66

Surely they see not God, I know,

Nor all the chivalry of His,

The soldier saints who, row on row,

Burn upward each to his point of bliss Since, the end of life being manifest,

He had cut his way through the world to this."

Nowhere does this virile, all-for-All way of life find such striking emphasis and illustration as in the sayings and in the practice of the great Galilean. Religion for him is not an unnecessary luxury; it is the staff of life, the bread and water by which men live. The "whole world" set over against this indispensable life of the soul weighs nothing. Even the eye that hinders the soul is to be bored out and the hand that interferes with the central life is to be hacked off and flung away, because there is only one focal thing in the universe that matters and toward which all energies must bend. Two very simple, yet very profound, parables are told by the Master to illustrate this principle of giving the all for the All. A man casually digging in a field hits upon a buried treasure which in some earlier time of war had been hastily hidden in the ground as the owner fled before the invading enemy. The finder, thrilling with joy over his happy discovery, goes and sells all that he possesses and invests

everything in the field which contains his treasure. Another man, watching the pearl-divers come into port laden with their "finds," sees with his trained eye, among the many ordinary pearls, one priceless pearl. He hurries home, disposes of all his stock of goods, sells his shop and bit of land, and goes back to the divers and buys that lustrous pearl of great price which is worth all other possessions. Those are Christ's figures to illustrate the true attitude of the soul toward the kingdom of God, the highest vision and ideal of life. It must not take its place alongside of other things and stand on a competitive level with them. It must rise high over all and become the absorbing goal and central pursuit of the soul. That is, beyond question, the secret of spiritual power. The religion that costs nothing, that demands no hard sacrifices of other things, that does not lift the life out of low-level motives, is worth little and makes little difference to the life. The type of religion, on the other hand, which costs the all, which makes the cross the central fact that dominates the life as its one driving power, becomes an incalculable force and turns many to salvation. We have been trying to get on with the "fifty-fifty " scheme.

We have endeavored to take over ease with our comfortable religious faith. We have scaled

down the demands to attract the economically minded. But it is now, as always, a false trail and an abortive undertaking. We must return to Thomas à Kempis's principle and learn to give the all for the All. We must go back still farther to the way set forth by a greater than the Brother of the Common Life and make everything else in the universe yield to the central call of the kingdom of God.

Sacrifice for its own sake is asceticism. Surrender, mortification, crucifixion as a dumb negation of life cannot be recommended. It is always better to live in the yea than to live in the nay, where the yea is possible. But when a clear collision comes, when life forces a choice between the soul's true destiny and all else, then there must be a surrender of everything which tends to anchor the soul to its inland harbor when it should be

sailing the open sea with God- the all must go for the sake of the All! This higher way of life, this capacity to see real value, to let the bird in the hand go for the sake of catching the two in the bush, this power to live by the unseen and to insist on having God or nothing — that is what we mean by "faith."

That it "works" there can be no doubt. That it produces a new quality of soul must be admitted.

The spiritual experts have one testimony to give. For a sample opinion let us take the account of a little-known eighteenth-century saint, Thomas Story:

“He called for my life and I offered it at His footstool; but He gave it me as a prey, with unspeakable addition. He called for my will, and I resigned it at His call, but he returned me His own in token of His love. He called for the world and I laid it at His feet, with the crowns thereof; I withheld them not at the beckoning of His hand. But mark the benefit of exchange! For he gave me, instead of the earth, a kingdom of eternal peace, and in lieu of the crowns of vanity a crown of joy. . . . He gave me joy which no tongue can express and peace which passeth understanding. My heart was melted with the height of comfort; my soul was immersed in the depth of joy; my eyes overflowed with tears of greatest pleasure. I begged Himself and He gave All."

...

III

HABAKKUKEANS

In a charming essay written several years ago Dr. William Osler- now Sir William - dealt with two groups of people whom he called, respectively, Gallionians and Salomics. The Gallionians, named from Gallio in Corinth, who "cared for none of these things," are, in the famous doc

tor's essay, persons who are too busy with the affairs of this world to give any time or thought to spiritual issues. There are surely many Gallionians among us still! The Salomics, named after Salome, supposed to be the mother of the sons of Zebedee, who asked Jesus to give the highest commissions in his gift to her sons, are those persons who look upon religion as a way of promoting themselves, of advancing their position. Salome meant well. She loved the boys she had borne and brought up and she wanted to do as well as she could for them. She believed, as so many mothers since her day have believed, that the great thing to pray for and push for in this world is visible success. She knew of nothing better or more to be desired than position, place, and power. She had dreamed, ever since she was a little girl, of a coming great king who would break the yoke of Rome, make Jerusalem a free, holy city, a center of the new age who would be a world-ruler, with a splendid court on Mount Zion. What glory to have two sons in that court! Could a mother aspire to any loftier triumph than to have her boys sit on either side of the throne of this Messianic king! What a prospect for two fishermen of the Galilean lake!

It took some courage to come out with her re