[See page 214]

Published Monthly by Funk & Wagnalls Company, 354-360 Fourth Avenue, New York.

(Adam W. Wagnalls, Pres.; Wilfred J. Funk, Vice-Pres.; Robert J. Cuddihy. Treas.; William Neisel, Sec'y.)

VOL. LXXVI.

SEPTEMBER, 1918

No. 3

66

The Devotional Hour

XIX. Poured Dut

In the annals of David's life there is a very fine story of heroic daring, and of the way David, by a sudden inspiration, turned the splendid bravery of his men into a religious sacrament. In the midst of hard battle, David exprest a longing for a drink of water out of the well at the gate of Bethlehem, at a time when Bethlehem was held by the army of the Philistines. Three of the most valiant of David's mighty men" at once volunteered to break through the enemies' line and get the water for their king. At the risk of their lives they got through to the well and brought the skin of hard-won water back to David. If he had done the usual thing and had drunk the water which his brave men had got for him, we should never have heard the story, but he did not drink it. It seemed to him too precious, too deeply tinged with the blood-red spirit of risk and sacrifice, to be put to common, ordinary uses, and, uplifted by the beauty of the deed, David poured the water out unto the Lord.

What a waste! What a way to treat his brave men! is the comment of dull common-sense. What a pity for the dry sand to drink up the water that had been got at such a venture! is the philistine view of the matter. But to those who have eyes for the inner meaning of deeds, this act of David's brings to light the fascinating, attractive quality of character which has made the first king of Judah with all his faults an immortal figure. He does the sublime and unexpected thing. He will not turn to personal, selfish uses the gift which comes to him deeply colored with the sacrificial daring of his men. The wine-skin holds for him not water to be drunk, but the precious lifeblood of brave men to be offered to the Lord as a sacrament of love.

There is a parallel story in the New Testament that is still finer and more moving. A woman who has suddenly found a new life, a new hope, a new power through the unexpected gentleness and tenderness of Christ and through his extraordinary faith in her, comes in at a dinner where he is and, in a moment of overmastering love and gratitude at the memory of the past, she breaks a costly alabaster vase of priceless perfume and pours it recklessly out upon the Savior's feet. The common-sense observers cry out against the waste, and the economically minded figure out how much could have been purchased with this spilled ointment, but Christ sees further. He instantly catches the deeper meaning. For him, it is the revelation of a spirit, a devotion, a passion that loves and that can not stop to figure and calculate. He sees that there is at least one person in the world who

understands him, who has discovered his way, and feels the absolute worth of love. She has not sold her perfume to inaugurate some paltry charity that would bring her cheap fame; she has instead, without any calculation, made an undying sacrament of it.

The world is full of chances for this kind of sacramental service. There is hardly anything which touches our higher life that is not blood-red with the sacrifices that have won it for us. The privileges that have become our common heritage have all cost an untold amount of venture and daring, and suffering and death. We too often take these things as a matter of course. We use them as we do the air and sunlight, as tho they were ours by right of birth, and we do not have the high quality of poetry and religion in our nature that makes us able to raise them to a sacramental service as we should.

The cross itself has again and again been thought of and used as a symbol of security: "He paid the price"; "He died that we might be safe." It is seized upon as a way of relief. Everything has been done for us without us. Our title is now clear to mansions in the skies. Surely not thus should we accept the sacrifice. If it is what the most devout souls have believed it to be, then all life henceforth must be colored and altered by this unparalleled act of love and sacrifice. Instead of bringing us the seal of perpetual security, instead of being meant for our own selfish relief, it is a call to us to pour out the life that has been given to us in the highest way of sacramental service to which we can raise our vision. If redemption has come to us in this way of uncalculating love, then we can never live again in the poor, thin, common, plodding way of old; the love of Christ "constrains us" to live the bold and daring way of faith and love that ventures all and keeps back nothing.

The tremendous cost of freedom and of self-government makes the word "country mean something new when we see it colored with unstinted sacrifice. But here again we can not calmly drink the precious water to quench our own private thirst. We can not settle down in security and enjoy in peace the treasures which others have won for us. Noblesse oblige. We are bound as patriotic sons of noble fathers to make their sacrificial gains genuine sacraments of life. We can do this best by risking all that freedom means to us, all that country stands for in our vision, in a brave effort to bring forth and secure for our children a still greater freedom and a still loftier country. Patriotic service is made the truest sacrament when it is devoted to the task of raising patriotism itself to its higher meaning. "The greatest legacy the hero leaves his race is to have been a hero."

Our own religion, born in heroic endeavor and baptized in unstinted suffering bravely born, has not seldom been quietly accepted as a way of ease and security. The water brought at such risk has been drunk in shelter and in peace. We have often felt that we were doing enough if we enjoyed our privileges and passed them on, but slightly shrunken, to the next generation. Our ideal has been "preservation." We have aimed to guard and keep, to have and to hold.

It will not do. It is a miserable ambition. It is time for us to discover the sacramental way of treating this precious water which our ancestors drew for us. We can not use it for our private enjoyment, we can not save it for our children, we can not treat it as ours; we must pour it out in uncalculating, self-forgetful devotion. It is better that we should lose it than that we should merely succeed in

saving it for our own ends. It is too sacred, too red with the life-blood of heroes to be used in the dull, common way of commonplace men. It must be poured out like the Bethlehem water, like the Bethany perfume, like the life of Christ; poured out without count

ing the cost or calculating the results, HAVERFORD COLLEGE, Haverford, Pa.

CHRIST AND DEMOCRACY'

Professor ARTHUR S. HOYT, D.D., Auburn Theological Seminary, N. Y.

THE words of the footnote tell us what Christianity is, not a creed nor a worship, not the most orthodox opinion nor the most emotional response to it; but a life, a "rule of God in the hearts of men," a society in which each one, however weak and imperfect, has spiritual value and is helped to true life. Christianity is a spiritual democracy.

Mr. Lowell, in his famous address. at Birmingham on Democracy, said that "democracy was that form of society, no matter what its political classification, in which every man had a chance and knew that he had it." That's the best definition we have of a political democracy. And there's a vital relation between these two expressions of life-a spiritual and a political democracy.

There is a relation and nothing has made it so evident as the world-conflict in which we are engaged. Last winter in one of our Y. M. C. A. huts in France, a Tommie came in one night and, about the warmth of the stove, began discussing with a group of our American soldiers the meaning of the war. "For what are we fighting?" "To beat the Huns," said the American. "No," said the Tommie, "we're fighting for Christianity and humanity." And more than one voice in the idealism of the hour has declared that Christianity and democ

racy are identical.

At least says a great French captain, "Christianity is the hope of democracy." What is their relation? I would speak of Christ and democracy.

I. In Christianity is the dynamic of popular movements. It has awakened and disciplined the forces of democratic society.

1. The latent life of the people first found an articulate voice in the person of Jesus. The people have always recognized Jesus as a brother man. The fact of his life is the strongest single force for democracy. His lowly birth, his toilsome youth, his manhood devoted to a ministry that knew no distinctions of pride and taste, his perfect identification with our common life, have powerfully imprest the imagination of the race. The old dramatist Dekker called Christ the first true gentleman, and Lowell adds that Christ was the first true democrat that ever breathed.

Some of you saw a picture of the modern Christ in the Swedish section of the World's Fair, Chicago — a workman in coarse, homely garb, passing along the crowded street, ignored and despised by the rich and the powerful, but welcomed by the people, here a glad look of recognition for some young, timid life, there a helping hand for the burdened and weary. Art has caught the very spirit of life.

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.-Matt. 7:21.

It is not the will of your Father which is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. -Matt. 18:14.