USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > First Church of Christ in Pittsfield, Mass. : proceedings in commemoration of its one hundred and fiftieth anniversary, Feb. 7th and 8th, 1914 > Part 7
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I want to revive your faith, if it needs any re- viving, in the Church of Jesus Christ. I want you to have an intelligent and an invincible persuasion that it has its place in the world of our day just as surely as it had its place in the world of yesterday. I want you to feel that the Church has greater things before it than it has behind it; that there is indeed before it an open door, and one that no man can shut.
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Now, I grant you that some doors are shut and no man can open them. For example, the Church is no longer a means of secular education. Well, it was once. There was a time when people came to church not only to worship, but they came to church to get information. There was a day when a church pastor was the only college graduate in town. Harvard Col- lege was moved to Cambridge in order that its stu- dents might have the benefit not only of the piety but also of the learning of Thomas Shepard. But that door is shut, and no man can open it. To-day theological students come to Cambridge in order that they may get their learning and culture from Harvard University. Every pastor knows that there are people in his pews that know more than he will ever know, and that they have on their shelves at home books that will tell them more than he can ever tell them. That door is shut and no man can open it.
Also there was a time when the Church was the center of the social life of the community, and when the people came to church not only to meet with their God, but to meet with their fellow-men. That is why church buildings were called meeting houses. Out from their separated and isolated homes people came to a common meeting place where they could not only share their experience with their Maker, but where they could share and compare their experiences with each other. Now that door is shut and no man can open it. Our social order is honeycombed with all kinds of organizations that provide that sort of recre- ation for the people of to-day. The Church ought to provide fellowship and it is providing fellowship, but the Church is no longer needed as the center of social recreation.
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There was a time when the Church was a dis- penser of charity. What if a man wanted clothing? He came to the Church. What if he wanted care when he was sick? It was the Church that helped him. And that door is closed and no man can open it. Every charitable institution in this or any other com- munity is a child of the Christian Church, but no- body recognizes that fact; and if a man goes to a hospital or if a man receives relief, he does not feel that he owes anything to the Church. The door is shut and no man can open it.
But I want to tell you that while it is true that these doors are shut and no man can open them, it is also true that there is one door that is open, always has been open, always will be open, and no man can shut it. Jesus said, " I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever." Jesus, said "I am the good shep- herd, and I lay down my life for the sheep." "I am the door. By me if any man enter in, he shall go in and out and find pasture." And the Church of Jesus Christ is called to be the Christ of God to human so- ciety, to break the bread of life to famishing multi- tudes, to lead them out into green and living pastures, and to provide for scared and scattered multitudes of men by sacrificial love a leadership that shall bring them Home. Deprived of its other and its subordinate functions, the Church is thrown back upon its real mission. " Behold, I set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it."
This door cannot be shut because the hunger and thirst of the soul for a living God remains unchanged from age to age. The questioning mind and the wondering heart and the suffering soul can find its satisfaction alone in the contemplation, the knowledge
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and the service of God. The human mind may advance in wisdom, but the universe will never be so cheapened that it will fail to inspire awe, and human life will never be so materialized that moral obligations and spiritual aspirations will cease. Now to bring down the life and the presence of God to do its sacramental work upon the human life and the human heart, that remains the mission of the Church in this age and in every age.
I will grant you at once that merely as an agent for secular culture or merely as a dispenser of secular information, or merely as a doer of secular tasks, the Church has no future. But I tell you, too, that as a channel for the communication of spiritual grace and as a center for the inspiration of spiritual life, the Church not only has a future but it never had quite the future that it has to-day. A truly spiritual Church has absolutely nothing to fear in this age or in any age, and I am inclined to think, rather less in this age than in any age. Unless thoughtful observers are much mistaken, there is a tremendous turning toward the sources of spiritual life upon the rank and file of men and women who are living just in the days in which we find ourselves now. All over this land of ours there are multitudes of men and of women who have been trained in modern ways of thinking and who are quite beyond the reach of ecclesiasticism and quite beyond the reach of dogmatism, who have yet a great hunger and a great thirst in their souls, and are panting even as a hart for the water brooks for the knowledge of a God that is alive. These people do not want a complicated faith, and they are not looking for an elaborate faith, but they do want to believe in something. Witness, for example, the extraordinary sale and circulation in our day of re-
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ligious books, the demand for which far exceeds the supply. Think of the vast circulation of such books as those of Mr. Dresser and of Mr. Trine, books that are not very serious literature, and books really which are not very serious philosophy, but books which are sold by the hundreds and thousands because of the hundreds and thousands of us who want by some means to get in tune with the Infinite.
People are beginning to have their misgivings in the day in which we live. They are having desperate misgivings about the power of material things perman- ently to satisfy the human soul. There are thousands of men to-day whose property lies on their soul just like a dead weight. There are thousands of people who, if they could underscore one verse in the New Testament and declare out of their own experience that that was God's truth, would underscore this verse : "A man's life consists not in the abundance of the things that he possesses, but in love, joy, peace in the Holy Ghost." People are having their misgiv- ings about the ability of science really to answer the questions on which a man's health and happiness and holiness depend. People are waking up to the fact that science really asks more questions than it answers. What science has done is to make a world for us that is a nightmare if it has no God somewhere in it. What science has done is to lift the heavens so far above our heads as to frighten us, and literally to take the solid ground from beneath our feet, so that a man looks around in the kind of a world that science has made for him in our day, and feels that he will go mad unless there is an intelligence and unless there is a love there somewhere. People are finding it much more easy to believe in the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob than to think of themselves as
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clinging to the thin outside crust of a planet that is being hurled through abysmal distances at simply in- credible velocity without an eye to look on or an ear to hear or a heart to care. That thing has become unbelievable.
Again, people are having their misgivings about what popular philosophy has to say on the subject of sin. Think of reading such words as these, for example, in Collier's Weekly. I quote them roughly. " People are having their misgivings as to what a popular philosophy has to say on the subject of sin : that if a man sins to-day it is largely a matter of temperament. He sins because his grandfather was a sinner, or he sins because he lives on the wrong street corner. Now, that ought to comfort a man, but somehow it does not, and it ought to take the ache out of his heart, but instead it leaves it there. It leaves him with the blight of sin on his soul and it leaves him with a heart that is ashamed. So that men are beginning to turn back to the old Book which when it talks about sin does not say any cheap and easy words about it at all, but before it gets through talking about sin tells a man that there is a God with Whom there is forgiveness, that He may be feared, and speaks to him the words, 'Go and sin no more.'"
Then there are people in this world who are des- perately tired. But when they look at their business they do not find rest there; and when they look at the stars they do not find rest there; and when they look in their newspaper there is nothing restful there. And they are beginning to listen to the Voice of Gal- ilee that said, "Come unto me and I will give you rest."
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Or again, there are multitudes of lonely people : people that just want to be loved, people that want to be taken care of. When they started out to live they did it with a stout heart, but if you should try to define the state of heart they are in now, all you could say is that they are homesick. And they are beginning to listen to the words of a Book that tells them that "behind this rude and temporary universe of ours there is a Being of love that knows how to get close to the littlest child or to the oldest man when he is sick at heart because of his loneliness." People are standing up by hundreds and thousands all around us and they are saying, "What consolation have we got anyway, that we should turn our back upon this consolation? Has our heart then got so strong by the wear and by the tear of the centuries that no longer we have a sin that needs to be forgiven and no longer have we a sorrow that needs to be comforted? Has our science become so acute as to wipe failure out of a man's life? At last has evolution produced a man who is and knows himself to be all-sufficient and all-sufficing?" If only we had eyes to see and hearts to feel it, we would know the throb of a great multi- tude who want to get back to God, back to the Bible, back to Jesus Christ. "Behold, I set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it," for the reason that you cannot still that hunger, and you cannot hush up that cry, and you cannot put your hand up to crush the unrest of that troubled heart.
I grant that people are crying less for theology and I know that they are crying out less for doctrinal and ecclesiastical controversy. But that does not mean that they are crying out less for religion. They want less of the paraphernalia, but they want more of the power. They want less of the husk, but they want
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more of the kernel. They want a religion; a religion that will cure their maladies, and above all, a religion that will supply a real uplift and re-enforcement to what they know to be the inadequate spiritual re- sources of their own lives. People have found out that the cares of this world are so many, and its problems are so heavy, and its perplexities strike so deep, that they can be saved only by a great tide of spiritual vitality ; and they have made the discovery that if that tide is to flow forth from any source, it will flow forth from the very throne of God. " Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it." Think of a spiritual church standing in a day just like ours, witnessing for the things wherein all men are one, witnessing for all the things whereby all men live. A thousand voices call for it, but what they call for is a spiritual church that is just anointed, transfigured and inspired by the very mind of Jesus Christ.
Let me go one step farther and point out that when a truly spiritual Church thus satisfies the restless human heart, it will help to solve every problem of a restless outside world. Now if there is one word that can characterize the world in which we live, it is the word Unrest. Think of the books that line our book shelves with the word Unrest as their titles : our social Unrest, our industrial Unrest, our political Unrest. Trace all this unrest to its source, and you find that source to be the restless human heart. This heart-restlessness has gone on in ever widening circles until it has literally covered land and continent, earth and sea and sky. How put an end to our unrest? Only by putting an end to the restlessness of the hu- man soul. In other words, the real problem before us is not an economic problem, and it is not a social
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problem. It is neither an industrial problem, nor a political problem. In the last analysis, it is just a spiritual problem. Human society, we have come to understand, is never going to be saved into sweetness and soundness except by the moralization, except by the spiritualization of its members. A right spirit will be far more searching, far more exacting, and far more effective than law, regulation, or legislation. We must pacify the human heart before we can put the world at rest. And men are looking all around them for some force that is adequate to the task. What will solve our spiritual problem? What will set at rest the human heart? And men are realizing as never before that there is only one force that can give rest to the human heart, and that is the mind of Him who said, "Let not your heart be troubled." "That mind penetrates all the perplexities of human relations and solves the problems of life in all of its phases. It is upon the Spirit of Christ working through individuals and shaping and inspiring our politics that we must de- pend to straighten out the tangles in our affairs. That is the only force that is equal to so huge a task: that can make capital duly tolerant of labor, and labor duly tolerant of capital, that can keep the spiritual in control of the material, and can bring liberty and op- portunity to all creatures to work out all that there is in them of good." What the world needs as never before is the mind of Jesus Christ.
" Behold, I have set before thee an open door." In the realization of this vast fact will you tell me when in the whole history of the Christian Church it had an opportunity commensurate with the oppor- tunity as it exists to-day? Look down for a moment into the coming years and imagine what it will mean if the world of our possessions becomes also the world
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of our faith; if the world of our knowledge becomes also the world of our hope; if the world of our power becomes the world of our love. I tell you, eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, neither hath it entered into the mind of man to conceive what confessors of Jesus Christ can do in the day in which we live if they only love God. The Church has no power aside from the dignity and presence of Jesus Christ. The Church has indescribable dignity and power if possessed by the mind of Jesus Christ.
People talk sometimes about the foolishness of preaching. There is some preaching that is foolish, but there never was quite such a chance for a spiritual preacher as in the day in which we live. When I think of the kind of preaching that I think men want in our day, I remember some words that Phillips Brooks once wrote after he had heard George Mac- Donald preach. "There were all the good and there were all the bad elements in the man's style; manly, rugged honesty, with some tendency to sentimen- tality. But over and through it all there was this quality : it was a message from God to those people by him. The man struggled as a child struggles with his imperfectly mastered tongue that will not tell the errand as he received it and had it in his mind. As I listened, I seemed to see how weak in contrast was the way in which other preachers had amused me or challenged my admiration by the working of their minds. But here was a real Gospel, here were real tidings." It is such spiritual prophecy communicating the mind of Christ that constitutes the open door to the preacher of our day.
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It is the Spirit of Christ that alone gives vitalizing power to Christian living and opens wide the door to the humblest follower of Jesus Christ to-day. For faith ultimately is not taught from this pulpit or from any other pulpit. Real faith is not taught at all; it is caught. And let a man's life somehow be sur- charged with the spirit of Jesus Christ and he will communicate it to a hundred other lives with which he comes in contact. To every Christian life is offered the infinite possibility of being a bit of leaven in the lump which can transmit its own hidden secret power, till the whole lump be leavened with the sacramental grace of Jesus Christ.
What can the Church do, men ask, in such a day as this? Well, what can it do? What can it do but to strike its spiritual note clearly and strongly? What can it do but to lift its life up to the very highest spiritual levels that it knows anything about? And that is all it has to do. And when it has done that, it will answer the prayer of Jesus Christ for his own Church, that He might present it to Himself pure, without wrinkle, without spot, unto the day of Jesus Christ.
My dear friends, on this anniversary Sunday morning, I want you to believe in your Church as you never believed in it before. I want you to be- lieve it has a mission and an opportunity such as it never had before. I want you to dedicate yourselves to it as you never dedicated yourselves to it before, that the word of true prophecy may be realized, "I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it."
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Oh, holy Sabbath bells, Ye have a pleasant voice. Through all the land your music swells And man with one commandment tells To rest and to rejoice.
As thirsty travellers sing Through desert paths that pass To hear the welcome waters spring And see beyond the spray they fling Tall trees and waving grass :
So we rejoice to know Your melody begun, For when our paths are parched below, Ye tell us where green pastures grow And living waters run.
For His dear name's sake, Amen.
CLOSING PRAYER BY DR. CALKINS
Almighty God, our heavenly Father, grant, we be- seech Thee, that thy Holy Spirit may rest upon us at this hour. Fill us with all joy and hope in believing, O Lord, our God. Grant that the words that we have heard this day with our outward ears may, by Thy grace, be so grafted inwardly in our hearts that they may bring forth in our lives the fruit of good living, to the honor and praise of Thy Name, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
SERMON AT THE COMMUNION SERVICE
By REV. CHARLES G. BURD
" Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin." Hebrews 12:4.
What a splendid challenge this is! What a fitting climax to the preceding chapter! For in the eleventh chapter, you remember, the apostle has been eulogiz- ing the heroes of the faith-Abraham, Gideon, and the martyrs. Then he bids his own followers lay aside every weight that they may contest with like heroism; and finally he urges them to the utmost exertion, in the words of the text: "Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin."
We do not know to whom this epistle was ad- dressed other than that they were Hebrew converts ; we do not know what their condition was or how greatly they had suffered for the cause of Christ; we do not know, of a certainty, who the author was But what matters it? We have its splendid record of noble heroism, and the summons to courageous action. And who of us who profess the name of Christian can be unmoved?
Judging from internal evidence the apostle who penned this message was trying to prepare his fol- lowers for some day of sore trial. They were men- naced by some threatening evil, and the time was approaching when their courage would be tried to the uttermost. The year was about 70 A. D .- a time
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filled with persecutions of all sorts, a time of terror and anguish, a testing-time for all who professed themselves followers of Jesus. Many a Christian community had been destroyed through the hatred of the Roman Emperors; many a Christian man and woman had suffered dreadful tortures; many had resisted unto blood. It was not a time for ease and indolence, for indifference and cowardice; but for the greatest courage and faith. This the apostle knew, for after setting forth the splendid heroism of the past, he calls upon these Hebrew converts for a like hero- ism. He reminds them of the cloud of witnesses, he bids them " call to remembrance the former days in which they themselves endured a great testing," and he tells them of the greater trials to come. Instead of allowing them to rest content, he summons them to the utmost exertions with the words, "Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin."
I have chosen this verse for my text, for it seems to emphasize a side of the Christian life too often forgotten, to-day. It is a call not to passiveness, but aggressiveness; not to a meek waiting for the King- dom to come, but to a heroic and persevering assault on the enemies of the Kingdom; not to a sitting down content with victories already won, but to a struggle to the death. This is one good thing about the Bible -it keeps the soul alive; it does not allow us to rest upon our laurels, but urges us on from conquest to conquest. It is wholesome medicine to turn back at times to the prophets of Israel-those brave, patient men who fought so unflinchingly against the en- trenched evils of their day-the idolatry, the immor- ality, the godlessness so prevalent; Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, Jeremiah,-and no one is more inspiring than Jeremiah. In one place, when he is discouraged, he
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calls upon the Lord and receives this cryptic answer : " If thou hast run with the footmen and they have wearied thee, how canst thou contend with horses ? And if in a land of peace thou art scarcely secure, how wilt thou do in the pride of Jordan?" The pride of Jordan being the dangerous ground by the river where the vegetation was rank and fever-breeding and where wild beasts made their lair; a place of the greatest menace to health and to life. The prophet asked for an answer of peace and assurance, and he was told that there were greater dangers ahead. What he had endured was as nothing to what he was to en- dure. And it was only too true. In a short time Ne- buchadrezzar was besieging Jerusalem and carrying her people away in chains, and the prophet was an exile. Surely the Bible doesn't promise an easy life to the servant of God. If we are looking for an easy time, we should not choose the road of righteousness, for it is narrow and rocky and too often leads to the crown of thorns and the cross.
This is the message of the apostle to his people, however, and it applies to us also. Ye have done well, but there is far more to do; ye have run with the footmen, now run with the horsemen; ye have been sorely tested, but ye have not yet resisted unto blood.
Why is it, I wonder, that so many look upon the religion of Christ as a religion of passiveness, of peace, when it is one continuous struggle against evil within and without? To be sure, Jesus promised us peace-" My peace I give unto you ; my peace I leave with you," but he also said-" I have come not to bring peace but a sword."
In the sermon on the mount, he said: "Resist not evil." But, again, he said, " Let him who hath no sword, sell his cloak and buy one." A noted Eng-
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lish writer says, apropos of this: "Christianity is made up of contradictions which counteract each other. There has ever been room in it for a St. Francis, praising all good, and for a St. Jerome, denouncing all evil; for priests that did not fight and for crusaders that did. All that the Church did was to prevent either of these good things from oust- ing the other."
This is cleverly said, but the writer has confused the letter with the spirit, the Church with Christianity. The Church ever has been full of contradictions ; Christianity-and by Christianity I mean the true re- ligion of Christ-Christianity has ever had but one central message-" Resist evil." To be sure, some of Jesus' sayings seem to contradict each other; but when we interpret them in the light of his life, we realize that such contradictions do not really exist. His message is so plain that he who runs may read. And although some of his sayings would seem to mean that the Christian is to sit passive in the face of evil, we know that such is not the case. The whole life of Jesus was a continual resistance against evil, from the day when he went apart into the wilderness to the day when his hands and feet were pierced with the cruel nails. "I came not to send peace, but a sword." And, although he promised his disciples peace-his peace, it was the peace that comes only after conflict.
Truly the followers of Jesus have never had an easy time of it; nor will they have until evil is con- quered. The history of the Christian Church is not one of peace and quiet. One has but to recall the struggles from the days of Nero to the present-the martyrs, the Hugenots, the Waldensians, the Puritans, to realize this beyond a doubt. And the Church that
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