Where the Roots Fed

" In Christ " published— Private conferences for Bible study— Books which had a formative influence on Dr. Gordon's ministry— Contact with Brethrenism—The mission of this sect— In Europe, 1877— Estimate of preachers heard abroad

SOON after coming to Boston, Gordon published a remarkable study in the identities of Christ and the believer. " In Christ " was the fruit of much deep meditation, the distillation of many late hours in the Jamaica Plain manse. It is, perhaps, the most nearly perfect in form and content of any of his works, quintessential in its compression, rich, finished, and imbued with mysticism, the mysticism of the New Testament. Such pages as these A Kempis or the Friends of God might

have written. How refreshing this profoundly penetrating

interpretation after the shallow syncretisms and nonchalant denials of New England Unitarianism! It stands out to one, working through the arid mass of the local religious literature of its day, like a green spot, with feathery palms and tinkling springs, in a choking expanse of unfruitful, limitless sand.

The Pauline phrases, "created in Christ," "crucified with Christ," "risen with Christ," "baptized into Christ," "sanctified in Christ," "the dead in Christ," are taken as melodic themes upon which to work out the variations of a sober, fruitful exposition. Unitarianism made of Christ a mere pattern. This volume exhibits him as an indwelling principle, incorporating itself in the believer and eradicating the old will,

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the old personality. Through its action the former life is doomed to drop off and disappear as a scab, beneath which the new, wholesome flesh is forming. There are accordingly two eras in the life of the Christian. The one Paul describes as the time " when we were in the flesh "; the other is the true Anno Domini, the period of our life in Christ.

The significant fact of this new epoch in our history is the presence of Christ in the heart. Without this, man cannot be joined to God any more than steel can be welded without the

flux of borax. " We cannot be loved of God apart from

Christ, for the divine approval can go out only to that which is worthy. Neither can we be condemned if we are in Christ, for the divine disapprobation can fall only upon what is sinful, and he is without sin." ^* In prayer our: acceptance is determined by the same nexus. If Christ's will covers, interpenetrates, and absorbs our will, there can be no conflict be-

tween our prayer and the sovereign wishes of God. " We

can come with boldness as being in him ' that liveth and was dead,' and, being 'dead with him,' we shall be careful to bring that only required sacrifice of the Christian covenant, a crucified will." t Thus Christ prays through us.

Again, " since Christ and his attributes never part company, it is impossible to be made in him without being made into all that belongs to him." \ Here is the earnest of our sanctification. But " though this grace is conferred on each Christian as soon as he believes, it is nevertheless a gift held on deposit, 'hid with Christ in God,' to be drawn on through daily communion and gradual apprehension." §

Finally, the affinities thus created by union with Christ secure to his own the immortality which is his. " They that sleep in Jesus " have that in them which will respond to the resurrection summons as steel filings to the sweep of the mag-

* " In Christ," p. 119. f Ibid., p. 142. % Ibid., p. 168. $ Ibid., p. 170.

net above them. Then the identity of Hfe with Christ will have been attained through an identity of experience.

These first years in Boston were years of study and of spiritual exercise. Private conferences were held semi-monthly in Gordon's house for the consideration of the deeper themes of scriptural teaching. Associated with him in these studies were W. R. Nicholson, then rector of St. Paul's, and now bishop in the Reformed Episcopal Church, Mr. George C. Needham, Dr. H. M. Parsons, and others. The reading upon which he fed included such books as Gurnall's " Christian Armor," Charnock's " Wisdom of our Fathers," and the body of Puritan divinity generally. " It seems to me," he writes, "that the Puritan ministers held together both sides of the truth, and preserved their balance to a remarkable degree. They expounded most clearly the objective work of Christ, and they also unfolded his subjective work with a minuteness and a depth of insight quite beyond anything we witness in our day. They wrote thus clearly because they had apprehended these things by a profound interior experience. What tide-marks do the diaries and meditations which these good men left furnish of the heights to which the Spirit's floods rose in their souls! We have a great lesson to learn of them concerning the culture of the inner life."

Among other books of which he was especially fond were Van Oosterzee's " Person and Work of the Redeemer," Vinet's " Outlines of Theology," Alford's works, the " Horae Apocalypticse " of EUiott, Edersheim's " Sketches of Jewish Life," the journals of Eugenie de Guerin, Uhlhorn's " Conflict of Christianity with Paganism "; the poems of Henry Vaughn, of Herbert, of Quarles, and of Donne; the works of Rothe, of R. Stier, of Birks, of Flavel, of Archer Butler, of Westcott, of Guinness, of Harnack; the lives of Joseph AUeine, of Robert Moffatt, of John Woolman, of Henry Martyn, and of David Brainerd. The career of the last named exerted a powerful

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and lasting influence upon him. Years after, in describing a visit paid to Brainerd's grave, he writes

''Does it savor of saint-worship or superstition to be thus exploring old graveyards, wading through snow-drifts, and deciphering ancient headstones on a cold day in midwinter? Perhaps so, on the face of it; but let us justify our conduct. What if the writer confesses that he has never received such spiritual impulse from any other human being as from him whose body has lain now for nearly a century and a half under that Northampton slab? For many years an old and worn volume of his life and journals has lain upon my study table, and no season has passed without a renewed pondering of its precious contents, ' If you would make men think well of you, make them think well of themselves,' is the maxim of Lord Chesterfield, which he regarded as embodying the highest worldly wisdom. On the contrary, the preacher and witness for Christ who makes us think meanly of ourselves is the one who does us most good, and ultimately wins our hearts. This is exactly the effect which the reading of Brainerd's memoirs has on one. Humiliation succeeds humiliation as we read on. 'How little have I prayed! how low has been my standard of consecration!' is the irresistible exclamation; and when we shut the book we are not praising Brainerd, but condemning ourselves, and resolving that, by the grace of God, we will follow Christ more closely in the future."

We should not, in summing up the influences which shaped Dr. Gordon's religious and theological opinions, omit those resulting from his contact with Brethrenism. In an interesting survey of the religious upheavals of the century, he describes the two movements, Tractarianism and Brethrenism, which, emanating from a common source, have affected so powerfully, yet so differently, the Christian life of England. After noting the important places which universities have occupied in religious movements generally, and after contrasting the opposite courses which Darby, in Dublin University, and Newman, in Oxford, took in their revolt against the current religious apathy in the Church of England, he calls attention to the insignificant contributions which the Tractarian reactionaries have made to biblical interpretation, as compared with the extraordinary productivity of Brethrenism. The Tractarian party left two works of exegesis— Pusey's " Daniel and the Minor Prophets " and Keble's " Metrical Version of the Psalms"— which barely pass the line of mediocrity. " But if we turn to the other party," he continues, " we see a movement almost ultra-biblical, and a body of men almost ultra-apostolical in their style and manner of life and service. It gathered to itself a strong body of scholars, mostly from the pulpits of the Church of England, who began to pour out biblical literature in floods— exposition and textual criticism, lexicons and dictionaries for aiding in the study of the Bible, synopses of Scripture, tract leaflets, etc. The Christian world has been fairly inundated with these issues, and it may be doubted if any body of Christians ever sent forth such a mass and such a variety of biblical literature in the same length of time.

" If we were to describe in a word the theological complexion of these writings, we should say that here we have high Calvinism, preaching free grace with a fullness and plainness never surpassed; practising believers' baptism, and writing treatises on its symbolism rarely equaled for deep spiritual insight; laying down a rule of life almost ascetic in its requirement of separation from the world and surrender of earthly possessions for Christ's sake; and holding with primitive apostolic fervor to the personal, literal, and ever-imminent coming of Christ as the hope of the church. It is our opinion that the best writings of this body have furnished the textbooks of modern evangelism, and largely determined its type of doctrine and preaching. Let us specify briefly.

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" There is C. H. Mackintosh's ' Notes on Genesis,' ' Exodus,' etc., a work for which Mr. Spurgeon has expressed his high admiration, and which has had an immense circulation We know of hardly any modern treatise which is so full of the meat and marrow of the gospel as this, and which sets forth so clearly the fundamental doctrines of atonement and justification. There is ' The Blood of Jesus,' by William Reid—small treatise, but one which has given to thousands of readers a new revelation of the simplicity of the gospel. There are the ' C. S. Tracts,' brief presentations of the gospel to the inquirer. They have been scattered far and wide, and have, in our opinion, never been surpassed as clear expositions of the way of life to the unconverted. Of less popular works, we might mention Darby's 'Synopsis of the Bible,' the expositions of Kelly, Newton, Tregelles, Soltau, Pridham, and Jukes. These books, especially those of the first three, have constituted the chief theological treasury of many of our evangelists. We can say for ourselves that, from the first time our eyes fell upon these treasures, we have nowhere else seen the gospel so luminously presented— the gospel of the grace of God, disencumbered of legalism and mysticism and tradition. Considered theologically these are humble treatises. So was the ' Theologia Germanica,' out of which, through Luther, the German Reformation was born. So were the expositions of Peter Boehler, from which Wesley says he received his first true apprehension of saving faith. The springs of great reformations are often hidden and remote, but they rarely fail to be recognized in the end.

" Besides books, there were men. This little sect of which we are speaking has certainly shown us some apostolic characters. When George Muller set himself to live a life 'out and out for God,' and to prove in his own experience what can be accomplished by the single means of prayer and faith, many criticized, but few commended. When men like Darby and Wigram forsook their aristocratic associations, and laid down their great inherited wealth at the feet of Christ, going forth in apostolic fashion, without scrip or purse, to preach the gospel in every city, and in almost every European tongue, none went before them to sound the trumpet of fame. But such examples are always and inevitably contagious; and they have doubtless affected the consecration of modem evangelism quite as strongly as the books have influenced its doctrine, " Such, we believe, after much thought and careful investigation and frequent conversations with those best qualified to judge, is the real spring of the present evangelistic movement. It demands a fearless candor to concede it, but we believe that truth requires us to confess that we owe a great debt, both in literature and in life, to the leaders of this ultra- Protestant movement. And we are glad to believe that the light which it has thrown out by its immense biblical study and research has been appropriated by many of the best preachers and evangelists in our Protestant churches."

The summer of '76 Gordon spent with his wife in Europe. Nothing especially noteworthy occurred in the three months' visit. The hoary churches and refectories of Oxford, the gleaming peaks of the Jungfrau and of the Matterhorn, the surf-like roar of London, the idyllic windings of the Rhine, filled with interested pleasure the hearts of these, as of all tourists. In London he was specially drawn to the churches. For the first and only time in his life after his ordination (with the exception of a few Sundays of sickness and one solitary Sabbath in New Hampton) he occupied a seat in the congregation. The observations which he made from his new point of view are acute and discriminating, and give us, naturally enough, many intimations of the ideal and standard which he had set for himself.

" ' The secret of power ' is much inquired after, and when one demonstrates that he has real ability in preaching or in

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teaching, there is forthwith great speculation as to how it was acquired. But it ought to be suggested at the outset that the secret of power is not some algebraic x— the unknown quantity in the problem of success, which can be figured out, and set by itself, and its exact value determined. Real power comes from an even proportion and nice adjustment of all the faculties of the man; and to imagine that there is some special secret which constitutes the philosopher's stone, that can transmute leaden failure into golden success, is to fall into a disastrous mistake. And so it has struck us again and again how utterly they come short who aim at power along some single line of culture or accomplishment.

" There were three preachers heard during a European journey who furnished a complete lesson on this point.

" There was, first, the intellectualpreacher. He was such indeed; polished to the last degree, and dealing out real and carefully wrought thought. It was no ingenious serving up of scraps of borrowed opinion— no mere originality of literary pattern-working upon commonplace material. Here was a thinker, earnest, genuine, and thorough; and if one should want to hear such, we would commend him by all means to this divine. But though the congregation was exceptionally intelligent, it was evident that the number who could follow his discourse was very small. To them it was stimulating, no doubt. Yet how about the great numbers who could not follow it? Good food, and something for all, must be the rule in feeding the flock of God. But there, just in front of me, was a respectful, sedate hearer. He might have been a grocer or a butcher or a coal-dealer. At all events, his business was such as gave him little training or aptitude for the refinements of thought and the delicate shadings of style to which he was now listening. And so I set to watching his face. Determination to be faithful in attending to the services was written on every feature. He was holding the

9© ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON

muscles of his face to their Sunday tension, I saw drowsiness and inattention pulling at them, but in vain. And when, under the loud and somewhat monotonous tones of the preacher, he half drowsed, he would start from the perilous edge of sleep, and open such a wakeful and applauding glance on the minister as fairly humbled me. For said I, ' What a pity that hungry souls should have to stretch their necks and strain their appetites to get their spiritual food, and that they should have to look such loyal amens at the preacher when really they do not understand what he is saying!' And so our good, patient, faithful hearer went out of church when the services were over. And if he had known the quotation, probably the truest confession he could have made would have been found in the lines of Tennyson's 'Northern Farmer, Old Style '

" ' An' 'eerd 'un a-bummin' awaay loike a buzzard clock ower my 'ead, An' I never knawed whot a mean'd, but I thowt a 'ad summut to saw, An' I thowt a said whot a owt to 'a' said, an' I coom'd awaay.

"Next we came upon the unctuous preacher. He made as much use of his heart and his handkerchief as the other did of his head and his learning. But who does not know how cheap the unction is that is merely poured upon the heart, and not pressed out of the heart by deep and genuine feeling? Ready-made emotion is not likely to fit a congregation very closely. If a preacher has no oil in his lamp, it matters little how profusely he pours oil on his head, or how lavishly it runs down his beard. In other words, fervor without light, feeling without truth, do not generally move one. When Robertson was discoursing on the love of God to sinners, and in the glow of his kindling thought a tear was seen to course down his cheek and fall upon his Bible, no wonder that they said that that was the most eloquent passage in his sermon.

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There must be a certain amount of thought to give body to feeUng; it is the beaten oil of the sanctuary which alone can feed true unction. Oil produced from the olive-press of Gethsemane— emotion born of true fellowship with the sufferings of Christ— this alone can beget genuine sympathy. But the preacher whom I am describing sought to work up feeling by pathetic exclamations and fond phrases, and the like. And so I was not surprised at the comment of a Norwegian musician, who chanced to be traveling in our company. In broken and entertaining English, he said, ' He did not seem to veel vat he says, and he did not says much.'

" The third preacher whom we heard impressed me neither by his remarkable culture nor by his remarkable pathos. He had enough of each, however; and the two elements were so evenly blended that neither was especially conspicuous. But he affected us very deeply. No admiration for the preacher's genius was awakened; no sense of his trying to make us weep was experienced. On the contrary, as he went on, we found ourselves thinking of our sins, and then adoring the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world. In fact, we confess that we were disappointed. We went to hear a great preacher, and from beginning to end never thought of him as such, so much were we occupied with self, the great sinner.

" ' Which now of these three? * The first made his sermon a work of art. That was evidently his business. To that end he was pressing on with all his might. ' And by chalice there came down a certain priest that way.' To find a poor, wounded, half-dead sinner, and pour the oil of grace into his heart, was not what he was bent on. He was about other matters— attending to his r/fnVd;/ duties, minding his theology, etc.— and if he should discover a lost sinner in his way, it would be entirely by chance.

"The second preacher beamed unctuously upon his congregation, ' oozing all over with the fat affectionate smile,' and anon dissolving his smiles in a solution of tears. But there was no grip of truth in all he said, no strong grappling with the conscience, no tears of penitence in the hearer's eyes reflecting tears of pity in the preacher's. ' And likewise a Levite came and looked ' (with gold-bowed spectacles, no doubt, which had constantly to be wiped because of his emotion), ' and passed by on the other side.'

" The third preacher uttered a message which came straight home 'to men's business and bosoms.' He was evidently bent on seeking out the sinner. 'This preaching finds me,' must have been the feeling of many a hearer. ' But a certain Samaritan, as he jovurneyed, came where he was.'' This is the preaching the world needs—not the discoursing in which the hearer gets glimpses, now and then, of the minister looking through the lattice of some flowery period, or emerging from some rhetorical circumlocution, only to disappear again into incomprehensibility. The preaching which comes close to the heart, and finds it, and blesses it, is what is wanted."

On another Sunday Gordon had the interesting and novel experience of listening to his own words with the slight incidental modifications suitable to differing congregations. Then indeed was a mirror set before his eyes. For on going to a leading Presbyterian church he was surprised, when the text and headings were given out, to note how closely they followed a sermon scheme which he himself had used some months before in Boston. As the sermon progressed from stage to stage, his own illustrations, his own metaphors, his very quotations, appeared as on an unfolding panorama. The London minister had. Dr. Gordon afterward conjectured, read the sermon in a somewhat obscure American paper devoted to those prophetic exegeses with which he was closely in touch, and had reproduced it presumably by a process of unconscious cerebration.

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For when Gordon shook hands with him, introducing himself at the meeting's end, he was invited without the least apparent constraint or embarrassment, which the common ownership of such a secret would naturally involve, to the minister's home, and spent the day with him in pleasant intercourse.