I am asked to talk specially to what we call in Scotland
"the outsider"--the man who has not seen his way to throw in his
lot with Christian men. We have made a specialty of the outsider in our
university work in the old country. We have laid all our plans to interest
him. He is generally the best man in the university; and for some years we
have arranged all our Christian work and worship with a view to that type
of man. We have laid down one or two principles. The first one is that
none of us in any shape or form shall encourage cant. By that I mean
sanctimoniousness, anything that is falsetto, any unreal expression of
emotion or exaggeration of feeling. A second principle we have had to lay
down is that no religious man shall interfere in any shape or form with
the university amusements. Time after time I have seen at our religious
meetings twelve out of the fifteen university football team; and we have
always had amongst our foremost men the best athletes in the university.
We have also laid it down as a principle that we shall not interfere with
any university work. We have tried to get hold of the busiest men and
interest them in whatever is going on, believing that a man may do his
university work thoroughly and yet do something in the way of helping on
the Christian life of his fellow students. In the Medical Faculty, where
we have from 1,800 to 2,000 students, and which is our largest faculty in
Edinburgh University, at the end of the four years' course we have the
"Blue Ribbon Medical Course" scholarship. It is given to the man
who has stood first all along the line for four years. Now the man who for
the last four years has taken this scholarship has been not only one of
the most active workers in the Christian community, but actually the
secretary of the movement. I do not mean that one man has done that for
four years; but the last four men have been not only the leading men in
the scientific and professional studies, but the leading men in the
Christian life of the place. With such a record as that you can understand
that Christianity is, at all events, respected.
We never have any religious meetings on week
days. We do not want the professors to say we are taking up the time the
men ought to give other things. We believe a man's business at a college,
and his religion, too, is to do his work. The meetings we have had,
therefore, were on Sundays.
Another rule that we have had to make is
never to interfere with a man's views. We want a man's life. We do not
want his opinion. We do not start a man with a creed. We believe that the
man arrives at a creed; and we take into our ranks any man who has any
desire to seek the Kingdom of God. That, of course, had widened the door
to a very large number of men who would have kept out, if we had been
exclusive. But while we do not underrate a creed, while we believe that
theological doctrines are just as scientific doctrines; yet religion is an
art, and we can get men to practice the art who will arrive, we hope, in
their future life, at something of the scientific principles which
underlie it; but we make it a barrier to no man at the start that he knows
little. In fact, a man enters the school of Christ as he enters a
university. That is to say, he enters, not as a professor, but as a
student. He comes to learn; and we believe the best way to learn is to let
the man matriculate and begin.
If you ask me what obstacles we find
specially in the way, I think the chief obstacle we meet is the revolt in
thinking men's minds against popular and spurious and weak forms of
Christianity. Men come to the institution who have been very strictly
brought up, and they are not able, after a few months' college discipline,
to believe the things they used to believe. A gentleman in Boston said to
me a few days ago that he had a son at Harvard and that the young man had
the audacity to come to him not long ago and tell him that he didn't
believe so and so. I said to him: "Sir, what a splendid fellow your
son must be." He preferred truth to comfort. A man is to be
encouraged to think about religious matters. If Christianity cannot bear
thinking about, it is not worth going in for.
One other thing that one finds is the idea
many men have that it is a dull thing to go in for Christianity. Now, of
course, that is simply not true. It is not true in fact, and it is not
true in theory. It has, doubtless, more concern for a man's temperament
and body than his creed; but if there is anything that can put sunniness
or brightness into a man's life, it is Christianity. Christianity
professes to cure dullness. Some of the greatest words in the Bible are
"joy," "rest," "comfort." Christianity cures
depression and gloom by removing the causes of it. What makes men
depressed? Self-concentration, as a rule. When a man is wrapped up in
himself, seeking only his own, he finds he is seeking a very shallow
object, and very soon gets to the end of it; hence all the springs of life
have nothing to act upon, and depression follows. Now, Christianity cures
that by trying to take a man out of himself, and by showing him that his
true life is in living out of himself.
Another source of dullness is the thwarting
of the ambitions that we have. We get down in spirits because we do not
get the recognition we think we deserve, because we are snubbed and
slighted, because we are not at the top. Christianity cures that by a
single sentence. It says: "The meek shall inherit the earth."
There is no connection between Christianity and a dull life. It is the
want of Christianity that makes any life dull. Christianity offers a young
man, or an old man, or any man, a more abundant life than the life he is
living--more life as life goes, more happiness in life, more intensity in
life, more worthiness in life.
That, however, is perhaps not so great an
obstacle, comparatively a trifling one, as the thought many men have that
it is an unscientific thing in these days to endorse Christianity. Now it
may be unscientific to endorse some forms in which Christianity is
presented, but Christianity itself is a thoroughly scientific thing. There
is nothing the least narrow about anything that Christ ever said. On the
contrary, Christ said the broadest things that have ever been said; and he
never rebuked breadth, but constantly rebuked narrowness. In His day there
were three great philosophical, theological schools. There were the
Pharisees, who were so narrow that they could not see spirit for form.
There were the Sadducees, who were so narrow that they could not see
spirit for matter. And there were the Essenes, who could not see matter
for spirit. Christ was always rebuking these sects simply on account of
their narrowness. His own view of life was as broad as the heavens. He
took in every man and every part of every man. His religion was not kept
back by any geographical or ethnographical limits. It was the religion of
humanity.
You say, "But it is well known that
many scientific men are opposed to Christianity." I ask you to give
me their names. If you run over the names of the large figures in science
at this moment, you will find that the majority are not only in favor of
Christianity, but have expressed themselves in favor of it.
Mr. Huxley has never said anything against
Christianity. He has defined the position of science. He says,
"Science is not Christianity, nor is it anti-Christianity. It is
extra-Christianity." He has thrown an arrow, with a little poison on
it, perhaps, at some of the outworks of Christianity; but he has never
said one word against Christ or the words or spirit of Christ. And it
matters little what a man does to the outworks so long as he respects and
is compelled to respect Christ; and Christianity is always respected,
however humbly it is lived, by the wisest men.
The other day I came upon a statement by a
Fellow of the Royal Society with regard to this subject, a sentence of
which I should like to read to you. The Royal Society of London, as you
know, is probably one of the first scientific bodies in the world. This
man says: "I have known the British Association for the Advancement
of Science under forty-one different presidents--all leading men of
science. On looking over these forty-one names, I count twenty, who,
judged by their public utterances or private communications, are men of
Christian belief and character; while, judged by the same test, only four
disbelieve in direct divine revelation."
You point to Mr. Darwin. Mr. Darwin never
had, and never gave himself, a chance. He was brought up on Paley's
Natural Theology--a great book in its day, but a book which Darwin himself
made it impossible to read to-day; and he was bombarded with that book,
and with religion along that line; and we have no evidence that he ever
studied Christianity in any other form. But wherever he saw it, he
respected it. When he was on the Island of Terra del Fuego, he saw the
lowest subjects in the world. He told the missionaries they might go home.
It was an impossibility, from the point of view of science, that these men
could ever be elevated. A very few years after, Mr. Darwin wrote a letter
to the secretary of that missionary society saying that he had found out
what a great change had come over these islands--a certain amount of
civilization had been introduced, and morality had been established; and
he would like to withdraw what he had said. He enclosed a check for twenty
five dollars for the work of the society; and he continued sending in his
annual contribution to the end of his life.
Perhaps the greatest name known to you in
the old country is that of Sir William Thompson, now Lord Kelvin,
Professor of Physics in Glasgow University. If you go into his class room
any day you like, you will hear him open his lecture with prayer.
It is not true that the scientific men have
given up Christianity. Many of them have given up imitations of
Christianity, spurious forms of it; but the thing itself stands untouched.
You ask me, "What, then, do you retain?
Do you dilute Christianity until it means little or nothing--so little
that anybody can call himself a Christian?" On the contrary, we make
it the most severe thing, the most definite thing, that a man could choose
for his object in life. We make it a necessity that a man shall be
turning, that he shall seek first the Kingdom of God. He may choose his
own way of doing it; but he must put that before him as an ambition and as
his career to seek first the Kingdom of God. We say nothing to those men
about saving their souls. We say to them: "Gentlemen, save your
lives. Do something with your life. Let that energy, that talent, go out
to some purpose. The world needs the knowledge you have, the impulses you
can give; aye, and the criticisms that you can offer upon the religious
forms round about. It needs all these things. Save your lives. Do
something with them." The Kingdom of God, according to Christ's own
definition, is leaven; it is salt; it is light. Can you tell me what is
going to raise this country, for instance, if it is not to be
Christianity? If you take the Christianity out of Boston, weak as some of
it may be, and inconsistent as some of it may be, in fifty years it will
be uninhabitable by a respectable man or woman. Was it Mr. Lowell who
said: "Show me ten square miles in any part of the world, outside of
Christianity, where the life of man and the purity of woman are safe, and
I will give up Christianity"? There are no such ten square miles in
any part of the world. Many things can lift society a little; but, as a
matter of fact and history, the thing that has lifted the nations of the
world to their present level has been, in some form or other, direct or
diffused, the Christianity of Christ. Christian men are to be not only the
leaven of the world, but they are to be the salt of the earth. The world
is not only sunken, needing to be raised, but it is rotten, and needing to
be purified. Salt is that which saves from corruption. Christianity is the
salt of the earth. It is the great antiseptic of society. Christian men
are the light of the world. The light of Christ was the light of men; and
other men are to catch that light and radiate it upon the world.
You point me to other teachers, many of them
very great, many of them with great messages for the world--Socrates,
Plato--a long list of names; but, allowing all their goodness, can one of
them be put beside Christ as a mere teacher? Socrates went about the world
asking questions. Christ went about the world answering questions. That
was the difference. Socrates was looking for truth. Christ said truth is
in living. I am the truth; and the man who lives like Me will live true,
and all the wrong in the mind will be corrected. You cannot help seeing
truth.
Now, gentlemen, what do you think of that
for a life, for a career? You do not know what to do with yourself. What
do you think of being a crystal of salt in a community such as this city,
or a little cell of leaven which cannot help, by the mere contagion of its
presence, passing on influence and life to things round about it, or being
a light to the dark people, perhaps the dark Christians, if you like,
round about, too?
Do the workingmen of this country not need
light? What is to alter the critical condition of the working classes in
this country, if it is not to be the teaching of Christianity in some
form? What is to guide these labor movements and to work upon the minds in
all directions, to make this country continuously prosperous? Men who have
looked deepest into these problems have either given them up or seen only
one solution, and that is in the teaching of Christ and the application of
His principles to common life. These principles are not in the air. They
are justified by every fact and law of nature.
I believe in Christianity, first of all, not
because I believe in this book. I believe in this book because I believe
in Christianity. Religion does not come out of the Bible. The Bible comes
out of religion. I believe in Christianity because I believe in evolution.
Christianity is to me further evolution. I know no better definition of it
than that. The forces of nature carry a man up to a certain point and
there they stop. Then the psychic forces carry him up another point to the
evolution of mind. Then the moral forces come in and carry him up a little
further. Then the vis a tergo, the struggle for life that pushes him on,
is reinforced by a vis a fronto; and he sees ideals before him, and is
drawn up higher and higher, from strength to strength, until he reaches
the fullness of the stature of the perfect man. That is pure evolution,
the evolution of the man toward the ideal, toward the perfect man Jesus
Christ. This principle of which I have been speaking, of a man giving his
life to other people, to help on his country, is in the very, heart of
nature. There are two great principles in nature by which all things work
and by which all things are moved. The one is the struggle for life. Every
plant and animal starts out to nourish itself. That struggle goes on along
the line of the function of nutrition. There is the struggle for the life
of others--the function of reproduction. These two functions make up life.
Now, most of us live along the line of the first. All our lives, nearly,
are centered in that; but that is only one half of the life appointed by
nature. There is the struggle for the life of others, the function of
reproduction, and in its higher forms everything that is high lies. All
the happiness in life, in reality, has come along the second of these two
lines, and not along the first. All the life of the world, in reality,
lies on the side of reproduction. A plant takes a little bit of itself and
gives it away. It lives by death. It dies; the life goes on. This chapel
is built upon death. That book is death. Those pillars are the death of
men. Those clothes are the death of animals. Every part of life and
everything in life is kept alive by death. The animal gives off a part of
itself and dies. Its life goes on--has passed on; and I say all the
comfort and happiness and beauty and luxury of life come along that line.
Three-fourths of the world at this moment live upon rice. What is rice? It
is a seed --a fruit, therefore, of reproduction. The world lives upon this
altruistic principle. All the fruits of the world are the gifts of
reproduction. All the drinks of the world are the fruits of reproduction
--the milk of the cow, the sprouting grain, the malted liquor, the
withered hop, the fruit of the vine, wine itself. All the beauty of the
world comes along the line of reproduction--the feathers of the bird, the
fire of the glow-worm, the face of a woman. All the music of the world is
love music--the chorus of the insect, the song of the nightingale, the
serenade of the lover. We live by what the function of reproduction has
done for us; and the man who gives his life for what is going on in that
line is living for the highest end in nature.
The struggle for life is waning every
century, and by and by it will give place entirely to this other.
Therefore, when Christ said, "Seek first the Kingdom of God," he
propounded a perfectly scientific doctrine. He was offering man a life
which would include all other lives, to which all other things would be
heir.
Let me give you an illustration of what I
mean. You are here at the university. You can't yet begin to do anything
for your country, as you might. What you can do now is to leaven this
university. What you can do is to get hold of some one man, whose life is
of no account, and which is apparently not going to be of any account, and
save that man, not for his own sake only, but because that is a piece of
energy which has gone off but can be brought in and reclaimed and utilized
for the good of man.
There was a medical student in Edinburgh
University in his second year (our course is four years), who saw that he
had been living there eighteen months entirely for himself. He had never
done a hand's turn to be of any good or use to any one, and it hurt him.
One day he determined that he would do something to help another man, and
he remembered another undergraduate, who had come from the same country
town as himself, and who had gone to pieces. He hunted him up. He found
him half drunk in a very poor and shabby lodging. He told him that he
would like him to come and live in his rooms; that he had nice rooms, and
it was snugger than where he was. The other man stated he was in debt and
could not leave. No. 1 went out of the room, paid the man's bill, sent for
a carriage, bundled up his friend's things--and a newspaper held them
all--and took him off to his own lodgings. The next morning he said:
"Now, you and I are going to live together. Let us make a contract
and both sign it."
There were four articles in it.
"First, neither one of us is to go out
alone, unless absolutely necessary.
"Second, twenty minutes to be allowed
to go from room to college for recitations. Overtime to be accounted for.
"Third, one hour to be given every
night to recreation.
"Fourth, bygones to be bygones."
They both signed it. Everything went on
well. They had lived together for six weeks when one night No. 2 sprang
up, shut his book with a bang and said: "I can't stand this slow
life. I must have a bust." "Very well," said No. 1,
"you shall bust here. What do you want?" "I want some
drink." "Well, you shall have it," said No. 1, and he got
him something to drink and brought it to the room. No. 2 took it. Do you
say it was a risk? His thirst was allayed and the wild beast was calmed.
He settled down to his books for six weeks again, when the wild beast once
more asserted itself. No. 1 gave it a meal to satisfy it, as before. No. 2
worked faithfully this time for three months before another outbreak. And
so the thing went on. A year afterward No. 2 said to No. 1: "You
never tell me what you are reading at the recreation hour. I think I see
you read the Bible sometimes. You never talked to me on that
subject." Talked to him about it! What was the use of talking to a
man about Christianity when he was living it every hour of his life? He
had done his work without ever having said a word. No. 2 was dying to
learn his secret. I need not detail the rest. These two men passed out of
the University at the end of their course. No. 1 passed a fairly good
examination. No. 2, the man who was lost, graduated with honors and took
the medal for his thesis. The last time I heard of No. 1 he was filling an
important appointment in London, and No. 2 is known as "the Christian
Doctor" of a village in Wales. Now that seems to me to be a thing
worth living for; something to look back upon after one's college life is
over.
No one knew anything about this. No. 1 was
never known as a specially religious man, and yet, in his quiet way, he
was living Christ in every direction; and he left more fragrance behind
him when he was gone than a dozen of the noisier men.
I ask you, gentlemen, to save your lives, to
save your college days, and I appeal to the generous side of you and ask
you to remember your fellow men. Remember the man who is going to pieces;
remember the man who is down, the man who is tempted. Perhaps if you would
stand by him you could help him through. You need not make any great
profession of religion. But, if you do that, you will make a great
practice of it. It will amount to little, after the college course is
over, that you have merely done your work and passed. What is the use of
your passing, what is the use of your getting any degree, unless it is
going to be of some use to somebody else? There is no particular reason
why nine-tenths of us should be alive at all; but the man who begins to
live for the Kingdom of God, who sees a chance to do a good turn here and
a little one there, and shed a little light here and a little sunniness
there, has something to live for. That man's life will never be lost. He
lives a more abundant life. There is no other joy or light in the world
except that.
And if you gentlemen are going to seek the
Kingdom of God, I want to ask you to seek it first. Do not touch it unless
you promise to seek it first. I promise you a miserable life and influence
and a poor, broken, lost career, if you seek it second. Seek it first, or
let it alone. Do not be an amphibian; no man can serve two masters, and,
if you only knew it, it is a thousand times easier to seek first the
Kingdom of God than to seek it second. I have not the slightest doubt
there are many men who are seeking second the Kingdom of God, and their
religion is a nuisance to them. It is hard to keep up, and they would get
rid of it if they could. The cure is to seek it first, to make it the helm
of life. Then only can a man's life go straight, and then only can he
fulfill the destiny for which God has put him into the world.
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