THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD, A Life for a Life and other addresses, A Changed Life, THE PROGRAMME OF CHRISTIANITY, THE CITY WITHOUT A CHURCH, PAX VOBISCUM, and STONES ROLLED AWAY and other addresses, Henry Drummond [digital book reader txt] 📗

I will close with a specific case of one of your own countrymen. One night I got a letter from one of the students in the University of Edinburgh, with page after page of agnosticism and atheism. I went to see him, and spent a whole afternoon with him, but did not make the slightest impression. At Edinburgh University we have a students' evangelistic meeting Sunday nights, with an attendance of 800 or 1,000 men. A few nights after my conversation with this young man I saw him at one of these meetings. Beside him sat a man I had seen occasionally at the meetings, but whose name I did not know. After the meeting I spoke to the latter student and asked him if he knew the man sitting next to him. He said: "I am a graduate. After I finished my regular course of study, I wanted to take a post-graduate course; and last year I came to Edinburgh, where, in the dissecting room, I happened to be placed near this man. I took a singular liking to him. I found out he was not a religious man. A year passed without any change in him. I went to pack my trunks to go home at the end of my one year's post-graduate work; but I was uncertain whether I should go and take up my profession in America, or stay in Edinburgh and try to win that one man for Christ. I decided I would stay." "Well," I said, "my young fellow, it will pay you. You will get your man." Two or three months passed. It came to the night for our students' farewell meeting--a service some of you might well imitate. We have men in Edinburgh University from every part of the world. Every year five or six hundred of them go out never to meet again. In our religious work we get very close to one another; and on the last night of the university year we sit down together in our common hall to the Lord's Supper. This is entirely a students' meeting; but that night the members of the Theological Faculty participate, so that things may be done decently and in order. There you see hundreds of men--the cream and the youth of the world--sitting down to the Lord's table, many of them not members of the church, there for the first time pledging themselves to become members of the Kingdom of God. I saw one, sitting down, passing the communion cup to his American friend. The American had won the agnostic for Christ. A week after, he was back to his own country. I do not know his name, but he was a subject of Christ's Kingdom doing his Master's work. A few weeks passed, and the friend he rescued from agnosticism came to see me and said: "I want to tell you that I am going to be a medical missionary."
Before you leave here, make up your mind that, with God's help, you will try to land your man. Let us ask God to use us in His work.


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THE THREE ELEMENTS OF A COMPLETE LIFE
Students are very often recommended to invest in certain books. I am going to take the liberty of suggesting to some of you to buy a certain picture which you can get for a very few cents. Most of you have already seen it. It is "The Angelus." It is an illuminated text. God speaks through you. He also speaks through art. I want to hang up this picture as an illuminated text. There are three things in the picture--a potato field, a country lad and a country girl standing on the ground, and on the far horizon the spire of the village church. That is the whole thing. There is no great scenery, no picturesque scenery; just a country lad and a country girl. In those Roman Catholic countries, at the hour of evening, the church bell rings out to summon the people to pray. Some go into the church to pray; and those that are caught in the fields when the Angelus rings bow their heads to engage for a few moments in silent prayer.
Now, that picture is a perfect picture of Christian life; and what is interesting about it is that it picks out the three great pedestals of life. Moody said it was not enough to have the root of the matter, we must have the whole thing.

I
The first element in life is work Three-fourths of our life is probably spent in work. Is that religious, or is it not? What is the meaning of it? It means, of course, that our work is just as religious as our worship; and unless we can make our work religious, three-fourths of our life remains unsanctified. The proof that work is religious is that the most of Christ's life was spent in work. It was not the Bible that was in His hands during these first thirty years of His life. It was the hammer and the plane. He was making chairs and tables and plows and yokes. That is to say, the highest conceivable life is in doing work. Christ's public ministry occupied only two and a half years. The great bulk of His time, He was simply at work; and from that moment work has had a new meaning given to it. When Christ came into the world He came to men at their work. He appealed to the shepherds, the working classes of those days. He also appealed to the wise men, the students of those days. Three deputations of the world went out to welcome him--first, the shepherds; second, the wise men; third, two old people, Simeon and Anna, in the temple. That is to say, Christ comes to men at their work, as the shepherds. He comes to men at their books--the wise men. He comes to men at their worship--Simeon and Anna. We find Christ, therefore, at our work, our books and our worship. But you will notice that it was the old people who found Christ at their worship, and, as we get older, we will cease to find Christ so much at our work and our books. We will then spend more of our time in worship than we are able to now, and as we get old we will repair to the prayer meeting and the House of God and meet Christ and worship Him as Simeon and Anna. We must try, until the time comes when much of our time shall be given to direct business, to find Christ in our books and at our common work.
Why should God have arranged that so many hours of every day should be occupied with work? It is because work makes men. A university is not a place for making scholars. It is a place for making Christians. A farm is not a place for growing grain. It is a place for growing character, and a man has no character except what is built up through the medium of the things he does from day to day. God's Spirit aids it through the actions which he performs during his life-work. The student turns up every word in his Latin, instead of consulting the translation. The result is that honesty is translated into the student's being. If he gets up his mathematics thoroughly he not only becomes a mathematician and a learned man, but he becomes a thorough man. If he attends to the instructions that are given to him in class intelligently and conscientiously he becomes a conscientious man, and it is just by such means that thoroughness, conscientiousness and honorableness are imbedded in our being. We do not get perfect character in our sleep. It comes to us as muscle comes, through doing things. It is the muscle of the soul, and it comes by exercising it upon actual things. Hence the meaning of our work is that it is the making of us, and it is only by and through our work that the great Christian graces are communicated to our souls. That is the means God requires for the growing of the Christian principles. We cannot have Christian character unless we use these means. Hence, gentlemen, the necessity of a student being true, first of all, to his work, and letting his Christianity show itself to his fellow students and his professors by the integrity and the thoroughness of his academic work. Unless he is faithful in that which is least, it is impossible for him to be faithful in that which is much. The world judges a student by the conscientiousness and faithfulness with which he does his college work. I know men who were led to pass their examinations simply because they had become Christians--men who struggled for years to pass their examinations, but who, when they became Christians, got to work and succeeded where they had previously failed. Christianity comes out in a man as much in his work as in his worship. Our work is not only to be done thoroughly, but it is to be done honestly. In dealing with that august thing called truth a man must be square with himself, fair to his own mind and to the principles and spirit of truth. We are students, and it is our business to get to the bottom of difficulties. Perhaps some truths which are revealed to us have deeper bottoms than we now know. We will get down to nuggets if we go below the surface, as our chairman said this morning. Christianity is the most important thing in the world, and the student ought to sound it in every direction and see if there is deep water and a safe place through which to steer his life. If there are shoals, he ought to know them. Therefore, when we come to difficulties, let us not be guilty of intellectual sin, jumping lightly over them. Let us be honest seekers after truth. We do not ask the public to sift doctrines, but it is the business of the student to exercise the intellect which God has given him. Faith is never opposed to reason in the New Testament. It is often supposed to be so, but it is not. Faith is opposed to sight, but never to reason. It is only by reason that we can sift and examine and criticise, and be sure of the forms of truth which are given us as Christians. Hence a great field of work has opened to the student even apart from his academic work. Let him be sure that in seeking after truth he is drawing very near Christ. "I am the way, the truth and the life." We talk a great deal about Christ as the way and about Christ as the life; but there is a side of Christ especially for the student, "I am the truth." Every student ought to be a truth-learner and a truth-seeker for Christ's sake.

II
The second element in life after work--and it ought to be put first in importance--is God. The Angelus is perhaps the most religious picture painted in this century. You cannot look at it and see that young man standing in the field with his hat off, and the girl opposite him with her hands clasped and her head bowed on her breast, without feeling a sense of God. Gentlemen, do we carry about with us wherever we go a sense of God? If not, we have missed the greatest part of life. Do