Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

You remember that interview that God had with Moses when he was about to send him into Egypt. How often God says, “I am the Almighty God. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” What did he say that to him for? That he might encourage him to believe in him; trust him, and encourage him to go out under his might. I believe “I am the Almighty God” answered every excuse of Moses. If we put this matter in the hands of God, with perfect consecration, faith, and love toward God, and perfect truth, honesty, and magnanimity to our fellow-men, it will become easy to us, it will become the joy of our lives, and God will put us down in his blessed book as among his perfect ones.

Mark what God calls perfect is so different from what men require. We hear some persons say, “Well, C. is about perfect.” You go out and tell that thing to somebody that knows her, and does not like her very much. If I should believe the things I hear said about some men, they should be put in jail. But you can not find out that way: look up to God! Knowing how imperfect we are, and how poor we are, in all these relations of our hearts and lives, God has put it down, “I am the Almighty God. I am able to make you what you want to be.” That is what he said to Abram. Look at him. You recollect at one time in his life, under great pressure, he told a lie. And yet Abram filled the ideal, but it was in spite of that. Noah was perfect, but he got drunk. Job was perfect, and upright, and eschewed evil. If anyone will read over carefully the Book of Job, (and I recommend you to read it), he will find a perfect answer for all the skepticism of this present age. Job went so far as to curse the day in which he was born, and the day when it was said a man-child is born, and yet he was a man that was perfect in his generation, and that pleased God. He came out of that immature condition of ignorance of God.

Mark another thing. You remember in this Book of Job, with all the hard things that Job said, you can not find a place where God rebuked him. All he said was, “Stand up, Job, and let me talk to you. You can not understand my providence and government. You must trust me, Job.” So he does with hundreds and thousands. There was David who wrote the prayers and poetry of the ages. What a man he was! Yet he succeeded in pleasing God, not by his sins, but he pleased God. The truth is, the Bible is a record of bankrupt cases of men who were full of the wreck and ruin of sin, and yet grew up into this perfect stature of men in Christ Jesus our Lord. What an encouragement it is for everybody to seek to be perfect before God.

Let me hasten to the conclusion. The first reason why we should be perfect before God is this, that God has agreed to help us, “I am the Almighty God.” He will stand by in every serious and sincere attempt to be his. If you seek to keep step with your convictions, if you seek to be true to your best light, remember that God is with you to help you all he can. I know about the weight of evil; I know that when we strike out for the shore, there is some dreadful undertow that seems to draw us back. I know the earthly is weak and we seem to be drawn down. But I answer the whole of it by this great truth in this text, “I am the Almighty God.” God helps, God will strengthen us.

There is a little thing that occurred in my boyhood, that has been a great comfort to me many times in the hard work I have been called to do. When I was about fourteen years old, and my brother about twelve, my father took us out fishing on Long Island Sound. We had a poor flat-boat called a scow. We were ambitious, like all little boys, and when we turned in to go to the shore, about four miles, I was entrusted with a pair of long oars, and my brother with a shorter pair. We saw near us a boat with two boys in it about our own age, with their father, an admirably built boat, clean in her lines as a yacht. They were looking at our boat, and the man said to my father, in a sneering tone, “You have got a pretty strong crew in there, but I guess we will beat you to town.”

My father said nothing, but he straightened up and looked at his boys. How we pulled! They beat us a good deal of the way; it was their boat; I knew the boys were not any better than we, for I had thrashed the biggest one several times. We pulled away, and they were yet three or four rods ahead, when my father reached out his great hands and put them on mine, I seem to feel them to-day, and as I pulled he pushed. We beat. Many a time I have thought of it when I have been trying my best, my father pushes while I pull. “I am the Almighty God.” That is enough for me. All it means is within my reach; all the possibility it promises is within my grasp; all hope, all blessedness, all might, all victory through my Father in Heaven. “I am the Almighty God. Walk before me, and be thou perfect.”

The second thought is, the glorious independence of such a life as this. The man who walks before God, who is his with devout trust, has this as the center and circumference of his idea: “I will, I must, I shall please God, and he will help me to follow him.” He understands all. A man walks through this world with his conversation in heaven. No room for selfishness, what shall become of me? Suppose that we could interview those five smooth stones that David took out of the scrip against Goliath, that we could endow them with intelligence; every one was willing to be slung against Goliath. I don’t suppose they would have whined and said, “I wonder why he picked out such a crooked stone as that. There is something wrong about that.” But with this idea of walking before God those four stones that lay in the scrip were as happy as they lay there as the one that went whizzing against the giant. Whether we run, or wait, or stand, or go into the fight it is all one. Milton says “they also serve who only stand and wait.” The perfect independence of this life is worth all it costs. Suppose in order to do it we must have the selfish feeling in us, like a cancer, cut out. As Mrs. Browning says, “He who tears his heart in twain, and casts away the baser part, is richer for his loss.” Painful as it may be, before this wonderful and attractive idea, it is cheap.

You remember that the River Nile runs one thousand two hundred miles through a desert land without a single affluent. How do you account for it? How does that great river pour its flood through Egypt, and keep alive for one thousand two hundred miles without a single stream to feed it? It is fed away back there in Africa, by those giant lakes, and kept ever full and rich. So it is with the soul that walks with God. Its sources are in God. He draws his sustenance, not from this poor world, but far upon the hillside toward God. As the rivers of Europe, that keep it alive, are kept alive themselves by the tall mountain peaks in Switzerland, so a soul that walks with God, that pleases God, is made a wonderful and everlasting benediction to all around him, while he lives independent of all. I do not say that people who are seeking this sort of thing do not feel or have a need of human sympathy. O, no, they have a great deal of it. I do not say that this ideal is so often found, but I believe it is possible. I believe I have made a testimony for you this morning. I want you to think and remember, if you want to walk before God, he will help you.

Somebody says, “How about the profession of this thing?” The Bible don’t say anything about it. That is a matter for your individual judgment. Your wife will find out about it if you find it. When I hear a man say hallelujah very loud, I want to know always how much he pays toward the Gospel. When I hear a man say he is very happy, or holy, I want to know how he lives at home, how he carves the beefsteak. Abram did not hang out any sign, but he became so powerful that the kings all around wanted to make an alliance with him. If you are keeping step with the best ideal, it will show in the carefulness and kindness of your replies, in the grasp of your hand, in the intelligence and sweetness of your face. O, my friends, may I entreat you to set this before your eyes? I believe it is the ideal of God for man. “Walk before me, and be thou perfect.” He will help you as my father helped me to pull the boat. He will help you as every good, kind and gentle mother helps her child. He will help you every time. It will not be a flash and then over. He will make you happy, joyful and independent by day and night. Never mind the circumstances, you will be wrapped in arms so soft and hovered in a love so deep, it will not leave a desire in your souls unsatisfied; there will be such choral harmonies within, that the babel tongues of this world will not overpower them.

Some one may say, “But, Mr. Adams, how?” I say in a word, go to God and ask him, get yourselves humble; be truly penitent; be honest and sincere. Lay your hand in the hand of the Lord. You need not hypothecate any experience. You can not tell whether you are going to live long or not, but you can live with your hand in his.

If a sinner has heard me this day, he knows that this life is the life he wants. I spoke to a sinner the other day, “John, why don’t you give your heart to God?” “Oh,” said he, “I am sick of you Christians.” Said I, “Don’t you think there are Christians in the world?” “Well, that is a hard question.” “But, don’t you think there are Christians?” “Well,” said he, “I am not going back on my old mother.” “Didn’t you promise her to be a Christian?” “Yes, I believe I did.” “Why don’t you do it?” “Why there are so and so that owe me. I don’t want any of their Christianity, but I believe your kind of Christianity is true.” I believe John will give his heart to God. That is the kind that everybody wants. Nobody wants these poor, barren, lean kind, but we want this royal kind, that which fits and satisfies the feeling of our hearts.

I must close with one remark. It is a great and intense age; it is such an age as has never come to the world before. Some of the preceding ages have surpassed this in some respects, it is true, but men have never achieved as they are doing to-day. This great age demands a great piety; it demands deep, wide-spread spirituality. Let me tell you it again; a great age demands great Christians, Christians like Abram, Christians like Paul, Christians like John. Who will set themselves apart to do battle of the royal sort? To keep step with the spirit of the age? It is an age of culture. Education is the cry. There is such a thing, however, as using up your heart by giving too much education to your head. If you guard your heart with this ideal it will be all right. Oh friends, have your hearts filled with God! Follow this great idea to be perfect before God, that you may stand in the advance of the age, and may even run ahead of it. I say that an age like this, an age of lightning, steam, force, and advance in every department of human knowledge, demands that the men and women of the Christian Church should rise to the loftiest ideal of the Christian life. All the sublime achievements of Christian faith lie in the line of fidelity to your advanced convictions. It is the inspiration of souls, it makes the greatness of life. It is that which has made all the grand Christians in the world. It is that which will make Chautauqua grow from year to year in spiritual development, and surround it with a great light, as an aureola, and place it at the head of this great age.

Men and women of Chautauqua, let an unworthy servant of the Master, my Master the Lord Jesus Christ, whose I am and whom I serve, get down at your feet and beseech you to meet the greatness of this ideal. It is not enough to be a ship, it must be launched. It is not enough to have all these great qualities that God may give to you, you need to be consecrated. Hear the word of God to Abram amidst the din and clatter and roar of this age, hear him say, high out of the clear heavens, “I am the Almighty God, walk before me, and be thou perfect.” And that this may be your and my happy lot, is my earnest prayer.

FOOTNOTE:

[E] A sermon delivered in the Amphitheater, at Chautauqua, Sunday, August 20, 1882.

MY OWN GIRL.

By FREDERICK LANGBRIDGE.

Fifteen shillings—no more, sir—
The wages I weekly touch.
For labor steady and sore, sir,
It isn’t a deal too much;
Your money has wings in the city,
And vanishes left and right,
But I hand a crown to Kitty
As sure as Saturday night.
Bless her, my own, my wee,
She’s better than gold to me!

I must be honest and simple,
I must be manly and true,
Or how could I pinch her dimple,
Or gaze in her frank eyes’ blue?
I feel, not anger, but pity,
When workmates go to the bad;
I say, “They’ve never a Kitty—
They’d all keep square if they had.”
Bless her, my own, my wee,
She’s better than gold to me!

One day she will stand at the altar,
Modest, and white, and still,
And forth from her lips will falter
The beautiful, low, “I will.”
Our home shall be bright and pretty
As ever a poor man’s may,
And my soft little dove, my Kitty,
Shall nest in my heart for aye.
Bless her, my own, my wee,
She’s better than gold to me!