THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD, A Life for a Life and other addresses, A Changed Life, THE PROGRAMME OF CHRISTIANITY, THE CITY WITHOUT A CHURCH, PAX VOBISCUM, and STONES ROLLED AWAY and other addresses - Henry Drummond (best reads of all time txt) 📗

grow, but they do know that they cannot grow in five minutes. Some lives have not even a stalk on which fruits could hang, even if they did grow in five minutes. Some have never planted one sound seed of Joy in all their lives; and others who may have planted a germ or two have lived so little in sunshine that they never could come to maturity.
Whence, then, is Joy? Christ put His teaching upon this subject into one of the most exquisite of His parables. I should in any instance have appealed to His teaching here, as in the case of Rest, for I do not wish you to think I am speaking words of my own. But it so happens that He has dealt with it in a passage of unusual fulness.
I need not recall the whole illustration. It is the parable of the Vine. Did you ever think why Christ spoke that parable? He did not merely throw it into space as a fine illustration of general truths. It was not simply a statement of the mystical union, and the doctrine of an indwelling Christ. It was that; but it was more. After He had said it, He did what was not an unusual thing when He was teaching His greatest lessons. He turned to the disciples and said He would tell them why he had spoken it. It was to tell them how to get Joy. "These things have I spoken unto you," He said, "that My Joy might remain in you and that your Joy might be full." It was a purposed and deliberate communication of His secret of Happiness.
Go back over these verses, then, and you will find the Causes of this Effect, the spring, and the only spring, out of which true Happiness comes. I am not going to analyse them in detail. I ask you to enter into the words for yourselves. Remember, In the first place, that the Vine was the Eastern symbol of Joy. It was its fruit that made glad the heart of man. Yet, however innocent that gladness--for the expressed juice of the grape was the common drink at every peasant's board--the gladness was only a gross and passing thing. This was not true happiness, and the vine of the Palestine vineyards was not the true vine. Christ was "the true Vine." Here, then, is the ultimate source of Joy. Through whatever media it reaches us, all true Joy and Gladness find their source in Christ. By this, of course, is not meant that the actual Joy experienced is transferred from Christ's nature, or is something passed on from Him to us. What is passed on is His method of getting it. There is, indeed, a sense in which we can share another's joy or another's sorrow. But that is another matter. Christ is the source of Joy to men in the sense in which He is the source of rest. His people share His life, and therefore share its consequences, and one of these is Joy. His method of living is one that in the nature of things produces Joy. When He spoke of His Joy remaining with us He meant in part that the causes which produced it should continue to act. His followers, that is to say, by repeating His life would experience its accompaniments. His Joy, His kind of Joy, would remain with them.
The medium through which this Joy comes is next explained: "He that abideth in Me the same bringeth forth much fruit." Fruit first, Joy next; the one the cause or medium of the other. Fruit-bearing is the necessary antecedent; Joy both the necessary consequent and the necessary accompaniment. It lies partly in the bearing fruit, partly in the fellowship which makes that possible. Partly that is to say, Joy lies in mere constant living in Christ's presence, with all that that implies of peace, of shelter, and of love; partly in the influence of that Life upon mind and character and will; and partly in the inspiration to live and work for others, with all that that brings of self-riddance and Joy in other's gain. All these, in different ways and at different times, are sources of pure Happiness. Even the simplest of them --to do good to other people--is an instant and infallible specific. There is no mystery about Happiness whatever. Put in the right ingredients and it must come out. He that abideth in Him will bring forth much fruit; and bringing forth much fruit is Happiness. The infallible receipt for Happiness, then, is to do good; and the infallible receipt for doing good is to abide in Christ. The surest proof that all this is a plain matter of Cause and Effect is that men may try every other conceivable way of finding Happiness, and they will fail. Only the right cause in each case can produce the right effect.
Then the Christian experiences are our own making? In the same sense in which grapes are our own making, and no more. All fruits grow--whether they grow in the soil or in the soul; whether they are the fruits of the wild grape or of the True Vine. No man can make things grow. He can get them to grow by arranging all the circumstances and fulfilling all the conditions. But the growing is done by God. Causes and effects are eternal arrangements, set in the constitution of the world; fixed beyond man's ordering. What man can do is to place himself in the midst of a chain of sequences. Thus he can get things to grow: thus he himself can grow. But the grower is the Spirit of God.
What more need I add but this--test the method by experiment. Do not imagine that you have got these things because you know how to get them. As well try to feed upon a cookery book. But I think I can promise that if you try in this simple and natural way, you will not fail. Spend the time you have spent in sighing for fruits in fulfilling the conditions of their growth. The fruits will come, must come. We have hitherto paid immense attention to effects, to the mere experiences themselves; we have described them, extolled them, advised them, prayed for them -- done everything but find out what caused them. Henceforth let us deal with causes. "To be," says Lotze, "is to be in relations." About every other method of living the Christian life there is an uncertainty. About every other method of acquiring the Christian experiences there is a "perhaps." But in so far as this method is the way of nature, it cannot fail. Its guarantee is the laws of the universe, and these are "the Hands of the Living God."

STONES ROLLED AWAY and other addresses
by Henry Drummond


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INTRODUCTION

STONES ROLLED AWAY

THE MAN WHO IS DOWN

ONE WAY TO HELP BOYS

AN APPEAL TO THE OUTSIDER: OR, THE CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY

LIFE ON THE TOP FLOOR

THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND YOUR PART IN IT

THE THREE ELEMENTS OF A COMPLETE LIFE


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INTRODUCTION
Any one who had read "The Greatest Thing in the World" could not help but desire to see and hear its author; and, when Professor Drummond visited Boston in the spring of 1893, the capacity of lecture halls was taxed to the utmost. To accommodate thousands turned away, he repeated some of his lectures in the Lowell Institute Course, Boston. It was a crowded Boylston Hall or Appleton Chapel that invariably faced him when he addressed the students of Harvard University. He drew young men as few men can. He loved life and nature. He studied and knew men. He had read much. He had travelled in Europe, America, Africa, Australia and the New Hebrides, with eyes and ears wide open. With a charming personality and a rare grace of manner, he was a most attractive speaker and character, whether on the platform or in the quiet hour.
* * * * * *
The student, the evangelist and pastor, the professor and lecturer, the traveller and writer, has passed away; but his words, his writing and his influence cannot. He willingly gave his life to help others. Many a soul was brought into a higher life. Many a life was led into the top flat. Many a one was shown his part in the Kingdom of God. Many a man who was down was set upon his feet. Many a stone of difficulty was rolled away.
The addresses here given to the public in permanent form for the first time, as they have already helped some, may yet help many more.
The first four were delivered to students of Harvard University, in April, 1893. The remaining three addresses were delivered at the World's Bible Students' Conference, Northfield, Mass., in July, 1893.
LUTHER HESS WARING.
Scranton, Penna.


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STONES ROLLED AWAY
Gentlemen, I am very much astonished at this spectacle. I told you last night it was against our principles in Scotland to have religious meetings on a week night. It seems to me that if you come to a meeting of this kind you mean business, and you may just as well own it. If a man comes to a shorthand class, it means that he wants to learn shorthand; and, if a man turns up at what I suppose I must call a religious meeting, it means that he is less or more interested in the subject.
Now I should say that I think a man has to give himself the benefit of that desire, and he should not be ashamed of it. The facts of religion are real; and, as mere students of life, you and I are bound to take cognizance of them. Of course, many very fair minded men are kept away from going into this subject as they would like by a number of exceedingly surface reasons. I cannot help calling them surface reasons. For instance, you meet a man who tells you that he doesn't like Christians, that they always put his back up.
Now, Christians often put my back up. There are many of them I find, with whom it takes all my time to get along. But that is not peculiar with Christians. It is only peculiar to peculiar Christians, and there are just as many of the other sort. A man might just as well say, I don't like sinners. A man might just as well keep out of the world because he doesn't like some people in the world, as to keep out of Christian circles because there are some objectionable creatures in it. We cannot be too fastidious. We cannot join any sect without having the weaker brethren in it. We cannot get on in this world entirely by ourselves. We must join this thing and that if we are going to be of any service at all, so that I think the difficulty of having to join ourselves with objectionable men applies pretty much all around.
Other men are kept away from Christianity by what I might call its phrases. A great many people, not so much in your country as in ours, talk in a dialect. The older people especially, our grandmothers,