PROFESSOR HERRON.

BY HON. CHARLES BEARDSLEY.

My acquaintance with Rev. George D. Herron began in the summer of 1891. I was chairman of a committee of the Congregational church of Burlington, Iowa, charged with the duty of discovering and presenting the name of a suitable person to become associate of the pastor of the church whose term of service in that office had been continuous for nearly half a century. My attention was called to Mr. Herron by two or three individuals who had some knowledge of him, particularly through an address of his published in the Christian Union some months previously, entitled "The Message of Jesus to Men of Wealth"--afterwards widely circulated as a booklet and now as one of the chapters of "The Christian Society." I then read this address for the first time, and was astonished to learn that its author was the pastor of a village church in Minnesota. It occurred to me that a preacher who could write such a discourse as that would not lack invitations to wider fields. I wrote to him, not really expecting that anything would result from the correspondence, and learned later that, as I had surmised, he had already received a number of calls, some of them from large and wealthy churches, but from the first was disposed to look with favor upon that from the Burlington church, which he subsequently accepted. In the meantime he visited this church and preached from its pulpit, and conferred with its representatives.

He was under thirty years of age, of gentle ways, in person slender, a little above the average height, but somewhat below the average in apparent strength and vigor, yet with a fine public address and a tongue touched with the fire of a very earnest purpose, and a spirit all aflame in its zeal for righteousness and consecration to the truth. He spoke, indeed, as one having authority-not in his own right, but in the sure utterance of principles from which there could be no appeal.

It is not the purpose of this sketch to give a biography of Dr. Herron; but it is quite impossible to understand his unique position as a public teacher, his high and steady devotion to his calling, the significance of the message

which he has to deliver, or his unsurpassed moral courage, without some knowledge of his parentage and the experiences which came to him in his youth and in the earlier years of his ministry. For this purpose nothing can be so good, nor so interesting, as his own history of himself, included in his confession of faith made to the ecclesiastical council which installed him as a pastor in Burlington, Iowa, on the 30th day of December, 1891. I will make, therefore, some considerable extracts from the paper which he read on that occasion, premising that hitherto it has had only a local publication, and that its contents will be new, with comparatively few exceptions, to the readers of the ARENA. Mr. Herron said to the council that he proposed to present them a confession of his Christian faith as it had grown out of his religious experience rather than an outline of theological opinions. He thought such occasions should be times of spiritual refreshment and the closer drawing together of a divine brotherhood, rather than times of discussion and criticism; and that it would be a great gain for truth if installation councils should meet in "so clear an atmosphere of sympathy that every nightmare of theological propriety might vanish in the light of an absolute spiritual honesty, shining from soul to soul." He pleaded for apostolic frankness and the examination of life more than opinion; for the sake of fulfilling his thought he was willing to be considered egoistic, and also was more ready to do this because certain inquiries had been made as to the spiritual experiences which lay behind some utterances of his which had gone abroad in the world. He continued:

While I find myself in accord with the evangelical theology of the day, with a growing tendency toward a conservatism of what I understand to be its fundamental doctrines, my belief in God and my thought concerning Him have not been formed by either the theology of the creeds or the philosophy of the schools. My theological beliefs have been cast in the mould of experience. My intellectual apprehensions of religious truth have their roots in spiritual struggles. My philosophy is the product of moral conflict. So that I believe in God the Father, who manifested himself in Jesus Christ as our Redeemer, who dwells in man as a life-giving spirit, because I know Him and have lived with Him.

I do not know when I began to live with God. I have never been without the inner consciousness of God's compelling and restraining presence. I cannot remember that the Eternal Word was ever silent in my soul. I know of no time when my life has not been subject, in some degree, to the profound conviction that it belonged to God.

I may have been converted before I was born. Through my father, a humble man who believed in the Bible and hated unrighteousness, I came from an unbroken line of Christian ancestors, reaching back to the days of Scottish Reformation. During the year preceding my

birth my mother lived in an atmosphere of prayer, studying good books and brooding over her Bible. She asked God to give her a child who should be His servant. She received me as from God and gave me back to God as her freewill offering. She besought God to keep me upon the altar of a perfect sacrifice in the service of His Christ and her Redeemer. She told Ged of her willingness to have me drink of Christ's cup and be baptized with His baptism, if needful for my entire consecration to His purpose in my life. Her after years were crowded with trials, sorrows, and mistakes. She never again, nor had she before, reached the spiritual height upon which she walked with God during the year of my birth. But nothing has ever been able to separate her from the belief that in bringing me into the world she had fulfilled the purpose of her being, and she never doubted that I would be a messenger of God to my fellow-men. Of all this I knew nothing until after I had been preaching the gospel; nor have I ever spoken of this before, either publicly or privately.

Until I was nearly ten years of age it was nearly always a question whether I should live from one year to another. My mother was much of the time an invalid. I shrank from all companionship save that of my father. He taught me, very early, to read, and selected my books and directed my thoughts. We were seldom apart day or night. He drew out all there was in me and turned it Godward. Before my tenth year I had the history of the world, with God behind it, before my mind as a panorama. I had gone through the earlier edition of Bancroft and gathered from it something like a philosophy of history. The reign of God in human affairs was so wrought into all my thoughts that I could not form a conception ́from any other point of view. An accident, in the minutest detail of life, was a thing foreign to my comprehension. I was a slave, if I may so speak, to the idea of God. I knew little of childhood or play. But the Kingdom of God and its righteousness were tremendous realities. I could not disassociate a picket on a fence from the moral kingdom. God was my confidant. I never thought of myself as other than His child. I talked with Him over my books and on my walks. He answered my prayers. The words and deeds of His servants were my recreation. Joseph and Elijah and Daniel, Cromwell and John Wesley and Charles Sumner, were my imaginary playmates. Thus I grew up in the company of God, with a daily deepening sense of a divine call which sooner or later I must obey.

I think it was at thirteen that I first united with the church. I was then already working for my livelihood, in a printing office, amidst the most vicious associations. From thence to my twentieth year I encountered all manner of temptations. I sometimes looked upon sin lightly. I did much that was wrong. Yet I did not fall into the vile sins of my companions. In this fact, however, is no virtue. I seemed to be kept in spite of myself. I tried to fall into the depths and could not. When I would do evil good was present with me. Sometimes, I was so ashamed of my outward innocence that I pretended to be guilty of sin which I never committed, and my associates would not believe my pretensions. Again, when being led away into evil, a willing victim, upon my soul would close the awful grasp of an Almighty hand and I would bewilder my tempters with the sudden vehemence of my efforts to save them with myself. Then, alone in my room, would I, with bitter regret and fearful shame, entreat God to take me back and keep me evermore. And oftentimes, during those years of poverty and sickness, toil and trial,

rebellious plans and wasted energies, hasty actions and crude efforts. oftentimes the glory of the Lord would cleave the darkness and envelop me, filling my soul with a joy I could not understand and giving unto me a quenchless faith. Strong mercy constantly encompassed me, and rendered me helpless to surrender to the sins that pursued me.

It was not until after I had been in the ministry, and other souls had professed Christ through the words spoken by me, that there came to me that profound self-revelation which our fathers called a conviction of sin. So far my Christian life, my religious thought, had been as much an inheritance as the fruit of experience. I had been more of a Hebrew than a Christian. I had been spasmodic and passionate in the pursuit of righteousness. But I had not yet personally realized the fact of redemption. I had also been largely influenced by the lives of the mediæval Catholic saints. I was fascinated with the spiritual charm of their ascetic piety and subtle devotion. God became to me a taskmaster, and I was constantly trying to fill up the measure of my misdoing with overdoing. I knew myself to be a sinner. I did not know myself as a lost and a redeemed soul. There came a time, however, when I stood face to face with the Infinite Holiness, oblivious to all else save my sin and God's righteousness. I saw the selfishness, the pride, the falseness, the absolute unholiness of my heart, until I could bear the revelation no more; yet was unconscious that there were depths of wickedness which the divine mercy had veiled from my eyes. I groped in that horror of darkness which settles down upon a soul when it knows that there is no sound thing in it and that it merits nothing but eternal death and endless night. The hopeless anguish of a lost life laid such hold of me that all the eternities seemed overwrought with speechless pain. I knew that nowhere had I an inch of standing-ground save the mercy of God, and the least of all God's mercies seemed too great for me. Jonathan Edwards' Enfield sermon was, at that time, the only thing real enough to answer to my experience. But out of this horrible pit I cried unto the Lord and He heard me, lifting me up and planting my feet upon the rock of his salvation. When neither body nor brain could longer endure the divine testing and searching of soul, God revealed to me His Christ, and I knew what it meant to be saved. I was now not only a child of God by birth and calling, but a redeemed child, bought by the blood of Christ, cleansed by the sufferings of God. I knew Christ no more merely as the historic Redeemer. He had manifested Himself unto me, and had shown me myself and the Father.

I know I am yet a sinner. But in Christ I behold God as the sinner's friend, and I have peace with God through faith in Christ. Not what I am, but what God has shown himself in Christ to be, is the ground of my immovable hope for my own future, and the future of the race. I am persuaded that nothing will ever be able to separate me, or the world in which I work, from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ my Lord. The footprints of Jesus upon the soil of this earth are the seal of God's eternal ownership. The blood of Calvary is the pledge of God's unchanging friendship for man. I know that I and my fellow-men must suffer and struggle. But I believe the God of peace, who has revealed His glory and manifested His power in Christ, will bruise Satan under our feet shortly. I see that the grace that shines from Christ is sufficient to light me home, where I shall be like Him. Gratefully and joyously I follow Him, pointing my brothers to Him as I go. I see nothing else to live for. I find His yoke of the Father's will easy, and His burden of love for

men light. Only one thing I fear: that I may sometimes reflect Him darkly or falsely. I have but one wish: that Christ may work in me the will of God.

As to my reasons for preaching the gospel, there is but one: I could not help it. I dared not do else. The call to this ministry reaches as far back as my memory. I seemed to awake to the consciousness of this call as I awoke to the consciousness of my existence. It is as real to me as my being. I did not want to preach. No one, not even my mother, suggested that I should preach. Nothing seemed more preposterous to my reason. I loved solitude and abhorred a crowd. I shunned and distrusted people who were pious in their conversation and manner of life. I was silent in religious meetings. I gave no expression to my inner and deeper life. To enter the ministry meant the surrender of my tenacious ambitions for a life of literature. But events emphasized the divine call. Experiences of which I need not speak, made it unmistakably distinct. In the still hours of night I wept, and tried to believe myself deluded. I indulged in many kinds of conscience-juggling in attempts to make terms with God. I tried all the fine arts of getting away from God. And it seemed to me unreasonable that God should give me both a frail body and poverty and yet insist on my preparing for the ministry. When through repeated failure of health I was compelled to relinquish my plans of study I rejoiced and thought myself free to go my own way. But God went with me. The time came when I seemed to have no choice save death or irrevocable self-surrender. I did not much mind the matter of dying; for I cared little for my life. But I was afraid to die without having preached the gospel. So, once and for all, after a quick and intense struggle, during which God kept near to me with His wondrous mercy, I let Him have His way; and I went and preached according to His word. He has given unto me, experience by experience, new and larger revelations of His truth, and has shown me what he has for me to do. His joy is my strength and He is my reward. His infinite purposes are my inspiration. To show men the sufficiency of Christ in their personal lives, in the reconstruction of society, in the problems of history, is my supreme privilege, my consuming passion. I know of no words which can express the depthless gratitude I feel for the privilege of presenting Christ to human need.

Mr. Herron found no creed that contained the measure of his faith. The best statement he could make of belief was a simple confession of his "faith in Christ as God in man and man in God." Nor did he see any theory of the atonement that satisfied or even approximated his "estimate of the riches of God in Christ Jesus." He regarded the incarnation as the "coming of God within the life of man to recreate and renew that life." "The incarnation brought forth the atonement. The life of Christ is God's prophecy of the divine humanity which is to be the fruit of that atonement. The incarnation is continuous and the atonement eternal." He did not believe that Christ was the Saviour of individuals only, but that His redemption comprehends the absolute subjection to His law of love of all human affairs and institutions. "Capital and labor,