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JOY AND POWER


Three messages with One meaning

by

Henry van <DW18>




1903




Dedicated to my friend John Huston Finley
President of the College of the City of New York




THE PREFACE


The three messages which are brought together in this book were given
not far apart in time, though at some distance from one another in
space. The one called Joy and Power was delivered in Los Angeles,
California, at the opening of the Presbyterian General Assembly, May 21,
1903. The one called The Battle of Life was delivered on Baccalaureate
Sunday at Princeton University, June 7. The one called The Good Old Way
was delivered on Baccalaureate Sunday at Harvard University, June 14. At
the time, I was thinking chiefly of the different qualities and needs of
the people to whom I had to speak. This will account for some things in
the form of each message. But now that they are put together I can see
that all three of them say about the same thing. They point in the same
direction, urge the same course of action, and appeal to the same
motive. It is nothing new,--the meaning of this threefold message,--but
it is the best that I have learned in life. And I believe it is
true,--so true that we need often to have it brought to remembrance.

Henry van <DW18>

Avalon, July 5, 1903




CONTENTS


i. Joy and Power

ii. The Battle of Life

iii. The Good Old Way




JOY AND POWER

    <i>St. John viii. 17: If ye know these things, happy are
    ye if ye do them.</i>

I ask you to think for a little while about the religion of Christ in
its relation to happiness.

This is only one point in the circle of truth at the centre of which
Jesus stands. But it is an important point because it marks one of the
lines of power which radiate from Him. To look at it clearly and
steadily is not to disregard other truths. The mariner takes the whole
heavens of astronomy for granted while he shapes his course by a single
star.

In the wish for happiness all men are strangely alike. In their
explanations of it and in their ways of seeking it they are singularly
different. Shall we think of this wish as right, or wrong; as a true
star, or a will-o'-the-wisp? If it is right to wish to be happy, what
are the conditions on which the fulfilment of this wish depends? These
are the two questions with which I would come to Christ, seeking
instruction and guidance.

I. The desire of happiness, beyond all doubt, is a natural desire. It
is the law of life itself that every being seeks and strives toward the
perfection of its kind, the realization of its own specific ideal in
form and function, and a true harmony with its environment. Every drop
of sap in the tree flows toward foliage and fruit. Every drop of blood
in the bird beats toward flight and song. In a conscious being this
movement toward perfection must take a conscious form. This conscious
form is happiness,--the satisfaction of the vital impulse,--the rhythm
of the inward life,--the melody of a heart that has found its keynote.
To say that all men long for this is simply to confess that all men are
human, and that their thoughts and feelings are an essential part of
their life. Virtue means a completed manhood. The joyful welfare of the
soul belongs to the fulness of that ideal. Holiness is wholeness. In
striving to realize the true aim of our being, we find the wish for
happiness implanted in the very heart of our effort.

Now what does Christ say in regard to this natural human wish? Does He
say that it is an illusion? Does He condemn and deny it? Would He have
accepted Goethe's definition: "religion is renunciation"?

Surely such a notion is far from the spirit of Jesus. There is nothing
of the hardness of Stoicism, the coldness of Buddhism, in Christ's
gospel. It is humane, sympathetic, consoling. Unrest and weariness, the
fever of passion and the chill of despair, soul-solitude and
heart-trouble, are the very things that He comes to cure. He begins His
great discourse with a series of beatitudes. "Blessed" is the word.
"Happy" is the meaning. Nine times He rings the changes on that word,
like a silver bell sounding from His fair temple on the mountain-side,
calling all who long for happiness to come to Him and find rest for
their souls.

Christ never asks us to give up merely for the sake of giving up, but
always in order to win something better. He comes not to destroy, but to
fulfil,--to fill full,--to replenish life with true, inward, lasting
riches. His gospel is a message of satisfaction, of attainment, of
felicity. Its voice is not a sigh, but a song. Its final word is a
benediction, a good-saying. "These things have I spoken unto you, that
my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full."

If we accept His teaching we must believe that men are not wrong in
wishing for happiness, but wrong in their way of seeking it. Earthly
happiness,--pleasure that belongs to the senses and perishes with
them,--earthly happiness is a dream and a delusion. But happiness on
earth,--spiritual joy and peace, blossoming here, fruiting
hereafter,--immortal happiness, is the keynote of life in Christ.

And if we come to Him, He tells us four great secrets in regard to it.

i. It is inward, and, not outward; and so it does not depend on what we
have, but on what we are.

ii. It cannot be found by direct seeking, but by setting our faces
toward the things from which it flows; and so we must climb the mount
if we would see the vision, we must tune the instrument if we would hear
the music.

iii. It is not solitary, but social; and so we can never have it without
sharing it with others.

iv. It is the result of God's will for us, and not of our will for
ourselves; and so we can only find it by giving our lives up, in
submission and obedience, to the control of God.

  For this is peace,--to lose the lonely note
  Of self in love's celestial ordered strain:
  And this is joy,--to find one's self again
  In Him whose harmonies forever float
  Through all the spheres of song, below, above,--
  For God is music, even as God is love.

This is the divine doctrine of happiness as Christ taught it by His life
and with His lips. If we want to put it into a single phrase, I know not
where we shall find a more perfect utterance than in the words which
have been taught us in childhood,--words so strong, so noble, so
cheerful, that they summon the heart of manhood like marching-music:
"Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever."

Let us accept without reserve this teaching of our Divine Lord and
Master in regard to the possibility and the duty of happiness. It is an
essential element of His gospel. The atmosphere of the New Testament is
not gloom, but gladness; not despondency, but hope. The man who is not
glad to be a Christian is not the right kind of a Christian.

The first thing that commended the Church of Jesus to the weary and
disheartened world in the early years of her triumph, was her power to
make her children happy,--happy in the midst of afflictions, happy in
the release from the burden of guilt, happy in the sense of Divine
Fatherhood and human brotherhood, happy in Christ's victory over sin and
death, happy in the assurance of an endless life. At midnight in the
prison, Paul and Silas sang praises, and the prisoners heard them. The
lateral force of joy,--that was the power of the Church.

  "'Poor world,' she cried,'so deep accurst,
    Thou runn'st from pole to pole
  To seek a draught to slake thy thirst,--
    Go seek it in thy soul.'

         *       *       *       *       *

  Tears washed the trouble from her face!
    She changed into a child!
  'Mid weeds and wrecks she stood,--a place
    Of ruin,--but she smiled!"

Much has the Church lost of that pristine and powerful joy. The furnace
of civilization has withered and hardened her. She has become anxious
and troubled about many things. She has sought earthly honours, earthly
powers. Richer she is than ever before, and probably better organized,
and perhaps more intelligent, more learned,--but not more happy. The one
note that is most often missing in Christian life, in Christian service,
is the note of spontaneous joy.

Christians are not as much calmer, steadier, stronger, and more cheerful
than other people as they ought to be. Some Christians are among the
most depressing and worryful people in the world,--the most difficult to
live with. And some, indeed, have adopted a theory of spiritual ethics
which puts a special value upon unhappiness. The dark, morbid spirit
which mistrusts every joyful feeling, and depreciates every cheerful
virtue, and looks askance upon every happy life as if there must be
something wrong about it, is a departure from the beauty of Christ's
teaching to follow the dark-browed philosophy of the Orient.

The religion of Jesus tells us that cheerful piety is the best piety.
There is something finer than to do right against inclination; and that
is to have an inclination to do right. There is something nobler than
reluctant obedience; and that is joyful obedience. The rank of virtue is
not measured by its disagreeableness, but by its sweetness to the heart
that loves it. The real test of character is joy. For what you rejoice
in, that you love. And what you love, that you are like.

I confess frankly that I have no admiration for the phrase
"disinterested benevolence," to describe the main-spring of Christian
morals. I do not find it in the New Testament: neither the words, nor
the thing. Interested benevolence is what I find there. To do good to
others is to make life interesting and find peace for our own souls. To
glorify God is to enjoy Him. That was the spirit of the first
Christians. Was not St. Paul a happier man than Herod? Did not St. Peter
have more joy of his life than Nero? It is said of the first disciples
that they "did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart."
Not till that pristine gladness of life returns will the Church regain
her early charm for the souls of men. Every great revival of Christian
power--like those which came in the times of St. Francis of Assisi and
of John Wesley--has been marked and heralded by a revival of Christian
joy.

If we want the Church to be mighty in power to win men, to be a source
of light in the darkness, a fountain of life in the wilderness, we must
remember and renew, in the spirit of Christ, the relation of religion to
human happiness.

II. What, then, are the conditions upon which true happiness depends?
Christ tells us in the text: If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye
do them.

This is the blessing with a double if. "If ye know,"--this is the
knowledge which Christ gives to faith. "If ye do,"--this is the
obedience which faith gives to Christ. Knowing and Doing,--these are the
twin pillars, Jachin and Boaz, on which the house of happiness is built.
The harmony of faith and life,--this is the secret of inward joy and
power.

You remember when these words were spoken. Christ had knelt to wash the
disciples' feet. Peter, in penitence and self-reproach, had hesitated to
permit this lowly service of Divine love. But Christ answered by
revealing the meaning of His act as a symbol of the cleansing of the
soul from sin. He reminded the disciples of what they knew by
faith,--that He was their Saviour and their Lord. By deed and by word He
called up before them the great spiritual truths which had given new
meaning to their life. He summoned them to live according to their
knowledge, to act upon the truth which they believed.

I am sure that His words sweep out beyond that quiet upper room, beyond
that beautiful incident, to embrace the whole spiritual life. I am sure
that He is revealing to us the secret of happy living which lies at the
very heart of His gospel, when He says: If ye know these things, happy
are ye if ye do them.

i. "If ye know,"--there is, then, a certain kind of knowledge without
which we can not be happy. There are questions arising in human nature
which demand an answer. If it is denied we can not help being
disappointed, restless, and sad. This is the price we have to pay for
being conscious, rational creatures. If we were mere plants or animals
we might go on living through our appointed years in complete
indifference to the origin and meaning of our existence. But within us,
as human beings, there is something that cries out and rebels against
such a blind life. Man is born to ask what things mean. He is possessed
with the idea that there is a significance in the world beyond that
which meets his senses.

John Fiske has brought out this fact very clearly in his last book,
Through Nature to God. He shows that "in the morning twilight of
existence the Human Soul vaguely reached forth toward something akin to
itself, not in the realm of fleeting phenomena, but in the Eternal
Presence beyond." He argues by the analogy of evolution, which always
presupposes a real relation between the life and the environment to
which it adjusts itself, that this forth-reaching and unfolding of the
soul implies the everlasting reality of religion.

The argument is good. But the point which concerns us now is simply
this. The forth-reaching, questioning soul can never be satisfied if it
touches only a dead wall in the darkness, if its seeking meets with the
reply, "You do not know, and you never can know, and you must not try
to know." This is agnosticism. It is only another way of spelling
unhappiness.

"Since Christianity is not true," wrote Ernest Renan, "nothing interests
me, or appears worthy my attention." That is the logical result of
losing the knowledge of spiritual things,--a life without real interest,
without deep worth,--a life with a broken spring.

But suppose Renan is mistaken. Suppose Christianity is true. Then the
first thing that makes it precious, is that it answers our questions,
and tells us the things that we must know in order to be happy.

Christianity is a revealing religion, a teaching religion, a religion
which conveys to the inquiring spirit certain great and positive
solutions of the problems of life. It is not silent, nor ambiguous, nor
incomprehensible in its utterance. It replies to our questions with a
knowledge which, though limited, is definite and sufficient. It tells us
that this "order of nature, which constitutes the world's experience,
is only one portion of the total universe." That the ruler of both
worlds, seen and unseen, is God, a Spirit, and the Father of our
spirits. That He is not distant from us nor indifferent to us, but that
He has given His eternal Son Jesus Christ to be our Saviour. That His
Spirit is ever present with us to help us in our conflicts with evil, in
our efforts toward goodness. That He is making all things work together
for good to those that love Him. That through the sacrifice of Christ
every one who will may obtain the forgiveness of sins and everlasting
peace. That through the resurrection of Christ all who love Him and
their fellow-men shall obtain the victory over death and live forever.

Now these are doctrines. And it is just because Christianity contains
such doctrines that it satisfies the need of man.

"The first and the most essential condition of true happiness," writes
Professor Carl Hilty, the eminent Swiss jurist, "is a firm faith in the
moral order of the world. What is the happy life? It is a life of
conscious harmony with this Divine order of the world, a sense, that is
to say, of God's companionship. And wherein is the profoundest
unhappiness? It is in the sense of remoteness from God, issuing into
incurable restlessness of heart, and finally into incapacity to make
one's life fruitful or effective."

What shall we say, then, of the proposal to adapt Christianity to the
needs of the world to-day by eliminating or ignoring its characteristic
doctrines? You might as well propose to fit a ship for service by taking
out its compass and its charts and cutting off its rudder. Make
Christianity silent in regard to these great questions of spiritual
existence, and you destroy its power to satisfy the heart.

What would the life of Christ mean if these deep truths on which He
rested and from which He drew His strength, were uncertain or illusory?
It would be the most pathetic, mournful, heartbreaking of all phantoms.

What consoling, cheering power would be left in the words of Jesus if
His doctrine were blotted out and His precept left to stand alone? Try
the experiment, if it may be done without irreverence: read His familiar
discourses in the shadow of agnosticism.

'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is a hopeless poverty.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they know not whether they shall see
God. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, for ye
have no promise of a heavenly reward.

'Enter into thy closet and when thou hast shut the door, keep silence,
for thou canst not tell whether there is One to hear thy voice in
secret. Take no thought for the morrow, for thou knowest not whether
there is a Father who careth for thee.

'God is unknown, and they that worship Him must worship Him in ignorance
and doubt. No man hath ascended up into heaven, neither hath any man
come down from heaven, for the Son of Man hath never been in heaven.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which