Going Up to Jerusalem

“Then Jesus took unto him the twelve, and said unto them, Behold, toe go up to Jerusalem, and all thin;/* that arc written concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished.” — LUKE xviii. 30.

EVERY true life has its Jerusalem, to which it is always going up. A life cannot be really considered as having begun to live until that far-off city in which its destiny awaits it, where its work is to be done, where its problem is to be solved, begins to draw the life towards itself, and the life begins to know and own the summons. Very strange is this quality of our human nature which decrees that unless we feel a future before us we do not live completely in the present where we stand to-day. We have grown so used to it that we do not realize strange it is. It seems to us to be necessary. But the lower natures, the beasts, do not seem to have anything like it. And we can easily picture to ourselves a human nature which might have lx. n created so that it never should think about the future, but should get all its inspiration out of present things. But that is not our human nature. It always must look forward. The thing which it hopes to become is already a power and decides the thing it is.

And so every true life has its Jerusalem to which it is always going up. At first far off and dimly seen, laying but light hold upon our purpose and our will, then gradually taking us more and more into its power, compelling our study, directing the current of our thoughts, arranging our friendships for us, deciding for us what powers we shall bring out into use, deciding for us what we shall be: so every live man’s Jerusalem, his sacred city, calls to him from the hill-top where it stands. One man’s Jerusalem is his profession. Another man’s Jerusalem is his fortune. Another man’s Jerusalem is his cause. Another man’s Jerusalem is his faith. Another man’s Jerusalem is his character. Another man’s Jerusalem is his image of purified society and a worthy human life. You stop the student at his books, the philanthropist at his committee, the saint at his prayers. You say to each of them, “What does it all mean? What are you doing? What is it all for?” And the answer is everywhere the same: “Behold we go up to Jerusalem.” We draw back the vail of history, and everywhere it is the same picture that we see. Companies, great and small, climbing mountains to where sacred cities stand awaiting them with open gates upon the top. The man who is going up to no Jerusalem is but the ghost and relic of a man. He has in him no genuine and healthy human life.

There never was an exhibition of all this so fine and perfect as that which we see in Jesus. His manhood shines out nowhere so clear and stroi here. Think how his life gets its glory and beauty from the way in which it is always, from tin- v« r first, tending on to the thing which it was at last t<> reach. That tendency began at his birth, and it never ceased until he was hanging on the cross out side the city gate. Then he had come to Jerusalem and it was finished. The angels sang about Jerusalem when the shepherds heard them. The boy’s thoughts were full of Jerusalem as he worked in the carpenter’s shop. Egypt, where they carried the babe to get him out of danger was on the way to Jerusalem, where he was finally to be killed. The visit to the temple when he was twelve years old, was a nearer glimpse of the Jerusalem to which he did not then really come, though his feet trod its streets, but which he then accepted as the only sufficent issue of his life. He was baptized in consecration to the life-long journey to Jerusalem. “For this cause was I born. For this cause came I into the world.” “My time is not yet come.” Those words, and words like those, dropped here and there, along his path, are like foot-prints in the road lie walked, all pointing to Jerusalem. At last he came there, and in the tragedy of Good Friday he laid down his life. He had reached Jerusalem at last. The most intense, persistent purpose that the world had ever seen, had reached its completion. He had come to the Jerusalem of his intention, and mankind was saved.

With Christ as the great image and pattern of it all before us, let us speak this morning of the Jerusalem of every life, the steady tendency of every life to come to some appointed result of which it is growingly conscious as it moves upon its way towards it. Let us speak first of the existence of such a result, and then of the struggle by which it is reached.

First, then, may we not say that the appointed result of any man’s life will consist of his character multiplied by his circumstances. Find the product of that multiplication, and you can surely tell what the man will attain. It is because both of these terms are vague; because, look as deep into him as you will, you cannot read his character perfectly; and because, study his circumstances as carefully as you may, you cannot tell just what is going to happen; for these two causes, the final issue of his life is not entirely clear; the Jerusalem to which he is travelling, is vague and cloudlike. And yet it is good, indeed it is necessary, for us to know that both of these elements do enter into the decision of a man’s life, and that neither of them must be left out. You leave out a man’s character, and think that his circumstances only must control his destiny, and at once you are a fatalist. On the other hand you leave out his circumstances, and think only of his character, and you have set a premium on wilfulness. At once men go about complaining that the circumstances, which they did not take into account, are hindering them from being what they have found it, they think, in their characters to be!

320 Going tip to Jerusalem.

Hut sec! here is a man who has heard tinwhich I have preached thus lar in this sermon. I Itwants to apply that doctrine to himself. “Where is my Jerusalem?” he says. “What is then- to which my life is moving? What is there which 1 must hope ultimately to attain?” That man, I say, must multiply his character by his circumstances and see what the product is. He finds himself by character a scholar, and by circumstances a citizen of America in the nineteenth century after Christ, Those two things he must put together. As the result, a certain image of scholarship, humane, practical, broad, hopeful, distinctly modern, distinctly different from mediaeval scholarship, burns before him on the hill. On that his eye must be fastened. To that his feet must struggle.

Or he might have found himself a man with a soldier’s heart in the third century, or with a saint’s heart in the first century, or with a discoverer’s disposition in the fifteenth century. The time and the man together decree the possible career.

Or, if you talk of it within a narrower range; here in town there is a man poor and full of enterprise; there is a rich man all alive with sympathy: then is a quiet, meditative soul, pushed on by the accidents of its existence into perpetual contact with i’dlowmen; there is a brilliant flashing genius doom« solitude. In either case it is the condition and the man, it is the circumstances and the character multiplied into each other which make the lift’. The circumstances are the brick and mortar; the character is like the architect’s design; out of the two Jerusalem is built.

He then who would know his Jerusalem must know both of these elements. He must know him self and he must know his conditions. See how at once the full activity of man is called for. You can not simply look at what other men are doing and see in their activity the disposition of your time and fling yourself out into their forms of action, regardless of the fitnesses and the limitations which are in your own nature. On the other hand you cannot just study yourself and then demand that the age and the place in which you find yourself shall take you and find use for you, however you may be out of harmony with its disposition and its needs. From both of those causes there have come great failures. Who are the men who have succeeded in the best way? Who are the men who have done good work while they lived, and have left their lives like monuments for the inspiration of mankind? They are the men who have at once known themselves in reference to their circumstances, and known their circumstances in reference to themselves; true men, sure of their own individuality, sure of their own distinctness and difference from every other human life, sure that there was nev er another man just like them since the world began, that therefore they had their own duties, their own rights, their own work to do, and way to do it; but men also who questioned the circumstances in

which they found themselves, and asked what was the best thing which any man in just those circumstances might set himself to do? T men before whom there rises lpy-and-lpy a tin-am, which later gathers itself into a hope, and at last solidifies into an achievement. It is something which only they can do, because of their distinctness and uniqueness. It is something which even they could not do in any other circumstances than just these in which they do it now. Columbus discovers America because he is Columbus, and because the study of geography and the enterprise of man have reached to just this point. Luther kindles the Keformation because he is Luther, and because the dry wood of the papacy has come to just the right in flammability. You and I, who are not Luthers nor Columbuses, but simply, by the grace of God, ear; true-hearted men, conceive some purpose for our lives and keep it clear before us, praying we may not die before we do it; and at last doing it before we die, because we are we, and because the world in which we live is just the world it is. It is every young man’s place to realize, to make real to him self, both himself and his circumstances, what he is and where he is. Are the young men here doing that? If they are not, their lives are stagnant or drifting, and who knows which of these two is worse? But if they are, then there is certainly shaping itself in the misty future a purpose of their life which slowly will grow clear to them, which they will pursue with ever deeper joy and ardor, which they will humbly rejoice in when they come

Going lip to Jerusalem. 323

to die, and which men will thank God for, long after they are dead!

“But how shall I realize myself and my circumstances?” some one says. I wish that I could make you see it as clearly as it seems to me. The answer is that you must realize them both in God. Jerusalem, as we go up to it, shines through its atmosphere to us. We see it through and because of the vital air which is poured around both it and us. Now God is the atmosphere in which we “live and move and have our being.” He made our characters, and He made our circumstances, and it is His hand that moulds the two together and bids arise into existence out of them a definite, appropriate purpose for our life, a thing for us to be and do.

Here are you, let us say, who have seriously decided that you will be a lawyer in this city and this time. If you have come to that decision seriously and intelligently, and not by mere whim, you have reached it by a knowledge of your character and your circumstances, as I tried to describe. You have recognized certain powers in yourself, and certain needs in the community. Tell me, will it not make both of those recognitions clearer if behind them both you put the thought, the certainty, of God? If you are able to think of One who made you for your time, and made your time for you; if you are able to see, with the eye of faith, as we say, the eye which sees the unseen — if you are able to see the divine wisdom and foresight standing with your nature in its hands, and saying, “This nature will need such and such chances,” and so making for it this Boston and this profession of the law, and also see that same wisdom and foresight standing with this Boston and this legal profession in its sight, and saying, “They will need such and such a man,” and so making you. “Ah,” you say, in your mock humility, 44 I cannot really think that I am of as much consequence as that.” 4’ Ah,” you say, in your crude independence, 44 I will not let any power choose and appoint my life for me. I will do it for my si It.” Let the two outbursts modify and rectify each other. Let your humility make you rejoice that God has appointed for you the Jerusalem up to which the whole journey of your life must climb. Let your instinct of independence, your instinct of personal life, give you assurance that God cannot have chosen your Jerusalem for you so absolutely that it will not rest with you to find the way to it through every bewilderment, and to keep it continually in your sight.

All this is illustrated in the life of him to whom the picture of our text belongs. The” life of J«-sus Christ is full of this atmosphere of God. He calls Himself, “Him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world.” What does that mean but just what I have been saying? God made the world and He sent Jesus. The world needed Jesus the Saviour, and Jesus the Saviour bore in His mysterious nature the power to save the world. The t<> met and there was Jerusalem, the sacred city, the city where the sacrifices had smoked in prophecy for years; the city where Herod and Pilat. tarried f<T their victim; the city where the judgment-seat, the condemnation, the cross, the resurrection morning were waiting. As Jesus goes up to that Jerusalem, He goes because He is He, and Jerusalem is Jerusalem, and because both are themselves in God; because the Father hath sanctified him and sent him into the world. When he came there and the cross seized and held him, character and circumstances had perfectly met in their complete result. The Saviourhood and the world’s need of being saved had come together, and here was salvation.

Would it not be a vast thing for us if we could be far more aware than we are now of some such great Christlike sweep of our lives towards a purpose? The truth which Jesus first manifested in his living, and then taught in his doctrine, the truth that man is the child of God, is pregnant with that consciousness. Whenever any man has learned it he grows strong and eager. He no longer loiters and plays. A friend comes to you and says, “Do this with me!” And you quietly reply to him, “I cannot;” and he answers you, “Why not?” And you say, “I am going up to Jerusalem.” There is an end of it. You have not to sit on a stone at the road side, undetermined, until every speculative question has been settled, until you have decided just whether the thing is wrong, and just how wrong it is, and just how bad it is for this other man to do it, and just how near a thing to it you may allow yourself to do. Simply the thing is not on the way to your Jerusalem, and so you press on past it and leave it far behind. Ah, how men spend their time in debating just how wr<>n<;- things are, which, whether they U- more or less wrong, these men know that it is not f«>r them to do. It is as if a traveller in a givat highway refused to pass by the opening of any side lane until he knew just how deep was the bog or the wildo into which the lane would lead him if he followed it, which he has no idea of doing. The power of an apprehended purpose saves us from all that. The hope of our Jerusalem draws us on, and will not let us stop.

And, to come to the second part of what I want to say, this power of our purpose, this attraction of Jerusalem, is not destroyed, nay, is not weak< -ned, nay, is intensified and strengthened, when the vail is lifted, and it is distinctly shown to us that our pur pose can be attained only by struggle and self-sacrifice and pain. This surely is one of the most interesting things in all our study of mankind. I s man who has caught sight of how his character and his circumstances unite to designate for him a certain work and destiny. He is inspired by the vision. He has set out with all his soul to realize it. I can see lions in the way which he cannot see. I dread to tell him of the deserts he must cross, the iiivs through which he must force his way before He go into that open gate, and be what he has made up his mind to be. At last I feel myself compelled to tell him, and I do tell him with a trembling heart. I look to see him falter and sink down, or else turn and run. Instead of that I see his eye kindle; his whole lace glows; his frame stiffens with intense resolution, and I see him a thousand times more eager than before to do this thing which he has recognized as his. Listen to Jesus as he says the words following our text: “Behold we go up to Jerusalem, and all things which are written concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished. For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked and spitefully entreated and spitted on, and they shall scourge him and put him to death.” What a catalogue of miseries! How clear and how certain they evidently are, as we hear through the ages that calm voice rehearsing them, while the Lord and the disciples walk along the road. But tell me, as we hear that voice through the ages, is there any faltering in it because of these miseries which it foretells? Are you not sure that the steadfast feet go pressing on all the more steadfastly as they keep time to the tragical catalogue which the calm lips are telling? 0 this is a wonderful power in man, this power which shines out supremely in the Man of men, this power to be inspired by danger, and to desire a good and great thing all the more because of the deserts and the ure and the death which must be gone through for its attainment!

We hear it said sometimes that it was wonderful that Jesus, having undertaken the world’s salvation, did not draw back at the sight of the cross. Would it not have been wonderful if, being Jesus, he had drawn I nick and refused to go up to Jerusalem because of what was waiting for him there? Can we imagine that? Would we not have said at once, “No, he is not the Christ I thought In- was — or else tincross with all its terrors never oould hare frightened Him.”

I think the same is true of all devoted souls — of ’ all souls who have really seen their Jerusalem an< their faces towards it. I do not expect them — they ought not to expect themselves — to be turned back by the difficulties and terrors which stand in the way. The wonders of life are not in deeds, but in characters. Given the character, the deed does not surprise me. Let me look into the martyr’s soul and see the perfect consecration which is burning there, and then there is no wonder in my spirit when I see him walking next day to the stake as to a festival. The wonder would be if I saw him turn and run away. Let me thoroughly understand how the humble missionary loves his Master and thinks that Master’s service the one precious thing on earth, and then I can perfectly comprehend why he turns his ship’s prow all the more steadfastly shoreward when the savages come howling down to the beach to seek his blood. The wonder is that they should be the men they are. When they once are the men they are, the things that they do are not wonderful.

No deed is wonderful except in relation to tinstrength which does it. It would be wonderful that a robin should swim, but it is not wonderful that a fish should swim. It would be wonderful if you or I should write a Hamlet. It was not wonder I’M 1 that Shakespeare should do it. The W(.n<l that he should be Shakespeare; but, he being Shakespeare, Hamlet is no miracle. It would be unspeakably wonderful if any man should stand upon the mountain top and bid the morning rise out of the sea. But God does it day by day, and we are not astonished. Granted God, and what deed of God is marvellous? God is so marvellous that He exhausts all marvel in Himsel£ God is the one only wonder of the universe. With Him in the universe, the most stupendous prodigies are natural.

What does this mean for us? What is its bearing on our lives? Something very direct and definite, I think. If you are going up to Jerusalem, and as you go you become aware that you can only reach your Jerusalem, your purpose, through suffering, perhaps through death. What then? Where shall you look for your release, and the solution of your fear? Shall you expect it in the change of circumstances, in the muzzling o the lions so that they shall not bite you, in the palsying of death so that it shall not kill you? No! you must seek it in the strengthening of your own life, so that it shall be nothing strange for you, being the man you are, to scorn the lions and to laugh at death.

Men watch you. They say, Is it possible that he will not be frightened, but will go on to his appointed end through everything? You, knowing your own heart, are sure that you will not be frightened, sure that you will indeed go on. Some friend who really knows you, quietly says, “Yes, he will conquer,” and evidently thinks it nothing strange.

It is no gift of prophecy in him. It 18 simply that ho does know you, and knowing your strength, the trial that awaits it does not seem too great.

0, do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stroi. men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks! Then the do ing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at your self, at the richness of life which has come in you by the grace of God.

There is nothing which comes to seem more foolish to us, I think, as years go by, than the limitations which have been quietly set to the moral possibilities of man. They are placedly and perpetually assumed. “You must not expect too much of him,” so it is said. “You must remember that he is only a man, after all.” “Only a man!” That sounds to me as if one said, “You may launch your boat and sail a little way, but you must not expect to go very far. It is only the Atlantic Ocean.” Why man’s moral range and reach is practically infinite, at least no man has yet begun to comprehend where its limits lies. Man’s powers of conquering tempfcation, of despising danger, of being true to principle, have never been even indicated, save in Christ. “Only a man!” that means only a Son of God; and who can begin to say what a Son of God, claiming his Father, may become and be and do?

Therefore the fact that with our purpose clear before us, with something which we believe that it is our place to accomplish in the world, there still are fears and pains and difficulties in the way, that fact may not have any power except a power of inspiration. You tell the mother that her child is in danger, and that she cannot save it except by vast self-sacrifice, and the question never arises for an instant whether the sacrifice shall be undertaken and the child saved. The whole power of the tidings is just to summon a deeper flood of that self-sacrifice which is the very essence of her motherhood, and which laughs at danger with a quiet scorn.

So may it be with you! I look across this congregation and I know that to many of these young eyes some Jerusalem has shown itself, some pur pose far away upon its hill. You have multiplied your character into your circumstances and seen what you ought to do with your life. I bid you know it is not easy to attain your hope. I bid you clearly know that if the life which you have chosen to be your life is really worthy of you, it involves self-sacrifice and pain. If your Jerusalem really is your sacred city, there is certainly a cross in it. What then? Shall you flinch and draw back? Shall you ask for yourself another life? 0 no, not another life, but another self. Ask to be born again. Ask God to fill you with Himself, and then calmly look up and go on. Go up to Jerusalem expecting all things that are written concerning you to be fulfilled. Disappointment, mortification, misconception, enmity, pain, death, these may come to you, but if they come to you in doing your duty it is all right. “It cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem,” said Jesus. “It is dreadful to suffer except in doing duty. To suffer there is glorious.” That is our translation of his words into our own life.

May God let us all first see our Jerusalem and then attain it. What is that prayer but the great prayer of our Collect in the Prayer Book — that by his holy inspiration we may think those things that are good, and by his merciful guiding may p- i - form the same, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.