Called to Be Saints
IX the Roman Catholic
Church the act of canonization is the enrollment of
beatified persons among the
saints. It cannot take place
till more than fifty years
after the persons have died, except in the case of martyrs, nor until the most searching investigations have been made into their life and character. In the New Testament, however, the word saints is used of living believers. The meaning is not that the Christians of those early days were perfect. They were faulty, incomplete in life and character, just as Christians are in every age. All who love and follow Christ are called to be saints. The form of Christian life changes from time to time. The type that stands in highest honor in these days is the strenuous. Activity is the word. People who do things are the people
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who count, not only in business and in all secular lines, but also in religion. It is not the saint of the closet, the devout man who spends hours at his devotions, in pious meditations, in secret prayer. The man who is commended to-day as the greatest Christian is the man who is always abounding in the work of the Lord. The best Christian life is the one devoted to service of love. We say we are saved to serve. We say our mission is to carry the gospel to every man, to make disciples of all the nations. We are to go about doing good. Richard Burton writes of The Modem Saint:
No monkish garb he wears, no heads he tells, Nor is immured in walls remote from strife;
But from his heart deep mercy ever wells; He looks humanely forth on human life.
He looks not holy, simple is his belief;
His creed for mystic visions do not scan; His face shows lines cut there by other’s grief
And in his eyes is love of brother-man. [48]
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Not self nor self-salvation is his care;
He yearns to make the world a sunnier clime To live in, and his mission everywhere
Is strangely like to Christ’s in olden time.
Dr. James Denney says, in speaking of the Life of Christ as it appears in the Gospels: “The only Person whom the New Testament calls the Saint of God lived in the fields and in the streets, mingling in the common life of man at the common level; and what strikes us most as we contemplate Him is not a monotonous and conventionally expressed sanctity, however deeply felt, but the spontaneity, the liberty, the unexpectedness, and yet the thorough naturalness of such a life.”
One of the great present-day words of saintliness is Brotherhood. It is not a hard word to pronounce — it is rather musical. It is coming to be a fashionable word among Christian people. Orators like to use it — it is an inspiring word. It is something we ought to practice. Men are talking in these [49]
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days about practicing the presence of God, living every moment as if they saw God beside them. A little book has been published on the practice of immortality, thinking of the little common days as segments of eternity, of eternal life, as if we really believe we shall live forever. Some one writes also of practicing the Incarnation. The Incarnation was God coming down and living in human flesh, the highest, the most divine, coming down to help the lowest. We open the New Testament and we see the Eternal God comforting a sorrowing mother, taking a cooing baby in his arms, looking into its deep eyes, and laying his hand on its head; we see the infinite God curing a blind man by putting clay on his eyes, healing a lame man by a touch or by a word. This is very beautiful, very wonderful. Now practice the Incarnation in your own life. That is what the law of love requires. The angels must look upon manifestations of love in self-denial and service as finer than the finest displays of eloquence or skill. An act of love, [50]
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says St. Paul, is greater than tongues of angels, exhibitions of vast learning, the giving of a fortune in philanthropy, or dying as a martyr.
Thus saintliness is shown in love, in helpfulness, rather than in the practice of devotions, t that we are to be less prayerful, or to cease to read the Bible — waiting upon God is always essential in the life that pleases God. We cannot be saints and not commune much with God. Before there can be activity in Christian service, there must be a true abiding in Christ. Our Master himself abounded in the work of the Lord. He was intensely active. But he also spent much time in prayer. He arose a great while before day, that he might be a long time with his Father before going out to the day’s tasks. Saintliness begins, therefore, in devotion, in communion with God. But its manifestation is in active life, in service. Another essential mark of saintliness is holiness of life and character. No accusation is made against the church by the world more [51]
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frequently than this, that the professed followers of Christ are not living up to their profession. Is the accusation just? “You are not as good as your Book,” said a great Hindu. “If you were as good as your Book, Christianity would soon conquer India.” What does our Book require of us? First of all, Christ demands implicit obedience. “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” Saints are those who ask always for the will of the Lord, and instantly do it. Christ wants to see the print of the nails in pur hands. What does this mean in life? The cross meant love, love that stopped at no sacrifice. It meant vicarious suffering — Christ gave himself for his people. We sometimes get sentimental ideas of the cross and of the print of the nails. The old monk said he had looked so long and so intently at the crucifix, that the nail marks came into the palms of his own hands. But that is not what Christ means. If to-day and to-morrow you deny yourself to do some service of love for another; if, to rest one who is overwrought, [52]
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you take his place and do the work yourself, Christ will see the prints of the nails in your hands. When the young minister nursed the poor woman’s baby himself that the weary mother might get out in the fresh air for an hour, when the Prime Minister was missing from Parliament that he might visit and pray beside the poor old dying crossing sweeper in his garret, the Master saw the marks of his cross.
Saintliness is shown also in the culture of a life. The Bible speaks of the beauty of holiness. Sometimes, however, what is called holiness by men is not really beautiful. The Pharisees in our Lord’s day thought themselves holy. They were very exact in certain forms of obedience, in some respects going beyond what the law required. They tithed everything, even down to the tiny anise and cummin, little garden herbs, giving every tenth sprig to God, but they failed utterly in the weightier matters of the law — judgment, mercy and faith. They made long prayers in the streets and in the synagogues, assumed [53]
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attitudes of great piety and devotion, and were rigidly severe on other people who did not follow all the Pharisaic rules. Then they were hard in their dealings. They oppressed the poor, they crushed the downtrodden, they were unjust, grasping, cruel. Their holiness was not beautiful. God does not care for long prayers, much church going, approved orthodoxy, strict Sabbath keeping, with meanness, selfishness, backbiting, criticism, dishonesty, in the everyday life. True sainthness is beautiful. “Whatsoever things are lovely,” is one of the marks of the life that pleases God.
It is not religion for a boy to join the church and come to the communion, and then to-morrow get angry when he is beaten in a game, or sulk when some other one gets something he wanted. These are not beauties of holiness. The work of a church in all its departments is the making of beautiful lives, not good lives only, but beautiful as well. There are some who cannot be condemned on moral grounds, but are not attractive Chris- [54]
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tians. They are honest, upright, just, but are not kind, thoughtful, winning in their spirit, not lovable. Christ himself was the finest Christian gentleman the world ever saw. He was gentle to all men. He did everything in a gracious way. Let us strive to attain the saintliness that Jesus commends in his teaching and illustrates in his life. There is too much counterfeit saintliness. It lacks love. It is orthodox in doctrine, but it is not pleasant to live with. It is clean cut as a marble statue, but it is as cold as marble. Saintliness that pleases Christ is flesh and blood, not stone. It is human, it is Christly, it has the whole Thirteenth of Corinthians in it. It has a heart, is self-forgetful, is lowly. Many things spoil saintliness. It is spoiled by pride. One of the secrets of saintliness is the absence of self-consciousness. He who knows he is doing good is not doing the highest good. Moses wist not that his face shone. The saintliness that is most divine is unaware of its radiance.
Saintliness must be helpful. Nothing is made [55]
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beautiful merely for its own sake. Fruitfulness is the test of a Christian life. Fruit is beautiful as it hangs on the tree or vine, but who ever supposed beauty to be the chief purpose of fruit .^ It is not for the tree’s adorning — it is to feed hunger. Saintliness is not merely for spiritual adornment. We fulfill God’s purpose for our lives when our holiness, our goodness, our spiritual beauty, make us helpful to others, make our lives useful.
Some one says, “God is loving service.” This is really only an expansion of St. John’s definition, “God is love,” for love is service. Love that is not service Is not genuine. Christ loved and served to the uttermost, withheld nothing. There is no true spiritual culture which does not add to our power of serving others. The prayer of saintHness should always be:
“// there he some weaker one,
Give me strength to help him on;
If a blinder soul there he,
Let me guide him nearer thee.
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“Make my mortal dreams come true
With the work I fain would do;
Clothe with life my weak intent,
Let me he the thing I meant;
“Let me find in thy employ,
Peace that dearer is than joy;
Old of self to love he led,
Until all things sweet and good
Seem my nature’s habitude.”
There are many more saints in the world »’ than we think. Some people are pessimists concerning goodness. We think most people are bad, very few, at least, good. We may not claim sainthood for all men and women, but let us think of the homes of any Christian community, and the good that is in them, the love that is ever ministering. Think of the mothers always serving and blessing their children, of the wives who live for their husbands, of the way many husbands care for wives who are frail or invalids, of the noble service thousands of children render to their parents. Think of the sacrifices cheerfully [57]
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made, of the devotion almost divine, of the tenderness shown by those who care for the weak and feeble, and the marvelous patience of those who endure pain, loss of rest, trial of all kinds, in serving others. Think of the way thousands of men pour out their lives year after year in caring for their families, working long hours, and then working over hours to add to their income, how they deny themselves, how they scale their own indulgences down to the last penny, that they may feed and clothe their children and educate them. Think, too, how the poor help each other. Think of the heroisms of labor, of the way men risk life to save other lives. Every day you read of the way some brave fellow throws himself into peril that a train may be stopped, a runaway horse halted, a child snatched from death on the street; of the way a doctor puts his own life in jeopardy for his patient; of the way a nurse offers herself to prolong a life. Everywhere we see the conscious and unconscious saintships which redeem this world from the accusation of [58]
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selfishness, lovelessness and godlessness which are made against it.
We need not say that men are not sinners. They are bad enough — we are all bad enough — but we should magnify the blessings of the divine redemption and the wonderful love seen in the common life of the common days. For all these heroisms of sacrifice in the home, on the sea, on the street, and in all life, get their inspiration from the cross of Christ.
We are called to be saints. We may be only at the foot of the mountain now, but we are yet to reach the summit. Every moment the call breaks anew upon our ears, bidding us press forward. This ought to keep us courageous and determined, so that we never lose heart, never be content to stay on low levels, but always be reaching up to the possibilities of sainthood.
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til ‘These are the sins I fain Would have thee take away: Malice and cold disdain, Hot anger, sidlen hate. Scorn of the lowly, envy of the great. And discontent that casts a shadow gray On all the brightness of a common day.’*