Over twenty centuries with their ebbings and flowings of faith, their apostasies and returns, their juniper-trees and transfiguration scenes, their battle-cries and anthems of victory; over this last, most splendid of all the centuries, with its actual restoration of apostolic faith, doctrine and character; over our Centennial celebration and hallelujahs; yea, over all our hopes and triumphs of coming years, ring the strong words of Him at whose feet we lay all Centennial trophies--"A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another."

      In formulating this imperial, eminent command, Jesus

G. L. SNIVELY.

discriminatingly selected from his rich vocabulary that word for love best expressing wise, sympathetic, generous, fraternal helpfulness, and illustrates it by appending, "As I have loved you, so love ye one another."

      He won the world by a love finding expression in unceasing, personal ministry to the leprous, paralytic, blind, hungry, demoniac, tempted and homeless that distinguished him in that loveless age as one going about everywhere doing good unto all.

      In his portrayals of ideal disciplehood, Jesus made it clear that the throbbing heart of all redemptive law was the love of God and man. Yea, in his sublime imagery of the judgment-day, and its determination of human destiny, only those are represented as following him into the heavenly fold who on earth had sealed their discipleship by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the prisoner, and ministering to the sick in his name.

      He left nothing undone to emphasize his conception of the importance of love in the establishment of his kingdom in a cruel, loveless world--a love printed in the universally read language of helpfulness.

      The apostles and other early disciples comprehended and scrupulously observed this new command as of divine authority and indispensable to the fulfillment of their mission. Through a misguided zeal, but a zeal inspired by this command, many disciples committed their possessions to a common treasury to which all the poor had easy access. Others daily celebrated the Eucharist, which was followed by a simple banquet at which there was room for all indigents.

      Along every Palestinian highway were strewn blind and crippled indigents on whom Pharisee and pagan gazed with calloused indifference, but the Holy Spirit pauses to portray Peter and John, whose fishing craft had already been converted into alms, saying to one at the "beautiful" gate of the temple, "Silver and gold have we none, but what we have we give unto thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk."

      So greatly had the church been blessed by the sporadic altruism of the disciples, that the apostles were encouraged to further test the statecraft of Jesus by bringing this command to bear upon the exigencies of the times with all the force of united, systematic endeavor. Accordingly, the first society ever organized within the church of [292] Christ was an International Benevolent Association with seven executive officers, having headquarters at Jerusalem. And the Lord so blessed their labors that Secretary Luke records: "The word of God increased, and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem exceedingly; and a great company of priests were obedient to the faith" (Acts 6:7).

      And so were the heathen won--not so much by the revolutionary doctrines of the gospel they could not as yet comprehend, as by the marvelous love of the church. "See how these Christians love," they exclaimed, as they abandoned pagan shrines and gods, and whole provinces coronated the Christ proclaimed by the Gospel of the Helping Hand. They might scoff at the story of David's resurrected son, but never at his disciples going forth to bind up the wounds of the mangled slave, kindling a fire on poverty's cold gray hearth, or reaching up to uncurtain stars of hope to shine down on the black night of a lowly man's defeat and despair. The deity of it was the only rationalism to them of that love that kept on loving in a loveless and cruel old world that could not reciprocate because it had nothing in kind to return.

      Until long after the fall of the Roman Empire the most thrilling pages of history are those telling of the love-lighted church's care for the distressed. A long line of emperors, perceiving Heaven was the ally of the church, either from motives of piety or policy sought ecclesiastical and divine favor by a generous diversion of their revenues to the church. These the church received as the trustee of the poor and treasured against the day of greatest need.

      It is soul-harrowing to read of the widespread devastation and wretchedness throughout the known world effected by latter-day extravagance, corruption, degeneracy and brutality of Roman officiary, and the successive invasions of the Goths, Vandals, and other barbaric hordes. Countless millions were enslaved. Then it was the Gospel of the Helping Hand shone out over disastrous ages with a beauty and sublimity almost justifying the awful background. The only ear to hear their grief; the only hands to dress where scourge had cut; the only hearts to cheer with hopes of better days, or of early death and paradise, were those of the elders and deacons of the churches against whose bulwarks of love these legions of hell could not prevail.

      Like stars in that long and cruel night shine the lives of heroic Christian altruists. Chrysostom eloquently gave all his revenues to a stream of seventy-seven hundred mendicants he supported. Augustine entreats that expensive garments may not be given him, for he shall only sell and give their price to the poor. If any one wishes him to wear it himself, he must send him such a coat as he could give in his turn to any poor brother who has none. These great men, with vast revenues at their disposal, restricted themselves to such table fare as was enjoyed by the poorest members, that they might--manumit slaves, liberate prisoners, feed the starving, heal the sick, reunite families, educate orphans, and be as Lord Christs to their sad world.

      Spice-trees may fragrance the ax that fells them. But Christian philanthropy changed the very nature of the persecutors of the church so that Roman temples crumbled, lectors laid down their scourges, fagot-bearers their fuel, priests their insignia and sought the source of this marvelous love. Not only so, but those barbaric hordes from the North, drunk with the blood of Rome, were arrested by the self-denying love of the sect of the Christians who would divide the last loaf with a brother and then die for one another. They learned of the Christ. They came down as ruthless conquerors, they returned as the prisoners of the Lord, and over the Balkans, through the Black Forest, and along the Danube, they scattered the seeds of the kingdom. Those were ages of blood and iron and fire, but they were the testing-days of the church and in which the gentle priestess of philanthropy invested it with a popular love second only to the love of mankind for God.

      The real pathos of history is the church's forfeiture of this filial love of mankind. Satan accomplished this by causing pride and policy to confiscate the charities for ecclesiastical [293] aggrandizement, golden plate and livery, magnificent residence, subsidized monarchs; stately ritualism, gorgeous pageantry, official hierarchism. But while this glaring glory flared from marble cathedral, regal palace and ivory crucifix, the true light of the temple designed to lighten every man coming into the world began to wane. Men looked longingly in former sacred places for Him who with scarred hands had multiplied loaves and assuaged fevers. When they saw, instead, well-groomed prelates arrogantly enjoining men to save the church, they knew Christ had gone, for Christ's church was to save and not to be saved. Then was witnessed the anomaly of men loving Christ with all their souls and denouncing the church with all their might.

      Now, as in olden times, men were wounded in the wilds between Jerusalem and Jericho. Pompous, flattered priests and studious, busy Levites passed them by on the other side. But the intensely human Samaritan, with some knowledge of the ways of the Nazarene, rescued and sent them to the inn for healing. And grateful man, reading deeds rather than creeds, loved the Samaritan who had a little of the Shepherd's spirit, rather than priest and Levite, who had renounced it for pride of learning, the fetish of orthodoxy, and altar perquisites.

      If the Restoration inaugurated by the Campbells and cotemporaries had accomplished nothing else, their turning of the world upside down would have been justified by their preparations for the birth of the National Benevolent Association of the Christian Church.

      This is an organization of Disciples banded together for the restoration of helpful, Christian love to its ancient place in the divine economy. Although the youngest of our great church interests, when this splendid Centennial celebration draws to a close and angels come to place the tokens of divine approval on their brows, none other will excel in affectionate handiwork and glory that one adorning this Gospel of the Helping Hand.

      Already orphanages have been established in a half-dozen States. Here the little ones are loved, cherished and taught till placed in Christian homes, or equipped and given the golden keys of opportunity to make for themselves places of honorable usefulness among men, and with hearts aglow with gratitude to Him who inspired for them that love that rocked their cradle, cherished their childhood and made possible their present career.

      In Illinois, New York, Texas and Oregon are homes for those dear saints of the Lord who realize, as the chill shadows of the years fall round them, that they are not only old and poor, but friendless and homeless as well.

      O God, we pray thee for money to redeem every one of them from public alms-houses, and from the homes of unnatural sons and daughters, and into these blessed retreats where the shadows fall more gently on their hearts; where only kind words are spoken, and none wants death to summon them; where their dimming eyes may see the gleaming of the star and their dulling ears may hear the rustle of an angel's wings coming to restore them to those they have loved and lost for awhile.

      Hospitals, too, have been established in Missouri and Indiana, where indigent disciples may freely command the ablest surgical skill, and the care of nurses whose hands are tender as mother's, and whose footfalls are soft as an angel's tread. Herein are the blind made to see, the deaf to hear, the lame to walk. Splendidly is being fulfilled the Saviour's prophecy, "And greater works than these shall ye do, because I go unto my Father."

      A final proof of this need is that God has made provision for it in every dispensation of his grace to the world. Not otherwise can we so commend God and his church to the world as by this grace. Not all can read Greek grammars and Hebrew lexicons or comprehend the scholastic prints of God's immanence found in the philosophers; and God's footprints across the earth and ages are so far apart that most of us get confused, in following after him; but all can discern his cryptograph in the ministries of love; and we know that he is identified with them as is the sun with noontide splendor. No atheist receives the second installment of a church's beneficence. His atheism and [294] even agnosticism disappear with his hunger and cold and homelessness. These, too, are the least costly evidences we can present to mankind of God's presence with us. Let us with generous hand scatter them all over the wilderness of doubt and make them to bloom with lilies of the valley, roses of Sharon, and the trees of life.

      Catholicism is a twentieth-century anachronism in America. Yet behold their imposing cathedrals, impressive statistics and potent voice in government--made possible, not by learned prelates and politic Jesuits, so much as by sweet-faced nuns ministering under the regalia of the "man of sin." Oh, how much more powerful than Catholicism would this Restoration soon become had we a tithe of their priestesses of mercy going about, but without the Papal "man of sin" on their shoulders weighting them down!

      How sadly we deplore the few men at our mid-week services in contrast with the full lodge-rooms whence are no Christ nor martyr history nor heavenly inspiration. Oh, brethren, the great tragedy of Protestantism has been the relegating to secular guilds the administration of this "new and greatest commandment." Let us reassert our ancient prerogatives, and from the lodges will come millions of warm-hearted and noble soldiers of the cross.

      Our hospitals are becoming true lamps of Aladdin achieving the impossible over indifferent and worldly hearts, and daily accruing for the church a greater wealth of popular love and power than can be won by a century's polemics and convention oratory. Let us in the first quarter of our second century have the white scarf of the great Physician floating over a hospital of the church of Christ in every city of America and all pagan lands.

      And the children of our orphanages! If to you they are only bulbs, to us they are lilies of the valley; if you see only unpolished stones, we see diamonds and rubies flashing in the diadem of the future; if you see only marble blocks, we see angels struggling for emergence and leadership in the zeal and holiness and altruism of coming days. Let us multiply these orphanages and assemble the little ones till our humble beginnings shall be made glorious, and our future luminous by the light flashing from the true imperialism of the righteous and omnipotent childhood of the church.

      Let us teach all the coming Sir Launfals that the Holy Grail is not sequestered in pagan fane or splendid capitol, or far-away storied land, but that it is the hand, whether fair or scarred, that makes generous division of one's own with the familiar poor.

      And then, if the church to-day in festal joy should ever have questionings arise, as once they did in the heart of John, and men or angels should ask of the Campbells, Scotts, Stones, and other heroes of the Restoration, Are you sure you led Israel out of the wilderness and started them in the way of truth, along the old landmarks, and back to the church of Christ? let them dispel all misgivings and fears by answering: "Go and tell John the things which ye hear and see. The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the hungry are fed, the dead are raised up, and the poor have good tidings preached to them."

[CCR 292-295]