THE PITY OF CHRIST

abiding assurance of his compassion. membereth that we are dust." 1

89

"He re

In the character of Christ pity is central for the same reason. The richness and the nobility of his spirit, the universe of love that lies open to him, the resources of his Father's nature that are at his command, lift him to an immeasurable height above the multitudes that follow him from town to town. And, therefore, when he sees them as sheep without a shepherd, he is moved with compassion. Pity is thus the passion that makes the lowest indispensable to the highest. It is the great conservative force in the moral world, the ultimate source of the patience and devotion that carry forward the total education of men.

This is the high passion out of which has risen the missionary activity of the church. It takes refuge in the strength of the supreme example: "Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich."2 Still the missionary community looks upon itself as rich. It has a command over the sources of wisdom and solace and moral power that makes its existence great. It is the thought of the nations lying in wickedness, the vision of them as outside the spiritual wealth of the world, destitute, afflicted, tor

1 Ps. ciii. 14.

2 2 Cor. viii. 9.

mented, when they might be in the temple of peace, and in communion with the Infinite love, that floods the stream of missionary zeal. The deprivation of the Infinite is to the good man the only intolerable poverty; and the spiritual want and woe of the heathen nations appeal overwhelmingly to those who are rich toward God. The contribution of millions of dollars annually to carry on this enterprise is the simple consequence of this inspired human passion. A few may give from the force of tradition, or early habit merely; others may contribute as the only way of release from the foreign missionary beggar. Importunity is painful to the person importuned, and the speediest end to the pain may sometimes lie in surrender to the appeal. But the great and generous supporters of this cause have a profounder and infinitely nobler motive. They are rich in their own souls; the consolations of the Eternal are with them, and they are not few. For them life has risen into the consciousness of communion with the Absolute Life, and therefore they are moved by the whole strength of their rich possession to try to cancel the deprivation of the nations.

Thus ideal and faith and experience together work the great foreign missionary organization of the church. The ideal frames its programme of a divine life for all men; the faith supports programme with the nature of God and the

this

IDEAL, FAITH, AND EXPERIENCE

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character of Christ; and the experience of the ideal, made more and more attainable in personal life by the faith, supplies the passion of pity that seeks to bring the ledge of the Infinite love.

race to the knowWhether as plan,

or as religious belief, or as human tenderness, the missionary movement of the church is an impressive witness for humanity. The race

stands as the object of its vast device, the concern of its great faith, the solicitude of its profound pity. Its ideal is for all, its God is for all, the treasures of its human heart are for all. This movement, originating in the highest thoughts and feelings of the Christian community, declaring its sincerity through thousands of lives of unsurpassed heroism and devotion, showing its power by the enduring organizations which it has called into existence, and by the multitudes whom it has interested in its. cause, indicating its sanity by the countless acts of good to individuals which it has wrought, and yet more by the permanent connection which it has established between the nations of the earth and the richest and strongest force in human civilization, has but one meaning. It is one of the century's greatest voices in behalf of the needs, the rights, and the possibilities of mankind.

The last great servant to be named here, of the idea of humanity in the nineteenth century,

is the United States of America. It is not unusual in these days to hear even from wise men criticisms upon the Declaration of Independence. One of the best and wisest of Englishmen, F. D. Maurice, found the special greatness of Lincoln to consist in the fact that he carried the policy of the nation back of the Declaration of Independence, and grounded it upon the theocratic faith of the Puritan commonwealth. And it is true that the humanity of Lincoln rested upon a divine basis. His best speeches have in them this high union of faith in the humanity of God with the purpose for the emancipation of the slave. Ever memorable are these words: "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." 1

There is, however, no real conflict between the Puritan belief in God and the view of human society embodied or implied in the Declaration of Independence. If there is any essential conflict, the right to victory rests with the great 1 Second Inaugural Address.

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

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Declaration. Puritan theology in the eighteenth century had become formal and far from human. It was never an ideal theology; it never ceased to do violence to man's best thoughts about himself, and it fell infinitely short of an adequate expression of the mind of the righteous God toward mankind. In the noble genius of its greatest representative, it has been well said that the great wrong which it did "was to assert God at the expense of humanity."1 With all its high strength, Puritan theology was sadly in need of a broader and richer humanity. The Declaration of Independence can be so read as to make it the Bible of anarchy; but this is to commit outrage upon its spirit, and upon the ancestry of its political ideas. The great document stands for the inalienable rights of man against the tyranny of power. It embodies the ideas of French thinkers before the Revolution ; but these ideas have proved a permanent addition to the political wisdom of the world. When all is said against Rousseau and his political theories that honest and enlightened criticism must say, it remains that his political protest is the protest of human nature. The significance for the American people of the Declaration of Independence lies in the fact that it was the faithful utterance of their aggrieved manhood. For the purposes of expression it was not bor

1 Life of Jonathan Edwards, by A. V. G. Allen, p. 388.