The Needs of the Secular
“Come over into Macedonia, and help us.” — Aors xvi. 9.
IT is the cry of Greece to Judea — the appeal of the secular to the sacred. Greece had every secular possession the heart can name — beauty, philosophy, art, culture, gaiety. Judea had at this moment no secular possession at all; she had only Christ. Yet rich Greece called for the help of poor Judea! It is no passing picture, no evanescent experience; it is an eternal truth. The secular world cannot live without the help of Christ. I do not mean the familiar truism that the things of earth are perishable. I mean that the perishable things of earth themselves require the aid of something beyond them; time cries to eternity, “Come over, and help us!” No man can fulfil the duties of the hour by the light of the hour; it is always by a coming light. The schoolboy works for his prize, the clerk for his promotion. Nothing of value is stimulated by the mere sense of the moment. Not even charity is so stimulated. My benevolence for anything is proportionate to my idea of its longevity. Rome had no hospitals for incurables, no infirmaries for lives useless to the state. Why have we such institutions? It is because we think of these people as possible members of a future state. Our charity has been born of our faith and our hope. Why do we not follow the Roman in eliminating deformed infants? Because we have more pity? Nay, I think the Roman was prompted by pity. We refuse to follow, not because we feel more deeply, but because we see more clearly. We have caught sight of another chance for the deformed infant — a chance which his misfortune will not impair. We have seen that he too is worth training, worth educating, worth moulding — that there is a place waiting for him in a republic even larger than that of Rome.
Come over, and help us, Q Christ! Come over, and help that life which we call secular! Come over, and help our charities; teach us the eternal value of our brother’s body and soul! Come over, and help our pleasures; give us that self-forgetfulness which imparts zest to every joy! Come over, and help our business;
Thy peace can preserve from panic in counting-house and exchange! Come over, and help our manners; Thy grace can make us gracious, the brightness of Thy face can brighten ours! Come over, and help our sense of the beautiful; let us read Thy soul in all things, and all things will be twice lovely! Come over, and help our forgiveness; let pity for the injurer take the place of wounded pride! Come over, and help our toiling; double work will follow when we shall rest in the spirit! No school trains for earth like Thy school of heaven; come over, and help us, O Lord!