Mornings in the College Chapel Part 12

[1] Harriet Ware Hall, _A Book for Friends_, p. 90. (Privately printed.) 1888.

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LXVIII

POWER AND TEMPTATION

_Matthew_ iv. 1-11.

All these temptations of Jesus came to him through the very sense of power of which he could not but be aware. Here was this great consciousness of capacity in him to do wonders, to display himself, to get glory. How should he use his gifts? Should it be for himself, for honor, for praise, or should it be for service, for sacrifice, for G.o.d?

The devil's temptation was that Jesus should take the gifts of which he was conscious and make them serve his own ends of ambition or success.

The first great decision in the work of Jesus Christ was the decision of the end to which his powers should be dedicated; the use to which his powers should be put.

The same fundamental decision comes to every young man in his own degree. Here are your gifts and capacities, great or small. What are you to do with them? Are they for glory or for use? Are they for ambition {172} or for service? The sooner that decision is made the better. Some people have never quite done with that temptation of the devil. They go on trying to direct their gifts to the end of reputation, or wealth, or dominion; and they attain that end only to find that it is no end, and that their lives, which should have grown broader and richer, have grown shrunken, and meagre, and unsatisfied.

Such a life is like a fish swimming into the labyrinth of a weir. It follows along the line of its vocation until the liberty to return grows less and less; and, at last, in the very element where it seems most free, it is in fact a helpless captive. The man's occupation has become his prison. He is the slave of his own powers. The devil has withered that life with his touch.

And then, on the other hand, you turn to lives which have given themselves to the life of service, and what do you see? You see their capacity enlarged through use, you see small gifts multiplied into great powers. Few things are more remarkable in one's experience of life than to see men who by nature are not extraordinarily endowed achieve the highest success by sheer dedication of their {173} moderate gifts. Their capacities expand through their self-surrender, as leaves unfold under the touch of the sun. They lose themselves and then they find themselves. The devil tempts these men, not with a sense of their greatness, but with their self-distrust; yet he tempts them in vain.

Their weakness issues into strength; their temptation develops their power. The angels of G.o.d have come and ministered unto them.

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LXIX

LOVING WITH THE MIND

_Mark_ xii. 30.

In the great law of love to G.o.d and love to man which Jesus repeats as the law of his own teaching, there is one phrase that seems not wholly clear. You can love G.o.d with your heart and your soul; you can even increase your strength by love; but how can you love with the mind? Is it not the very quality of a trained mind to be unmoved by love or hate, dispa.s.sionate and unemotional? Is not this the scientific spirit, this att.i.tude of criticism, with no prejudice or affection to color its results?

Of course one must answer that there is much truth which can be discovered by a loveless mind. Yet there is, on the other hand, much truth which cannot be discerned without love. There are many secrets of literature, of art, of music, and of the higher traits of character as well, into which you cannot enter unless you give your mind to these things with sympathy and affection and responsiveness; loving them, as Jesus says, with the mind. One {175} of our preachers has lately called attention to the new word in literature which ill.u.s.trates this att.i.tude of the mind.[1] When people wrote in earlier days of other people and their works they wrote biographies or criticisms or studies, but now we have what are called "appreciations;" the attempt, that is to say, to enter into a character and appreciate its traits or its art, and to love it with the mind. Perhaps that is what this ancient law asks of you in your relation to G.o.d, to come not as a critic, but as a lover, to the rational appreciation of the ways of G.o.d. Here is the n.o.blest capacity with which human life is endowed. It is a great thing to love G.o.d with the heart and soul, to let the emotions of grat.i.tude to Him or of joy in his world run free; but to rise into sympathetic interpretation of his laws, to think G.o.d's thoughts after Him, and to be moved by the high emotions which are stirred by exalted ideas,--to love G.o.d, that is to say, with the mind,--that, I suppose, is the highest function of human life, and the quality which most endows a man with insight and power.

[1] Rev. Leighton Parks, D. D., in a sermon at the Diocesan Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, Boston, May, 1895.

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LXX

AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?

_Genesis_ iv. 9.

Cain was the first philosophical individualist; the first "laissez-faire" economist. When G.o.d asked: "Where is Abel?" Cain answered: "What responsibility have I for him? My business is to take care of myself. Am I my brother's keeper?" But the interesting fact is that Cain had been his brother's keeper though he declined responsibility for him. He refused to be responsible for his brother's life, but he certainly was responsible for his brother's death. He refused to be his brother's keeper, but he was willing to be his brother's slayer. There are plenty of people to-day who are trying to maintain this same impossible theory of social irresponsibility. They affirm that they have no social duty except to mind their own business; but that very denial of responsibility is what makes them among the most responsible agents of social disaster. They deal with their affairs on the principle that they are n.o.body's {177} keeper, and so they are stirring every day the fires of industrial revolt. We are pa.s.sing through dark days in the business world, and there are many causes for the trouble, but the deepest cause is Cain's theory of life.

"Where is thy brother?" says G.o.d to the business man to-day,--"thy brother, the wage-earner, the victim of the cut-down and the lockout?"

"Where is thy brother?" says G.o.d again to the unscrupulous agitator, bringing distress into many a workman's home for the satisfactions of ambition and power. And to any man who answers: "I know not. Am I my brother's keeper?" the rebuke of G.o.d is spoken again: "Cursed art thou!

The voice of thy brother crieth against thee from the ground."

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LXXI

PROFESSIONALISM AND PERSONALITY

1 _Corinthians_ xii. 31.

The wonderful chapter which follows this verse becomes still more interesting when one considers its connection with the preceding pa.s.sage. Paul has been looking over the life of his Christian brethren, and he sees in it a great variety of callings. Some of his friends are preachers,--apostles and prophets, as he calls them. Some are teachers, some are doctors, with gifts of healing; some are politicians, with gifts of government. The apostle speaks to them as though he were advising young men as to the choice of their profession, and he says: "Among all these professional opportunities covet the best; take that which most fills out and satisfies your life." But then he turns from these professional capacities and adds: "Be sure that these gifts do not crowd out of your life the higher capacity for sympathy. For you may understand all knowledge and speak with all tongues, and if you have lost thereby {179} the personal, human, sympathetic relation with people which we call love you are not really to be counted as a man. You are nothing more than an instrument of sound, a wind instrument like a trumpet, or a clanging instrument like a cymbal." That is the apostolic warning to the successful professional man,--the warning against the narrowing, self-contented result which sometimes taints even great attainments and professional distinction. Covet the best. Be satisfied with nothing less than the highest professional work of doctor, politician, or teacher. But beware of the imprisoning effect which sometimes comes of this very success in professional life, the atrophy of sensibility, the increasing incapacity for sympathy, for public spirit, for charity,--an incapacity which makes some men of the highest endowments among the least serviceable, least loving, and least loved of a community. "If,"

says the apostle, "in the gain of professional success you lose the higher gift of love, you are no longer a great man; you are not even to be described as a small man. You are 'nothing.'"

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LXXII

THE CENTRAL SOLITUDE

_John_ xvi. 32.

In one of Frederick Robertson's sermons he speaks of the conduct of life as like the conduct of atoms, which have a certain attraction for each other, but at a certain point of approach are repelled and do not touch. There is in every large life a certain central solitude of this kind into which no other soul can enter. Some persons fear this solitude, some rejoice in it, but the use of it is the test of a man's life. A very near friend of Dr. Brooks's once heard of a man who said that he knew Dr. Brooks intimately; and this friend said: "No man ought to say that. Not one of us knew Dr. Brooks intimately. There was a central Holy of Holies in his life, into which none of us ever entered." So it was. And this preservation of an inner privacy for the deeper experiences of life is what proves a soul to be peaceful and strong. Guard your soul's individual life. In the midst of the social world keep a place for the {181} nurture of the isolated life, for the reading and for the thoughts which deal with the interior relations of the single soul to the immanent G.o.d.

"Thyself amid the silence clear, The world far off and dim, His presence close, the bright ones near, Thyself alone with Him."

That is what makes a man strong under the tests of life. He is not a parasitic plant deriving its life from some other life; he is rooted deep in the soil of the Eternal. As was said of John Henry Newman, such a man is never less alone than when alone. "He is not alone, because the Father is with him."

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LXXIII

IF THOU KNEWEST THE GIFT OF G.o.d