Daniel A. Goodsell

“ How they tax themselves to help each other! How their women work for each other when one is unable to care for herself or her children! Their doctrine that "an injury to one is a wrong to all" has much that is Christlike in it. Let us who believe in an atoning Christ rejoice that as long as men honor bravery—self-sacrifice unto death for country, home, or the life of dear ones; as long as they build monuments to generals, soldiers, firemen, physicians who die for others, so will the world be slow to disbelieve the doctrine that "Jesus Christ tasted death for every man." ”

“ To-day the devout Christian feels the impulse to walk where the Master walked, to behold the sea which He stilled, to sit by the well where He preached, to pray in the garden of His agony, and to stand on the summit above which He shone. And if his faith can be assured as to the site of Calvary, the great tragedy loses all historical dimness and is made real, visible, and present, though its story be read through penitent tears. The place suggests the man; the man suggests the Divine Man ”

“ It is of no interest to us to inquire, as did the Christian philosopher, Dick, into the locality of heaven and hell. Such ideas as those recently put forth by a preacher, not of our Church, thank God! that hell is in one of the spots on the sun, and heaven in the chromosphere are distasteful to the last degree to those who believe that "God is a Spirit," and that "flesh and blood can not inherit the kingdom of God." Such feel that heaven may be anywhere and everywhere; that the gulf which separates the rich man and Lazarus may be only a moral gulf, seeing that they talked across it. ”

“ Crazy Enthusiasm
Ignorance of the Crusaders
More pitiful sights could be occasioned only by a famine or pestilence. Men who had dependent families were followed by the wives and children who could not afford to be separated from their natural protectors. Old men, helpless as to livelihood, dragged after their strong-armed sons. There was no joy over staying at home. Happiness seemed to abide only with those who were going to war. A stream starting from a village drew other streams from the villages and towns through which it passed until a river of humanity rushed on. ”

“ Human tempers and passions must be eliminated from our Divine Ideal. He must not be made an angry and jealous God as men count these. He must not be thought of as a vindictive personality, never so well pleased as when scaring His children into panic. In the thought of the Church He will be an all-pervasive Spirit whose nature is unfolded by the universe He has made. In that universe He will be felt to be immanent as the power of development, order, and destiny. All ages show Him to be "the power which makes for righteousness." ”

“ The impatient enthusiasm of Peter was moved to tears by the patient enthusiasm of Simeon. "Is there no remedy?" cried Peter, weeping. And Simeon answered: "Is it not evident that our sins have shut us away from the mercy of the Lord? All Asia is in the power of the Mus [Pg 29] sulmans; all the East is enslaved; no power on earth can help us." Peter asked, "May not the warriors of the West come to your help?" "Yes," said Simeon, "when our cup is full, God will soften the princes of the West, and will send them to the help of the Holy City." ”

“ The Doctrine of Energy.
And if the most advanced philosophy should yet be confirmed as true that there is nothing really but energy, none the less would the doctrine of the Holy Spirit abide. Back of all the individual energies of humanity; back of all the forces of nature is the supreme energy of God. ”

“ The camp of the Christians was summoned to arms by the trumpets on the 14th of July, 1099. Men and machines began their awful task. The air was full of flints hurled to the walls by ballistas and mangonels. Under large shields and covered galleries, the battering-rams approached the walls. A cloud of arrows swept the ramparts, and the ladders were erected at the most promising points. Northeast and south the rolling towers were pushed to the walls, and Godfrey set the example of being first to open the battle from their tops. The resistance was as vigorous as the attack. ”

“ Thus the death of Christ as the ultimate of self-sacrifice persuades us to the death of sin in us that we may live renewed in God; "rise from our dead selves to higher things." His life persuades us as the condition and example of growth to move on from the first self-surrender into the habit and fact of constant obedience and therefore "into the likeness of God's dear Son."
The consciousness, well-nigh universal, of the nobility of self-sacrifice is that which gives vitality and vogue among the masses to the doctrine of the atonement. ”

“ Unable to resist their arms, they took refuge in the futilities of philosophy as their proof of superiority, and in the trickery which, at some periods, had helped them well. But nothing could meet or restrain the skill, courage, and discipline of the forces pledged to the cross, and no complacency was proof against the contempt of the Latins for the Greeks, who, calling themselves Christians, were indifferent to the cry of the oppressed city of the Savior's passion. ”

“ The Holy Spirit is the energy of God, whether working as Creator or in the processes of redemption. It stirs us to the depths when we consider that the Author of the worlds, the Source of the energies is He who transforms, renews, sanctifies, and witnesses in us. ”

“ Men have been massacred and women ravished within those blessed walls. European Christians are warring on each other when they ought to be rescuing their brethren from the yoke, and from the unbeliever's sword. ”

“ There is no question as to the pervasiveness and competence of the Power which "works in us to will and to do of His good pleasure." We are taught to trace all our religious uplift to the highest possible source. We gather a great sense of our worth by the dignity of this association as we do of the condescension of our Lord in making His home in our hearts. This Holy Spirit is in all Christians the energy of the entire spiritual life. ”

“ But how much more awful the thought that this limitation of the nature by sin, whether of body or soul, may affect the soul through unending life without fitness for any pleasure or delight possible to that state! The company of good and refined men and women is here little less than hell to a bad and coarse man, if he is compelled to stay in it. There is nothing in the spirit, aim, and employments of such that he can measure. ”

“ If you must have blood, bathe your sword in the blood of infidels. Soldiers of Hell become soldiers of the living God. Remember that 'he who loves father and mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me.' Thus speaks Christ to you to-day."
Spread of Enthusiasm
Pardon by Fighting
Long before this final sentence, Urban's hearers had been lifted to indescribable enthusiasm. A mighty shout as from a single throat answered him: "God wills it. God wills it. We will join the army of God!" Urban commands the bishops to rouse their dioceses by preaching the instant duty of war for the Holy Sepulcher. ”

“ The Bible presupposes a power in man to test and verify its statements and doctrines. It makes its appeal to this steadily from the earlier books to the later; the appeal growing in content as the soul has developed its power of recognition. This is the familiar law of knowing and doing, of proving by practice, of perceiving the leadership of Jesus Christ through the leading of the Holy Ghost. As to doctrine, there is left in man the power to make the beginning of a faith. ”

“ Bravery of the Leaders
Rout of the Turks
The different leaders—Bohemond, Robert the Duke of Normandy, Tancred, Richard of Salermo, Stephen, Count of Blois—threw themselves into the fight, drove the Turks back, but yielded ground, through exhaustion, to fresh Turkish re-enforcements. All seemed lost when Raymond and Godfrey appeared with the other division of the Christian army. These chased the Turks into the mountains, flanked them on both sides, got into their rear, and met them as they fled down the mountain. The wearied ranks which had despaired had joined in the charge. ”

“ Sin is blameworthy because it is born of the human preference and the human will. The nation which, knowing most of the Divine will, disobeys, is the most guilty because the most knowing. The proportion of guilt depends on the measure of knowledge and the measure of opportunity. Hence there is some guilt among those who know only a part of the truth, and if a man perceives, without the aid of revelation, a law in nature and a penalty, and breaks that law, then is he a sinner. ”

“ In the cooler blood of historical inquiry to-day, we can not wonder at a tax which failed at its greatest height to meet the increased cost of government when thousands of pilgrims were added to the population of Jerusalem and its environs. But it was often gladly paid by those who could, and the gates of Jerusalem were opened by the richer pilgrims for those to whom it was an impossible or severe burden. ”

“ On the other hand he may reduce the intellectual and spiritual life to the lowest limit by giving the mastery to his physical appetites. We feel instinctively that to do this last is unworthy of manhood and destructive of the higher nature and intent. But who expects a brute to do anything else but minister to his appetites? If he delays a single second in doing it, it is only through fear of man or of some stronger animal. His intellectual movements have this as an end in complete reversal of the case with man. With the brute the intellect seems incidental to the body. ”