VOL. VI.

THE OWNERSHIP OF LIFE.

A SERMON BY REV. H. PRICE COLLIER, BROOKLYN, N.Y.

"Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business ?"-LUKE ii. 49.

The years go by in a boy's life with little thought on his part, usually, that there is any demand to be made upon him for serious business. Youth gallops through those sunny, irresponsible years of play and study, when he is guarded and provided for; and only occasionally he hears an indefinite whisper of duty, saying, "Lo, thou must!" And then, all at once, to some men early, to some men late, there comes this phrase of my text: "I must be about my Father's business." Life steadies down and settles itself, and the engine goes to work to do some serious task. This dreamy boy, Jesus, working, probably, in his father's shop, goes to Jerusalem. He sees and hears much that is new and unknown to him. The opportunities of life swing open their doors to him, and he looks in at one and another. While he was talking with these doctors of the law, it came over him that there was a place for him, a duty for him: he discovers in himself a new power; he feels himself qualified to take a certain place in the world. And the more he talks and questions and listens to these men of the world, the more clearly his task defines itself. His mother and father come back in search of him, and bid him, as they used to do, to go with them. Whereupon he turns to them, and says: "How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" He is so full of his new experience and his new plans that he can hardly realize that his determination is not known already to them. He has come into possession of his own life now. He is no longer to go hither and thither at any one's

No. 9.

bidding. He is his own king, and he must be about his own business. I can fancy that it was hard for that mother to be obliged to realize that what had been her boy was now his own man. It is one of the greatest pleasures in life to guard and protect another life, and to feel that it is a rudderless life without our hand upon it; and therefore it is a shock to one's affection when the life awakens to its own powers and demands to do its own steering. "I love you just as much," the man says, “but now I have arrived at a certain birthday of experience: I am of age, and must be about my own business." It is a fine thing to see youth coming gradually, but surely, to this conclusion. The young man sloughs off his follies, loses his interest in the former pastimes, declines any longer to be led by them or to be engrossed by them, will have no more coddling and petting, and sets out alone. I say it is a fine thing to do; and yet it is strange how little the world appreciates it, and how often it attempts to hinder the man from starting out on his own business. The world seems loath to let a man have his own life to himself, and only the strongest can turn and say: "How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?"

And first of all, in preaching to you from these words, let me warn you against this tendency of the world to take and to try to keep possession of you. There are all sorts of ways of doing this. Many young men try to get out of the net of the past, out of the meshes of old companionships, out of the tightly drawn cords of former habits, and they are held fast. The world comes to seek them, and begs them to go back, and seems almost, as did Mary and Joseph in the case of Jesus, to have a claim upon them. But a man should never forget that no life is in the least valuable that has not

this sacred element of ownership. You, not your father and mother; you, not your old friends and companions; you, not your former habits; you, not even those who love you most and think they are wisest in caring for you,—you, not any of these, must go before your God with the life he gave you, and answer for what you did with it.

The world comes and whispers, "You used to do so and so: why not do it now?" and there is but one manly answer: "I must be about my Father's business now." Your companions smile, sneer even at your new plans and the new direction, and they tell you, you are eccentric or foolish or what not; and there is only one answer,-"I must be about my Father's business."

Even love, if it be foolish enough, will sometimes attempt to prevail with a man, and coo to him that it matters not about this or about that, and this may go undone and that be left; and then, hardest of all is it to say, "I must be about my Father's business."

I find in this city life hundreds of currents setting strongly against the man who is trying to possess his own life. Fashion and precedent and the experience of other men and the general easy-going carelessness which prevail where hundreds and thousands of men and women are huddled together, and the sense of responsibility is lost in the crowd, these all tempt and even clutch and pull a man into allowing his life to be frittered away. Are you not continually being told, not by those who wish you ill, but even by those who wish you well: "No need of doing that. Other men do not do it. Or you must do this or that because others do the same"?

When a man chooses his profession or his business, are there not always those ready to offer objections, ready to tell him how hard it is, or how little he seems fitted for it, or how much better it were for him to do this, that, or the other, instead of what he purposes doing? I do not refer here to the necessary clashing of purposes and plans, the necessary friction among so many doing so many things that I recognize as fair and as being inevitable; but I am speaking of the inclination the world has to swallow a man, to distract him from his own affairs, and to bid him to follow along in its ways and customs.

It is so in the higher realms of life, too. Carlyle appears on the literary horizon, and the world of critics demands that he write as they do. Ruskin takes up his life into his own keeping, and couches his lance against the shams and superficialties of art, and the crowd sneers and laughs, and tries to beat him back. Rossetti paints or Whistler draws or Browning sings, and the world bemoans their eccentricities and would put them in the familiar strait-jacket. It is very true-at least, I believe it is so-that all three of those men have allowed eccentricity to fall into morbid unconventionality that is neither helpful nor good, if it be even honest. But they were doing their Father's business as it was given them to do, and in their work there was and is much to be applauded.

No man can know another's capacities or weaknesses. I believe many a man has been so cowed and dejected by ignorant criticism, which knew nothing of his real motives, that he has failed of doing even what he was well fitted to do. I believe this is often due to the fact that in so much rubbing against people we lose the sense of the mystery of life. We forget that each man and woman carries about burdens and hopes. joys and sorrows, that are unknown to us, and yet which make for that person the motive power of all actions and all speech. You meet a man some morning, and his demeanor is the same as yesterday, his "goodmorning" has no dramatic ring, his eyes show no sign of tears, and yet within the last few hours he has lost a hope he once had, an ambition has died, a dream has burst like a cloud to pour down a rain of sorrow upon him, his soul is in sackcloth, and a choking despair is making it hard for him to greet you. You know nothing of all this. You go to him with the business of the day, with its gossip or its problem, you go to him perhaps to complain or to criticise, and he seems so strange and indifferent, and, if you only knew the funeral in his heart, you would slink away abashed and ashamed; but, as you know not this, you are only hurt when he intimates that he must be about his Father's business, that he must have his life to himself.

You go to another man with your happy wishes and congratulations. You take for granted that you know just how he must

feel, but he feels quite differently. He is not proud of what you think ought to make him proud; he is not happy over what you think ought to make him happy; he cares not a straw for the success which makes your face flush with pleasure for him,—and you wonder, and are puzzled, and often enough you pass judgment upon him, when, if he could take you by the hand and lead you into the house of his life, and show you all that has been and is there, you would come out white and still, and whisper to your neighbors that he must be allowed to be about his Father's business, and that it is best as it is.

I never come to know another man or woman well, thoroughly well, -and the overwhelming payment and the all-compensating gift of my profession is that one is allowed to know so many people thoroughly well, I never come to know other persons well, but what I am shocked by the superficial judgments passed upon them and by the idle talk about them. It reminds me always of the story of the beautiful Eastern lady who was killed at Constantinople by the falling of the great amphitheatre during the royal games. She was the envied of all who knew her. Beautiful, rich, seemingly happy, women wished themselves like her, men thought of her as without a pang or pain, all Constantinople was wont to refer to her good luck and her happiness as almost a proverb; and, when they picked her up crushed and lifeless that day, they found beneath the silk and softness a tightly drawn girdle, studded with tiny spikes, that left their marks upon her with every movement. She had her sin or her sorrow or her terrible tragedy,—who knows what? —and, while that crowd were smiling at her beauty and envying her happiness, she was scourged by her sorrow.

"I cannot tell you why," the man or woman is saying, "but I must be about my Father's business. You think me proud: I am not proud, but sorrowful. You think me rich: I am not rich, but poor. You think I have much: it seems so paltry, this that you call much, beside what I am longing for. You think me cold or indifferent: I am not that, but only shy and fearful, I have been hurt so often. You think I ought to do this or that: I cannot, but I may not give you the reasons. This is

what men and women are saying all round you every day. They have their Father's business of which you know not, and they must attend to that.

It even becomes pitiable when a man demands that he be permitted his own beliefs, his own faith, his own sorrows, and others step in jauntily to persuade him that something else is better. A man's belief even is not often a clear, cold, passionless thing; but it is shot through and through with memory, with hopes, with disappointments that are all his own. He has his own calendar of sacred days, his own saints' days, his own Good Friday, and his own Easter. The Christ was born for him one day, for you another. His Christ rose into reality for him one day, for you another. The day that is all sunshine for you is all dark for him, and the day that seems like any other to you gleams and glitters and sparkles with happiness for him. No man of serious life goes from belief to belief, from creed to creed, from prayer to prayer, from church to church, without tremendous wrenching and tearing. He may not be able to answer your logic, but neither can you answer for his experiences. The prayer that sounds so dull in your ears speaks with a score of voices to his experiences. The barren church that has no echo for your ears resounds with angels' voices and re-echoes with pathetic memories to him. The creed that is so unpalatable to you may have numberless suggestions for him. The empty space may be peopled for him. How will you, then, undertake to provide belief, or prayer, or ritual, or house of worship for him? I long to have other men love my belief, my simple creed, my prayers, my church; but I am loath with careless hand to touch these things, knowing so well that one is apt to get one's fingers in another's heart-strings, and then do harm one cannot repair. Yes, even here in matters of belief, in questions of theology, we wonder sometimes that men are not persuaded by the invincible logic of truth; and I find the reason there. is not logic: a man is not loving a certain form of words alone, he is not caring much for the particular regulations of his church, -caring very little nowadays, indeed, -but all his experiences, his most pathetic reminiscences, his moments of rare exaltation, are entwined with these, and he cannot cut the

Life

strings, and break loose and snap all the threads, and leave his life without a past. You argue and press truths upon him, and he answers not; for higher truths of love and loyalty and sadness and gladness, which embrace and include all you say, hold him still. It is his own and his Father's business, and his only defence for himself is one about which he must keep silence. And I, for one, am slow to insist upon breaking in upon the silences of others' lives. I would much rather believe about other men that God has his way with them as with me, and that beyond a certain point I have no right to go. When a man knows what he is doing and is glad to take the consequences, then that is a personal business between him and his Father; and it is neither your place nor mine to meddle therewith. I hope I am not misunderstood, I hope I am not leading you to believe that you have no responsibility for your brother's life, and that every man is to be allowed without warning to go wrong, horribly wrong. But I hope you know the difference between gossip and wise counsel; between helping the weak and trying to coerce the strong; between the desire to have your hand in the important affair and lending a hand to the fallen; between making it your business to give comfort and succor and interfering in the business between a man and his God. It was a cold and cruel thing of Jesus to say to his mother: "How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" if it were not that in that reply we see the light of a new purpose, and the determination of a man to be a man. I am not preaching for the right of a man to be let alone; but I am preaching for the sacredness of every man's serious purpose and business in life, and at the same time insisting that a man is indeed rudderless and helpless, and to be pitied, if he have not in his life an understanding between himself and his God. If you have any business that is worth doing, then you ought to demand the right to do it without interference; if you have a sorrow that is serious, then you should be allowed the privacy of it; if you love anything or anybody with your whole life, then give yourself to it, come what will; if you have determined what is right for you, then cherish that right through storm and stress; if your life

is possessed by a great purpose, and surely life is a very paltry and unhappy affair when it is not so possessed, -then turn and say: "How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" Allow no trifling, no coquetting, no interference with the God element in you, and God himself will guard and help you.

THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.

Presbyterianism as a concrete organization is recent in the world. If its fountain was in Judea, in the first century, for more than a thousand years it was an underground stream. Its friends say that it appeared above ground for a short time before the great Reformation, among the Waldenses, but it was only a slight stream,-only enough to flash in the sunlight for an instant, or to mirror a single star, and then it disappeared again. It was only a little over three hundred years ago that it became one of the unmistakable facts of the world.

To introduce another form of speech concerning it, it was one of the islands suddenly pushed up from the tumultuous sea of the sixteenth century by the gigantic forces which were raging beneath it. A certain volcanic creation, it became in a sense the first solid ground upon which all those who were afloat and struggling in the weltering sea of ecclesiastical anarchy could find a resting-place. Not an inviting spot, as viewed from this distance,-gaunt and naked rocks for the most part; rude, inhospitable cliffs, against which the waves were dashing; inland, awful fastness and peaks reaching skyward; not so much as a palm-tree for protection from sun or storm; no grass, nor flower, nor bird-song to greet the comer, and to his gratitude for his escape from death add gladness over the refuge he had found. Yet all agreed that it was better than drifting about on the raging sea, and better, so all who landed upon it thought, than any of the other islands that were beginning to appear above the surface.

Appearing in troublous times, it has always had something of the storm in its character. It has always borne traces of the wild, elemental forces which produced it. Its rude outlines have felt the touches of time, and have been softened by them.

Many of its rocks have been pulverized into fruitful soil. Forest trees have fringed its mountains, hiding all their grim deformities. Orchards and fields and grassy nooks abound where once was a cold and barren waste. Nevertheless, beneath all this graceful drapery is the same stern, unbending form, as defiant as at the beginning. The velvet glove conceals, but does not change, the mailed hand.

To speak in more sensible forms of speech, Presbyterianism first began to attract attention in Geneva. It was at once a system of doctrine and a form of church government. In each case, it was a protest against the existing order of things. It is associated in its origin there with the name of John Calvin, who has been more praised and more damned than any other of the reformers. He has been called "incomparably the wisest man that ever" the Protestant movement produced; and again, by the Anglicans in the eighteenth century, he has been regarded as a perfect incarnation of spite and mischief; about whom we shall say nothing more here, although much might be said, -except that, after his ups and downs in the course of history, he stands now before the world in many ways a great man, but by no means perfect: with blots on his character which it were foolish to deny, and yet as worthy of the halo round his head as any of his contemporaries. If not the wisest and noblest, he is not the meanest of mankind.

In Scotland, a few years later, Presbyterianism became established under the leadership of the stern John Knox. He also was called during his lifetime "a man of God; the comfort of the church, the mirror of godliness; an example to all of purity of life and soundness of doctrine." In the eighteenth century he had suffered a relapse. He was called "a monster who delighted to practise on the tender feelings of Mary Stuart the cruelty which inquisitors inflicted on men's bodies." Then another change came in the public estimate of him. Carlyle ranks him among the great heroes of the world; and Froude says of him that he not only reformed the church in Scotland, but he made Scotland a nation.

Wherever the truth may be found by some more impartial historians, concerning these men, it is evident that they had in them the

qualities of conquest; and through them more than through any others Presbyterianism assumed a definite and irrefragable character. From Geneva as a centre, it spread in every direction. Not usually by peaceful methods, but it stormed along for a century or more; battling with Catholicism, with Independency, with Episcopacy; often defeated, but never conquered; now the. object of persecution, again itself the persecutor. It got itself finally established in Switzerland, France, Holland, Scotland, England, Ireland. It was brought by the Dutch to New York in 1619, by the Scotch to Virginia in 1680, by the French to Carolina in 1685. The first Presbytery in America was formed in 1705; the first Synod, formed of four Presbyteries, in 1717; and the first General Assembly, in 1789, or one hundred and two years ago.

Through these hundred years of its American career, true to its character, there has been much of storm and stress. Separations and reunions, and separations without reunions, have occurred. The Cumberland schism came in 1810, and still continues. In 1873 came the separation into the old and new schools, lasting a generation. During the war, the separation arose between the church North and South, which still continues, presenting the inexplicable but not uncommon phenomenon in the world, of theological passions existing much longer than political passions, and remaining persistently long after the causes which produced them have disappeared. Thus, through all the changes in the Old World and the New, this form of religion for three hundred years has held a place, doing, as it thinks, God's will on the earth, and never unable to give what it deems a sufficient reason for its existence. Now there are in the United States, of all forms of Presbyterians, running from the deepest blue by imperceptible gradations out into purple and violet, and even into tints so neutral as to be almost indistinguishable, nearly a million and a half of communicants, many of whom are noble men and women and enrich our country by their presence. Every year they give over ten millions of dollars for church work. They are a great fact in the world. With them rests an immense power. Upon them rests an immense responsibility.