II.

Conference Sermon.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ETHICAL FORCES.

BY REV. T. T. MUNGER, NEW HAVEN, CONN.

"And when he was come into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things? And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and in his own house. And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief."— MATT. xiii. 54–58.

There is a touch of naturalness in these words that puts their authenticity beyond all doubt. It does more than authenticate the record: it uncovers human nature. Jesus had been brought up in Nazareth, was the son of a carpenter there, had played as a child in its streets, was one of a family of children, had worked at his trade, and at last had left the place, gone down into the region of the Jordan, and received baptism at the hands of John. After a time he returns in an entirely new character,- a remarkable speaker in the synagogue and a healer of diseases. The people were astonished. "Whence this wisdom and these mighty works?" They do not wonder at the wisdom or the works, but at the source of them. They detected the wisdom, they appreciated the works; but much as they Hebrew-like- delighted in wise words on religion, and much as they like all men were amazed by miracles, they threw both aside, and turned their wonder on the man. But the wonder was too much for them. They stumbled over it into incredulity, forgot the wisdom, explained away the miracles, and lost the good of both. Had some gray-bearded hermit in strange garb come from Lebanon or the desert, and spoken the same words and done the same works,

they would have listened and believed and followed.

But a prophet

at home was an unheard-of thing. Why, here are his brothers whom we all know by name, and even his sisters. He is the son of our neighbor, the carpenter: he is one of us. He is no prophet nor

wonder-worker.

Jesus himself was not surprised at their unbelief and unwillingness to hear him. It had always been so: a prophet has no honor at home. He could not overcome their inveterate inability to think otherwise, and he left the city. It was undoubtedly a hindrance to Christ's work that he was too well known. If one is an ordinary person, engaged in ordinary work, intimate knowledge is an advantage: the common understands the common, and keeps within its range; but he who is called to greatness, and is lifted into its heights, not only fails of recognition, but finds his field of action closed to him. But it was a limitation that Christ courted or rather suffered. He would not make himself extraordinary: it was foreign to his conception of himself. He would remain a common man among his fellows. He put on no badges, and avoided whatever shut him out from the rank and file of men. It was this habit, not assumed but grounded in his nature, that strengthened the natural disposition of his neighbors to withhold their faith in him as a prophet. His life had not been wonderful in word or deed, but only in that way which men are slow to see,- purity of spirit, fidelity in duty, excellence in conduct. There had been nothing demonstrative about him, nothing marked except a brooding silence that foreran the great mystery that was gathering about him.

The feeling of the people toward him sprang out of the gregarious instinct that lingers within us. We think gregariously, and do not easily conceive it possible for one of our number to think in any other way. A person is the last product of creation, and we have not yet become familiar with it. It is with difficulty that we make room in our thought for great men. If they appear, they must come from afar, from another herd than our own; and they are seldom understood.

But what a loss it was to these people of Nazareth that they could not believe in Jesus, who had come back to them with the clear marks of a prophet upon him! How little did they know of the thoughts that filled his mind, of those conceptions of God and man and society and duty and life and destiny which had become clear

to him, wrought into a unity and order which he called the kingdom of God,-- a thing of equal reality with the kingdom of nature! He had made a great discovery, a new world into which he was ready to welcome them as citizens; but they could not even see that there was such a kingdom. Christ asked no recognition of himself as a person. There was no ontological mystery for which he claimed acquaintance. He was content to be known as the carpenter's son. He required no worship. He will even be as a servant among them; but he had learned something in his baptism and temptation which was of infinite importance to them. In his discovery of the kingdom of God he had come into a consciousness of sonship in God. Jesus was possessed by a profound logic: he saw things in their relations and implications. The fatherhood of God was an old truth, the prophets were full of it; but fatherhood implies sonship. The sense of this relation came to him in all its fulness when the spirit descended on him in the baptism. It was confirmed in the temptation, and made fundamental in his life. It spread out into a broad system of related truths and duties: it gave meaning to all things. Nature became an expression of the indwelling God who worked in it eternally. Human society became a divine order. men became the sons of God; for God is the Father of all. all men are brethren, and their duties are shaped by this relation. Sonship must realize the divine fatherhood, reproduce it, and so bring out the Deity that is immanent in humanity. Brotherhood means love and all that love involves, sacrifice, sympathy, helpfulness, forbearance, patience, and a host of minor qualities that buttress these great virtues; and, because all this is divine and is supreme in life, it becomes the sum of all truth and is worth dying for, because it involves and carries with it the order of society and the salvation of every man's life.

All

Hence

This is what was set before the people of Nazareth; but they refused to believe it because it came from one of their own citizens. What a loss! The kingdom of God brought nigh and missed! But this was not all. They not only failed to see the beautiful world of truth that was opened before them, making plain the past history of the nation and meeting the perplexities of their hearts, but they failed of the practical benefits that would have come from such truths if they had accepted it. He did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.

Explain the miracles of Christ as you will, and it does not much matter how they are explained nor in which category, natural or supernatural, you put them. Draw the pen of criticism across half of them if you must, there remains this impregnable fact that his life and deeds were what his principles required; truth and conduct were made one reality.

Why was not the Christ a Greek? or, rather, why did not Greece produce a Christ ? Why was he a Hebrew? The Greek was content to see truth apart from life. The Hebrew could not: it simply had no existence for him except as fact. This was the burden of the prophets, that truth and fact were disjoined and should be united. Christ followed and embodied the genius of his nation, and turned his truth into reality. He was in a real world, and he made his life real: otherwise, he would not have been the Christ. It was thus that he knew he must die in sacrifice. Love was not a sentiment, but a way of living; and to live out his love would cost him his life, this he knew. But the truth he saw with such clearness required more: it led him to turn every phase of it into some corresponding action. It was not truth to him until it was so used.

When shall we learn this, when give over our endless speculations on truth that ends in nothing, and pass into that higher realm of thought where truth becomes truth because it is made one with fact and conduct? There is nothing that we more need to keep in mind in the deliberations of this Convention than that every social truth brought to light must instantly be vested in some practical form. Hence the works and words of Christ. Of which was there the more,- words or works? Never was there a word without a deed: never a deed but the word of eternal truth out of which it sprang, word and deed forming a perfect whole. Thus Christ correlated himself to the world in which he found himself, reflecting its order and course in his own life. The world is God's thought turned into reality it is the will of God made fact. Christ is no dreamer gazing into the heavens, but the very incarnation of the Mind that thought the world, and so made it,-- a simultaneous and indissoluble process. The merciful deeds that went along with his words- so entangled in them that you cannot draw them out and leave the words are a part of the words, and with them formed his life. They are the Logos. men could not receive his words, they could not share in his works. The divorce was not retributive,

:

If

but necessary. Jesus did not make it: it made itself. Nothing is gained in the long run by allowing a separation of the physical from the ethical. We hear of agnostics who are heroically and painfully striving to redeem the slums by securing some order and cleanliness in them; but you cannot divide man in this way. Christ would not attempt to do anything for men unless it took in their whole nature. He treated man as a whole because he is an indivisible whole. There is no blade sharp enough to separate intellect from feeling. There is no eye keen enough to see where the physical ends and the mental begins. This is something that needs to be kept steadily in view in all efforts to reform and uplift society. You recognize and confess it by coming here in the midst of your deliberations not to hear your work discussed, but to listen to the word that shall give meaning and worth to it. And that word is this: there is not the slightest permanent value in any work of charity or reform you undertake unless it has regard to the moral welfare of those for whom it is done.

This, I conceive, is what is meant by doing all things in the name of Christ: they must be done in his way, the supremely wise, the profoundly true, the necessary way,- a universal method that had its illustration in that Galilean city which failed to secure the benefit of his works because it would not receive his words. Into the mystery of his works it may be difficult to penetrate; but, whatever the process, natural or supernatural, they could not be wrought in a man except as they embraced his whole nature. Hence that city which had no eyes except for the common round of things went untaught, uncomforted, unhelped. The kingdom of God had come nigh, but its blessings were untasted because its conditions were not obeyed.

The point to which I have been speaking so far is this: That the people failed of great good because they were blind to the source of it. They did not believe that Jesus could make good his words.

I propose to turn this concrete example into a general truth; namely, there is a great deal of power waiting for development at the hands of those who are working for the good of mankind.

The most striking feature of the day is the development of new forces. It is so great that there is simply no end to it. We no longer prophesy: prophecy cannot measure probability. Any day may bring out something that will revolutionize the face of the