The Preeminence of Christianity

“Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.” — John vi. 68.

It seems from the Bible story that at one time — and no doubt at many times besides — many of Christ’s disciples went back and walked no more with Him. Then Jesus turned to the twelve and said, “Will ye also go away?” And Simon Peter answered, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.” It appears almost as if these impetuous words really showed a novel feeling in the mind of Peter. It seems as if, constantly keeping company with Jesus, it never had occurred to him to think of separation. All of a sudden the retreating crowd and Jesus’ question put that thought before him; and then he became aware that Christ had grown to be absolutely necessary to him. He could not live without Him. There was no substitute conceivable, no other that could do for him that which his Lord was doing every day. And this sudden, almost surprised conviction breaks out in the strong words, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.”

If this be all true, then we are sure that afterwards Peter’s firm hold upon Christ must have been firmer than ever. After he had discovered how indispensable his Saviour was, after he had realized that nobody could take that Saviour’s place to him, his faith must have had a new assurance in it. That moment’s recollection must have made his denial harder and his remorse more bitter and his return more eager. For there is always a sort of assurance of a thing’s value which comes from the perception of that thing’s indispensableness. When we find that nothing else can do what one power has hopefully undertaken, and are fully convinced that what that power has undertaken is something which must be done, it always strengthens our belief in that power’s capacity to do it. Let me pass in this way from the special experience of St. Peter to the law which I wish to apply to religion generally to-day.

If any army learns to believe not merely that its general is brave, but that he is the only man in all the land who can lead them on to victory, they will rally round him all the more enthusiastically. It is one of the strongest arguments for the most permanent and universal human institutions that they have no substitutes. Nothing can take their place. Men grow impatient of government, and they attempt to give it up and try to live in anarchy. Men are dissatisfied with the family and they throw it aside for the community. They stand aside and wait — those two great necessities, the family and government — sure that men cannot do without them. They stand and wait in their quiet dignity, till men too find how necessary they are and come to them, and bring them back in honor, and recrown and rethrone them and are loyal to them with a new loyalty.

I want to-day to plead this same argument for religion. Is it true that for religion there is no substitute, that there are certain things which men must always hold essential which she can do, and which she only can do? If there are — if we are sure that for eternally necessary works she has no substitute, if all who offer themselves to take her place are evidently insufificient — then we are sure of her, sure that however her throne may seem dishonored, — nay, though sometimes it may seem as if men were ready to banish her out of the world, still and forever she is queen and must come back to a sceptre that none but she can wield. This is no abstract argument about the prospects of religion in the world’s future. It comes close to men’s experiences. It has helped many of us when the interests of the faith we loved seemed dark. It is capable of giving strength to many a soul whose confidence in religion as a saving power is shaken by some loud, temporary phenomena of irreligiousness. It makes such a soul strong to know that for the power which men seem to despise there is no substitute, that it and it alone can do for man those highest and most precious things which it is inconceivable that man should ever cease to desire.

But we must spend a few moments first in definitions, that we may be sure we know of what we are talking. What is religion, and what is it that religion undertakes to do? I answer to the first question that religion is the force which inspires man’s actions by a love for God in gratitude for what God has done for him. Service of God out of a grateful love of God — that is religion. “We love Him because He first loved us,” and “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” That is religion. “Ah, yes,” you say, perhaps — if you have caught the new talk which is very current nowadays — “yes, that is the Christian religion, that is Christianity, but Christianity is not the only religion. Religion is larger than Christianity.” There may be a religion without a Christ, — nay, some people are beginning to say — a little bewilderingly — there may be a religion without a God; yet still I claim that in these two great Christian utterances we have the fundamental truth of what religion is. I own in full the spiritual power which there is in every attempt of heathenism after God, but though there be other religions than the Christian, surely the full notion of religion is not to be gathered out of their imperfection, but out of the more perfect faith which does what they try to do and is what they try to be. If a man asks me what 4 tree is, I will not send him to a stunted, frost-bitten bush high up Mount Washington, but to the oak or elm which under the best conditions has opened the tree life into fullest glory. If any one asks me what a man is, I will not show him a Kaffir or a Hottentot, but the best specimen of manhood which Europe or America can bring. And yet the mountain shrub is certainly a tree, and the Hottentot is certainly a man. So if anybody asks me what religion is, I will not point to Mohammedanism nor to Buddhism, though they surely are rehgions; I will go to Christianity and in its central motive take out the real central force of all religion. Christianity sets men to trying to do God’s will because of the Redemption which God in Christ gave them from the Cross. Religion is the service of God out of grateful love for what God has done for us.

And now what does this religious motive try to do? Again, there cannot be a doubt about the answer. The effort of religion is to perfect the man, to bring this rich and manifold life of man’s in every part of it out to its perfectness. There cannot be a doubt but that that is her mission as she comes down with her great, new, strong force. When I speak of religion, as I said just now, I speak of Christianity. Christianity comes to you — a man with great, strong powers, with a great, strong nature, half-awakened, working away vehemently in some parts of it, torpid and dead, entirely unconscious of itself in other parts of it — the religion of Christ comes to you and says, “See, what I have to show you! “It holds up the Cross and says, “God loved you so that He did that for you to save you from your sins and bring you back to Himself. See how He plans for you. See how He suffers for you. See how He loves you. Now, to thank Him and to show Him that you love Him in answer, do His will. Here is all righteousness, all goodness; be and do all this! “What is Christianity aiming at when it does that? You say, the forgiveness of your sins. No, the forgiveness of your sins is not her end; it is only her beginning. She would give nothing to have you forgiven and cleansed, if you still remained unchanged and undeveloped. You say it is to get you into heaven, — talking about heaven as if it were a place beyond the stars. But no, religion is not set upon places, she is not busied with the mere geography of the universe. She would not care for you in heaven if you were still in heaven what you are here upon the earth, all open and active upon the sensual side of you, all closed and dead upon the spiritual side. No, there is only one thing worthy of this power of religion to attempt, and that is the thorough perfection of your soul. With a serene ambition she sets her eye upon that. She sees you — you a man or woman engaged here in common worldly things called by a common worldly name, putting out the exertion of a few of the simplest, perhaps the lowest powers, — she sees you holding within yourself all the time immense capacities, untouched powers, springs all wrapped up tight, clinging with the rust that is upon their unused coils, passions, desires, hopes, fears, capacities of loving, doing, suffering — all these this eye of Christianity sees waiting inside of your life and character. Can you conceive of Michael Angelo waiting outside a house in which were paints and brushes and great walls to paint on, gazing into the window and saying,” If I were only in there I would make a picture.” So Christianity looks in on your nature and says,” If I were only in there I would make a man. I would bring that being to his perfection. I would make him come up to and fill out his very best, spiritually, intellectually — yea, physically — if I could take po?

session of him and set him to loving God because God first loved him,” This is her one object. She will sacrifice everything to this. She will make the man suffer very often, but she will fulfil his life; she will make him perfect, make him like God by bringing him into God’s kingdom.

That is the end at which religion aims. Is such an end desirable? To ask the question is to answer it, I think. I take it for the sign of a lofty and intelligent man, indeed of a real and true and healthy man, that he is dissatisfied and anxious if he sees anything falling short of its complete self, of the best that it might be, whether it be a state or a plant, a statue or a character. Everything desires and seeks its highest. A true man is conscious of pain when he sees anything miss its highest. Most of all when that thing is man, the being capable of the best perfection, the being for whose perfection everything else is laboring. We must reconstruct our thoughts of the purposes of everything in the world before the perfection of human character, the making of the perfect man can cease to seem the aim of all things, “the consummation most devoutly to be wished” of all of which we can conceive. One often wonders how it seems to many of the men who love and honor their humanity and yet who seem willing to see religion pass away as a power among men, whether sometimes there does not come a misgiving and a fear, lest if it went, there should be some parts of this humanity of ours which would no longer find any true culture, and so the hope and prospect of the perfect man be lost forever.

This, then, is the power of religion. The reHgious man is he who does right because it is the will of a God to whom he owes so much that all which he can render in return is but a mere acknowledgment, not a repayment of the blessing for which he is thankful. Here is a force of life that knows no limit short of the infinite limit of what God has done for man. It never can exhaust itself till man has paid back the unpayable debt of God’s salvation. It reaches every part of his nature and tries to conform it perfectly to the will of God, — an endless spiritual force attempting the vast spiritual task. Let me see this spiritual force at work and I know just what is going on. I see a religious man, and how clear it is! Here is a man who knows that God loves him That has been made clear to him with all the emphasis of the suffering of Christ. He is thoroughly grateful for that love. His gratitude is at the root of every act he does. And in that life of service, out of gratitude the fulness of his character, the completeness of his humanity, is being gradually accomplished.

Now take the question with which we started. This is what religion tries to do. This is the sort of life that religion as a force and rule of life creates. And now is there any other force beside religion which can make for a man such a life as shall bring him completely to his best? Is there any substitute for religion? Can any other motive power besides gratitude to God thoroughly regulate the life and fierfect the character?

As I look around among men I find really two attempted substitutes for religion. When men have got to be more than brutes, when they have learned that their passions must be restrained and that they must have some regulating power of their lives, I seem to see two forces or impulses which to many men appear to be quite enough, even without a grateful, humble love of God, to do the work of life with. One of these forces is expediency and the other is honor. These are the two forces that men try to put in the place of religion. Let us look at them a moment and see if they are fit to do her work.

I. Look first at expediency as a motive of good living and a means of human development. We all know how frequently it appears and what power it very often has. We are told that a good life is the best life, the safest and the happiest. “If you do what is wrong, no matter what may be the present pleasure of it, you certainly will suffer. If you do what is right, no matter how hard the struggle to which it sets you now, you certainly will prosper. Therefore, it is not well, it is not prudent, it is not expedient to be wicked.” The doctrine is immensely true. Its certainty is emphasized by all that we already know of human history, and misgivings of still more terrible assertions of it stretch forward into the other world. And the doctrine certainly is lofty, inasmuch as it asserts that right and wrong are not mere whims and fashions, but essential and eternal things, that they have to do with the very structure of man and of the world, that both man and the world are built so that the wrong finds its punishment and the right its reward. And certainly it is a doctrine which does to a very great extent control the actions of mankind. Some people will even call it religion. Some people will make religion to be nothing but a great system of expediency stretching out into the world beyond the grave. But I hope that you have seen how clearly this is not religion. The religious man says, “This is right, and I will do it because God wants me to and I love Him for the great love wherewith he has loved me.” The prudent man says, “This is right, and I wiH do it because it will be best for me.” They are two different things. The first is religious and the second is not religious, only prudent.

And now what are the faults of this system of expediency? How does it fail when it tries to put itself into the place of religion as a sufficient force to guide the lives and perfect the characters of men? You have seen already how tame and dull it sounds beside the strong motive which it tries to supplant, how utterly it lacks the enthusiasm of which the other is full. But the essential objections to it are two. One that it is limited in its range. The other that it is selfish and low in its spirit. It is limited in its range. If the reason why I will not do what is wrong is that I shall suffer for it, will there not be a tendency for the duty of resistance to concentrate itself upon those acts whose evil consequences are most manifest and certain? I shall be anxious not to do that which I know will instantly bring its vengeance, and I shall be eager to do that which I know will immediately bless me with its reward.

Can we not see it so? The prudent moralist, the moralist whose motive power is prudence, will not do the acts of wanton dissipation which will tell to-morrow or a few years hence in tottering footsteps and a bewildered brain; but the duties of spiritual culture, of chivalrous self-denial for the sake of others, of humility, of self-surrender — although they certainly will bear their fruits far off under the warmer skies and in the richer soil of eternity — by their very remoteness lose their hold upon him. The notion of duty grows narrow and confined and fastens itself on those tasks which lie in the most restricted range and manifest their consequences.

And certainly the spirit of duty done from the mere motive of expediency must be borne down by selfishness, and so the power of such duty to elevate and cultivate the character must be defective. I look at the man who through a long life has done what is right, because he felt satisfied that each right act would help him and advance him, who has resisted many and many a temptation to do wrong because he knew that he would suffer if he did it; I see the path his feet have walked from the beginning to the end of life. It is wonderfully straight; it has escaped disgraces in a wonderful degree. The pitfalls of temptation it has left on either hand. It is a path to point young men to, that they may see how straight a conduct-line may run. But the man who has walked it and who at the end of it is taking the competence and the reputation that his upright life has won him — has he attained to the full richness of a human character? A lofty selfishness, but still a selfishness, has been behind it all. If you suddenly bring him another duty which involves apparent entire self-surrender, is he ready for it? Is not the very presence of self-consciousness at all a hindrance? Are there not parts of the nature whose wild and extravagant action you often see and are often tempted to admire in very bad men — parts of the nature which are evidently essential to it and capable of very lofty and pure exercise — which do not show themselves at all in him? — capacities of self-forgetfulness and generosity and uncalculating devotion?

Christianity is beyond all doubt the most expedient thing. But no man can take the service of Christ for its expediency. Unless we lift it to a height which carries it beyond itself, unless we make selfishness so high that it covets for itself the mere pure satisfying pleasure of giving itself away in gratitude to Christ, the power of selfish expediency fails. It does not perfect the character. Nothing but complete devotion out of earnest love can do that; and such a devotion to God is religion.

2. But turn now to the other power which men attempt to substitute for religion as the ruler and inspirer of life. I called it honor. It is that feeling which is in the heart of almost every man, the sense of self-respect which makes him say, “It is beneath my dignity to do a mean or wicked action.” Poor indeed is the man who does not know what that feeling is. You offer a man a temptation to steal. He turns away and will not steal because he is loyal to his master, God. That is religion. He draws back and will not steal because he knows that “Honor is the best policy,” that is expediency. He turns indignantly upon you and says, “Do you take me for a thief?” That is honor. What this great instinct of honor has done, it is hard to overvalue. It has been the overruling power of whole sections of society, almost of whole periods of history. It has shone with splendid lustre in the eyes of many men, till it seemed to them all that humanity needed for its full consummation. It has had its martyrs who have given up their lives under its inspiration. It is romantic. It is the power of chivalry. There is hardly an age of history so dark that it may not be found burning there. It is a strong and, as it seems to many people, a sufficient power here to-day. There are many who would substitute the principle of honor for the principle of religion, many who think that the self-respect of the gentleman is enough without the loving consecration of the servant of God.

But what is this honor that shines so splendidly? Is it conscience quickened and filled with pride? Its very principle of life is pride. It is a man’s supreme consciousness of his own value, so strong that he recognizes the obligations which rest upon one so valuable as he is. His nobility obliges him. The deficiencies of it seem to be premised in this very definition, and they show out all through the history of its influence on men.

(i.) It is partial in the duties it selects. It is ready to inspire men for those tasks which ordinarily feed men’s pride. It can make them resent injuries or refuse to be guilty of a meanness, but it is rare

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that honor grows so deep and fine that it will make a man forgive an injury or submit with meekness to a slight. Honor can manage pretty well with the second table of the commandments, but it can do really nothing with the Beatitudes.

(2,) Again the principle of honor has not stability enough. It has no fixity of standards. It is apt to take the fleeting fashions of the hour for its rule of right. It grows fantastic and unsound. We cannot ever forget that for ages the great achievement of the principle of honor was the brutal and unreasonable practice of the duel.

(3.) And again, it brings no spiritual elevation. Pride is always a source of weakness and degradation. It has no power of benefit to character. In humility only does the soul lie open and take in spiritual life.

(4.) And again, the power of honor, of mere personal dignity, is not universal. It belongs only to certain men and certain moods. It never has been, and it is hard to believe that it can be, the inspiration of all men at all times.

(5.) And yet once more, it is cold, — bright, but not warm. It does not fire the soul in which it dwells, and call out all its best activities. Its martyrs do not kindle the world with their stake-fires. One faithful saint has more enkindling power than a whole generation of mere self-respecting gentlemen.

All these defects the principle of honor has with all its great nobility. We would not for a moment pray that it may fail or die away. It is immensely higher than the power of expediency. Indeed it trembles often on the brink of being something greater than itself. It is often almost religious. But always there is this clear difference: The man of honor is proud; the man of religion is humble. The man of honor respects himself. He thinks of a certain dignity settled in his being the man he is. The man of religion no less respects himself, but it is a self-respect that is wholly consistent with humility, — nay, it is a self-respect that has its root deep down in his humility. He values himself not for the greatness that he finds in his own nature, for he has found in his own nature weakness and sin. He has brought that nature, ashamed of it, to God. It is because God has taken it up and done for it wonderful things, that he sees it now lustrous with the value that the Cross has given to it, and worthy of being dedicated to Him in whose service it can find perfection. That is the self-respect of the Christian — the humble reverence in which the servant of the Saviour holds the soul for which the Saviour lived and died.

These, then, are the two substitutes which men are trying to put in the place of religion and compel to do its work, I have dwelt upon them long; I have taken up almost all this morning’s sermon with their description, because they are not mere figments of the preacher’s brain. They are real things. They are the things which many of you who listen to mc are trying to put into your lives in the motive place, where religion ought to be. I do not speak to those who are mere slaves of passion. I have preached to those in whose hearts there were real desires to do right. Why do you wish it? Is it expediency? Is it honor? They are the forces of many of the struggles, the real hard struggles with sin, out of which you, my friends and people, come here Sunday after Sunday, to which you return after our service together here is over. I know how far these forces will carry you, — to respectability, to rectitude in every dealing, so that men shall honor you while you live and praise you when you die. But I know there comes a point beyond which they cannot carry you. They never can renew your life and character. By them you never can be born again. They never can set you on the broad ground of enthusiastic duty stretching out into eternity. They have good words to say to you about this life, about the regulation of your daily behavior, but the disciple of religion hears in them no words of eternal life, no programme of existence embracing infinity, full at once of peace and inspiration, such as he finds in the service of his beloved Lord.

This is the reason why every prudent and honorable man here needs to be religious. I bid you ask yourselves, are these things substitutes for the power of grateful consecration to God? Can they do the work for a man which that can do? You are a young business man; all life lies out before you; what will you do there? You will do right, because so only can you prosper, because it is unworthy of you to do wrong. Ah, there will come a time when to do what is right will demand of you to tread your evident prosperity and advantage under your feet. There will come times when every standard of dignity and honor about you will bid you do some brilliant act which you know is wrong. Worse than that, there will come times — times of failure, of bereavement, of sorrow, of despair, almost — when you will seem to have gone quite out beyond these powers; their strength will seem to be exhausted. In some great hour of pain you will not seem to care whether you prosper or not, and your own dignity and honor will be crushed and scattered as the jewels are scattered when a sword crashes through a soldier’s helmet to his very brain. In those days what will you do? Then you must have some “words of eternal life.” Then nothing but religion can hold you. Then will not the words you need be just these everlasting words of Jesus, “If any man love me let him follow me, and where I am, there shall also my servant be, — in my peace, my confidence, my love.”

O my dear friends, there is no substitute! The peace, the hope, the quiet confidence, the humility, the new manhood, cannot come except by religion, cannot come except by Christ. “Who are these in white raiment,” the thoroughly white raiment of a new eternal life? Only “those who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Only those, that is, the motive of whose new life is the grateful love of their Redeemer.

He died for all that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves but unto Him who died for them and rose again ’ ‘; for all, that all might live to Him, — for you and me, that you and I might live to Him, and so come to our own best life and enter into His glory.