Tée ILLUSTRATOR

 

 

Vol. XXXIX

JANUARY, 1922

N0. 1

 

 

:2

A E‘sausta‘y Lott (Goats/fiction.

E ought to be dead certain about a few

\x’ things, at least. Some preachers are

dead (in earnest), and others are
dead-in-earnest. It makes all the difference
where you put the pause. We must not meet
the returning soldiers with an “if.” They
don’t want to hear our doubts. They have
been up against stern realities over there—
such real things as pain and death and im-
mortality. They don’t want a religion with
strings tied to it when they come back. They
will want to hear a man who has the courage
born of conviction. They will demand what
they call “the real thing.” The late Dr.
Halsey, of the Presbyterian Foreign Board,
tells of an incident of the war in which
groups of inutinous soldiers seized women and
girls and bore them off to their villages to
lives worse than slavery. In one case after a
number of women had been seized, the Cap—
tain cried out: ”Are any of you Christians?
If so, stand out and we will shoot you, that
we may have no trouble with the missionary.”
One brave young girl stood out from the line
and said, “I am a Christian.” “Go back,”
said her captor, “you are the real thing.”
And she was. Our soldier boys have risked
their lives and jeopardized themselves unto
death for America. They will expect a min-
istry which will risk itself to the death for
Jesus Christ. If we are not prepared to ad-
venture all for him, we had better get out of
the job.

My point is that we ought to be definitely
certain about a few essential things, and min—
imize the rest. \Ve must have a creed, but
let it be as simple as possible. One of the
fallacies which the war has exploded is the
old axiom that “It makes no difference what
a man believes; only his actions count.”
The war has shown that it makes all the dif-
ference in the world what a man believes, for
a real man will act out what he thinks in.
Creed and conduct are closely related. The
New York Peace Society some time ago pub-
lished “The Creed of the Hzms“ in words
quoted entirely from the Germans themselves,

even the title. Germany had a creed. She
had certain convictions which she cherished
all through the years. And the most flagrant
acts of the war were the cold working out of
creed into conduct, of belief into action. If
the Germans were willing to die for their
convictions, ought not the ministry of Christ
to be willing to live for theirs?

I love to hear men preach who seem to be
standing on the solid rock of a few great
truths. It is much more inspiring to hear a
man say “I know whom I have believed,”
than to hear him say, “I have a suspicion that
critical investigation will yet authenticate the
historicity of Jesus Christ." It is surely more
heartening to hear a sermon on the text, “The
gates of hell shall not prevail against the
Church,” than to listen to a discourse on
“\Vill there be any churches ten years from
now P” I love to see a man standing four-
square to all the winds that blow, even if I
cannot stand by his side. I can well appre-
ciate the attitude of Hume, the great skeptic,
with regard to Whitfield. Hume, on his way
to hear Whitfield preach, was stopped by a
friend on the street. Learning where Hume
was going, the friend naturally expressed
great surprise, and exclaimed: “Why do you
go to hear him? You do not believe what he
preaches.” The answer of the skeptic was
significant: “No, but'h‘e does, and that is the
reason I like to hear him.” So I suggest, my
brethren, that we have an intellectual house-
cleaning, and that we take stock of ourselves
and our beliefs, so that we can meet the years
of Reconstruction unafraid and say:“Here
are the things that have come through the
fire. They still hold. You have read them by
the watch-fires of the camps in the glare of
the war-light, and I have read them in the
headlines of the extras and in the good old
Book. Come, let us get back to where we
believe something, and where we believe it
terribly—terribly enough to live for it, ter-
ribly enough to die for it if need be.”—T1—1E
NEW EARTH AND OTHER SERMONS. By Her-
bert Booth Smith. $ 1.5' net,