THE YOUNG MAN WHO WAS BORN TO THE PURPLE

“In the year that King Uzziah died” it was more than a date, it was an experience! The king had been a wise and good ruler. He had served his country well for fifty-two long years. He showed an interest in the welfare of his people “He loved husbandry and dug wells for them in the desert.” He caused vineyards to be planted on the slopes of Carmel and he increased the herds of cattle which grazed in the lowlands. He fortified his capital by building towers at the valley gate and at the turning of the wall in Jerusalem.

His reign was beneficent, but now he was dead, and this warm-hearted young patriot felt that his heart was overwhelmed. He and his fellow citizens must now plan for the future of their county without the guidance and inspiration of this great king.

But “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord.” There came something more than a personal experience of disappointment. There came the emergence of a new and higher form of faith. This young man saw the earthly majesty of this wise and good king go down in utter defeat. In some strange way the king contracted leprosy. During all the closing years of his reign he suffered from the crawling inroads of that loathsome disease. By the stern requirements of the Jewish law he was banished from his own capital. He was compelled to live outside the city and to reign by deputy. He finally died a lingering and horrible death.

And in that dread hour the young man saw the heavenly majesty of the King of kings resplendent and enduring. “In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord, high and lifted up, sitting upon His throne and His glory filled the temple.” The spirit of hero-worship was passing over into religious faith.

Let me study with you the effect of this crisis in the life of his nation upon this young man who was born to the purple. He possessed all those advantages which go with wealth, social position, and education. We have here no rough man of the hills like Elijah, the Tishbite, rudely dressed and rude in speech. We have here no man with the smell of the fields in his garments like Amos, the herdsman of Tekoa.

Isaiah belonged to the fortunate class. He lived on Fifth Avenue. He had an assured social position which gave him ready access to the court and to the presence of the king. He was familiar with the customs and the costumes of fashionable society, as we find in that chapter where he openly rebukes the showy extravagance of the idle rich. He was well educated he had that literary skill which comes only to those who are well trained. In all the Old Testament you will find nothing finer than the sweep and finish of some of this young prophet’s public utterances. He was one to whom five talents had been given where other men were struggling along with one apiece. He therefore owed to society what might be called the debt of privilege. It is a fixed charge upon the lives of those who sit above the salt. It has a right to insist upon full payment. “To whom much is given, of him will much be required.”

It is for every man to ask himself: “How much do I eat up in my generous mode of life? How much in food and dress, in housing and furnishing, in motor cars and yachts, in travel and in recreation? How much do I consume in those provisions which I make for a wider culture through books, pictures, music and the like?” What is your average intake of this world’s good things? That measure of consumption will indicate the measure of your responsibility. If you are born to the purple and fare sumptuously in all these ways then the world has a right to demand that you shall render back in corresponding measure that useful service which is your plain duty.

In that effective cartoon which Jesus drew of the Rich Man and Lazarus, it was the unpaid debt of privilege which brought about the loss of a soul. Jesus showed the two men in this world, one of them living in a palace, clothed with purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day; the other in rags dying at the Rich Man’s gate, hungry and full of sores. Then Jesus showed the two men in the next world, Lazarus the beggar now in Abraham’s bosom, and the son of good fortune enduring torment.

There is no hint that the Rich Man had gained a penny of his wealth wrongfully; no charge of lying or theft, of murder or adultery is laid at his door. He was damned not by the wicked things he had done, but for the lack of that generous and humane service which he had left undone. His sin was that of selfish indifference. The way to perdition is paved with moral neglect. The debt of privilege can no more be escaped than death or taxes. To whom much is given, of him will much be required. And a full sense of that responsibility was brought home to this well-endowed young man in the year the great king died.

The fortunate young man stood out in the open confessing his sense of moral need. There in the place of worship in that high and serious mood which followed upon the death of the king, he caught a fresh vision of God. “I saw the Lord high and lifted up, sitting upon His throne. I saw Him surrounded with the winged seraphs. And one of them cried to another, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts! The whole earth is full of His glory.”

The very sight of the unstained purity of Him “unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid,” brought this young man to his knees. He knelt in the dust and beat upon his breast and told the sins of his life. “Woe is me, I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips. I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. And mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”

The man who has no sense of sin has little sense of any sort. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves or else we lie. Where is the man who can stand up in the presence of those who know him and say, “Every deed that I have done was done in honour and integrity. Every word that has fallen from my lips has been spoken in truth and in kindliness. Every desire which I have harboured in my soul has been one upon which the eye of my Maker might rest with approval.”

Can you say that? I am frank to confess that I cannot. I have done wrong. I feel my need of the divine mercy. I want forgiveness, cleansing and renewal. And every man who is honest enough to look himself in the face, without flinching, will be moved to make the same confession. It is up out of those moments of contrition when men are humbled and broken before God that the spiritual impulses come which are to beat back the forces of evil and make this earth at last as fair as the sky.

I care not what the man’s outward station may be he may live on the Avenue or he may live in the slums; he may be clothed in purple or he may be dressed in rags; he wear a Phi Beta Kappa key or he may be so untaught that he has to make his mark when he signs a mortgage in any event here is a prayer which will fit his lips it fits every pair of lips: “God be merciful to me, a sinner.”

In that one brief sentence we have the four main terms of religious experience. “God,” the object of religion, the ground of all finite existence, the basis of all our hope! “Me,” the human soul, the subject of religion, the field where the work of religion is to be wrought out! “Sin,” the obstacle to religion, the source of all our moral failure, the cause of our alienation from God! And “mercy,” the agent of religion, the form of energy which accomplishes our recovery! God be merciful to me, a sinner.

This young man of good fortune stood up in the temple in the presence of his fellows making his open confession of moral need. “Woe is me for I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips.”

In that very hour when this honest confession came from his lips his life was cleansed by the direct action of the divine spirit. He saw one of the winged seraphs flying towards him through the open spaces of Heaven. The angel took a live coal from the altar and laid it upon the lips of this young man. He cried out as he did it, saying, “Thine iniquity is taken away. Thy sin is purged.” Isaiah was no more a man of unclean lips he could now speak with that Lord whose name is Holy as friend speaks with friend.

We have this profound moral experience dressed up in those grand, Oriental robes which were dear to the people of that region. But when you strip away the silk, the lace, and the feathers of Eastern imagery, and get down to the bare, warm truth, this is what you find a man whose sense of moral lack had prompted that open confession, cleansed in that high hour by the direct action of the divine spirit upon his soul.

Here is that which is basic and fundamental in all religious life! I wonder if we have not been tempted in recent years to obscure this vital experience. We have held those two big words, “Heredity” and “Environment,” so close to our eyes as to blind us, oftentimes, to the larger vision of that which is superhuman in earthly experience.

It is possible for the inner life of a man to be so wrought upon by the action of the spirit of God that the corrupt nature is cleansed, the weak nature is made strong, the selfish disposition is transformed into benign love.

It matters little how you go about it, if you go with sincere faith. You may seek for that renewal through the regenerating influence of the Sacraments dear to the heart of the Romanist and the High Churchman. If you find it there, it will be because Christ is within the Sacrament. You may seek for it in those profound emotional reactions which come at the Methodist mourners’ bench. If you find it there, it will be because the spirit of Christ was operating through those feelings. You may find it as you make an about face, turning away from that which is evil and making Christian duty your supreme choice in the quiet of your own room. If you find it there, it will be because Christ was present in those movements of your inner life. The woman was healed in the Gospel story by touching the hem of Christ’s garment because Christ was within that garment.

If any man will seek for moral renewal at the hands of God he will find. If he will knock at any one of these doors it will open. Here is the Gospel as it stands recorded on the pages of the Old Testament “The spirit of the Lord shall come upon thee and thou shall be turned into another man.” Here is the same Gospel as it stands recorded on the pages of the New Testament “If any man is in Christ he is a new creature. Old things are passed away and all things are become new.”

In the joy of moral renewal this well-born, well-reared, well-trained young man gave himself in eager consecration to the highest he saw. “I heard the voice of the Lord say, Whom shall I send? Who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I, send me.”

His nation, now robbed of its great king by the hand of disease, was facing a crisis. The national church to which he belonged was steeped in formalism and insincerity. The divine voice was uttering a heartfelt lament over the unfaithfulness of the chosen people. “Israel doth not know! My people do not think. The whole head is sick and the whole heart is faint.”

There was a loud cry for men of large build with wise heads and sound hearts to furnish moral leadership. And in the face of that demand this son of good fortune did not allow the divine spirit to go out into the highways and hedges in order to compel some sort of man, any sort of man, to come in that the ranks might be filled. He answered to his name with a clear-cut consecration of himself. “Here am I, send me.”

When war comes to any country, there are rich men who give money, millions of it, that the war chest may be full. There are great manufacturers who promptly place their plants at the disposal of the government for the making of munitions. There are ship owners who turn over their vessels to the Navy that they may be sent to do business in the great waters of national defense. There are wise men who think hard upon the problems of finance and statecraft that they may provide that counsel which is more precious than rubies. All this is in the highest degree praiseworthy.

But the only men who give what Lincoln called at Gettysburg “the last full measure of devotion” are the men who give themselves. These men do not go on horseback nor in automobiles. They walk. They eat the hardtack. They sleep on the ground. They dig the trenches and fight in them. They march out at the word of command to be shot at. They keep right on doing those plain things until the war is ended and victory achieved. These are the men who awaken our warmest feeling of admiration and gratitude. “Here am I, send me” nothing can take the place of that!

In that sterner war where there is no discharge, in that age-long, world-wide fight against the evils of earth this same sound principle holds. Money is needed; counsel is needed; organization and administrative ability are needed. The bringing in of that kingdom which is not meat and drink, nor shot and shell, but righteousness and peace and joy in the divine spirit, requires all these fine forms of effort. But nothing can ever take the place of that personal consecration of each man’s own soul to the service of the living God.

In that high hour when Isaiah saw the God of things as they are, high and lifted up, sitting on His throne, he did not say, “Here are any number of fine people, send them. Here is a man who could perform the task better than I send him.” He said what every man must say who means to stand right in the Day of Judgment, “Here am I, send me.”

He was the son of good fortune, and his life was bright and rich with many an advantage. But this did not prompt him to claim any sort of exemption from the call for volunteers. His vision of the awful difference between the earthly majesty of that king who sank so swiftly into a leper’s grave and the heavenly majesty which rose above it sovereign and eternal, made him feel that nothing would suffice but the gift of himself.

What shall it profit a man, this man, that man, any man, to gain the largest measure of earthly success you may choose to name, if in the process he loses himself, his real self, his best self, his enduring self? What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, but feels within himself a capacity for higher things unrealized? In the great outcome nothing really matters save the devotion of the personal life to the highest ends.

In the year 1840 near the city of Louvain a child was born, who came of good stuff. He was educated for a business career, and there in prosperous little Belgium the outlook at that time for wealth, for social position, and for a life of joy was very bright. But at the age of eighteen this boy offered himself for the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church. He joined the Society of the Sacred Heart. He went out to the Hawaiian Islands as a missionary and was ordained as a priest in the city of Honolulu.

He was at once impressed with the sad condition of the leper settlement on the island of Molokai. He resolved to give his life to those poor, diseased, horror-stricken people. He knew that to live among them would mean banishment from his ordinary associations and the loss of all possible preferment in the church. He knew that he might himself contract that terrible disease and suffer a lingering, painful, frightful death. “No matter,” he cried, “I am going.” And he went.

He not only preached to those lepers the Gospel of the Son of God and ministered to them in spiritual things his own labours and his appeals to the Hawaiian government secured for them better dwellings, an improved water supply, and a more generous provisioning of the unhappy settlement. For five years he worked alone, but for the occasional assistance of a priest who came to the colony for a single day. He finally succumbed to the dread disease of leprosy and in his forty-ninth year died a martyr to humane devotion. His name was Father Damien, and he shed fresh luster upon the Christian ministry.

The young man who was born to the purple, called now to be a prophet of God, seized upon the vital elements of religion and uttered them with power. “What does it mean to be religious?” men were asking. Some of the dull, blind priests of that day were saying, “It means sacrifice and burnt offering. It means the careful and showy observance of the forms of worship.” Israel did not know; the people did not think.

Then this young prophet gave them the word of God with an edge on it. He showed them the folly of all those outward signs of devotion apart from the inward spirit of righteousness. “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices? Who hath required this at your hands? When you spread forth your hands I will hide my eyes. When you make many prayers I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean. Put away the evil of your doings. Cease to do evil, learn to do well. Then though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow.”

“Salvation by righteousness this is the message of the Old Testament,” Matthew Arnold used to say. “Righteousness through Jesus Christ,” this is the message of the New Testament! And this nineteenth century man of letters was but echoing the words which fell from the lips of those prophets in the eighth century before Christ.

“Wherewith shall I come before the Lord?” said Micah. “Will the Lord be pleased with a thousand rams or with ten thousand rivers of oil? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.”

“Seek justice,” Isaiah said; “relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. If ye be willing and obedient ye shall eat the good of the land. If ye refuse and rebel ye shall be devoured.” This was the heart of his message. It was the call of God to personal righteousness.

He represents the Almighty as sitting upon the throne of the universe, summoning His people into friendly conference with Him. “Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord.” Religion is not a thing of magic. There is no sleight-of-hand or hocus-pocus in the benefits it seeks to confer. Religion is rational and moral. It is a reasoned form of intercourse between an intelligent and moral being who is finite and the Intelligent and Moral Being who is Infinite. Its benefits are to be realized in that direct impress of the spirit of God upon the soul of the man who has made an intelligent and honest approach to his Maker.

The young prophet saw his country threatened with disaster from both sides. He saw upon the south the selfish and cruel designs of Egypt. He saw the encroachments of mighty Assyria from the north. He saw the madness of those Israelites who thought they could combine wickedness and worship, the observance of religious forms with lives of moral unconcern. And in that hour the truths he lifted before them were “The majesty and authority of God, the everlasting obligation of personal righteousness, the certainty of the ultimate triumph of God’s Kingdom over the wrath of man.” These were the mighty truths by which he sought to inspire the hearts of men to do their duty, come what might.

Have we not great need at this very hour of just such men! It has been given to you and to me to live through one of the great, searching crises of human history. The world has never seen a struggle so gigantic. We have been patient for more than two years with a certain nation across the sea patient clear up to the border of what has seemed to some of our neighbours like a lazy acquiescence in lawlessness. We have seen that nation referring contemptuously to her own treaties as mere scraps of paper, and then openly disregarding her solemn obligations.

We saw the outrage perpetrated upon Belgium, an outrage which men who know their histories better than I know mine are saying will go down as the greatest crime in the annals of the race. We saw the drowning of hundreds of helpless women and children in the sinking of the Lusitania without warning and in flat defiance of international law. We saw the judicial murder of women like Edith Cavell and of men like Captain Fryatt. We have seen the Zeppelins engaged in the dastardly business of hurling down bombs upon unfortified towns for the killing of old women and little children heretofore when decent nations have gone to war men have fought with men. We have seen thousands of helpless Armenians butchered by the Moslem allies of that so-called Christian power, it is all but universally believed, with its own connivance and under its direction. We have witnessed a frightful record of brutality and outrage, investigated and established by the competent testimony of such men as James Bryce and Cardinal Mercier. We have seen the sinking of hospital ships loaded with wounded men and the sinking of relief ships carrying provisions to the famine-stricken children of Belgium, no matter what flag they flew, or what cargo they bore.

We have had our own rights as a neutral trampled upon by that government with the arrogant assumption that her necessities knew no law. And now to crown it all we have detected the official representatives of that country with protests of friendship upon their false lips actually plotting with Mexico and seeking to extend that plot to Japan with the unholy purpose of destroying the peace between this country and its neighbours.

The men of our country who have red blood in their veins and the sense of justice in their hearts are saying, “How long, O Lord, how long!” War is a terrible thing and no honest man ever speaks lightly of war. But there are things which are worse than war. The loss of all capacity for moral indignation is worse. The easy, lazy, cowardly acquiescence in lawlessness and crime is worse. The loss of the readiness to sacrifice one’s very life, if need be, for those ends which are just and right, is infinitely worse.

There are interests which are worth fighting for and, if need be, they are worth dying for. The sanctity of womanhood and the safety of little children, the security of those interests which are essential to human well-being and the protection of our homes, the honour and integrity of our country, and the maintenance of those majestic principles of righteousness which underlie all social advance these ends are worth dying for. If these high ends can be secured by persuasion and moral appeal, well and good. But if they cannot, if their very existence is threatened by lawlessness and hate, then let men of sound mind and honest heart stand ready to do battle for the right.

In these hours of stress which have come upon our country, we have need of men who possess the necessary moral courage to stand forth and meet the crisis. There is a loud call everywhere for those who are prepared to face duty without flinching. It is for every man to say touching his own measure of ability, “Here am I, send me.”

If the cause of democracy is not to fail in those hard years which will come at the close of this war, there is need not only of wise and honest leaders there is need of ranks upon ranks of plain men who are ready to give their best strength to the service of that government which is “of the people, for the people, and by the people.”

“O beautiful, my country, ours once more,
What were our lives without thee;
What all our lives to save thee.
We reck not what we give thee,
We will not dare to doubt thee,
But ask whatever else and we will dare.”