THE SOLITARY THRONE

ADDRESSES GIVEN AT THE KESWICK CONVENTION ON THE GLO RY AND THE UNIQUENESS OF THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE

BY Dr. S. M. ZWEMER Professor of Christian Missions and the History of Religion, Princeton Theological Seminary

PICKERING & INGLIS LONDON GLASGOW MANCHESTER EDINBURGH Dr. SAMUEL M, ZWEMER LoNJ>ON • • 14 PA.TRRNOSTBR Row, B.C.4 GLASGOW• • 229 BOTHWBLL STB.BRT, C,2 MANCBBSTER • 185 DEANSGATE, 8 EDINBURGH • GEORGE IV BRIDGE, 1 TORONTO - • HOM& EVANGEL, 418 CHURCH ST., 2 NEW YORK • LOIZE.AUX BROS., 19 WEST 21ST ST.

Preface

THIS little book consists of five addresses given at the Keswick Con­ vention in the summer of 1937. The title is borrowed from a statement made by Mahatma Gandhi in one of his books : " I am unable to place Jesus Christ on a solitary throne." He believes, as do all Hindus, in many incarnations, and not in the unique origin, character and mes­ sages of our Saviour. The finalityof Christ­ ianity is being challenged even in so-called Christian circles. But the Lamb is on the Throne and He alone is worthy to open the seals of the Book of Life and History. The other addresses deal with the same theme of the matchless Christ, Who makes His ministers a flame of fire, and Who Himself dwells in light inaccessible and full of glory. And in Whose light is the life Made and Printed Great Britain f:o 4:11375 of men. 6 PREFACE The last chapter shows how feeble is our faith in view of the greatness of God's promises, and the wealth of our heritage. May the messages in this printed form be used of God, more widely than they were when first uttered. SAMUEL M. ZWEMER. Contents •.&.oz 9 EDINBURGH, August, 1937. I. THE SOLITARY THRONE' •• 31 II, HIS MINISTERS A FLAME, , , 55 III, PHOTOPHOBIA, 77 IV, THE GLORY OF THE IMPOSSIBLE,, , 95 V, THE HINTERLAND OF THE SOUL, , , I The Solitary Throne

UNLESS Jesus Christ is Lord of all He is not Lord at all. It has often impressed me as a great and very solemn truth that on two of the most solemn occasions in the life of our Lord upon earth, His self-asser­ tion and the utter audacity of His claims were such as to prevent His classification with men. The self-assertion and utter audacity of His claims on these occasions make it impossible for anyone who reads the Gospels to doubt that Jesus Christ is Lord of all. Both of these occasions were almost parentheses. They were when Christ was in the synagogue at Capernaum, when He burst into a thanksgiving to His Father, using these words : " I thank Thee, 0 Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes. For so it seemed good in Thy sight." The other occasion was an interruption. Madame Guyon says that "the interrup- 9 10 ' THE SOLITARY THRONE THE SOLITARY THRONE 11 tions are the opportunities." That is a to Jesus Christ our Lord. And therefore great statement, because if you will take it is hard to be a witnessing Christian. How the interruptions in the work of Jesus, or hard it is to be a Christian witnessing for in the words of Jesus, you will find that Christ over against the testimony of other every interruption was the revelation of a voices that challenge Christ's supremacy, new splendour in the character of our Lord. or that supplant Him in the hearts and Here a question was asked by Thomas : lives of men and women and little children. "How can we know the way? " "Jesus At home and abroad, even in Christian saith unto him, I am the Way, the Truth, circles, there are many voices that are and the Life ; no man cometh unto the raised against the supremacy and the Father, but by Me." finality and the sufficiency of the Christian No person with ordinary intelligence religion. Many people who profess and who reads even these two passages in the call themselves Christians have lost the Gospels of Matthew and John, can doubt sense of Christ's supremacy and sufficiency, for a moment that, whatever the world may and therefore also the urgency of their say, Christ asserted His absoluteness and message. finality. He said that He was the only And there is confusion of tongues, as channel of truth and life and light. The we all know. When a Methodist bishop aloofness and the transcendence of Jesus, in America asserts in public that Mahatma the Son of Man, are so self-evident, that Gandhi is the greatest Christian in India, anyone who accepts the New Testament one begins to wonder what it means when can only come to that conclusion as to the Gandhi says in his latest book : " I cannot face value of Christ in His own Book. place Christ on a solitary throne, because It is so easy for us at home here to sing : I believe God has been incarnate again and "All hail the power of Jesu's Name!" again." Or when in the Student Movement But' all round the world, rival faiths and of America, one of our former leaders uses new religions and strange cults are chal- in his book, "Christ or Christianity ? " lenging this hymn of the Church which words like these : · "One of the most tragic ascribes all glory and praise and honour blunders of Christendom has been the 13 12 THE SOLITARY THRONE THE SOLITARY THRONE placing of such extreme emphasis upon the great non-Christian religions to-day, that uniqueness of Jesus that an unbridgeable every Mohammedan mosque built in gulf has been created be,tween Him and the London or Berlin or Paris or New York, rest of mankind. If all 'human beings were every temple to Christian Science, is a created in the spiritual image of God, and direct challenge to the supremacy and the if there is only one kind of personality, then finality of Jesus Christ. In what sense is the only difference between Jesus and other Christ different from all other religious men is one of maturity." leaders and personalities ? What is His Wilhelm Hauer, a representative of the pre-eminence ? neo-paganism of Germany, and a Professor When we look at Him we see that in one of the Universities there, uses words the historic Jesus rises, like an inac­ like these: "The Ten Commandments laid cessible peak of the Himalayas, above down in the Scriptures do not suffice for the all other mountains and foothills of human building up of the present-day Christianity. greatness. Man's effort has failed to The Semitic character of Christianity is measure His height. History, philosophy, undoubted, but such is also its condemna­ art, have already paid Him their highest tion. Jesus said : 'Salvation is of the tribute. Every newspaper . published in Jews,' but He was mistaken. Belief in the New York, in Chicago, in Buenos Ayres, Resurrection is not the heart of Christianity, in London, has on its front page an acknow­ but is a worldly doctrine. Many of Jesus' ledgment of the Christ of history. It is words and deeds touch a chord deep in our 1937, A.D. hearts. But we protest against His being He is the historic dividing line be­ imposed on us as a leader and pattern. tween what happened before He came, We must not allow our native religious and what happened after His revelation. life, which grows immediately out of our Even Mohammed in Arabia, as a keen own genius, to be diverted into any Semitic student once said, had Christ on the brain. foreign tracks." He could not leave Jesus Christ alone. Voices like these appear to you and me And in the . Koran he speaks of Him as as being unusual. But I submit that the "The Spirit of God, the Word of Truth." 14 THE SOLITARY THRONE THE SOLITARY THRONE 15 Napoleon on St. Helena said : " I know all human thought, and all human ideals men, and Jesus was no man. Charlemagne, in religion ? Alexander the Great, and I, founded Surely missionaries ought not to be great empires upon force, and here is One narrow-minded ; and all of us, I think, who founded an empire upon love. And - who have been abroad, and have had now I am alone and forsaken, and there are opportunity to study the faiths of non­ millions who would die for Him." Christians, are quite willing to admit that Jean Paul Richter, of Germany, in a won­ these religions which are nearly all older derful passage, said : " 0 Thou who art than Christianity have much to commend mightiest among the mighty, and the them. They have certain spiritual and holiest among the holy, Thou with Thy moral values. pierced hands, hast lifted empires off their In Confucianism you have the sacred­ hinges, and turned the tide of human ness of the family. No Chinese boy would history!" ever speak to his father as some American Rabbi Klausner, the President of the lads do. In Hinduism you have the great University in Jerusalem, in one of his books conception of the immanence of God : on Jesus Christ, says : "His parables are "Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, matchless ; His ethics are unsurpassed by And Spirit with spirit can meet. anything in the Old Testament ; He is Closer is He than breathing, the supreme fruit of the tree of And nearer than hands or feet . " Judaism." In Buddhism you have a commentary on Now all that is very beautiful, but it is the most pessimistic book in the Bible, in a sense inadequate, and beside the point. the Book of Ecclesiastes. Without Christ, Who is this Jesus Christ Who said that if and without hope of a resurrection, all is He were lifted up He would draw all men indeed vanity and vexation of spirit. In unto Him? In what respect is Jesus Christ Mohammedanism you have the old truth on a solitary throne ? In what respect is of the prophets of Israel, the transcendence Jesus Christ the Alpha and Omega, the first of God, and His sovereign irresistible will and the last, the beginning and the end of in the history of the world and of all THE SOLITARY THRONE 17 16 THE SOLITARY THRONE again in the image of God that is to be humanity. In fact many great truths are held restored. John in his Apocalyptic vision in common with Christianity, and are held said : " Lo, a great multitude which no with zeal and devotion. man can number, of all nations, and But it is not difficult to show that Christ kindreds, and peoples, and tongues, stood and, therefore, Christianity, stand supreme, before the Throne, and before the Lamb." unique, and final in ten great particulars; Where else than in the Bible do you find and we are able to give an answer to every such marvellous phraseology on the man who asks for the reason of the hope solidarity of the human race? I tried for that is in us. the fourth time to read the Bhagavad Gita, (1) First of all, Christ's Bible-I mean the New Testament of Hinduism, and I the Bible His mother opened to Him and found in it the narrow caste system of read to Him at Nazareth-and our New Hinduism, and the doctrine of incarnations, Testament, both of them teach the unity but nothing of the universal, or of the race and the solidarity of the human race. You as a whole. do not find that in any other sacred book. (2) Jesus Christ is the only religious From the first chapter of Genesis until the leader Who came to destroy all race barriers last chapter of the New Testament it is and class hatreds. He is adequate for this if always one great human family. And if we will only give Him His right of way. we had only the 67th Psalm we would have He came to .destroy the racial chasm, and there the foundation for a great league of build the bridge of human brotherhood. all nations. Paul, standing on Mars' Hill, He gave woman her true place; childhood said very clearly : " God hath made of one its rights ; the slave his freedom ; the bar­ blood (of one substance) the whole human barian welcome. Lecky, in his history of family." European morals, gives the evidence of this Then you tum to the Epistles, and gradual development. you find that solidarity imbedded deep Take the words of the Apostle Paul ; in the theology. " As in Adam, so in and the more you meditate on them the more Christ-" united for ever in the image of you see that here you have the Magna God which was lost, and brought together :i 18 19 THE SOLITARY THRONE THE SOLITARY THRONE Charta of Christianity, equality in of the Gospel, and look at the face of Jesus, Jesus Christ. "Neither Jew nor Greek, you findthat He was neither Occidental nor male nor female, bond nor free, Roman Oriental, neither Jew nor Greek; He was nor barbarian." After nineteen centuries the Alpha and the Omega of ideal manhood we are still far behind these lofty standards and ideal womanhood. of the international mind of the Apostle He has all the virtues which we Paul. The life of Jesus Christ is a rebuke · admire in the Oriental, and none of to all Nordic, or American, or Anglo-Saxon the faults and the vices which we pride, and all our miserable race prejudices despise in the Occidental. Patience, and class hatreds. courtesy, and hospitality-these are the (3) Jesus Christ, the Founder of Christ­ supreme virtues of the East. And as you ianity, is the Son of Man, of mankind. He read the Gospels you find such virtues is not the Son of any nation. The Son of supreme in Jesus Christ. Truth, honesty, Man was His own favourite title. What and moral courage-those are the virtues does it mean? He is the ideal Man, the ideal of the Nordic races ; and Jesus Christ was of humanity, the ideal of all the ages, and the acme of them all. The only Man Who of the whole human race. was not a moral coward in Holy Week was When you read the life of Mohammed Jesus Christ. His disciples forsook H� you say : There stands an ideal Arab in andfled. Pilate was a coward. But Chnst thought, in life, in outlook. When you read had the great moral courage to say to His the life of Confucius you say : There is a disciples, even in the Garden of Geth­ true Chinese, the scholar and gentleman of semane : "Arise, let us go hence "-toward Chinese civilisation. When you read the the Cross I life of Buddha you say : There you have an (4) Christ's life and purpose and com­ Indian ascetic and mystic ; but his pathway mands and promises are world-wide. They is wholly Asiatic. When you read the life are adapted to and adequate for the whole of Socrates you say : Here is the greatest human family. This is a unique character­ Greek philosopher ; but he always remained istic of Old Testament prophecy and New a Greek. But when you turnover the pages Testament teaching not found in any 20 THE SOLITARY THRONE THE SOLITARY THRONE 21 other religion-the note of universalism. catacombs as in the cathedrals, in a hut Christ's marching orders were universal; as in a palace, in a prison, or in the trenches. His triumph was to be absolute. " Every There you may break the bread, and receive knee shall bow to Him." from His hands the tokens of His dying love. No other religion ever held out such It is the only religion whose Founder could a world-wide programme. You find have said, and ever did say : " Suffer nothing of it in Buddhism, or Hindu­ the little children to come unto Me." ism, or Zoroastrianism. Their golden Mohammed never said it, and had he said it age is always in the past ; our golden age is they would not have gone to him. And as in the future. The watchword of missions, for the Indian religions, the Brahmin priest­ the evangelisation of the whole world, is hood marries little girls to the gods of lust absolutely inconceivable except for instead of inviting them to the bosom of Christianity. the Saviour. (5) Christ's laws and rituals are possible (6) We have a Book that has been translated everywhere for everybody. They are adequate and is translatable into all languages, and for for all, because He is our contemporary. all humanity. Other sacred books are not Jesus offers to men, women, and children, altogether translatable. Their style and a ritual and worship that excludes none contents make it impossible to translate but the impenitent. Christ's words to the the sacred books, so-called, of the East. poor Samaritan woman are still ringing The Ko-ji-ki is the sacred book of the down the centuries : " God is a Spirit, and Shinto religion ; but the American scholar they that worship Him must worship Him who translated it apologised in the preface in spirit and in truth." Men need no local that large sections of it were so indecent shrine as in Mecca ; no sacred river, as at that it had to be put into Latin. The Hindu Benares; no sacred mountain, no sacred volumes on the Tantric Yogi festival could city. Prayer to Him can be offered every­ not be translated for public reading ; nor where in every place by every one. could three certain chapters of the And the observance of the Sacraments Koran, perhaps more, be read in a mixed which Christ instituted is as possible in the audience. 22 THE SOLITARY THRONE THE SOLITARY THRONE 23 But the Bible, although it speaks frankly Hume, of Union Theological Seminary, is of sin, retains the purity and simplicity of made up as follows: Zoroastrians, 100,000 ; its message in all the nine hundred lan­ Shintos, 24,000,000 ; Tacists, 43,000,000 ; guages into which it has been translated ; Buddhists, 137,000,000 ; Mohammedans, and each year there are fourteen new 240,000,000 ; Confucianists, 250,000,000 ; languages added. It is the best selling Hindus, 217,000,000, and those who profess book in the world ; and thirty-three million and call themselves Christians, however far copies are sold in one year. apart we may be, and however distantly (7) Jesus Christ has continued to occupy we may follow Him, number 588,000,000, the dominant place in the world of law, twice as many as the followers of any other culture, and morals, a solitary throne. religion. Pilate's inscription is fulfilled before our (8) Christianity is unique and alone in eyes--"Jesus, the King of the Jews "­ its conception of God and of Christ's revela­ because He is the King of international tion of God ; and it is the highest and most law (Latin), the King of culture (Greek), comprehensive. Islam says that God is the King of ethics (Hebrew). His Kingdom transcendent, above all. Hinduism says that is an everlasting Kingdom. His law is God is immanent. Polytheism says that acknowledged as an international ideal. gods are incarnate; that you can hold them In the expression of human culture to your bosom. Jesus Christ reveals God as through music, sculpture, painting, archi­ all three of these. The Father of infinite tecture, poetry-their highest inspiration, majesty ; the Holy Spirit Who broods over as asserted earlier, has been found in Jesus creation-Who dwells in human hearts ; Christ. All the world has gone after Him. and the Son of His love Who was made His ethics are the yardstick by which we flesh, and dwelt among us, on Whose bosom measure others, and by which others mea­ John could lean, and Who could say : "No sure us. By the suffrage rights of humanity man hath seen God at any time ; the only Jesus Christ is elected King of hearts. His begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the love is winning the whole world. Father, He hath declared Him." "Have The world population, according to Dr. I been so long time with you, and yet hast 24 THE SOLITARY THRONE THE SOLITARY THRONE 25 thou not known Me, Philip ? He that hath Peter puts it for us-" Who His own seen Me hath seen the Father." self bare our sins in His own body on the Christ is the Alpha and Omega tree." " Hallelujah, what a Saviour ! "­ of all we know about God, the Father. a Saviour Who is " very God of very God, All other conceptions of- Deity are begotten not made." He came down to the in comparison nebulous, vague, distant, manger to lift us up, and to set us poor or distorted. Once, while riding along sinners as princes in His Kingdom. a country road in China in company (10) Christ offers the strongest proof for with a Chinese missionary, Charles Ogilvie, the truth of His message ; namely, ex- I put a question to him as to what Confucius - perience. And it is thus that we sing " All taught about God, and he said this in an­ hail the power of Jesus' Name I " In swer : " A child in our Sunday School accord with our scientific age, and the de­ knows more about God than all you can mands of the laboratory, Jesus Christ find in all the Analects of Confucius." appealsto those very tests. For Christianity Without God, without hope ; because with­ is not a religion of human authority, like out Christ. Confucianism. It is not a religion of tradi­ (9) Jesus Christ combined in Himself the tion, like Judaism. It is not a religion of highest ideal of character and of redemption. force and might, like Islam. It is not a " Behold the Lamb of God I " How spotless, religion based upon argument and philo­ and yet sufficient as an atonement for all sophy; although Christianity is a philo­ human guilt! No religion ever caught that sophy, and although the Bible calls upon idea. Prayer and sacrifice are found in all us to reason with God. But it is a religion, the world among all nations. There is first and always, from beginning to end, of sacrifice and propitiation in all the religions, experiment and experience ; it is a prag­ but they never rise to the sacrifice and matic faith. " Oh, taste and see that the propitiation that you find in John 3. 16. Lord is gracious! " " Prove Me now here­ "Not all the blood of beasts with, saith the Lord, and see if I will not On Jewish altars slain, Can give the guilty conscience peace, pouryou out such a blessing that there shall Or wash away its •tain." not be room enough to receive it." " Come 26 THE SOLITARY THRONE THE SOLITARY THRONE 27 unto Me all ye that labour, and are heavy affluent with all the riches of Jesus Christ, laden, and I will give you rest." "A sk, and His perfect righteousness, imputed and it shall be given you." " Seek, and ye shall imparted to us by His Holy Spirit. find. " "Knock, and it shall be opened unto This is the religion which we preach and you." commend to the non-Christian world. Now, no scientist could speak in Christ occupies the solitary throne of every more definite terms than those. George heart once yielded to Him ; even as He Romanes, the great English scientist, was occupies the throne of Heaven, before once a sceptic, and then he came face to which myriads of those who have been face with John 7. 17 : "If any man will do redeemed are falling prostrate before Him, His will, he shall know of the doctrine." crying : " Holy, Holy, Holy! Unto Him His biographer tells us that from that text that loved us and loosed us from our sins, he found his way to a simple faith in Jesus to Him be the glory for ever ! " The Lamb Christ. When you and I face Jesus Christ is on the Throne now and to all eternity. we are conscious, with Isaiah and Paul and I want to close with two quotations ; Peter, of our own absolute spiritual bank­ one from Professor MacIntosh, of Edin­ ruptcy. burgh, on " The Originality of the Christian When, at the Jerusalem Conference, Message ;" and the other from Pascal. we were spending days in discussing Professor MacIntosh says : " Any faith the spiritual values of the non-Christian which challenges the finality of Christianity religions, a speaker representing the Dutch must produce the equivalent of Jesus Bible Society asserted that they possessed Christ. He . . . embodies the Gospel in no spiritual values judged by the gold Himself, and in Him its own finality, if real, standard of the religion of Christ. The must be found. To call Christianity the experiment tried for twenty centuries by absolute or final religion, therefore, is to hundreds of millions has never yet failed. contend not merely that, in Jesus Christ, We are all spiritually bankrupt before God is presented in a form higher and more Christ ; but immediately after that experi­ spiritually satisfying than elsewhere, but ment the position is reversed. We become that the relationship to the Father on 28 THE SOLITARY THRONE which believers thus enter is such that it cannot be transcended." Pascal, the great French Christian, says in his " Thoughts on Religion " : " Jesus Christ is the centre of everything and the object of everything ; and he who does not know Him knows nothing of the order of the world and nothing of himself. In Him is all our felicity and virtue, our life, our light, our hope ; apart from Him there is nothing but vice, misery, darkness, despair, II and we see only obscurity, and confusion in the nature of God and in our own." How His Ministers a Flame can we withhold such a Saviour from a dying world ? How shall we escape if we neglect to proclaim so great a salvation? Then let us proclaim for " how shall they hear without a preacher ? " II His Ministers a Flame IN all nations and in all ages men have associated fire with God's presence and with God's power. From the earliest times in nearly every country men have said, or whispered : " Our God is a consuming fire." You findfire-worship as one of the earliest forms of communion with the Deity. It is in Mexico, and Japan, and India, and Persia, and the Islands of the Sea. In the Bible, over four hundred times in the Old Testament, and seventy-five times in the New Testament ; fire is associated with the appearance, the manifestation, the power, the symbolism of Deity. Now Paul uses a word here, which brings us right into the midst of our subject : "anazopurein." And the word he uses in the Greek Testament is only used once in the New Testament, twice in the entire Bible. It is used once in Timothy, and once in Genesis, and means to kindle or fan into flame. To Timothy, 31 32 THE SOLITARY THRONE HIS MINISTERS A FLAME 33 Paul says : " Kindle again the flame that language of Canaan. It was not the l�­ came to you s a from the ignition power of guage of Ke wick fifty years go. But it God's Holy Spirit that has died down on the It smacks of the is right up-to-date. e altar of your life." a ag . a l boratory, the factory, �nd the gar Th t Greek ee word contains thr Ignition, power, light, mot10n, heat. different words. Putting life a about re into the First of all Paul spe ks to Timothy flame or fi . It occurs in tha a e the a t beauti­ the spark th t kindled the flam in ful ch pter where the gifts come from a r his whom he se a heart of th t dea son of Jo ph to old J cob, and the Septuagint prayed day and s sa s a loved, and for whom he version y th t when Jacob saw the s r night. . . . chariots, hi hea t kindled up again. is waiting for that km�mg a Every life s My theme is th t process of the s r s ms : e kindling park. Men are dead in t espasse and of th fire in the hearts of God's servants, a r prayers a a and though the alt r of ou youthful th t we m y serve Him as ministers who r e doW'Il, and the a r may have been b ok n are flame, on fi e. Obviously when r r s at Con­ a you sac ifice of ou live once made strike a m tch, when you kindle a fire on the Sunday School, may e r firmation, or in r th hea th, even when you start the a e r ate of r engine h v been d enched in the cold w of you motor three things take place. s s thrice over, yet the God e s a heartles critici m r Th re i the sp rk of ignition ; there is a His fire on the alta ; s of Elij h cah send s the process of combu tion, which is always whence that fire come ; s s and we all know acrificial ; and there is the re ultant illum­ from God. a a it comes only in tion and the spiritual dyn mic. To put a s Paul says, was "bestowed s Th t gift, a _ it spiritually : the park of faith that e the laymg on of my e r s on the with ignites ; th p ocess of combu tion which s s the an s sa r a is hand ; " but it wa not � � c ificial; nd the resultant illumination a the fire of Chnst 1;11 a of P ul ; it was s and the spiritu a r r r l dyn mic which never the hea t of Timothy. Of cou se the e 1 take place without r s a a rs the sacrificial p ocess a sen e as all f thers nd mothe know, of combustion. r in whi�h grace is he editary. It is not Now that kind of terminology is not the heresy to believe this, because in our 3 35 34 THE SOLITARY THRONE His MINISTERS A FLAME hymnary we have that beautiful hymn by His alone. One spark from the eternal fire, Horatius Bonar, where he says : "I thank and our life changes. " Only believe, and Thee for a godly ancestry." thou shalt see, that God is all in all to "From thy infancy," says Paul to thee." Timothy, " thou hast known the Holy Paul says that because he himself ex­ Scriptures which are able to make thee wise perienced it on the road to Damascus ; and unto salvation." That is, from his earliest because he believes that Timothy some­ youth Timothy carried a very tinder-box where and somehow at some time in his in his soul, put there by his mother and his life experienced the same miracle of ignition grandmother. And Paul is absolutely cer­ -that Christ lives in him, as Christ lives tain that his mother's faith and prayer, and in Paul-then for Timothy to live and for his grandmother's covenant intercession Paul to live is not money, or pleasure, or are going to be fulfilled ; their intercession honour, or power, or ease, but for him to cannot be in vain. That is a great passage live is Christ. for us who are fathers or grandfathers to Now we have heard so much about lay hold of. ignition, about power, about the new It surely cannot be true of the rising life in our hymns and preaching, that generation that the prayers of fathers we have forgotten what it means when we and mothers of past generations are glibly ask for the baptism of fire. Because not going to be answered by the God after ignition there always comes com­ who keepeth covenant unto a thousand bustion, and the process that takes place generations. Paul's ideal for flaming man­ after that ignition is always sacrificial. hood is that of a youth whose mind is aflame ·You cannot keep your wood pile, . you with the truth of God ; whose heart is cannot keep your coal in the cellar, if you aflame with love for humanity ; and whose would have a fire on the hearth. Remember will is set on fire with a passion for God's the words of our Lord Jesus Christ : " John righteousness in an age of iniquity. was a burning and a shining light." The First of all he tells us, as we all know burning must come before the shining. here, that ignition is the gift of God in thee, Many of our younger ministers and 36 THE SOLITARY THRONE HIS MINISTERS A FLAME 37 theological students expect to have the " He held seven stars in His right shining without the burning ; and that is hand, walking amid the seven burning utterly impossible. There can be no power golden candlesticks, a new Prometheus and no light and no heat without the with fire from Heaven (unbound)." sacrifice of the altar. " I come to cast fire Christ in all His symbolic Divine glory on the earth, and how am I straitened until came to cast fire on the earth. And how is it be kindled," said the Lord Jesus. Fire He straitened until His ministers, you is a marvellous thing both in nature and in and I, become a flame of fire? What else grace. should they be ? A man set on fireis an apostle of his age. What is the process of combustion ? And the only one who can kindle the spark When you strike a match, when you light a of light and fire on the hearth where it has fire on the hearth, when you start a great died down is He Who has revealed Himself firein a factory, when you turnon the power as the God of fire, our Lord Jesus Christ. of your motor engine, there are five " Our God is a consuming fire." things that always take place. First of all, The last picture we have of Jesus fire always tears asunder and binds to­ Christ in the Bible is not the one gether. Fire separates and it unites. "I we show to the children in the Sunday am come to set at variance." "A man's School. The last picture of Jesus Christ foes shall be those of his own household." in1 the}Bible is that portrait of Him Who can fully explain the chemical, that cannot be put on canvas ; it is there on the divisive action of combustion ? The the first page of the Book of the Revela­ law of cleavage that takes place when the tion-a portrait of " Prometheus Un­ wood and the coal are torn asunder in the bound." John says : "I saw one like the flame, when the oxygen and carbon and Son of Man ; His eyes were as a flame of hydrogen are set free. You cannot explain fire, the shining of His face as the sun in that. No more can you explain what takes his strength, His feet as brass burning in a place when Christ says to someone : " For­ furnace." You cannot picture this on sake all and follow Me." The flame and canvas. heat either ends in electricity and light and 39 38 THE SOLITARY THRONE HIS MINISTERS A FLAME power, or they end in smoke and ashes hath ...Except a man hate his father and death. and mother, yes, and his own life Tell me, is your ministry a burning also, he cannot be My disciple." And when and shining light, or a smoking flax-wick, He comes again in glory He will manifest slowly dying out to ashes? Think how the that sundering, that tearing power of the fire of Christ tears asunder and separates. flaming fire of His eye. " Come ye blessed Think of the intolerance of Jesus ; His of My Father : . . Depart from Me ye divisive demands ; His stem rebukes ; His cursed." sevenfold woe to the Pharisees of His day. You say, "That was Jesus ! " Well, That was His conference address in Matt. consider Paul. If anyone ever was a flame 23. It would stir all great Conferences of fire, it was Paul. He wrote to the Corin­ to-day if we dared to use those words in thian Church : " Come ye out from among regard to ourselves, and to each other' them, and be ye separate." " What fellow­ which Christ used in regard to the ministry ship hath light with darkness ? " We are of the Jewish Church. always giving the Benediction of the Second The very presence of Jesus always Epistle to the Corinthians ; but no minister demands decision. He always divides dares to pronounce that sentence in the and cleaves mankind, eternally, horizon­ 1st Epistle : " If any man love not the Lord tally, and perpendicularly ; to the Jesus Christ let him be Anathema." right ; to the left. The highest Heaven ; "I thought His love would weaken the lowest Hell. Separation from God. As more and more He knew me, But it burneth like a beacon, In Christ-joy and peace ; without Christ­ And its light and heat go through me.• without hope and without God. At a Convention, when Jesus comes " I came to cast fire on the earth." Christ something happens, as when He was at speaks to us, with His eyes like a flame of Capemaum. Luke tells us that a fire. May God forgive us, for when we speak great multitude followed Him. " And in His Name we are often so cold, so luke­ Jesus turned and said unto them, warm ; so unconscious of that baptism of Except a man forsake all that he separation which was given to us ministers 40 THE SOLITARY THRONE HIS MINISTERS A FLAME 41 by the laying on of hands-the true apos­ of !anctification, that fails to teach tolic succession. " Ours the mighty ordina­ tolerance of fellow Christians, and tion of the Pierced Hand." "How hard it love of all the brethren, I tell you is to be a Christian," says Robert Browning ; solemnly that I believe it is a false and how hard to be a preacher. fire ; it does not come from God's And then fi re unites things that are broken Spirit. When He unites us it is like the bell­ asunder. It welds together into one, things metal which comes from the crucible in a that belong together. There is nothing that real unity. binds like fire. As you drive through the In a great factory I once saw them Black Country, and go through the Bir­ putting into the furnace the copper, mingham and Wolverhampton districts, the iron, the tin, and the brass ; and they the smoke of those countless chimneys tell all came out melted into a new substance, us how marvellous is the binding power of vocal with celestial harmony and heavenly fire in steel manufacture. music, and it became the call to worship. So all our race problems in the It had been through the fire. United States and South Africa, all In the crucible of Christ's love there our class hatred in Britain, or Ger­ is neither "Jew nor Greek, bond nor many, or anywhere else, all our ecclesi­ free, male nor female, neither east astical disputes and differences, and our nor west. We are all one in Christ most unhappy divisions, would be healed Jesus." It is a good thing to confess and dissolved if we were only brought close that one article of the Apostle's Creed, to Christ, and entered into the crucible of which is believed by all the Churches, and His love. Our sectarian divisions and is more transgressed against than any parochial prejudices disappear as soon as article of the Creed : " I believe in the we enter t_he fire. Carping criticisms of communion of saints." "I believe in the fellow Christians become impossible in the forgiveness of sins "-all sorts of ecclesi­ presence of Christ ; and where He is we astical sins. "And in the life everlasting." are " all one in Christ Jesus." Some one has said we will see a great Any doctrine of the Holy Spirit, or many people in Heaven that we never ex- 42 THE SOLITARY THRONE Hrs MINISTERS A FLAME 43 pected to see, and they will hold a place of But the flame does a destructive work honour higher than ourselves. " I believe also ; because fi re destroys and consumes. in the Communion of saints." In that You remember those days in the War, fire-baptism we all become one in Christ, when you saw outside the great camps those a Christian unity that is not artificial but mighty incinerators built for the army, supernatural. and which existed for no other purpose Again Paul says to Timothy : " Stir into than to destroy and to put away for ever flame the gift that is in thee," because everything that was unclean in the soldiers' fi re purifies. Jesus is the crucible of camp. All that was hygienically impure, character. Malachi tells us that " He, the allthe dross, went up in smoke. So with our Messiah, shall sit as a Refiner and Puri­ lives. We have the promise that the fire fier of silver ; He shall purify the sons of will destroy all the mistakes and the follies Levi, and purge them." That is, it begins of our lives, all the failures of our Christian on the platform ; it begins with the ministry, all the wood and the hay and ministers, the Christian leaders. The the stubble, all the dregs of our regret ; Roman Catholic Church believes in Purga­ they will all go up in smoke, and the tory hereafter. We believe in Purgatory silver and the gold and the precious now. stones will abide for ever. David said it All meanness, all hatred, all envy, all for us on his knees : "Thou knowest my impurity, all criticism, all suspicion, all foolishness, and my sins are not hid from jealousy that is in your heart or mine will Thee." disappear if we just throw them into the One of the most interesting, traditional, crucible of Christ's loving soul. And when apocryphal sayings of Jesus is this-and He stirs into the flame our intellect and why should it not be true ?-" He that is emotions and will, to be His true disciples, near Me is near the fire." Lord Tennyson we become ministers that are a flame of was very fond of that saying, and loved to fire. The process of combustion tears as­ meditate on it. And perhaps Paul knew under, and it binds together, it solders as that apocryphal saying of Jesus when he nothing else can. told Timothy to fan into flame all his 44 THE SOLITARY THRONE Hrs MINISTERS A FLAME 45 spiritual gifts. Our hymn speaks of it : and spreads until it becomes a great con­ "Spirit of God, descend upon my heart, flagration. What a glorious symbolism of Ween it from earth, through all its pulses move , the Acts of the Apostles, beginning at Stoop to my weakness, mighty as Thou art, Jerusalem, and spreading through Judea And make me Jove Thee as I ought to lcve. and Samaria, and on unto the uttermost "Teach me to Jove Thee as Thine angels Jove, parts of the earth ! One holy passion filling all my frame. The baptism of the Heaven-descended Dove , It took the Church eighteen hundred My heart an altar, and Thy love the flame." years to reach the uttermost part of the earth-one hundred and eighty Again, fire always gives energy. Huxley, degrees from Jerusalem-and now we that great scientist, tells you what takes hear of revivals in China, in India, in place in the world of energy when you Uganda, and all around the globe ; the fire simply light a tallow candle. Every one of is still spreading. That flame came down at us is to be like that of which the children Pentecost. sing, " A little candle burning in the night, I love to go to the University Library you in your small corner, and I in mine." in Princeton. Over the fireplace in Such fires give energy, the very dynamic of the library of that Graduate School there God. " I can do all things through Christ are carved these Latin words from the which strengtheneth me." Vulgate Psalter : "In Meditatione mea The Holy Spirit is the wisdom of exardescet ignis." " While I sit meditating, God and the power of God, because the fire burns.'' What a motto to have in the Holy Spirit is the fire of God. a university library ! " While I sat musing And wherever there is this energy of fire the fire burned." Yes, it burns. But what it spreads ; that is the characteristic of all fire is it that burns as we sit meditating ? fire. That is why children Jove to play with For there are fires celestial, and fires ter­ fire. That is why every sensible man is restrial, and fires infernal. As James puts afraid of the danger of fire-the prairie fire, it : " Behold, how great a forest is kindled the great conflagration. The flame that by how small a fire I And the tongue is a separates, unites, consumes, also energises fire"-the tongue of speech, or the tongue 46 THE SOLITARY THRONE Hrs MINISTERS A FLAME 47 in the printed page ; the tongue of the of the train. I said to him : " Do you think righteous and the tongue of the wicked. that the professors and students at Prince­ One is fanned with the flame of Heaven ; ton are flames of fire ? " He smiled, and the other burns with the blaze of Hell. said : "No, I do not think so." That was The one is as the shining light that shineth enough for me to think over. The im­ more and more unto the perfect day. And pression that a minister makes on a railway the other is like a wandering star to which guard is not that of a flame of fire. is reserved the blackness of darkness for Once I was to preach a sermon at ever and ever. an anniversary in a Methodist Church ; "While 1 was musing," said David, there were a great number of ministers " the fire burned." Yes, it burned into present, and I was greatly honoured David's deepest soul, so that he gave to be allowed to preach there. We us the seven Penitential Psalms as well as met in the vestry. And the sexton, the Hallelujah Chorus and the 103rd whose work it was to take care of Psalm of thanksgiving. As Kipling puts it the comfort of the preacher, said to me : in his couplet "Would you like a glass of water in the "Down to Jehen nom, or up to the Throne pulpit ? " I said : "No, I would like a He travels the fastest who travels alone ." bonfire." He smiled. That is what I felt When you are sitting meditating you may that day. be quite sure the fires are burning. And It is a strange custom that we should when we speak, God grant that our tongues supply a minister with a glass of water ; may be always celestial fires, and not ter­ if only we could supply him with a restrial, or infernal fires that burn on the bonfire in the pulpit, a spiritual bonfire. hearth of our souls. I felt I needed one that morning ; it would And, lastly there is the dynamic of such have been a great help to me. a flaming ministry. I preached this sermon We need the dynamic of a flaming in America on a certain occasion when I ministry that will set the Church on fire. had to travel by train on the Saturday In the Acts of the Apostles we find the night. I put one question to the conductor divine capacities, the supernatural dynamic 48 THE SOLITARY THRONE HIS MINISTERS A FLAME 49 issuing from the lives of ordinary men, Apostles. It is a neglected Book fanning the faith into flame. amongst those who ought to be leaders of The New Testament teaches us that all the Church of Christ. You can label its spiritual energy, every kind of spiritual chapters, " The Acts of the Apostles­ power comes from one primary source, God's Book of Fire." Then you can put on the Holy Spirit of God. Apart from Him the different chapters : Ignition ; Combus­ we can do nothing. He is the overflowing tion ; Dynamic ; Illumination ; Conflagra­ fountain of life and light. " Apart from Me tion-it is all there. ye can do nothing," says Christ. " He that What matchless courage against all believeth in Me, the works that I do, shall opposition. What patience in defeat I he do also : and greater works than these What love for all humanity I What shall he do because I go to My Father." bursting through barriers of race­ That is the hardest text in the Bible to try prejudice and class-hatred I What dis­ to understand. Yet when we meditate cipline of self in an age of self-indulgence upon it, and think of the work of Hudson in Rome and Greece ! They preached the Taylor, of David Livingstone, of Horace pure life, a pure womanhood, and a pure Underwood-to mention only three mis­ manhood. What boldness in proclaiming sionaries among thousands, their work was a message that was to the world-wise of far greater in area than the work of Jesus their day the acme of foolishness, and to Christ ; it was far greater in results than the Jewish Church a perpetual stumbling­ the visible results of our Lord's work block I Yet with it they turned the world during His three years' ministry ; far greater upside down-intellectually, socially, and in length of time, far greater in proportion morally, and all in one generation. to their strength than the miracles of Jesus I recall the words of Von Harnack : Christ. " He that believeth in Me, the " About the year 50 A.D., Christianity was works that I do shall he do also, and greater an ellipse whose foci were Jerusalem and works than these shall he do because I go Antioch. Fifty years later these foci to My Father." were Ephesus and Rome. The col­ Let us often read the Acts of the ossal change implied in this proves 4 50 THE SOLITARY THRONE Hrs MINISTERS A FLAME 51 the greatness of Paul's work, and have it illustrated at every baptismal of the work done by the first Christian service in India, in Persia, in Arabia, in missionaries." By then the empire of China, where people who follow Christ are Cresar had become the empire of Another, calledupon to forsake all for the love of our even Jesus Christ our Lord. And the Lord. Shall we not pray : " Fan into flame astonishing fact is that these laws of spiritual that little spark which God has kindled in ignition, of combustion, of dynamic, are ·our souls by His grace ? " semper, ubique, et ab omnibus, the same always, everywhere, for all. May God grant unto us their fulfilment! May we never glibly pray the prayer that we may be filled with the Holy Spirit. I shall never forget my own pro­ fessor under whom I was taught theology a man some fifty years ago telling to stop as he prayed that prayer ; and the man stopped in the middle of his petition. " John," he said, " do you know what it might mean to your father and mother, to your home-ties, and to your whole life, if you were really baptised with the Holy Spirit ? " When we pray that prayer, it means combustion-sacrifice ; " my heart an altar, and Thy love the flame." "A great multitude followed Jesus, and He turned and said : Except a man hate his father and mother, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple." You III Photophobia

ss III Photo phobia HEN a patient is in an opthalmic W hospital and prefers darkness rather than light, prefers the dark shadows rather than the brightness of the sun, the physicians call it photophobia. It is hard to be a Christian, because all of us at some time, and some of us all the time, are suffering from photophobia. You will remember the word, for you have other words in the English language written in the same way. A photograph is a writing made by the light in the camera. Hydro­ phobia is when a dog is afraid to drink­ the symptom of a serious disease. Anglo­ phobia is where the nations are afraid of Great Britain. So you will remember these two simple Greek words, and you will not forget the subject, which is Photophobia. By photophobia we mean fear of the light ; an intolerance of that which is natural and beautiful. This is a strange paradox that seems contradictory to the very laws of nature, the laws of life, the laws of beauty, 55 56 THE SOLITARY THRONE PHOTOPHOBIA 57 and which occurs, nevertheless, in excep­ very serious eye-disease. Which things are tional cases among plants and animals, a parable of the spiritual world. as if it were a parable of spiritual photo­ The story is told by John in the words phobia. of Jesus. "Now there was a man of the There are mosses in the depths of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the dark forests of Africa, there are certain Jews. The same came to Jesus by night." algre and seaweed in the depths of the He had no photophobia ; he was groping ocean, which seem to grow best where the towards the light, an earnest seeker after sun never shines. So the owl is the bird of God, not far from the truth. He said: " We the night, while the eagle greets the day­ know Thou art a teacher come from God." break. The mole lives underground and And to this earnest enquirer, who, for fear hides from the sunlight. And in the Mam­ of the Jews, came to Jesus by night, our moth Cave, Kentucky, there are thousands Blessed Saviour unfolded the very heart of fishes that have lost their sight because of the Gospel, the very heart of God. they have lived in the darkness for so long. To Nicodemus He declared the necessity The eyeball and the organ remains, but for and the mystery of the second birth. He centuries they have propagated in the told him the heavenly things of the Incar­ darkness. nation, and the Atonement with all that it Now in man photophobia is always a involved, of Christ's twofold nature and symptom of serious disease. It is assocated twofold state as Man and God, of humilia­ sometimes with colour-blindness ; but it is tion and exaltation. This chapter contains always present in disease of the iris, or the the whole theology and Christology of the cornea. I have often seen in our hospitals Gospel. " Verily, verily, I say unto you ... in Arabia, poor Arab children sufferingfrom No one hath ascended into Heaven, but He this malady. How they would huddle in that descended out of Heaven, even the a dark corner, or bury their faces in a dirty Son of Man, Who is in Heaven." Out of pillow, afraid of the light. There is not Heaven He came, into Heaven He went, usually much pain, but the doctor knows and in Heaven He is for you and for me and that it is an indication, a symptom of a for Nicodemus ; the love that would not let 58 THE SOLITARY THRONE PHOTOPH OBIA 59 humanity go to eternal perdition, but saved That is what Paul explains in the 1st men through the Cross on which Christ chapter of his Epistle to the Romans. The was lifted up, even as Moses lifted up the heathen are not only to be pitied, and, God brazen serpent in the wilderness. knows, they are to be pitied ; the Moham­ That love He explains to Nicodemus in . medans are not only to be had compassion the words that follow. He said to Nico­ on, but we are to see that they are under demus : You are a ruler of the Jews, you condemnation, because they do not love the cannot understand the principles of salva­ light. This is the crisis of history, and of the tion, the laws of the kingdom of darkness biography of every human soul, that light and the kingdom of light. He that believes is come into the world, that true Light that is saved. He that refuses to believe, refuses lighteth every man, the Light that is the to look toward the uplifted One, is judged light of man. by his own act. How can he escape if he I would like to ask three questions in neglect so great a salvation? If Christ had view of the fact that you and I once upon not come, they would have had no sin, but a time blindfolded Jesus; and once upon now they have no cloak for their sin ; and the a time, or here and now, are suffering from reason for this crisis and judgment, for this photophobia. condemnation lies in one stupendous fact, I. What is the nature?-2. What is the the Incarnation ; the manifestation of God's cause ?-3. What is the cure-of this terrible love in sending His Son into the world. disease of the soul? Since the Coming of Christ and the ex­ Now what is the nature of photophobia? hibition of God's love in a perfect human " Men love darkness rather than light, be­ life, in the light of that holiness and that cause their deeds are evil," and thus the love of the Father, and because men have fact of photophobia, of men hating the seen His face, human sin is no longer the light and loving the darkness, is patent to result of ignorance, but of deliberate choice all of us. No one who is engaged in what is and preference. The world's secret sins called " the cure of souls "-a beautiful are now set " in the light of His coun­ word-but knows that this is one of the tenance." distinguishing symptoms of a man who is 60 THE SOLITARY THRONE PHOTOPHOBIA 61 without Christ, and without hope, and uphold by all means their own precarious without God. position of authority, dignity, and wealth It was so in the days of Jesus. The histor­ under the Roman sovereignty, and to ical and experimental background of the suppress every movement that might story in the 3rd of chapter John is evidence possibly make the Romans jealous. And of it. They hated Jesus without cause. so they hated " the Light of the World." " He came unto His own, and His own With the Pharisees it was due to their received Him not." Once they led Him to refusal (at the bidding of one who was in the brow of the hill at Nazareth. Once their eyes only a layman from Nazareth) we read that "many walked no more with to acknowledge their own profound mis­ Him." And at last we read : "They all takes and ignorance, and to think over forsook Him and fled." And He turned, and again the prophecies to which Christ pointed with tears in His eyes, said : " Ye will not and the real meaning of the religion of come unto Me that ye might have life." Abraham, of which they were the orthodox The record is in the prophecy of Isaiah that representatives. In the case of the mass of "He was despised and rejected of men." the people, who cried, "Crucify Him I " The record in the Gospel is that they mocked it was due to their worldly pre-occupation Him, and spat upon Him, and disowned of mind and their stubborn nationalism, Him, and blindfolded Him. which made them entertain wild hopes, There is no tragedy more real and more and blinded them to the spiritual way of moving in all history, and in our own lives, redemption which Jesus kept on preaching than the deliberate rejection of Christ ; to them in spite of their hardness of heart. because it is due, not to any extraordinary Now these three classes of people are wickedness in the Jews, or the Romans, or still with us to-day. They crucifiedour Lord the people of New York, or the people of on Calvary nineteen hundred years ago, London, but to the ordinary motives of men. and they crucify Him afresh to-day. The In the case of the Sadducees, there was the spiritual pride of Annas ; the self-righteous­ family of Annas and Caiaphas ; their rejec­ ness of Caiaphas ; the love of Mammon in tion was due to selfish determination to Judas ; the secular cynicism of Pilate- 62 THE SOLITARY THRONE PHOTOPHOBIA 63 all these were there, and all these together of His divinity. The Jewish mob, when crucified Jesus Christ. they could not hide their faces, covered The enemies of Jesus to-day are not those His face, shutting out the light not from outside the Churches altogether. We who Jesus, but from their own hearts. And attempt to be spiritual physicians know so it is to-day. full well that photophobia is found in the There are three manifestations of Christ pews of our Churches ; and sometimes it is in the world which every one who is not of found in the case of those who stand in the the light fears, avoids, and tries to cover pulpit. It is found in our own hearts. We up. (1) You have the Christ of History, read : " They blindfolded Him." That was the " Light of the World "-Jesus. (2) You the climax in the career of those who loved have the revealed Word of God-Christ darkness rather than light. in the Old Testament, and in the clear Did it ever occur to you to ask yourself record of the Gospels. That Light has been why they blindfolded Jesus ? Was it translated into over nine hundred lan­ because His eyes were filled with such a guages, in order that in every speech and holy wonder at their unbelief ? Was it language, across every land and continent, because His eyes looked down on them with men, if they will, can see the face of Jesus. such compassion, and yet such condemna­ (3) . And there is the light of His Holy tion of their wilful ignorance, flashing with Catholic Church. " Ye are the light of the a light that smote their consciences like a world "-in spite of all our faults, and flame of fire? They could not bear to loolc divisions, and failures. into His face, and so, Mark tells us, No one can say that where there is one some began to spit upon Him, others single Christian who walks in the light, his covered His face and began to buffet Him. neighbours and friends cannot see, at least, Luke puts it very briefly. He says : " They a dim reflection of that light that never was blindfolded Him." on sea or land, covering the whole universe Their cowardice was only matched by with its glory. their hatred. They smote Him ; they This threefold light lighteth every man mocked Him ; they then asked for a proof that cometh into the world to-day. Christ, 64 THE SOLITARY THRONE PHOTOPHOBIA 65 the Bible, the Church, are in all lands, and the last edition of the EncycloprediaBritan­ before all eyes to-day. On the radio, on the nica, and read the story of Napoleon or front page of the newspapers, in the hands of Charlemagne ; and then turn to the utterly every colporteur, beside each cot in every inadequate article about Jesus Christ. hospital, on the foreign field-the Light of Turn to H. G. Wells' "History of the the World is Jesus. This Jesus has become World," and read his paragraph on Jesus an unescapable fact-the fact of Christ. Christ, and you will see that H. G. Wells, Jesus rises above all the peaks of human with all his literary genius, deliberately history, like Everest of the Himalayas, far blindfolds Jesus. above all the foot-hills and mountains. The same is true when unbelief blind­ There He stands, sovereign, supreme. folds the Bible. You and I have done it by Every man in any -land knows that who closing its covers, by preventing its message has ever read the life of Jesus. Yet men from reaching childhood, by omitting family have always been afraid, and, therefore, prayers, by abandoning it on the shelf, and unwilling to look Christ in the face. They by making it, as Mark Twain once defined try to escape the Jesus of history by declar­ it, a " classic which every one talks about, ing that the story is only a myth ; or they but no one reads." You try to escape the refuse to look at the full portrait of Christ living Christ by blindfolding Him in the in the Gospels ; they whittle away the only place where He can gaze at you, Gospels until there is only a small pro­ covering the Bible from the members of portion of them left, and say this is only your own household. history. Men blindfold Christ even in the pulpit, How many popular histories, encyclo­ or in the Press, and then when they have predias, and school text-books have blind­ blindfolded Him, it is so easy to mock His folded Jesus by an apologetic paragraph on prophetic office and Messianic glory, and " the Carpenter of Nazareth " or " the His claims to be very God of very God. Greatest Jew who ever lived," or "the Some preachers do not try to find out how Great Teacher of Galilee." These terms are great Jesus Christ is by studying the Gospels utterly inadequate to the subject. Tum to and the Epistles, but how small they can 5 66 THE SOLITARY THRONE PHOTOPHOBIA 67 make Him. They tell you to omit Colossians Saviour there is moral obliquity at the root and Revelation and Ephesians, where you of all refusal to accept Christ. This is per­ have the effulgence of His glory. They read fectly obvious when you remember that Mark's Gospel, but they do not turn over Jesus is "the Light of the World." To to the pages of John's Gospel because there refuse to accept the ideal which He presents they see too much of the brightness of His is naturally to prefer darkness rather than glory and the effulgence of His heavenly light. greatness. When men minimise Christ by To draw closer to Him even gropingly, any kind of critical process, instead of is to greet the Light, to hail the brightness magnifying Him, they strike Him in the of the morning. One of our most telling face. commentators on this Gospel passage, the Voltaire, Netzsche, Renan, Strauss German theologian, Lange, has this ob­ Paine, Ingersoll (and others like them i� servation: " As on the trees of the same mind and heart, although not in notoriety forest, all kinds of birds take shelter together outside the Church), and many who claim during the night ; but in the morning, as to be inside the Church, all agree together soon as the sun shoots his rays thither, first to blindfold Jesus before they deny some close their eyes and seek the darkest His Deity ; to hide His face before they retreat, while others shake their wings, and smite His glory. That kind of photophobia salute the sun with their songs ; so the is often found in the homes of Christians, appearing of Christ separates the lovers of in our children when they come back from the day from the lovers of the night, the University or High School. mingled till then in the mass of mankind." Now what is the cause of this tragic photo­ Where light is refused, photophobia sets in. phobia? John says it is not mental, but Paul says : " If our Gospel be hid it is hid moral ; it is not of the mind, but of the heart. to them that are lost, in whom the god of They hate the light, and they love the this world hath blinded the minds of them darkness " because their deeds are evil." which believe not, lest the light of the The Greek word is phaula-poor, paltry, glorious Gospel of Christ, Who is the image ugly, vulgar. According to our blessed of God, should shine into them." 88 THE SOLITARY THRONE PHOTO PHOBIA 69 If you are neglecting your morningwatch, India' and then to read the life of Chiang. if you are omitting your daily Bible study, Kai-Shek, the most prominent figure m if you are forsaking the assembling together China, who, when he saw the gleam leapt of the saints as the manner of some is, you toward it, and to realise the contrast. may be sure that all of these things are early Chiang Kia-Shek bowed down before Jesus symptoms of photophobia, and will end in as his Saviour and Lord. But the lowest spiritual blindness. among the outcaste Christians is greater On the other hand, if men draw near to than Gandhi, because they have come to the Light, God meets them. Erasmus the light, while he has deliberately_ blind­ wrote to Sir Thomas More about Plato, and folded Jesus although he follows Hun afar said : " Where such light as exists has been off. conscientiously used, more is sought, and Finally, we have the cure of photophobia. welcomed when it comes. Plato was like a We have it in the words of Jesus. "He man shut into a vault, running hither and that doeth the truth cometh to the light, thither, with his poor flickering taper, that his works may be made manifest that agonizing to get forth, and holding himself they have been wrought in God." Christ is o in readiness to make a spring f rward the the panacea for all the ills of humani�y. moment a door should open. But it never More light is the only cure for photophob1a. did. 'Not many wise are called.' Plato " In Him is no darkness at all." " If we had climbed a hill in the dark, and stood walk in the light as He is in the light, we calling to his companions below, ' Come on, have fellowship one with another, and the come on, this way lies the East ; I am ad­ Blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all . " vised we shall see the sun rise anon.' But sm. they never did. What a Christian Plato Dr. James Moffatt has a very fine transla­ would have made ! " Those were the words tion of my text which I will read to you : of Erasmus to Sir Thomas More. " Anyone whose pra?tices are con::upt You and I who are living in the twentieth loathes the light, and will not come out mto century, have only to read carefully the life it in case his actions are exposed; whereas, of Gandhi, the most prominent figure in �yone whose life is true, comes out into 71 70 THE SOLITARY THRONE PHOTOPHOBIA the light to make it plain that his actions able Pharisee. Those who seek find; to those have been divinely prompted." Tell me, who knock, the door is opened. I love the are you following the gleam, or are you words of Sankey's old hymn : trying to escape it by going back to the "The whole world was lost in the darkness of sin­ gloom ? Believe me, the principle of un­ The Light of the World is Jesus. Like sunshine at noonday His glory shone in: belief is not primarily intellectual, but The Light of the Wor Id is Jesus. " moral. When Jesus spoke to Nicodemus, it was It was when men came seeking Jesus, night in Jerusalem. The city had a popula­ when they drew near to the Light, that He tion of nearly a million people at Passover revealed the greatness of His loving heart. time-so Josephus tells us-in the days of Take two instances. One was when Christ our Lord. Jerusalem was a great city, with was a Babe resting on the bosom of His its outlying hamlets, and with all the evils mother Mary ; and the Wise Men came and of a great Oriental city. "Jerusalem which opened their treasures. I cannot help but spiritually is called Sodom, where also our believe that when they looked into those Lord was crucified." Many evil-doers were eyes they saw in them Heaven's welcome wandering abroad in the streets of the city, for the whole Near Eastern world which pursuing guilty aims that night. Many of to-day is coming nearer to Christ. Then them were victims of greed, or passion, or we read in John's Gospel of those unknown pride. But Nicodemus went through the Greeks, who said to Philip, "We would main highway, and along a side street, and see Jesus." And you read further on in thP up a narrow staircase, and he came to chapter : "Now is the judgment of this Jesus by night. This groping after the Light world ; now shall the prince of this world be was the promise of full enlightenment. It cast out "-the Greeks and all nations always is, as we missionaries on the foreigu coming unto Him, the Light of the World. field know ; and our hearts leap with joy We see Mary Magdalene at the Feast, and when some Nicodemus comes to us by night, Peter in the Hall, and the thief on the Cross, saying :" Sir, we would see Jesus," whether with all their sins, and all their shame, and it be a penitent publican or an irreproach- all their denials, but they were sincere in 72 THE SOLITARY THRONE PHOTOPHOBIA 73 their penitence, and they looked toward that doeth the truth cometh to the Light." the Light. " The path of the just shineth more and Whenever I read the story of a penitent more unto the perfect day." " Awake thou faith, I put in the margin this question : that sleepest, and rise from the dead, and " How small a gospel can contain the whole Christ shall give thee light." Cast off your Gospel ? " I think of him who looked photophobia. " And they shall see His face, simply to Jesus, the King of the Jews, con­ and His Name shall be in their foreheads ; scious of his own sin, the first penitent sin­ and there shall be no more night there, for ner to enter Paradise. " This day shalt thou the Lamb is the light thereof." be with Me in Paradise." Jesus always gives forgiveness and peace and joy to anyone who comes to the Light. An English poet, Henry Vaughan, has put what I have tried to say of Nicodemus in unforgettable lines : "Most blest believer he, Who in that land of darkness and blind eyes, Thy long expected healing wings could see, When Thou didst rise ; And (what can never more be done) Did at midnight speak with the Sun." Nicodemus at midnight spoke with the Sun of Righteousness Who was there with healing in His wings-was there for Nico­ demus. "To them that fear His Name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in His wings." Healing for all your hurts ; balmfor all your woes ; comfort for all your griefs ; light for all your darkness. " He IV The Glory of the Impossible

76 IV The Glory of the Impossible

J RECALL that it has been my privilege to speak on three occasions here at Keswick on this subject of the Evangelisa­ tion of the Moslems. In 1907 I spoke on the will of God for the Mohammedan world. In 19151 spokeofthefulnessoftime for the Mos­ lem world. And most of us then thought that there was the dawning of a new day in Turkey, but it proved to be a false dawn. In 1923 I spoke on the patience of God in the evangelisation of Mohammedan lands from the text: "Master, we have toiled all the night and have taken nothing. Neverthe­ less, at Thy word I will let down the nets." To-night our subject is the Glory qf the Impossible in Moslem Evangelisation. That verse in Psalm 72 : "He shall have dominion also (or reign) from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth," is one of the hardest passages in the Bible to believe. Unto men this is im­ possible, but with God all things are pos­ sible. For thirteen long centuries Moham- 77 78 THE SOLITARY THRONE THE GLORY OF THE IMPOSSIBLE 79 med-not Christ-has reigned from sea to It is, however, not in the realms of sea across Arabia. The history of Missions science or exploration that I am speaking ; in every land is the story of the achievement for it is in another realm that we see the of the impossible. Yet this one promise glory of the impossible-in Christian Mis­ taken literally means that Jesus Christ sions. Eleven men standing on Mount shall have dominion over all Arabia. This Olivet, ignorant, unlearned, feeble in faith, promise is repeated three times, in Exodus, faltering in trust-" when they saw Him in Zechariah, and in this Psalm. they worshipped Him, but some doubted." For thirteen centuries we have waited And to them came the great commission, for the fulfilment of this one promise. and in less than half a century they had Arabia has been penetrated, it has been accomplished the impossible, and covered unveiled ; but Arabia has not yet been the Roman Empire with the Name and the evangelised. The story of Arabian ex­ love and the power and the spirit of Jesus ploration, which is the glory not only of Christ. They remembered Christ's words : Denmark and France and of the Nether­ "All things are possible to him that be­ lands, but especially of Britain, is known lieveth." to every one. As Toyohiko Kagawa said : . Now when we turn to the Mohammedan " If you are willing to die for it there is world and its evangelisation, we face a task nothing you cannot accomplish." "Thou that is humanly impossible and supremely hast made Him a little lower than the difficult. I remember Gairdner, when he angels ; Thou has crowned Him with glory came to see me once in Cairo, struc1: the and honour and put all things under His table in his earnest way, and said : " This feet." In the story of exploration, men is an impossible possible problem ! " Think and women have been the incarnation of of the colossal dimensions of what we call an attempt to do the impossible " in the the Moslem world. Think of its ever­ strength which God supplies." expanding area ; think of the building of "So near is grandeur to our dust , mosques to-day in Paris, Berlin, and Lon­ So close is God to man, When Duty whispers low, 'Thou mu•t ,' don. Think of the baffling fact that Islam The youth replies, 'I can ! ' " is the only religion which has defeated 80 THE SOLITARY THRONE Tf!.E GLORY OF THE IMPOSSIBLE 81 Christianity and eclipsed it. Buddhism and problem ? Islam is not confined to the Hinduism have never done that ; but Mediterranean basin, nor to three Con­ Islam has utterly wiped out areas once tinents. It has crossed the seven seas, and Christian, and blotted out bishoprics and invaded all five continents. The Moslem churches where once they sang the glory of population of Africa is over fifty million ; the Triune God. of India, nearly eighty million ; of Java, Think of the categorical denial by the forty million ; of Dhina, between eight Mohammedans in their books and creeds and twelve million. It is found in every of all that makes Christianity Christian ; country in Asia with the exception, per­ of their arrogant defiance of Christ's mes­ haps, of Korea. It extends to South sengers and disciples by closing and keeping America where there are 250,000 Moham­ closed doors that were once open, and these medans ; and there are three and a half doors have been barred and bolted for million Moslems in south-east Europe. thirteen long centuries. Christ was born in Under the American flag, in the Philippine Bethlehem, and there, five times daily, Islands there were 587,000 Mohammedans. they hear the Moslem prayer-call. Its total is 250 millions of people bound But where Mohammed was born in Mecca together by one creed, by one type of no Christian has ever yet proclaimed the culture, and by one great defiance of the Gospel. Travellers have gone in and out, work of Christian Missions. but not one missionary has stood at the This great system eclipsed Christianity gates of Mecca to gain entrance and pro­ in Central Asia and North Africa from claim the Name of Christ. Think of the the seventh until the fourteenth century. hopes deferred and the hearts made sick The story of this conquest has been recently by massacres, martyrdoms, and deporta­ told by a Cambridge scholar, Dr. Laurence tions. Have you read the recent novel, E. Browne. Islam, he points out, is the " The Forty Days on Musa Dagh " ? There only great religion that came after Chris­ we have an epitome of what the Oriental tianity, and yet defeated and well-nigh Churches have gone through for centuries. destroyed it in Central Asia, in Arabia, What are the actual dimensions of this Persia, Syria, Egypt, North Africa, and 6 82 THE SOLITARY THRONE THE GLORY OF THE IMPOSSIBLE 83 even in Palestine, the land of its birth. pride of language and culture. In this Churches by the hundreds, we might say by religion is all the strength of Jewish fana­ the thousands, became mosques ; bishop­ ticism to win proselytes. In this religion rics became provinces that paid tribute. is all the strength of universalism in its The new Arab civilisation wrote its Moham­ outlook and conquest borrowed from medan palimpsest over the old Christian Christianity. . tradition. Mohammed's name was exalted Think of the strength of its creed, so above every other name. defiant, so penetrating ; the very words Armenians, Nestorians, Syrians, Copts, sound like a battle-cry. No one who and Berbers were persecuted century after has ever heard them from a mosque in century, and passed over to Islam until Cairo, or in Arabia, or on the borders of the remnant of the faithful became like Afghanistan, can ever forget them. Think Samson, with eyes blinded, grinding in of the solidarity of its fellowship. I visited the prison-house of the Philistines. That Beira, in Portuguese East Africa, in 1925 ; is the tragic history of the Oriental Churches. there boys were being taught, and were But there is always in that history of the collecting their coppers to put into a box Church the glory of the impossible-the to pay for an aeroplane to be used by faithful remnant. the Riffs of Morocco against the French in Then, again, the impossibility of this a holy war. You cannot parallel that in problem appears when we ask what Islam Buddhism, or Confucianism, or Hinduism. really is. A compact system of anti­ Think of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Christian theism ; a threefold cord not They meet every year in a barren valley, easily broken ; social ideals, political power, with scarcely a tent to cover them, and in a and religious convictions twisted together temperature of a hundred degrees in the until only the power of God can untwist shade ; and they come from every part of and unravel that which Lord Curzon called the Moslem world. China sends pilgrims to " not a State Church, but something far Mecca, and every Chinese pilgrim spends worse, a 'Church State'." In this religion between eight and nine hundred dollars is all the strength of the Arabian pagan for his journey. 84 THE SOLITARY THRONE THE GLORY OF THE IMPOSSIBLE 85 It has meant not only the eclipse of liest of British missionaries, Miss Lilias the Churches, but of the Christ. His Incar­ Trotter, of North Africa, wrote just before nation, His Atonement, His Resurrection, her death in Algeria ; "We who are engaged His finality as Lord and Saviour, are con­ in Moslem work live in a land of blighted tradicted by the Koran. Sir William Muir, promises. That is a fact that none of us the great British administrator, at the close who love its people best can deny ; and the of his four-volume Life of the Prophet, says deadly heart-sickness of hope deferred, in the last paragraph : " It is my conviction sometimes makes even the most optimistic that the sword of Mohammed and the of us almost despair of seeing abiding Koran are the most fatal enemies of civilis­ fruitage to the work." She was not a ation, liberty, and truth, which the world pessimist. A pessimist is a man who blows has yet known." And Islamic propaganda out the candle to see how dark it is. She has not ceased ; it has entered the West. was living in the light of God ; she was The Ahmediyya sect have built mosques feeding on the promises of God, with the in Berlin, London, and Chicago, and they light of Christ in her very soul. She faced are circulating new lives of Mohammed reality. And we need once again to face in English, Turkish, Albanian, Polish, the glory of this impossible task. And as Italian, Javanese, Malay, Dutch, Chinese, God did years ago, so now again He will Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, and other languages. raise up men and women who will go forth In their publications catalogue they claim to this great conflict, conscious that they to have published seven million pages of have the strength of God and the power this literature in the last few years. of God with them. Not only is this religion defiant of Look at the actual situation. I do not Christianity in its creed and propaganda, say that there are no results. I have seen but down at the centre of it is the old the work of God's Spirit among the Mo­ law of apostasy, which is still in force in hammedans in Java. I have seen the public many lands, and which has made visible baptism of twenty-two adult Mohammedans results meagre ; the battle for the truth is in St. Luke's Church, Isfahan. I have seen a fight against the wall. One of the saint- Mohammedans in Arabia who had sur- 86 THE SOLITARY THRONE THE GLORY OF THE IMPOSSIBLE 87 rendered all for Christ, and who faced life Tripoli to keep lonely vigil ; and none in with nothing, no friends, no home, no all westernArabia ; and three little stations hope-their one hope was in Christ Who in all Central Asia ; with a few waiting had died for them. wistfully on the borders of Afghanistan, Yet look at the actual situation. Think while some have penetrated and returned. of the thin red line, Christ's vanguard, His Yet none of them would exchange places lonely sentinels. Egypt has had eighty with us because they are confident of the years of unremitting sacrificial toil by the issue. They see the invisible, they lay hold of the intangible, they hear the inaudible no�lest o_f i_nen and women of the Presby­ tenan M1ss10n and the Church Missionary voices. There is no great ingathering, but Society, and yet there are scarcely three they know that the promises of God are hundred Moslems converts in all Egypt sure, and they know that He shall yet have to-day, from Alexandria to Khartoum. In dominion from sea to sea. With men this Arabia forty years of pioneer effort against problem of Islam seems impossible, but not with God. p�ejudice, an� loneliness, and a deadly chmate-hosp1tals, schools, evangelism, toil The Roman Catholic Church published and tears and blood-and all the visible a striking book recently. I read it with results are a little handful of Christians I great interest. It was entitled, " The And ye� not one of them would change Psychology of Conversion." These learned pla?es with any one of ,:ou ; they are holding missionaries and-whatever else we may on m the glory of the rmpossible. say of them-devoted missionaries, had Missionary work in Turkey is far more chapters on the psychology of all the non­ difficult than it was twenty-five years ago. Christian religions, and the approach of the North Africa, which once boasted Athan­ Gospel message. I turned to the last chap­ asius, Augustine, Cyprian, Tertullian, ter, it was entitled, " Le bloc inconvertisable t�ousands of churches and scores of bishop­ -Jes M usulmans ! " Thank God, the Pro­ ncs, now counts scarcely more than a little testants have never used that word in group of small organised Christian Churches. regard to the Mohammedan world! They There is not a missionary to-day in all have never lost faith in God since the day of 88 THE SOLITARY THRONE THE GLORY OF THE IMPOSSIB LE 89 Raymund Lull, and Henry Martin, and once the Book becomes a Gospel. Christians Canon Gairdner, and the other heroes of find the Cross the centre of their religion. the Cross. Bible circulation is our Pro­ In sorrow they sing : ' Simply to Thy Cross testant glory. Like dynamite that Word I cling.' When they pass through the valley of God has been used to blast the rock of of the shadow of death they sing : ' Hold Islam to pieces. Thou Thy Cross before my closing eyes.' We hear of the veil disappearing in The Cross is the place of victory. If I want Turkey, and being forbidden in Persia, my sin conquered, if I want to get it be­ and of the rights of womanhood being neath my feet, I must find Christ first upon recognised. All this is another illustration the Cross. I say it reverently, Christ Him­ of the power of God's Word. Doors once self could not do it but for the Cross. It barred and bolted are now opening. Ibn was expedient for one Man to die for the Saood has repeatedly invited medical mis­ people. He has put away sin by the sacrifice sionaries to visit his capital. Missionaries of Himself. ' He only could unlock the gates have crossed over into Afghanistan, and of Heaven and let us in.' Social reform could preached the Gospel to the Mullahs of Herat. not do it ; ethical sermons could not do it. That is the glory of the impossible. Only Christ on the Cross can forgive and We say Afghanistan is closed, and from conquer sin in the human heart." All this within comes this voice. Let me read to you in a chapter on Christianity by an Afghan what an educated Afghan says in a book, Mohammedan ! " Lights of Asia," in which he writes on We see those closed doors. Do we realise Christianity and other religions. He says : that the Bible penetrates, that literature " Christianity centres in the Cross. The penetrates, that God's Spirit penetrates? Cross is the centre of all revelation. Have To-day we see across the great Mohamme­ you ever thought what the Bible would be dan world great darkness. But the pent-up without the Cross? Take the Cross out of energies of unanswered prayer ; the prayers this Book, and you will not be able to recog­ of His saints now before His throne ; the nise it. The Old Testament without the faith of those who saw the invisible before Cross is lost. Put the Cross back, and at they fell asleep ; the visions of the noble 90 THE SOLITARY THRONE THE GLORY OF THE IMPOSSIBLE 91 army of martyrs, from Raymund Lull, and yet have dominion from sea to sea, and from Henry Martin, and William Borden-all the river unto the ends of the earth. If these are creative forces which God is now you want a task worthy of your powers, if using to accomplish the impossible. It is you want a real apostolic succession, I daybreak, not sunset in the Moslem world. appeal to you to put your life on the altar The mosque of Santa Sophia no longer hears for this most difficult of all missionary Muezzin's cry ; it has become the problems, and to have the patience of the museum of the new Turkish Goveniment, saints, and the faith of the martyrs, and and every one who passes through it sees the endurance of those who see the in­ in those glorious mosaics, where the plaster visible. has been removed, the story of the Gospel, the baptism of Jesus, the Crucifixion of Jesus, and the Resurrection of Jesus, por­ trayed in marble by the early Christians, and now made visible by a secular govern­ ment. Those who visit the old mosque at Damascus can see these words inscribed : " Thy Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom, and Thy dominion from generation to generation." There is only one thing that is impossible-it is impossible for God to lie. His promises are sure. "Uplifted are the gates of brass, The bars of iron yield, To let the King of glory pass . The Cross is in the field." That Cross has never been defeated, because it itself was the defeat of sin, and death, and hell. He Who hung on it will The Hinterland of the Soul

93 V The Hinterland of the Soul I WANT to show how hard it is for you and me, for a Salvation Army officer, or a Bishop of the Church of England, or a narrow, proud Presbyterian, to be freed from all those things that bin:d us, and to enter into the boundless heritage of Christianity. This challenge of King Ahab : " Know ye that Ramoth-gilead is ours, and we be still, and take it not out of the hand of the king of Syria ? " (I Kings 22. 3), and the words of Paul the Apostle : " All things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come ; all are yours " (I Cor. 3. 21, 22), have nothing whatever in common, except that both of these men were imperial in their thinking. Ahab thought of his hinterland on the borders of Gad, overrun by the enemies of Israel. His statement was perfectly true. Ramoth­ gilead was included in the promise of God to Abraham, in the division of the land by 95 96 THE SOLITARY THRONE THE HINTERLAND OF THE SOUL 97 Moses, and in the establishment of this city the British, when they took Aden in of refuge. Although Ahab was killed in 1837, and later Singapore ; the French battle, his son Joram captured Ramoth, at Algiers in 1830 ; the Dutch at Cape­ and the Jews to-day on the front page of town ; Cecil Rhodes dreaming his dreams the newspapers, are claiming that very city at Johannesburg. And Mussolini planting as their own. the Italian flag on the hills at Addis Paul thought of the spiritual heritage Ababa. Now such conquests and such of those who were in Christ Jesus, of exploitations are mostly morally inde­ their boundless possessions as Christian fensible. But Paul summons us here to imperialists ; and he said that all Christian spiritual imperialism, and neither he, nor teachers, with all their gifts and talents, of the Christian hymn-book which we use are the world of Paul's day, of the whole ashamed of using a military vocabulary. Roman Empire, of things present and things Of all the forms of Pacifism, Spiritual to come, of death itself-they were the Pacifism is the most despicable. "For we possession of the Christian. wrestle not against flesh and blood, but This hinterland of the soul is the little­ against the rulers of the darkness of this known, untravelled land of spiritual ex­ world, against the principalities and perience ; it is the vast and undeveloped powers " that conspire to keep us out of territory which Christ has gained for us by our God-given heritage, the possession His death and resurrection, and which is which Christ has won for us on Calvary. our common spiritual heritage. Like the Therefore we must fight if we would reign. hinterlands in the history of imperialism, "Increase my courage, Lord. they await pioneers and empire builders !'Ii bear the toil, endure the pain , to pour their hidden wealth down to the Supported by Thy Word ." coast. Just two questions. What is the hinter­ You remember the story of European land of the soul ? What is the area, what imperialism in its four chapters, at least are the boundaries of our spiritual pos­ our youth remembers it-of discovery, sessions ? And the second question : Does exploration, exploitation, and possession- it really all belong to you ? The boundaries 7 98 THE SOLITARY THRONE THE HINTERLAND OF THE SOUL 99 Paul gives us in a long inventory; and after other, "I am a Low Church Anglican ;" giving the inventory, Paul gives us the title­ another, " I belong to the Salvation Army ;" deeds to our vast inheritance, namely, another, " I am a Friend." Now, none of "Ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." those who use those phrases in an exclusive " All these are yours, because ye are sense have ever realised the greatness of Christ's, and Christ is God's." Now, leaving their inheritance. out the title-deeds, let us take a survey of We forget that the smaller the hinter­ our possessions. land the smaller our resources. The smaller The sovereignty of God the Father is the the diameter of your brother-love, the corner-stone of all property rights in the smaller the circumference of your spiritual universe ; the redemption in Jesus Christ power. But, as the Psalmist says, we shall confers on those who have received the " run the way of God's commandments adoption, the glory of their inheritance. when He shall have enlarged our hearts." They sing : Just think of that phrase, and what it "My Father is rich in houses and lands, means ; you can meditate on it, and it gets He holds all the wealth of the world in His bigger and bigger as you think of it. " All hands ; Of jewels and diamonds, of silver and gold, are yours." His coffers are full ; He has riches untold." Paul, the Roman citizen, educated at Tarsus, learned in all the learning of the I am the child of a King. Alas, most of Jewish Talmud, with an imperial outlook. us have never realised our possessions ! Apollos, a Greek, Hellenist, Alexandrian. Most of us live on the narrow coast, and we Peter, a Jew of the Jews, a fisherman who have never ventured inland ; we are afraid, spent three years in the greatest Theological we are timid, we are sectional, we are Seminary ever founded, on the shores of the parochial, we are sectarian souls, poverty­ Lake of Galilee, sleeping with the Master in stricken, emaciated weaklings. One says, the boat, who was with Him face to face " I am a Presbyterian ;" another, " I am a through those years. All these are yours. Calvinist ;" another, " I am a Methodist ;" Now the impression we receive of a man's another, " I am a Fundamentalist ;" an- spiritual wealth or poverty depends en- 100 THE SOLITARY THRONE THE HINTERLAND OF THi SouL 101 tirely upon the area which he keeps culti­ there is only one chapter in Obadiah.) vated in the garden of his soul. Only Christ These men and women have brought can give magnanimity and largeness of unoccupied territory into cultivation. heart. Only Christ is the inexhaustible They have sunk hidden shafts, and found fountain of tolerance, love, and sympathy. new lodes of wealth. Perchance Dr. Jowett Only Christ can endow us with our common gave them the vocabulary of pure spiritual inheritance in the holy Catholic Church of English. Dr. Alexander Why:e t�ught which He alone is the Head. them the exceeding sinfulness of sm. Bishop Again and again we meet in every walk Phillips Brooks led them to a new discovery of life, and in our friendly circles, men of the sheer beauty of holiness. Toyohika and women who have no better coast-lines Kagawa was their teacher in the school of than we have, and yet who seem to have far sacrifice for Christ. And Bishop Lancelot greater reserves, and larger horizons, and Andrewes taught them how to pray. much ampler resources of power. If you To possess your possessions does not have shaken hands with Moody, as I have, depend on circumstances or natural talen� ; and if you have looked into his eyes, you it depends on your will. " Whosoever wiU know you have seen a man of spiritual may enter in." John Bunyan had no ad­ resources. The same was true of Charles vantages, except that he was arrested and Spurgeon, or to speak of living men, John put in jail ; and when he was in Bedfo�d R. Mott and Robert E. Speer. There is a Jail he travelled all the way to the Celes�1al largeness and a wideness of horizon about City, and gave us a guide-boo�, than which their spiritual life that become the envy of there is none better. Luther m the Wart­ those of us who are following afar off. burg translated the Bible into such house­ When we seek the reason for this great hold German that he led captive a whole wealth of personality, we find it to be none nation to the feet of Jesus Christ. Such other than this : These men and women heroic souls not only explore new territory, have obeyed the remarkable words of but they write the guide-books for other Obadiah and " possessed their possessions." pilgrims to the City of God. (You can easily find the words, because All of you know that common word 102 THE SOLITARY THRONE THE HINTERLAND OF THE SOU L 103 "Baedeker." A German scholar first wait on God what a saint you could be, if thought of writing guide-books for all you could �aster even these seven little countries and places ; and there was a time Baedekers of the soul. when there were no better guide-books the than Or tum to our hymn-books. All our Baedekers. What a shelf we ar these have of great hymns e the result of spirit�al Baedekers of the soul! Bishop drewes' An­ adventures, the bold ascent, the mountam- great book of " Private Devotion has no " top experience, the ascent up Everest equal in the realm of prayer. Thomas a Kempis on of men like Heber, Faber, Wesley, New­ " The Imitation of Christ " has no equal to make man, Isaac Watts, and George Matheson, us home-sick for Heaven. or women like Frances Ridley Havergal, John Cordelier, the great Roman Catholic found their way to the City of God, mystic, wrote a who little handbook, " The left a record of their mountaineering. Pathway of Wisdom," and which I would not hymn-book to believe once again in the myself like to lose from my ar ar libr y. Ch les One needs only to study the pages of !he Gordon's " Letters to his Sisters," was when he Holy Catholic Church. The Presbytenan engaged in a campaign of blood fire in Khartoum, and hymn-book has a very old hymn by Andrew is one of the strongest of Crete, and it is my favourite hymn books of devotion you can read. " Tongue Arthur's "Christian, dost thou see them of Fire " still stirs a fever in On the holy ground ?" blood of the age. Forbes Robinson's " Letters to his Fri It is one of the greatest hymns dealin� with ends," to which someone intro­ duced ar temptation. Some of these hymns shr our me, opens extraordin y new of other-worldliness, vistas souls because they mount upwards into the _ and the patience of the samts. And then there hinterland. _ is that priceless you say : " I have often read these little book-to be had for sixpence where-" any­ books." Yes, and you have done exactly The Practice of the Presence God," by Brother of what the impecunious world-traveller does; Lawrence. He was a scullion in a monastery. the trick of the American stay-at-home, With those books who sends to Europe and secures hotel on our book-shelves, and taking time to labels, and pastes them on a suitcase that 104 THE SOLITARY THRONE THE HINTERLAND OF THE SOUL 105 hasnever left New York harbour ! It is not great characters of the past, but the future enough to possess your Baedeker. The itself is ours too. All things are yours. only way to follow these saints of God is "The world to come." What did he mean ? to go into the highlands yourself, to ex­ Although in one sense the future belongs to plore its secrets, to unearth its treasures, everybody ; in another sense it belongs to dare to leave the coast. Because all only to those who are in Jesus Christ. things are yours when you cross the old In the firstcentury the future belonged, not frontiers and press beyond your parochial to the men who thought that Paul was a barriers. fool, but to Paul the Apostle. How suggestive is the thought of the In the thirteenth century the future Apostle that each of us may supplement belonged not to those powerful bishops and our own narrow lives, and enrich them by Popes who did their utmost to restrain and possessing the immortal parts of every great silence St. Francis of Assisi and Raymund and noble life that has ever lived ! Even Lull, but to them. · the mere contemplation of the great mo­ In the sixteenth century the future ments of the past produce enlargement belongoo to MaftinLuther and John Calvin, of the soul. it did not belong to His Holiness the Pope. One has only to compare the mental In the eighteenth century the future outlook of the reader of one local daily belonged to John Wesley ; it did not belong newspaper with that of the man who can to those influential ecclesiastics who sit down any day he chooses in a great crowded him out of thtir churches and library, and hold communion with the forced him, against his own inclinations, intellectual life of all the ages. As Emerson to preach in the open fields. Now to whom says: does the future of the twentieth century "I am the owner of the spheres, belong save to those Christians who are Of the seven stars and the solar years, already looking beyond the horizon, who Of Cresar's hand , and Plato's brain , can read the signs of the times, and who Of Lord Christ 's heart, and Shakespeare's strain ." makes bold adventures for God ? Now, according to Paul, not only the That brings us to our second question. 106 THE SOLITARY THRONE THE HINTERLAND OF THE SOU L 107 To whom does all this vast hinterland and Papini and Spurgeon and William belong ? To whom else than to you ? Booth-we do not belong to them ; no, " All things are yours." " Jesus Christ the they belong to us. Every faithful minister same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." His profits the whole Church ; and every promises, His power, His presence, His member of the Church may, and ought to, Spirit. As Neander well says : "The derive benefit from the teachings of all. sovereignty over the world was indeed It is thus our minds are expanded beyond conferred on man in his original estate. mere party limits and party cries into a But this being lost through sin, was true catholicity. restored again by redemption. (' Ye are "For the love of God is broader Christ's, and Christ is God's.') The spirit Than the measure of man's mind. which is bestowed on Christians carries in And the heart of the Eternal itself a principle which everything must Is most wonderfully kind . " eventually obey, and which will subjugate At the great Conferences at Oxford and the world ever more and more, until at last Edinburgh, attempts were made to weld the promise, that ' the meek shall inherit and bind together all those who love the the earth ' is fulfilled, and the world has Lord Jesus Christ so that no longer will it become the theatre of the divine kingdom." be ridiculous, but literally true when we Until He shall reign from sea to sea, from sing : the river unto the ends of the earth-until "We are not divided ; all one body we .... every knee shall bow, of things in Heaven, "Like a mighty army, moves the Church of God ." and on earth, and under the earth, and The declaration " All is yours " also every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ promises the world to Christians, pre­ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. eminently in this sense, that all secular " All things are yours." What does it art and all the sciences help to furnish mean? All true Christian teachers of every mortar for building the temple of God. name-Paul and Apollos and Cephas and Christians are not called to leave the world, Wesley and Phillips Brooks and Cardinal or to curse the world, or to ignore the world, Newman and Barth and Brunner and Pascal but to overcome the world, and to rule the 108 THE SOLITARY THRONE THE HINTERLAND OF THE SOUL 109 world for God. Music, painting, sculpture, our title deed. " I am come that ye might architecture, all the fine arts, they were have life, and that ye might have it more given by God from the beginning of the abundantly." The Christian life has four creation to be used for the glory of God. dimensions-length, breadth, height, and Any of you who have ever read the depth. Like the love of God, it takes " all history of music, or painting, or sculpture, the saints " to measure it. For the Son of or architecture, will say, as a great artist Man is Lord of all. Remember Peter's said to me : " Every one of the fine arts challenge to near-sighted Christians. He have laid their finest tributes at the feet of himself suffered at first from parochialism Jesus Christ." The world is only a scaffold­ and narrowness of heart until he had the ing that will be broken up when it has served threefold vision on the housetop at Joppa, its end in assisting to construct God's and then his heart was enlarged, and he felt temple and throne for Jesus Christ. the growing-pains of his soul, when he I saw a lettet from the Bishop of Natal shook hands with Cornelius, and bridged (Bishop Hamilton Baynes) many years ago, the chasm between the two races, the Jew when I was in South Africa. He wrote these and the Gentile. Afterwards he wrote to words: "I am ready to hope and believe that the poor. near-sighted Christians : " Add a Church which has an imperial outlook, a to your faith, virtue ; and to virtue, know­ world-wide plan, and a sure hope of peace ledge ; and to knowledge, self-control ; and among the nations of the world, may awaken to self-control, patience ; and to patience, a response among the people of England godliness ; and to godliness, kindness ; and which can never be evoked by a merely to kindness, love." personal and parochial religion which ex­ All this means a big-souled enterprise, presses itself in soup-kitchens and tracts." an heroic effort; it means the conquest of Soup-kitchens and tracts are good things, the unoccupied hinterland. It means the but surely we need to have a larger horizon appropriation of its riches and resources. of the. power of the Church and of Christ Ahab said: " Why do we sit still ? " You its head. are to be your own Livingstone. You are Christ's promise is our Magna Charta, to be your own Cecil Rhodes. You are 111 110 THE SOLITARY THRONE THE HINTERLAND OF THE SOUL to be your own spiritual empire builders. great adventure with God. Forward, march 1 For " all things are yours." Listen to Edwin Put on the whole armour of God-girdle, Markham's trumpet call helmet, breastplate, shield, sandals, sword. Then close ranks, every one who loves the "Are you sheltered, curled up, and content By the world's warm fire? Lord Jesus Christ, and possess the land ; Then I say, that your soul is in danger I "for all things are yours, and ye are The sons of the light, they are down with Christ's, and Christ is God's. " God in the mire, God in the manger. So rouse from your perilous ease ; To your sword and your shield ; Your ease is the ease of the cattle. Hark I Hark I where bugles are calling Out to some battle !" Why do we sit still ? Why are so many people in our Churches content with a smug self-satisfaction. " Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove ! " " Dear Lord, and shall we ever live, at this poor dying rate ? " " Ramoth-gilead is ours." The whole Land of Promise is ours. All things are yours. Claim them now. All the depth of the riches of love in Jesus Christ ! � May God give you here at Keswick, and give me, largeness of heart in all our ecclesi­ astical borders. Let us go up and possess the land. For the path of eternal wisdom in all creation is growth by sacrifice and service. Let this Keswick Convention date the commencement of your expedition, the 1::he Solitary 1::hrone

HIS book is not to be T judged by its size. It is crammed full of good things. It is like a bugle-call to battle, but it is more. In arresting and picturesque language it sets forth the reasons why men should bestir themselves for the honour of the King of kings. Dr. Zwemer has covered a vast amount of ground, and has laid under tribute a multitude of facts which illustrate the hope­ fulness of the task which engages the attention of the Christian Church and deepens the con­ viction that the Christ of God shall yet wear the crown of universal Uaminion.