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] 📗

we have that feeling and conviction of God's abiding presence wherever we are? Does He beset us behind and before? There is nothing more needed in this generation than a larger and more scriptural idea of God. A great American writer has told us that the conception of God that he got, in books and from sermons, when he was a boy, was that of a wise and very strict lawyer sitting in his office. I remember very well the awful conception I got when I was a boy. I was given a book of Watts' hymns, which was illustrated, and, amongst other hymns, there was one about God, and it represented a great black, scowling thunder cloud, and in the midst of that cloud there was a piercing eye. That was placed before my young imagination as God, and I got the idea that God was a great detective, playing the spy upon my actions, and, as the hymn says, writing now the story of what little children do. That was a bad lesson. It has taken years to obliterate it. We think of God as "up there." You know there is no such thing as "up there." What would be "up there" tonight will be "down there" twelve hours from this time. Do not think of God as "up there," because there is no such place. Science has been "up there," and it has not seen God. You say God made the world six thousand years ago and then He retired. That is the last that was seen of Him. He made the world and then went away into space somewhere to look on and keep things going. Geology has been away back there, and God has gone further and further back. These six thousand years have extended back into ages and ages of long, long years. Where is God, if He is not back there in time or up there in space? Where is He? God is in you. The Kingdom of God is within you and God Himself is within men. He is not "up there." When are we to exchange the terrible God of our childhood, the far-away God of our childhood, for the everywhere-present God of the Bible?
The God of theology has been largely taken from the old classical Christian-Roman writers, such as Augustine, who, great as they were, had nothing better to fling their conception of God upon than that of the greatest man. The greatest man was the Roman emperor, and therefore God became a kind of emperor. The Greeks had a far grander conception--the conception of Clement of Alexandria, which is coming again into modern theology. The Greek God is the God of this Book; the Spirit which moved upon the water; the God in whom we live and move and have our being; the God of whom Jesus spake to the woman at the well; the God who is a spirit. God is a spirit. Let us gather the conception of the immanent God. That is the theological word for it, and it is a splendid word. Immanuel, God with us, the inside God, the immanent God. You have had singular experiences since you have been here. What is it? It is God working in you. Have we really realized that God is in us and is working in us? God must be working in us. Long, long ago God made matter. Then He made flowers, trees and animals. Then he made man. Did He stop? Is God dead? If He lives, if He acts, what is He doing? He is making better men. He is carrying on the development of man. "It is God which worketh in you." The buds of our nature are not all out yet. The sap to make them come out comes from God, from the indwelling immanent Christ. Our bodies, therefore, are the temples of the Holy Ghost. We must bear Christ with us wherever we go, because the sense of God is not kept up by logic but by experience.
Most of you have heard of Hellen Kellar, the Boston girl who is deaf and dumb and blind. Until she was seven years of age her mind was an absolute blank. Nothing could get into that blank, because all the avenues to the other world were closed. Then, by that great process which Boston has discovered, by which the blind see, the deaf hear and the mute speak, that girl's soul was opened. Bit by bit they began to build up a mind --to give her a certain amount of information and to educate her. But no one liked to tell her about religion. They reserved that for Phillips Brooks. After some years had passed they took her to him and he began to talk to her, through the young lady who had been the means of opening her senses, and was able to communicate with her by the delicate process of touch. Phillips Brooks began to tell her about God, who God was, what He had done, how He loved men and what He was to us. The child listened very intently. Then she looked up and said: "Mr. Brooks, I knew all that before, but I didn't know His name." There was some mysterious pressure, some impelling power, some guide, some elevating impulse, within her soul. "It is GOD," said Phillips Brooks, "which worketh in you. God is with us and in us."
I wonder if you have heard the story of the two Americans who were once crossing the Atlantic and met in the cabin on Sunday night to sing hymns. As they sang the last hymn, "Jesus, Lover of my Soul," one of them heard an exceedingly rich and beautiful voice behind him. He looked around, and, although he did not know the face, he thought that he knew the voice. So, when the music ceased, he turned and asked the man if he had been in the Civil War.
The man replied that he had been a Confederate soldier.
"Were you at such a place at such a night?" asked the first.
"Yes," he replied, "and a curious thing happened that night which this hymn has recalled to my mind. I was posted on sentry duty near the edge of a wood. It was a dark night and very cold, and I was a little frightened because the enemy were supposed to be very near. About midnight, when everything was very still and I was feeling homesick and miserable and weary, I thought that I would comfort myself by praying and singing a hymn. I remember singing this hymn:

" `All my trust on Thee is stayed,
All my help from Thee I bring;
Cover my defenseless head
With the shadow of Thy wing.'

"After singing that a strange peace came down upon me, and through the long night I felt no more fear."
"Now," said the other, "listen to my story. I was a Union soldier and was in the wood that night with a party of scouts. I saw you standing, although I did not see your face. My men had their rifles focused upon you, waiting the word to fire, but when you sang out:

" `Cover my defenseless head
With the shadow of Thy wing'

I said: `Boys, lower your rifles; we will go home.' It was God working in each of them. Just by such means, by this everywhere-acting, mysterious spirit, God keeps His Spirit moving. Hence that second great element in life, GOD, without Whom life is a living death.

III
A moment or two about the third element in life. The first is "work," the second is "God," the third is "love." You have noticed in that picture the sense of companionship, brought out by the young man and the young woman. It matters not whether they are brother and sister or lover and lover. There you have the idea of friendship, the final ingredient in our lives. If the man had been standing in that field alone, the scene would be almost weary. If the woman had been standing alone it would have been sentimental. You can carry much away from this Conference; but we can all carry away with us some enrichment of our human friendship, and that will complete our life, because no life is complete unless it has that additional element in it. That, after all, is the divine element in life, because God is love and because he that loveth is born of God. Therefore, gentlemen, after we leave one another, let us keep our friendships in repair, as some one says. They are worth while spending time on and keeping them up, because they constitute a large part of our life. I need not say that we must cultivate this spirit of friendship and let it grow into a great love not only for our friends, but for all humanity. Some of you are going into the mission field. Your mission field will be a failure unless you cultivate this element. Two years ago I was wandering about the coral islands of the Pacific, and I came to one island far remote from human gaze, inhabited solely by cannibals. At one end of the island was a missionary and his wife. At the other end of the island was another missionary and his wife. They never heard from other parts of the world for six months. You would suppose they would see each other every day, but they were not on loving terms. They were not on speaking terms. They were on war terms. One had actually assaulted the other. What was the trouble about? It was a quarrel over the word in the native language they should use for "God" in their translation of the New Testament. They needed and lacked charity, tenderness, tolerance, patience.
So these three things--work, God, love--form a complete life. If your life is not comfortable, if you are ill at ease, ask yourself if you are not lacking in one or other of these three things, and pray for them and work for them.


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Publication Date: 07-11-2009

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