The Commoner
NOVEMBER,: 1916
17
tian world than on the subject of forgiveness.
Whilo the latter contented themselves with
rules and formulae Christ cleansed the heart of
that from which evil grows.
Forgiveness is so important a part of God's
scheme, so essential to Christ's code of morals,
that in the model prayer which Jesus gave for
the instruction of His followers, He made our
willingness to forgive the measure of our claim
to forgiveness: "Forgive us our tresspasses, AS
WE FORGIVE THOSE WHO TRESPASS
AGAINST US."
The doctrine of forgiveness was not urged for
the benefit of the forgiven alone; it is necessary
to the happiness of the injured party as well.
There is no heavier burden than a load of re
venge; it will break any man down who attempts
to carry it. It is only once or occasionally at
most, that one has a chance to retaliate upon
an enemy, but the spirit of retaliation does the
one who cherishes it a continuing injury. It is
a corroding influence, and destructive of the
better nature.
It is for the benefit of the victim of ihe in
jury as well as for the punishment of the wrong
doer that God reserves to Himself the exclusive
right to Visit retribution.
(From The Fruits of the Tree-)
CHRISTIAN COURAGE
But this Prince of Peace promises not only
peace but strength. Some have thought His
teachings fil.only for the weak and the timid
and unsuited to men of vigor, energy and am
bition. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Only the man of faith can be courageous. Con
fident that he fights on the side of Jehovah, he
doubts not the success of his cause. What mat
ters it whether he shares in the shouts of tri
umph? If every word spoken in behalf of truth
has its influence and every deed done for the
right weighs in the final account, it is imma
terial to the Christian whether his eyes behold
victory or whether he dies in the midst of the
conflict '' ' . . .
"Yea, though thou liejirpon the dust,
When they who helped thee flee in fear,
Die full of hope and manly trust,
Like those who fell in battle here.
"Another hand thy sword shall wield,
Another hand the standard wave,
Till from, the- trumpet's mouth is pealed,
The blast 'pf'trfumph o'er) thy grave."
(From The Prince of Peace.)
SAVING LIFE AND LOSING IT
The seeming paradox: "He that saveth his life
shall lose it and he that loseth 4iis-life for my
sake shall find it," has an application wider
than that usually given to it; it is an epitome of
history. Those who live only for themselves
live little lives, but those who stand ready to
give themselves for the advancement-.of things
greater than themselves find a larger life than
the one they would have surrendered. Wen
dell philipps gave expression to the same idea
when he said, "What imprudent men the bene
factors of the race have been! How prudently
niost men sink into nameless graves, while now
and then a few FORGET themselves into im
mortality." We win immortality, not by re
membering ourselves, but by forgetting ourselves
in devotion to things larger than ourselves.
(From The Prince of Peace.)
EXAMPLE
Example is the means of propagating truth.
What bloodshed might have been avoided;
what slaughter might have been prevented, if
all who bore the name of Christian had been
willing to trust to the life for the evangeliza
tion of the world, instead of resorting to the
sword! .-'
It is a slow process, this winning of converts
by example, but it is the sure way it is Christ's
way. A SPEECH MAY BE DISPUTED; EVEN
A SERMON MAY NOT CONVINCE, BUT NO
ONE HAS YET LIVED WHO COULD ANSWER
A CHRISTIAN LIFE; IT IS THE UNANSWER
ABLE ARGUMENT in SUPPORT OF THE
CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
. .,(FromThe Fruits of the Tree.) , ,
THE GOLDEN RULE
It is not sufficient that wo abstain from wrong
doing; wo must do good. It is difficult to
measure the woe which injustice has brought
mankind or to estimate the benefit to bo de
rived from the establishment of universal
justice; but the world needs something better
than justice. The earth would bo a cold and
cheerless place In which to live if there woro
nothing warmer hero than justice. Wo noed
sympathy; wo need generosity; wo need that
helpfulness which benovolence alone inspires.
Christianity is not an abstraction it is a re
ality. To prove his right to the name of Chris
tian, one must BE something; ho must DO
something. Love impels him to service through
example, and the golden rule points the way.
.(From The Fruits of the Tree.)
L
SERVICE THE MEASURE OP GREATNESS
It always has been true; it Ib truo today;
it always will be true that ho is greatest who
does the most of good. Read the inscriptions
upon the monuments reared by grateful hands
to those whom the world calls great; they record
not what the dead have received, but what they
have given to the world, and prove that it is, in
truth, "more blessed to give than to receive."
And how this old earth will be transformed
when this measure of greatness is the measure
of every life! We have had our conflicts, be
cause we have been trying to see how much wo
could get from each other; there will bo peaco
when we are trying to see how much we can do
for each other. We have had our combats be
cause we have been trying to see how much we
could get out of the world; there will be peace
when we are trying to see how much we can put
into the world. The human measure of a hu
man life is its income; the divine measure of a
human life is its outgo Its overflow its con
tribution to the welfare of the world.
Christ's conception of life Is a revolutionary
one; it will revolutionize an individual, it will
revolutionize a community, a nation, or a world.
Let one understand that his success is to be
.measured (and is not his happiness also?) by
his service to society, and life takes on a new
meaning.
(From The Fruits of the Tree.)
THE PRICE OF A SOUL
The fact that Christ dealt with this subject
is proof conclusive that .it is important, for He
never dealt with trivial things. When Christ
focused attention upon a theme it was because
it was worthy of consideration and Christ
weighed the soul. He presented the subject,
too, with surpassing force; no one will ever add
emphasis to what He said. Ho understood the
value of the question in argument. If you will
examine the great orations delivered at crises
in the world's history, you will And that in
nearly every case the speaker condensed the
whole subject into a question, and in that ques
tion embodied what he regarded as an unan
swerable argument.
Christ used the question to give force to the
' thought which he presented in regard to the
soul's value. On one side He put the world and
all that the world can .contain all the wealth
that one can accumulate, all the fame to which
one can aspire, and all the happiness that ono can
covet; and on the other side he put the soul;
then He asked the question that has come ringing
down the centuries: "What shall it profit a man
if he gain the whole world and lose his own
soul?"
There is no compromise here no partial
statement of the matter. He leaves us to write
one term of the equation ourselves. He gives
us all the time wo desire, and allows the imag
ination to work to the limit, and when we have
gathered together into one sum all things but
the soul, He asks What if you gain it all all
ALL, and lose the soul? What shall it profit?
(From the Price of a Soul.)
'PROOF OF IMMORTALITY
If the Father deigns to touch with divine
power the cold and pulseless heart of the buried
acorn and to make it burst forth from its prison
walls will he leave neglected in the earth. the
soul of 'man, made in the image of his Creator?
If he stoops to give to the rose bush, whoso
withered blossoms float upon the autumn brceztf,
tho sweet assurance of another springtime, will
Ho refuso tho words of hope to tho sons of men
when tho frosts of winter come? If matter,
xnuto and inanimate, though changed by tho
forces of naturo into a multitudo of forms, can
nover die, will tho imperial snirit of man suffer
annihilation when It has paid a brief visit like a
royal guest to this tenoment of clay? No, I am
sure that Ho who, notwithstanding his apparent
prodigality, created nothing without a purpose,
and wasted not a single atom In all his creation,
has made provision for a futuro life in which
man's unlvorsal longing for immortality wiljl
find its realization. I am as sure that we llvo
again as I am sure that we livo today.
(From Tho Prince of Peace.)
THE GRAIN OF WHEAT
In Cairo I secured a few grains of wheat that
had slumbered for raoro than thirty centuries In
an Egyptian tomb. As I looked at them this
thought came into my mind: If one of thoso
grains had been planted on tho banks of tho
Nile tho year aftor it grow, and all Its lineal
descendants had been planted and replanted
from that tlmo until now, its progeny would to
day bo sufllclontly numerous to feed tho teem
ing millions of the world. An unbroken chain of
life connects the earliest grains of wheat with
the grains that we sow and reap. Thoro is in
tho grain of wheat an invisible something which
has the power to discard tho body that wo see,
and from earth und air fashion a new body so
much liko the old one that we can not tell tho
ono from the other. If this Invisible germ of
life In tho grain of wheat can thus pass unim
paired through three thousand resurrections, I
shall no doubt that my soul has power to clotho
itself with a body suited to its new cxistenco
when this earthly frame has crumbled into dust.
(From The Prince of Peace.)
HEAVEN
We need not worry about the details of "the
" next life; it Is enough to know that' there is an
existence beyond the grave. The God 'who
. fashioned this world and suited it to tho ndeds
of man, can bo trusted to frame a heaven for
thoso whom He has made in His own imago.
(From The Fruits of the Tree.)
THE MIRACLE
The miracle raises two questions: "Can. God
perform a miracle?" and, "Would He want to?"
The first Is easy to answer. A God who can
make a world can do anything He wants to do
with it. The power to perform miracles is
necessarily implied in the pover to create. But
would God WANT to perform a miracle? this
is the question which haa given most trouble.
The more I have considered it the less inclined
I am to answer in the negative. To say that
God WOULD NOT perform a miracle is to as
sume a more intimate knowledge of God's plans
and purposes than I can claim to have. I will
not deny that God does perform a miracle or
may perform one merely because I do not know
how or why He does it. I find it so difficult to
decide each day what God wants done now that
I am not presumptuous enough to attempt to
declare what God might have wanted to do
thousands of years ago.
(From The Prince of Peace.)
THE WATERMELON ILLUSTRATION
I was eating a piece of watermelon some
months ago and was struck with its
beauty. I took some of tho seeds and
dried them and weighed them and
found that It would require some five thousand
seeds to weigh a pound; and then I applied
mathematics to that forty-pound melon. One
of these seeds, put into th$ ground, when
warmed by-the sun and moistened by the rain,
takes off Its coat and goes to work; it gathers
from somewhere two hundred thousand times
its own weight, and, forcing this raw -material
through a tiny stem, constructs a watermelon.
It ornaments the outside with a covering of
green; inside the green it puts a layer of white,
and within the white a core of red, and all
through the red it scatters seeds, each one cap
able of continuing the work of reproduction.
What architect drew the plan? Where does th
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