come
+men that could rule themselves as well as their fellows, women that
+could be trusted as well as loved. Read the history of such families,
+and you will understand the truth of the poet's words:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote class="poetry">
+&quot;Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,&mdash;<br>
+These three alone lead life to sovereign power.&quot;<br>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Look around you in the world and see what way it is that has brought
+your fellow-men to peace and quietness of heart, to security and honour
+of life. Is it the way of unbridled self-indulgence, of unscrupulous
+greed, of aimless indolence? Or is it the way of self-denial, of
+cheerful industry, of fair dealing, of faithful service? If true honour
+lies in the respect and grateful love of one's fellow-men, if true
+success lies in a contented heart and a peaceful conscience, then the
+men who have reached the highest goal of life are those who have
+followed most closely the way to which Jesus Christ points us and in
+which He goes before us.</p>
+
+<p>III. Walk therein and ye shall find rest for your souls. Right action
+brings rest.</p>
+
+<p>Rest! Rest! How that word rings like a sweet bell through the turmoil
+of our age. We are rushing to and fro, destroying rest in our search for
+it. We drive our automobiles from one place to another, at furious
+speed, not knowing what we shall do when we get there. We make haste to
+acquire new possessions, not knowing how we shall use them when they are
+ours. We are in a fever of new discoveries and theories, not knowing how
+to apply them when they are made. We feed ourselves upon novel
+speculations until our heads swim with the vertigo of universal
+knowledge which changes into the paresis of universal doubt.</p>
+
+<p>But in the hours of silence, the Spirit of Wisdom whispers a secret to
+our hearts. Rest depends upon conduct. The result of your life depends
+upon your choosing the good way and walking in it.</p>
+
+<p>And to you I say, my brother-men, choose Christ, for He is the Way. All
+the strength and sweetness of the best possible human life are embodied
+in Him. All the truth that is needed to inspire and guide man to noble
+action and fine character is revealed in Him. He is the one Master
+altogether worthy to be served and followed. Take His yoke upon you and
+learn of Him, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10395 ***</div>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Joy & Power, by Henry van Dyke
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+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>Joy and Power</h1>
+
+<h2>Three messages with One meaning</h2>
+
+<h4>by</h4>
+
+<h2>Henry van Dyke</h2>
+
+<h4>1903</h4>
+
+
+
+<br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<h4>Dedicated to my friend John Huston Finley</h4>
+<h4>President of the College of the City of New York</h4>
+
+
+
+<br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="THE_PREFACE"></a><h2>THE PREFACE</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>The three messages which are brought together in this book were given
+not far apart in time, though at some distance from one another in
+space. The one called Joy and Power was delivered in Los Angeles,
+California, at the opening of the Presbyterian General Assembly, May 21,
+1903. The one called The Battle of Life was delivered on Baccalaureate
+Sunday at Princeton University, June 7. The one called The Good Old Way
+was delivered on Baccalaureate Sunday at Harvard University, June 14. At
+the time, I was thinking chiefly of the different qualities and needs of
+the people to whom I had to speak. This will account for some things in
+the form of each message. But now that they are put together I can see
+that all three of them say about the same thing. They point in the same
+direction, urge the same course of action, and appeal to the same
+motive. It is nothing new,&mdash;the meaning of this threefold message,&mdash;but
+it is the best that I have learned in life. And I believe it is
+true,&mdash;so true that we need often to have it brought to remembrance.</p>
+
+<p>Henry van Dyke</p>
+
+<p>Avalon, July 5, 1903</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CONTENTS"></a><h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>i. <a href="#JOY_AND_POWER">Joy and Power</a></p>
+
+<p>ii. <a href="#THE_BATTLE_OF_LIFE">The Battle of Life</a></p>
+
+<p>iii. <a href="#THE_GOOD_OLD_WAY">The Good Old Way</a></p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="JOY_AND_POWER"></a><h2>JOY AND POWER</h2>
+
+<blockquote class="poetry">
+<i>St. John viii. 17: If ye know these things, happy are
+ye if ye do them.</i><br>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>I ask you to think for a little while about the religion of Christ in
+its relation to happiness.</p>
+
+<p>This is only one point in the circle of truth at the centre of which
+Jesus stands. But it is an important point because it marks one of the
+lines of power which radiate from Him. To look at it clearly and
+steadily is not to disregard other truths. The mariner takes the whole
+heavens of astronomy for granted while he shapes his course by a single
+star.</p>
+
+<p>In the wish for happiness all men are strangely alike. In their
+explanations of it and in their ways of seeking it they are singularly
+different. Shall we think of this wish as right, or wrong; as a true
+star, or a will-o'-the-wisp? If it is right to wish to be happy, what
+are the conditions on which the fulfilment of this wish depends? These
+are the two questions with which I would come to Christ, seeking
+instruction and guidance.</p>
+
+<p>I. The desire of happiness, beyond all doubt, is a natural desire. It
+is the law of life itself that every being seeks and strives toward the
+perfection of its kind, the realization of its own specific ideal in
+form and function, and a true harmony with its environment. Every drop
+of sap in the tree flows toward foliage and fruit. Every drop of blood
+in the bird beats toward flight and song. In a conscious being this
+movement toward perfection must take a conscious form. This conscious
+form is happiness,&mdash;the satisfaction of the vital impulse,&mdash;the rhythm
+of the inward life,&mdash;the melody of a heart that has found its keynote.
+To say that all men long for this is simply to confess that all men are
+human, and that their thoughts and feelings are an essential part of
+their life. Virtue means a completed manhood. The joyful welfare of the
+soul belongs to the fulness of that ideal. Holiness is wholeness. In
+striving to realize the true aim of our being, we find the wish for
+happiness implanted in the very heart of our effort.</p>
+
+<p>Now what does Christ say in regard to this natural human wish? Does He
+say that it is an illusion? Does He condemn and deny it? Would He have
+accepted Goethe's definition: &quot;religion is renunciation&quot;?</p>
+
+<p>Surely such a notion is far from the spirit of Jesus. There is nothing
+of the hardness of Stoicism, the coldness of Buddhism, in Christ's
+gospel. It is humane, sympathetic, consoling. Unrest and weariness, the
+fever of passion and the chill of despair, soul-solitude and
+heart-trouble, are the very things that He comes to cure. He begins His
+great discourse with a series of beatitudes. &quot;Blessed&quot; is the word.
+&quot;Happy&quot; is the meaning. Nine times He rings the changes on that word,
+like a silver bell sounding from His fair temple on the mountain-side,
+calling all who long for happiness to come to Him and find rest for
+their souls.</p>
+
+<p>Christ never asks us to give up merely for the sake of giving up, but
+always in order to win something better. He comes not to destroy, but to
+fulfil,&mdash;to fill full,&mdash;to replenish life with true, inward, lasting
+riches. His gospel is a message of satisfaction, of attainment, of
+felicity. Its voice is not a sigh, but a song. Its final word is a
+benediction, a good-saying. &quot;These things have I spoken unto you, that
+my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>If we accept His teaching we must believe that men are not wrong in
+wishing for happiness, but wrong in their way of seeking it. Earthly
+happiness,&mdash;pleasure that belongs to the senses and perishes with
+them,&mdash;earthly happiness is a dream and a delusion. But happiness on
+earth,&mdash;spiritual joy and peace, blossoming here, fruiting
+hereafter,&mdash;immortal happiness, is the keynote of life in Christ.</p>
+
+<p>And if we come to Him, He tells us four great secrets in regard to it.</p>
+
+<p>i. It is inward, and, not outward; and so it does not depend on what we
+have, but on what we are.</p>
+
+<p>ii. It cannot be found by direct seeking, but by setting our faces
+toward the things from which it flows; and so we must climb the mount
+if we would see the vision, we must tune the instrument if we would hear
+the music.</p>
+
+<p>iii. It is not solitary, but social; and so we can never have it without
+sharing it with others.</p>
+
+<p>iv. It is the result of God's will for us, and not of our will for
+ourselves; and so we can only find it by giving our lives up, in
+submission and obedience, to the control of God.</p>
+
+<blockquote class="poetry">
+For this is peace,&mdash;to lose the lonely note<br>
+Of self in love's celestial ordered strain:<br>
+And this is joy,&mdash;to find one's self again<br>
+In Him whose harmonies forever float<br>
+Through all the spheres of song, below, above,&mdash;<br>
+For God is music, even as God is love.<br>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>This is the divine doctrine of happiness as Christ taught it by His life
+and with His lips. If we want to put it into a single phrase, I know not
+where we shall find a more perfect utterance than in the words which
+have been taught us in childhood,&mdash;words so strong, so noble, so
+cheerful, that they summon the heart of manhood like marching-music:
+&quot;Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Let us accept without reserve this teaching of our Divine Lord and
+Master in regard to the possibility and the duty of happiness. It is an
+essential element of His gospel. The atmosphere of the New Testament is
+not gloom, but gladness; not despondency, but hope. The man who is not
+glad to be a Christian is not the right kind of a Christian.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing that commended the Church of Jesus to the weary and
+disheartened world in the early years of her triumph, was her power to
+make her children happy,&mdash;happy in the midst of afflictions, happy in
+the release from the burden of guilt, happy in the sense of Divine
+Fatherhood and human brotherhood, happy in Christ's victory over sin and
+death, happy in the assurance of an endless life. At midnight in the
+prison, Paul and Silas sang praises, and the prisoners heard them. The
+lateral force of joy,&mdash;that was the power of the Church.</p>
+
+<blockquote class="poetry">
+&quot;'Poor world,' she cried, 'so deep accurst,<br>
+Thou runn'st from pole to pole<br>
+To seek a draught to slake thy thirst,&mdash;<br>
+Go seek it in thy soul.'<br>
+<br/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br/>
+<br/>
+Tears washed the trouble from her face!<br>
+She changed into a child!<br>
+'Mid weeds and wrecks she stood,&mdash;a place<br>
+Of ruin,&mdash;but she smiled!&quot;<br>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Much has the Church lost of that pristine and powerful joy. The furnace
+of civilization has withered and hardened her. She has become anxious
+and troubled about many things. She has sought earthly honours, earthly
+powers. Richer she is than ever before, and probably better organized,
+and perhaps more intelligent, more learned,&mdash;but not more happy. The one
+note that is most often missing in Christian life, in Christian service,
+is the note of spontaneous joy.</p>
+
+<p>Christians are not as much calmer, steadier, stronger, and more cheerful
+than other people as they ought to be. Some Christians are among the
+most depressing and worryful people in the world,&mdash;the most difficult to
+live with. And some, indeed, have adopted a theory of spiritual ethics
+which puts a special value upon unhappiness. The dark, morbid spirit
+which mistrusts every joyful feeling, and depreciates every cheerful
+virtue, and looks askance upon every happy life as if there must be
+something wrong about it, is a departure from the beauty of Christ's
+teaching to follow the dark-browed philosophy of the Orient.</p>
+
+<p>The religion of Jesus tells us that cheerful piety is the best piety.
+There is something finer than to do right against inclination; and that
+is to have an inclination to do right. There is something nobler than
+reluctant obedience; and that is joyful obedience. The rank of virtue is
+not measured by its disagreeableness, but by its sweetness to the heart
+that loves it. The real test of character is joy. For what you rejoice
+in, that you love. And what you love, that you are like.</p>
+
+<p>I confess frankly that I have no admiration for the phrase
+&quot;disinterested benevolence,&quot; to describe the main-spring of Christian
+morals. I do not find it in the New Testament: neither the words, nor
+the thing. Interested benevolence is what I find there. To do good to
+others is to make life interesting and find peace for our own souls. To
+glorify God is to enjoy Him. That was the spirit of the first
+Christians. Was not St. Paul a happier man than Herod? Did not St. Peter
+have more joy of his life than Nero? It is said of the first disciples
+that they &quot;did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart.&quot;
+Not till that pristine gladness of life returns will the Church regain
+her early charm for the souls of men. Every great revival of Christian
+power&mdash;like those which came in the times of St. Francis of Assisi and
+of John Wesley&mdash;has been marked and heralded by a revival of Christian
+joy.</p>
+
+<p>If we want the Church to be mighty in power to win men, to be a source
+of light in the darkness, a fountain of life in the wilderness, we must
+remember and renew, in the spirit of Christ, the relation of religion to
+human happiness.</p>
+
+<p>II. What, then, are the conditions upon which true happiness depends?
+Christ tells us in the text: If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye
+do them.</p>
+
+<p>This is the blessing with a double if. &quot;If ye know,&quot;&mdash;this is the
+knowledge which Christ gives to faith. &quot;If ye do,&quot;&mdash;this is the
+obedience which faith gives to Christ. Knowing and Doing,&mdash;these are the
+twin pillars, Jachin and Boaz, on which the house of happiness is built.
+The harmony of faith and life,&mdash;this is the secret of inward joy and
+power.</p>
+
+<p>You remember when these words were spoken. Christ had knelt to wash the
+disciples' feet. Peter, in penitence and self-reproach, had hesitated to
+permit this lowly service of Divine love. But Christ answered by
+revealing the meaning of His act as a symbol of the cleansing of the
+soul from sin. He reminded the disciples of what they knew by
+faith,&mdash;that He was their Saviour and their Lord. By deed and by word He
+called up before them the great spiritual truths which had given new
+meaning to their life. He summoned them to live according to their
+knowledge, to act upon the truth which they believed.</p>
+
+<p>I am sure that His words sweep out beyond that quiet upper room, beyond
+that beautiful incident, to embrace the whole spiritual life. I am sure
+that He is revealing to us the secret of happy living which lies at the
+very heart of His gospel, when He says: If ye know these things, happy
+are ye if ye do them.</p>
+
+<p>i. &quot;If ye know,&quot;&mdash;there is, then, a certain kind of knowledge without
+which we can not be happy. There are questions arising in human nature
+which demand an answer. If it is denied we can not help being
+disappointed, restless, and sad. This is the price we have to pay for
+being conscious, rational creatures. If we were mere plants or animals
+we might go on living through our appointed years in complete
+indifference to the origin and meaning of our existence. But within us,
+as human beings, there is something that cries out and rebels against
+such a blind life. Man is born to ask what things mean. He is possessed
+with the idea that there is a significance in the world beyond that
+which meets his senses.</p>
+
+<p>John Fiske has brought out this fact very clearly in his last book,
+Through Nature to God. He shows that &quot;in the morning twilight of
+existence the Human Soul vaguely reached forth toward something akin to
+itself, not in the realm of fleeting phenomena, but in the Eternal
+Presence beyond.&quot; He argues by the analogy of evolution, which always
+presupposes a real relation between the life and the environment to
+which it adjusts itself, that this forth-reaching and unfolding of the
+soul implies the everlasting reality of religion.</p>
+
+<p>The argument is good. But the point which concerns us now is simply
+this. The forth-reaching, questioning soul can never be satisfied if it
+touches only a dead wall in the darkness, if its seeking meets with the
+reply, &quot;You do not know, and you never can know, and you must not try
+to know.&quot; This is agnosticism. It is only another way of spelling
+unhappiness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Since Christianity is not true,&quot; wrote Ernest Renan, &quot;nothing interests
+me, or appears worthy my attention.&quot; That is the logical result of
+losing the knowledge of spiritual things,&mdash;a life without real interest,
+without deep worth,&mdash;a life with a broken spring.</p>
+
+<p>But suppose Renan is mistaken. Suppose Christianity is true. Then the
+first thing that makes it precious, is that it answers our questions,
+and tells us the things that we must know in order to be happy.</p>
+
+<p>Christianity is a revealing religion, a teaching religion, a religion
+which conveys to the inquiring spirit certain great and positive
+solutions of the problems of life. It is not silent, nor ambiguous, nor
+incomprehensible in its utterance. It replies to our questions with a
+knowledge which, though limited, is definite and sufficient. It tells us
+that this &quot;order of nature, which constitutes the world's experience,
+is only one portion of the total universe.&quot; That the ruler of both
+worlds, seen and unseen, is God, a Spirit, and the Father of our
+spirits. That He is not distant from us nor indifferent to us, but that
+He has given His eternal Son Jesus Christ to be our Saviour. That His
+Spirit is ever present with us to help us in our conflicts with evil, in
+our efforts toward goodness. That He is making all things work together
+for good to those that love Him. That through the sacrifice of Christ
+every one who will may obtain the forgiveness of sins and everlasting
+peace. That through the resurrection of Christ all who love Him and
+their fellow-men shall obtain the victory over death and live forever.</p>
+
+<p>Now these are doctrines. And it is just because Christianity contains
+such doctrines that it satisfies the need of man.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The first and the most essential condition of true happiness,&quot; writes
+Professor Carl Hilty, the eminent Swiss jurist, &quot;is a firm faith in the
+moral order of the world. What is the happy life? It is a life of
+conscious harmony with this Divine order of the world, a sense, that is
+to say, of God's companionship. And wherein is the profoundest
+unhappiness? It is in the sense of remoteness from God, issuing into
+incurable restlessness of heart, and finally into incapacity to make
+one's life fruitful or effective.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>What shall we say, then, of the proposal to adapt Christianity to the
+needs of the world to-day by eliminating or ignoring its characteristic
+doctrines? You might as well propose to fit a ship for service by taking
+out its compass and its charts and cutting off its rudder. Make
+Christianity silent in regard to these great questions of spiritual
+existence, and you destroy its power to satisfy the heart.</p>
+
+<p>What would the life of Christ mean if these deep truths on which He
+rested and from which He drew His strength, were uncertain or illusory?
+It would be the most pathetic, mournful, heartbreaking of all phantoms.</p>
+
+<p>What consoling, cheering power would be left in the words of Jesus if
+His doctrine were blotted out and His precept left to stand alone? Try
+the experiment, if it may be done without irreverence: read His familiar
+discourses in the shadow of agnosticism.</p>
+
+<p>'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is a hopeless poverty.
+Blessed are the pure in heart, for they know not whether they shall see
+God. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, for ye
+have no promise of a heavenly reward.</p>
+
+<p>'Enter into thy closet and when thou hast shut the door, keep silence,
+for thou canst not tell whether there is One to hear thy voice in
+secret. Take no thought for the morrow, for thou knowest not whether
+there is a Father who careth for thee.</p>
+
+<p>'God is unknown, and they that worship Him must worship Him in ignorance
+and doubt. No man hath ascended up into heaven, neither hath any man
+come down from heaven, for the Son of Man hath never been in heaven.
+That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the
+spirit is a dream. Man shall not live by bread alone, neither shall he
+listen for any word from the mouth of God. I proceeded forth and came
+from darkness, I came of myself, I know not who sent me. My sheep hear
+my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, but I can not give unto
+them eternal life, for they shall perish and death shall pluck them out
+of my hand. Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe not in God, ye
+need not believe in me. Keep my commandments, and I will not pray for
+you, and ye shall abide without a Comforter. In the world ye shall have
+tribulation, but be of good cheer, for ye know not whether there is a
+world to come. I came forth from darkness into the world, and again I
+leave the world and return to darkness. Peace I leave with you. If ye
+loved me ye would rejoice because I said, I go into darkness, and where
+I am there shall ye be also.'</p>
+
+<p>Is it conceivable that any suffering, sorrowing human soul should be
+comforted and strengthened by such a message as this? Could it possibly
+be called a gospel, glad tidings of great joy to all people?</p>
+
+<p>And yet what has been omitted here from the words of Christ? Nothing but
+what men call doctrines: the personality of God, the divinity of Christ,
+the Atonement, the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, the
+sovereignty of the Heavenly Father, the truth of the divine revelation,
+the reality of the heavenly world, the assurance of immortal life. But
+it is just from these doctrines that the teaching of Jesus draws its
+peculiar power to comfort and inspire. They are the rays of light which
+disperse the gloom of uncertainty. They are the tones of celestial music
+which fill the heart of man with good cheer.</p>
+
+<p>Let us never imagine that we can strengthen Christianity by leaving out
+the great doctrines which have given it life and power. Faith is not a
+mere matter of feeling. It is the acceptance of truth, positive,
+unchanging, revealed truth, in regard to God and the world, Christ and
+the soul, duty and immortality. The first appeal to faith lies in the
+clearness and vividness, the simplicity and joy, with which this truth
+is presented.</p>
+
+<p>There has not been too much preaching of doctrine in this age. There has
+been too little. And what there has been, has been too dull and cold and
+formal, too vague and misty, too wavering and uncertain.</p>
+
+<p>What the world wants and waits for to-day is a strong, true, vital
+preaching of doctrine. The Church must realize anew the precious value
+of the truths which Christ has given her. She must not conceal them or
+cast them away; she must bring them out into the light, press them home
+upon the minds and hearts of men. She must simplify her statement of
+them, so that men can understand what they mean. She must not be content
+with repeating them in the language of past centuries. She must
+translate them into the language of to-day. First century texts will
+never wear out because they are inspired. But seventeenth century
+sermons grow obsolete because they are not inspired. Texts from the Word
+of God, preaching in the words of living men,&mdash;that is what we need.</p>
+
+<p>We must think about the doctrines of Christianity more earnestly and
+profoundly. We must renew our Christian evidences, as an army fits
+itself with new weapons. The old-fashioned form of the &quot;argument from
+design in nature&quot; has gone out with the old-fashioned books of science
+which it used. But there is a new and more wonderful proof of God's
+presence in the world,&mdash;the argument from moral ends in evolution. Every
+real advance of science makes the intelligent order of the universe more
+sublimely clear. Every century of human experience confirms the Divine
+claims and adds to the Divine triumphs of Jesus Christ. Social progress
+has followed to a hair's breadth the lines of His gospel; and He lays
+His hand to-day with heavenly wisdom on the social wants that still
+trouble us, &quot;the social lies that warp us from the living truth.&quot;
+Christ's view of life and the world is as full of sweet reasonableness
+now as it was in the first century. Every moral step that man has taken
+upward has brought a wider, clearer vision of his need of such a
+religion as that which Christ teaches.</p>
+
+<p>Let not the Church falter and blush for her doctrines. Let her not turn
+and go down the hill of knowledge to defend her position in the valley
+of ignorance. Let her go up the hill, welcoming every wider outlook,
+rejoicing in every new discovery, gathering fresh evidences of the
+truths which man must believe concerning God and new motives to the
+duties which God requires of man.</p>
+
+<p>But in doing this we must put the emphasis of our preaching to-day where
+it belongs, where Christ puts it, on the doctrines that are most
+important to human life and happiness. We can afford to let the fine
+metaphysical distinctions of theology rest for a while, and throw all
+our force on the central, fundamental truths which give steadiness and
+courage and cheer to the heart of man. I will not admit that it makes no
+difference to a man of this age whether or not he believes in the
+personal God and the Divine Christ. If he really believes, it makes all
+the difference between spiritual strength and spiritual weakness,
+between optimism and pessimism. I will not admit that it makes no
+difference to a learned scholar or a simple labourer to-day whether he
+accepts or ignores the doctrine of the atonement, the doctrine of
+personal immortality. If he knows that Christ died for him, that there
+is a future beyond the grave, it makes all the difference between
+despair and hope, between misery and consolation, between the helpless
+frailty of a being that is puffed out like a candle, and the joyful
+power of an endless life.</p>
+
+<p>My brethren, we must work and pray for a true revival of Christian
+doctrine in our age. We must deepen our own hold upon the truths which
+Christ has taught us. We must preach them more simply, more
+confidently, more reasonably, more earnestly. We must draw from them the
+happiness and the help, the comfort and the inspiration, that they have
+to give to the souls of men. But most of all, we must keep them in close
+and living touch with the problems of daily duty and experience. For no
+doctrine, however high, however true, can make men happy until it is
+translated into life.</p>
+
+<p>ii. Here is the second if, on which the power of religion to confer
+happiness depends: If ye know, happy are ye if ye do these things.</p>
+
+<p>Between the knowing and the doing there is a deep gulf. Into that abyss
+the happiness of many a man slips, and is lost. There is no peace, no
+real and lasting felicity for a human life until the gulf is closed, and
+the continent of conduct meets the continent of creed, edge to edge, lip
+to lip, firmly joined forever.</p>
+
+<p>It is not a blessing to know the things that Christ teaches, and then go
+on living as if they were false or doubtful. It is a trouble, a torment,
+a secret misery. To know that God is our Father, and yet to withhold
+our love and service from Him; to know that Christ died for us, and yet
+to deny Him and refuse to follow Him; to know that there is an immortal
+life, and yet to waste and lose our souls in the pursuit of sensual
+pleasure and such small portion of the world as we may hope to
+gain,&mdash;surely that is the deepest of all unhappiness.</p>
+
+<p>But the right kind of knowing carries in its heart the doing of the
+truth. And the right kind of doing leads to a fuller and happier
+knowing. &quot;If any man will do God's will,&quot; declares Christ, &quot;he shall
+know of the doctrine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Let a man take the truth of the Divine Fatherhood and begin to conform
+his life to its meaning. Let him give up his anxious worryings, his
+murmurings, his complainings, and trust himself completely to his
+Father's care. Let him do his work from day to day as well as he can and
+leave the results to God. Let him come to his Father every day and
+confess his faults and ask for help and guidance. Let him try to obey
+and please God for love's sake. Let him take refuge from the trials and
+confusions and misunderstandings of the world, from the wrath of men and
+the strife of tongues, in the secret of his Father's presence. Surely if
+he learns the truth thus, by doing it, he will find happiness.</p>
+
+<p>Or take the truth of immortality. Let a man live now in the light of the
+knowledge that he is to live forever. How it will deepen and strengthen
+the meaning of his existence, lift him above petty cares and ambitions,
+and make the things that are worth while precious to his heart! Let him
+really set his affections on the spiritual side of life, let him endure
+afflictions patiently because he knows that they are but for a moment,
+let him think more of the soul than of the body, let him do good to his
+fellow-men in order to make them sharers of his immortal hope, let him
+purify his love and friendship that they may be fit for the heavenly
+life. Surely the man who does these things will be happy. It will be
+with him as with Lazarus, in Robert Browning's poem, &quot;The Epistle of
+Karshish.&quot; Others will look at him with wonder and say:</p>
+
+<blockquote class="poetry">
+&quot;Whence has the man the balm that brightens all?<br>
+This grown man eyes the world now like a child.&quot;<br>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Yes, my brethren, this is the sure result of following out the doctrines
+of Christ in action, of living the truths that He teaches,&mdash;a simple
+life, a childlike life, a happy life. And this also the Church needs
+to-day, as well as a true revival of doctrine.</p>
+
+<p>A revival of simplicity, a revival of sincerity, a revival of work: this
+will restore unto us the joy of salvation. And with the joy of salvation
+will come a renewal and expansion of power.</p>
+
+<p>The inconsistency of Christians is the stronghold of unbelief. The lack
+of vital joy in the Church is the chief cause of indifference in the
+world. The feeble energy, the faltering and reluctant spirit, the
+weariness in well-doing with which too many believers impoverish and
+sadden their own hearts, make other men question the reality and value
+of religion and turn away from it in cool neglect.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, is the duty of the Church? What must she do to win the
+confidence of the world? What is the best way for her to &quot;prove her
+doctrine all divine&quot;?</p>
+
+<p>First, she must increase her labours in the love of men: second, she
+must practice the simple life, deepening her trust in God.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose that a fresh flood of energy, brave, cheerful, joyous energy,
+should be poured into all the forms of Christian work. Suppose that
+Foreign Missions and Home Missions should no longer have to plead and
+beg for support, but that plenty of money should come flowing in to send
+out every missionary that wants to go, and that plenty of the strongest
+and best young men should dedicate their lives to the ministry of
+Christ, and that every household where His gospel is believed should
+find its highest honour and its greatest joy in helping to extend His
+kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>And then suppose that the Christian life, in its daily manifestation,
+should come to be marked and known by simplicity and happiness. Suppose
+that the followers of Jesus should really escape from bondage to the
+evil spirits of avarice and luxury which infect and torment so much of
+our complicated, tangled, artificial, modern life. Suppose that instead
+of increasing their wants and their desires, instead of loading
+themselves down on life's journey with so many bags and parcels and
+boxes of superfluous luggage and bric-a-brac that they are forced to sit
+down by the roadside and gasp for breath, instead of wearing themselves
+out in the dusty ways of ostentation and vain show or embittering their
+hearts because they can not succeed in getting into the weary race of
+wealth and fashion,&mdash;suppose instead of all this, they should turn to
+quiet ways, lowly pleasures, pure and simple joys, &quot;plain living and
+high thinking.&quot; Suppose they should truly find and show their happiness
+in the knowledge that God loves them and Christ died for them and heaven
+is sure, and so set their hearts free to rejoice in life's common
+mercies, the light of the sun, the blue of the sky, the splendour of the
+sea, the peace of the everlasting hills, the song of birds, the
+sweetness of flowers, the wholesome savour of good food, the delights of
+action and motion, the refreshment of sleep, the charm of music, the
+blessings of human love and friendship,&mdash;rejoice in all these without
+fear or misgiving, because they come from God and because Christ has
+sanctified them all by His presence and touch.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose, I say, that such a revival of the joy of living in Christ and
+working for Christ should silently sweep over the Church in the
+Twentieth Century. What would happen? Great would be the peace of her
+children. Greater still would be their power.</p>
+
+<p>This is the message which I have to bring to you, my brethren, in this
+General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. You may wonder that it is
+not more distinctive, more ecclesiastical, more specially adapted to the
+peculiarities of our own denomination. You may think that it is a
+message which could just as well be brought to any other Church on any
+other occasion. With all my heart I hope that is true. The things that I
+care for most in our Church are not those which divide us from other
+Christians but those which unite us to them. The things that I love most
+in Christianity are those which give it power to save and satisfy, to
+console and cheer, to inspire and bless human hearts and lives. The
+thing that I desire most for Presbyterianism is that it should prove its
+mission and extend its influence in the world by making men happy in the
+knowing and the doing of the things which Christ teaches.</p>
+
+<p>The Church that the Twentieth Century will hear most gladly and honour
+most sincerely will have two marks. It will be the Church that teaches
+most clearly and strongly the truths that Jesus taught. It will be the
+Church that finds most happiness in living the simple life and doing
+good in the world.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="THE_BATTLE_OF_LIFE"></a><h2>THE BATTLE OF LIFE</h2>
+
+<blockquote class="poetry">
+<i>Romans vii. 21: Overcome evil with good.</i><br>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The Battle of Life is an ancient phrase consecrated by use in
+Commencement Orations without number. Two modern expressions have taken
+their place beside it in our own day: the Strenuous Life, and the Simple
+Life.</p>
+
+<p>Each of these phrases has its own significance and value. It is when
+they are overemphasized and driven to extremes that they lose their
+truth and become catch-words of folly. The simple life which blandly
+ignores all care and conflict, soon becomes flabby and invertebrate,
+sentimental and gelatinous. The strenuous life which does everything
+with set jaws and clenched fists and fierce effort, soon becomes
+strained and violent, a prolonged nervous spasm.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere between these two extremes must lie the golden mean: a life
+that has strength and simplicity, courage and calm, power and peace. But
+how can we find this golden line and live along it? Some truth there
+must be in the old phrase which speaks of life as a battle. No conflict,
+no character. Without strife, a weak life. But what is the real meaning
+of the battle? What is the vital issue at stake? What are the things
+worth fighting for? In what spirit, with what weapons, are we to take
+our part in the warfare?</p>
+
+<p>There is an answer to these questions in the text: <i>Overcome evil with
+good.</i> The man who knows this text by heart, knows the secret of a life
+that is both strenuous and simple. For here we find the three things
+that we need most: a call to the real battle of life; a plan for the
+right campaign; and a promise of final victory.</p>
+
+<p>I. Every man, like the knight in the old legend, is born on a field of
+battle. But the warfare is not carnal, it is spiritual. Not the east
+against the west, the north against the south, the &quot;Haves&quot; against the
+&quot;Have-nots&quot;; but the evil against the good,&mdash;that is the real conflict
+of life.</p>
+
+<p>The attempt to deny or ignore this conflict has been the stock in trade
+of every false doctrine that has befogged and bewildered the world since
+the days of Eden. The fairy tale that the old serpent told to Eve is a
+poetic symbol of the lie fundamental,&mdash;the theory that sin does not mean
+death, because it has no real existence and makes no real difference.
+This ancient falsehood has an infinite wardrobe of disguises.</p>
+
+<p>You will find it pranked out in philosophic garb in the doctrines of
+those who teach that all things are linked together by necessity of
+nature or Divine will, and that nothing could ever have happened
+otherwise than just as it has come to pass. Such a theory of the
+universe blots out all difference between good and evil except in name.
+It leaves the fence-posts standing, but it takes away the rails, and
+throws everything into one field of the inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>You will find the same falsehood in a more crude form in the popular
+teachings of what men call &quot;the spirit of the age,&quot; the secular spirit.
+According to these doctrines the problem of civilization is merely a
+problem of ways and means. If society were better organized, if wealth
+were more equally distributed, if laws were changed, or perhaps
+abolished, all would be well. If everybody had a full dinner-pail,
+nobody need care about an empty heart. Human misery the secular spirit
+recognizes, but it absolutely ignores the fact that nine-tenths of human
+misery comes from human sin.</p>
+
+<p>You will find the same falsehood disguised in sentimental costume in the
+very modern comedy of Christian Science, which dresses the denial of
+evil in pastoral garb of white frock and pink ribbons, like an innocent
+shepherdess among her lambs. &quot;Evil is nothing,&quot; says this wonderful
+Science. &quot;It does not really exist. It is an illusion of mortal mind.
+Shut your eyes and it will vanish.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Yes, but open your eyes again and you will see it in the same place, in
+the same form, doing the same work. A most persistent nothing, a most
+powerful nothing! Not the shadow cast by the good, but the cloud that
+hides the sun and casts the shadow. Not the &quot;silence implying sound,&quot;
+but the discord breaking the harmony. Evil is as real as the fire that
+burns you, as the flood that drowns you. Evil is as real as the typhoid
+germ that you can put under a microscope and see it squirm and grow.
+Evil is negative,&mdash;yes, but it is a real negative,&mdash;as real as darkness,
+as real as death.</p>
+
+<p>There are two things in every human heart which bear witness to the
+existence and reality of evil: first, our judgments of regret, and
+second, our judgments of condemnation.</p>
+
+<p>How often we say to ourselves, &quot;Would that this had not come to pass!&quot;
+How often we feel in regard to our own actions, &quot;Would that I had done
+differently!&quot; This is the judgment of regret; and it is a silent witness
+of the heart to the conviction that some things are not inevitable. It
+is the confession that a battle has been lost which might have been won.
+It is the acknowledgment that things which are, but are not right, need
+not have been, if we and our fellow-men had seen more clearly and
+followed more faithfully the guiding star of the good.</p>
+
+<p>And then, out of the judgment of regret, springs the deeper judgment of
+condemnation. If the failure in duty was not inevitable, then it was
+base. The false word, the unjust deed, the foul action, seen as a
+surrender to evil, appears hateful and guilty. It deserves the
+indignation and the shame which attach to all treason. And the spirit
+which lies behind all these forms of disloyalty to the good,&mdash;the spirit
+which issues in selfishness and sensuality, cruelty and lust,
+intemperance and covetousness,&mdash;this animating spirit of evil which
+works against the Divine will and mars the peace and order of the
+universe is the great Adversary against whom we must fight for our own
+lives and the life of the world.</p>
+
+<p>All around us lies his dark, secret kingdom, tempting, threatening,
+assaulting the soul. To ignore it, is to walk blindfold among snares
+and pitfalls. Try if you will to shut it out, by wrapping your heart in
+dreams of beauty and joy, living in the fair regions of art or
+philosophy, reading only the books which speak of evil as if it did not
+exist or were only another form of goodness. Soon you will be shaken out
+of the dream into the reality. You will come into contact with evil so
+close, so loathsome that you can not deny it. You will see that it has
+its soldiers, its servants, its emissaries, as ardent and enthusiastic
+in its cause as if they were serving the noblest of masters. It inspires
+literature and supports newspapers; now intelligent and cultured,
+drawing the arts into its service; now coarse and vulgar, with pictures
+that shock the taste as much as they debase the conscience. It wins
+adherents and turns them into advocates. It organizes the dealers in
+drunkenness and debauchery into powerful societies for mutual
+protection. It creates lobbies and controls legislatures. It corrupts
+the government of great cities and rots out the social life of small
+towns. Even when its outward manifestations are repressed and its
+grosser forms resisted, it steals its way into men's hearts, eating out
+the roots of human trust and brotherhood and kindness, and filling the
+air with gossip and spite, envy, malice and all uncharitableness.</p>
+
+<p>I am glad that since we have to live in a world where evil exists, we
+have a religion which does not bandage our eyes. The first thing that we
+need to have religion do for us is to teach us to face the facts. No man
+can come into touch with the Divine personality of Jesus Christ, no man
+can listen to His teaching, without feeling that the distinction between
+good and evil to Him is vital and everlasting. The choice between them
+is to Him the great choice. The conflict between them is to Him the
+great conflict. Evil is the one thing that God has never willed. Good is
+the one thing that He wills forever. Evil is first and last a rebellion
+against His will. He is altogether on the side of good. Much that is,
+is contrary to His will. There is a mighty strife going on, a battle
+with eternal issues, but not an eternal battle. The evil that is against
+Him shall be cast out and shall perish. The good that overcomes the evil
+shall live forever. And those who yield their lives to God and receive
+His righteousness in Christ are made partakers of everlasting life.</p>
+
+<p>This is the teaching of Jesus: and I thank God for the honesty and
+virility of His religion which makes us face the facts and calls us to
+take a man's part in the real battle of life.</p>
+
+<p>II. But what is the plan of campaign which Christianity sets before us?
+In what spirit and with what weapons are we to enter the great conflict
+against the evil that is in the world?</p>
+
+<p>The natural feeling of the heart in the presence of evil is wrath, and
+the natural weapon of wrath is force. To punish crime, to avenge wrong,
+to put down wickedness with a strong hand,&mdash;that is the first impulse of
+every one who has the instincts of manhood.</p>
+
+<p>And as this is natural, so it is, also, within a certain sphere
+needful, and to a certain extent useful. Armies and navies exist, at
+least in theory, to prevent injustice among nations. Laws are made to
+punish wrong-doers. Courts, police-forces, and prisons are maintained to
+suppress evil with power.</p>
+
+<p>But while we recognize this method of dealing with evil as useful to a
+certain extent and necessary within a certain sphere, we must remember
+that it has its strict limitations.</p>
+
+<p>First, it belongs to the state and not to the individual. When the
+private man assumes to punish evil with force he sanctions lynch-law,
+which is a terror to the innocent as well as to the guilty. Then we have
+the blood-feud and the vendetta, mob-rule and anarchy.</p>
+
+<p>Second, the suppression of evil by force is only a temporary relief, a
+protection for the moment. It does not touch the root of the matter. You
+send the murderer out of the world by a regulated flash of lightning.
+But you do not send murder out of the world. To do that you must reach
+and change the heart of Cain. You put the thief in prison, but when he
+comes out he will be ready to steal again, unless you can purify his
+conscience and control his will. You assault and overthrow some system
+of misgovernment, and &quot;turn the rascals out.&quot; But unless you have
+something better to substitute, all you have done is to make room for a
+new set of rascals,&mdash;a new swarm of mosquitoes with fresh appetites and
+larger capacities.</p>
+
+<p>Third, the method of fighting evil with force on its own ground often
+has a bad effect on those who follow it. Wrestle with a chimney-sweep
+and you will need a bath. Throw back the mud that is thrown at you, and
+you will have dirty hands. Answer Shimei when he curses you and you will
+echo his profanity. Many a man has entered a crusade against
+intemperance and proved himself as intemperate in his language as other
+men are in their potations. Many a man has attacked a bad cause with
+righteous indignation and ended in a personal squabble with most
+unrighteous anger.</p>
+
+<p>No, my brother-men, the best way to fight against evil is not to meet it
+on its own ground with its own weapons. There is a nobler method of
+warfare, a divine plan of campaign given to us in the religion of
+Christ. Overcome evil with good. This is the secret of the battle of
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Evil is potent not so much because it has command of money and the &quot;big
+battalions,&quot; but because it has control of the hearts of men. It spreads
+because human hearts are lying fallow and ready to welcome the seeds of
+all kinds of weeds. It persists because too much of what we call virtue
+is negative, and selfish, and frost-bound,&mdash;cold storage virtue,&mdash;the
+poor piety which terminates in a trembling anxiety to save our own
+souls.</p>
+
+<p>The way to counteract and conquer evil in the world is to give our own
+hearts to the dominion of good, and work the works of God while it is
+day. The strongest of all obstacles to the advance of evil is a clean
+and generous man, doing his duty from day to day, and winning others, by
+his cheerful fidelity, to serve the same Master. Diseases are not the
+only things that are contagious. Courage is contagious. Kindness is
+contagious. Manly integrity is contagious. All the positive virtues,
+with red blood in their veins, are contagious. The heaviest blow that
+you can strike at the kingdom of evil is just to follow the advice which
+the dying Sir Walter Scott gave to his son-in-law, Lockhart: &quot;Be a good
+man.&quot; And if you want to know how, there is but one perfect and supreme
+example,&mdash;the life of Him who not only did no evil but went about doing
+good.</p>
+
+<p>Now take that thought of fighting evil with good and apply it to our
+world and to ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>Here are monstrous evils and vices in society. Let intemperance be the
+type of them all, because so many of the others are its children.
+Drunkenness ruins more homes and wrecks more lives than war. How shall
+we oppose it? I do not say that we shall not pass resolutions and make
+laws against it. But I do say that we can never really conquer the evil
+in this way. I hold with Phillips Brooks that &quot;all prohibitory measures
+are negative. That they have their uses no one can doubt. That they have
+their limits is just as clear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The stronghold of intemperance lies in the vacancy and despair of men's
+minds. The way to attack it is to make the sober life beautiful and
+happy and full of interest. Teach your boys how to work, how to read,
+how to play, you fathers, before you send them to college, if you want
+to guard them against the temptations of strong drink and the many
+shames and sorrows that go with it. Make the life of your community
+cheerful and pleasant and interesting, you reformers, provide men with
+recreation which will not harm them, if you want to take away the power
+of the gilded saloon and the grimy boozing-ken. Parks and play-grounds,
+libraries and music-rooms, clean homes and cheerful churches,&mdash;these
+are the efficient foes of intemperance. And the same thing is true of
+gambling and lubricity and all the other vices which drag men down by
+the lower side of their nature because the higher side has nothing to
+cling to, nothing to sustain it and hold it up.</p>
+
+<p>What are you going to do, my brother-men, for this higher side of human
+life? What contribution are you going to make of your strength, your
+time, your influence, your money, your self, to make a cleaner, fuller,
+happier, larger, nobler life possible for some of your fellow-men? I do
+not ask how you are going to do it. You may do it in business, in the
+law, in medicine, in the ministry, in teaching, in literature. But this
+is the question: What are you going to give personally to make the human
+life of the place where you do your work, purer, stronger, brighter,
+better, and more worth living? That will be your best part in the
+warfare against vice and crime.</p>
+
+<p>The positive method is the only efficient way to combat intellectual
+error and spiritual evil. False doctrines are never argued out of the
+world. They are pushed back by the incoming of the truth as the darkness
+is pushed back by the dawn. Phillips Brooks was right. It is not worth
+while to cross the street to break a man's idol. It is worth while to
+cross the ocean to tell him about God. The skilful fencer who attacks
+your doubts and drives you from corner to corner of unbelief and leaves
+you at last in doubt whether you doubt or not, does you a certain
+service. He gives you exercise, takes the conceit out of you. But the
+man who lays hold of the real faith that is hidden underneath your
+doubt,&mdash;the silent longing for God and goodness, the secret attraction
+that draws your heart toward Jesus Christ as the only one who has the
+words of everlasting life,&mdash;the man who takes hold of this buried faith
+and quickens it and makes you dare to try to live by it,&mdash;ah, that is
+the man who helps you indeed. My brothers, if any of you are going to be
+preachers remember this. What we men need is not so much an answer to
+our doubts, as more nourishment for our faith.</p>
+
+<p>The positive method is the only way of victory in our struggle with the
+evil that dwells in our own nature and besets our own hearts. The reason
+why many men fail, is because they thrust the vice out and then forget
+to lay hold on the virtue. They evict the unclean spirit and leave a
+vacant house. To cease to do evil is important, but to learn to do good
+is far more important. Reformation never saved a man. Transformation is
+the only way. And to be transformed, a man must welcome the Spirit of
+Good, the Holy Spirit, into his heart, and work with Him every day,
+doing the will of God.</p>
+
+<p>There are two ways of fighting fever. One is to dose the sick people
+with quinine and keep the fever down. The other is to drain the marshes,
+and purify the water, and cleanse the houses, and drive the fever out.
+Try negative, repressive religion, and you may live, but you will be an
+invalid. Try positive, vital religion, and you will be well.</p>
+
+<p>There is an absorption of good that guards the soul against the
+infection of evil. There is a life of fellowship with Christ that can
+pass through the furnace of the world without the smell of fire on its
+garments,&mdash;a life that is full of interest as His was, being ever about
+His Father's business; a life that is free and generous and blessed, as
+His was, being spent in doing good, and refreshed by the sense of God's
+presence and approval.</p>
+
+<p>Last summer, I saw two streams emptying into the sea. One was a
+sluggish, niggardly rivulet, in a wide, fat, muddy bed; and every day
+the tide came in and drowned out that poor little stream, and filled it
+with bitter brine. The other was a vigorous, joyful, brimming
+mountain-river, fed from unfailing springs among the hills; and all the
+time it swept the salt water back before it and kept itself pure and
+sweet; and when the tide came in, it only made the fresh water rise
+higher and gather new strength by the delay; and ever the living stream
+poured forth into the ocean its tribute of living water,&mdash;the symbol of
+that influence which keeps the ocean of life from turning into a Dead
+Sea of wickedness.</p>
+
+<p>My brother-men, will you take that living stream as a type of your life
+in the world? The question for you is not what you are going to get out
+of the world, but what you are going to give to the world. The only way
+to meet and overcome the inflowing tide of evil is to roll against it
+the outflowing river of good.</p>
+
+<p>My prayer for you is that you may receive from Christ not only the
+watchword of this nobler life, but also the power to fulfil it.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="THE_GOOD_OLD_WAY"></a><h2>THE GOOD OLD WAY</h2>
+
+<blockquote class="poetry">
+<i>Jeremiah vi. 16. Stand ye in the ways and see; and ask
+for the old paths, where is the good way; and walk
+therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.</i><br>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>This advice was given to people who were in peril and perplexity. The
+kingdom of Judah was threatened with destruction, which could be averted
+only by wise and prompt action. But the trouble was to decide in which
+direction that action should be taken. The nation was divided into loud
+parties, and these parties into noisy wings. Every man had a theory of
+his own, or a variation of some other man's theory.</p>
+
+<p>Some favoured an alliance with the East; some preferred the friendship
+of the West; others, a course of diplomatic dalliance; a few stood out
+for honest independence. Some said that what the country needed was an
+increase of wealth; some held that a splendid and luxurious court like
+that of Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar would bring prosperity; others
+maintained that the troubles of the land could be healed only by a
+return to &quot;simpler manners, purer laws.&quot; Among the nobility and their
+followers all kinds of novelties in the worship of idols were in fashion
+and new gods were imported every season. The philosophers cultivated a
+discreet indifference to all religious questions. The prophets taught
+that the only salvation for the nation lay in the putting away of
+idolatry and the revival of faith in the living and true God.</p>
+
+<p>Judah was like a man standing at the cross-roads, on a stormy night,
+with all the guide-posts blown down. Meantime the Babylonian foe was
+closing in around Jerusalem, and it was necessary to do something, or
+die.</p>
+
+<p>The liberty of choice was an embarrassment. The minds of men alternated
+between that rash haste which is ready to follow any leader who makes
+noise enough, and that skeptical spirit which doubts whether any line of
+action can be right because so many lines are open. Into this atmosphere
+of fever and fog came the word of the prophet. Let us consider what it
+means.</p>
+
+<p>Stand ye in the ways and see: that means deliberation. When you are at a
+junction it is no time to shut your eyes and run at full speed. Where
+there are so many ways some of them are likely to be wrong. A
+turning-point is the place for prudence and forethought.</p>
+
+<p>Ask for the old paths, what is the good way: that means guidance. No man
+is forced to face the problems of life alone. Other men have tried the
+different ways. Peace, prosperity, victory have been won by the nation
+in former times. Inquire of the past how these blessings were secured.
+Look for the path which has already led to safety and happiness. Let
+history teach you which among all these crossing ways is the best to
+follow.</p>
+
+<p>And walk therein: that means action. When you have deliberated, when you
+have seen the guiding light upon the way of security and peace, then go
+ahead. Prudence is worthless unless you put it into practice. When in
+doubt do nothing; but as long as you do nothing you will be in doubt.
+Never man or nation was saved by inaction. The only way out of danger is
+the way into work. Gird up your loins, trembling Judah, and push along
+your chosen path, steadily, bravely, strenuously, until you come to your
+promised rest.</p>
+
+<p>Now I am sure this was good counsel that the prophet gave to his people
+in the days of perplexity. It would have been well for them if they had
+followed it I am sure it is also good counsel for us, a word of God to
+steady us and stimulate us amid life's confusions. Let me make it a
+personal message to you.</p>
+
+<p>Stand in the ways: Ask for the good way: Walk therein:&mdash;Deliberation,
+Guidance, Action,&mdash;Will you take these words with you, and try to make
+them a vital influence in your life?</p>
+
+<p>I. First, I ask you to stand in the ways and see. I do not mean to say
+that you have not already been doing this to a certain extent. The great
+world is crossed by human footsteps which make paths leading in all
+directions. Men travel through on different ways; and I suppose some of
+you have noticed the fact, and thought a little about it.</p>
+
+<p>There is the way of sensuality. Those who walk in it take appetite as
+their guide. Their main object in life is to gratify their physical
+desires. Some of them are delicate, and some of them are coarse. That is
+a matter of temperament. But all of them are hungry. That is a matter of
+principle. Whether they grub in the mire for their food like swine, or
+browse daintily upon the tree-tops like the giraffe, the question of
+life for those who follow this way is the same. &quot;How much can we hold?
+How can we obtain the most pleasure for these five senses of ours before
+they wear out?&quot; And the watchword of their journey is, &quot;Let us eat and
+drink and be merry, for we do not expect to die to-morrow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There is the way of avarice. Those who follow it make haste to be rich.
+The almighty dollar rolls before them along the road, and they chase it.
+Some of them plod patiently along the highway of toil. Others are
+always leaping fences and trying to find short cuts to wealth. But they
+are alike in this: whatever they do by way of avocation, the real
+vocation of their life is to make money. If they fail, they are hard and
+bitter; if they succeed they are hard and proud. But they all bow down
+to the golden calf, and their motto is, &quot;Lay up for yourselves treasures
+upon earth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There is the way of social ambition. Those who walk in it have their
+eyes fixed on various prizes, such as titles of honour, public office,
+large acquaintance with prosperous people, the reputation of leading the
+fashion. But the real satisfaction that they get out of it all is simply
+the feeling of notoriety, the sense of belonging to a circle to which
+ordinary people are not admitted and to whose doings the world, just for
+this reason, pays envious attention. This way is less like a road than
+like a ladder. Most of the people who are on it are &quot;climbers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There are other ways, less clearly marked, more difficult to
+trace,&mdash;the way of moral indifference, the way of intellectual pride,
+the way of hypocrisy, the way of indecision. This last is not a single
+road; it is a net-work of sheep-tracks, crossing and recrossing the
+great highways, leading in every direction, and ending nowhere. The men
+who wander in these aimless paths go up and down through the world,
+changing their purposes, following one another blindly, forever
+travelling but never arriving at the goal of their journey.</p>
+
+<p>Through all this tangle there runs another way,&mdash;the path of faith and
+duty. Those who walk in it believe that life has a meaning, the
+fulfilment of God's will, and a goal, the attainment of perfect harmony
+with Him. They try to make the best of themselves in soul and body by
+training and discipline. They endeavour to put their talents to the
+noblest use in the service of their fellow-men, and to unfold their
+faculties to the highest joy and power in the life of the Spirit. They
+seek an education to fit them for work, and they do their work well
+because it is a part of their education. They respect their consciences,
+and cherish their ideals. They put forth an honest effort to be good and
+to do good and to make the world better. They often stumble. They
+sometimes fall. But, take their life from end to end, it is a faithful
+attempt to walk in &quot;the way of righteousness, which is the way of
+peace.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Such are some of the ways that lead through the world. And they are all
+open to us. We can travel by the road that pleases us. Heredity gives us
+our outfit. Environment supplies our company. But when we come to the
+cross-roads, the question is, &quot;Boy, which way will you ride?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Deliberation is necessary, unless we wish to play a fool's part. No
+amount of energy will take the place of thought. A strenuous life, with
+its eyes shut, is a kind of wild insanity. A drifting life, with its
+eyes open, is a kind of mild idiocy.</p>
+
+<p>The real question is, &quot;How will you live? After what rule and pattern?
+Along what way? Toward what end?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Will you let chance answer that question for you? Will you let yourself
+be led blindfold by the first guide that offers, or run stupidly after
+the crowd without asking whither they are going? You would not act so in
+regard to the shortest earthly journey. You would not rush into the
+railway station and jump aboard of the first train you saw, without
+looking at the sign-boards. Surely if there is anything in regard to
+which we need to exercise deliberation, it is the choice of the way that
+we are to take through the world. You have thought a good deal about
+what business, what profession you are to follow. Think more deeply, I
+beg you, about how you are to follow it and what you are to follow it
+for. Stand in the ways, and see.</p>
+
+<p>II. Second, I earnestly advise you to ask for the old paths, where is
+the good way.</p>
+
+<p>I do not regard this as a mere counsel of conservatism, an unqualified
+commendation of antiquity. True, it implies that the good way will not
+be a new discovery, a track that you and I strike out for ourselves.
+Among the paths of conduct, that which is entirely original is likely to
+be false, and that which is true is likely to have some footprints on
+it. When a man comes to us with a scheme of life which he has made all
+by himself, we may safely say to him, as the old composer said to the
+young musician who brought him a symphony of the future, &quot;It is both new
+and beautiful; but that which is new is not beautiful, and that which is
+beautiful is not new.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But this is by no means the same as saying that everything ancient is
+therefore beautiful and true, or that all the old ways are good. The
+very point of the text is that we must discriminate among
+antiquities,&mdash;a thing as necessary in old chairs and old books as in old
+ways.</p>
+
+<p>Evil is almost, if not quite, as ancient as good. Folly and wisdom,
+among men at least, are twins, and we can not distinguish between them
+by the grey hairs. Adam's way was old enough; and so was the way of
+Cain, and of Noah's vile son, and of Lot's lewd daughters, and of
+Balaam, and of Jezebel, and of Manasseh. Judas Iscariot was as old as
+St. John. Ananias and Sapphira were of the same age with St. Peter and
+St. Paul.</p>
+
+<p>What we are to ask for is not simply the old way, but that one among the
+old ways which has been tested and tried and proved to be the good way.
+The Spirit of Wisdom tells us that we are not to work this way out by
+logarithms, or evolve it from our own inner consciousness, but to learn
+what it is by looking at the lives of other men and marking the lessons
+which they teach us. Experience has been compared to the stern-light of
+a ship which shines only on the road that has been traversed. But the
+stern-light of a ship that sails before you is a head-light to you.</p>
+
+<p>You do not need to try everything for yourself in order to understand
+what it means. The writer of Ecclesiastes tells us that he gave his
+heart to know madness and folly; and that it was all vanity and vexation
+of spirit. It will be a wise economy for us to accept his lesson without
+paying his tuition-fee over again.</p>
+
+<p>It is perfectly safe for a man to take it as a fact that fire burns,
+without putting his hand into the flame. He does not need to try
+perilous experiments with his own soul in order to make sure that lust
+defiles, that avarice hardens, that frivolity empties, that selfishness
+cankers the heart. He may understand the end of the way of sensuality by
+looking at any old pleasure-seeker,</p>
+
+<blockquote class="poetry">
+&quot;Gray, and gap-toothed, and lean as death,&quot;<br>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>mumbling the dainties that he can no longer enjoy, and glowering with
+bleared eyes at the indulgences which now mock him even while they tempt
+him. The goal of the path of covetousness may be discerned in the face
+of any old money-worshipper; keeping guard over his piles of wealth,
+like a surly watch-dog; or, if perchance he has failed, haunting the
+places where fortune has deceived him, like an unquiet ghost.</p>
+
+<p>Inquire and learn; consider and discern. There need be no doubt about
+the direction of life's various ways.</p>
+
+<p>Which are the nations that have been most peaceful and noble and truly
+prosperous? Those that have followed pride and luxury and idolatry? Or
+those that have cherished sobriety and justice, and acknowledged the
+Divine law of righteousness?</p>
+
+<p>Which are the families that have been most serene and pure and truly
+fortunate? Those in which there has been no discipline, no restraint, no
+common faith, no mutual love? Or those in which sincere religion has
+swayed life to its stern and gracious laws, those in which parents and
+children have walked together to the House of God, and knelt together at
+His altar, and rejoiced together in His service?</p>
+
+<p>I tell you, my brother-men, it has become too much the fashion in these
+latter days to sneer and jeer at the old-fashioned ways of the
+old-fashioned American household. Something too much of iron there may
+have been in the Puritan's temper; something too little of sunlight may
+have come in through the narrow windows of his house. But that house had
+foundations, and the virile virtues lived in it. There were plenty of
+red corpuscles in his blood, and his heart beat in time with the eternal
+laws of right, even though its pulsations sometimes seemed a little slow
+and heavy. It would be well for us if we could get back into the old
+way, which proved itself to be the good way, and maintain, as our
+fathers did, the sanctity of the family, the sacredness of the
+marriage-vow, the solemnity of the mutual duties binding parents and
+children together. From the households that followed this way have come
+men that could rule themselves as well as their fellows, women that
+could be trusted as well as loved. Read the history of such families,
+and you will understand the truth of the poet's words:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote class="poetry">
+&quot;Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,&mdash;<br>
+These three alone lead life to sovereign power.&quot;<br>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Look around you in the world and see what way it is that has brought
+your fellow-men to peace and quietness of heart, to security and honour
+of life. Is it the way of unbridled self-indulgence, of unscrupulous
+greed, of aimless indolence? Or is it the way of self-denial, of
+cheerful industry, of fair dealing, of faithful service? If true honour
+lies in the respect and grateful love of one's fellow-men, if true
+success lies in a contented heart and a peaceful conscience, then the
+men who have reached the highest goal of life are those who have
+followed most closely the way to which Jesus Christ points us and in
+which He goes before us.</p>
+
+<p>III. Walk therein and ye shall find rest for your souls. Right action
+brings rest.</p>
+
+<p>Rest! Rest! How that word rings like a sweet bell through the turmoil
+of our age. We are rushing to and fro, destroying rest in our search for
+it. We drive our automobiles from one place to another, at furious
+speed, not knowing what we shall do when we get there. We make haste to
+acquire new possessions, not knowing how we shall use them when they are
+ours. We are in a fever of new discoveries and theories, not knowing how
+to apply them when they are made. We feed ourselves upon novel
+speculations until our heads swim with the vertigo of universal
+knowledge which changes into the paresis of universal doubt.</p>
+
+<p>But in the hours of silence, the Spirit of Wisdom whispers a secret to
+our hearts. Rest depends upon conduct. The result of your life depends
+upon your choosing the good way and walking in it.</p>
+
+<p>And to you I say, my brother-men, choose Christ, for He is the Way. All
+the strength and sweetness of the best possible human life are embodied
+in Him. All the truth that is needed to inspire and guide man to noble
+action and fine character is revealed in Him. He is the one Master
+altogether worthy to be served and followed. Take His yoke upon you and
+learn of Him, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Joy & Power, by Henry van Dyke
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Joy & Power, by Henry van Dyke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Joy & Power
+
+Author: Henry van Dyke
+
+Release Date: December 7, 2003 [EBook #10395]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOY & POWER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Dave Morgan and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+JOY AND POWER
+
+
+Three messages with One meaning
+
+by
+
+Henry van Dyke
+
+
+
+
+1903
+
+
+
+
+Dedicated to my friend John Huston Finley
+President of the College of the City of New York
+
+
+
+
+THE PREFACE
+
+
+The three messages which are brought together in this book were given
+not far apart in time, though at some distance from one another in
+space. The one called Joy and Power was delivered in Los Angeles,
+California, at the opening of the Presbyterian General Assembly, May 21,
+1903. The one called The Battle of Life was delivered on Baccalaureate
+Sunday at Princeton University, June 7. The one called The Good Old Way
+was delivered on Baccalaureate Sunday at Harvard University, June 14. At
+the time, I was thinking chiefly of the different qualities and needs of
+the people to whom I had to speak. This will account for some things in
+the form of each message. But now that they are put together I can see
+that all three of them say about the same thing. They point in the same
+direction, urge the same course of action, and appeal to the same
+motive. It is nothing new,--the meaning of this threefold message,--but
+it is the best that I have learned in life. And I believe it is
+true,--so true that we need often to have it brought to remembrance.
+
+Henry van Dyke
+
+Avalon, July 5, 1903
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+i. Joy and Power
+
+ii. The Battle of Life
+
+iii. The Good Old Way
+
+
+
+
+JOY AND POWER
+
+    <i>St. John viii. 17: If ye know these things, happy are
+    ye if ye do them.</i>
+
+I ask you to think for a little while about the religion of Christ in
+its relation to happiness.
+
+This is only one point in the circle of truth at the centre of which
+Jesus stands. But it is an important point because it marks one of the
+lines of power which radiate from Him. To look at it clearly and
+steadily is not to disregard other truths. The mariner takes the whole
+heavens of astronomy for granted while he shapes his course by a single
+star.
+
+In the wish for happiness all men are strangely alike. In their
+explanations of it and in their ways of seeking it they are singularly
+different. Shall we think of this wish as right, or wrong; as a true
+star, or a will-o'-the-wisp? If it is right to wish to be happy, what
+are the conditions on which the fulfilment of this wish depends? These
+are the two questions with which I would come to Christ, seeking
+instruction and guidance.
+
+I. The desire of happiness, beyond all doubt, is a natural desire. It
+is the law of life itself that every being seeks and strives toward the
+perfection of its kind, the realization of its own specific ideal in
+form and function, and a true harmony with its environment. Every drop
+of sap in the tree flows toward foliage and fruit. Every drop of blood
+in the bird beats toward flight and song. In a conscious being this
+movement toward perfection must take a conscious form. This conscious
+form is happiness,--the satisfaction of the vital impulse,--the rhythm
+of the inward life,--the melody of a heart that has found its keynote.
+To say that all men long for this is simply to confess that all men are
+human, and that their thoughts and feelings are an essential part of
+their life. Virtue means a completed manhood. The joyful welfare of the
+soul belongs to the fulness of that ideal. Holiness is wholeness. In
+striving to realize the true aim of our being, we find the wish for
+happiness implanted in the very heart of our effort.
+
+Now what does Christ say in regard to this natural human wish? Does He
+say that it is an illusion? Does He condemn and deny it? Would He have
+accepted Goethe's definition: "religion is renunciation"?
+
+Surely such a notion is far from the spirit of Jesus. There is nothing
+of the hardness of Stoicism, the coldness of Buddhism, in Christ's
+gospel. It is humane, sympathetic, consoling. Unrest and weariness, the
+fever of passion and the chill of despair, soul-solitude and
+heart-trouble, are the very things that He comes to cure. He begins His
+great discourse with a series of beatitudes. "Blessed" is the word.
+"Happy" is the meaning. Nine times He rings the changes on that word,
+like a silver bell sounding from His fair temple on the mountain-side,
+calling all who long for happiness to come to Him and find rest for
+their souls.
+
+Christ never asks us to give up merely for the sake of giving up, but
+always in order to win something better. He comes not to destroy, but to
+fulfil,--to fill full,--to replenish life with true, inward, lasting
+riches. His gospel is a message of satisfaction, of attainment, of
+felicity. Its voice is not a sigh, but a song. Its final word is a
+benediction, a good-saying. "These things have I spoken unto you, that
+my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full."
+
+If we accept His teaching we must believe that men are not wrong in
+wishing for happiness, but wrong in their way of seeking it. Earthly
+happiness,--pleasure that belongs to the senses and perishes with
+them,--earthly happiness is a dream and a delusion. But happiness on
+earth,--spiritual joy and peace, blossoming here, fruiting
+hereafter,--immortal happiness, is the keynote of life in Christ.
+
+And if we come to Him, He tells us four great secrets in regard to it.
+
+i. It is inward, and, not outward; and so it does not depend on what we
+have, but on what we are.
+
+ii. It cannot be found by direct seeking, but by setting our faces
+toward the things from which it flows; and so we must climb the mount
+if we would see the vision, we must tune the instrument if we would hear
+the music.
+
+iii. It is not solitary, but social; and so we can never have it without
+sharing it with others.
+
+iv. It is the result of God's will for us, and not of our will for
+ourselves; and so we can only find it by giving our lives up, in
+submission and obedience, to the control of God.
+
+  For this is peace,--to lose the lonely note
+  Of self in love's celestial ordered strain:
+  And this is joy,--to find one's self again
+  In Him whose harmonies forever float
+  Through all the spheres of song, below, above,--
+  For God is music, even as God is love.
+
+This is the divine doctrine of happiness as Christ taught it by His life
+and with His lips. If we want to put it into a single phrase, I know not
+where we shall find a more perfect utterance than in the words which
+have been taught us in childhood,--words so strong, so noble, so
+cheerful, that they summon the heart of manhood like marching-music:
+"Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever."
+
+Let us accept without reserve this teaching of our Divine Lord and
+Master in regard to the possibility and the duty of happiness. It is an
+essential element of His gospel. The atmosphere of the New Testament is
+not gloom, but gladness; not despondency, but hope. The man who is not
+glad to be a Christian is not the right kind of a Christian.
+
+The first thing that commended the Church of Jesus to the weary and
+disheartened world in the early years of her triumph, was her power to
+make her children happy,--happy in the midst of afflictions, happy in
+the release from the burden of guilt, happy in the sense of Divine
+Fatherhood and human brotherhood, happy in Christ's victory over sin and
+death, happy in the assurance of an endless life. At midnight in the
+prison, Paul and Silas sang praises, and the prisoners heard them. The
+lateral force of joy,--that was the power of the Church.
+
+  "'Poor world,' she cried, 'so deep accurst,
+    Thou runn'st from pole to pole
+  To seek a draught to slake thy thirst,--
+    Go seek it in thy soul.'
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Tears washed the trouble from her face!
+    She changed into a child!
+  'Mid weeds and wrecks she stood,--a place
+    Of ruin,--but she smiled!"
+
+Much has the Church lost of that pristine and powerful joy. The furnace
+of civilization has withered and hardened her. She has become anxious
+and troubled about many things. She has sought earthly honours, earthly
+powers. Richer she is than ever before, and probably better organized,
+and perhaps more intelligent, more learned,--but not more happy. The one
+note that is most often missing in Christian life, in Christian service,
+is the note of spontaneous joy.
+
+Christians are not as much calmer, steadier, stronger, and more cheerful
+than other people as they ought to be. Some Christians are among the
+most depressing and worryful people in the world,--the most difficult to
+live with. And some, indeed, have adopted a theory of spiritual ethics
+which puts a special value upon unhappiness. The dark, morbid spirit
+which mistrusts every joyful feeling, and depreciates every cheerful
+virtue, and looks askance upon every happy life as if there must be
+something wrong about it, is a departure from the beauty of Christ's
+teaching to follow the dark-browed philosophy of the Orient.
+
+The religion of Jesus tells us that cheerful piety is the best piety.
+There is something finer than to do right against inclination; and that
+is to have an inclination to do right. There is something nobler than
+reluctant obedience; and that is joyful obedience. The rank of virtue is
+not measured by its disagreeableness, but by its sweetness to the heart
+that loves it. The real test of character is joy. For what you rejoice
+in, that you love. And what you love, that you are like.
+
+I confess frankly that I have no admiration for the phrase
+"disinterested benevolence," to describe the main-spring of Christian
+morals. I do not find it in the New Testament: neither the words, nor
+the thing. Interested benevolence is what I find there. To do good to
+others is to make life interesting and find peace for our own souls. To
+glorify God is to enjoy Him. That was the spirit of the first
+Christians. Was not St. Paul a happier man than Herod? Did not St. Peter
+have more joy of his life than Nero? It is said of the first disciples
+that they "did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart."
+Not till that pristine gladness of life returns will the Church regain
+her early charm for the souls of men. Every great revival of Christian
+power--like those which came in the times of St. Francis of Assisi and
+of John Wesley--has been marked and heralded by a revival of Christian
+joy.
+
+If we want the Church to be mighty in power to win men, to be a source
+of light in the darkness, a fountain of life in the wilderness, we must
+remember and renew, in the spirit of Christ, the relation of religion to
+human happiness.
+
+II. What, then, are the conditions upon which true happiness depends?
+Christ tells us in the text: If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye
+do them.
+
+This is the blessing with a double if. "If ye know,"--this is the
+knowledge which Christ gives to faith. "If ye do,"--this is the
+obedience which faith gives to Christ. Knowing and Doing,--these are the
+twin pillars, Jachin and Boaz, on which the house of happiness is built.
+The harmony of faith and life,--this is the secret of inward joy and
+power.
+
+You remember when these words were spoken. Christ had knelt to wash the
+disciples' feet. Peter, in penitence and self-reproach, had hesitated to
+permit this lowly service of Divine love. But Christ answered by
+revealing the meaning of His act as a symbol of the cleansing of the
+soul from sin. He reminded the disciples of what they knew by
+faith,--that He was their Saviour and their Lord. By deed and by word He
+called up before them the great spiritual truths which had given new
+meaning to their life. He summoned them to live according to their
+knowledge, to act upon the truth which they believed.
+
+I am sure that His words sweep out beyond that quiet upper room, beyond
+that beautiful incident, to embrace the whole spiritual life. I am sure
+that He is revealing to us the secret of happy living which lies at the
+very heart of His gospel, when He says: If ye know these things, happy
+are ye if ye do them.
+
+i. "If ye know,"--there is, then, a certain kind of knowledge without
+which we can not be happy. There are questions arising in human nature
+which demand an answer. If it is denied we can not help being
+disappointed, restless, and sad. This is the price we have to pay for
+being conscious, rational creatures. If we were mere plants or animals
+we might go on living through our appointed years in complete
+indifference to the origin and meaning of our existence. But within us,
+as human beings, there is something that cries out and rebels against
+such a blind life. Man is born to ask what things mean. He is possessed
+with the idea that there is a significance in the world beyond that
+which meets his senses.
+
+John Fiske has brought out this fact very clearly in his last book,
+Through Nature to God. He shows that "in the morning twilight of
+existence the Human Soul vaguely reached forth toward something akin to
+itself, not in the realm of fleeting phenomena, but in the Eternal
+Presence beyond." He argues by the analogy of evolution, which always
+presupposes a real relation between the life and the environment to
+which it adjusts itself, that this forth-reaching and unfolding of the
+soul implies the everlasting reality of religion.
+
+The argument is good. But the point which concerns us now is simply
+this. The forth-reaching, questioning soul can never be satisfied if it
+touches only a dead wall in the darkness, if its seeking meets with the
+reply, "You do not know, and you never can know, and you must not try
+to know." This is agnosticism. It is only another way of spelling
+unhappiness.
+
+"Since Christianity is not true," wrote Ernest Renan, "nothing interests
+me, or appears worthy my attention." That is the logical result of
+losing the knowledge of spiritual things,--a life without real interest,
+without deep worth,--a life with a broken spring.
+
+But suppose Renan is mistaken. Suppose Christianity is true. Then the
+first thing that makes it precious, is that it answers our questions,
+and tells us the things that we must know in order to be happy.
+
+Christianity is a revealing religion, a teaching religion, a religion
+which conveys to the inquiring spirit certain great and positive
+solutions of the problems of life. It is not silent, nor ambiguous, nor
+incomprehensible in its utterance. It replies to our questions with a
+knowledge which, though limited, is definite and sufficient. It tells us
+that this "order of nature, which constitutes the world's experience,
+is only one portion of the total universe." That the ruler of both
+worlds, seen and unseen, is God, a Spirit, and the Father of our
+spirits. That He is not distant from us nor indifferent to us, but that
+He has given His eternal Son Jesus Christ to be our Saviour. That His
+Spirit is ever present with us to help us in our conflicts with evil, in
+our efforts toward goodness. That He is making all things work together
+for good to those that love Him. That through the sacrifice of Christ
+every one who will may obtain the forgiveness of sins and everlasting
+peace. That through the resurrection of Christ all who love Him and
+their fellow-men shall obtain the victory over death and live forever.
+
+Now these are doctrines. And it is just because Christianity contains
+such doctrines that it satisfies the need of man.
+
+"The first and the most essential condition of true happiness," writes
+Professor Carl Hilty, the eminent Swiss jurist, "is a firm faith in the
+moral order of the world. What is the happy life? It is a life of
+conscious harmony with this Divine order of the world, a sense, that is
+to say, of God's companionship. And wherein is the profoundest
+unhappiness? It is in the sense of remoteness from God, issuing into
+incurable restlessness of heart, and finally into incapacity to make
+one's life fruitful or effective."
+
+What shall we say, then, of the proposal to adapt Christianity to the
+needs of the world to-day by eliminating or ignoring its characteristic
+doctrines? You might as well propose to fit a ship for service by taking
+out its compass and its charts and cutting off its rudder. Make
+Christianity silent in regard to these great questions of spiritual
+existence, and you destroy its power to satisfy the heart.
+
+What would the life of Christ mean if these deep truths on which He
+rested and from which He drew His strength, were uncertain or illusory?
+It would be the most pathetic, mournful, heartbreaking of all phantoms.
+
+What consoling, cheering power would be left in the words of Jesus if
+His doctrine were blotted out and His precept left to stand alone? Try
+the experiment, if it may be done without irreverence: read His familiar
+discourses in the shadow of agnosticism.
+
+'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is a hopeless poverty.
+Blessed are the pure in heart, for they know not whether they shall see
+God. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, for ye
+have no promise of a heavenly reward.
+
+'Enter into thy closet and when thou hast shut the door, keep silence,
+for thou canst not tell whether there is One to hear thy voice in
+secret. Take no thought for the morrow, for thou knowest not whether
+there is a Father who careth for thee.
+
+'God is unknown, and they that worship Him must worship Him in ignorance
+and doubt. No man hath ascended up into heaven, neither hath any man
+come down from heaven, for the Son of Man hath never been in heaven.
+That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the
+spirit is a dream. Man shall not live by bread alone, neither shall he
+listen for any word from the mouth of God. I proceeded forth and came
+from darkness, I came of myself, I know not who sent me. My sheep hear
+my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, but I can not give unto
+them eternal life, for they shall perish and death shall pluck them out
+of my hand. Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe not in God, ye
+need not believe in me. Keep my commandments, and I will not pray for
+you, and ye shall abide without a Comforter. In the world ye shall have
+tribulation, but be of good cheer, for ye know not whether there is a
+world to come. I came forth from darkness into the world, and again I
+leave the world and return to darkness. Peace I leave with you. If ye
+loved me ye would rejoice because I said, I go into darkness, and where
+I am there shall ye be also.'
+
+Is it conceivable that any suffering, sorrowing human soul should be
+comforted and strengthened by such a message as this? Could it possibly
+be called a gospel, glad tidings of great joy to all people?
+
+And yet what has been omitted here from the words of Christ? Nothing but
+what men call doctrines: the personality of God, the divinity of Christ,
+the Atonement, the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, the
+sovereignty of the Heavenly Father, the truth of the divine revelation,
+the reality of the heavenly world, the assurance of immortal life. But
+it is just from these doctrines that the teaching of Jesus draws its
+peculiar power to comfort and inspire. They are the rays of light which
+disperse the gloom of uncertainty. They are the tones of celestial music
+which fill the heart of man with good cheer.
+
+Let us never imagine that we can strengthen Christianity by leaving out
+the great doctrines which have given it life and power. Faith is not a
+mere matter of feeling. It is the acceptance of truth, positive,
+unchanging, revealed truth, in regard to God and the world, Christ and
+the soul, duty and immortality. The first appeal to faith lies in the
+clearness and vividness, the simplicity and joy, with which this truth
+is presented.
+
+There has not been too much preaching of doctrine in this age. There has
+been too little. And what there has been, has been too dull and cold and
+formal, too vague and misty, too wavering and uncertain.
+
+What the world wants and waits for to-day is a strong, true, vital
+preaching of doctrine. The Church must realize anew the precious value
+of the truths which Christ has given her. She must not conceal them or
+cast them away; she must bring them out into the light, press them home
+upon the minds and hearts of men. She must simplify her statement of
+them, so that men can understand what they mean. She must not be content
+with repeating them in the language of past centuries. She must
+translate them into the language of to-day. First century texts will
+never wear out because they are inspired. But seventeenth century
+sermons grow obsolete because they are not inspired. Texts from the Word
+of God, preaching in the words of living men,--that is what we need.
+
+We must think about the doctrines of Christianity more earnestly and
+profoundly. We must renew our Christian evidences, as an army fits
+itself with new weapons. The old-fashioned form of the "argument from
+design in nature" has gone out with the old-fashioned books of science
+which it used. But there is a new and more wonderful proof of God's
+presence in the world,--the argument from moral ends in evolution. Every
+real advance of science makes the intelligent order of the universe more
+sublimely clear. Every century of human experience confirms the Divine
+claims and adds to the Divine triumphs of Jesus Christ. Social progress
+has followed to a hair's breadth the lines of His gospel; and He lays
+His hand to-day with heavenly wisdom on the social wants that still
+trouble us, "the social lies that warp us from the living truth."
+Christ's view of life and the world is as full of sweet reasonableness
+now as it was in the first century. Every moral step that man has taken
+upward has brought a wider, clearer vision of his need of such a
+religion as that which Christ teaches.
+
+Let not the Church falter and blush for her doctrines. Let her not turn
+and go down the hill of knowledge to defend her position in the valley
+of ignorance. Let her go up the hill, welcoming every wider outlook,
+rejoicing in every new discovery, gathering fresh evidences of the
+truths which man must believe concerning God and new motives to the
+duties which God requires of man.
+
+But in doing this we must put the emphasis of our preaching to-day where
+it belongs, where Christ puts it, on the doctrines that are most
+important to human life and happiness. We can afford to let the fine
+metaphysical distinctions of theology rest for a while, and throw all
+our force on the central, fundamental truths which give steadiness and
+courage and cheer to the heart of man. I will not admit that it makes no
+difference to a man of this age whether or not he believes in the
+personal God and the Divine Christ. If he really believes, it makes all
+the difference between spiritual strength and spiritual weakness,
+between optimism and pessimism. I will not admit that it makes no
+difference to a learned scholar or a simple labourer to-day whether he
+accepts or ignores the doctrine of the atonement, the doctrine of
+personal immortality. If he knows that Christ died for him, that there
+is a future beyond the grave, it makes all the difference between
+despair and hope, between misery and consolation, between the helpless
+frailty of a being that is puffed out like a candle, and the joyful
+power of an endless life.
+
+My brethren, we must work and pray for a true revival of Christian
+doctrine in our age. We must deepen our own hold upon the truths which
+Christ has taught us. We must preach them more simply, more
+confidently, more reasonably, more earnestly. We must draw from them the
+happiness and the help, the comfort and the inspiration, that they have
+to give to the souls of men. But most of all, we must keep them in close
+and living touch with the problems of daily duty and experience. For no
+doctrine, however high, however true, can make men happy until it is
+translated into life.
+
+ii. Here is the second if, on which the power of religion to confer
+happiness depends: If ye know, happy are ye if ye do these things.
+
+Between the knowing and the doing there is a deep gulf. Into that abyss
+the happiness of many a man slips, and is lost. There is no peace, no
+real and lasting felicity for a human life until the gulf is closed, and
+the continent of conduct meets the continent of creed, edge to edge, lip
+to lip, firmly joined forever.
+
+It is not a blessing to know the things that Christ teaches, and then go
+on living as if they were false or doubtful. It is a trouble, a torment,
+a secret misery. To know that God is our Father, and yet to withhold
+our love and service from Him; to know that Christ died for us, and yet
+to deny Him and refuse to follow Him; to know that there is an immortal
+life, and yet to waste and lose our souls in the pursuit of sensual
+pleasure and such small portion of the world as we may hope to
+gain,--surely that is the deepest of all unhappiness.
+
+But the right kind of knowing carries in its heart the doing of the
+truth. And the right kind of doing leads to a fuller and happier
+knowing. "If any man will do God's will," declares Christ, "he shall
+know of the doctrine."
+
+Let a man take the truth of the Divine Fatherhood and begin to conform
+his life to its meaning. Let him give up his anxious worryings, his
+murmurings, his complainings, and trust himself completely to his
+Father's care. Let him do his work from day to day as well as he can and
+leave the results to God. Let him come to his Father every day and
+confess his faults and ask for help and guidance. Let him try to obey
+and please God for love's sake. Let him take refuge from the trials and
+confusions and misunderstandings of the world, from the wrath of men and
+the strife of tongues, in the secret of his Father's presence. Surely if
+he learns the truth thus, by doing it, he will find happiness.
+
+Or take the truth of immortality. Let a man live now in the light of the
+knowledge that he is to live forever. How it will deepen and strengthen
+the meaning of his existence, lift him above petty cares and ambitions,
+and make the things that are worth while precious to his heart! Let him
+really set his affections on the spiritual side of life, let him endure
+afflictions patiently because he knows that they are but for a moment,
+let him think more of the soul than of the body, let him do good to his
+fellow-men in order to make them sharers of his immortal hope, let him
+purify his love and friendship that they may be fit for the heavenly
+life. Surely the man who does these things will be happy. It will be
+with him as with Lazarus, in Robert Browning's poem, "The Epistle of
+Karshish." Others will look at him with wonder and say:
+
+  "Whence has the man the balm that brightens all?
+  This grown man eyes the world now like a child."
+
+Yes, my brethren, this is the sure result of following out the doctrines
+of Christ in action, of living the truths that He teaches,--a simple
+life, a childlike life, a happy life. And this also the Church needs
+to-day, as well as a true revival of doctrine.
+
+A revival of simplicity, a revival of sincerity, a revival of work: this
+will restore unto us the joy of salvation. And with the joy of salvation
+will come a renewal and expansion of power.
+
+The inconsistency of Christians is the stronghold of unbelief. The lack
+of vital joy in the Church is the chief cause of indifference in the
+world. The feeble energy, the faltering and reluctant spirit, the
+weariness in well-doing with which too many believers impoverish and
+sadden their own hearts, make other men question the reality and value
+of religion and turn away from it in cool neglect.
+
+What, then, is the duty of the Church? What must she do to win the
+confidence of the world? What is the best way for her to "prove her
+doctrine all divine"?
+
+First, she must increase her labours in the love of men: second, she
+must practice the simple life, deepening her trust in God.
+
+Suppose that a fresh flood of energy, brave, cheerful, joyous energy,
+should be poured into all the forms of Christian work. Suppose that
+Foreign Missions and Home Missions should no longer have to plead and
+beg for support, but that plenty of money should come flowing in to send
+out every missionary that wants to go, and that plenty of the strongest
+and best young men should dedicate their lives to the ministry of
+Christ, and that every household where His gospel is believed should
+find its highest honour and its greatest joy in helping to extend His
+kingdom.
+
+And then suppose that the Christian life, in its daily manifestation,
+should come to be marked and known by simplicity and happiness. Suppose
+that the followers of Jesus should really escape from bondage to the
+evil spirits of avarice and luxury which infect and torment so much of
+our complicated, tangled, artificial, modern life. Suppose that instead
+of increasing their wants and their desires, instead of loading
+themselves down on life's journey with so many bags and parcels and
+boxes of superfluous luggage and bric-a-brac that they are forced to sit
+down by the roadside and gasp for breath, instead of wearing themselves
+out in the dusty ways of ostentation and vain show or embittering their
+hearts because they can not succeed in getting into the weary race of
+wealth and fashion,--suppose instead of all this, they should turn to
+quiet ways, lowly pleasures, pure and simple joys, "plain living and
+high thinking." Suppose they should truly find and show their happiness
+in the knowledge that God loves them and Christ died for them and heaven
+is sure, and so set their hearts free to rejoice in life's common
+mercies, the light of the sun, the blue of the sky, the splendour of the
+sea, the peace of the everlasting hills, the song of birds, the
+sweetness of flowers, the wholesome savour of good food, the delights of
+action and motion, the refreshment of sleep, the charm of music, the
+blessings of human love and friendship,--rejoice in all these without
+fear or misgiving, because they come from God and because Christ has
+sanctified them all by His presence and touch.
+
+Suppose, I say, that such a revival of the joy of living in Christ and
+working for Christ should silently sweep over the Church in the
+Twentieth Century. What would happen? Great would be the peace of her
+children. Greater still would be their power.
+
+This is the message which I have to bring to you, my brethren, in this
+General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. You may wonder that it is
+not more distinctive, more ecclesiastical, more specially adapted to the
+peculiarities of our own denomination. You may think that it is a
+message which could just as well be brought to any other Church on any
+other occasion. With all my heart I hope that is true. The things that I
+care for most in our Church are not those which divide us from other
+Christians but those which unite us to them. The things that I love most
+in Christianity are those which give it power to save and satisfy, to
+console and cheer, to inspire and bless human hearts and lives. The
+thing that I desire most for Presbyterianism is that it should prove its
+mission and extend its influence in the world by making men happy in the
+knowing and the doing of the things which Christ teaches.
+
+The Church that the Twentieth Century will hear most gladly and honour
+most sincerely will have two marks. It will be the Church that teaches
+most clearly and strongly the truths that Jesus taught. It will be the
+Church that finds most happiness in living the simple life and doing
+good in the world.
+
+
+
+
+THE BATTLE OF LIFE
+
+    <i>Romans vii. 21: Overcome evil with good.</i>
+
+The Battle of Life is an ancient phrase consecrated by use in
+Commencement Orations without number. Two modern expressions have taken
+their place beside it in our own day: the Strenuous Life, and the Simple
+Life.
+
+Each of these phrases has its own significance and value. It is when
+they are overemphasized and driven to extremes that they lose their
+truth and become catch-words of folly. The simple life which blandly
+ignores all care and conflict, soon becomes flabby and invertebrate,
+sentimental and gelatinous. The strenuous life which does everything
+with set jaws and clenched fists and fierce effort, soon becomes
+strained and violent, a prolonged nervous spasm.
+
+Somewhere between these two extremes must lie the golden mean: a life
+that has strength and simplicity, courage and calm, power and peace. But
+how can we find this golden line and live along it? Some truth there
+must be in the old phrase which speaks of life as a battle. No conflict,
+no character. Without strife, a weak life. But what is the real meaning
+of the battle? What is the vital issue at stake? What are the things
+worth fighting for? In what spirit, with what weapons, are we to take
+our part in the warfare?
+
+There is an answer to these questions in the text: <i>Overcome evil with
+good.</i> The man who knows this text by heart, knows the secret of a life
+that is both strenuous and simple. For here we find the three things
+that we need most: a call to the real battle of life; a plan for the
+right campaign; and a promise of final victory.
+
+I. Every man, like the knight in the old legend, is born on a field of
+battle. But the warfare is not carnal, it is spiritual. Not the east
+against the west, the north against the south, the "Haves" against the
+"Have-nots"; but the evil against the good,--that is the real conflict
+of life.
+
+The attempt to deny or ignore this conflict has been the stock in trade
+of every false doctrine that has befogged and bewildered the world since
+the days of Eden. The fairy tale that the old serpent told to Eve is a
+poetic symbol of the lie fundamental,--the theory that sin does not mean
+death, because it has no real existence and makes no real difference.
+This ancient falsehood has an infinite wardrobe of disguises.
+
+You will find it pranked out in philosophic garb in the doctrines of
+those who teach that all things are linked together by necessity of
+nature or Divine will, and that nothing could ever have happened
+otherwise than just as it has come to pass. Such a theory of the
+universe blots out all difference between good and evil except in name.
+It leaves the fence-posts standing, but it takes away the rails, and
+throws everything into one field of the inevitable.
+
+You will find the same falsehood in a more crude form in the popular
+teachings of what men call "the spirit of the age," the secular spirit.
+According to these doctrines the problem of civilization is merely a
+problem of ways and means. If society were better organized, if wealth
+were more equally distributed, if laws were changed, or perhaps
+abolished, all would be well. If everybody had a full dinner-pail,
+nobody need care about an empty heart. Human misery the secular spirit
+recognizes, but it absolutely ignores the fact that nine-tenths of human
+misery comes from human sin.
+
+You will find the same falsehood disguised in sentimental costume in the
+very modern comedy of Christian Science, which dresses the denial of
+evil in pastoral garb of white frock and pink ribbons, like an innocent
+shepherdess among her lambs. "Evil is nothing," says this wonderful
+Science. "It does not really exist. It is an illusion of mortal mind.
+Shut your eyes and it will vanish."
+
+Yes, but open your eyes again and you will see it in the same place, in
+the same form, doing the same work. A most persistent nothing, a most
+powerful nothing! Not the shadow cast by the good, but the cloud that
+hides the sun and casts the shadow. Not the "silence implying sound,"
+but the discord breaking the harmony. Evil is as real as the fire that
+burns you, as the flood that drowns you. Evil is as real as the typhoid
+germ that you can put under a microscope and see it squirm and grow.
+Evil is negative,--yes, but it is a real negative,--as real as darkness,
+as real as death.
+
+There are two things in every human heart which bear witness to the
+existence and reality of evil: first, our judgments of regret, and
+second, our judgments of condemnation.
+
+How often we say to ourselves, "Would that this had not come to pass!"
+How often we feel in regard to our own actions, "Would that I had done
+differently!" This is the judgment of regret; and it is a silent witness
+of the heart to the conviction that some things are not inevitable. It
+is the confession that a battle has been lost which might have been won.
+It is the acknowledgment that things which are, but are not right, need
+not have been, if we and our fellow-men had seen more clearly and
+followed more faithfully the guiding star of the good.
+
+And then, out of the judgment of regret, springs the deeper judgment of
+condemnation. If the failure in duty was not inevitable, then it was
+base. The false word, the unjust deed, the foul action, seen as a
+surrender to evil, appears hateful and guilty. It deserves the
+indignation and the shame which attach to all treason. And the spirit
+which lies behind all these forms of disloyalty to the good,--the spirit
+which issues in selfishness and sensuality, cruelty and lust,
+intemperance and covetousness,--this animating spirit of evil which
+works against the Divine will and mars the peace and order of the
+universe is the great Adversary against whom we must fight for our own
+lives and the life of the world.
+
+All around us lies his dark, secret kingdom, tempting, threatening,
+assaulting the soul. To ignore it, is to walk blindfold among snares
+and pitfalls. Try if you will to shut it out, by wrapping your heart in
+dreams of beauty and joy, living in the fair regions of art or
+philosophy, reading only the books which speak of evil as if it did not
+exist or were only another form of goodness. Soon you will be shaken out
+of the dream into the reality. You will come into contact with evil so
+close, so loathsome that you can not deny it. You will see that it has
+its soldiers, its servants, its emissaries, as ardent and enthusiastic
+in its cause as if they were serving the noblest of masters. It inspires
+literature and supports newspapers; now intelligent and cultured,
+drawing the arts into its service; now coarse and vulgar, with pictures
+that shock the taste as much as they debase the conscience. It wins
+adherents and turns them into advocates. It organizes the dealers in
+drunkenness and debauchery into powerful societies for mutual
+protection. It creates lobbies and controls legislatures. It corrupts
+the government of great cities and rots out the social life of small
+towns. Even when its outward manifestations are repressed and its
+grosser forms resisted, it steals its way into men's hearts, eating out
+the roots of human trust and brotherhood and kindness, and filling the
+air with gossip and spite, envy, malice and all uncharitableness.
+
+I am glad that since we have to live in a world where evil exists, we
+have a religion which does not bandage our eyes. The first thing that we
+need to have religion do for us is to teach us to face the facts. No man
+can come into touch with the Divine personality of Jesus Christ, no man
+can listen to His teaching, without feeling that the distinction between
+good and evil to Him is vital and everlasting. The choice between them
+is to Him the great choice. The conflict between them is to Him the
+great conflict. Evil is the one thing that God has never willed. Good is
+the one thing that He wills forever. Evil is first and last a rebellion
+against His will. He is altogether on the side of good. Much that is,
+is contrary to His will. There is a mighty strife going on, a battle
+with eternal issues, but not an eternal battle. The evil that is against
+Him shall be cast out and shall perish. The good that overcomes the evil
+shall live forever. And those who yield their lives to God and receive
+His righteousness in Christ are made partakers of everlasting life.
+
+This is the teaching of Jesus: and I thank God for the honesty and
+virility of His religion which makes us face the facts and calls us to
+take a man's part in the real battle of life.
+
+II. But what is the plan of campaign which Christianity sets before us?
+In what spirit and with what weapons are we to enter the great conflict
+against the evil that is in the world?
+
+The natural feeling of the heart in the presence of evil is wrath, and
+the natural weapon of wrath is force. To punish crime, to avenge wrong,
+to put down wickedness with a strong hand,--that is the first impulse of
+every one who has the instincts of manhood.
+
+And as this is natural, so it is, also, within a certain sphere
+needful, and to a certain extent useful. Armies and navies exist, at
+least in theory, to prevent injustice among nations. Laws are made to
+punish wrong-doers. Courts, police-forces, and prisons are maintained to
+suppress evil with power.
+
+But while we recognize this method of dealing with evil as useful to a
+certain extent and necessary within a certain sphere, we must remember
+that it has its strict limitations.
+
+First, it belongs to the state and not to the individual. When the
+private man assumes to punish evil with force he sanctions lynch-law,
+which is a terror to the innocent as well as to the guilty. Then we have
+the blood-feud and the vendetta, mob-rule and anarchy.
+
+Second, the suppression of evil by force is only a temporary relief, a
+protection for the moment. It does not touch the root of the matter. You
+send the murderer out of the world by a regulated flash of lightning.
+But you do not send murder out of the world. To do that you must reach
+and change the heart of Cain. You put the thief in prison, but when he
+comes out he will be ready to steal again, unless you can purify his
+conscience and control his will. You assault and overthrow some system
+of misgovernment, and "turn the rascals out." But unless you have
+something better to substitute, all you have done is to make room for a
+new set of rascals,--a new swarm of mosquitoes with fresh appetites and
+larger capacities.
+
+Third, the method of fighting evil with force on its own ground often
+has a bad effect on those who follow it. Wrestle with a chimney-sweep
+and you will need a bath. Throw back the mud that is thrown at you, and
+you will have dirty hands. Answer Shimei when he curses you and you will
+echo his profanity. Many a man has entered a crusade against
+intemperance and proved himself as intemperate in his language as other
+men are in their potations. Many a man has attacked a bad cause with
+righteous indignation and ended in a personal squabble with most
+unrighteous anger.
+
+No, my brother-men, the best way to fight against evil is not to meet it
+on its own ground with its own weapons. There is a nobler method of
+warfare, a divine plan of campaign given to us in the religion of
+Christ. Overcome evil with good. This is the secret of the battle of
+life.
+
+Evil is potent not so much because it has command of money and the "big
+battalions," but because it has control of the hearts of men. It spreads
+because human hearts are lying fallow and ready to welcome the seeds of
+all kinds of weeds. It persists because too much of what we call virtue
+is negative, and selfish, and frost-bound,--cold storage virtue,--the
+poor piety which terminates in a trembling anxiety to save our own
+souls.
+
+The way to counteract and conquer evil in the world is to give our own
+hearts to the dominion of good, and work the works of God while it is
+day. The strongest of all obstacles to the advance of evil is a clean
+and generous man, doing his duty from day to day, and winning others, by
+his cheerful fidelity, to serve the same Master. Diseases are not the
+only things that are contagious. Courage is contagious. Kindness is
+contagious. Manly integrity is contagious. All the positive virtues,
+with red blood in their veins, are contagious. The heaviest blow that
+you can strike at the kingdom of evil is just to follow the advice which
+the dying Sir Walter Scott gave to his son-in-law, Lockhart: "Be a good
+man." And if you want to know how, there is but one perfect and supreme
+example,--the life of Him who not only did no evil but went about doing
+good.
+
+Now take that thought of fighting evil with good and apply it to our
+world and to ourselves.
+
+Here are monstrous evils and vices in society. Let intemperance be the
+type of them all, because so many of the others are its children.
+Drunkenness ruins more homes and wrecks more lives than war. How shall
+we oppose it? I do not say that we shall not pass resolutions and make
+laws against it. But I do say that we can never really conquer the evil
+in this way. I hold with Phillips Brooks that "all prohibitory measures
+are negative. That they have their uses no one can doubt. That they have
+their limits is just as clear."
+
+The stronghold of intemperance lies in the vacancy and despair of men's
+minds. The way to attack it is to make the sober life beautiful and
+happy and full of interest. Teach your boys how to work, how to read,
+how to play, you fathers, before you send them to college, if you want
+to guard them against the temptations of strong drink and the many
+shames and sorrows that go with it. Make the life of your community
+cheerful and pleasant and interesting, you reformers, provide men with
+recreation which will not harm them, if you want to take away the power
+of the gilded saloon and the grimy boozing-ken. Parks and play-grounds,
+libraries and music-rooms, clean homes and cheerful churches,--these
+are the efficient foes of intemperance. And the same thing is true of
+gambling and lubricity and all the other vices which drag men down by
+the lower side of their nature because the higher side has nothing to
+cling to, nothing to sustain it and hold it up.
+
+What are you going to do, my brother-men, for this higher side of human
+life? What contribution are you going to make of your strength, your
+time, your influence, your money, your self, to make a cleaner, fuller,
+happier, larger, nobler life possible for some of your fellow-men? I do
+not ask how you are going to do it. You may do it in business, in the
+law, in medicine, in the ministry, in teaching, in literature. But this
+is the question: What are you going to give personally to make the human
+life of the place where you do your work, purer, stronger, brighter,
+better, and more worth living? That will be your best part in the
+warfare against vice and crime.
+
+The positive method is the only efficient way to combat intellectual
+error and spiritual evil. False doctrines are never argued out of the
+world. They are pushed back by the incoming of the truth as the darkness
+is pushed back by the dawn. Phillips Brooks was right. It is not worth
+while to cross the street to break a man's idol. It is worth while to
+cross the ocean to tell him about God. The skilful fencer who attacks
+your doubts and drives you from corner to corner of unbelief and leaves
+you at last in doubt whether you doubt or not, does you a certain
+service. He gives you exercise, takes the conceit out of you. But the
+man who lays hold of the real faith that is hidden underneath your
+doubt,--the silent longing for God and goodness, the secret attraction
+that draws your heart toward Jesus Christ as the only one who has the
+words of everlasting life,--the man who takes hold of this buried faith
+and quickens it and makes you dare to try to live by it,--ah, that is
+the man who helps you indeed. My brothers, if any of you are going to be
+preachers remember this. What we men need is not so much an answer to
+our doubts, as more nourishment for our faith.
+
+The positive method is the only way of victory in our struggle with the
+evil that dwells in our own nature and besets our own hearts. The reason
+why many men fail, is because they thrust the vice out and then forget
+to lay hold on the virtue. They evict the unclean spirit and leave a
+vacant house. To cease to do evil is important, but to learn to do good
+is far more important. Reformation never saved a man. Transformation is
+the only way. And to be transformed, a man must welcome the Spirit of
+Good, the Holy Spirit, into his heart, and work with Him every day,
+doing the will of God.
+
+There are two ways of fighting fever. One is to dose the sick people
+with quinine and keep the fever down. The other is to drain the marshes,
+and purify the water, and cleanse the houses, and drive the fever out.
+Try negative, repressive religion, and you may live, but you will be an
+invalid. Try positive, vital religion, and you will be well.
+
+There is an absorption of good that guards the soul against the
+infection of evil. There is a life of fellowship with Christ that can
+pass through the furnace of the world without the smell of fire on its
+garments,--a life that is full of interest as His was, being ever about
+His Father's business; a life that is free and generous and blessed, as
+His was, being spent in doing good, and refreshed by the sense of God's
+presence and approval.
+
+Last summer, I saw two streams emptying into the sea. One was a
+sluggish, niggardly rivulet, in a wide, fat, muddy bed; and every day
+the tide came in and drowned out that poor little stream, and filled it
+with bitter brine. The other was a vigorous, joyful, brimming
+mountain-river, fed from unfailing springs among the hills; and all the
+time it swept the salt water back before it and kept itself pure and
+sweet; and when the tide came in, it only made the fresh water rise
+higher and gather new strength by the delay; and ever the living stream
+poured forth into the ocean its tribute of living water,--the symbol of
+that influence which keeps the ocean of life from turning into a Dead
+Sea of wickedness.
+
+My brother-men, will you take that living stream as a type of your life
+in the world? The question for you is not what you are going to get out
+of the world, but what you are going to give to the world. The only way
+to meet and overcome the inflowing tide of evil is to roll against it
+the outflowing river of good.
+
+My prayer for you is that you may receive from Christ not only the
+watchword of this nobler life, but also the power to fulfil it.
+
+
+
+
+THE GOOD OLD WAY
+
+    <i>Jeremiah vi. 16. Stand ye in the ways and see; and ask
+    for the old paths, where is the good way; and walk
+    therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.</i>
+
+This advice was given to people who were in peril and perplexity. The
+kingdom of Judah was threatened with destruction, which could be averted
+only by wise and prompt action. But the trouble was to decide in which
+direction that action should be taken. The nation was divided into loud
+parties, and these parties into noisy wings. Every man had a theory of
+his own, or a variation of some other man's theory.
+
+Some favoured an alliance with the East; some preferred the friendship
+of the West; others, a course of diplomatic dalliance; a few stood out
+for honest independence. Some said that what the country needed was an
+increase of wealth; some held that a splendid and luxurious court like
+that of Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar would bring prosperity; others
+maintained that the troubles of the land could be healed only by a
+return to "simpler manners, purer laws." Among the nobility and their
+followers all kinds of novelties in the worship of idols were in fashion
+and new gods were imported every season. The philosophers cultivated a
+discreet indifference to all religious questions. The prophets taught
+that the only salvation for the nation lay in the putting away of
+idolatry and the revival of faith in the living and true God.
+
+Judah was like a man standing at the cross-roads, on a stormy night,
+with all the guide-posts blown down. Meantime the Babylonian foe was
+closing in around Jerusalem, and it was necessary to do something, or
+die.
+
+The liberty of choice was an embarrassment. The minds of men alternated
+between that rash haste which is ready to follow any leader who makes
+noise enough, and that skeptical spirit which doubts whether any line of
+action can be right because so many lines are open. Into this atmosphere
+of fever and fog came the word of the prophet. Let us consider what it
+means.
+
+Stand ye in the ways and see: that means deliberation. When you are at a
+junction it is no time to shut your eyes and run at full speed. Where
+there are so many ways some of them are likely to be wrong. A
+turning-point is the place for prudence and forethought.
+
+Ask for the old paths, what is the good way: that means guidance. No man
+is forced to face the problems of life alone. Other men have tried the
+different ways. Peace, prosperity, victory have been won by the nation
+in former times. Inquire of the past how these blessings were secured.
+Look for the path which has already led to safety and happiness. Let
+history teach you which among all these crossing ways is the best to
+follow.
+
+And walk therein: that means action. When you have deliberated, when you
+have seen the guiding light upon the way of security and peace, then go
+ahead. Prudence is worthless unless you put it into practice. When in
+doubt do nothing; but as long as you do nothing you will be in doubt.
+Never man or nation was saved by inaction. The only way out of danger is
+the way into work. Gird up your loins, trembling Judah, and push along
+your chosen path, steadily, bravely, strenuously, until you come to your
+promised rest.
+
+Now I am sure this was good counsel that the prophet gave to his people
+in the days of perplexity. It would have been well for them if they had
+followed it I am sure it is also good counsel for us, a word of God to
+steady us and stimulate us amid life's confusions. Let me make it a
+personal message to you.
+
+Stand in the ways: Ask for the good way: Walk therein:--Deliberation,
+Guidance, Action,--Will you take these words with you, and try to make
+them a vital influence in your life?
+
+I. First, I ask you to stand in the ways and see. I do not mean to say
+that you have not already been doing this to a certain extent. The great
+world is crossed by human footsteps which make paths leading in all
+directions. Men travel through on different ways; and I suppose some of
+you have noticed the fact, and thought a little about it.
+
+There is the way of sensuality. Those who walk in it take appetite as
+their guide. Their main object in life is to gratify their physical
+desires. Some of them are delicate, and some of them are coarse. That is
+a matter of temperament. But all of them are hungry. That is a matter of
+principle. Whether they grub in the mire for their food like swine, or
+browse daintily upon the tree-tops like the giraffe, the question of
+life for those who follow this way is the same. "How much can we hold?
+How can we obtain the most pleasure for these five senses of ours before
+they wear out?" And the watchword of their journey is, "Let us eat and
+drink and be merry, for we do not expect to die to-morrow."
+
+There is the way of avarice. Those who follow it make haste to be rich.
+The almighty dollar rolls before them along the road, and they chase it.
+Some of them plod patiently along the highway of toil. Others are
+always leaping fences and trying to find short cuts to wealth. But they
+are alike in this: whatever they do by way of avocation, the real
+vocation of their life is to make money. If they fail, they are hard and
+bitter; if they succeed they are hard and proud. But they all bow down
+to the golden calf, and their motto is, "Lay up for yourselves treasures
+upon earth."
+
+There is the way of social ambition. Those who walk in it have their
+eyes fixed on various prizes, such as titles of honour, public office,
+large acquaintance with prosperous people, the reputation of leading the
+fashion. But the real satisfaction that they get out of it all is simply
+the feeling of notoriety, the sense of belonging to a circle to which
+ordinary people are not admitted and to whose doings the world, just for
+this reason, pays envious attention. This way is less like a road than
+like a ladder. Most of the people who are on it are "climbers."
+
+There are other ways, less clearly marked, more difficult to
+trace,--the way of moral indifference, the way of intellectual pride,
+the way of hypocrisy, the way of indecision. This last is not a single
+road; it is a net-work of sheep-tracks, crossing and recrossing the
+great highways, leading in every direction, and ending nowhere. The men
+who wander in these aimless paths go up and down through the world,
+changing their purposes, following one another blindly, forever
+travelling but never arriving at the goal of their journey.
+
+Through all this tangle there runs another way,--the path of faith and
+duty. Those who walk in it believe that life has a meaning, the
+fulfilment of God's will, and a goal, the attainment of perfect harmony
+with Him. They try to make the best of themselves in soul and body by
+training and discipline. They endeavour to put their talents to the
+noblest use in the service of their fellow-men, and to unfold their
+faculties to the highest joy and power in the life of the Spirit. They
+seek an education to fit them for work, and they do their work well
+because it is a part of their education. They respect their consciences,
+and cherish their ideals. They put forth an honest effort to be good and
+to do good and to make the world better. They often stumble. They
+sometimes fall. But, take their life from end to end, it is a faithful
+attempt to walk in "the way of righteousness, which is the way of
+peace."
+
+Such are some of the ways that lead through the world. And they are all
+open to us. We can travel by the road that pleases us. Heredity gives us
+our outfit. Environment supplies our company. But when we come to the
+cross-roads, the question is, "Boy, which way will you ride?"
+
+Deliberation is necessary, unless we wish to play a fool's part. No
+amount of energy will take the place of thought. A strenuous life, with
+its eyes shut, is a kind of wild insanity. A drifting life, with its
+eyes open, is a kind of mild idiocy.
+
+The real question is, "How will you live? After what rule and pattern?
+Along what way? Toward what end?"
+
+Will you let chance answer that question for you? Will you let yourself
+be led blindfold by the first guide that offers, or run stupidly after
+the crowd without asking whither they are going? You would not act so in
+regard to the shortest earthly journey. You would not rush into the
+railway station and jump aboard of the first train you saw, without
+looking at the sign-boards. Surely if there is anything in regard to
+which we need to exercise deliberation, it is the choice of the way that
+we are to take through the world. You have thought a good deal about
+what business, what profession you are to follow. Think more deeply, I
+beg you, about how you are to follow it and what you are to follow it
+for. Stand in the ways, and see.
+
+II. Second, I earnestly advise you to ask for the old paths, where is
+the good way.
+
+I do not regard this as a mere counsel of conservatism, an unqualified
+commendation of antiquity. True, it implies that the good way will not
+be a new discovery, a track that you and I strike out for ourselves.
+Among the paths of conduct, that which is entirely original is likely to
+be false, and that which is true is likely to have some footprints on
+it. When a man comes to us with a scheme of life which he has made all
+by himself, we may safely say to him, as the old composer said to the
+young musician who brought him a symphony of the future, "It is both new
+and beautiful; but that which is new is not beautiful, and that which is
+beautiful is not new."
+
+But this is by no means the same as saying that everything ancient is
+therefore beautiful and true, or that all the old ways are good. The
+very point of the text is that we must discriminate among
+antiquities,--a thing as necessary in old chairs and old books as in old
+ways.
+
+Evil is almost, if not quite, as ancient as good. Folly and wisdom,
+among men at least, are twins, and we can not distinguish between them
+by the grey hairs. Adam's way was old enough; and so was the way of
+Cain, and of Noah's vile son, and of Lot's lewd daughters, and of
+Balaam, and of Jezebel, and of Manasseh. Judas Iscariot was as old as
+St. John. Ananias and Sapphira were of the same age with St. Peter and
+St. Paul.
+
+What we are to ask for is not simply the old way, but that one among the
+old ways which has been tested and tried and proved to be the good way.
+The Spirit of Wisdom tells us that we are not to work this way out by
+logarithms, or evolve it from our own inner consciousness, but to learn
+what it is by looking at the lives of other men and marking the lessons
+which they teach us. Experience has been compared to the stern-light of
+a ship which shines only on the road that has been traversed. But the
+stern-light of a ship that sails before you is a head-light to you.
+
+You do not need to try everything for yourself in order to understand
+what it means. The writer of Ecclesiastes tells us that he gave his
+heart to know madness and folly; and that it was all vanity and vexation
+of spirit. It will be a wise economy for us to accept his lesson without
+paying his tuition-fee over again.
+
+It is perfectly safe for a man to take it as a fact that fire burns,
+without putting his hand into the flame. He does not need to try
+perilous experiments with his own soul in order to make sure that lust
+defiles, that avarice hardens, that frivolity empties, that selfishness
+cankers the heart. He may understand the end of the way of sensuality by
+looking at any old pleasure-seeker,
+
+  "Gray, and gap-toothed, and lean as death,"
+
+mumbling the dainties that he can no longer enjoy, and glowering with
+bleared eyes at the indulgences which now mock him even while they tempt
+him. The goal of the path of covetousness may be discerned in the face
+of any old money-worshipper; keeping guard over his piles of wealth,
+like a surly watch-dog; or, if perchance he has failed, haunting the
+places where fortune has deceived him, like an unquiet ghost.
+
+Inquire and learn; consider and discern. There need be no doubt about
+the direction of life's various ways.
+
+Which are the nations that have been most peaceful and noble and truly
+prosperous? Those that have followed pride and luxury and idolatry? Or
+those that have cherished sobriety and justice, and acknowledged the
+Divine law of righteousness?
+
+Which are the families that have been most serene and pure and truly
+fortunate? Those in which there has been no discipline, no restraint, no
+common faith, no mutual love? Or those in which sincere religion has
+swayed life to its stern and gracious laws, those in which parents and
+children have walked together to the House of God, and knelt together at
+His altar, and rejoiced together in His service?
+
+I tell you, my brother-men, it has become too much the fashion in these
+latter days to sneer and jeer at the old-fashioned ways of the
+old-fashioned American household. Something too much of iron there may
+have been in the Puritan's temper; something too little of sunlight may
+have come in through the narrow windows of his house. But that house had
+foundations, and the virile virtues lived in it. There were plenty of
+red corpuscles in his blood, and his heart beat in time with the eternal
+laws of right, even though its pulsations sometimes seemed a little slow
+and heavy. It would be well for us if we could get back into the old
+way, which proved itself to be the good way, and maintain, as our
+fathers did, the sanctity of the family, the sacredness of the
+marriage-vow, the solemnity of the mutual duties binding parents and
+children together. From the households that followed this way have come
+men that could rule themselves as well as their fellows, women that
+could be trusted as well as loved. Read the history of such families,
+and you will understand the truth of the poet's words:--
+
+  "Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,--
+  These three alone lead life to sovereign power."
+
+Look around you in the world and see what way it is that has brought
+your fellow-men to peace and quietness of heart, to security and honour
+of life. Is it the way of unbridled self-indulgence, of unscrupulous
+greed, of aimless indolence? Or is it the way of self-denial, of
+cheerful industry, of fair dealing, of faithful service? If true honour
+lies in the respect and grateful love of one's fellow-men, if true
+success lies in a contented heart and a peaceful conscience, then the
+men who have reached the highest goal of life are those who have
+followed most closely the way to which Jesus Christ points us and in
+which He goes before us.
+
+III. Walk therein and ye shall find rest for your souls. Right action
+brings rest.
+
+Rest! Rest! How that word rings like a sweet bell through the turmoil
+of our age. We are rushing to and fro, destroying rest in our search for
+it. We drive our automobiles from one place to another, at furious
+speed, not knowing what we shall do when we get there. We make haste to
+acquire new possessions, not knowing how we shall use them when they are
+ours. We are in a fever of new discoveries and theories, not knowing how
+to apply them when they are made. We feed ourselves upon novel
+speculations until our heads swim with the vertigo of universal
+knowledge which changes into the paresis of universal doubt.
+
+But in the hours of silence, the Spirit of Wisdom whispers a secret to
+our hearts. Rest depends upon conduct. The result of your life depends
+upon your choosing the good way and walking in it.
+
+And to you I say, my brother-men, choose Christ, for He is the Way. All
+the strength and sweetness of the best possible human life are embodied
+in Him. All the truth that is needed to inspire and guide man to noble
+action and fine character is revealed in Him. He is the one Master
+altogether worthy to be served and followed. Take His yoke upon you and
+learn of Him, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Joy & Power, by Henry van Dyke
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