In some wise way when the door of opportunity opens upon a trying situation there comes forth a man of sufficient size to perform the task. When the time is ripe for the Protestant Reformation Martin Luther is ready and walks in. When the day arrives for Napoleon Bonaparte to be sent to St. Helena and the peace of Europe restored, the Duke of Wellington, representing British tenacity, is ready. When the hour has struck for American slavery to be destroyed by words and laws and grape-shot, William Lloyd Garrison and Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant are ready. Back of every emergency God waits. He has His great right hand full of men and when the fullness of time is come He brings upon the scene His own appointed man.
Here in a very old book is the story of the greatest king that Israel ever had! The House of Tudor in England, the House of Hohenzollern in Germany or the late House of the Romanoffs in Russia, never had such a hold upon the popular imagination and affection as did "the house and lineage of David" upon the hearts of the Hebrews. The One who was to be born "King of kings and Lord of lords" to reign forever and ever was to come from "the house and lineage of David."
But how was this country boy with rough hands and all the marks of toil upon him to become king? He was no Crown Prince—Jonathan was the eldest son of the reigning monarch. He was neither the eldest nor the favourite son of any man. He was the youngest son of a farmer named Jesse and because he seemed less promising than his older brothers he had been given the care of the sheep. Anybody with eyes in his head and feet to walk about can watch sheep. The boy did not seem at first glance to have his foot on the ladder nor to possess the elements of royalty.
He became king because he had these five qualities: First of all he showed fidelity in the ordinary duties of every-day life. Here is the summing up of his method—"And David behaved himself wisely in all his ways and the Lord was with him." If a bunch of sheep became his field of opportunity he would do his work in such fashion that no one could do it better. He would lead them in green pastures and by still waters so that they should not want. His rod and his staff would protect them. He would learn the use of sling and stone so that "he could sling," as the record says, "at a hair's breadth and not miss." If a wolf or a bear should attack his flock, he would be able to drive them off.
The simple ordinary duties which belong to keeping sheep or to getting one's lessons at school, to meeting one's obligations in some modest position in office or store, or in doing one's best in a factory or on a farm, become a kind of dress rehearsal for the larger duties which lie ahead. If a man knows his lines and can take his part effectively upon the narrower stage of action he is in line for promotion to a more important rôle. You will find whole regiments of young fellows who drag along, scamping their work and slighting those opportunities which are right at hand. They are saving up their energies to do something splendidly effective week after next. But week after next never comes to such men. It is always to-day, and to-day in their eyes seems ever small.
If those men were already on the quarterdeck as captains of great ocean liners; if they were already bank presidents sitting in handsome offices of their own; if they were already journalists of the first rank writing editorials for metropolitan dailies, they would do what their hands and their minds found to do with their might. But in this day of small things they feel that fidelity and skill would be thrown away. They have mixed up the words of the promise—they think it reads, "You have been unfaithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over everything." When a man is going up-stairs he must put his foot first on the step which is at the bottom and then take the other steps in order. The same rule holds in the great business of living a man's life and doing a man's work in the world.
The young man who was to become king showed courage and high resolve in the face of danger. There came a day when the Israelites and the Philistines were lined up in battle array on the opposite sides of a valley. The Philistines had their champion fighter in the person of a huge fellow named Goliath. His armour weighed one hundred and fifty pounds. His spear was like a weaver's beam. He stood roaring out his defiance against the armies of Israel, "Choose you a man! Let him come down to me and fight. If he kills me, we will be your servants. If I prevail against him then ye shall be our servants."
After the manner of the Iliad he stood ready to let the issue of the campaign turn upon the result of a solitary combat between himself and any Israelite they might put up against him. Saul, the king of Israel, had offered to enrich with great wealth the man who would fight that huge Philistine. He had promised to give him the hand of his own daughter, the fair young princess, in marriage, and to make his father's house forever free in Israel. But no Israelite had dared to fight the terrible Goliath.
Then David appeared upon the scene. He had been sent down by his father with ten loaves of fresh bread, with ten cheeses and a supply of parched corn for his brothers who were at the front. He saw this huge Goliath stalking up and down the picket lines between the armies. He cried out in his resentment at the apparent cowardice of his own countrymen, "Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God!" David was informed that even the promise of high reward offered by the king had not induced an Israelite to face the Philistine.
Then spoke out the voice of faith from the heart of unstained youth! "Let no man's heart fail because of him—thy servant will go and fight this Philistine." The king remonstrated with him. He pointed out the folly of sending an untrained youth to meet the disciplined man of war. But David insisted that his rough experiences with the lions and the bears which attacked his flock had furnished him the necessary training. The king then offered him his own armour, which would naturally be the best suit of armour in the camp, that the stripling might in some measure be protected. But after trying on this suit of mail David put it aside. "I cannot go with these," he said, "for I have not proved them." He refused the conventional modes of defense, relying upon those weapons which had been tested by experience. He took his sling and five smooth stones from the brook and announced that he was ready for the combat.
It seemed a contest most unequal when the principals were put forth with the Israelites and the Philistines ranged up on either side of the valley to watch the outcome. Goliath was enraged when he saw the boy they had sent against him. "Am I a dog?" he said. And then he cursed David by all his gods and threatened to feed his flesh to the beasts of the field before an hour had passed. Like many a modern combatant Goliath was mighty with his mouth. His tongue was like a weaver's beam.
The young man was not disturbed. His weapons were taken from the armoury of experience, and his courage came from the same reliable source. "The Lord who delivered me out of the paws of the lion and the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine." The moral triumphs of those early years when a boy keeps his life clean and strong become the earnest of the larger victories he is set to win in his mature manhood. The growing boy who disdains to lie or to cheat, to stain his life with dirt or to show himself a coward, will know how to bear himself when the harder tests of middle life assail him.
The young man's religious faith contributed to his courage. It was moral strength pitted against brute force. It was the scornful self-confidence which trusted in a coat of brass and a huge spear measuring itself against the spirit of faith which became the source of a finer form of valour. "Thou comest to me with sword and spear," David cried, as he saw his foe advancing. "I come to thee in the name of the Lord of Hosts whom thou hast defied." His trust in God kept his nerves steady so that he was still able in the presence of that roaring giant to sling stones at a hair's breadth and not miss. His moral passion as he went forth to lift that reproach from the banner of his nation gave strength to his right arm.
The huge Philistine came on, brandishing his spear and roaring out his wrath. David saw the unprotected spot below the visor of the man's helmet. He took one of his five smooth stones and slung it with such force and precision as to strike Goliath full in the forehead, knocking him senseless. He then ran forward and took the huge sword of his enemy and cut off his head holding it aloft as a trophy of his courage. When the Philistines saw their champion fall they fled in terror and the Israelites pursuing them won a notable victory.
How splendid is the quality of moral courage! How kingly is the man who can face all manner of danger undaunted because he knows that his heart is right and his cause is just! He deserves to be crowned. The battle is the Lord's in the last analysis and He saveth not alone with sword and spear.
There are sentiments and principles which become deep-rooted in a nation's life mightier by far than the heaviest battalions. There are habits of thought and long-cherished convictions which constitute a more reliable form of defense than all the ramparts and battlements devised by strategists. A nation of Davids will in the final outcome outmatch any nation of Goliaths with all their swords and spears. And in one's personal life the clear conscience and the heart of faith will bring any man off from any field where he may be sent more than conqueror through Him who loves us.
This young man showed also a fine capacity for friendship with men. "His soul was knit with the soul of Jonathan and he loved him as he loved his own soul." The fine friendship of a man for a man, or the gracious affection which a woman feels for a woman who is indeed her friend, becomes a noble form of human relationship. Those ties where the charm and power of the sex-impulse has no place have in them a world of moral worth.
It is easy for any man to fall in love with some beautiful woman—it is as easy as rolling off a log, and ever so much more delightful. It is easy for any man to inhale the sweet incense which arises from the devotion of some affectionate woman's heart. But where a man loves a man in an unsullied, unselfish friendship until his soul is knit with the soul of that man in an interlacing and interlocking of interest, then you have that harder, rarer form of human relationship which is rich with promise.
The young chap who is never quite happy with his fellows, who must always have some adoring young woman present in order to be content, is not quite all there. He is a "softy." He is lath and plaster where there should be quartered oak. He has sentiment than principle; he has less muscle and more fat than go to the make-up of a virile manhood. The very absence of the glamour and mystery which enters into all attachments between those of opposite sex clears the air for the manifestation of some of those fine forms of fidelity and devotion which belong to friendship at its best.
Here the friendship was the more notable when we recall how the two men were placed. Jonathan was the eldest son of the king, the heir to the throne, the natural successor of Saul. But David by his military prowess had come to be highly esteemed. When he returned victorious from his wars against the enemies of Israel the proud and happy women had sung in the streets, "Saul has slain his thousands, but David has slain his tens of thousands." And David had been privately anointed by Samuel the prophet as a worthy candidate for the throne of Israel.
Jonathan, as the Crown Prince, had the least to gain and the most to lose by protecting the life and ministering to the well-being of this friend who might one day aspire to the throne. He made his affection a thing resplendent by its sheer unselfishness. He saw that David might increase while he would decrease, yet even so the sky of his affection was unclouded by a single touch of jealousy. How great is that love which envieth not.
And David in turn made his own adequate response to this magnanimous interest. He showed himself in his whole bearing a man worthy of the friendship of a prince of the blood. Heaven be praised for men who can find joy and satisfaction in the friendship of their fellows.
The young man who was destined to become king was generous to his enemies. Saul stood head and shoulders above his fellows, physically speaking, but in his mental and moral stature he was less than knee-high to the man who followed him upon the throne. When he heard the women singing David's praises, "Saul was very wroth—the saying displeased him and he eyed David from that day forward."
When the king saw the fine friendship between his own son Jonathan and the rising David his heart became as bitter as gall. "Thou son of a perverse, rebellious woman," he cried to the Crown Prince, "thou hast chosen this son of Jesse to thine own confusion." And when David increased year after year in stature, in wisdom, and in favour with God and men, Saul tried repeatedly to kill him. His soul cried out, "Let me feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him."
It is not easy for any man, especially a young man with hot, red blood in his veins and the sense of injustice rankling in his heart, to stand up in the face of hatred and malice and keep sweet about it. "Love your enemies. Bless them who curse you. Do good to them that hate you. Pray for those who despitefully use you." If you are struck upon the cheek take a second blow upon the other cheek rather than strike back in resentment. If a man compels you unjustly to go a mile with him, go two miles rather than seek to be avenged. Take the rules of action constantly from within, from the best instincts of your own heart rather than have them furnished to you by the evil behaviour of wrong-doers. Allow no man's meanness to master you—allow rather your own nobility to overcome that evil with good.
How easy it is to say it, but to do it—aye, there is the rub! It is so divinely hard to put these fine principles into practice. The soft answer may turn away wrath, but the hot retort comes more readily to the lips. The humane return of good for evil points the way of spiritual advance, but the desire to pay every man back in his own coin with a tip thrown in for good measure is often more natural. The more honour then to the man who has learned that greater is he that ruleth his own spirit than he that taketh a city.
When David had Saul within his power he refused to strike. There were months when the young man was hunted through the hills of Judea by the hirelings of the wicked king, as if he had been a mad dog. There came a night when Saul was sleeping in his barricade of wagons. He had around him the three thousand soldiers whom he had led into the mountains in his mad effort to capture David. The young man had been pursued until he had felt that there was only a step between him and death.
That very night, accompanied only by his armour-bearer, David stole under cover of the darkness into Saul's camp. He presently stood in the tent of the sleeping giant. Here was his enemy lying helpless at his feet! His armour-bearer, knowing the history of that enmity, whispered, "Let me smite him with one blow to the earth! I will not smite the second time." One blow in the dark would suffice to end that murderous career.
And it ought to be remembered that this was in a day when "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" was the law of the land. It was esteemed the law of God. The atmosphere was not one of forbearance—the popular heroes were men like Samson and Gideon, women like Deborah and Jael, who did not hesitate to strike down their foes. "Let me smite him," came the whisper in the dark. "One blow will suffice."
But peace hath her victories no less than war. Mercy has its trophies no less than force. Here was a man who would not avenge himself—he would give place unto wrath knowing that vengeance belongs to God. He was ready to make the bold adventure of undertaking to overcome evil with good.
David would not strike his enemy even though that enemy had been in hot pursuit of him. "Destroy him not," he whispered to his companion-in-arms as he felt him clutching the sword which hung at his side. David's greatest victory was not over Goliath, the Philistine giant—it was over himself, over that spirit of revenge which might so easily have ruled his heart in that dark, hard hour.
He had in splendid measure the quality of mercy which the poet sings.
"The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
We do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy."
We are discovering those qualities which entitled this young man to be crowned as king.
Finally, he was a man of genuine piety. We read in one place that he was "a man after God's own heart." The statement has been a puzzle to many an honest mind. This man who in his later years dipped his hands in the blood of his foes and fell on one occasion into the grossest sin with an attractive woman, this fellow a man after God's own heart!
He was not an angel. As we go up and down through history we find men and not angels. We find men with mud on their boots, with blisters on their hands, and with scars on their souls. George Washington owned slaves. John Calvin burned Servetus at the stake. Peter the Apostle denied his Lord three times in a single night—he denied with an oath. If you are looking for moral perfection you will have to look somewhere else than on this earth.
David was a man after God's own heart, not because he never did wrong, but because when he fell down he got up again. He got up again faced towards God and not away from Him, faced away from the evil which had thrown him down and not towards a further advance in wrong-doing. "The wise make of their moral failures ladders by which they climb towards Heaven. The foolish make of their moral failures graves wherein they bury all their highest hopes."
When Oscar Wilde was imprisoned in Reading gaol for his own wretched wrongdoing he wrote that strangely human document, "De Profundis." It was a message "out of the depths." In that book he used this striking sentence which I have never forgotten since the first time I read it, "The highest moment in a man's career may be the hour when he kneels in the dust and beats upon his breast and tells all the sins of his life."
"God be merciful to me, a sinner." "Have mercy upon me, O God. Against Thee have I sinned. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin." This is all that any honest man can say in the presence of his Maker, and when he does say it honestly he is on his way to the divine favour.
David was a man of faith and of prayer; he was a man of deep, sweet feeling and of spiritual longing. In all his better moments when he was truly himself his heart hungered after righteousness and his soul was athirst for the living God. A man of that moral mood and build is much more after God's own heart, even though he may upon occasion be betrayed by the fervour of his nature into wrong-doing, than is the coldly correct man who has never felt enough of warm-hearted devotion to anything to raise the spiritual temperature a single degree.
I do not know how many of these Psalms came from the lips or the pen of David. No one knows—not many in all probability. But I know that these words represent experiences which were David's beyond a peradventure. "The Lord is my rock and my fortress, my deliverer and my saviour. In my distress I called upon Him and He heard me. He drew me out of many waters and He brought me forth into a large place. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever."
He came to the throne at the age of thirty, and he reigned over Israel for forty years. His name was handed down in human history as that of the greatest king that Israel ever had. He never could have done it but for the fact that he had in his heart faith and hope and love towards God and towards his fellow men. He was a man of deep and genuine piety.
When William IV of England passed away there was a young girl of sixteen named Victoria who was spending the night in Kensington Palace. Word was suddenly brought to her that the King was dead and that she was Queen of England. She immediately fell upon her knees imploring divine help and guidance in the discharge of the high duties which had been thrust upon her. May it not be that this was one secret of her beneficent reign which lasted for more than sixty years? The rulers who begin the ascent of their thrones upon their knees rise high because their eyes are upon that Great White Throne which is the final seat of all authority and of all blessing.
Here then were the leading traits in that young man who became king! In his early life when he was nothing but a shepherd boy he showed fidelity in the ordinary duties of every-day life. He showed courage and high resolve in the presence of danger. He had a fine capacity for joyous and enduring friendship with his brother men. He was great-hearted and magnanimous to his foes, even when he had them utterly in his power. He was a man of simple, genuine faith in the living God.
Whether you are living in Palestine or in Connecticut, in the tenth century before Christ or in the twentieth century after, are not these the qualities which are sure to be crowned? Are not these the traits which make any man kingly in his bearing and in the whole content of his inner life?
Set your hearts upon those traits and make them your own! Fight the good fight! Keep your faith! Finish your course with honour and you will find at the end of it laid up for you a crown of righteousness, which God gives to every man who serves Him aright.
"In the year that King Uzziah died"—it was more than a date, it was an experience! The king had been a wise and good ruler. He had served his country well for fifty-two long years. He showed an interest in the welfare of his people—"He loved husbandry and dug wells for them in the desert." He caused vineyards to be planted on the slopes of Carmel and he increased the herds of cattle which grazed in the lowlands. He fortified his capital by building towers at the valley gate and at the turning of the wall in Jerusalem.
His reign was beneficent, but now he was dead, and this warm-hearted young patriot felt that his heart was overwhelmed. He and his fellow citizens must now plan for the future of their county without the guidance and inspiration of this great king.
But "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord." There came something more than a personal experience of disappointment. There came the emergence of a new and higher form of faith. This young man saw the earthly majesty of this wise and good king go down in utter defeat. In some strange way the king contracted leprosy. During all the closing years of his reign he suffered from the crawling inroads of that loathsome disease. By the stern requirements of the Jewish law he was banished from his own capital. He was compelled to live outside the city and to reign by deputy. He finally died a lingering and horrible death.
And in that dread hour the young man saw the heavenly majesty of the King of kings resplendent and enduring. "In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord, high and lifted up, sitting upon His throne and His glory filled the temple." The spirit of hero-worship was passing over into religious faith.
Let me study with you the effect of this crisis in the life of his nation upon this young man who was born to the purple. He possessed all those advantages which go with wealth, social position, and education. We have here no rough man of the hills like Elijah, the Tishbite, rudely dressed and rude in speech. We have here no man with the smell of the fields in his garments like Amos, the herdsman of Tekoa.
Isaiah belonged to the fortunate class. He lived on Fifth Avenue. He had an assured social position which gave him ready access to the court and to the presence of the king. He was familiar with the customs and the costumes of fashionable society, as we find in that chapter where he openly rebukes the showy extravagance of the idle rich. He was well educated—he had that literary skill which comes only to those who are well trained. In all the Old Testament you will find nothing finer than the sweep and finish of some of this young prophet's public utterances. He was one to whom five talents had been given where other men were struggling along with one apiece. He therefore owed to society what might be called the debt of privilege. It is a fixed charge upon the lives of those who sit above the salt. It has a right to insist upon full payment. "To whom much is given, of him will much be required."
It is for every man to ask himself: "How much do I eat up in my generous mode of life? How much in food and dress, in housing and furnishing, in motor cars and yachts, in travel and in recreation? How much do I consume in those provisions which I make for a wider culture through books, pictures, music and the like?" What is your average intake of this world's good things? That measure of consumption will indicate the measure of your responsibility. If you are born to the purple and fare sumptuously in all these ways then the world has a right to demand that you shall render back in corresponding measure that useful service which is your plain duty.
In that effective cartoon which Jesus drew of the Rich Man and Lazarus, it was the unpaid debt of privilege which brought about the loss of a soul. Jesus showed the two men in this world, one of them living in a palace, clothed with purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day; the other in rags dying at the Rich Man's gate, hungry and full of sores. Then Jesus showed the two men in the next world, Lazarus the beggar now in Abraham's bosom, and the son of good fortune enduring torment.
There is no hint that the Rich Man had gained a penny of his wealth wrongfully; no charge of lying or theft, of murder or adultery is laid at his door. He was damned not by the wicked things he had done, but for the lack of that generous and humane service which he had left undone. His sin was that of selfish indifference. The way to perdition is paved with moral neglect. The debt of privilege can no more be escaped than death or taxes. To whom much is given, of him will much be required. And a full sense of that responsibility was brought home to this well-endowed young man in the year the great king died.
The fortunate young man stood out in the open confessing his sense of moral need. There in the place of worship in that high and serious mood which followed upon the death of the king, he caught a fresh vision of God. "I saw the Lord high and lifted up, sitting upon His throne. I saw Him surrounded with the winged seraphs. And one of them cried to another, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts! The whole earth is full of His glory."
The very sight of the unstained purity of Him "unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid," brought this young man to his knees. He knelt in the dust and beat upon his breast and told the sins of his life. "Woe is me, I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips. I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. And mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts."
The man who has no sense of sin has little sense of any sort. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves or else we lie. Where is the man who can stand up in the presence of those who know him and say, "Every deed that I have done was done in honour and integrity. Every word that has fallen from my lips has been spoken in truth and in kindliness. Every desire which I have harboured in my soul has been one upon which the eye of my Maker might rest with approval."
Can you say that? I am frank to confess that I cannot. I have done wrong. I feel my need of the divine mercy. I want forgiveness, cleansing and renewal. And every man who is honest enough to look himself in the face, without flinching, will be moved to make the same confession. It is up out of those moments of contrition when men are humbled and broken before God that the spiritual impulses come which are to beat back the forces of evil and make this earth at last as fair as the sky.
I care not what the man's outward station may be—he may live on the Avenue or he may live in the slums; he may be clothed in purple or he may be dressed in rags; he wear a Phi Beta Kappa key or he may be so untaught that he has to make his mark when he signs a mortgage—in any event here is a prayer which will fit his lips—it fits every pair of lips: "God be merciful to me, a sinner."
In that one brief sentence we have the four main terms of religious experience. "God," the object of religion, the ground of all finite existence, the basis of all our hope! "Me," the human soul, the subject of religion, the field where the work of religion is to be wrought out! "Sin," the obstacle to religion, the source of all our moral failure, the cause of our alienation from God! And "mercy," the agent of religion, the form of energy which accomplishes our recovery! God be merciful to me, a sinner.
This young man of good fortune stood up in the temple in the presence of his fellows making his open confession of moral need. "Woe is me for I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips."
In that very hour when this honest confession came from his lips his life was cleansed by the direct action of the divine spirit. He saw one of the winged seraphs flying towards him through the open spaces of Heaven. The angel took a live coal from the altar and laid it upon the lips of this young man. He cried out as he did it, saying, "Thine iniquity is taken away. Thy sin is purged." Isaiah was no more a man of unclean lips—he could now speak with that Lord whose name is Holy as friend speaks with friend.
We have this profound moral experience dressed up in those grand, Oriental robes which were dear to the people of that region. But when you strip away the silk, the lace, and the feathers of Eastern imagery, and get down to the bare, warm truth, this is what you find—a man whose sense of moral lack had prompted that open confession, cleansed in that high hour by the direct action of the divine spirit upon his soul.
Here is that which is basic and fundamental in all religious life! I wonder if we have not been tempted in recent years to obscure this vital experience. We have held those two big words, "Heredity" and "Environment," so close to our eyes as to blind us, oftentimes, to the larger vision of that which is superhuman in earthly experience.
It is possible for the inner life of a man to be so wrought upon by the action of the spirit of God that the corrupt nature is cleansed, the weak nature is made strong, the selfish disposition is transformed into benign love.
It matters little how you go about it, if you go with sincere faith. You may seek for that renewal through the regenerating influence of the Sacraments dear to the heart of the Romanist and the High Churchman. If you find it there, it will be because Christ is within the Sacrament. You may seek for it in those profound emotional reactions which come at the Methodist mourners' bench. If you find it there, it will be because the spirit of Christ was operating through those feelings. You may find it as you make an about face, turning away from that which is evil and making Christian duty your supreme choice in the quiet of your own room. If you find it there, it will be because Christ was present in those movements of your inner life. The woman was healed in the Gospel story by touching the hem of Christ's garment because Christ was within that garment.
If any man will seek for moral renewal at the hands of God he will find. If he will knock at any one of these doors it will open. Here is the Gospel as it stands recorded on the pages of the Old Testament—"The spirit of the Lord shall come upon thee and thou shall be turned into another man." Here is the same Gospel as it stands recorded on the pages of the New Testament—"If any man is in Christ he is a new creature. Old things are passed away and all things are become new."
In the joy of moral renewal this well-born, well-reared, well-trained young man gave himself in eager consecration to the highest he saw. "I heard the voice of the Lord say, Whom shall I send? Who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I, send me."
His nation, now robbed of its great king by the hand of disease, was facing a crisis. The national church to which he belonged was steeped in formalism and insincerity. The divine voice was uttering a heartfelt lament over the unfaithfulness of the chosen people. "Israel doth not know! My people do not think. The whole head is sick and the whole heart is faint."
There was a loud cry for men of large build with wise heads and sound hearts to furnish moral leadership. And in the face of that demand this son of good fortune did not allow the divine spirit to go out into the highways and hedges in order to compel some sort of man, any sort of man, to come in that the ranks might be filled. He answered to his name with a clear-cut consecration of himself. "Here am I, send me."
When war comes to any country, there are rich men who give money, millions of it, that the war chest may be full. There are great manufacturers who promptly place their plants at the disposal of the government for the making of munitions. There are ship owners who turn over their vessels to the Navy that they may be sent to do business in the great waters of national defense. There are wise men who think hard upon the problems of finance and statecraft that they may provide that counsel which is more precious than rubies. All this is in the highest degree praiseworthy.
But the only men who give what Lincoln called at Gettysburg "the last full measure of devotion" are the men who give themselves. These men do not go on horseback nor in automobiles. They walk. They eat the hardtack. They sleep on the ground. They dig the trenches and fight in them. They march out at the word of command to be shot at. They keep right on doing those plain things until the war is ended and victory achieved. These are the men who awaken our warmest feeling of admiration and gratitude. "Here am I, send me"—nothing can take the place of that!
In that sterner war where there is no discharge, in that age-long, world-wide fight against the evils of earth this same sound principle holds. Money is needed; counsel is needed; organization and administrative ability are needed. The bringing in of that kingdom which is not meat and drink, nor shot and shell, but righteousness and peace and joy in the divine spirit, requires all these fine forms of effort. But nothing can ever take the place of that personal consecration of each man's own soul to the service of the living God.
In that high hour when Isaiah saw the God of things as they are, high and lifted up, sitting on His throne, he did not say, "Here are any number of fine people, send them. Here is a man who could perform the task better than I—send him." He said what every man must say who means to stand right in the Day of Judgment, "Here am I, send me."
He was the son of good fortune, and his life was bright and rich with many an advantage. But this did not prompt him to claim any sort of exemption from the call for volunteers. His vision of the awful difference between the earthly majesty of that king who sank so swiftly into a leper's grave and the heavenly majesty which rose above it sovereign and eternal, made him feel that nothing would suffice but the gift of himself.
What shall it profit a man, this man, that man, any man, to gain the largest measure of earthly success you may choose to name, if in the process he loses himself, his real self, his best self, his enduring self? What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, but feels within himself a capacity for higher things unrealized? In the great outcome nothing really matters save the devotion of the personal life to the highest ends.
In the year 1840 near the city of Louvain a child was born, who came of good stuff. He was educated for a business career, and there in prosperous little Belgium the outlook at that time for wealth, for social position, and for a life of joy was very bright. But at the age of eighteen this boy offered himself for the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church. He joined the Society of the Sacred Heart. He went out to the Hawaiian Islands as a missionary and was ordained as a priest in the city of Honolulu.
He was at once impressed with the sad condition of the leper settlement on the island of Molokai. He resolved to give his life to those poor, diseased, horror-stricken people. He knew that to live among them would mean banishment from his ordinary associations and the loss of all possible preferment in the church. He knew that he might himself contract that terrible disease and suffer a lingering, painful, frightful death. "No matter," he cried, "I am going." And he went.
He not only preached to those lepers the Gospel of the Son of God and ministered to them in spiritual things—his own labours and his appeals to the Hawaiian government secured for them better dwellings, an improved water supply, and a more generous provisioning of the unhappy settlement. For five years he worked alone, but for the occasional assistance of a priest who came to the colony for a single day. He finally succumbed to the dread disease of leprosy and in his forty-ninth year died a martyr to humane devotion. His name was Father Damien, and he shed fresh luster upon the Christian ministry.
The young man who was born to the purple, called now to be a prophet of God, seized upon the vital elements of religion and uttered them with power. "What does it mean to be religious?" men were asking. Some of the dull, blind priests of that day were saying, "It means sacrifice and burnt offering. It means the careful and showy observance of the forms of worship." Israel did not know; the people did not think.
Then this young prophet gave them the word of God with an edge on it. He showed them the folly of all those outward signs of devotion apart from the inward spirit of righteousness. "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices? Who hath required this at your hands? When you spread forth your hands I will hide my eyes. When you make many prayers I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean. Put away the evil of your doings. Cease to do evil, learn to do well. Then though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow."
"Salvation by righteousness—this is the message of the Old Testament," Matthew Arnold used to say. "Righteousness through Jesus Christ," this is the message of the New Testament! And this nineteenth century man of letters was but echoing the words which fell from the lips of those prophets in the eighth century before Christ.
"Wherewith shall I come before the Lord?" said Micah. "Will the Lord be pleased with a thousand rams or with ten thousand rivers of oil? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God."
"Seek justice," Isaiah said; "relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. If ye be willing and obedient ye shall eat the good of the land. If ye refuse and rebel ye shall be devoured." This was the heart of his message. It was the call of God to personal righteousness.
He represents the Almighty as sitting upon the throne of the universe, summoning His people into friendly conference with Him. "Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord." Religion is not a thing of magic. There is no sleight-of-hand or hocus-pocus in the benefits it seeks to confer. Religion is rational and moral. It is a reasoned form of intercourse between an intelligent and moral being who is finite and the Intelligent and Moral Being who is Infinite. Its benefits are to be realized in that direct impress of the spirit of God upon the soul of the man who has made an intelligent and honest approach to his Maker.
The young prophet saw his country threatened with disaster from both sides. He saw upon the south the selfish and cruel designs of Egypt. He saw the encroachments of mighty Assyria from the north. He saw the madness of those Israelites who thought they could combine wickedness and worship, the observance of religious forms with lives of moral unconcern. And in that hour the truths he lifted before them were "The majesty and authority of God, the everlasting obligation of personal righteousness, the certainty of the ultimate triumph of God's Kingdom over the wrath of man." These were the mighty truths by which he sought to inspire the hearts of men to do their duty, come what might.
Have we not great need at this very hour of just such men! It has been given to you and to me to live through one of the great, searching crises of human history. The world has never seen a struggle so gigantic. We have been patient for more than two years with a certain nation across the sea—patient clear up to the border of what has seemed to some of our neighbours like a lazy acquiescence in lawlessness. We have seen that nation referring contemptuously to her own treaties as mere scraps of paper, and then openly disregarding her solemn obligations.
We saw the outrage perpetrated upon Belgium, an outrage which men who know their histories better than I know mine are saying will go down as the greatest crime in the annals of the race. We saw the drowning of hundreds of helpless women and children in the sinking of the Lusitania without warning and in flat defiance of international law. We saw the judicial murder of women like Edith Cavell and of men like Captain Fryatt. We have seen the Zeppelins engaged in the dastardly business of hurling down bombs upon unfortified towns for the killing of old women and little children—heretofore when decent nations have gone to war men have fought with men. We have seen thousands of helpless Armenians butchered by the Moslem allies of that so-called Christian power,—it is all but universally believed, with its own connivance and under its direction. We have witnessed a frightful record of brutality and outrage, investigated and established by the competent testimony of such men as James Bryce and Cardinal Mercier. We have seen the sinking of hospital ships loaded with wounded men and the sinking of relief ships carrying provisions to the famine-stricken children of Belgium, no matter what flag they flew, or what cargo they bore.
We have had our own rights as a neutral trampled upon by that government with the arrogant assumption that her necessities knew no law. And now to crown it all we have detected the official representatives of that country with protests of friendship upon their false lips actually plotting with Mexico and seeking to extend that plot to Japan with the unholy purpose of destroying the peace between this country and its neighbours.
The men of our country who have red blood in their veins and the sense of justice in their hearts are saying, "How long, O Lord, how long!" War is a terrible thing and no honest man ever speaks lightly of war. But there are things which are worse than war. The loss of all capacity for moral indignation is worse. The easy, lazy, cowardly acquiescence in lawlessness and crime is worse. The loss of the readiness to sacrifice one's very life, if need be, for those ends which are just and right, is infinitely worse.
There are interests which are worth fighting for and, if need be, they are worth dying for. The sanctity of womanhood and the safety of little children, the security of those interests which are essential to human well-being and the protection of our homes, the honour and integrity of our country, and the maintenance of those majestic principles of righteousness which underlie all social advance—these ends are worth dying for. If these high ends can be secured by persuasion and moral appeal, well and good. But if they cannot, if their very existence is threatened by lawlessness and hate, then let men of sound mind and honest heart stand ready to do battle for the right.
In these hours of stress which have come upon our country, we have need of men who possess the necessary moral courage to stand forth and meet the crisis. There is a loud call everywhere for those who are prepared to face duty without flinching. It is for every man to say touching his own measure of ability, "Here am I, send me."
If the cause of democracy is not to fail in those hard years which will come at the close of this war, there is need not only of wise and honest leaders—there is need of ranks upon ranks of plain men who are ready to give their best strength to the service of that government which is "of the people, for the people, and by the people."