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HOW TO FIND RELIGION.

BY REV. WALLACE RADCLIFFE, D. D.,*

Pastor N. Y. Ave. Presbyterian Church, Washington, D. C.

Text: "Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master." John 20:16.

The weeping Mary is the type of every earnest soul; her ecstatic cry of recognition, its certain and ultimate reward. With an absent Lord the garden is always a sepulchre. Its beauties attract not, its fragrance pleases not, but for every pleasure there abides a thorn, for every brightness a shadow and a fear. "They have taken away my Lord." The soul, above all earthly flowers and beauteous things, lifts its eyes toward heaven. There abides the thirst for the living

* Wallace Radcliffe is of Scotch-Irish descent, a native of Pittsburg, a graduate of Washington and Jefferson College, and of Princeton Seminary. After supplying a church in West Philadelphia for a year, his first pastorate was at Reading, Pa., 18711885; Fort St. church, Detroit, 1885-1895; N. Y. Ave. church, Washington, D. C., 1895-. He is by nature and grace, and in future hope as well, a Presbyterian-a "high church Presbyterian," to use his own striking phrase. The Synods of Pennsylvania and Michigan and the General Assembly of 1898 at Winona have placed him in their Moderator's chair. Twice he has been delegate to the Pan Presbyterian Council. Not only the Fort Street church of Detroit, but the Presbyterian Alliance of Detroit, the Presbytery of Detroit and the Synod of Michigan, have had the blessing of his analytical faculty, sound judgment and broad attainment. The brethren of the synod will be pleased to see him make the Alpha and Omega of this volume, and the editor gratefully acknowledges the favor received at the hands of Dr. Radcliffe.

God, and he is not far from every one of us. He stands ready to minister to every need, to respond to every honest search. He is found of those that seek him. He walks in the garden. Material things speak of him, and those things that are made and seen are the proclamations of the invisible One. With closed eyes, eyes closed by fear, by sorrow, by earthliness, men walk unmindful of the nearness of Jesus Christ. Truth walks along our streets and in our homes; and across the sea, in the darkness of heathenism, Christ stands. Men see him sometimes. They look through tears and darkness. The multitude fail to recognize his voice and presence; but amid our tears, amid the enveloping cloud of ignorance and sin, Christ stands, the Divine Gardener, the sympathizing Friend, the incarnate, resurrected One.

The incident presents to us the successive steps of our search for truth, and eminently for truth in the presence of Jesus Christ. He has to be disclosed to every honest search. If we wish the truth we must hunt for it. It does not hang on the tree for the careless grasp. It does not force itself upon the inattentive and the uncaring. He that would find Christ must hunt for him. He that would know truth must everywhere buy it at its price. The search for Christ is to be a diligent one. Beautifully the record gives the figure. Early, before dawn, while it was yet dark, Mary sought for Jesus. It is not certainly foreign to the suggestion of the text for us to recognize at least the thought that truth is found by him who in the early years seeks it. The conscience becomes hard, the mind sodden, effort limited in certain distinct and material channels, and the spiritual consciousness, unstrained and unsusceptible in age, in youth is controlled by an influence afterward unknown and often un

thought of. "They that seek me early shall find me," and Jesus gives the promise to the youthful thought, to the child with childlike faith, to the eyes that look with wonder and praise upon earthly duties and earthly experiences, that in the dew of youth the freshness of his truth and his presence will come with benediction.

But far beyond any suggestion is the wider teaching of the incident, that in any search for spiritual truth Jesus Christ is found by him who gives honest, earnest and continuous effort. Do you not notice that Peter and John, transient visitors in the sepulchre, did not see the angels; and that to the women who came with their spices and their eagerness, and who stayed in their sorrow, the angels came and spoke? Early, while it is yet dark, feeling the vaguest promptings of the heart, the merest glimmerings and suggestions of the truth, is that which leads into the larger realization of truth and Christlike living. The sun does not burst forth with a noon-day splendor. Truth does not come fullorbed to any soul. Christian lives do not spring like Minerva, full-armed and grown, but first the seed, then the ear, and by and by the full corn in the ear. The young Christian cannot have the maturity of thought nor the consistency of life that belongs to older hearts and professions. Revelations of truth always, knowledge of Jesus Christ eminently, is progressive. First the dawn, and then the light unto the perfect day. First, the bonest feeling of the truth we have.

What a vague suggestion, what a remote hope in the heart of Mary, that brought her in the darkness of the morning to the tomb of Christ. But to that hope, to that vague suggestion there came an answer at last. Men are not honest with themselves. They play with the truth and with Jesus Christ. They are the veriest tyros in their search for truth, tyros whom they would

not permit for a moment in their secular life. They take to-day a detached sentence from a speaker's address, a clause from the word of God, a chance word of a passing conversation, a skeptical thought in the drawing room or at the place of business. They dally with it, they play with it, that there may be some awakening for truth. To-day it quickens the mind, but to-morrow it is forgotten again. And men everywhere are walking in their truth as in a tread-mill, never getting on.

Some men are just as far to-day as you were 30 or 40 years ago in your knowledge and in your Christian experience; a little edge or fragment of the truth, a little drop of dew, it may be, of Christian experience, and that satisfies you, or at least you compel yourself to a satisfaction therewith. You question the being of God, but you never enter into a thoughtful discussion. You talk flippantly about the inspiration of the Scripture. You have never given one hour's solid thought to it. You play with the theories upon the divinity of Christ. You never have read one volume of proof or of argument upon it, and through days and years you play with fragmentary truth and go round and round your weary, blinded, inoperative tread-mill of so-called thought. He who attains the full day begins with the dawn and follows it. He who attains the mountain top climbs through many a valley, round many a rock, as Mary, by and by, welcomes the resurrection of Christ because she sought before the dawn the place of his sepulchre.

It is to be a search not only of diligence, but of affection. We attain truth when we love it. Upon what a small basis Mary wrought! She came to the grave of "We thought it had been he who would have redeemed Israel." They had dreams of crowns and thrones and organized monarchy and exalted life and

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