The appeal to life

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THE APPEAL TO LIFE

THEODORE T. HUNGER

AUTHOR OF "the FREEDOM OF FAITH "

Who lifts his thought to God will never sink
Far 'neath the level of what he dares to think
Goethe

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

.8,. Ji._

"II

oC-

Copyright, 1887,
By THEODORE T. MUNGER.

Ml rights reserved.

SEVENTH EDITION.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge :
Electrotyped and Printed by II. 0. Houghton & Co.

SDftitcatcD

TO

THE MEMORY OF TWO FRIENDS,

ELIZABETH DUNCAN HUNGER

AND

ELISHA MULFORD,

ONE THE DEAREST AND IN THE DEAREST RELATION;

THE OTHER THE FRIEND OF MY MIND AS WELL AS MY HEART.

BOTH HAVE PASSED ON,

SINCE THESE PAGES WERE BEGUN,

INTO THE PRESENCE OF IIIM WHOM THEY SERVED AND LOVED

WHILE THEY WERE UPON THE EARTH.

PEEFAOE.

The title of this volume indicates its purpose to
set forth the truths to which it refers in the direct
light of human life and common experience.

The pulpit is now nearly the only field of thought
and instruction not dominated by the inductive
method. It is natural that such should be the case,
because the fact of an authoritative revelation has
been regarded as obviating the necessity of a close
scrutiny and analysis of the facts among which it
has play. But the prevalent and growing concep-
tion of God as immanent in the world and in hu-
man life sends us to these fields for the vindication
and illustration of the revelation, so that the pulpit
is slowly becoming aware that it must think in har-
mony with other departments of thought and study.
The advantage of this is evident, for men cannot
have two equally authoritative methods of thought ;
and it is not well to invite them to think in one way
on Sunday and in another way on week-days : the
method that prevails for the most will prevail

VI PREFACE.

throughout, and effort to induce another will not
only work at cross purpose but result in unreality
and failure.

There are three general ways in which the Gospel
is presented : the dogmatic way, which interprets the
revelation through credal forms accepted as full and
ultimate ; a simple repetition of the single revela-
tion contained in the Bible without the inter-relation
of its truths, and with an implication of faith that
deprecates thought and requires only arbitrary ac-
ceptance ; and a third way that may be called the
vital way^ — that is, truth set in the light of daily
life and the real processes of human society. It is
not averse to dogma; it accepts with docility the
revelation, but it seeks for the vindication and illus-
tration of the truth in the actual life of the world,
on the ground that the revelation is through and in
this life. It is, in brief, the inductive method.

The first two methods are in violent contrast, yet
are largely used in the same pulpits. The acceptance
of a series of dogmas saturated with the metaphysic
of the age in which they were formulated, and simply
buttressed by texts selected in an uncritical day, is
the absolute reverse of the simple text-reading and
text-matching now so common ; but the two methods
are often united, — induced perhaps by an uncon-
scious feeling that the weakness of one supplements

PREFACE. Vll

that of the other. When persecuted in the city of
dogma, the preacher flies into the village of texts,
and so back and forth from fortress to open country.
But two faulty methods do not make a sound one.

These two methods are entrenched in sentiments
tliat are not only to be respected but maintained.
Dogma grows out of thought, and is the result of an
instinctive demand for order and consistency. Man
is a scientific being, and he cannot easily resist or
limit his disposition to formulate knowledge and de-
fine its principle. Perhaps he has no higher critical
service to perform than to decide where to cease for-
mulating, and when to refrain from pushing theories
beyond the bounds of knowledge.

The other sentiment is even more to be respected,
— the reverent and docile respect for divine revela-
tion. Of this there cannot be too much, but it can
be infused with intelligence and made an ally instead
of a supplanter of thought, as is so often the case.

The third method does not reject dogma, but re-
gards it as subservient, — subject to growth, to in-
crease of knowledge, as always incomplete, as liable
at any time to be justly set aside, and at all times to
be held subordinate to the universal laws of human-
ity. Nor does it regard with indifference the docile,
child-like acceptance of the revealed Word, but it
does not forget that a temper of mind is not to be

VIU PREFACE.

confounded with an exercise of thought, and that to
be like a child is not to cease to be a man. To know
and match texts and so infer a truth, may seem
docile and reverent, but it has its analogy in the
childish task of arranging the parts of a dissected
map and so discovering a country, — a good method
until another is grown to.

The method we advocate will entertain dogma ; it
does not hesitate to generalize truth, but it insists
that the generalization shall be an induction from
the whole revelation of God, and chiefly from the
revelation in humanity regarded as inclusive of the
Christ. It holds to this because it believes that
the Word came by inspiration through humanity
and by the processes of human life and the actual
life of its Head. The interpretation of the Word
must be according to its method. Hence it searches
and reads life as it goes on in the world, in his-
tory, in the family, and in the nation. The truth
it finds here, it finds to be the revealed Word of
God. When so discovered, it is felt to be truth ; it
takes on reality, and is full of commanding power.
The thing that man is always requiring is that he
shall be explained to himself : tell me what life
means, show God to me in human life and I will
believe on him. The Incarnation is the answer to
this instinctive demand. Christ is God explaining

PREFACE. IX

man, interpreting life, revealing its history and des-
tiny. Hence he is not only in human life, but he
teaches in no other way than by its processes. His
actual life is the teaching, and his words are only
comments upon it ; the words are not the teaching.

The reason Christ was said to speak with authority
was that he avoided the traditional and common
method of rehearsing the mere words of the law and
the prophets and the formulated opinions of eminent
teachers, and made an independent and direct appeal
to the minds of his hearers. He did so, indeed, on
his own responsibility and so as by authority, but
the effectiveness of his teaching lay in the fact that
it put itself in immediate connection with the moral
and spiritual nature of man. The traditional, the
dogmatic, the formal were set aside, and his Word
was laid close to the human heart — mind to mind
and nothing between. What Christ knew as abso-
lute truth, man is capable of knowing as such when
it is heard. Indeed, Christ's direct, intuitive knowl-
edge of it is the pledge of man's ability to receive
it in the same way and with something of the same
sense of reality. Christ did not rely upon the ori-
gin of truth for its effect, nor upon his divine com-
mission, but upon the fitness of the truth to lay
direct and powerful hold upon the nature of man.
His words were given him of the Father, and he was

X PREFACE.

sent from the Father to utter them, but their final
efficiency consisted in the absolute appeal they made
to man's moral nature ; there and so acting, they
became divine truth and *able to save. His method,
therefore, was the reverse of the dogmatic, and also
of what may be termed the implicit acceptance of the
revealed Word, — believed simply because it is re-
vealed. Truth is not actually truth until it gets
past the respect properly entertained for dogma, and
beyond reverence for an external revelation, and
awakens an intelligent and responsive consciousness
of its reality; it does not actually reach the man
until then, and all previous action is unreal or merely
disciplinary, useful indeed, but partial and without
full spiritual power. Hence Christ, in his teaching,
strove to start into action all the native sentiments
and instincts in which human nature is grounded,
casting himself in absolute confidence upon the fact
that because men are the children of God they are
ready each one for himself to hear his Word. Hence
he approached them directly and through their ex-
periences and occupations and the things they best
knew, because that was the shortest path to these
sentiments and instincts. If he can interpret a
shepherd to himself as he seeks a lost sheep, he can
easily make him understand God seeking lost men ;
the truth of God immediately allies itself with the
truth of the shepherd.

PREFACE. XI

These distinctions may seem slight but they are
fundamental. They enter into and underlie the
later and better habits of thoughts which are now
finding expression in many pulpits. If we do not
find the illustration and vindication of the Faith in
the heart and life of humanity, we shall find it
nowhere. If we can interpret the human heart as it
feels and hopes and strives in the natural relations
of life ; if we can measure the play of the human
mind in the family, in society, and in the nation, —
we shall find both the field of the Gospel and its vin-
dication. The thing to be done at present is not to
crowd upon men a system conceived in some way to
be true, nor to bind them down to a hard, literal,
undiscerning reception of texts, but to set forth the
identity of the Faith with the action of man's
nature in the natural relations of life ; to show that
the truth of God is also the truth of man. This is
the central meaning of the Incarnation, and preach-
ing should be the exposition of it.

The first ten sermons in this volume are efforts in
this direction, offered with a painful sense of their
failure to meet the ideal purpose.

I hardly need to say that the last four discourses
were not written to be preached, yet are included as
not out of unity with those before them, but more
specially to meet the needs of a vast number who are

Xll PREFACE.

asking if they can think under the principle of evo-
lution and -also as Christian believers. The necessity
of showing the possibility of this is my only reason
for including them, with the hope that they may be
the precursors of far better efforts by others in the
same direction, — the most imperative work now
pressing upon religious teachers who are able to dis-
cern the signs of the times, and who would serve
their day and generation.

CONTENTS.

The Witness from Experience 1

Christ's Treatment of Unwilling Skeptics . . 25

Truth through and by Life 45

Life not VA^^TY .65

The Gospel of the Body 85

The Defeat of Life 10*7

The Two Prayers of Job 127

Trust and Righteousness 147

The Twofold Force in Salvation 167

Faith Essential Righteousness 185

Evolution and the Faith 207

Immortality and Modern Thought .... 245

Man the Final Form in Creation 281

Music as Revelation . 307

THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE.

•' Christianity is not a theory or a speculation, but a life ; — not
a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process." — Cole-

" The Christian religion is a mighty lever, by the help of which
degraded and suffering humanity has again and again been
strengthened to lift itself out of the mire ; and by allowing it the
possession of this great moral efficiency, we place it on a platform
higher than all philosophy, and where, indeed, for the manifesta-
tion of its highest virtue no philosophy is required." — Goethe.

THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE.

Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear
him, etc. — St. Luke xv. 1-11.

If we had been present when these parables were
spoken, we should have witnessed at least a scene
of keen intellectual interest. For, first of all, these
parables are an intellectual combat, an answer to
criticism, and the answer has all the robust force
that any great logician would throw into his argu-
ment. There is nothing mystical, nothing rhap-
sodical, nothing sentimental, nothing outside the
ordinary experience of men. On the contrary, these
parables get their force because they rest so squarely
and broadly on the every-day feelings and experi-
ences of ordinary men. They are apologetic and
they are didactic ; that is, they are a personal de-
fense by Christ of himself and his work, and they
also enforce great truths of duty. They are local
and they are universal ; that is, they met the criti-
cism of the hour, and they also teach universal les-
sons of pity and helpfulness, and link the lowly duty
of earth with the joy of the heavenly order.

The scene must have had a thrilling interest to
one capable of appreciating how a great spirit meets
his opponents. A crowd of publicans flock about

4 THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE.

Christ, tax-gatherers, some of whom may be honest at
heart, and capable of becoming good men under better
circumstances, for no class of men is wholly bad ;
there will be many exceptions and many more with
redeeming qualities. Other sinners also are about
him : slaves of vice, good-for-nothings in the com-
mon estimate ; men and women who wear the brand
of evil without protest, but not therefore hopeless
in the discerning judgment of Heaven, for this class
are quite as much victims of an imperfect social
system as originators of sin. If the body of society
is not pure and well composed, there will be a sedi-
ment and a scum ; and the fault is not in any one
part, but in the whole mass. Imperfect human
society is always precipitating its faults, mistakes,
ignorance, injustice, and greed, and the result is the
degradation, brutality, and gross vice of the lower
classes, and the follies, corruption, and hard selfish-
ness of the rich, — the extremes meeting and min-
gling into one in the discerning eye of the all-seeing
Judge. Christ felt the force of these excuses, and
saw the redeeming, or rather redeemable, qualities
that lay beneath this outer crust of repelling wick-
edness. Hence he did not repulse this crowd when
it flocked* about him, drawn simply because he did
not repel, but had dropped some kind word which
their outcast hearts had caught at by unquenchable
instinct. They were drawn also by something
strono:er than a chance word. If the main charac-
teristic of Christ were reduced to one phrase, it
would be, — a passion for saving the lost. He is
indeed a shepherd leading his whole flock in green

THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 5

pastures and by still waters ; he guides the whole
family of man in right ways, and feeds society with
the bread of life, and lights every man born into
the world on the path to eternal life ; but when any
class or any man gets lost, — lost to God and to
humanity and to himself, — then the passion of his
nature is aroused ; then the flame of his love bursts
out ; then the wrath of the Son of Man is kindled
ao-ainst the evil that can so blast a fellow-man ; then
the Lamb of God is ready to die to save a brother-
man who is lost. When one indulges a passion like
this, the objects of it are not long in finding it out.
Let him raise his standard anywhere, and they will
flock to it, for there are affinities not only of likes
but of opposites ; needs as well as desires draw men,
and the instinct of the soul for what is highest and
strongest and best never wholly dies out.

There are also hovering about him another class :
Pharisees and Scribes, critics with notions of their
own in regard to all things in earth and heaven,
professional theologians and sociologists, theorists
who have sunk man in disquisitions about man, and
religion in schemes of religion ; who have spec-
ulated and refined upon religion until they have lost
sight of its great universal features, and so, at last,
have even reversed it, turning its mercy and love
and deliverance into mere forms of observance and
ritual, straining out gnats of heresy and swallowing
camels of broken eternal law, — a process that
finally transforms them so that they become cold
and bloodless haters and despisers of their fellow-
men. And yet they were very respeictable men:

6 THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE.

they sat in Moses's seat, and discussed their theology
under the name of " the Law " day after day ; they
published in their way defenses of what they deemed
the historic faith, and kept a close, rebuking eye
upon any who diifered from them. These men were
about Christ, for this Christ is quoting Moses and
telling the people what the Law actually means.
They do not ask, *' Does he quote Moses fairly ;
does he describe the faith as it is ? " but, " Does
he agree with us ; is he in accord with present be-
lief?"

Now it did not fall in with Christ's method to
pass by these men in silence, uttering simply his
own views, and suffering theirs to pass unchallenged.
For when a false teacher is entrenched in long-
cherished religious traditions and wears a garb of
outward sanctity, his influence over the common
people is well-nigh irresistible, and it needs to be
broken up not only by the counter, positive truth,
but by an exposure of the false grounds on which it
rests. These parables, therefore, are an attack as
well as a teaching ; they are a defense as well as a
message. Still, there is no personal hate in them ;
perhaps some of these Pharisees themselves will feel
their force. His words flame with divine indigna-
tion, but it is the still heat of a sun ; his emotions
are deep, but their expression is like the wheels in
Dante's vision, that seemed to sleep on their axles
from the very swiftness of their turning. These
critics who are complaining around Christ are guilty
of the one deadly sin, — inhumanity ; they have
reversed the law of human society, and have come

THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 7

to hate a man because he is wicked, and to despise
him because he is low. This is contrary to Moses,
but Christ does not quote Moses, for they have
turned his words into a creed of their own that
reads quite differently ; nor does he now affirm on
his own authority. Christ indeed so spoke, but it
was not an authority that shut out all use of reason,
that ignored the motions of the human heart and
the every-day thought of men ; his authority was
grounded in these, and it got its force from his
absolute knowledge of these things, and not from
the far-off secrets of some distant heaven. His
authority lay iu his absolute exposure of the human
heart to itself and a like revelation of God's heart.
He appeals instead to the daily experience of the
people about them, to the way in which shepherds
and housewives and fathers everywhere acted and
felt. The argument from every-day life and natural
feeling is irresistible. Show a man that his theory,
however fine and otherwise well supported, does not
tally with the common thought and instinctive habits
and feelings of men, and he is silenced ; nature can-
not be pitched out with any sort of a theoretical or
argumentative fork.

And so we have three parables saying nearly the
same thing, all turning on something lost, one piled
on another without reason excej^t to overwhelm his
critics under an accumulation of every-day truth.
The commentators find a variety of thoughts in
them ; there is instead one thought intensified by
repetition. You accuse me of taking an interest in
lost men, of eating and drinking with them ; you

8 THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE.

deem me fanatical because I love tliem ; you take
satisfaction in thanking God that you are not as
these publicans ; I find joy in saving them. They
are indeed lost, but what do men do, how do they
feel, when they have lost anything, no matter how
small its value may be? Take one of your own
shej^herds : he has a hundred sheep — a large flock,
but one gets lost, wanders away in its silly fash-
ion, tears its fleece and leaves it on the thorns,
grows hungry and lean in the rocky defiles, gets
wild and unlike itself in its strans^e and dano^er-
haunted life, a lost and nearly valueless sheep, hard
to find and of small worth when found, but it is lost,
— what does the shepherd do in such a case ? Does
he not leave the flock, perhaps neglect it somewhat,
turn it over to some one else, and go after the one
that is lost, and seek for it till he finds it ? Do not
all the habits and instincts of a shepherd lead him to
do this ? And how is it with housewives in their
dark cottages when they have lost a piece of money ?
Do they not light a lamp and sweej) the house in all
its four corners, till they find it ? And how is it
with fathers whose sons stray away into the evil
world, and waste their property in debauchery, and
come to shame and wretchedness, like these sinners
about us ? Do they not wait and hope and pray that
they may come to themselves and at last return ? And
when that happens, do not the fathers, would not you
if you are still human, rejoice, and receive them with
open arms and feasting ? Now I tell you that I am
not acting in any unusual or unnatural way. I am
merely doing what any person does who properly

THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 9

fulfills a true relation ; what any shepherd worthy of
the name, any prudent housewife, any real father,
would do, when they have lost sheep, or money, or
sons.» I have human nature on my side ; I stand
with those who fill their places in the every-day work
of the world, and who act out of unperverted natu-
ral instinct. If you criticise me, you criticise habits
that all men approve ; you array yourselves against
the natural emotions that every day sweep through
the hearts of all these people ; you deny the reality
of the strongest affection of the human heart, — a
father's love for his son. I told you long ago that
I am a physician striving to heal the sick ; now I tell
you that I am a shepherd seeking the lost sheep of
our common nation ; and in fulfilling these relations
I am led by the same motives that actuate every-day
people in the every-day occupations of life.

As an answer, nothing could be more conclusive
or more crushing. There was not a shepherd whc
had that day strayed down from the hills, not a
housewife who had stolen a moment from her cares
to hear the words of this new prophet, not a father
who had grieved over a wayward son, not a man or
woman who had ever lost anything and found it, but
triumphed in the argument that had its vindication
in their own bosoms.

And here, my friends, is where all the words of
Christ are proved true. It is here, in the daily ex-
perience of honest occupations, in the emotions that
rise out of the common events of life, in the history
of the human heart as it loses and finds, that tlie
Gospel has its confirmation. For the Gospel has

10 THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE.

no method peculiar to itself ; it is not an alien in
the world of thought ; it is not the secret of some
new order suddenly revealed. Its method is that
of human nature, which is also the divine nature ;
the Son of God is also the Son of Man ; in his
own image made he man ; the love of God i:;:
not different from the love of man, and the justice
of God is not unlike that which springs instinc-
tive out of the hearts of all men. The action of
reason in his mind is the same as that by which we
guide ourselves, for we are his image ; it is absolute,
but the absolute i^ ant essentially different from the
relative. The gravitation ^hat governs a pebble
thrown into the air is the same force that guides
Arcturus, and makes fast the bands of Orion, and
binds together in sweet influence the whole universe
of worlds. The fires that glow on our hearths and
the flames that mingle in our laboratories are the
same that leap from the face of the most distant sun.
The universe is a unit, perhajis an essence ; and
as the thought of God impregnates in all material
things, so is it wrought into all minds, — all set to
laws of righteousness, all keyed to the same emo-
tions, all centrally grounded in eternal love that is
eternal joy. The limitation and defect and perver-
sion of these constitute evil, but back of the evil
and in spite of it is the common current of thought
and feeling that issues froui the mind of God and
sweeps through humanity. The shepherd seeking
a lost sheej) is God saving a world. A woman re-
joicing over her found money is the joy of God and
angels over repenting sinners. Anthropomorphism

THE witnp:ss from experience. 11

has been regarded as the product of a simple and
superstitious age, but we are coming back — led by
philosophy on one side and by science on the other
— to something like this same old conception ; for
there is no better conception of God than as a Being
who contains within himself an eternal humanity.
We are finding out that we cannot otherwise escape
dualism, nor have a cosmos in the material world
and a revelation in the moral world. For a revela-
tion must have its basis and its method in a common
nature and in common processes of thought and feel-
ing ; otherwise there are no avenues and no recep-
tivity. Thus we know the revelation and determine
its reality, not by signs wrought, but by its accord
with the general laws of our being and the instinc-
tive feelings of our nature as they come out in the
natural relations of life. We do not thus set our-
selves over a revelation to determine it, but we put it
beside human nature to see if it tallies with it, if it
says the same thing, if the molten metal of inspired
truth fills the human mould, if the deep without calls
to the deep within and is keyed to the same eternal
note. Still, call it a test if you will ; the human
mind, in its brave, early day, did not hesitate to
claim that God doubled his oath before doubting
men, that they might have a sure and steadfast
anchor of the soul. There is no dishonor in under-
going a test. " Believe me for my works," says the
Christ. Or. if there were a humbling of himself in
it, it is that humility which is itself glory; God
stoops to get on the level of our doubting, question-
ing hearts, — hearts that must question and doubt

12 THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE.

because we have not yet come to the world where
there is no night. The shadows are ahnost as heavy
as the substance, and there are many voices around
and within us crying Lo here ! and Lo there ! But
when the glowing metal of revealed truth finds its
way into every crevice of the human mould, then we
know the one was made for the other. When God's
voice starts into vibration every string of my nature,
then I know it is God's voice. And so Christ laid
his finger on the hearts about him, — the shepherds,
the housewives, the fathers, men who sowed and
reaped, and toiled in vineyards, and fished in waters,
and made feasts, and attended weddings, and showed
them that his truth was their truth. Revelation is
not a set of orders issued as by a captain or pilot on
the deck of a ship : it is the Spirit taking the things
of Christ and showing them unto us ; it is the
appeal of the divine mind to the human on the basis
that one is the image of the other.

But apology and defense are a small part of
Christ's aim in the parable. It is true that the
Pharisee, like the poor, is always with us ; he stands,
not for a temporary class, but for a spirit that is al-
ways springing out of human selfishness when fed
by prosperity and endowed with power. The Phar-
isee of Christ's day was a religious bigot, but the
thing in him that stirred the Christly wrath was his
inhumanity, beside which bigotry is a simple thing.
The Pharisee of to' day is the Sadducee who believes
neither in angel nor spirit, but only in a force that
helps the strong and destroys the weak ; he is the
pessimist who finds no good or hope of good in the

THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 13

world, and so eats and drinks till to-morrow lights
him to dusty death ; he is the monopolist who fills
his barns while God's poor starve ; he is the rich man
who will not touch with one of his fingers the bur-
dens of vice and ignorance and poverty that rest on
his fellow-man ; he is the prudent, calculating, per-
sistent builder-up of his own fortune in ways exter-
nally fair, but lets every other man go his own way,
helps no public enterprise, takes part in no work
that does not contribute to his gains ; he is the man
of cold blood and narrow vision and hard sense, a
quoter of prudential maxims, one who believes that
the sunlight and the dew and the rain are for the
just, and not also for the unjust. And the Scribes
are also with us : men who propound the opinions
and habits of the modern Pharisee as theories and
write them out in books, laissez-faire economists ;
naturalists and sociologists who describe a section of
the world and call it a philosophy of the universe ;
positivists who, by denying the eternal and slighting
the moral, drive men back into the cave of present
self-interest; and lecturers who overlook brothels
to sneer at churches. Yes, the Pharisee and the
Scribe are with us still, and their loud murmuring is
not to be passed by. It is well to show them that
they contradict the instincts of the human heart and
the principles that spontaneously direct men in the
natural relations of human life. Still, this is a
small part of the work of a teacher of men. The
bread of life is positive ; the thing that ^s, is the
truth that feeds and nerves and inspires. It is be-
cause Christ was so immensely and overwhelmingly

14 THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE.

positive tliat he could afford at times to turn on
his critics, and hurl at them the denial of our
common nature. But your denier, your man with
only a negative proposition, whether he stand alone
or within a church, denying the Trinity, denying
future punishment, denying the validity of the sac-
raments, — such a teacher finds himself surrounded
by a lean and hungry flock that may, for a time,
look up expecting to be fed, but at last fall away,
some straying back into pasture and others into the
wilderness. He who gives himself up to denials
and negations reduces himself to their level, and be-
comes himself a negation, a silence when men are
calling for a voice, a darkness when they are crying
for a light. It matters little whether the thing de-
nied be true or false ; denial is not what we want.
We are all in error more or less ; we know it well
enough. We are groping in a dimly-lighted world,
grasping at substance and finding it shadow, casting
ourselves upon shadows to find that we have dashed
our heads against substance ; what we most want is
light. And so this parable mainly has for its end
to show that the saving of lost men belongs properly
to the business of the world, and is a main concern
with it ; that it is justified by the common thought
of men, and that it is linked with those economic
and moral instincts that form the basis of social
life. The Scribes may not understand me, but the
shepherds do.

Now let us look more closely into the jDrinciple
that Christ puts under his passion for saving lost
men.

THE WITNESS FROM EXTERIENCE. 15

lie does not by any means say that any faithful
shepherd, any prudent housewife, will take an inter-
est in lost men, but only that the principle at the
bottom of their conduct and emotions are similar,
like forces and currents in our common nature.
This principle is the peculiar joy we feel in find-
ing things lost. To get possession of a thing we
never had yields a certain satisfaction, but to regain
a thing lost stirs a deeper and keener feeling. To
lose a thing, of however small value and in whatever
way, vexes us ; we reflect on ourselves with shame
and blame, and we strive harder to find it than to
secure somethine: else of more worth. Not another
sheep, but the one lost, not earning another coin,
but finding the identical one I lost : in this we have
the voice of a sound and hearty nature. Such a
search piques the curiosity, — a sport in childhood
and a purpose throughout life. To find a hidden
thing is the mind matching itself against nature ; to
find a lost thing is the triumph of mind over nature
when it has eluded us. It involves also the con-
science ; we feel responsible for that which is our
own, or rather is not our own, but is entrusted to us,
and for that very reason to be accounted for at some
bar. You say ; I may do what I choose with mine
own, — drop this coin into the sea. You might if it
were your own, but because it is not absolutely yours
you may not cast it away. It is the instinctive sense
of stewardship that sets us to searching for what we
have lost ; it must be accounted for at the bar of
conscience, which is also the bar of God. To lightly
lose a thing, and care lightly for the loss, argues a

16 THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE.

shallow and immoral nature. He who heedlessly
parts with anything that truly belongs to him does
not hold himself at true value, but is a loose-girded,
ill-containing being who wastes at last the very ele-
ments of his selfhood. It is such a principle that
lies back of Christ's passion, deep seated in human
nature and in the divine nature. But he carries it
much farther. In his quest for lost men, he is search-
ing not only for a value lost out of the riches of the
Father, not simply to keep the flock whole, but to
restore to the lost man himself the riches he has
wasted. For a lost man is chiefly lost to himself.
It is not possible for those to suffer so much from
the wandering away of one dear to them into sin as
the one himself. For awhile the father suffers more
than his prodigal boy, but time and use dull the
pangs of one and sharpen those of the other. Here
is where Christ's work of saving lost men rises above
the analogies of instinctive nature and habit, and
enters the world of morals. It is his love for man,
his pity for the misery of a man lost, his sense of
the wrong when a man throws himself away, his per-
fect sense of the joy wasted, and his even keener
sense of the ever-deepening wretchedness of an evil-
doer; his sympathy, so perfect that he feels the
full measure of what another feels, and so bears on
his own heart all the woe of humanity, and treats as
his own all this poverty and hunger of sin, — here is
the spring of Christ's passion for saving lost men.

The parable turns in its last analysis upon the
union of consciousness which exists between a true
shepherd and his sheep. By living with his flock in

THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 17

the long intimacy of years and by constant care, he
passes the wide boundary of their diverse natures
and comes to know how a sheep feels ; he not only
loves but he understands it ; and when it is lost his
shepherd's heart goes after it in its strange loneli-
ness, pities its fear as it hears the howl of the wolf,
feels the weariness of the poor creature as it wanders
aimless over fell and moor, bleating for its compan-
ions. Ah, tender and true picture of this poor
world lost in evil and sought by its Shepherd!
It is Christ's absolute consciousness of lost humanity
that makes him its seeking Saviour.

These are weighty lessons for us. It is the first
duty of a man in the world to see things as they
are ; it is the highest achievement of the intellect to
rightly measure and weigh the condition of human-
ity. AYe understand quite well the loss of a sheep,
— a fleece of wool and a carcass of mutton. Money
lost, — that is a common and bitter enough experi-
ence. Waste, — there are enough to decry it :
political economists running up and down the land
telling us how to save here and gain there, how to
get the greatest number of dollars into the largest
number of pockets, — all of which is quite well.
But how is it about lost men, wasted energies, facul-
ties weakened by drink, minds sealed up in igno-
rance, hearts vacant of joy, whole classes lost in vice,
whole flocks scattered in the wilderness of evil, and
no shepherd to pity and seek them? It is the
strange thing in the world that man cares so little
for man. Man is the only jewel ; there is no true
gold but him on this planet. Why does man pass by

18 THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE.

man and go after something that glitters, or stretches
wide, or reaches high ? We cannot tell. It is not
natural, it is contrary to nature, — a perversion, a
blindness or dimness of yet unformed vision, the
blunder and stumtle of a race not yet come to the
full exercise of its proper humanity. It is because
Christ saw man at his true value and died to give
expression to his estimate that we name him the
Humanity itself ; he is man rightly weighing man.
And so the struggle of Christ in history is to bring
men up to the point of duly valuing their fellow-
men. We have no debt but to love one another.
There is no passion worthy of us but the passion for
humanity. It has been a weary work to start this
flame in the heart of the world. It was kindled in
the fires of the death of the Son of Man ; it spread
mightily so long as the breath of the Spirit had
access to it, but government, and philosophy, and
greed, and custom " heavy as frost, and deep almost
as life," first embraced and then smothered it ; each
added to it something ot itself, and so it became a
thing of authority and scholasticism and tradition, —
its simple, natural humanity overborne and well-
nigh lost to it. Now at last it seems to be emer-
ging, and to be gaining recognition not only in the
practical Christian conscience but in theology. And
here indeed is a sea deep and wide enough to float
whole bodies of divinity. It is a theology, a philos-
ophy, a social science; it is. the secret of the order
of the world. This passion for humanity, hindered
as it has been, is still the only force that has ever
done anything towards radically curing the wrongs

THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 19

of the masses. It has nearly driven out the tyranny
of king and class ; it has yet tc harmonize the rela-
tions between the poor and the rich, between the
laborer and the employer, — a task in which it will
be hindered by comnuniism and socialism ; for while
the Shepherd of humanity is seeking his lost sheep
he encounters wolves in sheep's clothing. The
greatest impediments to Christianity are those spo-
radic forms of benevolence that seek similar ends,
yet are without its spirit, its methods, and its wis-
dom. But at last it will triumph over these, for the
lost sheep will be sought till it is found. It will at
last teach men that they are brethren. Slowly but
surely this eternal truth is finding its way into so-
ciety. This dear nation of ours is organized under
this conception, — a land of equal laws. To reduce
society in its social and economic relations to the
same complexion is the task before it. The thought
is becoming familiar to men, and is subduing all
things — laws, customs, commerce, business — to its
own temper.

The parable, in its main drift, sends us each and
all to the work of delivering the fallen and oppressed
children of humanity. The whole need not a phy-
sician ; they may be left to the orderly forces of
nature and grace that enfold them ; they incite us
to wise and prudent care, they do not stir us
into a divine passion. But these poverty-stricken
ones : the children that grow^ pale in tenement
houses; the victims of drink; the women driven
to vice by the cruelty of rapacious employers ; the
multitudes who toil on railways, stripped bare of the

20 THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE.

saving ties of home and social life ; the churchless
masses in the West, the unchurched masses in the
East ; the illiterate of all sections ; the sinners, the
touch of whose garments we shun as we walk the
streets, — these are the lost sheep that we are to
seek.

It is not an easy task. Great passions move in
an atmosphere of cost and suffering, but along with
the suffering there is a jo}'. We do not sound the
depth of this parable until we master this feature of
it. It is significant that these parables end in joy,
— social joy, for there is no other. Two main
thoughts run through them : a suffering search for
that which is lost, a recompensing joy when it is
found. Christ is careful not to omit the latter. An
immense amount of far-drawn and fanciful analogy is
often associated with them that only hides the sense,
and were better thrown aside. There are indeed
some minor suggestions, incidental in their nature,
that are of value, but the sole, central truth is that
a man who has a proper feeling for humanity will
seek after its lost, and when he has recovered a
lost one he comes into jo}'. This is natural, — to be
glad when the lost is found, — but Christ expands
the field of its action, lifts it up to heaven, and calls
in the angels. AVhether this is the exulting play of
the oriental imagination spiritualizing its visions
and throwing into outward form the ecstasies of the
inner soul, or a simple revelation of experiences in
another world, it is not necessarj^ to decide. For
one, I do not care to make the distinction. It is
not improbable that the heavenly fact is the basis of

THE WITNESS FROM EXPEIUENCE. 21

the heavenly vision. But if the distinction were
pressed, I would sooner stand with the heaven-
seeins: enthusiast than with the modern Sadducee.
" Count me on the side of the angels/' Better a
noble faith than a narrow })liilosoi)hy. Give us
open but not empty heavens. Cease to deepen the
skies with your lenses, if you cannot also by faith
people them. Do not make man solitarj^ in this
wide universe by declaring that he alone dwells in
it. Do not point us to a sad and sorrow-stricken
world, and then break our hearts by the assertion
that there is none better. You strive in vain when
you tell us that this world of matter which upholds
our feet ui)holds also our spirits. In vain you may
tell us that there is a world for our senses, but no
world for our thoughts, for our affections, for our
spiritual instincts. To the clear eyes of the guile-
less man the heavens are open, and he sees angels
ascending and descending. Such a world enfolds
and interpenetrates the visible world, — a spiritual
yet a real w^orld, present, at hand, without and
within, seen not with eye, nor heard by ear, nor
felt by touch, but more substantial and truer than
that reported by the nerves ; for what the spirit says
to itself must be more trustworthy than what is
reported by its servants.

The world of spirit, the world of God and angels,
is the real world. Life comes from it and reaches
up into it ; there life culminates ; there moral and
spiritual processes have their consummation; there
God's pity yearns over his lost children ; there the
angels rejoice when one returns. Now for the use
of it.

22 THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE.

You and I, my friends, find scant reward in this
outward world for any pains and labors we undergo
in striving to save lost men. It is not easy to con-
tend against the selfishness of men, to strive for the
reform of evils and abuses before it becomes popu-
lar. It is not pleasant to see the finger of the proud
and the powerful pointed at you in scorn of what
they call your fanaticism ; if you sympathize with
labor, to be named a communist ; if you contend
against bigotry, to be cast out as a heretic ; if you
plead for ideals that are high and changes that are
radical, to be styled a visionary. Nor is it pleasant
to go down into the depths after lost men, to eat
and drink with sinners. This close but necessary
contact with evil is hard to endure, for the seeking
shepherd shares largely in the lot of the lost sheep :
if its fleece is torn, so are his garments ; if its
flesh is bruised, so is he bruised for its silly in-
iquities; if the blood of its life streams from
wounds, so is his raiment stained as he lays it upon
his shoulder ; if it has strayed away into dank and
deadly places, he must breathe the fatal air. There
is a great deal of good work to be done in the world
that demands no sacrifice, and yields a sufficient re-
ward in the gratitude of society ; but this special
work of saving the peculiarly lost has no such re-
ward. The passion for humanity is indulged at the
cost of suffering, but it is not without its joy. " You
eat with sinners," says the Pharisee. "True," says
the Christ, " but there is a satisfaction in it beyond
and above what you know, — the jo}^ of heaven."

That same heav^enly joy flows round this world

THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 23

still. When duty presses hard, when the faces of
men are averted, when labor brings no visible re-
ward, when conscience demands sacrifice, then fly
up into the heavenly world and drink the joy that
God gives to those who serve him in these ways.

CHRIST'S TREATMENT OP UNWILLING
SKEPTICS.

" There are few religious phrases that have had such a power of
darkening' men's minds as to their true relation to God, as the com-
mon phrase that we are here in a state of probation, under trial, as
it were. We are not in a state of probation ; we are in a process of
education, directed by that eternal purpose of love which brought
us into being-. When we apprehend that we are in a process of ed-
ucation that God will carry to its fulfillment, however long it may
take, we feel that the loving' purpose of the Father is over us, and
that the events of life are not appointed as testing us, whether we
will choose God or not, but real lessons into training us to make
the right choice." — Thomas Erskine, Memoirs, p. o76.

' ' Whatever is against right reason, that no faith can oblige us to
believe. For though reason is not the positive and affirmative
measure of our faith, and our faith ought to be larger than reason,
and take something into her heart that reason can never take into
her eye, yet in all our creed there can be nothing against reason.
If reason justly contradicts an article, it is not of the household of
faith." — Jeremy Taylor.

" Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life :
Such a Way, as gives us breath ;
Such a Truth, as ends all strife :
Such a Life, as killeth death.

" Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength :
Such a Light, as shows a feast :
Such a Feast, as mends in length :
Such a Strength, as makes his guest.

" Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart :
Such a Joy, as none can move :
Such a Love, as none can part :
Such a Heart, as joyes in Love."

George Herbert, The Call.

UNWILLING SKEPTICS.

And, behold, two of them were going- that very day to a villag-e
named Emmaus, which was threescore furlongs from Jerusalem.

And they said one to another, Was not our heart burning within
us, while he spoke to us in the way, while he opened to us the
scriptures ? — St. Luke xxiv. 18-32.

I THINK no one can read this story carefully with-
out seeing that it is an entirely truthful history down
to its minutest particular. One part of it carries
the other ; the philosophy of it confirms the incident,
and the incident is necessary for holding the philos-
ophy ; the two play into each other in so easy and
natural a way that all suspicion of myth, or late tra-
dition, or fabrication, is shut out. On any other
theory than that of historical verity, the meaning
would have escaped the form, or the form would not
have retained the meaning.

The incident might bear for a title, Christ's treat-
ment of unwilling skeptics. He has not joined
these two men merely to show them the fact of his
resurrection, and so drive them into a belief of it
by a physical process, but to convince them of it by
a rational process. He is not with them to assure

28 Christ's treatment of unwilling skeptics.

them in any way of a bare fact, but to set that fact
in all its wide relations and bearings. Hence, he
hides himself from their recognition, — how, it is
needless to ask ; whether through the shades of the
far spent day, or in the preoccupation of their sad
minds, or in the new form and features of one who
has passed under the transforming touch of death
and resurrection, it matters not. It is as man with
man, mind with mind, that he meets them, and so
leads them into the truth he would teach without
aid from the prejudice of personal love or the over-
whelming influence of enforced evidence. Why do
not the heavens open and show us God ? Why does
not the earth speak and declare his name ? Why
do not the gates of eternity swing open and disclose
the hosts of the blessed dead ? Why does not Christ
come and spread before us his pierced hands, and
offer them to the touch of our unbelief?

Not in such ways is faith wrought. " Blessed are
they that have not seen and yet have believed." A
certain kind of faith may be so induced, but it is not
a faith that blesses ; it is not a faith that roots itself
in the according reason ; it is not a faith that rests
on the whole order of eternal truth ; it is not a
faith that brings love and reverence and obedience
to a conscious realization through patient exercise of
them. For faith is not something to be given, but
a result to be achieved by the combined action of
the reason, the will, and the heart. And so Christ
puts himself far off from these doubting men, and
draws nigh to them by the close processes of reason
before he lets himself in upon the love and wonder

Christ's treatment of unwilling skeptics. 29

of tlieir hearts. Thus convinced, they will be per-
suaded indeed. Seen thus in the light of history,
they will surely know that he is the Lamb of God,
slain from the foundation of the world. There was
evidently in the mind of Christ a steady purpose to
prepare the disciples for a large conception of him-
self for their use in the future. He will not ask it
now, while he is with them, but he drops into their
ininds seeds of revelation that will bear the fruit of
a large and invincible faith.

These two men on the way to Emmaus are in a
state of mind not strange, nor without parallel in
the present. They had a Christ, but they have him
no longer. They had hoped he would redeem Israel,
but he was crucified, dead, and buried. Every con-
ception of him they had held was thrown into con-
fusion ; every hope they had won from him was
blighted. The fair dream, woven of his power and
goodness and spiritual energy, w^as dissolved. They
were again but Galilean fishermen, with the old
Judean skies above them ; Pharisees, whom they had
been taught to hate, still sat in Moses' seat ; the
Roman yoke still rested unbroken upon their necks ;
all things had turned back to the old, dead level of
hopeless waiting and vain desire. What could they
do but go back to the shores of their sea and fish in
its waters, with none to tell them where to cast tlieir
nets, to still its waves, to speak the word of life from
their boats ? We all know what broken and vanished
hopes are, and the pains of dissolving happy visions.
Who has not waked from some bright dream of
sweet fields and soft winds, to hear the storm of

30 CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF UNWILLING SKEPTICS.

winter beating against the shutter, and the sullen
drip of rain upon the sod ? Who has not dreamed
that the dear dead have come back, to the couch
beside us, in tlie cradle that we touch in the dark-
ness, in the chair by the hearth, and waked to find
that " day brings back our night " ? And hopes more
real than these — day-dreams built out of substan-
tial elements, bright assurances of fortune and hap-
piness and success — have faded away in a moment,
leaving us bewildered, smitten in heart and confused
in mind, doubting the reality of all things, yet held
by some tender forces of our nature ; for long after
the mind has lost its hold on reality, the heart re-
tains it by some power of its own.

It was so with these two men ; their hoj^es and
expectations had been thrown into confusion, but
their hearts remained true. They made no charges
of imposture ; their disappointment turned into no
accusations against their dead master ; they could
understand nothing in the past or present, but they
went no farther, held back by love from the harsh
verdict that reason might well pronounce. So it was
now, but so it would not have continued to be. It is
easy to imagine what their future would have been
had Christ not appeared and brought their minds
into harmony with their hearts. Their affection for
him would have languished under a growing sense of
his mistake and failure ; they would soon have come
to regard themselves as deceived men; their pity
for him would have turned towards themselves ; the
memory of his gracious love would have evaporated
as time put it at a distance ; and so head and heart

Christ's treatment of unwilling skeptics. 31

having been emptied of faith and love, they would
have lapsed back into old-time Jews, with perhaj^s
Sadducean indifference, or bitter hatred of all
things.

I speak of their possible experience because it is
often an actual experience at present.

Doubt is mostly a modern thing. In earlier times,
men believed or disbelieved ; they accepted the
Christian faith or they denied it. In the Catholic
ages, there was little of what is now known as
skepticism ; there was ignorance and perversion and
superstition, but not much of mental perplexit3\
The reasons are evident : there was no science to
raise the questions that seem to antagonize faith ;
and there was little sense of personality prompting
every man to think for himself. Men believed be-
cause there was nothing to hinder, and so believed
too much, — in relics, in demons, in magic, in priestly
power, in almost anything that was required. But
when Protestantism, which was simply a movement
of intelligence, swept out the superstitions and gave
men knowledge, and so awoke indej)endent thought,
doubt came in, and the age of skepticism began.

Was it well or ill? It is enough to say that it
was inevitable. What is inevitable is God's method,
and that must be right and well. Knowdedge and
personality make doubt possible, but knowledge is
also the cure of doubt ; and when we get a full and
adequate sense of personality we are lifted into a
region where doubt is almost impossible, for no man
can know himself as he is and all the fullness of his
nature without also knowing God.

32 CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF UNWILLING SKEPTICS.

This doubt has been of two kinds ; one belongs to
the past, the other is a feature of the present. The
earlier was the product of an over-stringent theology ;
of such doctrines as decrees, obscuring the freedom
of the will ; limited atonement, teaching that Christ
died only for the elect ; election, practically setting
aside personal character ; a limited action of the
Holy Spirit ; a magical conception of regeneration ; a
conception of faith as opposed to works ; a doctrine
of reprobation that turned earth into hell ; a con-
ception of life as under probation, and not under
grace; and a general, doom-like atmosphere under
which men were awed into submission or crushed
into despair. It was a theology prolific of doubt.
Hardy natures thrived on it in a certain way, but
tender, sensitive, reflective minds sank under it into
submissive sadness, or cast it from them by natural
repulsion.

The doubt sprang from within : I am not one of
the elect ; I have sinned away my day of grace ;
I have grieved the Holy Spirit ; I am not accepted
of God ; my sins are not removed ; my hope is a
delusion of Satan. We have but to read the reli-
gious biographies of the last century and the early
part of this to find it, and also its cause.

But the theology has mostly passed away, except
in form, and with it the form of doubt it was so
well fitted to produce. Another kind of doubt has
taken the place of the old, doubt that springs from
without, a perplexity very like that which troubled
these two men on the road to Emmaus. It is a doubt,
not of self, but of something outside of self. For,

CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF UNWILLING SKEPTICS. 33

just now, thought is mainly fixed on the external
world. Our poetry is introspective, and a part of
our fiction turns on the interplay of our moral and
spiritual mechanism, but for the most part the look
is outward, and chiefly on the natural world and its
order. From thence come our doubts, — doubt of
miracle, of the truth of the Bible, of immortality, of
the existence of a personal God, of the action of the
Holy Spirit, of the reality of a spiritual world ; doubt
of the soul itself, of the operations of conscience, of
accountability, of reward and punishment. The
source of these doubts also is plain. We are learn-
ing so much about nature and its laws, and of our
relations to it, that we are swamped in our knowl-
edge, as a boat is engulfed in breakers when near
the shore, — safe when far out on the wide sea, but
upset when the waves meet the resistance of another
element. It is not spiritual things that set us to
doubting, nor yet material things, but the getting
caught between the two ; and just now the tides of
eternal truth are beating hard against the rocks of
time and sense, and many are caught and engulfed
by their conflicting forces.

This new doubt has more reason in it than the
old, and is even more persistent and painful. The
old was an illusion, a disease ; the new is real, — the
antagonism of knowledge with knowledge. It was
painful to look into heaven and see only an angry
God, but it was better than to see no God at all. It
was bitter to think of endless hell, but it was not so
sickening as to think of annihilation. It was sad to
fear lest the Holy Spirit had passed by, but it was

34 CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF UNWILLING SKEPTICS.

not SO dreadful as to question if there is a Spirit be-
hind and in all this framework of nature and of self.
It was dreary to think of human life as under a
doom-like probation, with only a probability of escape
from eternal condemnation, but it was not so dismal
nor so fatal as to doubt accountability and to suspect
the eternal verdicts that await conduct and character.
The doubt of the present day is a great weakener ;
that of the past often detracted little from a man's
strength. It left him face to face with duty, and
with unimpaired conscience ; truth still existed even
if the man were overwhelmed by a misconception of
it ; there was reality, and no one is wholly weak in
the presence of reality. But the doubt of to-day
destroys the sense of reality ; it questions truth ;
it envelops all things in its puzzle, — God, immor-
tality, the value of life, the rewards of virtue, the
operations of conscience ; it puts a quicksand under
every step ; it ungirds the faculties so that they
no longer work to any end ; it undermines purpose
and inspiration, and leaves no path for the feet but
aimless desire or native instinct, — life a maze, the
heavens empty, the solid world the only reality !
There is much of it, and it is all about us. It is
not always a conscious thing. The lack of moral
earnestness, the feeble sense of spiritual things,
the material aims and standards of success, the push
for wealth as the only real thing, the godlessness of
society at large, — these are its signs and fruits.

We will not, to-day, take our thought into the
wide world, but will instead limit it to a class.

There are many who suffer in mind from these

CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF UNWILLING SKEPTICS. 35

doubts, but remain true in heart, — the mind all
torn and bruised, dumb with perplexity, blind from
the rapidly shifting lights that pass before it, but
the heart still true to the faith that once was so
beautiful and nourishing. In their hearts they still
hold to the living Christ, but the ruthless spirit of
doubt in their minds leaves liim a dead Christ in
Joseph's tomb ; there is no redeemer of Israel nor
of mankind ; his words seemed true and were full
of promise and hope, but he himself died as helpless
as the thieves beside him, and has gone with them
to mix with the elements. His cry to the Father,
his vision of Paradise, his commitment of his spirit
to God, were the illusive ecstasy of a d3ang brain.
The old sullen order of death and silence goes on
uninterrupted ; evil and doom still have sway, and
there is no deliverance.

There are many who think in these ways, but still
pray or try to pray, still keep up the Christian char-
ities, still exercise themselves in the Christian
graces, still deny themselves, and are brave and pa-
tient and true and pure.

What is to be done for such as these ? What are
they to do for themselves? How shall the head
come to think with the heart ?

There is something that we can do for one another ;
there is more that we can do for ourselves ; but full
deliverance can be gained only through Christ him-
self. Christ is the main factor in the solution of
these puzzles. Put him at his full value, and the
problem will solve itself as the sun solves the mys-
teries of darkness and separates shadow from sub-
stance.

36 CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF UNWILLING SKEPTICS.

Christ came to these two men to rescue them not
merely from doubts, but from doubts that were sad,
and that drew their sadness from hearts that were
still true to him. Their heads needed him, but
their hearts drew him. And he came to them not
merely because their state was sad, but because it
was dangerous. For, in the long run, the head wins
and the heart goes under. Doubt saps the vigor of
life. The heart wearies in its vain efforts to send
faith into the mind when the mind ceases to play
into it with honest conviction. And so Christ
comes to these men for rescue. Now see how wisely
and thoroughly he effects it. He might have said
at once : " Your fears are groundless ; I am the
Christ." But had he said this, they would have
fallen at his feet in an ecstasy of joy, all their sad
doubts flown away. Their hearts would have been
relieved, but their heads would not have been lifted
to the level of their hearts ; one would have been
flooded with joy, but the other only convinced that
this friend Jesus was still alive.

Christ wished to put a larger conception of him-
self, of his relation to Jewish history and to human-
ity, into their minds, and so he discoursed to their
minds while their hearts are still oppressed. For
we are not in the best state to receive knowledge
when we are surcharged with happiness; then we
believe anything, but the belief does not strike into
the depths of our nature and become lasting. The
lessons we learn in sadness and from loss are those
that abide. Sorrow clarifies the mind, steadies it,
forces it to weigh things correctly. The soil moist

CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF UNWILLING SKEPTICS. 37

with tears best feeds the seeds of truth. And so
Christ, while still but a fellow-traveler with them
on the way to Emmaus, began with Moses and all
the jirophets, and showed them that these old scrij)-
tures concerned him ; that he — the Christ — was
their fulfillment ; that it behooved him to suffer as
he had, and, by such a path, to enter into his glory.
That is, he put a broad and rational basis under their
faith. This method of Christ's deserves the closest
attention. He used all the knowledge of these men,
all their beliefs, all they had ever heard or thought
of, their whole world of truth, and said, " Christ
is the meaning of it all ; it all leads up to him ;
he is the key to it." He thus put a bottom under
their faith, linked it to their knowledge, gave them
something for their minds to feed on in the future,
and put them in the way of learning something of
the breadth and scope of his work. He is no man
of a day, no mere worker of miracles, not the last
prophet or teacher of good precepts, no gracious
rabbi ; he is not simply one strong enough to rise
from the dead : he is instead the fulfillment of
Jewish history, the manifestation of all that God
has meant from the first. All along God has been
a deliverer by sacrifice, and now deliverance has
come in its supreme form and power, and by the old
and eternal way of sacrifice, and with the trium-
phant vindication of glory entered on through resur-
rection.

These men could not understand this lesson at
once, but it was lodged in their minds, and formed
the basis of that immense transformation in thouoht

38 CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF UNWILLING SKEPTICS.

by which they and their fellows went over from
their old conception of Christ as simply their master
to the conception of him as the fulfillment of their
national history, — a transformation that is other-
wise inexplicable. The peculiarity in the change of
the apostles after the resurrection is the immensely
larger scope of their views. Hence their first preach-
ing was chiefly an epitomizing of the Old Testa-
ment. It sounds dull to our ears, but it is full of
significance as an attempt to link Christ with all
previous history and with the whole order of the
world so far as they knew the world. It discloses
truth of immense value, and shows how modern
doubt of Christ is best met. Redemption is the
key to this world ; there is no other. To deliver
the world ; to get it out of the order of nature, its
limitations, its evil, its death and doom ; to get it out
of sin and the death of sin, — there is no other ex-
planation of the world but this. Until you plant
yourself on this central necessity and fact, you will
have doubt and confusion. But see this, know this,
and doubts vanish.

What is needed to cure the skepticism of the day
is a direct and, so far as may be, an adequate view
of Christ. In the weakening and breaking-up of
theological systems, the part in them filled by Christ
vanishes along with the rest, and there is actually
no function or place left for him in our thought ;
identified with the systems, he disappears with them
as they sink out of sight. The Romish conception of
Christ as a perpetual sacrifice, a simple offset to sin,
cannot, even when stripped of its grossness, satisfy

CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF UNWILLING SKEPTICS. 89

the mind. Sin is a great fact, but it is negative,
and Ciirist is here in the workl for more than to
undo a negation. Calvinism narrows still more the
conception of Christ by making him a mere factor
in a system of divine sovereignty and decrees and
election, a cog in a wheel, or a v^heel amongst wheels
that grind out an irrational destiny for mankind.
Sovereignty decrees and elects ; Christ dies for the
elect ; the Spirit regenerates and sanctifies the ef-
fectually called, who alone are saved, while the non-
tlect perish everlastingly by the same sovereign
decree. It was in such a system as this that Christ
was made to bear a part till the heart broke away
from its cruelty and injustice, dragging the mind
with it ; for Calvinism is strong on the mind-side,
and is well-nigh impregnable so long as it is kept
apart from the human sentiments and instincts of
the heart. Its weakness and its downfall are due to
the admissions it is forced to make in behalf of in-
fants, — admissions wrenched from the system by
the demand of the heart crying for its own, and by
the imperative sense of fairness lodged in every
breast. If exceptions to the inexorable grinding of
the system can be made for infants, why not for
others ? Through this grudgingly accorded exce2>
tion — for Calvinism still asserts that only elect
infants are saved — the whole system is flowing out,
as pent waters seek the narrow fissure through which
they press at first drop by drop, but at last with
their whole current. It is a significant fact that these
ancient systems of theology, for the mort part, break
down over infants. It is here that human nature

40 Christ's treatment of unwilling skeptics.

takes its final stand and utters its defiant protest.
It is significant also that where theology so often
breaks down and ends, Christianity begins. " And
he took a little child, and set him in the midst of
them, and said, Whosoever shall receive one of
such little children in my name receiveth me : and
whosoever receiveth me receiveth not me, but him
that sent me."

But when the heart thus forced the head to admit
that Christ died for all, and that he is the Re-
deemer of the world, the entire system began to
give way ; for Calvinism is not adjusted to a gen-
eral atonement. So long as it consistently held to
a limited atonement, it antagonized only the heart ;
but when it became " moderate," and asserted a
general atonement while it held on to decrees, it lost
the respect of the head. Weak and ill-adjusted
systems continue for a time, but at last yield to the
instinctive demand of the mind for consistency. The
process of disintegration is, however, attended with
confusion and doubt. We are standing to-day in the
midst of this theological wreck, — its ruins around
us, its dust filling the air, and the question on many
lips is. Where is the Christ? Has he perished
with the system? What place are we to assign
him in our thoughts ? What work are we to ascribe
to him ? The exact trouble with multitudes at
present, whose hearts still turn warmly to Christ,
is that they are not clear what he has done for
them, what relations he sustains to them and they
to him. The old theology is no longer sufficiently
coherent as a system to contain Christ : where then

Christ's treatment of unwilling skeptics. 41

is he ? Such is the demand ; for we must think
rationally and in some order, if not within a sys-
tem. Many stand to-day where the two disciples
stood when on the way to Emmaus, — thrown out of
their ohl conceptions, and not yet seeing any other.
They have had a very clear idea of the kingdom
and of the part Christ was to play in it, — a concep-
tion supported by prophecy, definite, easily under-
stood, and who would dare to say that it was not
lofty, — the redemption of Israel ? But it had faded
away, and now what shall they think of Christ ? He
has not merely died out of their sight ; he has died
out of their thought, and left them in mental confu-
sion. But their doubt sprang not so much from
what had happened to Christ as from what had hap-
pened to their conception of him, for they had lived
more in their theory of the redemption of Israel
than in tiie personal Redeemer. It was the shatter-
ing of their system that troubled them. It had
filled so much space in their minds that when it was
broken up Christ vanished with it, staying only in
their loving hearts.

The same thing is going on all around us. The
systems in which Christ has been made to serve as
a factor are thinning into mist, and losing shape
and proportion and meaning ; and as they fade
away or merge into other systems, the figure of
Christ grows dim and recedes into the past along
with the passing forms. "But no!" our hearts
cry, " it cannot be so ; it cannot be that Christ is
not a reality ; it is not possible that he dies when
the creed dies. But what does he do? What is

42 Christ's treatment of unwilling skeptics.

his relation to the new thought that crowds upon
the age ? What place does he fill in the newly-
discovered order of nature and in the fresh tasks of
human society? What is his real relation to the
world? How is he a personal Saviour?" Thank
God, it is getting to be possible to answer these
questions. We are coming to see that Christ, in
his real character, was no more present in the old
Calvinism than in the Romish mass. Christ cannot
be put into a system. He cannot be explained by
any one relation, such as the relation to sin, or to
law, or to sacrifice, or to the church, or to the indi-
vidual, or to humanity. We are beginning to see
that instead of ascribing too large a place in theology
to Christ, it has been too small. We made him the
head of the elect, but not head over all ; a sacrifice
for the sin of the world, but not the redeemer of it ;
the head of the church, but not of humanit}! ; an ex-
ample for believers, but not the order of society ; the
Son of God, but not the Son of Man. We have
treated him as a heavenly visitant, as God simply
wearing a robe of flesh, as a being chiefly excep-
tional in humanity instead of the absolute fulfillment
of humanity.

The task is to adjust our minds to the larger con-
ceptions of Christ now possible and urged upon us
by our needs and by the thought of the age. We
need that done for us which was done for the two
disciples, — Christ set before us as the fulfillment of
all revelation, — natural, human, divine. We still
think of him as our personal Saviour from the guilt
and misery of personal sin, and still retain him in

Christ's treatment of unwilling skeptics. 43

all the clear, interior relations of our spirits, our
friend and comforter and example, but we must also
set him in those larger relations, which are now get-
ting to be apprehended with some clearness, as the
Head of humanity ; as containing in himself the
history and destiny of humanity ; as the law and the
order of human society ; as the head of the nation
as well as of the church ; as God actually in human-
ity, and so manifesting the divine humanity ; as the
light of the world that lights every man born into
it, and also lights up its dark mazes, its paths that
run backward through all the creating ages and for-
ward into ages of spiritual life and glory.

Doubt is a child of limited sight ; but the vision
of Christ is universal sight. It reveals all things ;
it creates an order in the world ; it puts meaning
into things ; it tells me how to get out of my
evil and sin, how to live, what to do, and where I
shall go ; it gives me the motive that I need and
all the inspiration I can bear ; it makes life a real,
orderly, and sufficient thing, — life indeed, and as
high and strong and noble as we would have it.
And as the vision of Christ clarifies our individual
life, so it clears up and explains the whole world.
It is like standing in the sun, where all the planets
are seen moving in harmonious orbits, vast but sim-
ple, many and unlike, but clear at the first glance.

These are not idle words. No one can look
seriously at the world without confessing that recon-
ciliation is its great need, — man with man, man with
himself, class with class, nation with nation, and all
with God. Sense needs to be reconciled with spirit,

44 Christ's treatment of unwilling skeptics.

past ages with the present, time with eternity, tem-
poral life with eternal life. And reconciliation there
will be, for the Reconciler is at work, turning the
hearts of men towards each other and bringing them
into peace with themselves and so with God. There
is no other way or name but his. If other ways
are helpful, they are also his ; forbid them not !
When we catch sight of this reconciling work, and
see it in all its vast sweep, and feel its transforming
energy at work within us, not only do doubts vanish,
but a great joy enters into us. " Did not our hearts
burn within us, while he opened to us the scrip-
tures?"

The vision of Christ, set in the full light of all
revelation, enkindles the whole nature. The deeps of
God call to the deeps within us. Then we are ready
to take up the cross and follow him to death ; then
we are ready to lose all that we may win him.

TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE.

' ' In theology, intuition works marvels. While ordinary intelli-
gences are climbing the paths of the holy mountain by force of
study, the choicest minds gain its summit with one bound. They
do not learn; they understand. They have the instinct of the
divine. While the argument is going on in the dark, sudden flashes
overflow them. What matter words and formulas ? They see,
they possess, they enjoy." — Joseph Roux, Meditations of a
Parish Priest.

" I am sure that when the listening repose of the multitude was
broken as the sermon closed, and, like a melted stream, the crowd
flowed away into the city, the people carried something more with
them than a handful of good precepts. I think that they went
silently, or with few words, with something of exaltation and
wonder at themselves in their faces. They had been taught that
they were God's children. One who was evidently God's Son him-
self had told them so. He had bidden them, as God's children, at
once to see duty with something of his own immediateness of per-
ception, and also to hear him announcing it to them out of a
Father's lips. Duty, the thing they ought to do, had shone for
them that morning at once with its own essential sweetness and
with the illumination of the Father's will. No wonder that as
they walked together they said to one another : ' He speaks to us
with authority.' " — Rev. Phillips Brooks, D. D., The Influence
of Jesus, p. 33.

TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE.

Then certain of the Scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying,
Master, we would see a sign from thee. But he answered and said
unto them. An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign ;
and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah the
prophet : for as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly
of the whale ; so shall the Son of man be three days and three
nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall stand
up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it ; for
they repented at the preaching of Jonah ; and behold, a greater
than Jonah is here. The qvieen of the south shall rise up in the
judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it ; for she
came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon ;
and behold, a greater than Solomon is here. — St. Matt. xii.
38-43.

One of the foremost questions among Biblical
scholars at present is, How did Christ quote the
Old Testament? Did he cast upon it a supernat-
ural light, confirming its letter and vindicating its
statistical and historical accuracy by direct and
superior knowledge ; or did he use it simply to
illustrate and confirm his points ? The trend of
thought is towards the latter view. Christ did not
concern himself wdth questions of interpretation ;
they did not exist in his day ; nor would he have
regarded them if they had existed, nor will those
who have entered into his mind pay much heed to

48 TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE.

them. The superior knowledge of Christ did not
pertain to such questions. His use, by way of il-
lustration, of a name or an incident settles no tech-
nical question that may be raised in regard to it ;
he simply used it as he found it. But the way in
which he used any character or incident does settle
the moral element or truth involved in the character
or incident. For example, Christ here refers to
Jonah, but his reference does not indicate how the
book of Jonah is to be interpreted, — whether it is
to be regarded as historical, or parabolic, or poet-
ical, or mythical, — yet it does confirm and indorse
the moral truth involved in the story. He swept
past the formal questions that might be raised as
to literal accuracy, and struck for the spiritual
truth contained in them, w^hich does not depend
upon literal accuracy. Why think of small ques-
tions when there are large ones at hand ? It would
be well to imitate him in this respect.

It is curious to observe the subtle contrast Christ
makes between Jonah and Solomon. The Scribes
and Pharisees say to him, " Master, we would see a
sign from thee ; " and they would prefer one from
heaven, some stupendous and outflashing miracle,
— a portent in the sky forerunning some event, the
sun standing still, the stars turned back in their
courses, the clouds moving at his word. Then they
would believe on him. A natural request, it may
be thought, and one still made. These Scribes, and
those who now repeat it, do not see that thus they
put themselves on the level of the heathen who
build their faith on external signs. The apparent

TRUTH THROUGH AND BY UFK. 49

miracle is the basis of all religions till we come to
Christ, but all the generations they taught were
wicked and adulterous. A religion so founded and
forced into men from the outside, cannot make them
better ; it may control them, but it cannot change
and mould them into goodness. Christ turns on
them with an emphasis borrowed from his own deep
insight rather than from their dull perception, and
says, Why do you ask for any other signs than those
I have given you? I have preached the gospel to
the poor ; I have done works of saving mercy and
redeeming love ; I have preached repentance ; I
have enthroned love amongst you and will lift it
still higher, for I shall die and rise again for its vin-
dication. These signs, wrought on the earth and not
in the sky, before your hearts and not before your
eyes, are all I shall give, because they are all that
will do you good, all that reveal my power and attest
that I came from the Father. In illustration, he
refers them to their own Scriptures, and says, My
sign is like Jonah's. He preached repentance ; that
was his sign ; it is also mine. He came to his work
of deliverance after an imprisonment like that of
the tomb ; I shall come to the crowning vindication
of my work from the grave. As Jonah's experience
was linked to his preaching of repentance, so my
resurrection will be for the comfort and the justifi-
cation of those who believe on me. Neither Jonah's
imprisonment nor my resurrection has any meaning
as a sign apart from its moral purpose. Christ thus
illustrated himself through Jonah. He did not com-
mit himself to the details of Jonah's history, but
simply pierced their meaning.

50 TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE.

But on what a height does it place that much-
scoffed at bit of Hebrew Scripture ! Mockers hold
it up to contempt and blind zealots urge its literal
truth, — both wrong and equally oblivious of its
profound meaning. To both, Jonah in the whale's
belly is the main thing, but Jonah led by God to
his duty of preaching repentance, and foreshadowing
the supreme truth of universal divine mercy, is over-
looked. Christ chose him out of moral sympathy
to illustrate himself.

Not thus did he treat Solomon. A keen critic,
had one been present, might have detected an ap-
parently invidious comparison between the humblest
of the prophets and the greatest of the kings. Sol-
omon was the ideal king of the Jewish nation ; he
stood for its highest conception and embodied its
highest hopes. Solomon was David's son, and the
Messiah would be David's son ; they would be sim-
ilar. The long, peaceful, brilliant, and powerful
reign of that monarch was like that wdiich should
come. His wisdom was of the sort that delighted
the oriental mind, — ethical, prudential, keen, and
reverent. His piety was that of the ritual, and did
not exclude the highest degree of present and imme-
diate enjoyment. Thus Solomon stood before the
Jews, but Christ seems to have had little liking for
him. He mentions him but twice, and then in terms
of unfavorable contrast. His glory, when put on to
the full, was not equal to that of the Syrian rose by
the wayside. Something of a shock he must have
given to the conventional ideas of those who had
sounded the glory of Solomon for a thousand years .'

TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE. 51

But underneath lurks a low estimate of Solomon :
his glory was of a sort Christ did not believe in ;
the lily that purpled the fields had a truer glory be-
cause it reflected the glory of him who made it. So
here, while allowing a certain wisdom to Solomon
that drew a curious stranger from afar, he unhesi-
tatingly asserts his own as superior and himself as
greater. Christ does not here contrast Solomon with
himself as the conscious Messiah, but because his
teachino' was truer and his kinodom had the elements
of a better glory. There is an undertone of slight
regard and rejection, that the disciples seem to have
caught, for his name is never mentioned again. He
is not named in the heroical and saintly list in He-
brews, nor does he appear in the stupendous sym-
bolism of the Apocah^pse. Both he and his reign
represent the ease and external glory of the nation,
— not the struggles by which it achieved them.
Neither he nor his reign stands for any great truth,
or moral principle, or spiritual purpose.

We will now inquire in what respects Christ was
greater than Solomon.

Christ, as I said, was not forcing his Messiahship
on the people ; he did not teach this by assertion
apart from truth that revealed it. He did not set
his Messianic character over against one who could
not have had it if he would • that would have been
like the triumph of a mountain over a hillock, or of
the head over the hand. He is making a compar-
ison that rebukes those who are before him. And
what was their fault ? They failed to recognize the
truth when they heard it : they failed to see in

52 TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE.

Christ's works a revelation of God ; and they had a
false conception of wisdom and of greatness. The
men of Nineveh understood when they heard a
preacher of repentance, but you do not, though I
preach it more plainly. The queen of the south
came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom
of Solomon, but I bring a profounder wisdom, and
you do not recognize it. In the judgment, these
heathen will condemn you, — you who read the
preaching of Jonah and the Proverbs of Solomon.
The comparison turns on the points in which it was
possible for Solomon and himself to be compared,
not on his own nature or official character.

We will contrast them only as teachers.

The Proverbs could not well be spared from the
Bible nor dropped out of the life of the world. A
proverb is the condensed wisdom of long experience.
When men have found out that a principle or habit
is true and right, some wise man puts it into a brief,
epigrammatic form that is easily remembered, and
so always ready for use. It becomes a sort of guide
or law, ready at hand, by which men decide con-
duct ; and so used its value is great. It appeals to
common sense and intuition, and saves the necessity
of argument and reflection and special examina-
tion of each case. Take the most familiar of all :
" Honesty is the best policy." No one questions it ;
if one is tempted to dishonesty, it is ready with its
imperative lesson. If a man is wavering, it besieges
him with its irresistible wisdom, and draws him
back from his own sophistry. It has all the force of
all the ages of experience ; it is the universal verdict

TRUTH THROUGH AND Bi' LIFE. 53

of mankind. It does more to keep men lionest than
all tlio laws that ever were made. But if it has
value, it also has defect, and the defect api)lies to
nearly all proverbs. It is a rule, and rules do not
create character. A man might obey this proverb
forever and not be an honest man ; he acts honestly,
but he may not be honest. For the most part, prov-
erbs prescribe conduct, but do not furnish a full and
proper motive. Now, conduct is of immense impor-
tance, and is the constant attendant of character, but
it falls short of character. Hence proverbs most
abound and are chiefly used in early stages of society
and by untrained minds. There are few of recent
origin, and the cultured mind seldom uses them.
They are the alphabet of morals ; they are usually
but half truths, and they seldom contain the principle
of the action they teach. They are commonly pru-
dential, watch-words and warnings, and so lean to-
wards a selfish view of life. These remarks apply
only in part to the Proverbs of Solomon, because
he threw into them all the fear of God and all
the religious knowledge that his nation possessed;
many of them reach a long way towards the Ser-
mon on the Mount, and some touch the deepest
springs of the human heart. They are of highest
use, and ought to be read and re-read for their
wisdom, their broad interpretation of life, and their
ethical value. Especially ought the young, with
whom conduct comes first, to study them. They
are strong in the warnings they sound against in-
dulgence of the passions, — lust, anger, pride, env}^,
drunkenness. They protest against lying and cheat-

54 TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE.

ing and bribing and every form of social unright-
eousness. They touch tenderly on the family and
press its duties. They bear down heavily on folly of
all sorts, the idle, tale-bearing, senseless tongue, and
many of them are " rods for a fool's back." They
insist on truth and simplicity and justice and modera-
tion, on humility and patience and charity and kind-
ness. Everywhere they exalt wisdom and identify
it with goodness, and their universal characteristic
is common sense. They are also reverential and
abound in mention of God. For practical wisdom
and as daily guides of conduct, there are no other
utterances of truth comparable with them. Jf they
were heeded and obeyed, they would bring the in-
dividual, the family, the community, the nation, into
a state of ideal perfection. Their lack is that they
have no power to turn into living, moulding energy,
They simply state truth, and prescribe conduct.
They are impersonal, and have no living force to
drive them home. Truth has little power except as
it comes from a person who adequately represents it.
Plence you will never have a supreme truth at work
in the world until a supreme person utters it and
vindicates it in his life. These Proverbs of Solomon
were spoken to an age that swept past them into
destruction. Why did the people not heed them ?
Because there was no personal force and incarnation
of them behind them. The author himself violated
many of them, and drew others out of his own bitter
experience. Truth must be incarnated in a just
representative in order to be pow^erful. This is the
weakness of the Proverbs viewed as effective agents,

TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE. 55

they are without incarnation. Truth cannot save a
man nor a world ; only a person can do that. The
world is flooded with truth and always has been, but
how powerless ! Truth ! it is the commonest thing.
It cries in the street and from the housetop. There
are thousands of books full of it ; thousands of
teachers who are all the while declaring it. It is
wrought into systems by the philosophers ; it echoes
from the measures of the poets ; it sparkles upon the
pages of the essayists — Plutarch and Bacon and
Montaigne and Emerson ; it drops from the daily
speech of all men, and all men everywhere confess
it : but the world pays small heed to its multitudinous
voice, — offering an outward homage, but pressing
on in paths of greed and passion and ambition and
falsehood, knowing truth but never wise. Truth is
not indeed without influence and inspiring force, but
how incommensurate with its clearness and its uni-
versality ! And whatever influence it has is chiefly
of a prudential sort ; it plays about the surface of
life, repressing or enforcing conduct, but creating
no fountain of life. Truth must be grounded in a
person and be vindicated in life : then it becomes a
reality ; then it appeals to men ; then it flows along
its divinely created channel, — from life to life,
from heart to heart, from spirit to spirit.

These thoughts enable us to compare Solomon and
Christ as teachers. We search in vain amongst the
Proverbs for the man who uttered them, and we
search the man in vain for the profound practical
wisdom that dropped from his lips, — a man teaching
humility and simplicity but fond of pomp and glory,

56 TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE.

reverent and believing but lapsing into idolatry,
urging domestic virtues but lacking in their prac-
tice, full of v/ise, healthy speech but himself misan-
thropic, teaching a way of life he did not follow,
driven to God at last by failure, and not brought to
him along the path of rectitude that he so clearly
discerned. Hence his truth went out naked into the
world, and weighted by his failure to realize it in
himself. He gets at truth on its negative side, by
an experience of its opposite, and not by a direct,
positive appropriation of it.

Turn now to Christ. We can match nearly every
precept of Christ with a like one from Solomon.
Why does it not appeal to us with equal force?
First, Christ had a single, solid background for his
truth, — God the Father, — while Solomon spoke from
an observation of human life, or rather of the
world as it goes. Hence Christ's truth wore an eter-
nal character and was as the voice of God himself ;
it was absolute ; it came from above, and was not
picked up here and there. Christ stood upon the
earth and looked abroad and up into heaven, and
repeated the one word of God he heard. His teach-
ing had unity and divine emphasis and power ; it
was a revelation of the mind of God. But Solomon,
gifted indeed with an ethical discernment that justifies
his distinction as " the wisest man," sat on his throne
and looked about him, translating the conduct and
histories of men into their equivalents in language.
The wisdom of one is from above ; that of the other
is from the world and wears everywhere a mundane
cast. One speaks with indisputable authority ; the

TKUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE. 57

other but shows man to himself, and in such a reve-
hition there is no redeeming power ; the stream will
not float one above its fountain. It may seem
strange that two precepts, stating the same truth,
equally well phrased, should not have equal power.
It is because the power of truth lies chiefly in its
source. For truth has not in itself a propelling
power commensurate to the resistance it meets in
human nature ; wisdom is no match for passion.
Truth must come to men weighted and charged with
outside energy ; and the only power that men uni-
versally and unquestionably heed is the power of
God. Hence Christ referred his teachings directly
to the Father; his words were not his own, but w^ere
given him of the Father. Thus they had all the
commanding power, the absolute truth, the infinite
appeal, the sovereign authority of God. This was
not a mere claim of Christ's, a shrewd trick, like the
Delphic and Memnonian oracles, to win attention ;
it was the outcome of his divine consciousness, and
was so clearly attested that the whole world has
confessed its reality ; for whatever be thought of the
person of Christ, none will deny that his words were
divine.

There is also a wide unlikeness in the tone of their
teachings, especially if the book of Ecclesiastes is
referred to Solomon. This book stands in the Bible
rather as a warning than a guide, telling us how not
to think of life. It echoes the universal voice of
mankind as it interprets itself by its own light :
life is a puzzle ; good and evil are inextricably min-
gled ; time and chance have sway ; there is one end

58 TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE,

to all alike ; all is vanity and vexation of spirit. So
has the book of life been read in all ages, — from
Job to Hamlet, from Solomon to Goethe ; and the
wisest conclusions are. Trust God and wait ; forget
destiny in action. Both are wise, but they do not
lift the burden from the heart nor take perplexity
out of the mind. Under such an interpretation of
life, men are left to themselves, and so either walk
prudently amongst the shadows, or eat and drink in
their to-day, or curse God in pessimistic despair.

Christ's teachings are the contrast to this. Life is
no puzzle to him ; it presents no question. There is
no " time and chance " in his words. Good does
not die out into evil, life does not sink away into
vanity. Everywhere and always there is one clear,
unvarying note sounding an eternal distinction be-
tween good and evil, declaring life to be good and a
path to blessedness. It is not a phantasm, nor a
play of illusions, nor a doubtful struggle, nor a pro-
cess of vanity. It is not something to be inter-
preted by sibylline leaves scattered on the winds and
burned by fire. It is not the riddle of a sphinx, a
guess involving destiny. It is not something that
passes with immeasurable gradations towards Nir-
vana, the nothing or the all. Christ's treatment of
life contrasts with that of Plato, who finds its reali-
zation in beautiful dreams of ideal conditions ; and
with that of the dramatists, who picture it held down
under destiny ; and Avith that of the moralists, who
put it under a bare theory of endurance or enjoy-
ment. His view of life is simple, but it covers it ;
it is clear, but clear because his sky is full of light ;

TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIKE. 59

it is not only without question, but without the sus-
picion of it ; it is not only without doubt or uncer-
tainty, but it seems not to know them. It is the
reverse of the conception of life as a contending
play between doubt and hope, and, while a truly hu-
man and natural view, it becomes divine by the ab-
sence of all human limitations and weaknesses, and
is full of the yea and amen of absolute vision.

God is the Father ; men are his children ; the pure
in heart see him ; the meek inherit the earth ; love
is the one duty, hate the one evil ; struggle is not
in vain ; suffering has its recompense ; evil does not
triumph and is not eternal ; sorrow and sacrifice are
real but joy is above them. The kingdom of heaven
is the only reality, and Satan may be trampled un-
der foot. Nowhere in Christ's words do we discover
any balancing of probable and improbable, any sense
of mystery, any question as to the meaning of life,
any perplexity as to duty, any doubt of the reality
of things, of their source or character or purpose or
end. His view of life is that of a child and also
that of God ; simple as that of a child and incon-
trovertible as that of Omniscience. It is this over-
whelming positiveness, this uniformity of assertion,
swaying neither way under the pressure of events,
this single and yet universal interpretation of life,
that puts him in contrast not only with Solomon, but
with all other teachers. Christ alone explains life
and harmonizes it.

There is another contrast between these two teach-
ers ; one made but small personal vindication oi his
teaching, while the other brought his life into ideal
harmony with all that he taught.

60 TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE.

In certain prudential and practical matters of
state policy, Solomon illustrated his teachings, but
he did not cast himself upon their moral principles.
He was a man of keen insight and ready wit, pro-
foundly reflective, reverent in spirit, and broad in
his views of life. He saw clearly that the nation
was founded in righteousness ; he well understood
the secret of his father's reign, and started out in
the same path of righteous and reverent energy, but
rather in the way of imitation and by hereditary
propulsion. He relied mainly on resources already
provided, and simply guided the nation along the
path of power on which it had entered. In scope
of mind he was greater than David, but he lacked
his energy and moral force and lofty devotion. His
character was not equal to the temptations it met.
He saw all manner of folly, wickedness, wrong, mis-
take, and set them down in solemn or stinging epi-
grams, but did not throw himself as a personal force
into the evil in order to overcome it. He was a
critic but not a reformer, a commentator on life but
not a leader in it. He illustrates a common mistake,
— the mistake of the mere thinker and moralist who
utters his word and trusts to its inherent efficacy for
results, — the mistake of those who do not follow
precept with example, who preach crusades but stay
at home, who discourse upon life but withhold them-
selves from the struggle of it. It is a mistake be-
cause it violates the inmost meaning of life as a real
process in the world. For life is not a set of propo-
sitioft.s, nor a series of ideas, nor a congeries of re-
lated truths, but is a process of action ; it is truth

TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE. 61

at work, truth impersonated and vindicating its re-
ality through actual struggle and endurance and
victory. Life is achievement, and truth does its
work only under that conception. If life were not
this, — that is, a process of achievement, — there
would have been no occasion for a real world ; an
existence of mere ideas or perceptions, or of pure
mind without body or world, would have answered
as well. One who utters truth and does not incar-
nate it in consistent action ignores the central prin-
ciple of creation. Life is to be lived and truth is
to be won by a process, nor can it have power in
any other way. Divorced from life, it is simply a
soul without an upholding and inclosing body ; it is
the absolute without the eternally necessary relative.
When we turn to Christ, we find a teacher who
taught mainly by his life, and relied upon nothing
else to vindicate his truth : his life was his teaching ;
he himself was the truth. So entirely and abso-
lutely was this his method that he provided no other
channel, making no book, employing no scribe, sel-
dom appealing to the memory of his hearers for the
preservation of his words, but always to his works
and life. He spoke the Sermon on the Mount, and
then went up and down Galilee illustrating it. The
miracles were but the acting out of the truths he
had received from God ; his method was the method
of God; the Father worked perpetually, and he
worked. His teaching was no second-hand process ;
he did not content himself with teaching teachers,
but turned truth straight into life. There is not a
positive utterance of Christ's but is expressed in

62 TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE.

action ; not a duty enjoined but he did it ; not a
feeling urged but he felt it; not a hope imparted
but he reposed on it ; not a principle urged but he
illustrated it.

There are certain truths essential to salvation, —
consecration to God, a life of the Spirit, love through
sacrifice, resurrection from the dead, and life eternal.
Christ taught them by action, in his own person.
We do not have these truths on the authority of his
words ; we have them on the authority of his life.
He was baptized to signify his consecration ; he
opened himself to the Spirit and was filled with it ;
his whole life was a ministry of love by sacrifice ;
and in order to plant this central truth undyingly
in the hearts of the world, he first acted it out in
symbols of broken bread, and poured out wine — a
vain and inconsistent thing in itself, — and then
went out and suffered his body to be broken and
his blood to be shed on the cross. To teach resur-
rection and future life, he rose from the dead and
ascended alive into the heavens. Not to have died
and risen again and ascended, would have taken
unity out of his life as a teacher, and left him a weak
and inconsistent figure on the page of history.

There is a marked avoidance by Christ of all
methods of teacliing except this one of personal
action. It is a characteristic that goes to the very
foundations, and holds up the whole structure of
Christianity. In this, Christ is true to himself as
the manifestation of God ; for what do we know of
God except by his works, and how shall Christ
manifest God truly except by works ? It goes fur-

TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFK. G3

tlier still, and accords with creation as an actual
and not an ideal process. It is a confirmation of
human life as a reality, through which alone truth
can be realized. In simpler words, it is an assertion
that the meaning, the value, the truth of life can be
gained only by an actual performance of its duties ;
and it is a denial that truth can be learned and the
soul saved in any other way. A man cannot be
taught, or lectured, or preached, or inspired, either
into a knowledge of truth or into salvation. He
must give himself in actual consecration to God ; he
must suffer himself to be led by the Spirit ; he must
die on the cross with Christ, and then he may hope
to rise with him and enter into life everlasting.

It is in such a light as this that Christ stands out
the supreme teacher. Not only does his life vindi-
cate his truth, but it is the truth, and with what
tremendous reality is it taught I

What are words, precepts, syllogisms, pictures,
appeals, commands ; what are eloquence, poetry,
music, art, beside this living way, this way of truth
lived out through all its steps of struggle, and endur-
ance, and faith, and death, till it ended in the joy
thus, and thus only, to be achieved ?

The lesson is beyond expression practical. We
know no truth except by action. We can teach no
vital truth except through the life. We cannot at-
tain to the eternal joy except as we walk step by
step in that path of actual duty and performance in
which he walked, who so gained its fullness and sat
down at the right hand of the Father.

LIFE NOT VANITY.

" It must be some Divine Efflux running' qiiite through our Souls,
awakening- and exalting all the vital powers of them into an active
sympathy with some Absolute g^ood, that renders us completely
blessed. It is not to sit gazing upon a Deity by some thin specula-
tions ; but it is an inward feeling and sensation of this Mighty Good-
ness displaying itself within us, melting our fierce and furious
natures, that would fain be something in contradiction to God, into
an universal Compliance with itself, and Avrapping up our amorous
minds wholly into itself, whereby God comes to be all in all to us. ' '
— Dr. John Smith.

" I am heartily sorry for those persons who are constantly talk-
ing of the perishable nature of things and the nothingness of human
life ; for, for this very end we are here, to stamp the perishable with
an imperishable worth ; and this can only be done by taking a just
estimate of both." — Goethe.

"The angel of righteousness is delicate and modest, and meek
and quiet. Take from thyself grief, for it is the sister of doubt and
ill temper. Grief is more evil than all the spirits, and is most
dreadful to the servants of God, and beyond all spirits destroyeth
man. For, as when good news has come to any one in grief, straight-
way he forgetteth his former grief, and no longer attendeth to any-
thing except the good news which he hath heard, so do ye, also !
having received a renewal of your spirit through the beholding of
these good things. Put on, therefore, gladness, that hath always
favor before God, and is acceptable unto him, and delight thyself
in it ; for every man that is glad doeth the things that are good, and
thinketh good thoughts, despising grief. ' ' — Shepherd of Hennas,

LIFE NOT VANITY.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my
life ; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. — Psalm
xxiii, 6.

The phrase of the poet, that '' this wise worhl is
mainly right," has no better iUustration than the use
it makes of this twenty-third Psahn. There is no
other form of words which it hokls so dear, save per-
haps the Lord's Prayer ; but if that has a superior
majesty, this has a deeper tenderness ; if one is
divine, the other is perfectly human, and its " touch
of nature makes the whole world kin."

It was undoubtedly v/ritten by David, having all
the marks of the man upon it ; not while he was a
shepherd-boy, but after an experience of life, and per-
liaps during the very stress of it. For a shepherd-
boy does not sing of flocks and pastures, even if he
be a true poet, but of things that he has dreamed
yet not seen^ imagined but not realized. Hence,
youthful poetry is of things afar off, while the poetry
of men is of things near at hand and close to their
life, — the daisies under their feet, and the hills that
rise from their doors. The young, when they ex-
press themselves, are full of sentimentality ; that is,

68 LIFE NOT VANITY.

feeling not yet turned into reality under experience ;
but there is no sentimentality liere, — only solid wis-
dom, won by experience and poured out as feeling.
The shepherd-boy becomes a warrior and king ; life
presses hard on him ; he covers it in its widest ex-
tremes, tastes all its joy and bitterness ; his heart is
full and empty ; he loves and loses ; he is hunted
like a partridge and he rules over nations ; he digs
deep pits for himself into which he falls, but rises
out of them and soars to heaven. His nature was
broad and apparently contradictory, and every phase
of his character, every impulse of his heart, had its
outward history. Into but few lives was so 'much
life crowded ; few have touched it at so many points,
for he not only passed through vast changes of for-
tune, but he had a life of the heart and of the spirit
correspondingly* vast and various ; and so his experi-
ence of life may be said to be universal, a thing that
cannot be said of Caesar or Napoleon, — men whose
lives outwardly correspond to his. Hence, wdien
some stress of circumstance w^as heavy upon him and
faith rose superior to it, or perchance when the whole
lesson of life had been gone over and he grasped its
full meaning, he sang this hymn of faith and con-
tent. He sought the frame-work of his thought in his
boyhood, — those fresh days when he led his sheep
into pastures that were green, and by waters that
were still. For a fine nature is always going back
to its youth, won towards the innocence and sim-
plicity it has known and partly lost, and thus assur-
ing itself that they are an eternal possession to be
gained again. We go back to youthhood because

LIFK NOT VANITY. 69

there is a youth before us. The race of life is a
circle ; its early days are a goal to which, as well as
from which, we press, seeking their joy, their free-
dom, their innocence, their insensibility to time, their
harmony with the things that are. What, then, is
the gain if we come back to our starting-point?
Only in learning that these things are realities, turn-
ing them into the bone and sinew of compact human
life, taking them from their source in God and weav-
ing them into a conscious personality.

Once before, also, this king, whose life sjiread be-
tween a harp and a sword, recurred, in the same
poetic w^ay, to his j^outh. When shut in a hold, near
his birthplace, by the Philistines, and condemned to
weary inactivity, he yearns for the water of the well
by the gate where he had watered his flocks, and
he himself had drank in the light of the eyes of
the Hebrew^ maidens. Who has not felt the same,
— longed in some weary moment of heavy labor or
fretful care for the shade of the trees that overspread
him in childhood, for the w^ater that gushed from the
spring, for the patter of the rain on the roof, when
the night brought no darkness and life had no
shadow ? " Cherish the dreams of thy youth," says
the ancient sage. Life is going wrong wdth us if the
hard present crowds out the memory of the early
past. Keep alive thy youth, for it may be won
back!

This Psalm of reminiscence is not simply a leap
over intervening years into the first of them, b' »

• 1 . 1 .... . xlCl SUI-

startmo^ thence w^ith a metaphor, it is a review^ o ■, ■, .
, ^ . ^ . . . . . 1 and his

and an estimate oi it ; it is an interpretation c

70 LIFE NOT VANITY.

On looking it over and summing it up, the author
states his view of life ; Ms life, indeed, but what man
ever had a better right to pronounce on life in gen-
eral? If life is evil, he certainly ought to have
known it. If life is good, he had abundant chance
to prove it by tasting it in all its widest variety. We
are not to read these words of flowing sweetness as
we listen to soothing music, a lullaby in infancy and
a death-song in age, but as a judgment on human
life. It is Oriental, but it is logical ; it is objective,
but it goes to the centre ; it is simple, but it is uni-
versal ; it is one life, but it may be all lives. It is
not the picture of life as allotted and necessary, but
as achieved. Live your life aright and interpret it
aright, and see if it is not what you find here.

Let us search out the various notes of this Psalm ;
I think we shall find them uniting in a harmony
that is jubilant.

It may be said broadly that it is an utterance of
cheer.

The writer is satisfied that life is good, and is so to

be spoken of. He is not insensible to its heavy and

dark side, but he defies it in a certain way. He may

walk in the very shadow of death, as he had often

done and as all do, but he will fear no evil. Death

is a fearful thing, but the fear of it, not death, is the

evil. It is an orderly thing, a part of the leading of

the good Shepherd. We are not forsaken when we

^"^ die, but are led still. The lambs of our human

plici>(j]jg are not left untended when they enter this

ing itsTowy realm, but are folded in his bosom ; they

gained h not to us, but we go to them. He gets into

LIFE NOT VANITY. 71

many a dark valley, as we all do, — disappointments
that cloud him, losses that make effort seem vain,
strifes that overtax strength, treacheries that breed
despair, failures that beget disgust, temptations that
beguile into hideous sin, false loves and true, and
each ending in sorrow. As subject, and king, and
husband, and father, and brother, and kinsman, and
ev'Cn in his relations to God, this man had experi-
ences that were enough to lead him to throw up the
game of life as lost, but they did not so work in him.
He pressed through their first meaning and influence
to their real significance. With a brave and patient
heart and a regal will — both oj^en to the Spirit of
God — he pushed on and worked his way through,
never losing sight of the guiding rod and comforting
staff of his divine Shepherd. And so, at last, these
experiences change color and begin to seem to him
good ; they so work in and harmonize him that his
whole nature is full of gladness.

There is also in this Psalm a tone of triumph.
He has eaten from spread tables of bounty before his
enemies ; they do not fret him nor break the peace-
ful current of his life. This wise man learned that
highest of all arts, — how to bear himself towards his
enemies. Enemies he necessarily had, as every strong
man, who lives a full life, must have. One cannot
touch life at many points and do a man's work in
the world without arousing more or less of what may
be called enmity, — criticism, jealousy, misrepresen-
tation, slander, contempt, ostracism. David was no
weakling w^io sat down before his enemies and suf-
fered them to do what they would with him and his

72 LIFE NOT VANITY.

kingdom ; lie thwarted and punished where he justly
might, and bore the rest patiently, passing by the
greater part with lofty indifference. Nor is any man
required to ignore enmity. We have a personality,
an influence, a character, a work, to guard and keep
clear. It is not the part of truth and of true men to
leave an open path for evil and evil men. Pharisees
are to be burned in fires of their own kindling ; Sad-
ducees are to be silenced ; Satan is to be trampled
under foot. Truth is not an impersonal thing, and
life is not a play of generalities. It is a personal
world, and the contact of good and evil is personal,
and therefore it breeds enmity and compels conflict.
Forbearance, patience, and indifference, are indeed
the greater part of our duty before enmity, but never
dull acquiescence, and often relentless war. All de-
pends on the question and the issue at stake. We
may suffer personally, but we have no right to let
truth suffer. Christ allowed the Pharisees to crucify
him, but never for one moment did he cease in his
conflict against them. He forgave those who nailed
him to the cross, — not knowing what they did, —
but he never forgave the traitors to the truth. When
we make this distinction and keep personal feeling
in abeyance, enmity is not so hard a thing to bear.
Rather, in a superior man, it begets a sort of ecstasy.
He walks his way amidst averted faces in triumph ;
one with God is a majority ; legions of unseen angels
keep him company ; and the kingdom will surely
come.

David also puts into this Psalm a spirit of content
and satisfaction. His cup is full and runs over ; his

LIFE NOT VANIir. 73

head is perfumed with the oil of gladness ; goodness
and mercy follow him every day of his life. So it has
been and so it shall be ; he has been in God's house
from the first, and there he will stay forever. Life
is good to him ; it is not vanity, nor a lie, nor a dis-
solving vision, but a solid and true thing, full of joy
and peace. But the man who thinks so did not
reach this conclusion because he was a king. What
other king ever spoke words like these? He was
not insensible to his outward career, but it was not
the gold of his crown nor the power of his scejitre
that gave him content. Such things do not work in
this way. What we term success, — alas ! it is now
about our only conception of it, — namel}', getting
money, may be an element of contentment, but only
as oxygen is an element of vital air. It burns up
contentment unless mixed and tempered by other ele-
ments. Not from without, but evermore from the
heart, are the issues of life. When there is peace
and order within, an honest conscience, a true hu-
mility, a sincere contrition, a clear mind, a trained
judgment, a benevolent spirit, a brave will, a pro-
found faith, there may be a full contentment. I
know that it is hard to go without, hard to be stripped
of gains, hard to face age in poverty, and no man
should who can properly avoid it. " This wise world
is mainly right," and putting that thing we call sub-
stance or wealth between one's self and the world
is a good part of the business of life. But there is
something that every wise man, in these days, needs
to learn more than how to get rich, and that is how
to go without riches. All the energies of the age

71 LIFE NOT VANITY.

are being sucked into this vortex, and mind for
mind's sake, learning for learning's sake, art and
science and the nobler ideals of faith, — these are
going by default. Contentment, personal peace, na-
tional prosperity, will not come by this fullness of
bread that we are seeking.

This Psalm also may be said to take a healthy
view of life.

It is used and well used as a word for the dying,
but there is not a morbid note in it. It is full of
strong, calm, steady life, life that is sound and nor-
mal, and that is why the dying lean upon it ; it puts
the cup of life afresh to their lips.

It is an utterance specially fitted for these days
when life is suspected, questioned if it is good,
if the game is worth the candle, if the Preacher's
vanity of vanities is not its real key, if earnestness
and devotion and reality are not dreams of a mis-
taken past. The age undoubtedly runs to sadness ;
to pleasure, indeed, and therefore to sadness, for plea-
sure comes to an end ; to excitement, and therefore
again to sadness, for excitement tires and reacts ; to
strife and incessant toil, and therefore still more to
sadness, for these forces spend themselves, and leave
mind and heart without a vocation. Philosophy
finds evil, and, knowing not what to do with it,
curses God in pessimistic despair. Literature catches
its tone and settles into hard realism, or floats away
into sentimentality, reflecting the two moods of so-
ciety. Science faces a dissolving world, and, see-
ing no other, drives men to that saddest of all con-
clusions, "Let us eat and driuK, for to- morrow we

LIKK NOT VANITY. 75

die." It is said that disease tends to a tyi)li()id or
low type, and intellectual and social health seems to
share in the same tendency. Life is hurried, rest-
less, tired ; it tends to despondency. The poets are
sad and self-conscious ; the look is introsjiective, to
the small world of s(df, and not to the great world
outside. The thought of the day is analytic, taking
in pieces this framework of man and society that we
are, and not synthetic, creating anew in thought the
cosmos of the eternal order ; hence our minds are
held down to the partial or seeming evil, and not
lifted to the universal good for which all things work
together. Analyze man or society, and you will find
enough evil, but ]^ut them together, set man in all
his relations, get down to the resultant of the forces
of society, and you will catch sight of a total good.

The materialism of the age helps on this tendency
to sadness. The economists are telling us that the
main thing is to prosper, to get money, to improve
our condition, and by all means to "get on." This
is success, — to be rich, to live in ceiled houses and
wear fine raiment and fare sumptuously every day.
But this path is thorny and steep and full of pit-
falls, and so, after stumbling on for a time we find
ourselves pierced through with many sorrows and
wallowing in deep pits of failure, — for not all can
come to Dives' table, — we begin to complain and to
charge our disappointment to the world we are in.
It is a rough world ; stretch me no longer on its rack.
I thought I was to ride through life, and here I am
plodding along the dusty way with weary feet. I
thought I was to reap rich success ; the wise told me

76 LIFE NOT VANITY.

how, and lo ! my hands are empty ; the world is bad
and life is a delusion. Nor do the rich fare much
better. The walls are fair, the cushions are easy,
the linen is fine, the table is bountiful, but Dives is
not happy. When men mistake life, the discovery
of the mistake breeds sadness ; mistake is essential
sadness.

The fresh liberty of modern times just now works in
the same direction. Whatever else tyranny and fixed
custom did for or against men, it held them steady ;
it kept them to rigid and close ways of living, and
the very necessity bred a sort of peace and content.
But modern liberty and independence, modern indi-
vidualism, open to every man the way to all the mis-
takes he is capable of ; his freedom has not yet been
moulded by intelligence and long experience. Hence,
on every hand we see the sad tokens of unguided
life. It will work itself clear in time, but mean-
while it is turbid with half-knowledge and ill-used
privilege. Never before was there such prosperity.
What an age and what a country is this I How
good our houses, how fine our clothing, how gen-
erous our food, what art for our eyes, what music
for our ears, what comfort in travel, what ease at
home ! Our whole external life, — how safe and
orderly and well-proportioned ! But it has no cor-
responding zest ; it fades for most of us and changes
color long before its autumn ; it grows insipid and
sinks into low estimate ; its psalm is not keyed to
joy, but wails in minor strains ; our cup does not
run over ; goodness and mercy do not follow us from
day to day with their conscious blessing. This

LIFE NOT VANITY. 77

Psalm of David's is the reverse of this : it covers
all our clays, but it is cheerful ; it takes in death
and trouble, but it is not morbid ; it embraces pros-
perity, but there is no reaction of satiety, no weari-
ness or disgust.

But such a view of life must have its root in some-
thing' that feeds it ; it proceeds upon something ;
there are causes and forces that shape the conclu-
sion. Let us see what they are.

It presents life as under God. The Lord is my
Shepherd. Man is not a wild beast in a solitary
den, with no friend but nature and no law but its
own ravening appetite ; he belongs to a higher order
that has its life under a personal Will ; he lives in
relations to a superior Mind and Heart.

Freedom is a good thing, but it is freedom under
law and a Law-giver ; peace comes by obedience.
Individualism may be the goal of human destiny ;
man is to become a king, but a king unto God, a
priest at his own altar and to all humanity, but first
and evermore unto God. Man will not rule over
himself and have peace in the dominion of his soul
except as he bows under an eternal sceptre. He
will never be a servant of humanity except as he is
the servant of God. Man is not happy in himself,
but only in God. '^ Thou hast made us, and we
have no peace till we have it in thee." This ecstatic
cry of Augustine is soundest logic. Being made by
God and set in relations to him, we do not know
ourselves, nor can we adjust ourselves to our rela-
tions until we know God. David's life could be

78 LIFE NOT VANITY.

turned into a psalm of peaceful content, because
God was over it, and a guiding Shepherd throughout
it. Such a fact makes room for the play of trust,
without which life is a sad perplexity. For I can-
not understand life ; I cannot of myself find out
why I am, nor whence I came, nor for what end ; I
cannot ex^jlain why this and that happen to me ; I
may see some cause, but no full reason or end ; a
cause is not a reason. By myself I am lost in this
world, without paths except the circles of a clueless
labyrinth, without stars of guidance except such as
wander across the heavens, without light except that
which only deepens the darkness. Now in such a
state as this, I must either stray through life in sad
perjilexity, or I must trust God for a way. In such
trust the most painful features of life, its mystery, its
seeming vanity, its pain and burden and disappoint-
ment, its untimely end, its mischance, its inevitable
contact with evil, lose their force. I am not bound
to explain them; I may refer them to God, upon
whom is the responsibility. I need not bear them
in their naked form as evil, but in trusting God I
trust a greater encompassing good, and may there-
fore believe that they are shaped for good. For
only in a small sense do we make our lives; they
are made for us. I am put within certain bounds
of time, place, parentage, society, and this environ-
ment is by far the largest part of my life. I have
liberty within it, enough to make me accountable,
but I touch the inclosing walls every moment, and
their binding constraint seems to me only evil until
I can say, " God put them about me and for some
good end."

LIFE NOT VANITY. 71)

This matter goes very deep and touches every one
of us in a practical way, being simply the question
whether we shall solve the problems, bear the bur-
dens, and endure the evil of life alone, or whether
we shall refer them to him who gave us life and
put us where we are.

This Psalm takes what may be called the synthetic
view of life ; that is, it regards it as a whole. It is
not an analysis of life, dividing it up, setting each
part and feature by itself, counting certain things
good and certain evil, marking some days with red
letters and others with black. It gives life instead
a certain cast of universality ; it makes it all one ;
the Lord is always leading it as a shejiherd ; good-
ness and mercy follow it continually ; it is forever
in God's house. It would have been a sad and fool-
ish thing for David, as it is for any man, to set
about analyzing his life ; it could not bear the
strain ; the evil and the sorrow would have held his
thought, and outweighed the good. But taken as a
whole, the colors supj^lemented and melted into each
other, and left a picture that he could look at with
peace. It is so with us all. None of us can take
any year or day, or even hour, and pronounce it per-
fect. But as we look over the whole, we see that
a general purpose of good overspreads it, and also
that its general outcome is good. Its tendency has
been to make us wiser, steadier, more patient and
sympathetic, more obedient to law, more content with
the things that are, and more hopeful. It is also well
to see how one feature or exjDerience of life plays use-

80 LIFE NOT VANITY.

fully into another, how limitation works toward free-
dom, how a sickness or any other set-back contributes
to some large good. " I was ill, and lost a whole
month." Yes, but you earned some coin of patience,
some gain of human sympathy, some profit of wis-
dom. One part of life feeds another ; hence we must
not weigh its parts, but the whole. One reason why
men are now complaining of life is their hungry de-
mand for instant and incessant pleasure ; the cup of
enjoyment must be filled every day. Amuse me,
excite me, crown me to-day, is the cry. But as this
cannot happen, the plan being rather to build man
up into a being capable of holding happiness, men
turn away in disgust, not discerning how and for
what end they are made.

We must hold resolutely, as this Psalm does, to
the truth that life is joy. " It does not seem so," you
say; "it seems quite otherwise." Very likely, and so
it will be while you trust in appearances rather than
in principles. You say, " I have only appearances to
go by." But suppose you take appearances, and try
to construct out of them a theory of life ; to explain
life by its aspects and temporary features. You
cannot thus find out that it is either good or bad ; it
will be a puzzle and a contradiction. Try instead
principles ; assume character as a means and joy as
an end, and see if life is not plain as a printed page.
We cannot think broadly on this subject without
coming to see that joy is the end of existence. The
secret of the universe is blessedness. Any other con-
ception is treachery. By any other theory we are

LIFE NOT VANITY. 81

betrayed creatures. If it is not so, then we know not
what is or is not, and it matters little. We are sen-
tient beings ; this is fundamental truth, and it pre-
supposes joy as its realization. There is a negative
side, — the possibility of the opposite ; but this is
the great positive possibility, the thing for which we
are made, the atmosphere we are to breathe, the
essence by which we live. It has its laws and its
method. Christ taught nothing higher or more cen-
tral ; he had for himself no other motive than the
joy set before him and it was never less than full.
It turns indeed on character ; only the faithful ser-
vant enters into it, but setting this view aside, it is
well to get it thoroughly wrought into us tliat exis-
tence is joy, that life is " bathed in it as an ether,"
and has no other true atmosphere. This is central
truth ; we must resolutely believe it, and so far as
may be live it, or, if that is difficult, live towards
it. If I am wretched, I am involved in some mis-
take, — my own or another's. If I am despondent,
I am off the track of life. If existence has no zest,
some poison has got into the cup. If I am led to
deny that life is good, I change it into such a mass
of contradiction and absurdity that it turns on me
and forbids me to think or assert anything of it. If
I am letting it fade out into a dull, insipid thing, I
am falling away from the only heritage I have.

It is the duty and privilege of all to work away
from sorrow and gloom and dullness towards joy. I
know what griefs come to us, — Rachel weeping for
her children because they are not, fathers broken-
hearted over dead Absaloms. I know how shut in

82 LIFE NOT VANITY.

and pressed down many of you are, how vast your
desires and how small your portion ; what dead-
weights of shame and tender sorrow hang on you ;
what physical ailments, w^hat lack of training, what
force of evil habit, what clamor of appetite, what
memory of evil, what earthiness of spirit, what infir-
mities of temper, shut you off from this world of joy.
Still, you are to work towards it. Tears must flow
and the head must bow in shame for a while, but
when nature and conscience have had their due,
turn once more to life, knowing it to be good.

Much might be said on the wisdom of taking a con-
stantly fresh view of life. It is one of the moral uses
of the night that it gives the world anew to us every
morning, and of sleep that it makes life a daily
re-creation. If we always saw the world, we might
grow weary of it. If a third of life were not spent
in unconsciousness, the rest might become tedious.
God is thus all the while presenting the cup of life
afresh to our lips. Thus after a night of peaceful
sleep, we behold the world as new and fresh and
wonderful as it was on the first morning of creation,
when God pronounced it " very good." And sleep
itself has a divine alchemy that gives us to ourselves
with our primitive energy of body and mind. The
.-nlays are not mere repetitions of themselves ; to-mor-
row will have another meaning ; I shall come to it
with larger vision than I have to-day.

And then, how grandly life is unrolling at present !
Knowledge gives to our minds almost a new world
every year. How rapidly is man climbing into his
throne of earthly supremacy, subduing nature, yoking

LIFE NOT VANITY. 83

its forces to his will, getting all things under his
hand ! And how fast is humanity unfolding the
greater mysteries of social life, coming to a knowl-
edge of itself, finding out its lavs, and getting so-
ciety into shape ; government, philosophy, science,
all working together for humanity ! Almost every
day visible advance is made, — changes that are
enough to set us agape with delighted wonder. The
world is not dull except as we have dull eyes. It is
a vain conceit, " a want-wit sadness," that tempts us
to think we have exhausted it, that life has nothing
more to offer. There are times, indeed, when its
whole value and significance is taken away, dropped
down into a grave deeper and wider to us than the
whole world, swept out on the flood of disaster,
turned into blackness by sinful shame ; there are
defects and losses and mistakes that induce weari-
ness, and lead us to hold the world " a stage where
every man must play a part, and mine a sad one."

Bvit wait awhile, and look about you and above.
The sun shines still ; there is no change in the notes
of nature. The blessed order of growth goes on.
Humanity keeps on its upward way ; God is leading
it as a shepherd, and you are a part of it, and he is
leading you, — not just now by still waters, but
through the valley of shadows, — and would comfort
you with his staff, show you what it all means and
where it ends. Wait thus awhile, and you will find
that you are still in God's house, and not in a dark
and orderless world.

And so I say, in conclusion, think well of life and

84 LIFE NOT VANITY.

the world. To suspect and question life, to hold it
cheap, to use it listlessly or sadly, — this is treachery,
this is folly. For what else have we but life, what
other heritage, what other standing-ground ; what
else is there to hold us or anything that we have ?
To cheapen it, or hold it indifferently, or treat it
scornfully, — this is the folly of one who smites and
impoverishes himself.

This life of ours, just as it is, is so beautiful and
glorious that we can imagine it offered to some
newly created being of intelligence for acceptance
or rejection, all its good and evil plainly set before
him. As he looks it over, sees its plan and purpose,
the joy woven into it, its marvelous growth, its hero-
ism and strength, sees how it rises and presses to-
wards God and the glory of God, how its evil works
toward good, how divine love throbs through it, and
divine power is under and over it, we can imagine
him crying, " Put me into that world ; let me live
that life and earn its joy."

Even so did the Psalmist regard it when he cried
in the fullness of his content : " I will dwell in the
house of the Lord forever."

THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY.

*' Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store ;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross ;
Within be fed, without be rich no more."

Shakespeare, Sonnet cxlvi.

" Life, — strong life and sound life, — that life which lends ap-
proaches to the Infinite and takes hold on heaven, is not so much
a progress as it is a resistance." — North British Review.

' ' Kant makes virtue consist in self-government, Schleiermacher
in self-development ; the former makes virtue a struggle, the latter
a harmony. They form the outermost sea-marks of the great ocean
of moral speculations, and the whole tide in different ages has rolled
backwards and forwards between them." — Review.

"In the life of the church, as in all the moral life of mankind,
there are two distinct ideals, either of which it is possible to follow,
— two conceptions, under one or the other of which we may repre-
sent to ourselves man's effort after the better life. The ideal of
asceticism represents that moral effort as essentially a sacrifice of
one part of human nature to another, that it may live in what sur-
vives more completely ; while the ideal of culture represents it as a
harmonious development of all the parts of human nature, in just
proportion to each other." —Walter Pater, Marius, the Epicu-
rean, vol. ii. p. 136.

' ' The essential peculiarity of the Christian life is, that it is the
complete harmony, the absolute synthesis, of both kinds of good-
ness." — Rev. James Freeman Clarke, D. D.

THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY.

And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abun-
dance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh,
the messenger of Satan, to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above
measure. — 2 Corinthians xii. 7.

I THINK a good life of St. Paul would be the best
possible exponent of Christian experience. I do not
mean an external biography, for that we have ; but
a full transcript of his thoughts and feelings. If St.
Paul had written confidential letters to a friend ; if
he had kept a sincere diary, if St. Luke had written
down his conversation as they sat on deck in sea-
voyages or traveled up and down in Asia, what a
priceless treasure would have fallen to the church, —
what a revelation of the Christian faith every be-
liever would have had ! But we have this in a
greater degree than we suppose. These epistles of
his are not theological treatises but genuine letters
from one man to other men, full of personal feeling
and experience, and not impersonal generalizations
of truth ; they show how the man Paul took in the
gospel and how it worked in and through him. His
personal experience is valuable because it was so
natural. It was not clogged and colored by dogmatic
and ecclesiastical notions such as enter into nearly

88 THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY.

all later lives. The Christian Fathers undoubtedly
have much to tell us in regard to Christian truth,
but great allowance must be made for ecclesiasti-
cism, which is no part of Christianity and is a great
modifier of it. But in St. Paul there was nothing
between him and the source of his faith ; he felt
and thought in response to a close and full vision of
Christ. This truth worked in a great nature and in
powerful ways ; the lesson is large, and the move-
ment of his mind is like the blowing of winds or the
tread of armies.

This experience of the thorn in the flesh is both
interesting and valuable, or would be, if we could
come at it. But it has been buried under such a
mass of comment and conjecture that the simple les-
sons it contains are hard to reach. The main object
seems to have been to discover what the exact nature
of the thorn was. The strife is typical of much
study of the Bible, — infinite scrutiny of the form
without much thought of the end. Now It matters
little what the thorn in the flesh was ; but how It
pierced the apostle, how he bore it, and how it af-
fected him are the real questions. Still It may be
well to refer to these various theories, if for nothing
else than to get rid of them. They have been of
several kinds, and all have been urged with skill and
force.

One Is that it consisted in spiritual trials, — some-
thing that directly assailed his principles and faith.
The view taken by the writers in the Romish Church
Is that he was beset by sensual temptations. This
is the natural view of men who have turned their

THE GOSPKL OK THE BODY. hU

whole lives into a needless conflict with the passions.
What is bitterest and hardest to be put away by
them must have been the particular trial of the apos-
tle ; so it is easy to think. His own description of
it forbids us to accept this explanation ; for, having
prayed that it might depart from him, he concludes
to abide by it and bear it as best he may, getting
from it some compensating spiritual return. But he
would not have treated a sensual temptation in this
way. No good man says of such action of his na-
ture : " It is my cross ; I must bear it patiently,"
and ceases to pray against it. Not patient acqui-
escence, but unending conflict, is the rule here.
Luther keenly and tenderly says of this view, " Ah,
no, dear Paul, it was not that manner of temptation
that troubled thee."

Another interpretation is that it was a temptation
to unbelief. But as little would St. Paul have ac-
quiesced in this. Doubt is indeed a thorn that pierces
deep. To have a mind made to know God, and yet
not be able to find him ; to hunger after the truth,
and yet not be sure of truth ; to have eyes that
rejoice in the light, and yet catch only glimpses, —
this is well-nigh the keenest suffering a true man
can feel. But it was not a temptation from which
St. Paul suffered. He was preeminently and always
a believer, a man of convictions. There was no ces-
sation of belief when he drew nigh to Damascus ;
there was no increase of belief as he entered its
gates ; it had simply taken a new direction. We do
not find in him any indication of that wavering and
puzzled state of mind known as skepticism, — a que-

90 THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY.

rying if all things may not be a delusion, a fear lest
more light or wider experience may dispel present
faith. From first to last St. Paul was a mighty be-
liever, — "I know whom I have believed." No ;
St. Paul did not feel the ranklings of this thorn.

Another explanation is that he suffered from re-
morse for his past life, and especially for his part in
the death of Stephen. But St. Paul had too true a
conception of the gospel to give way to such a feel-
ing. Remorse is one of the black and fearful things
the gospel undertakes to destroy. It belongs to that
worldly kingdom which the kingdom of heaven dis-
places. It is indeed according to nature to keep
alive remorse for evil deeds, and the finer the spirit
the more bitterly will one regard one's offenses.
As such a spirit grows better, the more keenly will
remorse bite it, outmastering the dulling power of
time, and haunting the conscience with deathless
power. When the noble CEdipus discovered his un-
meant crimes, he put out his eyes, so that he might
never behold in this world, nor in the next, the be-
ings he had unwittingly sinned against : for that he
had sinned unwittingly was no excuse to himsielf, nor
did it assuage his remorse. This is the religion of
mere nature, — evil generating endless sorrow in a
pure heart. But the gosjiel reverses this process ; it
is a revelation of a love that forgives ; it blots out ;
it washes away ; it destroys the past ; and so ends
the wild play of remorse. It is a great and appar-
ently hazardous thing thus to interfere between a
man's evil and its penalty, to shut him off from its
natural feeling. " Better let him suffer and learn,"

THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 91

we say. But there is a gracious audacity in the
gospel that dares to take a man out of the natural
order of sin and penalty and remorse, and says, " I
can save him in his integrity without remorse, if he
will but let me have my way with him.'' St. Paul
well understood all this. He did not forget Stephen,
and the memory kept him humble, but it did not
haunt him with remorse ; it was no thorn piercing
him in this way.

Another interpretation is that it was some external
trial. The greatest trial, undoubtedly, he ever en-
countered was the opposition of the Judaizing party
in the churches ; and it never departed from him.
He endured their relentless opposition to the end,
and he fought them to the last, foreseeing that if
they should prevail the church would share in the
fate of the nation. This party had all those charac-
teristics that have so often been repeated in the his-
tory of the church : blind adhesion to the past ; the
mistake of supposing that what is old is therefore
venerable, and what is new is therefore dangerous ;
insensibility to the fact that God is continually re-
vealing himself in new forms ; exalting the letter
above the spirit ; dullness of spiritual vision ; obsti-
nacy mistaken for principle, and all penetrated with
a hard, relentless spirit towards those who disagree
with them. These things do not belong to one age,
but ever hang on the skirts of God's advancing
Church, a part of it in appearance, but in reality the
antichrist. This party denied that St. Paul was an
apostle, and that he had any right to speak for the
church ; it thwarted his influence, it slandered his

92 THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY.

character, it misconstrued his motives and conduct,
and all in the interest of what it called religion.
This party insisted on retaining the Jewish rites; St.
Paul determined to cut free from them, and to get
the faith out of a provincial form into such shape
that any Greek or Roman could take it at once into
his reason and conscience without the entanglements
of purely national customs. It was a life-long battle,
in which the apostle won, or won at least the ends
of victory, but it was a bitter conflict. It is to St.
Paul that we are indebted for a gospel and a church
universal in character, without local or temporal
features, — a religion of the spirit and of freedom.
But this conflict was not the thorn in his flesh ; this
was something more personal, something apart from
his general work. The thorn was for his personal
benefit, to counteract a special fault or tendency, an
offset to what may be termed an excessive action of
the spiritual nature. But it was of no advantage to
St. Paul to encounter in every church he had formed
a sanctimonious set — half stupid and half malicious
— who attempted to put him down by clamoring for
the good old Jewish ways ; thus making it appear
that he was devoid of piety and that they were full
of it. This was a trial that could do him no good,
nor correct any evil tendency in him ; it simply
worried and tired him.

It is thought by some that the thorn in the flesh
was the physical persecutions he endured. But St.
Paul elsewhere treats these experiences in a differ-
ent way ; they unite him to Christ ; they are taken
joyfully, and endured bravely, — a part of his lot as
a soldier of Jesus.

THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 93

We come nearer the probable truth in the sug-
gestion that it was some physical ailment or infir-
mity. If the force of words is to be regarded, it is
the flesh, the body, that suffers. There is something
pathetic, and at the same time almost humorous, in
the way in which suffering commentators have laid
their ailments on the apostle. They have attributed
to him diseases ranging from epilej^sy to weakness
of the eyes. Others insist on some personal defect,
and their guesses have ranged from an insignificant
personal appearance to a habit of stammering. The
commentator finds some phrase in an epistle that
bears him out, and so transfers to the apostle his
own infirmity, — a trembling hand, a stammering
tongue, weakened eyes, an unwinning address.
Amusing, but more pathetic ! What better can
we do with some hindering infirmity or humiliating
weakness than to bring it into such company, —
drawn on in the simple delusion by* the thought
that if we share in the weakness of the great apostle,
we may also share in his strength. It is some com-
fort to the preacher who stammers before an ungra-
cious audience, or speaks with features distorted by
nervous twitching, to think that it was even so with
St. Paul. These hearts of ours are fond in their
foolishness, and we are not quite strong enough to
bear our trials alone. It takes something from pain
to know that a great man has borne it ; something
from shame to know that one better than ourselves
has felt it.

It is, however, now quite generally understood
that by the thorn in the flesh St. Paul meant some

94 THE GOSPEL OF THK BODY.

nervous ailment, fitful or constant, that detracted
from his personal appearance and influence, and
shut him off from the fields where he most desired
to act. Thus it was both a humiliation and a grief
to him. Further than this we ought not to go in
our investigation, for the simple reason that St. Paul
saw fit to take us no further into the privacy of his
personal history. He was a man of too much re-
finement to speak of his disease in a close way, and
it is not delicate in us to press our inquiries in that
direction. It is a mean and vulgar characteristic of
an age which deems itself refined that it leaves no
privacy about any life. No great man dies but every
confidential utterance and personal habit is dragged
in CO light, and if a pathological history of his body
can be added, so much the better ; or rather, so
much the worse, for this invasion of personal life is
neither nice nor wise. St. Paul did not see fit to
tell us from what disease he suffered, and so we will
not attempt to fix it, even if we have the data. It
was enough for his purpose, it is enough for ours,
that we know he suffered from some incurable phys-
ical ailment, which was of such a nature in its effect
and persistence that it became to him a source of
spiritual strength.

If the real significance of the thorn in the flesh
were put in a general way, it would be : physical evil
a condition of spiritual strength. Such a thought at
once stirs up question and denial. It seems to be
contrary to the thought of the day ; it looks off to-
wards old-time asceticism, and to an ungenerous view
of human life.

THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 95

I put it in a general way rather than as a definite
assertion, for as an assertion it needs to be largely
qualified. It is a hazardous thing to claim that
physical evil is of any true value to us. Can evil
teach or bring us any good ? Is there anything to
be done with evil except to get rid of it? Is not a
sound body the condition of a sane mind and also of
a sane spirit ? Are not body and spirit so related
that if one is distempered the other is also ? Affir-
mative answers to these questions may justly be
expected. The matter becomes more puzzling when
we remember that Christianity has for one of its
ends the destruction of physical evil. It distinctly
prophesies that there shall be no more pain."
One of the most illuminating aspects in which Christ
stood before men was as healing their diseases. If
evil is a factor of good, if physical infirmity helps
the moral nature, why does Christ set himself up
as its destroyer?

Puzzling questions, I grant, which I cannot now
stop to discuss as problems, but will speak of only
in a practical light. Despite all that may be said
with such force and justness on the other side, as a
matter of fact we know that we get a great deal of
good out of our evil. Suffering is a thing to be put
out of the world as fast as knowledge and humanity
can do it. There is not a diviner work man can do
than to lessen pain, if he does it by destroying the
cause ; and yet pain teaches lessons of supreme value.
One of the largest factors in any wise man's educa-
tion is the mistake and misfortune and suffering of
one kind and another that he has undergone. I am

96 THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY.

aware into what a tangle such assertions lead us:
evil to be put away, and yet necessary to virtue ;
evil, the child of ignorance, and yet the school of
knowledge ; pain, the fruit of sin and mistake, and
yet the nurse of spiritual life ; that which you must
avoid the condition of what you must have. Here
is contradiction and absurdity enough so long as
we treat the subject in a speculative way, but
when turned into facts they vanish. There is no
contradiction between fact and philosophy, but we
must remember that no theory of life covers life.
We can always appeal from philosophy to life, from
the explanation to the fact. In some higher court,
in some age or world of clearer light, theory and
fact will come into harmony. Meanwhile we must
go by facts and let our theories wait, even if they
mock us with accusations of ioRj.

Following the strict line of our subject, I speak
now of the moral effect of bodily infirmity.

It cuts up our conceit and pride. It wrought
in this way in St. Paul. One might ask, What is
the relation between this pride in spiritual revela-
tions and physical infirmity, so that one subdues the
other ? There is no natural bond, no traceable path,
by which influence travels from one to the other ;
and yet we all know, as a matter of experience, that
bodily infirmity is a very humbling thing. The cen-
tral principle of pride and conceit is self -strength, —
a streno:th without relations ; the man fails to see
that his excellence is a derived thing, that it comes
to him from without. And this is what makes it
evil and fit to be named selfish, for self is its central
principle.

THE GOSPEL 01<^ THE BODY. \)i

Now, nothing strikes such a blow at self as an
experience of physical infirmity or suffering'. Pain
is a great humbler ; weakness a still greater. When
one is groaning from physical suffering, one does not
indube in self - cfratulation. When a man cannot
walk, he ceases to be proud. The pain and weakness
reach far beyond the body, and strike at the mind
and spirit. There is no logical reason why, when I
suffer, I should be humble, but I am, — no reason,
unless, indeed, this body was made to play upon
the soul and teach it lessons. These lessons are not
always lasting, but they are more so than we are apt
to think ; they exercise^ a general repressive influ-
ence. Our chief sin is pride, and our best grace is
humility, — " mother of all virtues." Human life is
ordered largely for keeping down one and fostering
the other. Were pride not checked here and there,
on every side and continually, it would destroy us.
" He that is proud eats up himself," says the great
moralist. Hence even the body is commissioned to
aid in keeping it down, for the body has one strong
hand that touches the spiritual nature, and when
the body lapses into weakness it drags the soul
wholesomely into the dust with it.

Bodily infirmity teaches a man to go carefully in
this world of mischance, — this world from wdiich
chaos is not yet wholly expunged ; it coordinates him
to an uncertain world. Nothing is truer than that
we know not what a day may bring forth. The
main feature of human life is its uncertainty. There
are great laws that carry it on and point to sure
phases and conclusions, but there are also occult

98 THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY.

laws and disturbing forces whose results cannot be
calculated. I do not know what will happen to me to-
morrow ; I may not even be in this world to-morrow.
And while I ought to live and act as though to-mor-
row were to be spent here, it is equally true that I
ought to live and act as though I were not to be here
to-morrow. We must not leave the uncertain feature
out of life. But man tends to make himself at home
here ; to live as though he were to stay here forever.
He builds, and gathers in, and heaps up, and says,
" Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many
years ; take thine ease, eat, drink, be merry ; " not
remembering that God may this night require his
soul. There is indeed a great deal to make one feel
safe and sure in this world. The heavens do not
change and the earth abides forever. There is a tre-
mendous assertion of life in our hearts that does not
readily give way to a sense of mortality. It is not
easy for any of us to realize that here " we have no
abiding city," and that we must " soon fly away ; "
we can be made to feel it only through the body.
It is by the body that we are linked to this sure
order of nature and the world, and it must be by
the body that we are taught we do not belong to
nature and the world. Providence at times weakens
and almost breaks the links of this chain to show
that it will not forever hold us. When one is pros-
trated by sickness, or when one carries about a
withered limb, or when some organ of the body
does its duty imperfectly and gives token of it in
pain and weakness, one realizes the frailty of that
which holds him here.

THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 99

It is well for us to know this, to be taught how
frail we are. For it is not well to live in the world
as though we were to stay in it forever ; if it were,
we should stay forever. We are not citizens here,
but sojourners. We " tarry but a night." The
places that now know us will soon know us no
more. These are facts and features of human
life, which it is not well to forget ; for if forgotten
we get to feel that earth is our home, and so grow
earthly in our thoughts, and take on earthly hues.
The immortal and eternal colors fade out, and we
become mere denizens of the world, subdued to its
complexion and quality.

Physical infirmity reveals to a man the fact that
he himself is not a source of power, and the more
general truth that the power of the world is outside
of him ; in other words, it teaches him that he is a
dependent being.

Man undoubtedly has power, and the conscious-
ness of it leads him to assert and maintain his place
as the head of creation. There is not an animal but
man is consciously its master ; there is not a force
that he is not bringing under his control. We
speak of subduing nature. There is an instinctive
feeling that we should have the mastery of the earth,
and as a preliminary we are exploring it and
discovering its peculiarities, mapping its deserts,
sounding and dredging its seas, piercing its arctic
darkness, and threading its labyrinths of tropical
growth. Man is all the while striving in ways that
express his power. There is an end of utility which
is an excuse, but the real motive, the passion of his

100 THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY.

labors, is to express his mastery. The pyramids
were built for tombs, but back of this purpose lay
the passion for achievement. The bridge that
connects New York and Brooklyn — perhaps the
greatest material work ever wrought — has for its
object an easy and quick transit from one city
to the other, but the inspiring force behind it was
this undaunted and indomitable pride in achieve-
ment : here was something fit to be done ; the difficul-
ties were immense, but their very immensity was the
reason they were overcome. The human mind brooks
no challenge that implies weakness, and it is the
glory of man that he does not admit an impossibility.
If he cannot yet find a way, he conquers in his
dreams. Thus he is insensibly led to pride himself
on his power. What is so glorious to him as an intel-
lectual being becomes a temptation to him morally.
For, whether we understand it or not, when a man
gets to feel that he is of himself a power, that he
can do for the most part whatever he undertakes, he
suffers injury in the region of the spirit. This sense
of power generates a feeling of independence that
closes the avenues of sympathy and mutual depen-
dence which connect him with his fellows, and he be-
comes selfish, and proud, and hard. The temptation
of wealth lies in the sense of power it begets ; it tends
to relieve its owner of that sense of dependence
which is the basis of sympathy. There is nothing
grander than this sense of power, but it carries with
it a corresponding moral danger, and so it is a thing
to be kept in check. Now, the logical way of re-
straining this tendency, the absolute method, is by

THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 101

knowledge, thought. But man has not yet come
to that point ; the strong man is not yet wise enough
to think himself into a true humility. The time
may come when he will not need an outside discipline
to correct his faults, but that day has not yet dawned.
Nothing so well restrains the undue action of our
nature in this direction as bodily infirmity. It
has an empirical look ; it seems like making a bad
thins: serve a STOod end. But for all that it is true.
The whole relation of body to mind has an empirical
look ; there is nothing more illogical and unreason-
able than the influence of the body upon the mind,
that an aching limb should determine the quality of
thought, but it is a fact, and facts are what we have
to do with.

It is a magnificent thing for a man to have this
sense of power, to feel that nothing on earth can
stop the play of the mighty energies that throb with
his blood, — a glorious thing, but dangerous. For
his highest and complete good, a man must also
know that he is weak and has no power. For in
this feeling his sense of dependence upon God and
fellow-men comes into play ; and this is more and
better than the sense of strength, which is always
whispering, '* Ye shall become as gods." We are
not gods, and it is not well to think we are. We
may be the head of creation, but we are not the
head of all things. There is nothing that so surely
and thoroughly undoes character as the belief that
there is no power and intelligence above us, that we
head the column of existence. Hence the most
violent and arbitrary checks are put in the way of

102 THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY.

such thinking ; badges of weakness are wrought
into our very body. We cannot forego a moment's
breath of air ; gravitation breaks our bones by a
little fall ; a misdirected atom clogs the life-current ;
a slight rise of the temperature of the body and
great Caesar " cries like a sick girl." We gird the
earth with our railways and telegraphs, but all the
while an impalpable gas is eating away our life.
When we realize this, we change our tone of exult-
ing strength for one of humble dependence which we
feel to be truer and really higher.

An experience of physical infirmity gives one a
certain wholesome contemj^t of material things.

As I say this, I hasten to qualify and explain it.
Nothing that God has made is to be despised ; least
of all this body that now holds us. It has in it all
the wonder and glory of creation, and is an epitome
of all previous creations, — a harp of more than a
thousand strings : so strong that it can level moun-
tains; so fine that in its automatic skill it almost
thinks ; so nearly spiritual that we cannot see
where sense joins thought ; so coarsely material that
chemical law runs riot in it ; a mere forge for the
fire of oxygen, yet so delicate that it reflects in every
turn and gesture the spirit and temper of the mind ;
so one with us that if it is sound we can hardly fail
of being happy, and if it is weak we can hardly fail
of being miserable ; so one with us that we cannot
think of ourselves as separate from it, yet are con-
scious that it is no part of us, — such a thing as
this is not to be despised nor treated otherwise than
as sacred. We have hardly any more imperative

THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 103

work than to secure for the body its highest possi-
ble vigor and health. How to feed and clothe and
house it ; how to use it ; how to keep it safe from
weakening and poisonous gases ; how to secure that
rhythmic action of its functions that turns physical
existence into music, — this is the immediate ques-
tion before civilization, the discussion of which will
drive out much of the vice of society and revolution-
ize its systems of education. The gospel of the body
is yet to be heard and heeded. But this gospel will
go no further than to require such care and treatment
of the body that it shall best serve the uses of the
mind. It is worthy of the greatest care, but only
that it may be the most supple and ready servant of
our real self. It is, as St. Paul says, something to
be kept under. It is all the while crowding to the
head and front ; it seeks to be master, and when it
gets the mastery it is that fearful thing which turns
on the mind and enslaves it, turns on the spirit and
smothers it, and finally destroys itself, for so at last
it works round. It is well, therefore, to have for it
a certain wholesome contempt ; to keep it down and
within its lowly place ; to know just how much is
due to it, due to its appetites and passions. A very
noble thing is the body, but also a very poor and
weak thing. What is the body when it may fail
me at any moment ; when a little bruise or punc-
ture of the skin will enlist all the attention of my
being? What is the body when its hold on the
mind is so weak that, on some slightest accident, it
withdraws its grasp and lapses into corruption ? I
will think well of the body, but not too well. Hence

104 THE GOPSEL OF THE BODY.

this experience of physical weakness and infirmity
is left in order to help us keep a due balance be-
tween flesh and spirit.

There are great advantages in not being allowed
to feel at home in the body. An animal life antag-
onizes a moral life. When we are at home in the
body, we are absent from the Lord. Flesh and
spirit play into and help each other, but they also
contend against each other, and the conflict is whole-
some. It is a great impediment to suffer weakness ;
it is a hard thing to halt in life's labor and lie
down on a bed of sickness. But the worth of the
experience is plain, it is a simple logic : the body is
not always to hold us, and it is well to be reminded
of it, to keep destiny in mind. The body is not m
itself a source of f)ower, and it is well to see it re-
duced to occasional weakness. It is not the master
of our being, and it is well at times to see it stripped
of a power it is always assuming. There is a strong
tendency to make the body itself the chief end of
existence. Ignorance is always doing this, and the
worldly are always saying. What shall we eat, and
what shall we drink ? The rich are prone to indulge
in a luxury that ends in a pampering of the body.
These tendencies are constantly at work ; they form in
their reaction the basis of asceticism, which is but a
false way of realizing a great truth. But to-day we
have other influences tending to unduly exalt the
body, such as the revival of Greek art, and the teach-
ing of science in regard to the relation of the body to
civilization. Art, in nearly all its schools, plays about
the human fifrure ; a certain school of literature has

THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 105

no liiglier inspiration ; science, with intense but nar-
row vision, wisely, but not with })iofound discrimi-
nation, directs us to the pliysical basis of society, —
all forgetful that man does not live by bread alone.
For hunger may feed him ; blindness may give him
lio'ht ; pain may bring peace ; the weakness of the
body may be the strength of the spirit.

However it be with all this fine regard paid to
the body by art and science and philosophy, a docile
experience of life teaches us that it is good to bear
burdens on our spirits, and to be pierced with thorns
in our bodies. For all this finite order and encase-
ment is a minister to the life which is eternal.

THE DEFEAT OF LIFE.

" Three great divines have from different points of view drawn
out, without exhausting-, the subtle phases o£ Balaam's greatness
and of his fall. Tlie self-deception which persuades him in every
case that the sin which he commits may be brought within the rules
of conscience and revelation (Bishop Butler) ; the dark shade cast
over a noble course by always standing on the ladder of advance-
ment (J. H. Newman) ; the combination of the purest form of re-
ligious belief with a standard of action immeasurably below it
(Dr. Arnold)." — Dean Stanley, Jewish Church, vol. i, p. 211.

" Throughout we find in Balaam's character semblances, not
realities. He would not transgress a rule, but he would violate a
principle. He would not say white was black, but he would sully
it till it looked black." — F. W. Robertson, Sermons, vol. v. p. 42.

"0 purblind race of miserable men,
How many among us at this very hour
Do forge a life-long- trouble for ourselves,
By taking true for false, or false for true ! "

Tennyson, Geraint and Enid.

" There is no game so desperate which wise men
Will not take freely up for love of power,
Or love of fame, or merely love of play.
These men are wise, and then reputed wise.
And so their great repute of wisdom grows,
Till for great wisdom a great price is bid,
And then their wisdom do they part withal :
Such men must still be tempted with high stakes."
Henry Taylor, Philip Van Artevelde, i. 3.

THE DEFEAT OF LIFE.

Let me die the death of the rig-hteous, and let my last end be
like his. — Numbers xxiii. 10.

Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteous-
ness. — 2 Peter ii. 15.

Longing to die the death of the righteous, and
yet loving the wages of unrighteousness ; such is the
contradiction in which this great character stands
out.

Contradictory qualities pass without much notice
unless they are moral. It does not surprise us that
Caesar was both lenient and severe ; these traits
may have been the gradations of one trait, or each
may have been the dictate of his practical wisdom.
But when we find him without belief in the gods and
at the same time superstitious, we are puzzled and
astonished. It is because a moral contradiction is
wider and more violent than an intellectual one.
There is an imperative demand in all minds that
morality shall be entire, without flaw or break ; so
human nature pays its tribute to the reality and
value of morality. Such contradiction in a great
character awakens more surprise than when seen in
an ordinary man. It belongs to greatness that it

110 THE DEFEAT OF LIFE.

shall be uniform, of one piece ; it goes along witli
strength, and strength implies oneness and unity.
Hence great men resist no imputation so emphat-
ically as that of inconsistency. When the littleness
or the contradiction shows itself, we say, Why does
the greatness not turn on it and crush it out ? So
we might expect, but so it is not.

The story of Balaam has little interest for us
until we uncover the man somewhat, and find out
how great and brilliant a figure he was. It is then,
when the range of his vision and the fervor of his
prophetic spirit are fully seen, that his moral deflec-
tion begins to puzzle and astound us.

The Israelites, toughened physically and morally
by their long sojourn in the desert, and now well con-
solidated into a nation, are beginning to emerge from
their southern retreat, and to betray their designs
upon the regions bordering on the Jordan. They
have met and defeated the desert tribes, and are now
threatening Moab which lies in their way. Balak,
king of Moab, undertakes the defense of his terri-
tory, and, like a wise general, studies and adopts
the tactics of his successful enemy. He has learned
that the Israelites are led by Moses, a prophet of
Jehovah, and that his prayers in the battle against
Amalek secured the victory. He will see what of
the same sort he can do on his side. Hundreds
of miles away, near the head waters of the Euphra-
tes, there lived another prophet of Jehovah, whose
reputation filled the whole region. It does not
concern us whether his gifts were on one side or
the other of the line called supernatural ; whether

THK DEFEAT OF LIFE. Ill

his sagacity was merely extraordinary or was clarified
by special, divine light. It is enough for us that he
was great, keen and lofty in his vision, comprehen-
sive in his judgment ; that he had a high sense of his
prophetic function, and was at first a man of integ-
rity. Balak sends for him. The Israelites have a
prophet : he will have a pro])liet. He sees in the
battles hitherto fought a weight not belonging to the
battalions, a spiritual force that won the victory ; he
will employ that force on his side. Moses is a
prophet of Jehovah ; his proj^het also shall be
Jehovah's. A very shrewd man is this Balak.
Holding to the Oriental custom of devoting an
enemy to destruction before battle, he will match his
enemy even in this respect as nearly as possible.
That a prophet should be found outside the Hebrew
nation is simply an indication that God has witnesses
in all nations ; it denies the theory that would eon-
fine all light and inspiration to one chosen people.
That Balaam comes from the ancient home of
Abraham hints the possibility of a still lingering
monotheism in that region. Though so remote, he
probably knew all about the Israelites : their history
from the patriarchs down, tbeir exodus from Egypt,
their religion, their development under the guiding
hand of Moses, their power in battle, and the resist-
less energy with which they were slowly moving uj)
from the desert with their eyes on the rich slopes of
Palestine. He doubtless knew that this was not only
a migration of a detached people, such as was now
often occurring in Asia, but a migration inspired by
a religion somewhat in keeping with his own. These

112 THE DEFEAT OF LIFE.

Israelites were not his enemies, and he could not
readily be made to treat them as such. When the
messengers of Balak come to him with their hands
full of rewards, asking him to go and curse Israel,
he weighs the matter well, devotes a whole night to
it, carries it to God in the simplicity of a good con-
science, and refuses to go. So far he seems a true
man, acting from considerations of mingled wisdom
and inspiration. The messengers retrace their long
journey, but Balak sends again by more honorable
men and doubtless with larger gifts. He is a shrewd
man, and knows what sort of a thing is the human
heart. He sends not onl}^ gifts, but promises of pro-
motion to great honor, and all by the hands of
princes, — a triple temptation ; flattery, riches, place.
How often does any man resist their united voice ?
Often enough he resists one of them ; flattery can-
not seduce him, nor money buy him, nor ambition
deflect him, but when all unite, — flattery dropping
its sweet words into the ear, gold glittering before
the eye, and ambition weaving its crown before the
imagination, — who stands out against these when
they unite to a definite end ? They had their com-
mon way with Balaam, but not at once. Such men
as he do not go headlong and wholly over to the bad
side in a moment. The undoing of a strong char-
acter is something like its upbuilding, a process of
time and degree.

This time the messengers are detained that he may
again consult God. He is very sure that he shall
confine himself to the word of the Lord, but he
himself, out of his own heart, has begun to enter-

THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 113

tain the purpose of getting upon the scene of these
glittering temptations. lie proposes to remain a
true man, but he enjoys the company of these hon-
orable princes. He will remain a true man, but he
would like to be near a king who can send such
presents. He will remain a true man, but, once in
Moab, his wit will stand him in hand better than in
these dull regions where he dwells. His lofty utter-
ances, soon to be spoken, showed that he was well
aware that the fields of activity and greatness were
westward. It is the old, old story of humanity, —
dallying with temptation in the field of the imagina-
tion, bribing conscience with fair promises, yet all the
while moving up to the forbidden thing. It is a
history not seldom repeated. Oh, no ! I shall never
become a miser, but I propose to be exceedingly
prudent. I shall never throw away my reputation,
mj^ character, but I will feed eye and ear and im-
agination with pictures of forbidden pleasure. I
shall never become a drunkard, but I will drink in
moderation. I shall never permit myself to be
called a selfish man, but I will take good care of
myself in this rough world. I shall never become
dishonest, but I will keep a keen eye for good
chances. Thus it is that men are passing to ruin
over a path paved with double purposes.

Balaam now gets a different answer. The first
time he is honest and open, and is told to remain ;
the next time he takes into the interview his own
desires which are against his convictions, and a
haK-formed purpose, and he comes out of it with
the answer he wants : desire has taken the lead of

114 THE DEFEAT OF LIFE.

conscience. He starts on his ill-fated journey, meets
with strange, confounding experiences, — reflections
of the moral confusion into which he has fallen, —
experiences, however, that serve to steady and but-
tress him on his professional side, but are not able
to prevent his fall as a man.

On reaching Balak, a remarkable interview takes
place, the record of which appears in the prophecy
of Micah ; for this story took a sti^ong and lasting
hold of the Jewish mind, and pointed for it many
a moral, as it does still. The king in his eagerness
asks Balaam how he shall come before the High
God, — with burnt offerings? with thousands of
rams and rivers of oil ? or shall I sacrifice my first-
born ? Any or all of these will I bring ! Balaam
replies in those lofty words, — the sum of all duty
still, — " 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 ? " He thus begins his relations with
Balak at the highest point of duty of which he can
conceive. It is not to the king that he speaks, but
to himself, — a mighty effort to confirm himself in
his integrity as he enters upon the doubtful busi-
ness before him. So men who find themselves verg-
ing: towards crimes will often bless themselves wdth
a text, and hide themselves momentarily in the
strongest towers of duty. Balaam and Balak are
worlds apart in conception, but at bottom they
are not far asunder. Robed thus in deceptive
sanctity, Balaam enters upon the work in hand, and
offers sacrifices thrice in succession upon points that

THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 115

overlook the tents of Israel and their future home.
His altars, built by heathen hands and kindled by
strange fire, fill the air with smoke, — a proceeding
designed to affect the mind of Balak; but when
Balaam speaks, it is a blessing, and not a curse.
He will please the king in the matter of sacrifice,
he will make up by ceremony what he will lose by
prophecy, but he has not yet reached the point of
saying what he does not believe. He has trifled
with his conscience ; he has deceived Balak ; he has
opened himself to the approaches of avarice and am-
bition, but he has not sunk to the depth of lying.
He has always cherished his prophetic gift, holding
it in a choice and reverent way, and he will not dis-
honor it for any price. He is sadly wrenched, half
wrecked in this doubtful imdertaking, and he sees
no good way out of it, but, come what may, he will
not turn his back upon his whole life and deny the
principles of his profession ; no, not now will he do
this, but he will do it in time. He has simply
halted for a moment in a downward career. In this
moment aU the greatness of his character rushes
into expression. The very means the king has
taken to secure a curse provoke a blessing. As
Balaam stands on the heights overlooking the num-
berless tents of Israel, — "as gardens b}' the river's
side," — the history of the wonderful people and of
their leader presses upon him and stirs his prophetic
spirit ; their liistory suggests their destiny ; out of
their past he constructs their future : their God is
his God. He knows the force of the inspiration
hidden in theii' hearts, and with what divine wisdom

116 THE DEFEAT OF LIFE.

tliey are organized; he sees with what resistless
energy they have pushed their way so far, and their
future is plain. The voice of his own insight and
outlook and the voice of God agree. He cannot
and will not speak against manifest destiny and
eternal purpose.

There is something unspeakably sad in these
three outbursts of prophetic fervor, as they come
from the divided mind of this great man caught in
the toils of evil and hastening to his doom. We
are perplexed as well as saddened. How could
such a man say such things ? we ask. Easily
enough ; it could hardly have been otherwise.
When a great man goes down morally, the words
he last utters before the fatal step are often the best
he ever spoke, — a truth illustrated by Shakespeare
in Cardinal Wolsey. There is a certain vantage-
ground for speech offered by evil as well as by
goodness ; standing on the summit of one, we see
all the glory and beauty of the other, — never before
so great as when it is receding forever. There is
also no stimidus to the imagination, and even to the
moral nature, like a disturbed conscience ; it is an
irritant to all the faculties, and leads each up to its
highest expression. It was out of such a state that
Balaam spoke, — his mind clear as if filled with
divine light, his heart aching with conscious degTa-
dation and foreboding his doom. That matchless
cry of devotion, " Let me die the death of the
righteous, and let my last end be like his," that has
passed into the prayers of the ages, sprang to his
lips not because he expected to die such a death,

THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 117

but because there was creeping upon him the fear
lest he should not so die. Nor did he so die, but
in battle, fighting by the side of heathen warriors,
their wages of unrighteousness in his hands, the
guilt of horrible crimes on his soul, every principle
he had cherished abandoned, the doomed enemy
and victim of the nation he had blessed.

The parallel to his career is found in Macbeth, —
the slow descent of a noble nature from heights of
chivalric loyalty to the depths of a traitorous and
brutal death-fight. The brilliancy of his genius, flash-
ing out after the integrity of his moral nature has
been lo^t, reminds us of Mr. Dimmesdale in the " Scar-
let Letter," whom the author represents as preaching
with a fervency and power such as he had never
before shown, on the very day of the culmination in
himself of his long-hidden crime. Hawthorne does
not mean to represent Dimmesdale as a hypocrite ;
he is aiming to portray the subtler truth that the very
process by which a great nature is ruined serves to
call out the highest powers of the man. We are to
think of Balaam as he stands on Pisgah blessing
Israel, in no other light than as a great man, caught
in the toils of evil, taking a farewell of himself,
throwing up his past, his truth and honor; but be-
fore he parts with them and wholly joins hands
with this Balak, he concentrates in one heroic utter-
ance all the past glory and fidelity of his life, — a
true man for one moment more, and then passes on,
as if driven by fate, to the death he would not die.

There are several difficulties in the narrative
which it is not well to pass by in any consideration
of the man.

118 THE DEFEAT OF LIFE.

The first is the violent contradiction between the
two answers received from God. The first time God
tells him not to go ; the second time he bids him
go, but is angry with him because he goes. What
does this contradiction mean ? There is no meanino-

o

in it till we drop the external shell of the story, and
look at the moral working of Balaam's mind, when
all becomes orderly and natural. There is here no
contradiction, as later on there is no miracle. Be-
tween the first and second asking there is a change
in his moral attitude. In the first he is docile
and obedient, and the voice of conscience, which
is the voice of God, prevails and decides his con-
duct. He enters into the second already half won
by Balak, dislodged from his old sympathies, rest-
less under the comparison between his old life and
that laid open to him. When men revolve moral
questions in such a temper, they commonly reach
a decision that accords with their wish rather than
with their conscience. Balaam has abandoned the
field of simple duty, — duty so plain that there is
no need of second thoughts. It is clear enough
that in no way could it be right to curse those whom
God had blessed ; this he well knows, and the spon-
taneous verdict of his conscience is God's first an-
swer. But, brooding over the matter and sore
pressed by temptation, he begins to contrive ways in
which he may win the gifts and honors of Balak, and
also remain an honest proi^het. Here is his mis-
take. Duty is no longer a simple, imperative thing,
but something that may be conjured with, a subor.
dinate, mutable tool instead of an absolute law

THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 119

Having thus blindecl himself as to the nature of
duty, there will no longer be any certainty in his
moral operations ; confusion of thought leads to
confusion of action ; in his own transformation he
transforms God ; he now hears God bidding him do
what he desires to do. Still, at times, conscience
revives, his judgment returns, and then he knows
that God is angry with him for doing what he had
brought himself to think he might rightly do. This
is e very-day experience put into this ancient story
in a dramatic yet real way. When a man has thus
trifled with himself and with his duty, God does in-
deed seem to say to him, " Go on in your chosen
course." He serves God in the externals of religion,
but in business cheats and lies in what he calls busi-
ness ways, and grinds the faces of the poor under
some theory of competition, yet God prospers him ;
no hindering word comes to him from Providence or
from the insulted sj)irit of truth. It may be better,
it may be, in a certain sense, the command of God,
that one who starts on such a path shall follow it to
the end, and find out by experience what he has re-
jected as an intuition. With the froward God show^s
himself froward. When Israel set up idols, God
answered them according to idols. A laissez-faire
theory of social economy brings temporary prosper-
ity, which is interpreted as the approval of Heaven,
— the idol answered according to itself. To those
who have pleasure in unrighteousness God sends a
strong delusion that they should believe a lie. This
is the concrete way of stating how the moral nature
acts when it is led by double motives. It comes into

120 THE DEFEAT OF LIFE.

bewilderment ; it gets no true answers when it ap-
peals to God ; its own sophistries seem to it the voice
of God. It can no longer tell the voice of God from
its own voice. " Fair is foul, and foul is fair."

The next difficulty encountered is the strange
story of the dumb ass rebuking the madness of the
prophet ; a strange story indeed until we get at its
iiioral equivalents, when it no longer seems strange,
but simple, every-day truth. With the form of the
story we have little to do. But few persons will
consider it worth while to pause long upon it ; or
they will but study it as an illustration of the way in
which the ancient Oriental mind embodied subtle
moral processes for which it had not yet found any
direct method of expression. The scene lies in the
infancy of the world, and the speech is as of an in-
fant, but, as in the speech of infants, there may be
truth that cur dull ears cannot hear. If any con-
sider it necessary to have some theory of it in order
to save the letter of Scripture, there is no objection ;
only let no theory of literalism or zeal for miracle
rob the story of its moral value. The thing signi-
fied is very plain, and may be read apart from any
theory. Balaam is doing what he knows he ought
not to do ; there is a great wrong in his heart send-
ing up its protests to the brain. The man is at cross-
purposes, and vents his unrest and ill-feeling upon
outward objects. How of ten it liappens ! One in ill-
humor often curses the tools he is using, — the dull-
ness of a saw, the waywardness of a shuttle, the
knife that wounds his hand ; he beats his horse or
dog ; he scolds his children. Here we come nigh the

THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 121

very heart of the story. When, in some fit of ill-
temper brought on by our own wrong-doing', we have
beaten an animal, or spoken roughly to a chikl, and
then have noticed the humble patience of the brute
under our anger, or the meek undesert of the child
reflected from its upturned eyes, there comes over us
a sense of shame and an inward confession that the
wrong is not in the brute or in the child, but in us.
The beast or the child speaks back to us ; its very
bearing and looks become audible voices of rebuke.
When a great man like Balaam gets involved in
wrong- doing, all nature is changed to him, and
from all things come rebuking voices. When
Macbeth returns from the murder of the king, a
simple knocking at the gate appalls him and deep-
ens the color of his blood-stained hands ; one sense
runs into and does the office of another. To a har-
assed and guilty conscience, the light comes with a
condemnation ; every true and orderly thing meets it
with reproof, — angels of God that confront it, but
do not turn it from its fatal course. Balaam would
have turned back, but he is told to go on. This is
only another stage of the moral confusion into which
he has fallen. He would go back, but the spirit of
sophistry again begins to work, and he goes forward,
but he will speak only the true word, — evil drawing
him on, while he excuses it with the plea of right in-
tentions, — a daily history on every side ! Why did
Balaam not go back ? He could not. When a man
does wrong in a simple and impulsive way under the
direct force of temptation, he can retrace his steps ;
but when he has found what seems to him a safe

122 THE DEFEAT OF LIFE.

path to a coveted end, he seldom gives over. Many
men with scrupulous consciences do not regret being
yoked with partners who are less particular ; and
many men do as a corporation what not one of them
would do as an individual. Balaam could not avail
himself of these modern methods, and so made a
partnership and corporation of his own divided na-
ture, — reaping speedily in himself the bitter con-
sequences of such action that overtake the modern
man slowly but no less surely.

There is also a certain fascination in evil that
draws men on, — a truth that Dickens has illustrated
in so many of his pages, even as we find it in every-
day life, — persistence in evil courses when appar-
ently nothing is to be gained, a return to them after
they have been abandoned, a blind daring of the
penalty bound up with them, contempt for expe-
rience. There is a sound doctrine named " the per-
severance of the saints," founded on its human side
on a passion for goodness when once tasted. There
is a corresponding truth in the kingdom, of evil — a
perseverance of evil-doers, resting on the fascination
of evil ; for evil gets its power largely from a cer-
tain play of fine qualities that it calls into action.
It challenges the will to a trial of strength ; it re-
sents the plain ploddings of virtue ; it delights in
the novelty of strange experiences, in the uncertainty
that attends its course, and in the pseudo-knowledge
uncovered by forbidden things. It is the immortal
mistake ! Its history and doom are written over
and over again, — in the Edenic traditions, in this
great character fascinated by a doubtful career pic.

THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 123

tured in his imagination while distant from its
scene, and drawn into a field of action where " he
would not play false and yet would wrongly win ; "
written again and again in the lives of many great
and even good men, who set their minds upon ends
before they fully consider methods ; found also in
organized schools and bodies who are governed by
the maxim that the means justify the end, in gov-
ernments that strive to save themselves by compro-
mise with evil, in churches that decline to protest
against popular sins in order to secure revenues, in
communities that license evils under the plea of re-
straining them, in trials for heresy that cloak per-
sonal hatred under zeal for the truth, in societies
that wage theological strifes under the plea of ful-
filling a trust.

This history will always attract the moralist for
the fineness with which it outlines the fall of su-
perior natures. It shows not how the weak and
ignorant and besotted sin, but how the strong, the
would-be good, the brilliant, and even the wise are
betrayed into evil. It shows also that the end and
doom reached is the same with that of gross and
vulgar sin. It illustrates the folly of trying to mix
up good and evil, of striving at the same time to do
right and wrong, — doing right in one part of the
life and wrong in another, doing a bad thing and
excusing it by a good motive or by coupling it with
a good action. It shows also how one may observe
all the outward forms of good conduct and cherish
its purpose, and yet stand on the brink of perdition.
Balaam will not lie for all the gold the king could

124 THE DEFEAT OF LIFE.

give liim ; he will flo notliing without getting what
seems to him the diviae sanction ; he is full of re-
ligious fervor and expression, but in and behind it
all is a self-seeking spirit that feeds upon and dom-
inates over his virtues. He illustrates that worst
of all sins, the perversion of sacred gifts, — the
only sin for which our Lord showed no pity and
uj^on which he pronounced the condemnation of
hell. He illustrates the history of such sin. When
his veracity and prophetic fervor no longer serve
him, he drops to base and horrible methods ; his
virtues, falsely held and used, become the snares
that lure him to his fate and deepen his doom.

The thing that is all the while surprising us is
the collapse of fair characters : the good man, the
trusted man, the honorable man, in an hour stands
out a perjurer, a thief, a liar ; but in every case it
will be found first that he had no tap-root of char-
acter, and then that he was moved by a double pur-
pose. On such a foundation no man can long stand.
Some wind of chance or blow of circumstance assails
him, some thread of suspicion trails behind him,
some crisis closes in upon him, and he passes to the
ever-sitting judgment that uncovers and separates
him into his two selves. Character and conduct
must rest on one and the same foundation, and they
must be of one piece.

The whole emphasis of Scripture is thrown upon
sino'leness of heart and ao-ainst double-mindedness.
There can be no service of God and mammon ; no
man can serve the Master and go first to bury the
dead ; first and always must one seek the kingdom

THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 125

of God ; whatsoever is not of faith is sin ; do all fur
the glory of God ; only the pure in heart see God ;
the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem are each one
poarl, — one entrance only into eternal life.

Christian teaching has not yet enough emphasized
the grace of simplicity or single-mindedness. It is
left secondary, or dropped into a lower category, as
not quite spiritual, or as not being an element of
savins: faith. We have failed to see that it is the
expression of the unity of God, and that it is both
the substance and essence of the Christ character ;
that in nothing else is Christ so one with God as in
the absolute simplicity in^ which he was grounded, his
whole being moving in the one straight line of truth,
his eye ever single and never wandering to take in
an opposite motive, bearing witness to the truth,
and for that end alone is he in the world, making no
bargains with conscience, saying and doing the one
thing that is right and true. " Yea and nay," not
something between or of both, — that is his rule of
conversation. Doing what he sees the Father do, —
that is his rule of conduct. Looking with a single
eye for the path of daily duty, — that is his guide.
Bearing witness to the simple truth, stating things
as they are and acting as he speaks, though it takes
him to the cross, — that is his history. He is no
casuist weicihinG: motives. He knows no doctrine of
expediency that involves morals. He would not
have mingled one drop of falsehood with an ocean
of truth to have saved the world ; he could not thus
have saved it. The church has not yet measured
Christ in this attitude. It has heeded the truth he

126 THE DEFEAT OF LIFE.

spoke but not tlie Truth he was, forgetting that the
truth spoken has value and power only because he
is himself its embodiment. Were he fully recog-
nized in this supreme attitude, what an upturnmg
would it cause in many a life, many a pulpit and
church and synod ! For the primal lie — good for
eye and taste and making wise as gods — is still the
deceiver of mankind. An alloy of evil to make
good current, — that is the fallacy which underlies
a great deal that calls itself right in this world.

A spirit of simplicity, truthfulness, life all on one
side and of one piece, life without any sort of lies,
— there is nothing a man should so strive after as
this, for he is striving after vital air — for the life of
the soul itself.

THE TWO PEAYEES OF JOB.

" He that lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend.
Eternity mourns that. ' T is an ill cure
For life's worst ills to have no time to feel them.
Where sorrow 's held intrusive and turned out,
There wisdom will not enter, nor true power,
Nor aught that dig-nifies humanity. ' '

Henky Taylor, Pldlip Van Artevelde, i. 5.

" Present unhappiness is selfish ; past sorrow is compassionate.

" The man knows only how to say ' sorrow ; ' the Christian, better
informed, says ' trial.' Trial! that word explains man, evil, Chris-
tianity, expiation, heaven, God.

" The heart which has wept much resembles the rock of Horeb,
which is now dry, but preserves the mark of the waters which
gushed from it in days of yore.

" At the bottom of every man there is an abyss which hope, joy,
ambition, hate, love, the SAveetness of thinking, the pleasure of
Avriting, the pride of conquest, cannot fill. The whole world cast
into that abyss would not satisfy it ; but, O my God ! a drop, one
single drop, of your grace causes it to overflow." — Joseph Roux,
Meditations of a Parish Priest.

THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB.

And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about,
tliat Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning,
and offered burnt otfermgs according to the number of them all ;
for Job said : It may be that my sons have sinned, and renounced
God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually. — Job i. 5.

And the Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for liLs
friends. — Job xlii. 10, Rev. Ver.

These two quotations describe two prayers of
Job ; the first offered in the days of his prosperity,
before his great lesson in suffering had been entered
upon, and the last after it was ended.

Prayer not only distinguishes the good man from
the bad, but it also marks the grades of character
in a good man. Job was always unimpeachable in
his integrity, irreproachable in his conduct, merci-
ful in his spirit ; but he was a very different man
at the last from what he was at the first. His trial
was not a test of the firmness of character already
won ; nor was it sent merely to confirm him in his
character, but to develop a higher quality of charac-
ter. The kind of man he was, and the kind of man
he became, are indicated in these two prayers.

Notice first his prayer for his sons. The picture
of Job at the outset is that of unbounded prosperity

130 THE TWO PRAYEKS OF JOB.

combined with the highest integrity and complete do-
mestic happiness. He was a prince, — none greater
in all the East ; he was rich in all that made riches
in those days, — sheep and camels and oxen and she-
asses ; he had a great retinue, and, to crown all, a
family perfect after the Eastern ideal, — seven sons
and three daughters, — sons enough to strengthen
his own house, and daughters enough to form alli-
ances with other princes. So rich, so happy, are
they all, that they give their days to continual feast-
ing, filling the week with their alternate visits, in-
cluding also their sisters, — a practice contrary to
Oriental custom. And so these happy children of
a good father spend their time, — rejoicing in one
another, and in the prosperity of a father who
can so endow their houses. The picture, you per-
ceive, is not painted to the life, but to the ideal of
life. We are not here reading actual events ; we are
looking upon the background of a picture of a great
moral experience. But the picture is not finished
until we behold him covering this life of his children
with the protecting mantle of his prayers. He
knows already what he will some day know better,
— that prosperity has its dangers. His sons are
good, and their feasting is innocent ; but he feared
lest they should forget God in it, and fall away
from religious conceptions of life. What he thus
feared as the result of prosperity was the same thing
that afterward came to him in his misery. Pros-
perity may tempt us to forget God, and wretched-
ness may lead us to curse him. And so Job
every week offered burnt offerings, presenting thus

THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. l31

his children to Heaven sanctified and cleansed from
any possible fault or casual sin. Notice again this
ideal picture, and see how perfect and beautiful it
is: riches without stint, domestic love, jojousness
without break, — all flowing out of a father's
bounty, and redeemed from all possible evil by a
father's prayers, — earthly happiness, tender affec-
tion, and careful piety combined into a perfect whole.

And this is what we all admire, what we all would
have and do. What other way of life is there for a
sensible man to follow but to strive for prosperity,
to surround himself with love, and to redeem it
from evil with piety, — the necessary and rational
aim and course of life in this world ? Only let no
man think that is all or enough ; and, lest we shall be
tempted to think it all or enough, God often sweeps
away our prosperity, and carries us off into other
regions of life and blessedness.

Yet, as this picture lingers in our vision, who can
but delight in and approve it ? Its beauty, its agree-
ment with the tenderest and sweetest sides of human
nature, its fulfillment of all that the heart craves, its
grace of piety so charm us that we say : Would
that my life w ere such !

So it is until life is opened up to us in its deeper
meanings and objects, until the heavens also are
opened and the powers of an endless life descend
upon us. Then we see the defects of this picture,
and of the life it depicts. For, after all, what is Job
thinking of and doing, and aiming at ? Merely the
enjoyment and wise use of his prosperity. He has
got him all these flocks and herds, these sons and

132 Tl&E TWO PRAYERS OF JOB.

daughters, and he puts them into relations of enjoy-
ment, — sweet and. real indeed, — while he stands
by and prays Heaven that it may not be marred nor
interrupted. His whole life is within the circle of
his own prosperity ; his piety does not reach beyond
the field of this prosperity ; his prayers rise foi' his
children as they go their happy ways. He is perfect
and upright, just and merciful, but all this is an
element, and perhaps a cause, of his prosperity. The
whole arg-ument of the book turns on the fact that
Job was free from fault, and did not deserve the evil
that came upon him. I confess that it is not easy
to put the finger on the flaw, or lack, or need in him
that justifies his trial. It can only be explained
by referring it to the mysterious way in which God
sees fit to deal with men. Only this we can say :
that God cannot fulfill his purpose with man in the
field of prosperity, where there is always occasion
for the question : Do we serve God for naught ?
That is, there is a temptation to serve God, not for
himself, but for the sake of the prosperity. While
the ostensible object of the book is to refute the
idea that all suffering is deserved, its real object
is to show that piety, in its high sense, is not per-
fected in the field of prosperity. And it never
is ; Providence cooperates with grace, and what we
call prosperity in the ordinary sense — full, last-
ing, universal — is not the portion of human life.
The flocks and the herds may remain, but some-
thing dearer than these is taken away; or riches
and family may be spared, but darts of secret
trouble find their way into our hearts ; or, if these

THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. 133

troubles stand aloof, over us hangs our mortality,
whose touch ever threatens to burst the bubble of
prosperous life. It is not a morbid fancy, but a
simple fact, that prosperity cannot ripen character.
In that sphere it cannot be made evident to others or
to ourselves that we are not serving God for a reward.
Hence the trier of life — the messenger of God —
goes walking up and down the earth, jostling men
out of their prosperity, and driving them into worlds
of poverty and loss and sorrow and disease and
loneliness, where they can test their principles and
find out what they believe, what they stand on, and
what they are living for. This is not Job's history
alone : it is yours and mine and every man's.

We turn now to his second prayer, offered when
his great lesson in life had been gone through. The
Sabeans have swept away his oxen and asses ; light-
ning has consumed his sheep ; the Chaldeans have
stolen his camels ; his servants have been slain ; a
whirlwind has killed his children at their feasting.
All this he endures in the highest spirit of submis-
sion : " The Lord "rave and the Lord hath taken
away ; blessed be the name of the Lord." But sub-
mission is not a high grace. Job enforces it by a
bit of rather stern but fair logic : " Naked was I
born, and naked shall I go hence." Who can com-
plain of that? It is nature circling round to its
beginning : as well complain of being born naked
as of dying naked. Submission at its highest point
touches only the lowest in true character, the field of
which does not lie in the will of God, but in the
love of God. Submission to the Divine will has no

134 THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB.

value except as it leads into the Divine sympathy.
Job's losses did not take him there. Like a God-
fearing man, and with a great deal of a man's
strength, he stands up against all this heavy buf-
feting, firm in himself and his principles. And so
the trial is brought closer, even to his body, and
into the deepest recesses of his own heart and mind.
For, say what we will about it, the lessons of Provi-
dence do not wholly reach and cover us, they do not
get down to the inmost centre of self, until we our-
selves, in our personality, are involved in them.
God cannot say to us through another what he can
say to us in ourselves. We may love another more
than self, and that other one may be taken away
from us through sufferings that we would gladly
have borne, and the lesson may be of priceless
value ; still, when God would speak his uttermost
truth to us, when he would communicate to us his
highest secret, — namely, his love for others, — he
must speak it directly into our own ear, and through
our own personal experience. Only as these springs
of personal life are touched and pressed will they
respond to the Divine word. Job had lost all that
he had ; but still between his losses and God there
was himself, strong in will, sound in body, hedged
about by the consciousness of his integrity. God
had come very near to him, but not into him ; he
must get inside of this image of himself, behind his
will and down into that self-love which is the ultimate
field of the Divine action ; he must take possession
of this royal citadel of the body, and send his mes-
sengers of humbling pain along the nerves, and turn

THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. , 135

the veins into channels of loathsomeness, and make
him a contempt unto himself, — his will and strength
and pride and self-complacence swept away from him
even as his flocks and children had been : then Job
could say : —

* ' I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear ;
But now mine eye seeth thee.' '

It is under such conditions that he is able to think
out his great question, and repel the sophistries that
thought is always forcing upon us when it draws
upon speculation instead of interrogating life itself.
Job's friends discoursed upon life as they thought
it was ; he, as he knew it and felt it. There is no
philosophy of life but the experience of it ; there is
no knowledge of God until, in some way, we come
completely into his hands. Sin and need and sor-
row may drive us there, but only life itself, in all its
length and dej^th and vicissitude and final emptiness,
can fully place us there.

There is more in the book of Job than is found in
the line of its argument, which is a vindication of
Providence in the matter of suffering. There is also
to be found in it the effect of suffering. Hence,
when Job emerges from his trial, we find him a dif-
ferent man, and standing in a different environment ;
he himself has been enlarged, and so he is set in a
larger field. He is no longer within the narrow,
happy circle of his family ; his brethren and sisters,
and all that had been of his acquaintance, come
about him, and bemoan his troubles and comfort
him. O, how true is the heart of man to man when
he is true to God ! They give him gifts of money

136 THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB.

to rebuild his estate, and rings of gold for the
renewal of his princely condition. He comes again
into prosperity, but not as the same man. Now he
knows what prosperity is, and what it is for. By
having it and by losing it, down even to the loss of
himself, he has found God, and, having found God,
he may safely regain prosperity. The book has
been thought to drop below the highest ethics, and
to play into the Jewish conception of prosperity as
the earthly reward of piety, because it leaves Job
where it found him. But its thought runs deeper.
Its ethics are of the universal sort ; there is in them
little of place and time, this world or any other ;
they are eternal in their nature. Prosperity is not,
indeed, the reward of piety, but it is eternally true
that the meek inherit the earth ; that all things are
ours ; that we are joint heirs with Christ in the
universe of God. In Job, this great truth is dra-
matically set forth under the conditions assumed in
the story.

But the point where we most clearly see the change
in Job is in his prayer for his friends. Then his
captivity of suffering and trial is turned. At the
outset, he prays for his family, — a narrow circle ;
but when he has passed through his mighty lesson,
he prays again, — for his friends, so called, but no
friends. They had come to him as such, but they
proved themselves miserable comforters. Their
words had only increased the perplexities of his
struggling heart ; their unjust reproaches had but
stung him with keener pain, and driven him into a
farther isolation from his fellows. Instead of enter-

THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. 137

ing into his sufferings with true sympathy, they
made them the text for their sophistries, and a foil
for the phiy of their shallow theories. His condi-
tion is to them not an occasion for help and pity, but
for speculation. They are much more concerned for
God's character than for the sufferings of God's
(;hild ; more fearful that the foundations of their
theology may be disturbed than that Job may perish
under the heavy hand of God, — an old picture, but
steadily reproduced in the church as, age after age,
it wrangles over its theodicies while humanity groans
and perishes unhelped. Their conduct produced its
legitimate effect upon Job : You are very pious, and
very careful of God's government, but you seem to
think little of me ; you know all about God's ways
and plans, but you know nothing of what I think
and suffer, and so I consider that you know nothing
about God ; your system is very correct, beautifully
proportioned ; one part follows from and upholds
another ; the logic is exact and faultless, but I have
found out in my experience that it is not true ; it
does not cover my case ; I am willing to suffer under
the unexplained providence of God, but I protest
against being made a text for your dogmatic opin-
ions ; you seem to be right, but the whole creation
of God is against you.

Job's feeling is the reflection of God's, whose
wrath was kindled against these men ; but it was a
transient feeling, and passed away as he emerged
from his trial. When he had come to see God
with his eye, and had humbled himself in dust and
ashes, there was no place left in him for wrath and

138 THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB.

reproacli. God be thanked that a time comes to all
when hatred dies out ! Job had lost ever}? thing, —
even himself ; but he had found his human heart,
and it began to beat in charity and love for others,
and even for his miserable comforters. Then, and
in that, and because of that, his captivity was turned.
When he is moved to pray for these friends, he has
learnt the lesson God had set him. He finds, in the
consciousness of such love and devout solicitude, the
solution of the great question that had been vainly
discussed with words and human knowledge. A new
feeling towards men, begotten by bitter experience,
has revealed God to him, and removed all perplexity
arising from the course of Providence. And so it
is that, when life and its suffering take us into fel-
lowship with Christ and his love, all questions are
settled for us, — settled, that is, by a practical en-
forcement of the Divine love, but unsettled so long
as we make them a matter of speculation and
theory.

It is not difficult to imagine what the prayer of
Job was like. He has found truth, and it is so sweet
and nourishing that he prays these men may also
find it. He has gained a vision of God, and it is
so clear and satisfying that he prays it may be
revealed to those who are sure they know all about
it. Was the prayer answered? Doubtless, but only
as they were led through some such experience as
his own ; for life, with its labor and burden and loss
and suffering, is the only medium through which the
knowledge of God can come to us. Hence the In-
carnation ; hence the Son made perfect through suf-

THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. 139

f ering ; hence fellowship with Christ as the only way
of oneness with the Father.

At the risk of some possible repetition, I will now
speak, in a more general way, of the effect of suffer-
ing as it is woven into human life, — not exceptional
or great suffering, but that inevitable measure of it
which is wrapt up in ordinary experience.

It works toward enlarged sympathies.

Nothing really opens the mind and heart of man
but suffering. The law, or its analogy, is wrought
into all nature, and at last God is presented to us
suffering in his Son. A man cannot think his way
into large sympathy with his fellow-men. No study,
no effort of will, no practice of benevolence, can
bring us into a true humanity. While we are pros-
perous and happy, we think chiefly of ourselves. Im-
agination, even, cannot overleap the walls of haj^py
circumstances. We must suffer in ourselves before
we can truly love others ; and we must suffer greatly
before we can love widely. Suffering alone will
sting and spur this sacred feeling into genuine ac-
tivity. Why it is so, we may not be able to tell,
unless it be that only thus do we gain a thorough
knowledge of ourselves. A heavy sickness will teach
one more psychology than all the books can. Get-
ting thus some true and full sense of self, and find-
ing out what a precious thing the soul is, and how it
can feel and suffer and rejoice, we reach a path that
leads divinely to others. There is in the heart of
man a secret chamber where God has put all human-
ity, and himself also : touch its door with the hand,
of suffering and it flies open, and man finds himseK

140 THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB.

one with all others, and God himself in the midst of
them. This is the truth of the Incarnation ; hence
the Lamb of God eternally slain ; hence he who
loved the whole world could only love it by suffering
in and with and for it.

Suffering is a mystery and it is not a mystery, —
a mystery in the sinless brute world, in the babe that
wails out its little life in agony, in faultless men and
women who serve God all their days and suffer in
them all. It is a mystery as it travels by sure
cause along the generations from some ancestral
source ; it is a mystery when we see it dissociated
from fault or desert, or issuing from ignorance or
from the forces of nature. A mystery, but perhaps
the key to all truth ; for, if it unlocks the heart of
God so that he becomes Love, and if it melts the
hearts of men so that they flow together in sympathy
and welds them into one mighty, nmtual force of re-
deeming effort, then it is no longer a mystery, but
the very light of truth and the solvent of all things.
Under such a conception, its presence in the inno-
cent brute world, in little children, in the good and
faithful, only seems to show that it cannot be kept
out of any part of the creation, because it is the key
to the whole creation.

Suffering, especially when it is great, and is un-
deserved by sin, tends to create a clearer and deeper
sense of God.

When it is not great, it is simply endured, —
matched by human will and patience ; but when it is
long, severe, and heavy, it rouses the mind to thought,
and, by opening up self, opens also a way to God.

THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. 141

Wlicn it is deserved, when it follows fradt and sin,
it simi)ly reveals a law of nature, and (iod as a law-
maker, — things well to be known, but not the best
and highest. But when it is undeserved, — as in
the case of Job, — the very mystery and strangeness
of it send us off to God by a necessity of our nature.
For, when we cannot explain a thing, and if it is
something real, something that touches us closely,
something that forces us to cry. Why ? we are
driven, because we cannot find out the why^ to carry
it up to God and there leave it. There is but one
place where the insolvable questions of life can be
left, — at the feet of God ; a rational thing to do,
for he who is over and in all things must have in
himself the explanation of all things. This is the
argument in the book of Job. God turns his mind
to the natural world, — to the stars, to the rain and
dew and lightning, to the brutes, — and confounds
him by the mystery in these things that are under
his eye and hand. Their explanation is only to be
found in God: " Hath the rain a father ? Or who
hath begotten the drops of dew ? " Take, then,
this other and nearer mystery of suffering to God,
and there leave it. Thus Job is led up to the
great act and state of trust. He did not know and
could not find out why he suffered ; he had done
nothing to deserve it ; there was no chain of cause
and effect in it ; the elements and foreign enemies
had smitten him, — not his own sins. And so he is
sent en a blind search after the reason. The ten-
dency was twofold : to atheize him, to lead him to
curse God and die, and so end his groaning misery ,

142 THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB.

or to follow the better clue till he could sec God as
with his eye, and at last could say : " Though he slay
me, yet will I wait for him. I know that my re-
deemer, my vindicator, liveth. Here upon this dust-
heap where I sit, exiled from the city, while my very
skin and flesh fall away from me, I shall see God for
myself, — not through your eyes, but mine own."
When a man can reach a confidence like this, and in
such a way ; when he has thus learned to put the
perplexity and hardness and bitterness of life on
one side, and God on the other as the sure solvent
and cure, he has come very near to God. He no
longer cries, " Oh that I knew where I might find
him ! " Instead, he says, " Now mine eye seeth
thee." Thus he becomes humble and docile, ready
to hear the vindication that is pressed in upon him
by the very nearness of God.

To trust is the longest step God-ward that any of
us can take. We cannot by searching find out God ;
we can only put ourselves where God can come to us.
He who trusts, who believes, knows God. Faith is
the path between heaven and earth quite as much as
between earth and heaven ; as necessary to God for
reaching us as to us for finding him. The divine
currents run hitherward first, — along the path of
God-containing whirlwinds it may be, — and the faith
that can respond under such disclosure of him is
that which finds him.

Suffering also tends to bring us into new rela-
tions to men. It does this because it has brought
us into full relations to God. Suffering man and
God and humanity are united by one golden chain.

THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. 143

When Job has found God, and so begun to think
and feel in God-like ways, he begins to think of and
feel towards men as God does. His captivity is
turned when his heart turns in pity and yearning
desire to these associates who had not been taught
and illuminated in his school. God stops short of
nothing else with us. We may be humbled till our
pride is gone, bruised till the will is meek, chastened
till we are obedient ; we maybe disciplined into rev-
erence and sober thought and virtuous conduct : but
God is not content with these, nor with anything but
a love for man like his own. Then our captivity of
worldly life, of crushing trouble, of dissolving hap-
piness, of bitter perplexity, of unsubdued spirit, of
rebellious complaint, is turned. God, indeed, we
need for trust, but equally we need humanity for
love and service. There must be a real field for the
play of our redeemed powers, as there must be for
the discipline of our unsanctified nature. This field
is not God, nor heaven, nor our own souls, but this
world of men about us.

It is not in vain, my friends, that you are called
to pass through great trials and sufferings. They
never leave you what they found you ; God forbid
they should ! But how you bear them, what they
make of you, what they lead you to do and to feel,
will vary according to your own attitude to them.
Their trend and purpose are towards those two poles
of duty, God and humanity ; but it is our weakness
and fault that often we do not read aright their
meaning. Suffering may leave us hard, selfish, and
complaining, or it may lead us into the mysteries of

144 THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB.

eternal Providence and into the very fellowship of
God. There is one thing we cannot do with it : we
cannot wholly explain it ; we cannot find out on what
principle it is allotted. A part of it is in the line of
cause and effect, — sin yielding misery ; a part is
disciplinary, — the necessary school for ignorance ;
but there is more that has no such explanations.
The good suifer almost more than the evil, and there
is such a thing as happy ignorance, — the very sim-
plicity of its conditions warding off evil consequences.
A vast amount of suffering is due to natural causes,
— lightning and whirlwind and torrent, — that affect
good and bad alike. A foul miasma poisons a saint
as soon as a sinner, and an earthquake shakes alike
the foundations of churches and brothels. But this
much we can say of suffering, — that it unlocks the
mysteries of spiritual life, and sets the moral forces
of our nature in action. It teaches us the oneness
of humanity, the power of sympathy, the sweetness
of love. It is not well to ask why we suffer ; we may
get no answer. Certainly we will get no full answer
until we experience its effects. Using it thus, w^e
find ourselves launched into universal sympathies
and filled with yearning thoughts for our fellows.
The children in the street become dear to us as our
own. The poor cry to us, and not in vain. The
Samaritan becomes our neighbor, and our neighbor
as ourself. Then we can pray for our enemies and
bless those that curse us. Thus the mystery of it
dies out ; its perplexity vanishes in the great light
that comes dawning upon us ; we find ourselves
transported away from the field of its external cause

THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. 145

and process into that spiritual woi-ld where we be-
hokl God himself suffering in his Son, and so re-
deeming the world out of all its evil, and preparing
the day when there shall be no more pai^, and all
tears shall be wiped away.

TRUST AND EIGHTEOUSNESS.

''Ask and receive, — 't is sweetly said ;
Yet what to plead for know I not ;
For wish is worsted, hope o'ersped.

And aye to thanks returns my thought.
If I woidd pray,
I 've nought to say
But this, that God may be God stUl.
For him to live
Is still to give.
And sweeter than my wish his will.

" 'All mine is thine,' the sky-soul saith;
' The wealth I am must thou become ;
Richer and richer, breath by breath, —
Immortal gain, immortal room ! '
And since all his
Mine also is.
Life's gift outruns my fancies far,
And drowns the dream
In larger stream.
As morning drinks the morning star."

David A. Wasson, All 's WelL

" Wliy shouldst thou fill to-day with sorrow
About to-morrow.
My heart ?
One watches all with care most true,
Doubt not that he will give thee too
Thy part."

Paul Flemming.

"Enjoy the blessings of this day, if God sends them, and the
evils of it bear patiently and sweetly : for this day is only ours ; we
are dead to yesterday, and we are not yet born to the morrow.
But if we look abroad, and bring into one day's thoughts the evil
of many, certain and uncertain, what will be and what will never
be, our load will be as intolerable as it is unreasonable."

Jeremy Taylor.

TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS.

Take therefore no thought for the morrow. — St. Matt. vi. 34.

The force of the word "therefore" in this phrase
reaches back over a considerable portion of Christ's
discourse. Why we need feel no anxiety for the
future, and how to surmount it, is his theme. In
an extended illustration, he turns our thoughts to
certain facts that show the needlessness and the fu-
tility of this anxiety. The fowls are not anxious,
yet they are fed ; and you are better than they,
better worth the care of the Heavenly Father. The
lilies are more gorgeous in their glory than Solomon,
but a man is more beautiful in the eyes of God than
a lily, and will more surely be cared for. Besides,
what is the use of anxiety? It betters nothing, it
alters nothing. Your life is not going on under
conditions that may be varied or improved by anx-
ious forethought ; it is rather going on under condi-
tions like those of your body. You cannot, by such
thought, add a single cubit to your stature, nor can
you add anything of real value to your life by
anxiety. Drop it, says Christ ; seek first the king-
dom of God and his righteousness, and you will get
all you strive after with such fret and care ; this

150 TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS.

is tlie true method. He closes his argument with
a bit of massive wisdom that well-nigh covers the
whole philosophy of life : let to-morrow take care
of itself ; there may be evil in it, but let it alone till
to-morrow comes. The point of his advice is, that
the evil which is incidental to life is to be left dis-
tributed over life, and not be drawn forward, and
added to the evil of to-day. If you do this, you
overburden yourself ; each day's evil is enough for
it ; you manage to get along with it in some way ;
you overcome it or bear it ; it does not make you
miserable nor disturb the true course of your life ;
but if you add to-morrow's evil to that of to-day,
you will have a heavier burden than you can well
bear, and will be thrown off the true line of exist-
ence. Christ does not deny nor lessen the reality
of evil, — sorrow, perplexity, pain, toil, disappoint-
ment, — but he requires us to take it as it comes,
and by no means to anticipate it. For we cannot
prevent it, it will surely come ; and if we anticij^ate
it, we have it twice over.

Such is the line of thought here, and a most
soothing picture of life it presents. It takes us oui"
of this world of strife and anxiety and foreboding,
and sets us down in the calm, un striving world of
nature with the birds and the flowers, and with as
little need of anxiety ; for are we not, along with
them, under the tender care of the Father? A
soothing picture, indeed, if we could but see and
realize it ! But as we attempt to do so, we are con-
fronted by questions that are not easily answered,
and we are led up to a conception of life seemingly

TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 151

at variance with its best qualities. Am I to live
here like a bird of the air, that neither sows nor
reaps nor garners ? Is it not rather my business to
sow and reap and gather in ? Am I not put under
the law of intelligent, careful, thought-taking labor,
and by no means under the improvident law of the
brutes? Is not man and his method of living in
the world the contrast to the birds and their in-
stincts ? And is a man like a lily, " whose red and
white nature's own sweet and cunning hand lays
on"? If a man would be arrayed like Solomon,
must he not toil and spin? These are fair ques-
tions, but they admit of answer.

Christ does, indeed, intend to put us, in a general
way, into the category of nature, but it is in a nature
framed and sustained by an all-wise Father. We
are in nature, but we are also above nature. So far
as we are in it, the same care that is over birds and
flowers is over us. Our bodies grow to their full-
ness of stature and divine proportions ; the earth
feeds them ; the light and the rain bless them. The
fixed laws of nature minister to our physical life
with tender and constant care. But we are also
above nature. Nature is fixed ; man is free. The
animals live by instinct, man lives by thought and
choice and care ; they are under natural laws, he is
under moral laws.

Now, Christ's thought, as I imagine it, is this : as
the birds and the flowers, in a sort of necessary v/ay,
keep the laws of their nature under the kindly care
of the Father, all their wants are met ; they sing
and feed, they bloom and live out their brief lives

152 TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS.

in glad perfection. But the secret of it lies in their
unconscious obedience to the laws of their being ; it
is in obedience that the watchful care of God is
realized. Hence, when Christ comes to apply the
matter to men, he introduces the condition : Seek
first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and
food and drink and raiment will follow. He by no
means says, Live as careless of the future as a bird,
but rather, Be as true to your law of righteousness
as a bird is to the law of its condition, and you
may be as free from anxiety. The point of the com-
parison lies in the certainty that the fowls of the
air will find their wants met in the sure order of
nature, because God is over and in it. But Christ
says there is the same certainty in the free, moral
world. God is over and in that also, and if a man
will live in that world as faithfully as do the birds
in theirs, he will as surely be fed, and need feel as
little anxiety.

But we meet with other difficulties. There seems
to be in these words an easy-going strain at variance
with those qualities of forethought and aim and
achievement on which the worth and strength of
life turn. Who becomes wise, or strong, or even
good without earnest, nay, anxious and care-taking
strife? There is no gain or achievement in life
except as a man looks forward, scans the future
with stern inquiry and forecast, troubles himself
with close scrutiny, scourges himself with stout re-
solve, braces himself to meet the possible storm,
and gathers the whole future, with all its uncertainty
and mischance, into his vision. Christ here seems

TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 153

to conflict with his own teachings. Many of his
parables turn on forethought of the most strict and
resolute character. The foolish virgins were shut out
simply because they were careless of the future.
The unjust steward wins praise because of his fore-
thought. Christ here seems to shut us up to the
present, — Think only of to-day ; but elsewhere and
for the most part he stands with uplifted, warning
finger pointing to the future, and says, Strive, ago-
nize to enter in. There is no doubt that life, as
Christ taught it, is a process moving on towards a
realization in the future ; it is an achievement not
won to-day, but only in the end. We are servants
awaiting in this night of existence our Lord's re-
turn. The account of human life is not rendered
day by day, but when he cometh to reckon. Nei-
ther the coldest scrutiny nor the most easy-going
estimate of life will say that it gets its reward as it
goes on ; it works toward an end and a consumma-
tion ; its joy is set before it. The wise, Christ-
taught man is he who keeps the end before him, and
has the strength and patience to wait, and struggle,
and press towards it. Why then have we these
words that seem to soothe us out of this earnest,
forward-looking, strenuous attitude, and to send
us off to the simple, carefree world of birds and
flowers, where indeed a good part of worthless hu-
manity are content to dwell, — the paradise of fools?
Is it not the very thing that Christ did not teach ?
But the seeming violence of the contradiction is the
pledge of harmony. Christ does not here hold us
back from forethought and care and even a sort of
anxiety.

154 TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS,

In the phrase, " Seek first the kingdom of God and
its righteousness," he puts us into this very attitude.
Seek, he says, first and always ; and no seeking, no
searcli, worthy of the name, can be made without
care. The matter turns, then, on the thing that is
to engage our thought and care. Not meat and
drink and raiment, not the things the Gentiles seek
after ; let your search be after righteousness. Food
and raiment will follow in the sure order of a wise
and tender Providence, when you fill out the higher
plan of your life. Put your solicitude, your careful
thought, your strife, where it belongs, — in the realm
of righteous obedience, — and there will be no oc-
casion for anxiety elsewhere. Thus we see that
Christ, when interpreted by himself, guards his
thought against misinterpretation.

But he was aiming more specially to secure a
certain temper or condition of mind in respect to
every-day life. The quality, the temper, the atmos-
phere of life, was something with which Christ
greatly concerned himself. For life is a fine and
delicate thing, and requires favorable conditions.
He strove to fjet it out from its needless hindrances
and away from its useless burdens, and into a free
and wholesome air. As he went about amongst
men, he saw that they were burdened with a foolish
anxiety as to the future, chiefly in regard to their
physical wants. For the most part they had but
one question. What shall we eat and drink and
wear? The question ran oft* into the future, and
brought back dark foreboding and mistrust ; and so
all the energy and thought of life were absorbed in

TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 155

these lower matters, leaving no room or strength
for higher things. To clear the atmosphere of daily
life, — this is what Christ is aiming at.

Like everything else in this great discourse, it is a
universal matter, it belongs to humanity. Anxiety
for the future, fear of want, undue care for physical
needs, — this is the common condition, this is what
the Gentiles think about, but it is not to be so in the
kingdom of God.

Let us now carry the subject into our own daily
lives.

We are all of us more or less possessed by this
anxiety. The greater part of our efforts turn upon
providing for our future necessities, upon warding
off the evils of poverty and dependence. So far we
are quite right, for we are planted in the soil of this
world ; we must first eat and drink and be clothed,
and we must do this in the way of anticipation and
forethought. No man has a right, if he can prop-
erly avoid it, to face old age in poverty. A man
cannot live as to his body from day to day ; he is
constructed on the plan of prevision ; his natural
life covers periods of non-production. No man ought
to earn his bread in old age ; he must earn it before-
hand. It is the vice and the degradation of multi-
tudes that they do not. But when it comes to anx-
iety and fret as to the future, it is another matter.
And yet what is so natural, so inevitable — perhai)s
you say. AYe hardly deem it a fault ; nay, to be
caretaking and solicitous comes nigh being regarded
as a virtue. Indeed Christ treats it more as a fault
than as a vice, — tenderly rather than strenuously,
— but no less as somethins; to be overcome.

156 TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS.

This spirit or liabit of anxiety and worry over the
future is something that we all condemn in ourselves,
yet all share in. Now this is very strange, — human
nature on both sides of a question, — two verdicts in
one case, and both springing spontaneously from our
minds ! It sets forth the contradiction in man, and
the mystery of his relation to the world : yet only
one verdict can be true ; to set aside the other is a
good part of our business in the court of life. But
there must be some pow^erful reason why we so gen-
erally pronounce the false verdict.

Why is man naturally anxious about the future ?
Because, while a weak and finite being, he is opened
to time. He knows to-morrow ; he sees the years
before him; he knows that he has wants and that
these wants recur ; he knows that only care and
thought and labor will meet these wants ; he knows
that he is weak, — that it is hard to wrest a living-
out of the world for to-day, while he has health
and strength and opportunity ; he sees himself grow-
ing weaker with age ; he sees tender, dependent chil-
dren about him; he sees the uncertainty of the
future, — its wants sure, but its means of supplying
them not sure, but subject to a thousand adverse
chances.

There is thus a sort of antagonism bred in him, —
time set before him, and himself a creature of to-day.
He sees the future, but he cannot compass it ; it
holds before him its wants and demands, but he is
conscious of no force in himself adequate to meet
them. I have hard work to get my bread to-day ;
why, in all reason, should I not be anxious about to-
morrow ?

TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 157

So we all think, and the thought seems justified
by our relation to the world.

But if we will examine the thought, we shall see
that it is made up of hard, cold calculation, — math-
ematical, even. Now, human life is not based on
mathematics. It is a very useful thing in building
bridges and selling goods, and no man should attempt
to live in this world without a strict habit of account-
keeping, if for n© other end than a sure payment of
debts on either side of the ledger. But human life
rests also on other sciences, and on principles that
are not usually named as science, but which are the
essence and end of all science.

It is to these other principles that Christ directs
us, and the main one is that of trust. The one cen-
tral thought in his mind here is trust in God. But
it is not a blind trust nor an irrational one, nor does
it dispense with forethought and labor. On the con-
trary, Christ takes pains to give us the reasons for
it, — tells us why and how we may trust. These
reasons are as solid as the world, as sure as the
process of nature, as true as God himself.

Let us now attend to them.

We are put into the sure order of nature, and
this order is one of supply of wants.

Christ sends us to this world in his allusion to
birds and flowers. Notice that he sends us to the
harmless and beautiful and specially dependent ob-
jects of nature, and not to the ravening and repulsive
side of it, — as if he would connect our lives with
what is fine and gentle and trustful ; and what sound
in nature is so clear in its content as the note of a

158 TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS.

bird ? — what bravery is so modest and assuring as
that of a flower lifting up itself under the mighty-
heavens and facing all the fierce powers of the world ?
It is often said that man " earns a living." It is
true, but in a larger sense his living is provided
for him, and his labor is merely supplementary, — to
get it into shape and at hand. God named the world
a garden, where he has put us with fruits and grains
having their unfailing seeds of growth, and animals
over which we have the mastery. Man has little to
do but to take and eat. As he awakes in the world
he finds all growing things needing only a little
labor — that he himself also needs — to be turned
into food. Water gushes from the spring; textures
half-woven await his touch to be changed into
raiment. A little transformation of the forest gives
him shelter. Air and fire and water wait on him as
humble ministers. The world is not only our dwell-
ing-place, but it goes a long way towards providing
a living, and making it reasonably certain. Here
is w^here the blessedness of unvarying law comes in.
We often look at these unyielding, immutable laws,
and they seem hard and bitter because they do not
shift to meet our shifting wants, but let us starve
and shiver and bleed and die. But their unchange-
ableness is their grand excellence. Thus only we
learn to use them, and thus we have a basis of trust
which becomes a reproof of anxiety. Their certainty
is the complement of our uncertainty and weakness.
If they changed as we change, what horrible uncer-
tainty would follow ! Then, indeed, we might be
anxious for the future. But if seed-time and harvest

TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. lO'J

do not fail, I sliall not go hungry. If the sun rises
to-morrow, I shall be lighted to my labor. If cattle
and sheep feed on the hills or in barns, I shall be
clothed and fed.

Now, this sure order of nature is a call to trust.
It is God's way of assuring me that my physical
wants will be met. To doubt this and fall into
anxiety, is to doubt that this sure order of nature
will go on ; it is to presume that God will not be as
good next year as he is this ; that some part of the
system by which we are clothed and fed will give
out.

But perhaps ydli say : My anxiety does not reach
so far as that, but only lest I may fail in my relation
to it : there may be harvests, yet I may lack bread.
But this only carries your anxiety and distrust of
God into your relation to the world. Does not God
put us here as he does the birds ? The fowls of the
air must seek their food according to the laws of
their being, and so must you according to the laws
of your being ; and so you will be as surely fed, —
nay more surely, for the laws of your being are
surer than the instincts of birds. Moral laws have
more certainty than physical laws. Or, in other
words, God loves men more than he loves brutes, and
has put them into surer methods. For a brute is
subject to nature, but man can surmount and out-
wit nature. There are two simple facts that are
enough to shut out all this low distrust and wearing
anxiety : the unchanging goodness of God, and the
sure order of nature, — one being simply the expres-
sion of the other.

160 TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS.

We are put under a law of righteousness, and
this law also works towards a supply of wants.
Christ says, Seek first the kingdom of God and its
righteousness. Why does he ssij first f Not merely
because it is more important. It is indeed so ; but
Christ by no means teaches the shallow and irra-
tional lesson that if you give yourself to your higher
duties, God will reward you by supplying your lower
wants. This would be commercial, and not divine.
There is no miracle, no break in the chain of cause
and effect in his care for his children. One who
thinks so may come to poverty and hunger on the
knees of unceasing prayer. The *f uU truth is, that
one who seeks first and mainly the righteousness of
God's kingdom will not come to want, because the
habits and laws of righteousness will prevent it.
For what is righteousness ? It is right-feeling and
right-doing. A man who feels and thinks right, and
does right, in these very ways provides for his fut-
ure ; they conduce to supply.

Put it now in the most practical light. A right-
eous man is without vices, and vice is the chief
breeder of poverty and want ; it is lawless passion
that wastes resources, and unfits men to produce, and
to earn a living. A righteous man is industrious, he
is not righteous unless he is ; and industry is the
sure pledge of future supply. A righteous man is
intelligent up to the opportunity and capacity of his
nature, and intelligence makes one master of the
future. A righteous man is careful, thrifty, and ju-
dicious ; the whole habit of the spiritual life leads
to these qualities. It forbids waste, it teaches fore.

TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 161

thought, it trains the judgment, it forbids indolence,
and demands energy in whatever the hand finds to
do; it makes men thoughtful, prudent, and sober;
and these all are paths of prosperity. By teaching
humility and simplicity, it leads away from luxurious
and needless expenditure ; for, next to passion, there
is no waster like pride. By inducing a life of thought,
it shuts off those clamors of the lower nature that
call for expensive indulgence. By teaching content-
ment, it defends one against the consuming appeals
of ambition and display and new sensations. By its
law of stewardship, it forbids one to waste and
squander, and makes expenditure a matter of con-
science. By fostering dignity and self-respect and
manhood, it teaches one to hate dependence, to earn
one's own living, and so the productive energies are
brought out and set to work. It steadies a man,
clears his judgment, and secures that even and
balanced action of his nature which is the basis of
prosperity; for not talent alone, not smartness nor
luck, make a safe and rich future, but a sound and
harmonious mind and a good conscience. Every law
of Christ contemplates universal obedience ; when
all obey, all will be full. The fruits of righteousness
are more than enough for her children.

Thus a righteous man, by the habit and law of his
being, sows seed for the bread of to-morrow. He
becomes rich in himself, is himself resources, capital,
and a productive agent in all spheres. He comes
into his promised supremacy over the world, nature
and all beasts. This is the secret of the dominion
granted him at the beginning, which was not given

162 TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS.

to him as intelligent but as moral. It is the un-
fallen Adam who has dominion over all things, and
they who rise out of this fall, and come into the
righteousness of Christ, thus get command of food
and raiment and shelter, and all else needful ; thus
they pass the flaming swords of the cherubim, re-
enter the garden, and resume the dominion lost
through sin.

But righteousness gives us even surer grounds of
trust than these.

It puts a man into such relations to his fellow-men
that it builds for him houses of habitation for all his
mortal years. For righteousness inspires love and
sympathy. A good man is never without friends.
The inmost principle of righteousness is oneness —
the oneness of love, — and thus it starts into action
all those forces of sympathy, pity, and helpfulness
that make men so ready to aid one another, to make
common cause, to cast in their goods in common if
needful, to bear one another's burdens. There is no
brotherhood on earth, however bound together by
oaths, so strong as that of good men. " Will you
help this poor man ? '■ "I cannot tell — perhaps he
is unworthy." " But he is a good man." " Ah, then
I cannot refuse."

One sometimes sees a narrowly good man — one
who has misconceived the nature of goodness, " one
whom a little grain of conscience has made sour,"
good in a certain way, but ungenerous, unsympa-
thetic — come to want, but never one who has caught
the large, noble, and tender spirit of Christ. Such a
man builds himself into the hearts of all men ; he

TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 1G3

creates debts of gratitude in others ; he lays up
treasure in the bosoms of multitudes that may be
surely drawn on. I do not refer to gifts of charity,
so called, — a righteous man seldom needs these, —
but to that friendly spirit and support that almost
every man requires at times. Alas! for the man
who has no friends in the hard crises of his life !•
But a good man, a truly righteous man, is never with-
out them. The future is uncertain, and chance and
change play many tricks with us, but there is no
provision against them comparable with that spirit-
ual yet human love begotten by like love. It is bet-
ter than bank, or bond, or land, for these are subject
to the chance and mischance of a changing world ;
but the trust of man in man, the love of heart for
heart, the oneness of spiritual sympathy — these never
fail. When one lives in these righteous ways, he
makes a friend of all humanity, and its helping hand
is like the hand of God himself.

Be righteously true to your fellow-men, and you
need have no anxiety for the future. " I have been
young and now am old; yet have I not seen the
righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread ; " —
says the Psalmist. Why? Because "he is ever
merciful, and lendeth."

And thus Christ saves us from anxiety and fore-
boding by simply putting us into the eternal order
of righteousness. It takes us up, as it were, in arms,
and bears us safely through life, — every real want
met, every calamity averted or broken in its power
to hurt. That one should not be fed and clothed
who has come into this order, would be like going

164 TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS.

to a feast and finding no food, or into a forest and
finding no shade ; the one carries the other.

*' Trust," says Christ, " be not anxious." Yes ;
but trust accoi'ding to the plan. There is no true
trust but in righteousness and its eternal laws, yet
such trust may be entire.

* One final question comes up in regard to the
subject. Why does Christ, in this inaugural dis-
course, devote so much time to such a matter as
anxiety, — a thing that hardly comes within the
range of morals ? We do not call it a sin, nor did
he. It never awakens in us pangs of conscience :
it is but a misfortune if we are.given to it ; a simple
fault if we indulge in it. Surely there is hardly any
imperfection of our frail humanity that we regard so
leniently. But Christ, nevertheless, treated it as
a matter of great importance ; and the reason is
evident. First, — it is a source of great unhappiness.
It was a main purpose with Christ to lessen the heavy
burden of misery that presses on the human heart ;
it is crushed, not only under its sin, but under its
sorrow. And so he told men how to cast it off,
and to trust in God. He showed them that the two
kingdoms of nature and righteousness are pledged
to take care of them ; that these two everlasting
arms of God are under them !

Who does not thank him for the assurance ! If
we could but get rid of this foolish anxiety ; if we
could but stop saying, What shall we eat, and
what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be
clothed in this dread future before us, I think a good
part of our unhappiness would have an end.

TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 165

But Christ had a more imperative reason, —
namely, to create an atmosphere of peace about the
soul. Character requires a still air. There may be
storm and upheaval around, but there must be peace
within for the soul to thrive. But anxiety is the
reverse of peace. It teases the mind with questions
that it cannot answer ; it broods over possible evil ;
it peoples the future with dark shapes ; it frets the
sensibilities with worrying conjecture. It spoils the
present by loading it with the evil of to-morrow.
Its tendency is, by dwelling on evil, to make us cow-
ardly and selfish. Character cannot grow in such
an atmosphere. Hence, as a matter of fact, we sel-
dom find any great height and sweetness of character
in an anxious-minded person, for the simple reason
that it has no chance to grow ; all the forces go in
other directions. But when one, in wise and right-
eous ways, has learned to trust in God, and so has
come into peace, then the seeds of all grace and
beauty spring up, and spread out their leaves in the
calm, warm air, and blossom out into full beauty —
fed from beneath and above.

It was to secure an atmosphere for an end so
eternally important as this, that Christ spoke these
words.

Oh, how wise the teaching! How blessed to be
able to receive it !

THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVA-
TION.

" God and man are so near together, so belong to one another,
that not a man by himself, but a man and God, is the true unit of
being and power. The human will in such sympathetic submission
to the divine will, that the divine will may flow into it and fill it,
and yet never destroy its individuality ; my thoughts filled with the
thought of One who, I know, is different from me while he is un-
speakably close to me ; — are not these the conscio;Js'nesses of which
all souls that have been truly religious have been aware ? " —
Rev. Phillips Brooks, D. D., Baccalaureate Sermon at Harvard
College, 1884.

' O power to do ! 0 baffled will !
O prayer and action ! ye are one. ' '

J. G. Whittier.

" Any one who could see quite through himself would seem to
have come to an end of himself ; he alone who is gradually discov-
ering himself is entitled to take an interest in his own existence."
— LOTZE, Microcosmus, p. 12.

" One half from earth, one half from heaven,
Was that mysterious blessing given,

Just as his life had been
One half in heaven, one half on earth,
Of earthly toil and heavenly mirth
A wondrous woven scene."

F. W. Faber, St. Philip's Death.

" Just as it is the distinction of a crystal, that it is transparent,
able to let the light into and through its close flinty body, and be
irradiated by it in the whole mass of its substance, without being at
all more or less distinctly a crystal, so it is the grand distinction of
humanity, that it is made permeable by the divine nature, prepared
in that manner to receive and entemple the Infinite Spirit ; to be
energized by him and filled with his glory in every faculty, feeling,
and power." — Horace Bushnell, Sennonsforthe New Life, p. 31.

THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION.

Work out your own salvation ^vitll fear and trembling- ; for it is
God which worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good
pleasvire. — Philippians ii. 12, 13.

This sentence falls from the lips of St. Paul as
easy and natural as his breath. It has no particular
emphasis, no special importance. It is not a climax
either of thought or feeling ; it is not a definition ;
it shows no trace of a long or careful process of
thouo:ht of which it is the conclusion. It has not
the force of a score of other passages, and evidently
was not framed to express a fundamental truth, far
less to determine a controverted point. It is a
casual remark, dropped almost incidentally ; true,
but not combating any specific error ; important, but
not specially important. As it came from St. Paul
it was a simple, natural, almost commonplace ex-
hortation to earnestness, with the encouragement
that God would cooperate : as any one of us might
say to another : " Work with all your might and
God will help you." But what St. Paul said in this
casual way has been caught up by opposing schools
of thought, turned to a use he never dreamed of,
crowded with meanino^ that he did not intend, made

170 THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION.

the rallying cry of theological champions, and a
very bddy of divinity. It is an illustration of how
Scripture is often misused by having meanings read
into it. In St. Paul's day, the controversy as to
faith and works had not arisen, at least in its mod-
ern form. St. Paul did indeed assert that the works
of the Jewish ritual are of no value, and that faith is
the vital principle of character, — not what a man
does, but what he believes is the main thing, for
belief carries action and covers the whole nature ;
but of the modern question between Arminian and
Calvinist he had not the slightest conception. But
Arminian and Calvinist seized this phrase, cut it in
two, emphasized each his own word in it according
to his philosophy, and, thus equipped, fought each
other for two hundred years or more over a doc-
trine of faith and works. But the controversy is
practically at an end ; the victory is with neither, or
rather with both ; so that we can go back to these
words of gracious encouragement, and read them in
the same simple, natural way in which they were first
written.

Now, what does St. Paul say ? Simply this :
Strive for your salvation ; work it out yourself ; do
not rely on others ; it is your own matter, and a very
serious one, hence be earnest about it ; do not trifle
nor take it for granted that you will be saved ; if
you ever see salvation you must work for it with fear
and trembling, or you may fail of it. But at the
same time remember, for your encouragement, that
while you work, God also works in you ; he wills in
your will, he acts in your act. If you are earnest in

THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION. 171

this matter and have an honest heart about it, you
may rely on the fact that God is at work in you,
the soul and energy of the whole process.

Such and so simple is the thought. But simple
as it is, it teaches several important lessons.

I. That salvation is an achievement. First let us
see what is here meant by salvation. It does not
mean anything done by Christ in the way of expia-
tion or removing hindrances. If such things enter
into salvation, they are not the things that a man
himself is to work out. Nor does it mean getting
to heaven. A man does not enter heaven in order
to find salvation, but because he has already been
saved. Heaven is the result ; salvation is the pro-
cess. Nor is it an immediate work, wrought in some
hour of deep feeling or full surrender. What is
done at such a time may be a very important part
of salvation, but it is not so much of it that one can
say after such an experience : '' I have found salva-
tion." It may be a great mistake to say this, for it
may lead one to confound the first step with the
whole journey, and to sit down satisfied with what
has already been done. Evidently it was not such
an experience that St. Paul had in mind when he
said : " Work out your salvation ; " but rather a
moral process in which time and effort are chief fac-
tors ; a moral process, I say. If a man has any
sinful habits, he must overcome them ; if he has any
lacks or weaknesses, he must work to supply the
deficiency. And then there is the great reality of
character — a welded group of qualities that only
comes about by elaboration. The qualities may

172 THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION.

have a natural root or ground, but each one must be
worked out ; it must come under the conscience and
the will ; it must be tried and shaped and fed and
worked into the substance of the character. When
all good qualities are so wrought out and united in
a man, he may be said to have achieved a character ;
and, so far as he is concerned, to have worked out
his salvation.

II. Another thing taught here is, that this achieve-
ment of salvation is at the cost of sharp and defi-
nite strife.

There is something to be done in the world by
every man born into it, that can only be wrought
in this way, namely : a certain change or achieve-
ment in character gained by the man's own effort.
It is a process and an undertaking that must be de-
liberately chosen and steadfastly pursued year after
year. Of other forces that enter in and help, I shall
speak farther on ; but first of all it must be under-
stood that every man is bound, by every considera-
tion of duty and self-regard, by every law of his
nature, by the sense of his destiny, by the sense of
his condition and of the meaning of life, to under-
take a certain work called salvation. We are here
in the world to do this very thing, and to do little
else. I am well aware that what is called the work
of life is a complex thing, and may be stated in
many ways. The first duty assigned to man was to
people and subdue the earth ; the next, to drive out
savagery and build up civilization. Another work is
to perfect society, to overcome tyranny, and establish
just and mercifid institutions ; another is to dispel

THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION. 173

ignorance and create intelligence ; another is to get
rid of whatever is vicious and low and brutal and
coarse, and bring in whatever is pure and high and
noble and fine. But if you look closely at these
works, you will see that they are all works of deliver-
ance and rescue, — evil overcome and good achieved.
They are not simply natural processes, like the
growth of a tree, or an animal that passes from one
stage of perfection to another ; they are not devel-
opments from lower to higher as in the natural
world, but changes in which evil is cast out by
struggle and suffering. There is no evil to be got
rid of in a sapling or a young lion. In the world
of nature the steps are from less to more, from good
to better, from lower to higher, and each is beautiful
and good in its time and degree. But it is not so
with man, nor is his grow^th such as this. When he
comes upon the stage he finds evil, and his work is
to cast it out and bring in good. He cannot stand
still and look at humanity as he looks at a tree, and
say : " See how it grows ; see how it develops its
inborn forces." Instead, he finds evils and wrongs
that are one with humanity, and yet are no proper
part of it. He sees barbarism ; that must be over-
come. He sees tyranny and cruelty and vice ; these
must be fought down. He sees ignorance ; that
must be dispelled. He sees injustice, greed, pride,
selfishness ; these must be eradicated. None of
these things go out of themselves ; they are not out-
grown nor sloughed by natural process, nor left be-
hind in a passive development of society, but always
and everywhere men have felt themselves called to

174 THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION.

figlit against them. Evil is overcome by struggle,
by sharp, distinct, positive effort, and by effort in-
volving: suffering: and sacrifice. No nation and no
man ever yet grew into virtue, or dropt evil as a
tree sheds its dead leaves.

My point is this : all these various works that are
commonly assigned to man are works of deliverance
or salvation ; they resolve themselves at last to that
complexion and properly take on such designation.
You can have no better or truer name for this
great world-work of man than salvation. Society
in all its struggle and upheaval is first of all saving
itself, working out of and away from its evils. Look
at the world and its history. What is it but a history
of struggle with evil? What else has the world
been trying to do but to save itself from its evils ?
Look at society. What is its main effort and strug-
gle but to check and to put away its evils ? W^hat
is the main function of government, institutions, edu-
cation, but conflict with evil? Turn it about, and
say that the end of society is to develop and har-
monize humanity, that the evil is incidental and will
fall away as man moves towards his perfect human-
ity. State it thus if you prefer, but tell me if every
step is not attended by a conflict with evil, with bad
conditions, and if this is not by far the greater part
of the work in hand. Tell me if a single gain has
been made that did not turn upon an overthrow of
some positive evil which was the main factor in the
operation. Call the progress of society development
if you prefer, but you do not name it by its largest
feature. Salvation is better, because truer and more

THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION. 175

philosophical ; it recognizes the main factor, the pro-
cess, and the beneficent result ; it is a better use of
language. It is well to name things properly, and
they are properly named when they are truly de-
scribed. Thus the Protestant Reformation is rightly
designated because it recognizes the evil condition,
the process of recovery, and the end accomplished.
So salvation, as a name for the general work of hu-
manity, is a proper term, because it recognizes the
evils of society, the rescue from them, and the good
result. It is not only philosophically true, but it
has a warm and joyful note ; it has a human inter-
est ; the heart throbs with it and the mind leaps into
exulting ecstasy with it : —

" Salvation, oh, salvation!
The joyful sound proclaim."

Let US not be ashamed of the old Scriptural names
and terms that describe the march of liumanit3\
Keep the cant out of them, but hold on to the reality
they describe. It will be a sorry clay for the world
when this great process through which it is moving
is called by any other name than salvation. Christ
and his church struck to the root of the matter and
penetrated to the utmost secret of the world in the
use of this word.

As salvation is the great world-business, the main
thing that humanity has to do, so is it the main
thing every man has to do. Hence the first and
constantly recurring question every man should ask
himself is. Am I saving myself ? I am ignorant ; am
I saving myself from that state ? I find in myself
hereditary evil, — faults, defects, proclivities of one

176 THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION.

sort and anotlier ; am I saving myself from these ?
I have contracted evil habits and appetites ; am I
casting them out? I have mean dispositions, — to
indolence, to moral cowardice, to self-complacence,
to petty rivalry, to contempt of others, to censorious-
ness, to evil-speaking, to petulance or anger, to hard-
ness and revenge, to easy toleration of existing evils,
to a low standard of conduct ; am 1 seeking to be
saved from these ? I am absorbed in business, and
in danger of forgetting that I have fellow-men about
me to be helped and benefited ; am I saving myself
from that tendency ? I am fast becoming a slave to
avarice ; am I saving myself from that hell ? I am
getting involved in the whirl of fashion and display
and vain pleasure, — a being to be merely diverted ;
am I saving myself from that still deeper pit of
perdition ? I am passing on from day to day with-
out moral earnestness, without communion with God,
doing nothing for humanity, for the community, for
my neighbors, for the little children in the street, for
the ignorant and suffering about me, nothing high
and good for myself or for others ; am I striving to
escape from this broad road to destruction ?

Some may say that it is better to take the positive
view, and to strike straight for good conduct and the
virtues, without looking off upon this negative side
of escape and deliverance. But the negative and
positive, evil and good, are so mingled in this world
that we cannot shut our eyes to one and look only for
the other. Evil is a reality ; a fault or a vice or a
defect is a positive as well as a negative thing, a fact
as well as a lack, and facts must always be recog-

THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION. 177

nized. If one has a mean, miserly strain in him, or
a lustful taint, or a dull, earthy spirit, it is as real
as the corresponding virtue, and one must first know
it as such before one can reach the virtue. The sailor
nmst not only keep his ship headed for the port and
.bend his sails to catch every helpful wind, but even
before he does this and as more important, he must
know what shoals lie in his course, what headlands
intercept it, what currents tend to sweep him out
of his reckoning, and what weaknesses there may
be in his ship. The sailor must save his vessel from
its dangers before it can make its voyage. And so
there enters into every man's life first a work of sal-
vation. Save yourself from your evil ; cast out, cut
off, drive away, the evil that has got into your heart
and life, and rooted itself in your habits and disposi-
tions. This is the first half of salvation ; then you
are ready to be saved. For the elimination of evil
is not salvation. The house swept clean is not a
home. A man with no faults or vices is not fault-
less nor virtuous. When the house of his heart is
swept clean and the faulty or vicious disposition
is brought under control, then there opens before
him the great positive work of salvation ; then he
may begin to build himself up into the proportions
of true spiritual manhood.

III. I come now to speak of this process as it is
described in the text : " Work out your own salva-
tion with fear and trembling ; for it is God which
worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good
pleasure," — a twofold process, you perceive. But
one process seems almost to antagonize the other.

178 THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION.

St. Paul sa}' s, Work it out yourself ; do not rely on
something or somebody else ; it is your own affair.
The words breathe a spirit of absolute independence ;
they imply the- possibility and even necessity that a
man should save himself ; but in the same breath he
introduces a helper and complicates the process, and
even seems to take the heart and meaning out of it,
— your own salvation ; work it out for yourself ; then
it will be your own indeed. This is plain enough.
But he does not leave it so ; another is brought in
who does it all : God works in jon to will and to
work. Here is confusion and contradiction enough.
The wind of inspiration blows east and west at the
same time. Let us rise into higher regions and see if
we cannot strike a current that sets in one direction.
We find here one of the plainest illustrations of a
doctrine that is now coming into fuller recognition
than it has had since its first Hebraic and Christian
utterance, namely, the doctrine of the Divine Im-
manence, or the actual presence and residence of
God in all things and beings, the life of all lives, the
force in all forces, the soul of all being. The Hebrew
nation was steeped in this truth ; it made it an in-
spired nation. Christ planted himself upon it, and
gave to it its highest and most spiritual expression.
St. John echoes Christ's ow^n words. St. Paul put
it into a sharp and eternal definition, " In him we
live and move and have our being." It is the sep-
aration of this truth from an external, mechanical
conception of God, and the recovery of it to its
original force and meaning, that underlies the
quickened religious thought of the age, and that is

THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION. 179

serving it so well in its conflict with naturalism.
Without this doctrine, the church of to-day would
be swept into the gulf of atheism. God in and
under and behind all things and all beings, — this
is eternal rock and sure foothold. The world does
not exist by itself ; it exists in God. Man does
not live, machine-like, by himself ; he lives and
moves and has and holds his being in God. His
energy and force are not his own, but flow out of
God. He has indeed a free will, but God is the
source of it ; but because it is a free will God can
only act with it and by its consent. He is not, how-
ever, excluded from this realm of our nature. God
may enter the will and fill it with power and work
with it, without impairing its nature or injuring the
value of its action.

This seems to be St. Paul's thought here. Use
your will, work out your salvation with fear and
trembling, — that is, in humble, dead earnestness ;
when you so work, God is working with you. By
virtue of your honesty and earnestness and humility,
God is present, mingling so closely with your efforts
that you cannot tell how much is yours and how
much his. It is all his ; it is all yours ; it is each ;
it is both ; it is neither alone ; together they are one.

No other influence can touch a man like God's.
When I give you my hand, it is in part my strength
that upholds you. When you cheer or inspire me,
I am leaning on your inspiration. But when God
works in a man to will and to work, the union of
wills is so close, that separate threads of influence
cannot be detected. The one indivisible current is

180 THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION.

flowing In one tide through the man's heart, and
thus all the benefit of the action is reaped by the
man. There is no longer any conflict between work-
ing out your own salvation and God working in you.
It often hurts a man to be helped by others ; it
surely hurts him to be helped much, but it never
hurts a man to be helped by God. The energy that
he imparts does not subtract from a man's own,
nor beget a sense of undue dependence, nor induce
a relaxation of the sinew^s of his will, nor lessen the
value of its action.

Consider now how important it is that we should
recognize this twofold process in salvation. St.
Paul never forgot it, and no wise man ever does.
No such man omits God either in the struggle of
life, or in the process of salvation, or in the building
of character. Now suppose God were left out in
this process and man saved himself. Suppose, if it
were possible, that a man alone and without helj),
without God, could overcome all his weaknesses and
faults and evil habits, could purify his heart so that
he should not lust after evil, could so train and
harden his will that he could resist all temptation,
could so chasten his mind that he would love only
what is true and high. Suppose he could so train
and develop himself that his faculties should work
harmoniously, — mind clear and strong, desires
high, judgment firm, tastes pure, social and domestic
instincts duly heeded, and so come to be a wise,
strong, good man, but without any conscious help
from God, the whole wrought by himself, — what
sort of a man would you have ? Assuredly a con-

THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION. 181

celtcd man, who at last will become a selfish one.
His achievement is his own ; why should he not
be proud? And, as his whole struggle has been in
and about himself, he inevitably grows into a fixed
state of self-consciousness. His thought is not for
another, but for himself, and, by the very law of his
heiuir, he "Tavitates towards selfishness. An illus-
tration is seen in Goethe, — the most thoroughly
trained and self -developed man of his century, but
one whose sense of God as entering into the jDro-
cess was but faint, and whose character is not re-
deemable from the charge of selfishness. Such men
are not rare, and they are growing frequent under
modern theories of culture, but they are not lovely ;
they do not win, nor move, nor do the best things.
They break an eternal law, and suffer a correspond-
ing defeat. A man cannot isolate himself in sharp
individuality from man and God, and live. If he
shuts himself off from man, he withers and shrinks
into nothingness. If he separates himself from God,
he fails in height and also in depth of character ;
he limits himself ; he gets no higher than the earth,
stays within the circle of the present world, and
never outgrows it. And so there comes about that
saddest of all sights, — a divine being working in
the world of mere things, an immortal being shut-
ting himself up in time, an enduring, feeling, think-
ing being slowly but surely leaving behind him all
that he knows or cares for, and entering into years
of age vacant of anything to feed his mind or sup-
ply his heart. No ! It is a sad experiment that so
many are making, — trying to live a worthy life

182 THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION.

without God. If they succeed, the result is faulty,
and in any case it is sad.

Suppose, again, that God alone saved a man, with-
out effort of his own. Suppose that he shut up every
path of evil so that there should be no play of will
and choice. Suppose that by some divine alchemy
the soul could be whitened of all stains of evil while
man remained passive. Suj^pose legions of angels
could descend in great crises of temptation and fight
our battles for us. Suppose divine grace were so
poured out that the spirit should be kept in a passive
ecstasy before divine things." Suppose we were car-
ried as children in arms through all the strife and
labor of life, — what would be the result? Worse
than in the previous case. It were better that a
man should save himself alone than that he should
do nothing and God do all. Neither is possible, but
each is a way that is attempted. Many men try to
get on without God, and many, in one way or an-
other, are weakly trusting in God to save them. Is
it not possible that some who are cherishing what
they call a hope, who have professed religion, who
joined the church, who think that once — years ago
— they were converted and found salvation, are
making this mistake, simply expecting that God will
save them, but how or why is not quite clear ?

Not to such a key does St. Paul sound this
trumpet-blast of appeal. No man could believe
more fully that God and God only saves us ; but it
is only as we work out our own salvation. It is
salvation because it is worked out, — not awaited, not
trusted for, not left to chance, not a matter of some

THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION. 183

bright hour, not a thing of church, nor of divine
decree, nor of divine mercy, nor of probable out-
come in future workls, but a process of action that
by this very quality secures the end of salvation.
For salvation is character ; it is perfected manhood ;
it is evil cast out and good achieved ; it is the will
practiced in righteousness ; it is the flight of the soul
into heaven on the two pinions of love of man and
love of God : stop their united beat for one moment
and it drops away from the heaven of salvation.

Now suppose again that, by an inextricable pro-
cess, God and man unite in the work of salvation,
what is the result ? I can only hint the unimpeach-
able answer. When a man recognizes that God is
at the bottom of all his work, he is led straight up to
the exercise of every grace and element of character.
Then he becomes reverent, and reverence is one half
of character, — the fear of God is the beginning
and well-nigh the whole of wisdom. Along with it
comes humility, — the soil of all the virtues, the at-
mosphere of all noble character. And, as the man
comes more and more to feel that God is in him and
with him, he is swept into the current of God's
own thoughts and feelings, and so he loves as God
loves ; and all the patience, the tenderness, the pity,
the truth, the justice, the majesty of God, brood
over him and work in him, subduing him unto their
own quality. Oh, it is a great thing for a man to
let God in upon him ! For in God he finds himself,
and in God he is led up to every duty, and into paths
of illimitable desire, and so on into oneness with
God himself.

FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS.

*' Through faith man comes into the life of God, the life of love
and righteousness. This is the true life of man. This is the
foundation of the life of the family and the nation, and, though it
may not seem justified in the physical process, without it —

' ' ' The pillared firmament is rottenness,
And earth's base built on stubble.' "
Elisha Mulford, LL. D., The Republic of God, p. 179.

" Believe and trust. Through stars and suns.

Through life and death, through soul and sense,
His wise, paternal purpose runs ;
The darkness of his providence
Is star-lit with benign intents.

" O joy supreme ! I know the Voice,
Like none beside on earth or sea ;
Yea, more, O soul of mine, rejoice :
By all that he requires of me,
I know what God himself must be."

J. G. Whittier, Revelation.

" God grant us to be among those who wish to be really justified
by faith, by being made just persons by faith, — who cannot satisfy
either their conscience or their reason by fancying that God looks
on them as right when they know themselves to be wrong ; and who
cannot help trusting that union with Christ must be something real
and substantial, and not merely a metaphor and a flower of rhetoric' '
— Charles Kingsley.

" Philamon had gone forth to see the world, and he had seen it;
and he had learnt that God's kingdom was not a kingdom of fanatics
yelling for a doctrine, but of willing, loving, obedient hearts. " —
Charles Kingsley.

FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS.

And he believed in the Lord ; and he counted it to him for right-
eousness. — Genesis xv. G.

The story of Abraham is permeated with this two-
fold fact: he believed in God, and this faith was
regarded as actual righteousness, because, in the large
view, it answered the ends of righteousness.

When the relation of character to conduct is fully-
understood, it is seen that faith is righteousness ; the
flower of character grows from the root of belief.
Conduct is the all-important environment of char-
acter, but is no essential part of it.

I take this great principle which St. Paul elabo-
rated, and which became the key-note of the Protes-
tant Reformation, — a principle that will be fully
vindicated only in later and higher stages of human
society, — and place it before us somewhat as a flag
or pennant, while we make a general study of the
man who first illustrated it.

In Abraham we have not only the beginnings
of history, but of biography. He is the first man
of whom we have any clear conception. Enoch
" walked with God," and Noah " feared God," but
these comprehensive words do not carry with them a

188 FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. ^

definite portraiture of individual character. But we
have enough of Abraham's life to know something
of his nature, — what sort of a man he was, how he
felt and thought, and from what motives he acted.
Still the picture is not wholly clear as we trace it
along those ancient pages, so unlike in their parts, so
various in their sources, so different in their tones,
— now firm and distinct as if uttered by the genius
of history itself, now flowing in idyllic strains, now
shadowy with remote traditions, now wearing the
form of a dream or vision recorded as fact, now sug-
gesting a mythical use of natural events for moral
ends. It is like a summer morning when the vapors
envelop the landscape: here and there a headland
stands out in the conquering sunlight; a glint of
waters ; the outline of a forest, faintly discerned, but
without definite lines ; the seen melting vaguely into
the unseen, where the eye of sense yields to the eye
of the imagination.

The narrative here and elsewhere in Genesis pre-
sents too many questions to be discussed at present.
Rather than attempt it, it is better to avoid explan-
atory theories and trust to a trained and intelligent
sense of language, under some such guiding prin-
ciple as " the letter killeth, the spirit maketh alive."
Literalism is fatal to any rational conception of the
history of Abraham. To hold that Jehovah ate flesh
in a tent, is to outdo heathen anthropomorphism. To
impatiently reject the whole as a tissue of mythical
traditions, is to cast away possible pearls ; it is also
scientific, for science is now getting to a point where
it deals with the shadowy and the uncertain, and

FAITH ESSKNTIAL HIGIITEOUSNESS. 189

often reverses their apparent eharaeter. To take
what we find and extraet its moral, without care as
to its form, is the better if not the only way ; and, if
we lose anything through the shadowy and elusive
character of the narrative, it is made uj) in its natural-
ness, its simplicity, and its evident honesty. The
depicting strokes are few, but they are reliable. Not
much is said of Abraham, but whatever is said is
full of light.

The chief value of a study of the ancient He-
brew characters lies in the fact that they disclose
truth through life rather than by speculation. They
live out truth in an actual process. Their conduct
is a direct resjDonse to motives ; it is largely sponta-
neous, or, as we say, natural. The Hebrew is not a
logician ; he has no dialectic ; and, when he attempts
the use of logic, he soon abandons it, as in Job, and
returns to the Hebrew method of practical experi-
ence and direct vision, or as in St. Paul, who often
begins a logical process, but forgets it or uses it care-
lessly or inconsequently, and finally falls back on
intuition and assertion. The Hebrew has no formal
logic, but he is not therefore illogical. His life al-
ways has in it what may be called a human order,
because it is spontaneous and is not warped and lim-
ited by speculation. The successive phases of his
history are united by strict premise and conclusion,
but the bond is his actual experience, not his specu-
lations. Hence he illustrates truth well, shows how
conduct and character are made up ; his creed and
his life, his philosophy and his religion, are one.
Truth so revealed is clearer and more authoritative

190 FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS.

than when reached by dialectic methods. Life and
conduct tell but one story, but a process of reason-
ing always suggests the possibility of another process
equally sound and with some other conclusion. It is
not till we come to a dialectic age that we begin to
find that strange and unnatural conflict between
faith and reason — at once horrible and grotesque
— which is seen in a church that persecutes, that
forces belief, and turns a Gospel into a doom. A
Hebrew might possibly have combined in his con-
duct inconsistencies equally great, but he would not
have tried to justify himself by a process of reason-
ing. Compare a character like Balaam with such a
one as Hildebrand or Torquemada, or David with
Cromwell. David is plain and clear even in his con-
tradictions, but who can trace the working of such
a mind as Cromwell's ? The theology of Isaiah is
simple and consistent, as natural as life, because it
is never far from life, but what relation to human
life or to the Gospel has the theology of Calvin?
Hence the Hebrew mind could easily be made the
vehicle of a revelation ; it accurately reflected im-
pressions and was sensitive to them, and it inter-
preted them into words and acts without modifica-
tion. The Hebrew acted as he felt, spoke as he
saw, thought in a simple and direct way on his ex-
periences ; the thing that he clearly saw and deeply
felt was to him the word of God. Hence the great
value of a study of Hebrew characters. They are
like fine art, — full of truth and revelation ; they
have in them the logic of human nature, and so far
as they embody religion they express it truly.

FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 191

It is an interesting fact that the first distinct char-
acter in human history sets forth the greatest of all
truths, namely, that faith in God is essential right-
eousness. If it be a coincidence, it is a moving one,
and one that suggests a Providence rather than
chance. Treat it as we may, we can never cease to
v/onder at the fact that, as the mists of antiquity
clear away and disclose the first historical man, we
behold one who is magnificently illustrating the
truth of all ages, that faith constitutes character ;
for so we may interpret the assertion that Abra-
ham's belief in God was counted to him for right-
eousness. To the Jews of St. Paul's day, who had
for generations been trained under a ceremonial law,
it was not plain that righteousness turned on faith ;
but the thinker of to-day finds no difficulty in ac-
cepting it unless he puts fictitious meanings upon
faith and righteousness. If faith be regarded as a
vague and magical thing, and not as downright,
thorough-going belief and confidence, and if right-
eousness be regarded as some vague and magical
condition instead of right behavior, there is still
room for perplexity. There is no better way of get-
ting a clear conception of this truth than by study-
ing it in this first example of it.

Abraham's faith was counted for righteousness
because it worked chiefly in the field of natural rela-
tions, which is the main field of righteousness. His
faith was not a mere state of mind, but an active
principle at work in the every-day fields of life.
He finds himself surrounded by idolatry, and so gets
away from it, puts the river and the desert between

192 FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS.

his household and the nature-worship of Chaldea.
He finds a mysterious hope dwelling within him that
he shall become the founder of a great nation, and
so he seeks a country where this hope can be fulfilled.
He finds himself a stranger amongst heathen, and
he strenuously remains a stranger, keeps apart from
them, asserts his superiority, preserves the peace,
but will come under no obligation, pays for what
he receives, and allows no intermarriage with them.
Questions arise between Lot and himself as to pas-
turage ; he treats the affair with lofty and tender
generosity, and trusts in God to do as well in rocky
Hebron as in the valley of Jordan. His kinsman is
captured and he bravely rescues him, worshiping on
the way and paying tithes to the mystical king of
Salem, — a warrior and a worshiper at the same
time. He illustrates both a tender humanity and a
sense of the practical value of righteousness and of
its saving power, by pleading for the preservation of
Sodom, placing himself in this matter on the very
highest plane of conduct. In his family relations
he symbolizes the divine character, — the father of
the gentle and obedient son of promise, and of the
turbulent child of the bond-woman ; but he yearns
over each alike : " O that Ishmael might live before
thee ! " So God yearns over all his children, even
those whom a jealousy calling itself social wisdom
has driven into the desert of despair. But, like
God, Abraham can await the unfolding of time, and
so does the thing that needs to be done at present
■ — sends Hagar into the wilderness, and suffers his
fortunes to concentrate upon Isaac ; for even so wis-
dom and love often seem to conflict.

FAITH ESSKNTIAL RIGHTKOUSNKSS. 193

Here are lofty qualities acting in wise, yet simple
and natural ways ; they may be summed up in fidel-
ity to natural relations. Abraham's righteousness
consisted in faith, but it was because this faith led
him to practical justice, to strictest honor, to purest
kindness and tenderest love, and because it upheld
him in great undertakings, and in stern and solitary
adherence to what he felt to be true. Here is no
divorce of faith from works. By reason of his faith,
he was in the midst of the best of works, but his
righteousness is set down to his faith because it
sprang out of faith. We must resolutely hold to
this view, and reject that which presents Abraham
as simply rewarded because he believes a difficult
and improbable thing. The difficult and improbable
may be the test of faith, but there can be no moral
value in believing it. When Abraham — already
an old man — believed that his seed should be as the
stars of heaven, because God had so assured him,
he showed the reality of his faith in God, but it was
counted to him as righteousness because, being real,
it yielded righteousness. Let us not stumble here.
God does not reward and count you worthy because
you believe some hard thing, or trust him in some
dark hour ; but because you do so trust him you
show that you have a moral quality and force that
ensure righteousness. Faith is counted for right-
eousness, because it reveals a real righteousness.
But why is righteousness made to turn on faith in
God if it consists in fulfilling worldly and human
relations? Because in the final analj^sis all our main
relations are to God. In him we live and move

194 FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS.

and have our being. I have no real relation to this
world ; the relation is transient, phenomenal ; I shall
soon be out of this world, and am at no time wholly
in it. Strictly speaking, I have no duties to the
world by itself. The world did not make me, nor
give me my powers ; it has no claim upon me, and
I owe it no allegiance. My real relation is to God ;
it may be through the world and human ties, but it
is to God. Now, righteousness or character can be
wrought out only in the fulfillment of a real relation,
and if our only real relation is to God, there lies the
field of character ; nor can it be gained in any other
way. This is the reason why we insist so strenu-
ously on faith in God, and why we suspect all char-
acter and conduct, however fair, that are not con-
sciously drawn from God. Men ask : Is it not
enough if we act right and do good ? The answer
is : You will not act right and do good unless you
believe in God. You may secure some external,
transient results that seem good, but you are work-
ing in a fleeting and phantasmal world — not in the
real and eternal world. There is no duty, no ser-
vice, no reward, no righteousness, and no character
except through faith in God.

Abraham's history reached its culmination in that
experience wrongly named the sacrifice of Isaac, for
Isaac was not sacrificed ; rather should it be called
the sacrifice of Abraham, since he was both the
priest and the oblation. Of the narrative we wiU
only stop to say that it matters little where the line
of historical reality is drawn, though the greatness
and accuracy of the truth it conveys would seem to

FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 195

indicate tliat it sjjrang out of an actual experience
and not from some dreaming brain. Truth is al-
ways realized before it is thought out, experienced
before it is conceived. In the divine mind concep-
tion goes before action, but in man the order is re-
versed: he acts and then formulates the principle
of his action. Such is the law of a conditioned be-
ing. God starts in the perfection of spiritual ex-
istence, and from that point goes forth into action,
— the universe springing from preexistent concep-
tion. But man starts from the opposite pole, — a
spark of intelligence under the weight of the whole
world, — and thence works his way up to God by
the path of trial. He knows no truth until he has
achieved it by experience. Hence we may justly
infer that these truths of faith and sacrifice, as
found in the story of Abraham, sprang out of an
actual experience. Before Prometheus lived in the
brain of ^schylus, some man had stolen fire from
heaven and paid the penalty ; and before he sang of
Iphigenia, some father had offered his child to ap-
pease angry gods. The conception of Abraham's
sacrifice could not have existed except through act-
ual occurrence, and the absoluteness of the truth
confirms its historical origin. Some doctrine of
sacrifice might be conjured up in the brain of some
dreamer ; this has been done and much else of the
sort in later ages ; but such a sacrifice as that of
Abraham has in it a fineness and exactness of truth
that come only from the human heart as it struggles
under the burden of duty ; for men always act more
truly than they speculate or imagine.

196 FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS.

There is no better way of getting at the secret of
this history than to regard it as an object-lesson in
religion. God teaches in one way only, — by real-
ity ; man learns in but one way, — by experience.
And so, as humanity emerges from its unlighted and
brutish past and enters upon a clear and rational
history, there is taught in the person of this man
the great lesson of faith, — how it works, what it
requires, what it secures. A most striking and sig-
nificant fact ! Trace history back to its first chapter
and we find the same experience in religion that we
are to-day striving to work out. Fix your eye upon
the first historical man and you behold him enacting
the law of sacrifice in its highest form, and exercising
faith in the fullest degree, — eternal lessons by which
alone nations and men live !

I will now speak of these lessons more in detail.

1. Full faith in God leads to Godlike action.

The essential feature of the experience is that
Abraham is led to feel that he must give up to God
in the way of sacrifice the source of all his joy and
hope. His son was a child of laughter ; in the be-
getting and the conceiving of him the power and
joy of youth were renewed ; all his vast hope as the
founder of a nation turned on the life of his son. It
was the intensity of his gratitude to God that led to
the idea of sacrifice. When a man believes in God
as Abraham believed, — absolutely, with his whole
nature ; and when he receives from God great gifts,
and so comes under an overwhelming sense of grati-
tude and obligation, — he feels moved and bound to
give back to God these very gifts. Just because

FAITH KSSENTTAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 197

they came as gifts, unexpeetedly and out of due
course and so sweeter, and because also they are in
themselves rich and dear, he is impelled to give them
back to God. Abraham in this matter acted in ac-
cordance with the law of a fine and true nature ; for
it is not according to human nature to stolidly accept
gifts without sign or return. Human nature, when
at its highest and noblest, rises towards an equality
with God ; it would match the fullness of divine love
by giving back to God in loving sacrifice the gift of
love. So w^e all feel in our better moods. Abraham
was acting in no strange way ; the logic of his con-
duct was the same as that which governs all noble
hearts. What God gives in love, loves gives back
to him : this is the moral play between God and
man by which the joy of God becomes the joy of
man ; the moral equilibrium of the spiritual universe
is so maintained. Abraham was but grandly and
perfectly illustrating this principle. The method of
carrying it out may have been mistaken, and so it
was hindered in its execution, but the mistake does
not impugn the truth of the principle and feeling-
imder which he was acting. He has come in some
way to a sense of the first and greatest of religious
truths, — the sum of all religious truths, — faith in
God ; but he has found no corresponding means of
expressing it. Ilis heart has outrun his intellect.
lie belonos to all aofes in his faith, but to his own
age in the expression of it. His spiritual sense is
not commensurate with his condition. He has found
God, but he has not found away in which to worship
him. His faith has no medium, no ritual, no Ian-

198 FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS.

guage. Under such circumstances it is not strange
that, driven by the vehemence of his faith towards
expression of some sort, he should have fallen into
wsijs that were common. The method or form did
not much concern him. Some method and form he
must have ; let it be what it may, so his faith can
use it. The form may belong to the heathen about
him : what of it ? Did he commit himself to their
ideas by using their form ? We can imagine him in
mental stress over the subject, — his heart demand-
ing the sacrifice of the object he held dear, but his
mind shrinking from an idolatrous custom, — a de-
bate settled by the superior weight of his believing
heart, which gave no quarter to his hesitating mind.
The very excess and vehemence of his faith swept
him over and past all self-criticism, as well as self-
love. " Let me be as a heathen outwardly, if so it
need be : I must in some way give back to God
what he has given to me." And so God suffers him
to move along on this line, — a true line spiritually
and in the main, a false line practicall}^ His feel-
ing and purpose are counted as righteous ; his ritual
is corrected and annulled. His mighty faith ushers
in the eternal law of conduct ; his false expression of
it undergoes a divine illumination.

2. True sacrifice is to be of self, and of naught
else.

Keep in mind the fact that Abraham is being
taught and grounded in religion ; that he is learning
the lesson that righteousness is by faith ; that he is
learning it through the one and only method of sac-
rifice. He clearly apprehends the principle of sac-

FAITH ESSEXTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 199

rifice, but he Ijluiulers in the application of it. He
falls into the common notion that the virtue of sacri-
fice consists in the offering of some victim through
which there is loss or suffering ; he thinks he cannot
express his obligation and gratitude except by some
l)ain inflicted on himself or another, — the old mis-
take ! There is no gain in simple suffering, in giv-
ing up and parting with what is good and sweet and
beautiful : righteousness does not come about in that
way ; it comes instead through that faith and trust
in God which makes one capable of any sacrifice.
What God was aiming at was not to end the life of
Isaac, but to win the heart of the father. If he
can induce Abraham to believe in him when there is
every apparent reason for doubting him, — believe
in God as against the world and against his own
heart, and even against the external promise of God,
— he has secured a state of mind that will yield all
righteousness ; for as a man believes so he acts. If
God can get Abraham over upon his side and up
into his own life and truth ; if Abraham will die
unto himself and to the world and its vain customs,
and come out of his sacrifice a believing man, — the
main result is achieved. He wiU have learned that
true sacrifice requires no victim, but only the will of
the offerer.

Hence the history, which is not to be viewed ex-
cept as a whole. God did tempt Abraham, and God
did say, " Take thy son, thy only son whom thou
lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah and
offer him there for a burnt offering." Yes, but God
did not say this apart from the whole transaction.

200 FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS

Do not carp or confuse yourself with small criti-
cisms. It is a divine teaching, and* God was in it
and all about it. The conclusion will bear out any
of the steps.

And so Abraham takes up his way to Moriah.
For three days he pursues his journey, — time
enough for change of purpose, for weakness or hes-
itation to do its work, enough also to prove his
strength and sincerity. God leads us to no hasty
conclusions, forces us to no untimely decisions.
When you serve God, know well what you are do-
ing ; count the cost and weigh the motives. Three
days ! When the morning dawned, and his rested
body fell into accord with the joy of nature, did he
not say, " Life is sweet and life is enough : Isaac
shall not die ! " And when the weary day closed,
did not the will flag with the flagging body, and all
his purpose flow out into weakness, the tired will
slain by untiring love? As he rested before his
tent, and saw the stars march in endless procession
across the sky, he recalled the word of God that so
should his seed be ; there were the stars sure and
steadfast, and here was his promised seed doomed
to death : where and what is God's promise ? How,
as the days passed, must the tormenting perplex-
ity have increased ! How could he be the father of
multitudes if Isaac should die? He must put the
child to death, yet every promise of God to him, and
every plan of God respecting him, turned on the life
of the child. The son of promise becomes a child
of doom ; the child born with laughter is to die as a
burnt offering. How can his brain endure all this

FAITH ESSENTIAL RICH TKOUSNESS. 201

fearful contradiction nowhoiuly drawing nigh to its
tragical conclusion ! Why docs it not all slip away
as a dream, a sickly jest, a distempered vision ? And
why does he not take Isaac by the hand and turn
back? Doubtless it was the frequent temptation;
but faith also has its realities and its victories.
It took his son away from him, but it left him God,
and this, after all, is what he and all men must have.
We can live without our child, but we cannot live
without God. Even if there is no God, I cannot go
one step without the thought of him. If God is a
dream, I nuist still cherish the dream and live under
it, for in that case all other things are but the shad-
ows of dreams. But I believe in God because he is ;
and because he is, I must trust him above and before
all else : thus I come into his order and righteousness.

So Abraham's mind worked, treading out the path
with magnificent certainty, — mighty first steps in
that path which each one of us must tread to reach
eternal life. For the question before him was that
set before us all : Shall we trust God, with the ap-
parent loss of all things ; or shall we serve the
world and lose God ?

The vindication of faith that came to Abraham
may come to us all. Let us not press in upon the
process with intrusive question. Abraham is not
required or permitted to do what he had conceived
he must do ; still he has thus been led up into the
very heights of faith and into the secret of sacrifice.
It was not a mortal life that God wanted, but a hu-
man will ; not an offering, but obedience ; not the
smoke of an altar, but an ascending trust. Oh, what

202 FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS.

a sur}3rise was liis when be found that all this wood
and fire and altar, were but a formal play, and that
the real process had been within himself ! He had
trusted and followed God up to the last point of
obedience, and, lo ! Isaac lives, while he himself has
died forever to his old, misguided life ! Shall not
this faith be counted as righteousness? What shall
the future life of such a man be but righteousness ?
What else will he do hereafter but obey God ?

This first, ancient lesson is still fresh and binding.
God is teaching us all in the same way. Life is a
perpetual giving up and laying down ; it is wrought
into nature ; it is the way of Providence ; it is the
command of Christ. We give up youth and strength
and at last life ; we lose our gains, our children ; we
must deny ourselves and take up Christ's cross, —
forms of sacrifice, but only forms: they are not final.
The thing required will be given back, and mean-
while we ourselves have been carried over into God's
world where all things belong. In the history of
Abraham the whole circle of faith is complete. In
his obedience he gave up Isaac, but Isaac lived, and
Abraham henceforth walks as in heaven, for he
knows God. But we lose our wealth, and go on
in poverty ; we lose health and youth, and drop
into weakness; we lose children, and never again
behold their faces ; yet let us not despair. As we
trust God, all these Isaacs of the heart will come
back to us in God's great day; he takes nothing
away from his children that he does not restore.
He leads us not in false but yet in blind ways
through bitter experiences, till at last our eyes are

FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 203

opened and we learn with joy what God actually
means. Our whole life is often such a trial, a
weeping journey of loss and sacrifice, full of wonder
and complaint. Why am I so poor ; why left so
alone? Why do I have this great burden of care?
Why is life passing into such disappointment?
Why did God take my child ? Strange and sad is
the journey till we learn to say, " The Lord will pro-
vide," and to see that thus God is revealing himself
to us ; that thus he is striving to give himself to us,
and also to preserve for us whatever is good and
true. We may be sure that we can never know
God except by trusting him in experiences that
seem to deny God. We cannot get over into that
transcendent world of the spirit except as we die
to this. And so God makes us die, — die in our
worldly hopes, die in our affections, our ambitions,
our passions, our bodies, — that believing in him we
may so come to know him.

In this way also we get at the real, inward worth
of our blessings that seemed lost. The reward of
Abraham's faith was that " in blessing I will bless
thee" in a real and vital way. Isaac had been his
own son ; now he is God's sacred gift. He under-
stands by what tenure he owns and possesses ; he
understands the law that binds him to the world
and to God : no more human sacrifices for him !
Any stray sheep caught in a thicket will do for an
oblation. What he must do hereafter is to obey
and trust God, and that will be the righteousness to
be rewarded ! Sacrifice is not an act of ecstatic
gratitude, nor is it expiation or placation, but is the

204 FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS.

obedience and trust of the heart. " Lo ! I come to
do thy will, O God ! "

We should need no better justification of this
history than to look into Abraham's mind as he re-
turned to his tent. It is not of Isaac that he now
thinks, but of himself. God has been dealing with
him, binding his own hesitating limbs upon the altar,
piercing his own doubting heart with the knife of
sacrifice, slaying all his blind, conflicting thoughts.
Yes ! he himself has died and there is now a new
man, one fit to be named the father of believers, and
to head their endless procession. The secret of
human order is his: he has learned that the man
who trusts in God holds the key of his own destiny,
and of human society as well.

As he journeyed back, order was restored to
nature, to his own life, to the future of his tribe,
to his thoughts of God ; for there is no interpreter
like a believing heart. The stars once more bespeak
his progeny. The child of laughter is still the foun-
tain of joy and hope. In such a revelation, doubt-
less, his soul became prophetic, and he saw that he
had set forth some greater act of sacrifice by which
all nations were to be blessed. He felt that this
crowning act of his life was in some way connected
with this universal blessing. He certainly must
have known that he had been dealing with eternal
things ; that he had been led through the deep,
spiritual necessities of man; and that what was so
good to him must find at last some universal and
consummate expression for all men ; and so he fore-
saw the day and was glad.

FAITH ESSENTIAL KIGIITEOUSNESS. 205

The thread that connects Abraham's experience
and Christ's sacrifice is subtle, but very real. Get at
the heart and inmost meaning of each and they are
alike. The secret of Christ's life, that so eludes all
his biographers and still more eludes the dogmatists,
was a faith in God in behalf of his nation and of
humanity and of himself that still held firm while
the nation, humanity, and himself passed under
death, — counting that God was able to save, and
would save, each in spite of death. This is exactly
what Abraham did. lie had hopes for himself, for
his tribe, and for all nations, that turned upon the
life of his son. These hopes pass through the ordeal
of sacrifice, and so come to real and sj^iritual fulfill-
ment. Christ passes himself, the nation, humanity,
through the sacrifice of obedience, and recovers his
own life, saves the nations, and redeems humanity.
In the obeying Christ, the trusting and dying Christ,
the risen and glorified Christ, all the nations of the
earth are blessed. Oh that we all may learn this
eternal process and secret of salvation ! Believe in
God; trust God by obedience to the uttermost;
trust him for a way when there is no way, for light
when there is no light, for all things when you have
nothing, for joy when there is only sorrow, for life
when you are in the midst of death : thus you will
find at last that faith is not only righteousness, but
life and joy and peace.

EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH.

"The agency of God in creation can never be negatived or ob-
scured, but only more clearly revealed, by the unveiling of the pro-
cesses by which he works.

" Theists, of all others, ought to anticipate the discovery of order
and solidarity where there has seemed to be separateness and con-
fusion.

" From the time man became a moral being he was launched
upon a sea of conflict. The higher realms of his new nature were
not to be entered upon at once. He might not eat of the tree of
life, and come as by a leap to the goal. The way to it is the way
of warfare. Henceforth the law of his being is not simply a becom-
ing : it is an overcoming. " — F. H. Johnson, Andover Rev. , 1884,
p. 363.

' ' I am quite sure that the most fundamental factors of evolution
are still unknown ; that there are more and yet greater factors than
are yet dreamed of in our philosophy. But evolution of some kind
and according to some law which we yet imperfectly understand,
— evolution affecting alike every realm of nature, a universal law
of evolution, — is, I believe, a fact which is rapidly approaching
recognition." — Prof. Le Conte.

"No theory of evolution clashes with the fundamental ideas of
the Bible, so long as it is not denied that there is a human species,
and that man is distinguished from the lower animals by attributes
which we know that he possesses. "VVliether the first of human
kind were created outright, or, as the second narrative in Genesis
represents it, were formed out of inorganic material, out of the dust
of the ground, or were generated by inferior organized beings,
through a metamorphosis of germs, or some other process, — these
questions, as they are indifferent to theism, so they are indifferent
as regards the substance of biblical teaching." — Prof. George P.
Fisher, D. D., LL. D., The Grounds of Theistic and Christian Be-
lief, p. 478.

EVOLUTION AND TPIE FAITH.

For every house is builded by some one ; but he that built all
things is God. — Hebrews iii. 4.

The fears that were felt when the doctrine of evo-
hition was first offered to the world were not unnat-
ural, nor derogatory to the dignity of earnest minds.
When a new and revolutionary doctrine involving the
nature, the action, and the destiny of humanity is
proposed, there is an intuitive wisdom or instinct of
self-preservation in man that prompts him to turn on
it with resentment and denial. Truth is man's chief
heritage ; it is his life, and is to be guarded as his
life. If lost, he knows that it cannot easily be re-
gained. It is like the golden image of Vishnu that
the Hindu was taking to his home from the sacred
city : if once laid upon the ground, it could not be
taken up again. The keeping of truth is not in-
trusted merely to our reason, but to our whole na-
ture ; every faculty and sentiment, down even to fear
and pride, may properly be used in the defense of it.

Reason may at last decide what is truth, but not
until it has won the consent of the whole man. The
period between the exchange of theories is one in
which human nature does not appear in its nobler

210 EVOLUTION AND THK FAITH.

guise, but a profound analysis sliows tliat it is acting
with subtle, unconscious wisdom. It is better also
in the end that a doctrine which is to become truth
should run the gauntlet of general denial and oppo-
sition. By far the greater part of what is proposed
as true in every department turns out to be false.
Theories more in number than the wasted blossoms
of the May fall fruitless to the ground. If human
nature as a whole did not turn on the conceits and
dreams that are offered to it, truth itself would have
no chance ; it could not extricate itself from the rub-
bish of folly that over-tolerance has suffered to accu-
mulate. Truth becomes truth by its own achieve-
ment ; it must conquer human nature before it can
rule it, — win it before it can be loved of it. This
wise, spontaneous treatment of new theories delays
their acceptance even when proved true, but always
with advantage to the truth ; for however fair the
final form is to be, it comes unshaped and with en-
tanglements, and often, like some animals, it is born
blind. Its first need is criticism, and even criticism
based on denial rather than on inquiry ; only it must
be criticism, and not blank contradiction.

The advent of the doctrine of evolution is an
illustration of these wise and wholesome processes.
"When it was first proposed in scientific form, it was
tossed aside in scorn, as too crude and naked for
presentation in the world of thought. Its revival
within the latter half of the century provoked a sim-
ilar storm of disdain and denial ; but it kept its feet,
bore its opposition bravel}^, and now may be said to
have won a position, — but by no means in the same

EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 211

form ill which it first appeared. Tlie evolution that
is now gaining' general acce[)tance is very different
from the evolution propounded twenty years ago.
Tlien it claimed the universe, which it i)roposed to
fill to the exclusion of philosophy and religion. But
to-day its place and limits are defined by philosoi)hy,
and instead of havino: the universe as its exclusive
domain it has only a section of it, which it holds as
the gift, and as still under the supremacy of philos-
ophy. Having at last become presentable to the
world of thought and grown shaj^ely and yielded to
limitations, it is winning the suffrage of the world
and assuming its place in the hierarchy of truth that
ministers to humanity. Definition and distinction
will be made farther on, but some theory properly
known as evolution may now be considered as estab-
lished, and as already entering into the practical
thought of the world.

It may be said that evolution is not yet proved ;
that it will be soon enough to adjust our faith to it
when it has ceased to be a hypothesis and become a
full-established theory. The line between hypoth-
esis and theory is seldom defined ; it is not a line,
but a region. There is much in the doctrine of evo-
lution that is still hypothetical, as there is still in
astronomy. But we have sailed far enough in this
voyage of search after the creative method to war-
rant the belief that we draw nigh to the land of our
quest. The seaweed of the shore drifts by on the
tide, the odors of spicy groves float on the wind, the
birds come and go as from a near home, the dim
outline in the horizon is changing from cloud to solid

212 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH.

land. The quest is practically ended, and now that
we are so near as to catch the ominous thunder of
the surf, it is wiser to look out for harbor and an-
chorage than run the risk of breakers ; for evolu-
tion, like the coast of all knowledge, is lined by de-
structive rocks, and also by inlets that run within
where safe possession may be taken.

In accepting evolution, it is well to remember that
w^e make no greater change than has several times
been made in all the leading departments of human
knowledge. In sociology the despotic idea yielded
to the monarchical idea, which in turn is now yield-
ing to the democratic idea. In philosophy the de-
ductive method has yielded to the inductive. In re-
ligion the priestly idea is yielding to the ministerial.
So, in accepting evolution as the general method of
creation in place of that which has prevailed, we
only repeat the history of the exchange of the Ptol-
emaic system for the Copernican, and of those new
theories of astronomy and geology which forced us
to redate the age of the world and of man's life upon
it. The wrench to faith and the apparent violation
of experience are different, but no more violent than
were those of the past. The present incompleteness
of evolution has its analogy in the Copernican sys-
tem, which waited long for the additions of Kepler
and Newton ; and geology is still an unfinished story.
Nor are we justified in withholding our assent to
evolution because we cannot each one for ourselves
verify its proofs. The vast majority of men could
not now verify the Copernican system ; it has not
even won recognition in human speech : the sun

EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 213

" rises " and " sets," and will so be spoken of while
men watch its apparent motion. Evolution is an in-
duction from many sciences, — chemistry, astronomy,
mathematics, geology, botany, biology,— and it is
impossible that any but the special student should
critically make the induction. But the Copernican
system was an induction from mathematics, and
even from those higher forms of it that ordinary
men never have traced. Its acceptance was, and
is still, an act of faith. Belief in evolution should
be easier because it is confirmed by several sciences
working on independent lines. It is not the biol-
Qo-ist alone who proposes evolution, but the astron-
omer, the chemist, the geologist, the botanist, and
the sociologist. I cannot examine and test their
processes, but I can trust their conclusions. I do
not, however, thus make myself the slave of their
opinions, for these opinions run off into other fields
where I may be as good a judge as they. I may rep-
resent a science as real as theirs, and possibly larger
and more authoritative. Hence, in accepting evo-
lution as a probably true history or theory of the
method of creation, we do not necessarily yield to
all the assumptions and inferences that are often
associated with it. It is not above criticism. Like
the germ-seeds of which science treats, each one of
which threatens to possess the whole earth, and
would do so if not checked by other growths, so evo-
lution—shall we say through affinity with its chief
theme ? — threatens to take possession of the uni-
verse. But its myriad thistledown, blown far and
wide by every breeze, meets at last the groves of oak

214 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH.

and pine that limit and define its spread. All about
these various sciences stands the greater science —
philosophy — under which they are included, from
which they draw their life, and to which they must
bow. Evolution is to be feared not in its bare doc-
trine of development, but in the scope and relations
assigned to it. If it be regarded as universal in-
stead of general, as inclusive of all things instead
of a part of all things, it is fatal to morals and re-
ligion. If it be regarded as supreme, it gives its
own law of necessity to all else. But if it is sub-
ordinate to philosophy, if it is considered as un-
der thought-relations, if it is held as finite and rel-
ative, it carries no danger to morals or religion or
faith. It may possibly modify but it cannot over-
throw them, simply because they stand in a larger
order.

But evolution is not to be accepted in a simply
negative way, — because it can no longer be resisted.
We are under no obligation to accept any trutli
until it is serviceable. It is possible to conceive of
truths that would be of no value to men, — such as
the constitution of other orders of beings ; if made
known, it might be passed by. But evolution,
properly regarded, is becoming tributary to society,
and seems destined to clarify its knowledge, to en-
large and deepen its convictions, to set it upon true
lines of action, and to minister to the Christian
faith.

Amongst the important services it has begun to
render is that it is removing a certain empirical
thread that has been interwoven with previous

EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 2Lj

theories of creation. The unity of crecati6n has
never been seriously aenied except by extreme
thinkers of the dualistic school. But the principle
of unity has not been recognized until of late. The
bond or ground of unity was justly found in God,
but that conception merely asserted that because
God is one there is unity in all created things. This
may be faith, but it is not philosophy. May not
faith become also philosophy ? Unity exists not only
because one God created all things, but because he
works by one process, or according to one principle.
As knowledge broadens and wider generalizations are
made, we find a certain likeness of process in aU
realms that indicates one law or method; namely,
that of development or evolution. One thing comes
from another, assumes a higher and finer form, and
presses steadily on towards still finer and higher
forms. We find the same method in matter, in
brute life, in humanity, in social institutions, in gov-
ernment, in religions, in the progress of Christianity.
Let not this thought disturb us. Do we not see that
otherwise the universe could have no unity? If
God worked on one principle in the material realm,
on another in the vital, on another in the social, gov-
ernmental, and moral realm, there would not be a
proper universe. These realms might indeed be reg-
ulated and kept from conflict, but they would break
up the universe into parts separated by chasms, ren-
der knowledge difBcult, vain, and disjointed, and
create a certain antagonism opposite to the nature of
mind. Man would be correlated, not to a universe,
but to separate systems and orders, and these varied

216 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH.

correlations would have no underlying unity. It
would be difficult to prove the unity of God as
against a harmonious polytheism or sovereign Jove.
We might believe in one God, but we could not
prove our faith. If matter has one principle in its
process, and life another, and morals another, why
not as many gods ? It has not been easy to keep
dualism out of philosophy. But, with one princijDle
or method in all realms, we have a key that turns all
the wards of the universe, opens all its doors in the
past, and will open all in time to come. Knowledge
becomes possible and harmonious ; a path opens
everywhere ; the emphasis of the whole universe is
thus laid on the unity of God. And when we find
not only one method or principle, but the direction
of its action, we obtain a prophecy and assurance of
the final result of creation that falls in with the
highest hopes of Christianity ; for the process tends
steadily towards the moral. The Church has hoped
and striven for a righteousness that shall fill the
earth. It may need only its faith to animate and
guide it, but it is not amiss to lay its ear upon the
earth and hear, if it can, the same word. It is not
amiss to see men in prehistoric ages forsaking caves
and living in huts, using first a club and then a bow,
ores and then metals, nomadic and then in villages.
It is not unhelpful to the hope of mankind to see
despotism yielding to a class, and the class yielding
to the people ; personal revenge passing into social
punishment of crime bylaw, and justice slowly creep-
ing to higher forms ; penalty first as vindictive, then
retributive, and now at last leformatory ; first a con-

EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 217

ception of God as power, then as justice, and finally
as love. These evolutionary processes may be woven
into the cord Ly which the Church binds itself to its
mighty purpose. It thus secures a broader base for
the generalization of its working truths ; for the
])yramid will not pierce lieaven unless it rests upon
the whole earth. No truth is perfect that is cut off
from other truths.

Evolution not only perfects our conception of the
unity of God, but it strengthens the argument from
design by which his goodness is proved. This argu-
ment may be based on the course of civilization, or
on the structure of the eye, or on the w^orking of
love. Paley's argument, as Bishop Temple has well
shown, stands, with slight modifications, on as strong
a basis as ever. But if w^e can look at the universe
both as a whole and in all its processes and in all
ages, and find one principle working everywhere,
binding together all things, linking one process to
another with increasing purpose, and steadily press-
ing towards a full revelation of God's goodness, we
find the argument strengthened by as much as we
have enlarged the field of its illustration. But if
one part of the universe is abruptly shut off from
another, if no stronger bond of unity be assigned to
it than that of creative energy, and only the near-
lying fields of design are used, then the argument is
abridged and may even fall short of an absolute con°
elusion.

It is felt by some, especially on the first contact
with evolution, that it puts God at a distance and
hides him behind the laws and processes of nature.

218 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH.

The apprehension is worthy, for we need and crave a
near God, and may well dispute any theory that puts
him at a distance or fences him off by impenetrable
walls. The universal and unappeasable cravings of
the heart may always be ojDposed to what seem to
be the laws of nature ; for there is a science of the
spirit that is as imperative and final in its word as
the observed processes of nature. But evolution,
properly considered, not only does not put God at a
distance, nor obscure his form behind the order of
nature, but draws him nearer, and even goes far
towards breaking down the walls of mystery that
shut him out from human vision. In other words,
in evolution we see a revelation of God, while in
previous theories of creation we had only an asser-
tion of God. In evolution we have the first cause
working by connected processes in an orderly way ;
in former theories we had a first cause creating the
universe by one omnipotent fiat, ordaining its laws,
and then leaving it to its courses or merely uphold-
inf it by his power. In respect of nearness, we at
once see that evolution brings God nearer than do
the other theories. Their hold upon the mind is not
at this point, but at another mistaken for it. The
religious mind delights in mystery ; it is an uncon-
scious assertion by the highest faculties of our
nature that we transcend the knowable, — that we
belong to, and live and have our destiny in, the
infinite. Hence we shrink from theories that seem
to undertake to explain God and his working, and
repeat with complacence the ancient phrase, " It is
impossible; therefore I believe." It gratifies our

EVOLUTION AND THE EAITH. 219

reverence to abuse our reason. There is in all tliis
a thread of truth, but the fine thread of reverence is
not cut nor drawn out of the web of faith by trans-
ferring the mystery of creation, from a point of time
and space beyond creation, and putting it contin-
uously into the processes of creation. Mystery
enough there is and always will be, and God's ways
will never become so familiar and plain that they
shall " fade into the light of common day." In-
stead, this drawing God down and into the processes
of creation as a constant and all- pervasive factor,
deepens the sense of mystery ar>d awe when we
have turned our eyes in that direction. The poet
plucks a flower out of the crannied wall, holds it in
his hand, and says ; —

" L'ttle Sower — but If I could understand
Wliat you are, root and all, and all in all,
I diould know what God and man is. ' '

In these simple lines we have an expression of the
true ground of that form of reverence which is bred
by mystery. It is not wonder at primal creation that
moves t^e poet, but the creating power lodged and at
work in every roadside flower. Goethe put the same
thought into statelier lines : —

"No! Such a God my worship may not win
Wlio lets the world about his finger spin
A thing extern : my God must rule within,
And whom I own for Father, God, Creator,
Hold nature in himself, himself in nature ;
And in his kindly anns embraced, the whole
Doth live and move by his pervading soul,"'

Milton built his great epic of creation upon an orig-
'nal creative fiat, but his conception is like his cos-

220 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH.

mology, traditional and unshaped by poetic insight.
The greatest poet in these later centuries, he still
lacked the highest of poetic qualities, — sympathetic
insight into nature. Tennyson, in his one line,

" Closer is he than breathing-, and nearer than hands and feet,"

betrays a truer sense of God in creation than is to be
found in " Paradise Lost."

It is true that a change in our conception of crea-
tion requires a readjustment of our feelings of rev-
ex^.-^o; and in the transition there may be danger
of losing li J-' ^crether. It is always easier to change
our beliefs than v. ,, feelings, and the mind more
readily accommodates itscc ^^ necessary changes
than do the sensibilities. Bul,,^,!^.^^^^^^, ^^le danger
and cost, such changes must be mio^^ ^^^^-^ -^ ^j^^ ^^^
there is gain. The eyes are dazzled \v ^^^ ^ ^^^^ ^^,.j^_
dow lets in more sunshine, and light ^^^ ^^le work
of darkness, but soon all things are seen i ^^^ clearly.
It cannot be said that, as yet, the concept^^ ^£ ^^^_
ation by evolution touches the mind so ^.gpiy ^nd
reverently as the former conception. Wt^^^ ^^j^^
occupied by the details and by the wondi ^£ ^j^^
truth, and have not connected it witii its I'^-i^oj^g^
nor learned to think and feel under it. Tv ^^^ ^
meteor falls to earth, men at first take more h.^^-^ ^£
its shape and composition than of its origin, l^jjj
be found that as we live on under the great ^^^^j^
and discern increasingly its wisdom and harmony, i^^
old sense of reverence will come back to us and b^
come a finer, deeper, intenser feeling than it wa^.
under the old conception of creation. It will also bt

EVOLUTION AND THK FAITH. 221

a more intelligent luul better-proportioned reverenee.
It may be questioned if the reverenee exeited by the
bare fact of creation has any great value. That God
created the universe is a truth of supreme impor-
tance in philosophy and religion, but a valuable rev-
erence is to be drawn from the later phases and out-
come of creation rather than from its beginning and
its earlier stages. The first active law in creation of
which we know is that of gravitation, but no moral
feeling is awakened by the fact that matter attracts
inversely to the square of distance. The condition
of the world, as it first took spherical shape, could
only be regarded with horror, and animal life in the
paleozoic ages repels us by its amorphous shapes ;
nor is it pleasant to picture our not very remote an-
cestors. Reverence is not to be stirred by that part
of creation which is behind us, but by creation as a
whole, and by its end. It is only under a theory of
evolutionary creation that we can truly wonder and
adore God. Otherwise, how shall we think, how feel,
before the Power that created those long orders of
beings that simply ravened and devoured one another?
If those orders were created independently, if they
are not necessary links of a whole united in an evo-
lutionary process, their creation cannot be rationally
reconciled with any worthy conception of God. But
seen as transient forms in an ever-growing process,
thrust aside and buried under Devonian strata, and
yielding to more shapely and complex orders, and so
climbing by an ever-finer transition to some final and
perfect end, we not only can tolerate them in thought,
but adore the directing Power and delight in his

222 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH.

method. But the feeling of reverence only possesses
us as we discern the creative process issuing in man
as a moral being. Were creation cut short at man
as a physical being, there would be nothing in it to
command our reverence, as there would be nothing
to satisfy our reason.

Nor should it disturb us to find that our moral
qualities have their first intimations in the brute
world ; that we find in the higher animals hints, fore-
castings of moral faculty and actions ; that as our
bodies bear some organic relation to the brutes, so
also may our minds. Body is not mind, but they are
organically related ; sensation is not consciousness,
but the latter is conditional on the former. So man
is not a brute, but he is organically related to the
brute, and the relation may touch his whole nature.
Our feeling on this point should be determined, not
by the first look, but by its final bearing. If it in-
validated our moral faculties, or robbed them of their
dignity, or made them less imperative, or separated
them in any degree from God, we should be justified
in rejecting the theory on the simple ground that
these faculties constitute a science in themselves, as
commanding and real as physical science. To disown
mind before matter is stultification. But there is no
such alternative. A relation of the moral faculties
to brute qualities may exist without impairing the
divineness of conscience and reverence and love.
But whatever our feeling, we cannot ignore the fact
that in the brute world there are intimations or sem-
blances of moral faculties ; nor need w^e hesitate to
say that they are united by the secret cord of the

KVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 223

creative energy. Tlie man of science, observing the
development, says that it is brought about by natural
forces ; the philosopher may grant it, but adds that
it is brought about by an intelligent force working
freely and progressively, and therefore possibly by
increments. Moral qualities are not found in the
brutes, but there are the grounds of them — the
stuff, so to speak, out of which they are constituted,
though not the essence that gives them their parti-
cular nature. Their presence there is only an indi-
cation that the moral is in the mind and purpose of
God, even so far back as in the brute world — a
foregleam of the approaching issue. They show the
divine purpose to crowd in the moral as soon and as
fast as possible, prophesying it long before it can ap-
pear, impatient, as it were, with the dull processes
behind, and pressing on with yearning speed towards
his moral image. We have spoken altogether too
long of the brutes with contempt — as though they
had nothing of God in them, and were wholly alien
to ourselves. It is no degradation of human love
that it is organically linked with the brooding care
of a brute for her young, nor of self-sacrifice that it
is so related to a lioness dying for her whelps, nor of
fidelity that it is akin to that of a dog dying for his
master. They are not identical, but they are related :
they spring from one root, but they reach forth to
different issues ; they have one motive in common,
but in man they have also other motives and other
relations. The rudimentary forms of moral quali-
ties in the brute world simply show that the moral
element and purpose is present in the entire creative

224 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH,

process. F'or it was not power that brooded over
the elements at the beginning, but love ; and the laws
of nature are not the cold formulae of mathematics,
but are laws of righteousness and truth. In the
most absolute sense these laws are holy, and when
they begin to work in the higher brutes they must
by their very nature assume a moral aspect or sem-
blance ; it cannot be kept out. Life, in its more
complex forms, is so dej)endent upon the moral, or
what is practically moral, that it cannot be main-
tained without it. There could be no gregariousness
in the animal world without the action of principles
that are essential to morality. It is no impeachment
of the dignity or value or imperativeness of a moral
faculty that it has come about by growth and differ-
entiation. Indeed, it may stand all the firmer if its
root reaches through all grades of life, and strikes
down to the centre of the earth. If I can trace my
moral qualities throughout the universe, I certainly
will not respect them less than if I found them only
in some corner of it. We are on false lines of thought
when we try to divide creation ; more and more does
it appear to be an invisible thing bound together by
some mysterious, internal bond of unity.

It does not follow that because a moral faculty
is brought to full appearance by a combination of
qualities or feelings, it has its origin or its essential
potentiality in those qualities and feelings, or that
it contains no more than is found in them. A com-
bination of two things that produces an effect which
neither could produce alone, implies more than is to
be found in the two thino:s : there is the idea or the

EVOLUTION AND THK FAITH. 225

j)roportio)i of the combination upon which the effect
depends; and this must come from some mind that
ordained the proportion, and not from the things
themselves. An acid and a base when mingled
precipitate a salt, but tliey are not the authors of
the salt ; the law of the relation between the acid
and the base is the author. The whole process
may be set down in mathematical terms, but all
the more is it evident that the product originates
in the mathematical thought underlying it.

The same may be true of the moral faculties;
they may appear as the results of brute qualities
through long growth and differentiation, but they
are not on that account to be regarded as the prod-
uct of brute qualities, but of the law under which
they have come about. So far from moral faculties
originating in brute qualities, though their history
may lie in them, they do not become moral except
as they cease to be brute qualities. A flower is a
flower only by refusing to be a leaf, though it
comes about by differentiation from a leaf. So
conscience or reverence may have come about by
evolution through brute qualities, but they become
themselves only by ceasing to be what they were.
They get their real and essential nature from the
mind that is behind and within the whole process.

If the conclusion disturbs us, if we shrink from
linking our nobler faculties with preceding orders,
it is because we have as yet no proper conception
of the close and interior relation of God to all his
works ; nor do we stop to see that our attempts to
separate ourselves from the previous creation are

226 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH.

reflections upon God's handiwork. Much of the
talk upon the theme has a Pharisaic taint. Let us
be thankful for existence, however it came about,
and let us not deem ourselves too good to be included
in the one creation of the one God.

The fact that man may be organically related to
the material and brute world does not in itself de-
termine either his nature or his destiny. So long
as he is what he is, it does not matter what his his-
tory has been, though it may be a matter of conse-
quence how — by what agency — he is differentiated
from the brute. But the bare fact of his develop-
ment from lower nature is not itself a fact that
determines anything. It is a hasty and imperfect
logic that conjures dark visions out of the relation,
and reasons that if man is developed from the brutes
he will share their fate. Origin has nothing to do
with destiny ; we can measure one as little as the
other, and we know too little of either to use them
as terms of close argument. I may be bound to
physical and brute nature by the cord of origin, but
that cord does not bind my destiny. A bird might
be tied to the earth by a thread of infinite length
and the knot never be unloosed, yet it might fly for-
ever into the heavens and away from its source. It
is an unreasonable contempt of lower nature that
makes us fear it. As we find God in destiny, so we
may find him in origin, — present at both ends of
his own process and in equal power. Indeed, our
chances destiny-wise may be all the better because
we are thoroughly interwoven with the whole crea-
tion. It is possible that we must be organically

EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 227

connected with the previous creation in order to
share in the eternal order before us ; that only thus
can we be included in the circle of endless existence.
If man is a sporadic and unrelated creation, his des-
tiny hangs upon the arbitrary will that so created
him, and gets no promise or assurance from the
great order of the universe and its Creator.

Nor need we be disturbed by the claim of an or-
ganic relation between the various orders of exist-
ence, lest no place be found for the truths and doc-
trines of religion. This has been the chief ground
of alarm in the past. This firm linking of creation
into one, this eduction of one phase from another
by a natural process, seems to many to shut off the
possibility of a revelation, of miracle, of an incar-
nation, of moral action, of immortality. It seems
easier to defend these truths when a creative chasm,
so to speak, has been placed between man and the
rest of creation ; man is more easily handled as a
moral and spiritual being when he is treated as an
independent creation. It has been feared that if
such a chasm were not insisted on, man as a moral
being would fall under the laws of the previous cre-
ation, and be swamped in necessity, and swallowed
up in the general destruction of the previous orders ;
that so unique a fact as the incarnation could have
no justification ; that miracle could not be defended
in the presence of hitherto universal law; that
moral action could not be discriminated from the in-
stinctive action of the brutes, whose action in turn
could not be discriminated from the chemic and
dynamic action of matter, thus throwing the chain

228 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH.

of materialism about mind and spirit. I grant that
these fears woukl be well grounded if certain theo-
ries of evolution were to be accepted as settled —
such as the theory that matter has within itself the
potentialit}^ of all terrestial life, and goes on in its
development alone and by its own energy ; a the-
ory that may stand for the various mechanical and
atomic doctrines that deify force and dispense with
cause. But this theory has a steadily lessening
place in the world of thought, for the simple reason
that it is a theory that renders thought impossible.

These fears would also be well grounded if the
theory were established that what is called force or
the forces were invariable — never more nor less ;
that they worked only by transmutation and within
the original limits ; that force itself is an entity.
This theory also has no tenable place in philosophy.
What is called force is the method of the action of
a cause, and is not a self-acting entity. Force can
proceed only from a will. It is absurd to say of
any inanimate thing that it is a force ; it may trans-
mit force, but only as it has first received it. Force
cannot be conceived except as proceeding from a
will ; nor can it be observed except as acting under
a thought-relation — that is, intelligently towards an
end by design. Nor is it the invariable and etei-nal
thing it is claimed to be. Matter existed — logically
if not otherwise — before force, and must therefore
have received its force from some source or reser-
voir; and as it works in thought-relations it must
have come from an intelligent source that cherishes
a design. The claim that force is invariable because

EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 229

it is SO observed is falhielous, simply because obser-
vation is limited. In the morning we see the sini
go up, and till noon we might say that it will go up
forever, but night reverses our observation. It
would have been necessary to be present when the
foundations of the earth were laid, to be able to say
that as the chemic and dynamic passed into the or-
o-anic there was not an addition of a force. Indeed,
when the origin of force is considered, we need not
think of it as forever exactly so much and no more,
but only as the steady pressure of the Eternal hand
upon matter, working uniformly indeed because there
is an affinity between force and steadiness, and a
divine wisdom in uniformity ; but we are under no
compulsion either of reason or of observation to
assert that this force is without variation. Force
\)eoins — where we know not till we postulate God ;
and it ends — how and where it goes we know not.
That it is without play, that it may not be rhyth-
mic and so analogous to the divinest of arts, that it
is worked by necessity and not by freedom, is an as-
sumption that is contradicted by every conscious act
of the human will. A system that works by law or
apparent necessity towards will or freedom as an
end, must be grounded in freedom. In the early
orders of creation, the divine hand held steadily
and evenly the lever of the great engine as it ran
along the grooves of changing matter ; but when a
brute, seeing an enemy in one path, chooses another,
there is a hint at least of self-generated force. And
it is idle to say that the changes wrought by man
on the face of the earth are not the products of his

230 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH.

creative will. These pliaiitoms of necessity, of ma-
terialized virtues, of instinctive morality, need no
longer disturb us ; they are vanishing before the
growing light of reason. It is not the better way
to assail them with indignant denial ; our fierce
weapons cleave them through, but they stand, like
Miltonic devils, as before. Nor can we exorcise
them by the magic of faith ; they thus cease to
frighten us, but they are not dispelled. The light
only will drive them to their caves, and the light is
growing.

When evolution is regarded, not as a self -working
engine, — an inexorable and unsupervised system,
a mysterious section of creation assumed to be the
whole, — but rather as a process whose laws are the
methods of God's action, and whose force is the
steady play of Eternal will throughout matter, there
need be no fear lest man and religion be swallowed
up in matter and brute life. In other words, man is
not correlated to the 2^^'ocess of creation, but to the
Creator. Man may bear a certain relation to the
process, but his real and absolute relation is to
the power over and in the process. We may have
come to be w^hat we are through a process of devel-
opment ; much of it may linger on in us ; some of its
laws still play within us : we eat and procreate as do
the brutes ; chemical action builds up and takes down
our bodies ; analogies of its processes reappear in us :
evil to be put away, good to be perfected. But we
are cut off from ouv previous history quite as much
as we are bound to it, because, the whole process
being one of design and man being its fulfillment,

EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 231

he drops away from it as tlie apple drops from the
tree. The fruit when it is ripe is no longer related
to the branch but to its use ; it no longer belongs to
the tree but to him who planted the tree, and he will
use it as seems to him fit. It may be set down as an
axiom that the end of a process cannot he identified
icith the 2')rocess. Man is the final and perfect fruit
of creation, and belongs to whatever has the best
claim upon him — to morals, if he is found chiefly
to belong there. However he came about, out of
whatever depths of seeming necessity he has been
drawn, he has freedom, consciousness, moral sense,
personality. He can obey and disobey, love and
hate, do right and wrong. These powers may en-
gender a history that requires all that religion
demands — even to a doctrine of the fall, if any
care to insist upon it. The phrase, now so prevalent,
" a fall upward," indicates confusion of thought.
The fall was not upward, but it was a step upward
in the scale of being. It was not till after it that
the Lord God said : Behold, the man is become as
one of us, to know good and evil.^ There is no sci-
entific reason to be ascribed against the theory that
when a free agent finds himseK crowned with moral
sovereignty, — it matters not how, — he trifles with
it, puts his crown under his brutish feet and not on
his godlike brow. His past may follow him as a
temptation, a deceiving serpent ; his future may
stand before him as duty upborne by a hope ; he
may at first drop back towards his past and not
hold himself steady to duty. As in creation the

^ Rev. F. II. Jolmson, Aniover Eeview, April, 1884, p. 379.

232 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH.

chemic needed more of God in order to become
organic, and as the organic needed more of God
than could be found in the chemic in order to be-
come vital and conscious, so man may need God in
all his fullness and in the perfection of his mani-
festation in order to become perfectly man. Hence
a revelation ; hence the incarnation. If the whole
progressive creation is a progressive revelation of
God, when its process culminates and ends in man,
it is the very thing we might expect ; namely, that
there should be a full and perfect manifestation of
God in the form and with the powers needed to lift
humanity up to the level of its destiny. The very
thing to be expected, after man has been drawn out
of the processes of matter and brought to the verge
of the moral and spiritual world, is that he should
be provided with a moral and spiritual environment
for feeding and protecting his moral nature. How-
ever else Christianity may be defined, it is the moral
environment of humanity — the bread of its life.
Without it the fulfillment and completion of man's
destiny as a spiritual being could not be secured.
He may have all spiritual faculty within him, but
he lacks environment : the spiritual world must be
opened to him, it must infold him ; and this is done
in a real way and by an actual process in the
Christian facts.

If it should appear that these facts and the theory
of evolution were incompatible, and the question
were raised which must be given up, the answer
would be — hold on to the moral and sjDiritual claim,
and let the scientific theory go ; for the simple

EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 233

reason that the moral facts involved in C'hristianity
are more stable and trustworthy than those of phys-
ical science. The unknowable thing is matter. It
is often said that theories of religion cannot stand
up against ascertained knowledge. Doubtless, for
nothing can stand up against the truth. But the
real question is, what is ascertained knowledge ?
There is a solidity, a certainty, in moral truth that
cannot be claimed for the verdicts of physical sci-
ence, because moral truth is the direct assertion of
personal identity, which is the only thing that we
absolutely know ; but matter — who can tell us what
it is, or trace our relation to it beyond uniformity
of impression ? Morals are absolute ; man knows
them because he knows himself, and he can know
nothing opposed to them ; but physical science is the
merest kaleidoscope — turn the tube and you see a
new picture. The surest and most universal law in
the material world is that of gravitation, but it is
unique ; it contradicts other laws, and is so myste-
rious that it can hardly be included in science. As
for all else, we wait while the physicists strip from
matter one husk after another, and change our de-
finitions accordingly.

The world of mind and morals is not only the
authoritative world, but it gives the law to science ;
the thought of a law of nature goes before the pro-
cess of the law and determines it. To set physical
science and its ascertained knowledge against mental
and moral truth is like a shadow turninc: against the
light, or like a flower contradicting the root. It is
only by mind that we know matter, and to use a pro-
duct for discrediting- its source is absurd.

234 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH.

Science is all tlie while solving physical mysteries,
not by bringing them within its present terms, but
by enlarging its boundaries. There are still many
mysteries that sit in the clouds and laugh at our
science with its doctrines of force and environment,
and there they are likely to remain till science can
infold them within a larger circle. The key to the
whole subject is a broader generalization ; think far
and wide and high, enlarge your science, and per-
plexity will vanish.

At the risk of repetition I will state the generali-
zation that contains a solution of the questions that
put religion in apparent conflict with evolution and
its laws. The main fact in evolution is force work-
ing uniformly ; but evolution does not explain force ;
it receives it from some will, which is its only
possible origin. But will is an attribute of person-
ality, and is the basis and a large part of religion.
We have, therefore, in religion an original factor
which is found in the process of evolution, — not as
an essential element, but simply as a method of
operation. Religion, therefore, is not compassed by
the evolutionar}^ process and laws, but is directly re-
lated to the eternal will that imparts its force to the
process of evolution. In other words, religion is
not correlated to a method of force, but to force
itself, that is, to the eternal will. Religion therefore
stands in freedom, for will is free. Nature seems to
be under apparent necessity, but only apparent be-
cause of the uniformity of its action, behind which
lies the absolute free will of God. If we were under
a different sense of time, a woodsman felling a tree

EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 'Ilih

would seem to be acting under necessity, so uniform
and sustained are Lis strokes ; he can stop at any
moment, but his purpose keeps his action constant
for an hour, which might seem an aion to a differ-
ently constituted being. The uniformity in nature is
no more indicative of necessity than the uniform
shape of printing-letters is indicative thai their mean-
ing is contained in their uniform shape. L-i-h-e-r-t-y
is invariably and necessarily used to spell that word,
but it does not therefore mean necessity. A pound-
weight is necessarily the same, but does a pound
mean only a uniform weight, or does it mean justice
in trade? and does it not ultimately mean, and even
have its origin in, a will that can choose between just
and unjust weights ? Clerk Maxwell says that the
conservation of energy as illustrated in the processes
of nature, which is the oround for the common belief
in necessity, is not indicative of its nature, but of
some power which so arranges atoms that energy is
conserved. Thus the steady play of force is not an
original nor an ultimate fact, but is subordinate to
some superior fact. The uniformity of nature may
mask the fullest freedom.

But if man is involved in the evolutionary pro-
cess, where and when and how does the free will
come in, with all the facts and duties of religion ?
We may not be able to say when and where, but
possibly we can tell how ; namely, in the progressive
working of God. To produce a will or a person
seems to be the end in view of the whole process,
and at last it is gained. It is often said that free-
dom cannot come out of necessity, nor altruism out

236 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH.

of egoism; doubtless, if necessity and egoism are
absolute, and not phases of a process. The very
uniformity of force may be a condition of the result
— freedom, and egoism may be the path to altruism.
The difficulty of getting from one to the other is no
greater than in passing from the chemical to the
vital. But when the result is reached, the conditions
under which it was produced may be relaxed. And
so we have man — a free will, himself a force acting
in creative ways. If it be asked where he gets his
free will, the answer is, from the same source from
which matter gets its force — God. He may get it
through nature, but he gets it from God working by
nature. Hence, when we come to discuss the prob-
lems of religion, — duty, conscience, faith, prayer, rev-
erence, love, — we are at full liberty, if we see fit, to
turn our back upon that uniformity of nature which
seems to rest on necessity. Man stands before the
Eternal One, and not before a method of nature.
Nature is all about him, but his real relation is to
God. His moral qualities may have been evolved
through natural processes, but they do not originate
there. The flower is evolved through the differen-
tiation of leaves, but it does not originate in them,
nor can it be compassed in their differentiation.
Not only is science unable to explain the ichy of the
differentiatiou, but it can give no account of the
idea of the flower. It may possibly learn to pen-
etrate the process by which leaves become flowers,
but it must go to other schools than its own to get
the idea of the flower as a germ of life and fruit
and seed.

INVOLUTION AND tiip: fahh. 237

I have eiK-leavored to show that tlic influence of
evolution u])on the faith turns upon the form or defi-
nition of the theory. If evolution be held as simply
a mechanical process ; if force be regarded as an in-
dependent thing, or be blankly named as proceeding
from an unknowable cause ; if an observed section
of the universe in time and space be considered as
the whole ; if an acknowledged essential factor be
left out of account because it seems to be unknow-
able ; if the observed uniformity of nature be inter-
preted as proof of necessity ; if the laws seen in the
earlier periods of creation be regarded as universal,
and incapable of yielding to other possible laws and
forces ; if, in brief, there is not a Power before,
under, and in all these natural laws and processes,
inclusive of them, — a Power working intelligently
towards an end, and therefore progressively, and
therefore in ways that seem new and even antago-
nistic to previous methods, — then evolution is dan-
gerous to the faith. It is, of course, illogical to as-
sert that because such theories are dangerous they
are untrue — the standing argument of bigotry and
ignorance. The path of truth always winds through
dangers — abysses below and crumbling cliffs above.
We base our protest against these theories on the
ground that the logic and the science of the subject
are against them. In that court of reason to which
men in all ages have repaired for final verdicts — a
court not of mere sensations, but of the combined
faculties and whole nature of man, where reason,
imagination, reverence, love, and all the passions of
human nature, stern logic, mathematics, and univer-

238 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH.

sal knowledge are the judges — no verdict for these
theories can be found. It can be secured only in a
specific school of philosophy known as positivism —
a philosophy that postulates reason and then uses it
to discredit it — a philosophy of the senses that plays
in a pool within the sand-bar, with no eye for the
ocean beyond. I would not speak disrespectfully of
this school nor of their methods, but I deny their
claim to a philosophy. They are useful in their way,
and their method is a wise check upon other and
better schools of thought. They are good sentries
about the castle of truth, quick to descry and drive
off the prowling theosophies and demiurgisms that
swarm in from the limbo of unreason and wild imag-
ination ; good beacons that warn against the reefs
and shallow waters of half-way thought and im-
perfect knowledge ; but they are not philosophers,
nor is their method one that suits the human
mind. If logically held, it runs into pessimism,
where it meets its end, for mankind cannot long
be induced to think ill of itself. It is enough to
say of it here that it is narrow ; it does not cover
the facts of its own field ; it ignores factors that
are beyond the limits it has imposed upon itself,
and denies the reality of phenomena that may be re-
ferred to those factors ; it attempts to measure the
universe by a rod no longer than the eye can see,
and by mathematical laws with total disregard of the
thought in these laws. The conflict of the faith is
not with the science of evolution, but with the school
of thought which claims to be its exponent — a claim,
however, that we can with ill grace resist so long

EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 239

as we spend our time in casting- theological stones at
evolution. It is time to remember that evolution is
the exclusive property of no one school of thought ;
least of all can it be compassed by a few unques-
tioned methods of nature, such as a struggle for ex-
istence, natural selection, and variation by environ-
ment— processes which, if taken by themselves, have
more of chance in them than order, and hence are
exclusive of a definite end. Evolution may embrace
these methods, but it is not defined by them, nor do
they contain its secret.

The few principles that have guided and deter-
mined the thought of all ages in respect to creation,
and, we venture to say, will guide and determine it
in all ages to come, are these : A cause must be as-
sumed as soon as an effect is observed ; force cannot
originate itself, and must proceed from a self-acting
agent ; a law in action, as in gravitation or crystal-
lization, must be preceded by a thought of the law,
and hence the priority of mind ; forces working to-
wards an end in a complex and orderly way presup-
pose a mind and force ordaining the order and the
end. These are the granitic foundations underlying
evolutionary creation, and they can no more be over-
looked or set aside than the process itself. To refer
them to an unknowable cause may possibly be correct
if w^e know only what our five senses tell us ; if

" All we have power to see is a straight stafE bent in a pool."

But to think in this way is to deliberately build a
wall around ourselves and then assert that we know
nothing of the outside ; it is to deny cause and effect,

240 EVOLUTION AND THE FATl'H.

by resolutely ignoring cause, and dwelling only on
effects under the plea that the senses give us only
effects and say nothing of cause. The human mind
refuses to think in this way, and it disdains to be
regarded as a Cerberus that can be appeased by mor-
sels of empty phrase flung to it under the stress of
logical demand. The human mind is patient with
truth-seekers, but it will not tolerate a philosophy
which asserts that because a straight staff seems bent
in a pool it is actually crooked. Spenser touches
the truth in the couplet : —

" Why then should witless man so much misween
That nothing is but that which he hath seen ? ' '

Turning from this philosophy in search of one
more consonant with reason, we do not expect to
reach the mystery of creation, but we may be able to
find lines along which we can travel even though it
be forever — an " endless quest," but still one that
we can follow without wronging our rational nature.
Under what conception, then, can we best contem-
plate creation ? What theory best covers the facts,
and what do they require ? The one impregnable
position, the fo?is et oingo of thought upon the sub-
ject, is this : Forces that work in complex order and
with design are sequents of the thought in the order
and design. Before the morning-stars sang together
some master prepared the measure. Before matter
began to gravitate inversely as the square of distance,
some mathematician fixed the problem. Before
homogeneous matter at rest became unstable, some
will disturbed its equilibrium. Starting thus with
One who is force and thought and order, how can

EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 241

we best connect him with creation and its methods ?
Shall we conceive of him as simply thought, and so
have a mere idealism, — an unreal world ? or as
force, and so bring up in necessity and the confusion
of pessimism that turns on us with furious denial of
the validity of reason ? or as a mechanician, and so
make him external to the world ? or as an arbitrary
ordainer, forcing on us the question why he did not
ordain better and omit the needless early stages of
cruelty? Or shall we accept the conception of Im-
manence, and so have a thought and will and order
who is continuously in the processes of creation, and
is revealing himself in a real way in them, — a true
manifestation ? Such a conception covers the facts ;
under it creation is thinkable. It meets that most
imperative of questions, — What is the bond or rela-
tion between creation and its source ? For we can-
not escape the conviction that the relation is organic.
We may not be able thus to compass the mystery of
creation and lift the whole veil from Isis, but we can
at least withdraw a corner and discover the golden
feet that uphold it. Our highest possible achieve-
ment will be to think rationally of the universe —
not to explain it. Science may carry us far ; it may
be able to link all phases and orders of creation into
one whole, and explain the links ; it may be able to
bring matter and mind, force and feeling, sensation
and consciousness, desire and duty, attraction and
Ijve, repulsion and hatred, pain and pleasure and
conscience, fear and reverence, law and freedom, into
some natural relation evolutionary in its character.
As all these things are bound up in one human

242 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH.

organism, so tliey may be united in creation as a
whole. As man is a microcosm, so the universe may
be the analogue of the human cosmos. In this direc-
tion we can think at least without violation of reason,
— if forever without reaching a final solution, so
be it. But so thinking we escape the absurdity of
picking up creation at a point given by the senses
and propounding the fragment as a theory of the
universe. By so thinking we find that we are con-
stantly transcending limits. The simple fact that we
reach a limit implies a knowledge beyond it ; and
so we find at last that we are correlated to the lim-
itless and have knowledge of it. Thus we learn to
pronounce easily and with confidence the Infinite
Name ; and so naming it, we find it a revelation to
us ; under it creation gets meaning. We no longer
stand on a headland and view creation as a ship ris-
ing out of the horizon and sailing past till it sinks
again beneath the sky, port whence and port whither
unknown, whether swept by currents or guided from
within also unknown. Rather do we tread the deck,
mark the hand that holds the helm, hear the word
that shapes the voyage, and so journey with it to the
harbor.i

1 In closing this discourse, in which I have attempted merely to
show that the Christian faith is not endangered hy evolution, and to
separate it from a narrow school of thought with which it is usually
associated, it may not be amiss to indicate in a categorical way the
lines upon which further study should be pursued : —

I. The respects in which evolution as a necessary process in the
natural and brute worlds does not wholly apply to man.

1 . Instinct yields to conscious intelligence.

2. The struggle for existence yields to a moral law of preserva-
tion, and so is reversed.

EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 243

3. Intelligence takes the place of natural selection.

4. The will comes into supremacy, and so there is a complete
person ; man, instead of being wholly under force, becomes himself
a force.

5. Man attains full, reflective consciousness.

6. Conscience takes the place of desire.

7. The rudimentary and instinctive virtues of the brutes become
moral under will and conscience.

II. Contrasting- phenomena of evolution under necessity, and
evolution under freedom.

1. Man changes and tends to create his environment ; achieves it
largely, and so may improve and prolong it. The brute is con-
formed to environment, but had no power over it.

2. Man progi-esses under freedom. The brute progressed under
laws and environment; man, under will and moral principles of
action.

3. Man thinks reflectively, systematizes knowledge and reasons
upon it ; the brute does not, except in a rudimentary and forecast-
ing way.

4. Man has dominion ; the brute is a subject.

5. Man worships, having become conscious of the Infinite One ;
the brute does not.

6. Man is the end of creation, and the final object of it ; the brute
is a step in the progress.

The end of a process cannot be identified with the process.

IMMORTALITY AND MODERN
THOUGHT.

" Gone forever ! ever ? No — for since our dying race began,
Ever, ever, and f or-ever was the leading light of man. ' '

Tennyson, Locksley Hall Sixty Years After.

" Philosophy can bake no bread ; but she can procure for us God,
Freedom, Immortality.'' — Novalis.

' ' The ends for which nature exists are not in itself, but in the
spiritual sphere beyond. Nature always points to something be-
yond itself, backward to a cause, above to a law, and forward to
ends in the spiritual system. God is always developing nature to a
capacity to be receptive of higher powers. Under the tension of
the di\'ine energy in it, it always seems to be ' striving its bounds
to overpass.' This discloses in nature a certain reality in Hegel's
conception, that nature is always aspiring to return to the spiritual
whence it came." — Prof. Saivil^el Harris, D. D., LL. D., The
Self-Bevelation of God, p. 485.

" 0 human soul I so long as thou canst so
Set up a mark of everlasting light,
Above the howling senses' ebb and flow.
To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam,
Not with lost toil thou laborest through the night !
Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home."

^L\TTHEW Arnold, Sonnet on East London.

" Christianity is ever conquering some new province of human
nature, some fresh national variety of mankind, some hitherto un-
tenanted, unexplored region of thought or feeling." — Guesses at
Truth, p. 305.

" Whenever any scientific revolution has driven out old modes of
thought, the new \'iews that take their place must justify them-
selves by the permanent or increasing satisfaction which they are
capable of affording to those spiritual demands which cannot be
put off or ignored.' ' — Lotze, Microcosmus, Introduction, p. ix.

IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT.

But, according' to his promise, we look for new heavens and a
new cartli, wherein dwulleth rig-liteousness. — 2 Peter iii. 13.

The apparent futility that has attended all efforts
to prove the immortality of man springs largely
from the fact that a sense of immortality is an
achievement in morals, and not an inference drawn
by logical processes from the nature of things. It
is not a demonstration to, or by, the reason, but a
conviction gained through the spirit in the process
of human life. All truth is an achievement. If
you would have truth at its full value, go win it.
If there is any truth whose value lies in a moral
process, it must be sought by that process. Other
avenues will prove hard and uncertain, and will stop
short of the goal. Eternal wisdom seems to say:
If you would find immortal life, seek it in human
life ; look neither into the heavens nor the earth,
but into your own heart as it fulfills the duty of
present existence. We are not mere minds for see-
ing and hearing truth, but beings set in a real world
to achieve it. This is the secret of creation.

But if demonstration cannot yield a full sense of
immortality, it does not follow that discussion and

248 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT.

evidence are without value. Mind is auxiliary to
spirit, and intellectual con\dction may help moral
belief. Doubts may be so heavy as to cease to be
incentives, and become burdens. If there are any
hints of immortality in the world or in the nature of
man, we may welcome them. If there are denials
of it that lose their force under inspection, we may
clear our minds of them, for so we shall be freer
to woi'k out the only demonstration that will sat-
isfy us.

Whatever is here said upon this subject has for
its end, not demonstration, but a clearing and pav-
ing of the way to that demonstration which can be
realized only in the process of life, — that is, by per-
sonal experience in a spirit of duty. Or, I might
say, my object is to make an open and hospitable
place for it in the domain of thought.

This result would be nearly gained if it were un-
derstood how the idea of immortality came into the
world. It cannot be linked with the early supersti-
tions that sprang out of the childhood of the race,
— with f etichism and the worship of ancestors ; nor
is it akin to the early thought that personified and
dramatized the forces of nature, and so built up the
great mythologies. These were the first rude efforts
of men to find a cause of things, and to connect it
with themselves in ways of worship and propitia-
tion. But the idea of immortality had no such
genesis. It is a late comer into the world. Men
worshiped and propitiated long before they at-
tained to a clear conception of a future life. A
forecasting shadow of it may have hung over the

IMMORTALITY AND MODr.RX THOUGHT. 249

early races ; a voice not fully articulaie may have
uttered some syllable of it, and gained at last ex-
pression in theories of metempsychosis and visions
of Nirvana; but the doctrine of personal immor-
tality belongs to a later age. It grew into the con-
sciousness of the world with the growth of man, —
^1 >\vly and late, — and marked in its advent the
stage of human history when man began to recog-
nize the dignity of his nature. It came with the
full consciousness of selfhood, and is the product of
man's full and ripe thought ; it is not only not allied
with the early superstitions, but is the reversal of
them. These, in their last analysis, confessed man's
subjection to nature and its powers, and shaped
themselves into forms of expiation and propitiation ;
they implied a low and feeble sense of his nature, and
turned on his condition rather than on his nature, —
on a sense of the external world, and not on a per-
ception of himself. But the assertion of immortality
is a triumph over nature, — a denial of its forces.
Man marches to the head and says : " I too am to
be considered ; I also am a power ; I may be under
the gods, but I claim for myself their destiny ; I am
allied to nature, but I am its head, and will no
longer confess myself to be its slave." The fact of
such an origin should not only separate it from the
superstitions, where of late there has been a ten-
dency to rank it, but secure for it a large and gener-
ous place in the world of speculative thought. We
should hesitate before we contradict the convictions
of any age that wear these double signs of develop-
ment and resistance : nor should we treat lightly

250 IMMCRTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT.

any lofty assertions that man may make of himself,
especially when those assertions link themselves with
truths of well-being and evident duty.

The idea of immortality, thus achieved, naturally
allies itself to religion, for a high conception of
humanity is in itself religious. It built itself into
the foundations of Christianity, and became also its
atmosphere and its main postulate, its chief working
factor and its ultimate hope. It is of one substance
with Christianity — having the same conception of
man ; it runs along with every duty and doctrine,
tallying at every point ; it is the inspiration of the
system ; each names itself by one synonym — life.

Lodged thus in the conviction of the civilized
world, the doctrine of immortality met with no
serious resistance until it encountered modern sci-
ence. It may have been weakened and obscured in
the feature of personality by pantheistic conceptions
that have prevailed from time to time, but pan-
theism will not prevail in a hurtful degree so long
as it stands face to face with the freedom of our
Western civilization. A slight infusion of it is
wholesome, and necessary to correct an excessive
doctrine of individualism, and to perfect the con-
ception of God ; and it has never gone far enough
in its one line to impair the substantial validity of
the doctrine of immortality. We may repeat with-
out hesitation the verse of Emerson, —

" Lost in God, in Godhead found," —

and feel ourselves justified by the greater word of
St. Paul : " For in him we live, and move, and have

IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 251

our being." But when modern science — led by
the principle of induction — transferred the thought
of men to the physical world, and said, '• Let us get
at the facts ; let us find out what our senses reveal
to us," then immortality came under question simply
because science could find no data for it. Science,
as such, deals only with gases, fluids, and solids, with
length, breadth, and thickness. In such a domain
and amongst such phenomena no hint even of future
existence can be found, and science could only say,
"I find no report of it." I do not refer more to the
scientific class than to a scientific habit of thought
that diffused itself throughout society, and became
general by that wise and gracious contagion through
which men are led to think together and move in
battalions of thought, — for so only can the powers
of darkness be driven out. We do not to-day regret
that science held itself so rigidly to its field and its
principles of induction — that it refused to leap
chasms, and to let in guesses for the sake of morals.
If it held to its path somewhat narrowly, it still went
safely and firmly, and left no gaps in the mighty
argument it is framing and will yet perfect. The
severity and bigotry that attended its early stages,
even with its occasional apparent damage to morals,
were the best preparation for the thoroughness of
its future work. If its leaders — moved by the
conviction that all truth is linked together — at
times forsook the field of the three dimensions, and
spoke hastily of what might not lie beyond it, they
are easily forgiven. When scientists and metaphy-
sicians are found in each other's camps, they are not

252 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT.

to be regarded as intruders, even if they have not
learned the pass-word, but rather as visitors from
another corps of the grand army. The sappers and
miners may undervahie the flying artillerj^, and the
cavalry may gird at the builders of earthworks ; but
as the campaign goes on each will come to recognize
the value of the other, and perhaps, in some dark
night of defeat when the forces of the common enemy
are pressing them in the rear, they will welcome the
skill of those who can throw a bridge across the fatal
river in front to the unseen shore beyond.

But science has its phases and its progress. It
held itself to its prescribed task of searching matter
until it eluded science in the form of simple force —
leaving it, so to speak, empty-handed. It had got a
little deeper into the heavens with its lenses, and
gone a little farther into matter with its retorts, but
it had come no nearer the nature of things than it
was at the outset. I may cleave a rock once and
have no proper explanation of it, but I know as little
when I have cleaved it a thousand times and fused
it in flame. In these researches of science many
useful facts have been passed over to man, so that
easier answer is given to the question. What shall
we eat and wherewithal shall we be clothed ? But
it has come no nearer to an answer of those impera-
tive questions which the human mind will ask until
they are answered — Whence ? How ? For what ?
Not what shall I eat and how shall I be clothed, but
what is the meaning of the world? explain me to
myself ; tell me what sort of a being I am — how
I came to be here, and for what end. Such are

IMMORIALIIY AND MODERN TflOUGHT. 253

the questions that men are forever repeating to
themselves, and casting upon the wise for possible
answer. When chemistry put the key of the phys-
ical universe into the hand of science, it was w^ell
enough to give up a century to the dazzling picture
it revealed. A century of concentrated and uni-
versal gaze at the world out of whose dust we are
made, and whose forces play in the throbs of our
hearts, is not too much ; but having sat so long
before the brilliant play of elemental flames, and
seen ourselves reduced to simple gas and force under
laws for whose strength adamant is no measure, we
have become restive and take up again the old ques-
tions. Science has not explained us to ourselves,
nor compassed us in its retort, nor measured us in
its law of continuity. You have shown me of what
I am made, how put together, and linked my action
to the invariable energy of the universe ; now tell
me what I am; explain to me consciousness, will,
thought, desire, love, veneration. I confess myself
to be all you say, but I know myself to be more ;
tell me what that more is. Science, in its early and
wisely narrow sense, could not respond to these de-
mands. But it has enlarged its vocation under two
impulses. It has pushed its researches until it has
reached verges beyond which it cannot go, yet sees
forces and phenomena that it cannot explain nor
even speak of without using the nomenclature of
metaphysics. In a recent able work of science the
word " spirit " is adopted into the scientific vocab-
ulary. Again, physical science has yielded to the
necessity of allying itself with other sciences —

254 LMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT.

finding itself on their borders. Chemistry led up to
biology, and this in turn to psychology, and so on
to sociology and history and religion, and even to
metaphysics, whose tools it used with some disdain
of their source. In short, it is found that there
is no such thing as a specific science, but that all
sciences are pai-ts of one universal science. The
broad studies of the day have done much toward
establishing this conviction, which has brought about
what may be called a comity of the sciences, or an
era of good feeling. The chemist sits down by the
metaphysician and says, Tell me what you know
about consciousness ; and the theologian listens ea-
gerly to the story of evolution. Unless we greatly
misread the temper of recent science, it is ready to
pass over to theology certain phenomena it has dis-
covered and questions it has raised. And with more
confidence we may assert that theology is parting
with the conceit it had assumed as "queen of the
sciences," and — clothing itself with its proper hu-
mility — is ready to accept a report from any who
can aid it in its exalted studies.

This comity between the sciences, or rather neces-
sary correlation, not only leads to good feeling and
mutual respect, but insures a recognition of each
other's conclusions. Whatever is true in one must
be true in all. Whatever is necessary to the perfec-
tion of one cannot be ruled out of another. That
which is true in man's spiritual life must be true in
his social life ; and whatever is true in social life
must not contradict anything in his physical life.
We might reverse this, and say that no true phys-

IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 255

iologist will define the physical man so as to ex-
clude the social man ; nor will he so define the so-
cial and political man as to shut out the spiritual
man ; nor will he so define the common humanity
as to exclude personality. He will leave a margin
for other sciences whose claims are as valid as those
of his own. If, for example, immortality is a neces-
sary coordinate of man's moral nature, — an evident
part of its content, — the chemist and physiologist
will not set it aside because they find no report of
it in their fields. If it is a part of sj^iritual and
moral science, it cannot be rejected because it is not
found in physical science. So much, at least, has
been gained by the new comity in the sciences, —
that opinions are respected, and questions that be-
long to other departments are relegated to them in
a scientific spirit.

But this negative attitude of natural science to-
ward immortality does not by any means describe
its relation to the great doctrine. The very breadth
of its studies has made it humble and tolerant of
hypothesis in other fields. It is parting with a nar-
row and confining positivism, and is keenly alive to
the analogies and sweep of the great truths it has
discovered — truths which, as science, it cannot
handle. More than this : while it has taught us to
distrust immortality, because it could show us no
appearance of It, it has provided us with a broader
princii)le that undoes its work, — namely, the prin-
ciple of reversing appearances. The whole work
of natural science might be described under this
phrase : it has laid hold of the physical universe

256 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT.

and shown that the reality is unlike that which first
appears. It has thus bred a fine, wholesome skepti-
cism which is the basis of true knowledge and of
progress. Once men said, This is as it appears; to-
day they say, The reality is not according to the
first appearance, but is probably the reverse. The
sky seems solid ; the sun seems to move ; the earth
seems to be at rest, and to be flat. Science has
reversed these appearances and beliefs. But the
Copernican revolution was simply the beginning of
an endless process, and science has done little since
but exchange Ptolemaic appearance for Copernican
reality, and the process is commonly marked by
reversal. Matter seems to be solid and at rest ;
it is shown to be the contrary. The energy of
an active agent seems to end with disorganization,
but it really ])asses into another form. So it is
throughout. The appearance in nature is nearly
always, not false, but illusive, and our first interpre-
tations of natural phenomena usually are the reverse
of the reality. Of course this must be so ; it is the
wisdom of creation — the secret of the world ; else
knowledge would be immediate and without process,
and man a mere eye for seeing. Nature puts the
reality at a distance and hides it behind a veil, and
it is the office of mind in its relation to matter to
penetrate the distance and get behind the veil ; and
to make the process valuable in the highest de-
gree, this feature of contrariety is put into nature.
What greater achievement has mind wrought than
to turn the solid heavens into empty space, fix
the moving sun in the heavens, and round the flat

IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 257

world into a si)here ? Truth is always an achieve-
ment, and it becomes such by reversing appearance

— turning rest into motion, solids into fluids, centres
into orbits, breaking up inclosing firmaments into
infinite spaces. The human mind tends to rest in
the first appearance; science, more than any other
teacher, tells it that it may not. But it is this pre-
mature confidence in first appearance that induces
skepticism of immortality. Our inmost soul pleads
for it ; our higher nature disdains a denial of it as
ignoble. No poet, no lofty thinker suffers the eclipse
of it to fall upon his page, but many a poet and
thinker is — nay, are we not all ? — tormented by a
horrible uncertainty cast by the appearance of dis-
solving nature, and reenforced by the blank stillness
of science ? The heavens are empty ; the earth is
resolving back to fire-mist ; what theatre is there for
livin": men ? Thou^^ht and emotion are made one
with the force of the universe, shut up for a while
in a fleeting organism. What is there besides it?
Brought together out of nature, sinking back into
nature, — has man any other history ? What, also,
is so absolute in its appearance as death? How
silent are the generations behind us. How fast
locked is the door of the grave. How speechless
the speaking lips ; how sightless the seeing eye ; how
still the moving form. Touch the cold hand ; cry
to the ear ; crown the brow with weed or with flower

— they are alike to it. It is an awful appearance;
is it absolute — final? Say what we will, here is
the source of the dread misgiving that haunts the
mind of the age. Science has helped to create it,

17

258 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT.

but it also has discovered its antidote. The min-
ister of faith stands by this horrible appearance and
says : " Not here, but risen." He might well be
joined by the priest of science with words like these :
" My vocation is to wrest truth out of illusive appear-
ances. I do not find what you claim ; I find instead
an appearance of the conti'ary ; but on that very
principle you may be right ; the truth is generally
the reverse of the appearance." I do not advance
this as an argument, but to create an atmosphere for
argument. We still think of death under Ptolemaic
illusion ; we have not yet learned the secret of the
world, the order of truth — inverting the landscape
in the lens of the eye that the mind may get a true
picture. To break away from the appearance of
death — this is the imperative need ; and whatever
science may say in detail, its larger word and also
its method justify us in the effort. Hence the need
of the imaginative eye and of noble thought. Men of
lofty imagination are seldom deceived by death, sur-
mounting more easily the illusions of sense. Victor
Hugo probably knows far less of science than do
Biichner and Vogt, but he knows a thousand things
they have not dreamed of, which invest their science
like an atmosphere, and turn its rays in directions un-
known to them. Goethe was a man of science, but he
was also a poet, and did not go amiss on this subject.

I pass now to more positive ground, — speaking
still of science, for the antagonist of immortality is
not science, but a contagion or filtration from it that
permeates common thought.

Assuming evolution, — it matters not now what

IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 259

form of It, except the extreinest wliieli is not worthy
of the name of science, — I remark that the process
of development creates a skepticism at every stage
of its progress so great that one lias no occasion
even to liesitate when the claim of immortality is
made. Doubt has so often broken down that it is
no longer wise to doubt. Improbability has so
often given way to certainty and fact that it be-
comes almost a basis of expectation. One who
traces evolution step by step, and sees one miracle
follow another, should be prepared at the end to say,
"I will wonder no longer at anything; I have
turned too many sharp corners to be surprised at
another." Take your stand at any stage of evolu-
tion, and the next step is no stranger, no more to
be anticipated, no broader leap than that from
death to future life. Plant yourself at any given
stage, with the knowledge then given off by phe-
nomena, and report what you can see ahead. Go
back to the time when the swirl of fire-mist was
drawing into spheres, and predicate future life : the
raging elements laugh you to scorn. Life from
fire! — no dream of metempsychosis is so wild as
that. You detect a law of progress ; but to what
are you now listening — to the elements or to mind?
The elements can tell you nothing, but mind detects
a law in the elements that affords a ground for ex-
pectation. The appearance silences you ; the hint
leads you on, and you become perhaps a very cred-
ulous and unscientific believer, confronted by scien-
tific facts to the contrary. If one is skeptical of the
reality of the spiritual world on scientific grounds,

260 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT.

or on the score of simple improbability, the best
practical advice that can be given him is — to trans-
port himself back into early geologic or chemic ages,
and then attempt to use a positive philosophy to find
out what shall or shall not be, on the ground of ap-
pearance. But I yield too much ; the development
of life from nebulous fire is a fact so immensely
improbable, that we cannot conceive of ourselves as
accepting it. Take later contrasts, — the headless
moUusk in a world of water, and an antlered deer
in a world of verdure ; or the huge monsters of the
prime, and thinking man. Here are gulfs across
which contemporaneous imagination cannot leap, but
looking back we see that they have been crossed, and
by a process of orderly development, in embryology
if not in the rocks and museums. We see the pro-
cess and the energy by which it was wrought, but of
the source of the process or of the energy we know
nothing until we postulate it. But, shut off as we are
at every stage of the process from the next by its
improbability, and only able to accept it as we look
back upon it, and even then with an essential un-
known factor at work, — what right have we, with so
confounding a history behind us, to cut it short and
close it up with a doubt on the ground of improba-
bility? Are we not rather taught to expect other
wonders ? I am quite ready to hear the answer of
science, that the process under which immortality
is claimed is unlike that of development, — that it
cannot be gained under the same laws nor according
to the same method. Evolution does not spare the
individual nor the class. Life, as we see it, is a

IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 261

functioniil play of something — we know not what

set in favorable relations to an environment, and

endino- . when the relations become nnfavorable.
When environment ceases to play well into the or-
ganization, and the organization fails to adjust itself
to the changing environment, life ends ; and the life
of that organization cannot go on because it was
simply a thing of relations which have been de-
stroyed. This seems logical, and would be final if
all the factors and all their processes were embraced
and understood in the argument. This, we claim,
is not the case, but, on the contrary, claim that there
are factors and elements not recognized, which
may involve other processes and another history.
Science responds: This is all we find; we cannot go
outside of the facts and the processes ; life is a func-
tional play of something, — we know not what; but,
not knowing it, we have no right to deal with it, and
so set it aside.

This is the crucial point upon which immortality
as a speculative question turns. Shall it be silenced
in its claims on such evidence ? Is there no higher
tribunal, of wider powers and profounder wisdom,
before whi»h it may plead its eternal cause ? We
turn to that which is the substantial method of all
ages, — the necessary habit of the human mind, — to
philosophy.

We now have the grave question whether we are
to be limited in our thought and belief by the dicta
of physical science. In accounting for all things,
are we shut up to matter and force and their phe-
nomena? Science as positivism says : Yes, because

262 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT.

matter and force are all we know, or can know.
Another school says boldly: Matter and force ac-
count for all things, — thought, and will, and con-
sciousness ; a position denied by still another school,
which admits the existence of something else, but
claims that it is unknowable. If any one of these
positions is admitted, the question we are consider-
ing is an idle one, so far as demonstration is con-
cerned; it is even decided in the negative. The
antagonist to these positions is metaphysics. Faith
may surmount, but it cannot confute them without
the aid of philosophy. And how goes the battle ?
I think an impartial judge of this friendly conflict,
in which a man is often arrayed against himself,
would say that metaphysics not only holds, but is
master of the field. At least, science is speechless
before several fundamental questions that it has itself
put into the mouth of philosophy. Science begins
with matter in a homogeneous state of diffusion, —
that is, at rest and without action, either eternally
so, or as the result of exhausted force. Now, whence
comes force ? Science has no answer except such
as is couched under the phrase " an unknowable
cause," which is a contradiction of terms, since a
cause with a visible result is so far forth known.
Again, there are mathematical formulae, or thought,
in the stars, and in matter as in crystallization.
The law or thought of gravitation necessarily goes
before its action. What is the origin of this law as
it begins to act ? — and why does it begin to act in
matter at rest? — a double question to which science
renders no answer except to the latter part, which it

IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 2G3

solves by polarization ; but this is simply putting
the tortoise under the elephant. Again, evolution,
as interpreted by all the better schools of science,
admits teleology, or an end in view ; and the end is
humanity. But the teleological end was present
when the nebulous matter first began to move. In
what did this purpose then reside ? — in the nebulous
matter, or in some mind outside of matter and capa-
ble of the conception of man ?

Again, how do you pass from functional action of
the brain to consciousness? Science does not un-
dertake to answer, but confesses that the chasm is
impassable from its side. What, then, shall we do
with the fact and phenomena of consciousness?
Again, what right has science, knowing nothing of
the origin of force, and therefore not understanding
its full nature, — what right has it to limit its action
and its potentiality to the functional play of an or-
ganism ? As science it can, of course, go no farther ;
but, with an unknown factor, on what ground can it
make a negative and final assertion as to the capa-
bility of that factor ? Again, you test and measure
matter by mind ; but if matter is inclusive of mind,
how can matter be tested and measured by it ? It
is one clod or crj^stal analyzing another ; it is get-
ting into the scales along with the thing you would
weigh.

These are specimens of the questions that philos-
ophy puts to science — or rather, as I prefer to
phrase it, that one's mind puts to one's senses.
The observing senses are silent before the thinking
mind. But these questions are universal and im-

264 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT.

peratlve. No further word of denial or assertion
can be spoken until they are answered. And as sci-
ence does not answer them, philosophy undertakes to
do so, and its answer is — Theism. The universe re-
quires a creating mind ; it rests on mind and power.
Philosophy holds the field, and on its triumphant
banner is the name of God. Science might also be
pressed into close quarters as to the nature of this
thing that it calls matter^ which it thinks it can see
and feel ; but how it sees and feels it, it does not
know. When Sir William Thompson — led by a
hint of Faraday's — advances the theory that all the
properties of matter probably are attributes of mo-
tion, a surmise is awakened if matter be not a mere
semblance or phantasm ; and if force, or that which
creates force, is not the only reality — a true sub-
stance upon which this play and flux of unstable
matter takes place. Under this theory of advanced
science, it is no longer spirit that seems vague, illu-
sive, unreal, but matter — slipping away into modes
of motion, dissolving into mere activity, and so shad-
ing off toward some great Reality that is full of
life and energy — not matter, and therefore spirit.
Science itself has led up to a point where matter,
and not God, becomes the unknowable. A little
further struggle through this tangle of matter, and
we may stand on a " peak of Darien " in " wild sur-
mise " before the ocean of the Spirit.

The final word which the philosophical man within
us addresses to our scientific man is this : Stop when
you come to what seems to you to be an end of man :
and for this imperative reason, namely, you do not

IMMORTALIIY AND MODKRN THOUGHT. 265

claim that you liave compassed him ; you find in him
that which you cannot exphiin — something that lies
back of energy and function, and is the cause or
ground of the play of function ; you admit con-
sciousness; you admit that while thought depends
upon tissue, it is not tissue nor the action of tissue,
and therefore may have some other ground of action ;
you admit an impassable chasm between brain-action
and consciousness. What right has science as sci-
ence to leap that chasm with a negative in its hand ?
And why should science object to attempts to bridge
the chasm from the other side? Physical science
has left unexplained phenomena; may no other
science take them up ? Science has left an entity —
a something that it has felt but could not grasp, just
as it has felt but could not grasp the ether ; may not
the science that gave to physics the space-filling ether
try its hand at this unexplained remainder ? Let us
have, then, no negative assertions, — the bigotry of
science. A generous-minded science will pass over
this mystery to psychology, or to metaphysics, or to
theology. If it is a substance, it has laws. If it is
a force or a life, it has an environment and a corre-
spondence. If it is mind and spirit, it has a men-
tal and spiritual environment ; and if the corre-
spondence is perfect and the environment ample
enough, this mind and spirit may have a commen
surate history. This is logical, and also probable,
even on the ground of science, for its analogies indi-^
cate and sustain it. My conclusion is this : Until
natural science can answer these questions put by
other sciences, it has no right to assume the solu-

266 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT.

tion of the problem of immortality, because tliis
question lies within the domain of the unanswered
questions. Not to the Trojan belongs the wounded
immortal Diomed, but to the Greek, who vindicates
the claim of his heart by the strength of his
weapons.

But has science no positive word to offer? The
seeming antagonist of immortality during its earlier
studies of evolution, it now seems, in its later studies,
about to become an ally. It suddenly discovered
that man was in the category of the brutes and of
the whole previous order of development. It is now
more than suspecting that, although in that order,
he stands in a relation to it that forbids his being
merged in it, and exempts him from a full action of
its laws, and therefore presumably from its destinies.
It has discovered that because man is the end of
development he is not wholly in it — the product of
a process, and for that very reason cut off from the
process. What thing is there which is made by man,
or by nature after a plan and for an end, that is not
separated from the process when it is finished, set in
entirely different relations and put to different uses?
When we build a wagon, we gather metal and wood,
bring them together, forge, hew, fit, and paint till it
is made ; but we do not then break it into pieces,
cast the iron into the forge and the timber into the
forest ; we wheel it out of the shop and put it to
its uses which have little to do with the processes by
which it was framed, — made under one set of laws
but used under another. When a child is born, the
first thing done is to sever the cord that binds it to

IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 267

its orii»iii and throuiili wliicli it became what it is.
And what is creation with its progressive and or-
derly development, — heat acting upon matter over-
shadowed by the Spirit ; then a simple play' of
forces ; at length a quickening into life, and then a
taking on of higher and more complex forms, till at
last the hour comes and man is born into the wor^d,
— what is creation but a divine incubation or gesta-
tion within the womb of eternity ? The thought is
startling, but I disclaim a rhetorical interpretation
and offer it as a generalization of science. What
then ? The embryotic condition and processes and
laws are left behind, and man walks forth under the
heavens — the child of the stars and of the earth,
born of their long travail, their perfect and only
offspring. Now he has new conditions, new laws,
new methods and ends of his own. Now we have
the image of the creating God — the child of the
begetting Spirit.

It is to such conclusions that recent science is
leading. Briefly stated, my thought is this : Man is
the end or product that nature had in view during
the whole process of evolution ; when he is produced,
the process ceases, and its laws either end at once or
gradually, or take on a form supplementary to other
laws, or are actually reversed. Thus, the struggle
for existence ceases, and a moral or humane law of
preservation takes its place. The secret of history
is the dethronement of the strong by the weak, or
rather the introduction of a force by which the meek
become the inheritors and rulers of the earth. Nat-
ural selection gives way to intelligent choice. In-

268 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT.

stiiict nearly ends, and thought determines action.
The whole brute inheritance is being gradually-
thrown off ; its methods constitute evil — the ser-
pent whose head the seed of woman is bruising and
shall finally crush. The imperative conclusion fol-
lows that man is not to be regarded as in the process,
nor under the laws, nor even under the analogies of
the order from which he has been evolved or created.
The leaden suggestion of nature, as it destroyed the
imllvidual and the type, no longer has even scientific
weight. The thing that has been is the very thing
that shall not be ; and Tennyson, with this fresh
page of science before him, could now stretch out
towards his great hope hands no longer lame, and
^rather something- more than dust and chaif as he
calls to the Lord of all ; for it is the appearance
and analogy of nature that crush our hope. But
science itself bids us turn our back upon physical
nature, or but look to it to find that we are no longer
of it.

The importance of this generalization or revelation
of science cannot be exaggerated. Canon Mozley,
in his great sermon on Eternal Life, says substan-
tially, " It does not matter how we came to be what
we are ; we are what we are," and from that builds
up his masterly argument for immortality. Still,
it does matter whether we face the great question
weighted by our previous history or freed from it.
It is possible, indeed, to scale the heights of our hope
burdened with the clay out of which we were made ;
but why bear it, when friendly science offers to take
it off ? Besides, man is a logical being, and he can-

IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 2G9

not be induced to leave unexphiined phenomena be-
hind him, nor to leap chasms in his thought ; nor
will he build the heavenly city upon reason while it
is confused by its relations to physical nature. So
freed, we have man as mind and s})irit, evolved or
created out of nature, but no longer correlated to its
methods, — correlated instead to contrasting meth-
ods, — face to face with laws and forces hitherto
unknown or but dimly shadowed, moving steadily
in a direction opposite to that in which he was pro-
duced.

Receiving man thus at the hands of science, what
shall we do with him but pass him over into the
world to the verge of which science has brought him
— the world of mind and spirit ? From cosmic dust
he has become a true person. What now ? The end
of the demiurgic strife reached, its methods cease.
Steps lead up to the apex of the pyramid. What re-
mains ? What, indeed, but flight, if he be found to
have wings ? Or does he stand for a moment on the
summit, exulting in his emergence from nature, only
to fall back into the dust at its base? There is a
reason why the reptile should become a mammal : it
is more life. Is there no like reason for man ? Shall
he not have more life ? If not, then to be a reptile
is better than to be a man, for it can be more than
itself ; and man, instead of being the head of nature,
goes to its foot. The dream of pessimism becomes a
reality, justifying the remark of Schopenhauer that
consciousness is the mistake and malady of nature.
If man becomes no more than he now is, the whole
process of gain and advance by which he has become

270 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT.

what he is turns on itself and reverses its order.
The benevolent purpose, seen at every stage as it
yields to the next, stops its action, dies out, and goes
no farther. The ever-swelling bubble of existence,
that has grown and distended till it reflects the light
of heaven in all its glorious tints, bursts on the in-
stant into nothingness.

The question is, whether such considerations are
subjects for thought ; whether they have in them an
element of reason that justifies a conclusion ; whether
they are phenomena, and may be treated scientific-
ally; whether they do not address us in a way as
impressive as physical science could address us at
any particular stage of evolution. Having thought
up to this point and found always a path leading
through the improbabilities of the future, shall we
cease to think because we face other improbabil-
ities ? We cannot, indeed, think facts out of exist-
ence — the world is real ; but natural science justi-
fies us in regarding man as under the laws of the
intellectual and moral world into which it has deliv-
ered him. It has shown us the chemical coming
under the subjection of the dynamic, and the dy-
namic yielding to the organic, and the organic, with
man in it and over it, working miracles of his own
— a power over nature, under laws that are neither
chemical, nor dynamic, nor organic, but creative in
their essence, and spiritual in their force. He is
therefore to be measured, not by the orders behind
him, but by those into which he has come

Proceeding now under theistic conceptions, I am
confident that our scientific self goes along with our

IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 271

rccasoning self when I claim that the process of evo-
lution at every step and in every moment rests on
God, and draws its energy from God. The relation,
doubtless, is organic, but no less are its processes
conscious, voluntary, creative acts. Life was crowded
into the process as fast as the plan admitted ; it was
life and more life till the process culminated in man
— the end towards which it had been steadily j^ress-
ing. We have in this process the surest possible
ground of expectation that God will crown his con-
tinuous gift of life with immortal life. When, at
last, he has produced a being who is the image of
himself, who has full consciousness and the creative
will, who can act in righteousness, who can adore
and love and commune with his Creator, there is a
reason — and if there is a reason there will be found
a method — why the gift of immortal life should be
conferred. God has at last secured in man the
image of himself — an end and solution of the whole
process. Will he not set man in permanent and per-
fect relations ? Having elaborated his jewel till it
reflects himself, does he gaze upon it for a briefer
moment than he spent in producing it, and then cast
it back into elemental chaos ? Science itself forces
upon us the imperious question, and to science also
are we indebted for a hopeful answer — teaching us
at last that we are not bound to think of man as
under the conditions and laws that produced him, —
the end of the creative process, and therefore not of
it. Such is the logic of evolution, and w^e could not
well do without it. But we must follow it to its con-
clusions. Receiving at its hands a Creating Mind

272 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT.

working by a teleological process toward man as the
final product, we are bound to think consistently of*
these factors ; nor may we stop in our thought and
leave them in confusion. If immortality seems a
difficult problem, the denial or doubt of it casts upon
us one more difficult. We have an intelligent Cre-
ator starting with such elements as cosmic dust, pro-
ceeding in an orderl}^ process, developing the solid
globe ; then orders of life that hardly escape mat-
ter ; then other orders that simply eat and move and
procreate ; and so on to higher forms, but always
aiming at man, for '' the clod must think," the crystal
must reason, and the fire must love, — all pressing
steadily toward man, for whom the process has gone
on and in whom it ends, because he — being what he
is — turns on these very laws that produced him and
reverses their action. The instincts have died out ;
for necessity there is freedom ; for desire there is
conscience ; natural selection is lost in intelligence ;
the struggle for existence is checked and actually
reversed under the moral nature, so that the weak
live and the strong perish unless they protect the
weak. A being who puts a contrast on all the rav-
ening creation behind him, and lifts his face toward
the heavens in adoration, and throws the arms of his
saving love around all living things, and so falls into
sympathetic affinity with God himself and becomes
a conscious creator of what is good and true and
beautiful — such is man. What will God do with
this being, the product of countless aeons of creative
energy? What will God do with his own image? is
the piercing question put to reason. I speak of ideal

IMiMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 273

man — the man that has been and shall be ; of the
meek who inherit the earth and rule over it in the
sovereign power of love and goodness. How much
of time, what field of existence and action, will God
grant to this being ? The pulses of his heart wear
out in less than a hundred years. Ten years are re-
quired for intelligence to replace the loss of instinct,
so that relatively his full life is briefer than that of
the higher animals. A quarter of his years is re-
quired for physical and mental development ; a half
is left for work and achievement, and the rest for
dying. And he dies saying: I am the product of
eternity, and I can return into eternity ; I have lived
under the inspiration of eternal life, and I may
claim it ; I have loved my God, my child, my brother
man, and I know that love is an eternal thing ; it
has so announced itself to me, and I pass into its
perfect and eternal realization. Measure this being
thus, and then ask reason, ask God himself, if his
mortal life is a reasonable existence. There is no
proportion between the production of man and his
duration ; it is like spending a thousand years in
building a pyrotechnic piece that burns against the
sky for one moment and leaves the blackness of a
night never again to be lighted. Such a destiny
can be correlated to no possible conception of God
nor of the world except that of pessimism — the
philosophy of chaos — the logic that assumes or-
der to prove disorder — that uses consciousness to
show that it is a disease. But any rational concep-
tion of God forces us to the conclusion that he will
hold on to the final product of his long, creative

274 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT.

process. If man were simply a value, a fruit of
use, an actor of intelligence, a creator of good, lie
would be worth preserving; but if God loves man
and man loves God, and so together they realize the
ultimate and highest conception of being and des-
tiny, it is impossible to believe that the knife of
Omnipotence will cut the cords of that love and
suffer man to fall back into elemental flames ; for, if
we do not live when we die, we pass into the realm
of oxygen. Perhaps it is our destiny — it must be
under some theories; but it is not yet necessary
under any accredited theory of science or philosophy
to conceive of God as a Moloch burning his children
in his fiery arms, nor as a Saturn devouring his own
offspring.

I am well aware that just here a distinction is
made that takes off the edge of these horrible conclu-
sions,— namely, that humanity survives though the
individual perishes. This theory, which is not re-
cent, has its origin in that phase of nature which
shows a constant disregard of the individual and a
steady care for the type or class. It found its way
from science into literature, where it took on the
form of lofty sentiment and became almost a reli-
gion. It is a product of the too hasty theory that
we may carry the analogies of nature over into the
world of man, and lay them down squarely and with-
out qualification as though they compassed him.
Science no longer does this, but the blunder lives
on in literature and the every-day thought of the
world. But suppose it were true that the individual
perishes and humanity survives, how much relief

IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 275

iloes it afford to thought ? It simply lengthens the
day that must end in horrible doom. For the ques-
tion recurs, how long will humanity continue ? For
long, indeed, if man can preserve the illusion of im-
mortality and the kindred illusions of love and duty
and sacrifice that go with it, and can be kept apart
from an altruism that defeats itself by cutting the
nerve of personality. Humanity will stay long upon
the earth if love and conscience are fed by their
proper and only sustaining inspirations; but even
then how long will the earth entertain that golden
era when the individual shall peacefully live out his
allotted years, and yield up the store of his life to
the general fund of humanity, in the utter content
of perfect negation ? I might perhaps make a total
sacrifice for an eternal good, but I will sit down with
the pessimists sooner than sacrifice myself for a tem-
porary good ; the total cannot be correlated to the
temporary. If such sacrifice is ever made, it is the
insanity of self-estimate, or rather is the outcome of
an unconscious sense of a continuous life. How long
do I live on in humanity ? Only till the crust of the
earth becomes a little thicker, and days and nights
grow longer, and the earth sucks the air into its " in-
terlunar caves " — now a sister to the moon. Chaos
does not lie behind this world, but ahead.

" Many an aeon moulded earth before Iier highest man was born ;
Many an aeon, too, may pass when earth is manless and f orlora. ' '

The picture of the evolution of man through " dra-
gons of the prime " is not so dreadful as that fore-
shadowed when the world shall have grown old, and
environment no longer favors full life. Humanity

27G IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT.

may mount high, but it must go down and reverse
the steps of its ascent. Its lofty altruism will die
out under hard conditions ; the struggle for existence
will again resume its sway, and hungry hordes will
fish in shallowing seas, and roam in the blasted for-
ests of a dying world, breathing a thin atmosphere
under which man shrinks towards inevitable extinc-
tion. Science paints the picture, but reason disdains
it as the probable outcome of humanity. The future
of this world as the abode of humanity is a mj stery,
though not wholly a dark one ; but under no possi-
ble conception can the world be regarded as the
theatre of the total history of the race.

A modification of this view is the theory that sets
aside personality and asserts a return of the indi-
vidual life into God. Mr. Emerson in an essay, the
suggestive value of which is very great, says : " I
confess that everything connected with our person-
ality fails." It would be easy to quote Emerson
against himself, but that were no gain. He wrote
this sentence too early to have the advantage of re-
cent science. In that play of nature on which he
fixed his gaze years before Darwin, he saw indeed
that " nature never spares the individual," but his
prophetic soul did not reveal to him the things to be.
The interpretation of science, as now" given, tells us
that when man is reached in the process of develop-
ment nature does spare the individual, or, more prop-
erly, the person. It is the very thing nature has
been aiming at all along, namely, to produce a per-
son and then preserve him. The whole trend of the
laws in social and intelligent humanity is toward

IMiMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. '277

securing a full personality, and a defense and per-
petuity of it. Emerson apparently never caught
sight of the fact that in humanity there is a reversal
of those laws by which matter and brute-life led up
to man. lie looked at nature more closely than
Plato dared, and was dazzled.

This altruism which assumes for itself a loftier mo-
rality in its willingness to part with personality and
live on sim2)ly as influence and force, sweetening hu-
man life and deepening the blue of heaven, — a view
that colors some unfortunate pages of both literature
and science, — is one of those theories that contains
within itself its own refutation. It regards person-
ality almost as an immorality: lose yourself in the
general good ; it is but selfish to claim existence for
self. It may be, indeed, but not if personality has
attained to the law of love and service. Personal-
ity may not only reverse the law of selfishness, but
it is the only condition under which it can be wholly
reversed. If I can remain a person, I can love and
serve, — I may be a perpetual generator of love and
service ; but if I cease to exist, I cease to create
them, and leave a mere echo or trailing influence
thinning out into an unmeaning universe. Such an
altruism limits the use and force of character to the
small opportunity of human life ; it is so much and
no more, however long it may continue to act ; but
the altruism of ideal and enduring personality con-
tinues to act forever, and possibly on an increasing
scale. This altruism of benevolent annihilation cuts
away the basis of its action ; it pauperizes itself by
one act of giving, — breaks its bank in the generosity

278 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT.

of its issue. It is one thing to see the difficulties in
the way of immortality, but quite another thing to
erect annihilation into morality ; and it is simply a
blunder in logic to claim for such morality a supe-
riority over that of those who hope to live on, wear-
ing the crown of personality that struggling nature
has placed on their heads, and serving its Author
forever and ever. The simple desire to live is
neither moral nor immoral, but the desire to live for
service and love is the highest morality and the only
true altruism.

I will not follow the subject into those fields of
human life and spiritual experience where the assur-
ances of immortality mount into clear vision, my aim
having been to lessen the weight of the physical
world as it hangs upon us in our upward flight. We
cannot cut the bond that binds us to the world by
pious assertion, nor cast it off by ecstatic struggles
of the spirit, nor unbind it by any half-way processes
of logic, nor by turning our back upon ascertained
knowledge. We must have a clear path behind us
if we would have a possible one before us.

There are three chief realities, no one of which
can be left out in attempts to solve the problem of
destiny : man, the world, and God. We must think
of them in an orderly and consistent way. One re-
ality cannot destroy nor lessen the force of another.
If there has been apparent conflict in the past, it
now seems to be drawing to a close ; the world agrees
with theism, and matter no longer denies spirit. If
at one tima, matter threatened to possess the universe
and include it under it? laws, it has withdrawn its

IMMORTALITY AND MODERN TnOUGHT. 279

claim, and even finds itself driven to mind and to
spirit as the larger factors of its own problems.
Mind now has full liberty to think consistently of
itself and of God, and, with such liberty,* it finds
itself driven to the conclusion of immortality by
every consideration of its nature and by every fact
of its condition, — its only refuge against hopeless
mental confusion.

Not from consciousness only, — knowing ourselves
to be what we are, — but out of the mystery of our-
selves, may we draw this sublime hope ; for we are
correlated not only to the known, but to the un-
known. The spirit transcends the visible, and by
dream, by vision, by inextinguishable desire, by the
unceasing cry of the conscious creature for the Cre-
ator, by the aspiration after perfection, bj- the pres-
sure of evil and by the weight of sorrow, penetrates
the realms beyond, knowing there must be meaning
and purpose and end for the mystery that it is.

MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION.

" The death and the resurrection of the Christ are always to be
connected -with the ascension. This is the witness that no limits of
time or space can separate the Clirist from the world which he
has redeemed. It is the witness that the heavens are opened, and
that their life becomes henceforth one with the life of earth. It
becomes an incentive to duty in a life of faith and hope. It is the
evidence of a pure and redeemed and g-lorified humanity. It ful-
fills the transfiguration in the eternal glory of the Son of man.' ' —
Elisha Mctlford, LL. D., The Republic of God, p. 257.

" The resurrection of Christ is a revelation of a general law of
resurrection, and that law and order of life in the resurrection is in
continuity with, and is the fulfillment of, the lower laws and pro-
cesses of created life up to man." — Rev. Newsian Sjitth, D. D,,
Preface to revised ed. of Old Faiths in New Lights.

' ' As physical science has brought us to the conclusion that back
of all the jjhenomena of the natural universe there lies veiled an
invisible viniverse of forces, and that these forces may ultimately be
reduced to one pervading force, in which the essential xmity of the
physical universe consists, and as philosophy has further advanced
the rational conjecture that this ultimate all-pervading force is
simply will, so the great Teacher holds up before us the spiritual
world as a system in the same way pervaded by one life, — a life
revealed in him as its highest human manifestation, but meant
to be shared by all those who, by faith, become partakers of his
nature. When, therefore, we are told that the Word, by whom all
things were created, was made flesh and dwelt among us, — in other
words, that the eternal reason by which the creation from the be-
ginning has been shaped, in the fidlness of time allied itself with
human intelligence and with human will, — we are not only told
nothing that science contradicts, but we have hinted to us a law of
the spiritual world w^hich the laws of the natural world confirm,
and with which all the last conclusions of science stand up in
striking and convincing parallel." — Pkof. J. Lewis Diman, D. D.,
Orations and Essays, p. 409.

MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION.

The earth beareth fruit of herself ; first the bhide, then the ear,
then the full corn in the ear. — St. Mark iv. 28.

Our Lord nowhere defines the kingdom of Heaven,
but many times over tells us what it is like. A great
teacher does not indulge in definitions ; for a defini-
tion by its nature implies logical processes and con-
clusions that shut one up within one's own mind,
subject to its weaknesses antl limitations. Christ
puts himself in contrast with the dogmatist who
frames a definition that necessarily imprisons him,
by opening a universe — undefinable, but clearly ap-
prehended. Search it thoughout, he says, and you
will find that all things are in harmony, one truth
in all truths. The dogmatist proves a point, Christ
reveals the universe of truth ; one drives us to some
definite action, the other inspires us with a sense of
duty ; one binds us, the other leaves us in freedom.
A great truth can be conveyed only by a great illus-
tration ; but Christ's method went farther and con-
nected the truth with the process and fact he uses :
the same force, the same order, the same movement,
are in the illustration and in the truth illustrated ;
and one sets forth the other because they have such a

284 MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION.

relation. The kingdom of Heaven is like growing
corn, not because the Oriental fancy discerns an
external likeness, but because the same power lies
behind the springing corn and the unfolding king-
dom inducing their likeness; they correspond, be-
cause both are ordained by one mind and put into
one order.

Christ likened the kingdom of Heaven to two
fields of action, — growth in the organic world, and
the spontaneous action of the human heart in the
natural and every-day relations of life. It is like
seed sown, like growing corn, like working leaven,
like mustard -seed and a fig-tree, like wheat and
tares, and fermenting wine. It is like the play of
the mind when men lose sheep or money or sons, when
they are intrusted with money, when they go to feasts
and weddings, when they pray, when they catch fish,
and barter, and mend garments, and build houses.
The world of unfolding nature and the world of
human life, — here are set down the laws, the meth-
ods, and the outcome of this great order named the
Kingdom of Heaven. Understand one and you will
know the other. The likeness is not rhetorical but
essential ; the revelation of one is through the other,
and they match each other because both rest on one
Will that works in harmony with itself.

It would be pressing language too far to seek in
the phrase, " the earth beareth fruit of herself," a
reference to any scientific theory ; still there is a rec-
ognition of the fact that there is lodged in the world
of nature a force that works, as it were, of itself,
and so brings forth fruit. It does not assert, but

MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 285

it admits of, an evolutionary i)i'oc*e.ss in the organic
world.

The theory of evolution in some form is now so
widely accepted that it no longer stirs offense nor
awakens suspicion to name it in connection with
questions of theology. One may do so without
thereby committing one's self to any special theory
of evolution, or to any conclusion that may be drawn
from it. It may be well, whether it is SLCcepted or
rejected, to lay it beside the problems of religion in
a tentative way, in order to see if it will aid in solv-
ing them, or add to their force and clearness. A
multitude of inquiring and not wholly believing
minds are thinking upon the themes of evolution,
who are eager to discover if they can retain both
their faith and their science. The practical divorce
between this popular theory and theology, that is
often insisted on, reacts against faith, for we are so
closely bound to this world that its apparent verdicts
take precedence of those of the spiritual world. They
may be specially blessed who believe without seeing,
but others are not to be condemned who ask to lay
their finger upon the jDroof that life is stronger
than death. There is a great deal of incipient
infidelity that might be cured if it were properly
dealt with. The limitations that make theology an
isolated science, and the common assertion tliat re-
ligion and science have nothing to do with each
other, are the actual sources of this infidelity. We
know ourselves too well to assent to the claim that
we are compartment-beings, thought-tight, and can
shut religion up in one part, and philosophy in

286 AIAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION.

another, and science in still another. When a truth
enters into man it has the range of his whole nature,
and makes its appeal to every faculty ; if shut within
the heart it will mount to the brain, or if held there
it will steal down to the heart. Man is the com-
pletest unit in nature. The divisions set up between
mind and will and sensibility are like the great cir-
cles which astronomy puts into the heavens, — imag-
inary, and for convenience only ; if insisted on as
real, they might check the planets in their orbits.

No harm, at least, can come from a hypothetical
discussion of evolution in its relations to religion,
and it is possible that much good will be gained. It
is certainly well for all to have some general knowl-
edge of it and to trace its varying stages in the world
of thought, if for no other reason than to find out
what is settled and what is still undetermined.

While evolution is now so generally accejjted
that no one thinks in any department of study ex-
cept under the evolutionary idea, there is as yet
no accurate definition and no special theory of it
which is not open to criticism. It is immediately
urged : How can there be a consensus of belief in
evolution without some settled theory of it ? What
is the foundation of your belief ? If it consists of
facts, cannot these facts be formulated ? These are
forceful questions and can be strongly pressed, but
may be met by an appeal to the actual attitude of
the thinking world, — holding to evolution without
a definite theory of it beyond its bare principle and
general method. This is not without precedent.
The Copernican system was believed by all the men

MAiN THE riNAL FORM IN CIJKATION. 287

of science contemi)orary witli its fi"iiiu!r long before
he stated it ; and the system waited for centuries,
and waits still, for full statement. Gravitation was
held under an imperfect formula before Newton dis-
covered the correct one, and was held as local before
it was known to be universal ; nor do we yet know
nuich about it. Nearly every great truth precedes
its theory ; it is believed before it is formulated.
Christianity itself was a fact and a power in the
world before it became a system ; nor have we yet,
nor shall we ever have, a definition of it. There is
reason to think it will be the same with evolution.
It is certainly true to-day that there is no closely
defined tlieory of evolution that covers its facts.
Universal laws are asserted, but they are found to
be particular and limited in their field. Evolution
and Darwinism have been used as interchangeable
terms and are still j^oj^ularly so used ; but the men
of science to-day regard Darwin as a great student
of evolution who discovered the law of natural selec-
tion to which his followers gave a wider scope than
was claimed for it by himself. Natural selection,
though a law of wide reach, does not cover the facts
of evolution.

Roughly defined, evolution is the theory that life
in the organic world is developed or evolved from
i^receding life by descent and variation. So far,
there is nearly universal agreement because the fact
is so evident. But when we ask why, or by what
law, offspring is like parents, we get various answers,
and none are satisfactory; and when we ask why
offspring varies from parents, w^e get still more di-

288 MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION.

vergent answers that are even less satisfactory.
Some theories exj^lain variation by natural selec-
tion ; others by migration ; others by an " internal
tendency," which is quite probable, but it is a mere
phrase and explains nothing ; others still by " ex-
traordinary births" which become the progenitors of
new species, — true in 23art doubtless, but how far
true is not known, and, whether partial or universal,
it is no explanation of the fact. Another, and just
now popular, theory of variation is that it is caused
by the active efforts of animals in certain direc-
tions ; but it is questioned if tendencies so caused are
sufficiently persistent to form a permanent species.

These are examples of attempts to explain a fact
upon which all are agreed, but are wide apart in
their explanations. They touch each other at certain
points and run into each other at other points, and
all rest on certain well-attested phenomena; but no
one covers, nor do all, taken in their points of agree-
ment, cover the facts, nor do they get beyond a cer-
tain limit where observation ends, — reaching a dead-
wall behind which their great fact lies in unattain-
able mystery. This condition of the subject is of
great significance. It does not indicate an imper-
fect state of science. Lamarck was perhaps as near
right as any man since ; and science has chiefly pro-
vided old theories with a few more facts : the micro-
scope has only added to the vision of the eye. It
rather indicates two things : first, that life is a very
complex thing, and is too wide to be brought under
a theory, — that while innumerable things may be as-
serted of it, it cannot be put into a single category j

MAN TIIK FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 289

second, that an explanation of life mnst be songlit
in a region that teehnieal science does not recognize.
A point of immense significance, I repeat, Ijecause
the theories break down one after another at just
those points where they most threaten morals and
religion, leaving the great fact of evolution to be
explained, if explained at all, by theories that admit
of morals and religion. The men of science demur,
and say, " Give us time and we will unravel the tan-
gled thread of creation." We do not cast at science
its ' disagreements, nor remind it that so far it has
worked at cross purposes, for we well know that
such confusion is no sign of error ; science seldom
starts on the right path, but it often reaches its end,
or some better end than it aimed at. Instead, we
assert that science will fail in its quest because it
always brings up against ultimate facts in both the
material and physical worlds. When it is found that
some countless millions of vibrations of luminiferous
ether upon the retina of the eye give the color red,
we have reached an ultimate fact; go one stej:* far-
ther and you are in a world that physical science
does not recognize ; namely, the consciousness of
vision. So when we say, I think, I will, I remem-
ber, we assert actual processes that physical science
cannot measure : the effort to do so is an attempt
to get outside of mind to find mind ; it is going out-
side of the ship to discover where it is bearing you.
These ultimate facts form barriers that physical
sciejnce cannot pass. It may crowd them back and
make ever-widening fields for itself, but they re-
main ; they exist in every grain of sand, in every

290 MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION.

begotten and conceived tiling, in every acting intel-
ligence. There cannot therefore be any theory of
creation that is scientific, in the ordinary sense of
the word. Science covers onty a section of creation.
It begins with a homogeneous fluid disturbed by
force, but what the force is, and why it begins to
act, it does not undertake to determine ; it simply
strikes in at a given point upon an existing order.
What is back of this, what may be over it and
under it and in it, science does not recognize, but
cannot deny. Now here are great realities, orders,
forces already existing and at work when science
begins its examination. They exist and act still,
and are the materials with which science works ;
they are the ocean out of which science has filled the
cup over which it is busy ; but no measurement or
analysis of the contents of the cup will explain the
ocean. It is in this, so to speak, preexisting world,
this siqyra et suh et intr^a existing world, that theol-
ogy and philosophy have their fields, which are not
only outside of the physical world but inclusive of
it. Physical science can no more settle a question
of morals than it can settle the question of creation.
It adduces many illuminating facts in respect to
both, but it brings u]) against the same barriers in
either case, giving us methods and processes but
never causes and explanations. Hence it can deter-
mine no question in morals or religion or philosophy,
simply because they reach beyond its domain while
they have a considerable play within it.

But the theistic evolutionist refuses to think
within this domain, and holds that it is unscientific

MAN TTTK FINAL FORM IN CRKATION. 201

and empirical to start in at a given point and then
attempt an explanation of creation and morals. He
boldly enters the wider domain of ultimate cause
and original force, and there attempts to think.
He can, at least, offer explanations that cannot be
disproved, and more and more seems he to be mar-
shaling the forces the way they are going. Postu-
late a creative Power, an eternal Will, a moral
Being, and you can have a coherent system, which
is certainly better than a scientific theory that can-
not carry the facts.

The point at which I am aiming is this : as nat-
ural science starts in at a given point and abandons
all that is befoie it to the theist, so a point will be
reached where science fails and must leave the prob-
lems of existence to be solved by the theist. As
science cannot determine origin, so it cannot deter-
mine destiny ; as it presents a sectional view of
creation, so it gives only a sectional view of every-
thing in creation. It is not only a sectional view in
time but in scope and reach. Everything rises out
of its domain, and disappears from its view in that
larger world which is about it ; a crystal and a man
are equally inexplicable within its necessarily limited
vision.

Such reflections leave with us the clear conviction
that physical science cannot settle the problems of
religion, though it may furnish important factors in
their solution. It can trace a few of the external
features of their history for a limited time, the most
important of which is that man is included in the
evolutionary process so far as the limited vision of

292 MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION.

science can observe him. But as this covers his en-
tire visible history, the question arises, What will be
his future history ? If he has been evolved in his
physical nature from the lower orders, may he not
develop into a higher order, and so become a simple
factor of an ascending series — as much below what
is to be as he is now above what has been ? More
briefly: granting evolution, may not man develop,
by the law of descent and variation, into a superior
species of being ?

The question is worthy of discussion, because evo-
lutionary conceptions prevail so generally that it is
wise to discuss man under them, and a question so
legitimate as this must be met ; and also because it
leads to a lofty conception of man, and throws pos-
sible light upon certain great Christian facts.

I shall attempt to suggest a few reasons tending
to show that man has reached the end of his phys-
ical evolution, and will not develop into another and
higher species.

Evolution does not imply that any given evolu-
tionary process has no limits or end.

Evolution may be a general law or method, but it
does not follow that each thing or species evolved
will forever go on developing into higher forms. It
is quite as probable that evolution is working towards
a fixed end as towards a forever ascending end ; it
begins in time and space, and because it so begins it
may so end. If we find a tendency to develop, we
find also a tendency to cease developing. There is
a strife and effort to produce a species, but, having
produced it, there is a disposition to rest and go no

MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 293

farther, and it is only by great straggle that nature
is crowded on to the production of another species
out of existing ones. Hence the apparent perma-
nence of species ; there is undoubtedly a tendency to
such permanence, and there is nuich reason to be-
lieve that it will be reached. Creation presents itself
in that aspect — species produced and obstinately
remaining such ; and the only reason we believe that
one species has been evolved from another is because
the facts require su(!h belief as we study the past.
We do not now behold the evolutionary process
going on except in embryology, where the whole
story of creation is perpetually repeated ; and in arti-
ficial experiments with certain animals, which are not
wholly satisfactory, as they show a tendency to ster-
ility and reversion. Evidently the end of a process
has been reached, or nearly reached. The struggle
for existence and natural selection go on, and en-
vironment changes, but plant and tree and animal
remain the same, and wear an aspect of finality.
Nature has done what she strove to do, namely,
evolved species, and, having gained her end, ceases
from effort in that direction. The oak and the
maple intertwine their boughs for a thousand years,
but do not modify each other. The rose and the
poppy blossom in the same garden for countless
generations, but the rose distills no sleep and the
poppy does not rob the rose of its perfume.

We not only have the fact of permanence of species
before us, but it is explicable if we can be content to
regard evolution as a simj^le process, and decline to
grant unlimited sw^eep to the laws of natural selec-

294 MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION.

tion and variation. It is neither good logic nor
good science to assert that the observed processes
of evolution are equal to evolution. Logic and
science indicate that evolution is the working out
of a definite design with reference to a definite
end; the laws themselves are the merest slaves of
the design. This design and end is the production
of species. When these are produced, the laws
either cease to act, or show a tendency to cease, —
if not wholly in the lower species, an ever-increasing
tendency to do so in the higher, — thus indicating
that an end of physical variation will be reached.

For the sake of entire clearness, let me say again
that science itself does not require us to assign un-
limited and endless sweep to the laws of struggle
for existence, natural selection, and variation; they
work towards definite ends, then stop and give
way to other laws that may be analogous to them
in some respects, but in others are the reversal of
them. It is equally scientific, and it is far more
reasonable because it takes in a larger group of
facts, to assert that evolution, having produced man,
has done what it was set to do and goes no farther.

The effort of nature seems to have been to pro-
duce a person, and, having done this, the work of
evolving creation ceases and rests from its labors.

What is a person ? A being having intellect, feel-
ing, and will, and consciousness of itself as such.
The brute world produces individuals but not per-
sons. An individual is one of a class, distinct from
it but not to the point of consciousness ; a person is
not only one of a class, but knows himself as one

MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 295

An individual is not free because it is not wliolly
detached from its species, but a person is wholly de-
tached, and therefore is wholly free ; a person only
can say / and Thou. The brutes certainly have
mind and feeling and will, but only in a rudimen-
tary and partial way. Suppose a brute of a higher
order were capable of self -analysis, it would be
obliged to say of itself : " I think, but I have not a
full mind ; I do nothing reflectively, but because I
feel that I must ; I love, but I see that I cease to love
after a little, nor can I tell why I love ; I have will
up to a certain point, — I can defend myself and
seek food, and I can learn to obey, but I feel myself
driven by a power that I do not understand, nor can
I resist doing what I am moved to do ; I am a part
of that which is around me, and I cannot detach my-
self from it." Man is not obliged to speak of him-
self in such terms. He can think perfectly, that is,
leflectively and up to the verge of his knowledge;
if he could see farther and know more facts, he is
conscious that he could reflect upon them. He can
love perfectly because he can choose to die for what
he loves : that is, he can cast the whole of himself
into the act of love. He can will perfectly ; that is,
when he makes a choice he knows that it is a real
choice : he knows and weighs the motives on either
side. He knows himself as distinct from creation, —
drawn out from it and still bound to it by a thou-
sand cords, but still so separate from it that he can
say : "I am /, and am not it''

These full attributes and this full consciousness
constitute personality. We need not hesitate to say

296 MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION.

that man, ideal man, is a perfect being. He may
go on indefinitely towards an enlargement of his
powers ; he may think more widely, love more in-
tensely, choose more wisely, and grow into an ever-
deepening sense of selfhood ; but there is no occa-
sion for his changing into another kind of being.
His limitations are not indications that he is not al-
ready a perfect being. A greater and more complex
physical development would not necessarily yield a
superior creature. Voltaire points one of his severest
gibes at human nature in the fable in which he trans-
fers an inhabitant of the earth to one of the larger
planets, and sets him to talking with the people he
finds there, — a very discontented lot, who grumble
over their limitations : " AVe have only sixty senses,
and cannot be exj^ected to know much ; " and so
quite put to confusion the earthly visitor, who is
forced to confess that he has only five. Voltaire was
too eager in his sarcasm to see that knowledge does
not depend upon the senses but upon mind. If mind
is absolute, five senses may be as good as sixty. In-
deed, it is probable that the physical universe is cor-
related to the five senses ; that these inlets are suf-
ficient to let in the whole material creation upon
man, provided there is a true mind behind them.
With five senses and mind we have already come
to the verge of matter, and stand looking off into
a world of spirit : what we now want is, not more
senses, — more or better eyes and ears and hands, —
but a better use of mind. Nay, it seems probable
that what we now need for larger knowledge is to
drop what senses we have, and go off into that world

MAN TIIK riNAL FORM IN CRKATION. 297

of the spirit to the borders of whicli we have come,
unci explore it simply as minds, or with spiritual
bodies. There is not the slightest reason for believ-
ing that a superior physical being would gain a bet-
ter knowledge of the^ world than man has or will
have.

And so it would seem that nature, having produced
th being who is cai)able of understanding it, who is
separate from matter, and is allied to an order above
it, will make no more efforts in a physical direction,
but will move in the direction of this other order to
which man belongs. If there is to be further evolu-
tion, it will not be material but spiritual ; but there
is more reason for expecting growth than evolution,
because man is already a perfect creature, — the
image of God, as near and like to God as a created
being can be.

There is in man no premonition of a development
into a higher physical life.

In every antecedent order, we may w^ell suppose
there is a sympathetic forecast of, and movement
towards, that which is about to come. The embry-
onic bird must have some sense or limited conscious-
ness of wings and flight. As one species or variety
is about to pass into another, there is doubtless some
prior hint or yearning or movement towards the
functions awaiting development. Nature makes no
sudden changes in its order, but always sends for-
ward some announcing herald: the force sets to-
wards its destiny. But in man this does not point
in a physical direction. He does not dream of better
hands and feet and eyes and ears. Instead, all the

298 MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION.

inward movements of his nature are mind-ward, and
towards that world of thought in which he can secure
all the results which a more highly organized body
might possibly give. He does not yearn for swifter
feet, but rather for such use of his mind that he can
make engines which shall not only outrun all possible
feet, but supersede them ; nor for stronger hands,
but for inventive power to create machines that sliall
do the work of many hands ; nor for better eyes,
but for skill to make telescopes and microscopes that
shall outreach the power of all possible eyes. The
set and bent of our nature is not towards more
senses, but towards mental faculties that either sup-
plement or supersede the senses. Indeed, more
senses, that is, more avenues into the physical world,
would imply that man was to turn his attention back-
ward and downward towards matter, whereas the
whole effort of nature has been to get him out of and
away from it. His lessons do not now lie there, but
in the moral and spiritual world to the borders of
which he has come. Were man to develop physically
into a superior animal, it might result in binding
this finer creature faster in matter ; for such a being
would either be more perfectly correlated to the
world, and so might come into a fatal satisfaction
with a transient order ; or it would be out of true
correlation with the world, and so would despise it.
Either result would be fatal : gross contentment with
a world wholly mastered, or pessimistic contempt for
a world too far removed or too alien to be of service.
Man occupies just that relation to the physical world
in which he can make the best use of it preparatory

MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 299

to leaving' it behind liim. One step short of man,
the being- cannot extricate itself from matter ; one
step beyond might throw the being back into mat-
ter, either as content with it or as hating it, in
which case the world would no longer serve it.

The actual movement and effort of man is not
in the direction of physical development, but is
towards a moral and spiritual development. The
effort of nature points away from the physical
world and seems about to overleap it, and to lift its
last creation into a world of thought and spirit.

Man will, indeed, perfect his body and make the
most of it, but only as a basis for an intellectual and
spiritual life. He has already done much in this
way, but there is no hint of organic change. There
is reason to believe that the modern eye has a better
perception of the chromatic scale than the Greek eye.
Homer is devoid of color, but a landscape, to the
last touch, could be painted from the pages of George
Eliot or Charles Craddock. So of music : the
Greek ear knew little of it beyond rhythm. " Old
Timotheus " might lead a military company, but he
could not lift a modern " mortal to the skies." But
these improvements of eye and ear are not organic
changes, and only carry man over into a spiritual
world. It is the thought and feeling in color and
sound that we care for ; they literally transport us
into a world where eye and ear have no function.
Hence we infer that the next step for man is not
some superior physical form, but an elevation into
a true spiritual world. Already he stands on its
borders ; he enters within it by thought and feeling ;

300 MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION.

he cares for little else when thought and feeling have
once been awakened ; he yearns for it with real or
unconscious desire. He knows that he issued from
that world, that he is the creature of mind and not
of matter,. of spirit and not of force. Behind this
Ion 2^ evolution of struo^o^lino- nature lies this world of
idea and thought and feeling and creating energy, a
real world of which this physical world is only the
show or semblance, as the statue is only the poor
shadow of the sculptor's ideal which is the real thing.
Having been brought through the long process of
evolving creation, and made a partaker of every
stage of it for some inscrutable reason, to the verge
of another world, so that it can be said of him that
he has a true mind and a true spirit, his next step
will be into that world to which he is thus correlated.
He already moves in it ; he has its freedom ; he
knows its language ; he can pronounce the ineffable
Name, and can receive upon his face the rays of the
divine glory. He can hear the eternal hymn of cre-
ation, and knows that it is keyed to joy and right-
eousness. He can feel in full measure the throb of
that supreme, genetic impulse out of which creation
sprang — love. If there is any significance or fit-
ness in the order of things, the next step for man
will be into this world of realities, and not into a
physical order in which nothing more could be done
than has been done for him.

In saying that physical or creative evolution prob-
ably ends with man, it is not meant that he is ex.
empt from the methods of evolution. His history
may go on under laws analogous to those of physical

MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 301

evolution, but he himself will be the theatre of them.
The law of the struggle for existenee and the sur-
vival of the fittest may continue, not as a physical
])roc'ess in relation to others, but as a moral process
witliin the circle of his own powers. For man, being
the end and head of creation, has in himself the
wliole history of creation ; the entire past in all its
foims lives and its processes work in him, but al-
ways within the fixed and stable limits of personal-
ity. The atoms still whirl in tissue and blood ; the
gases and fluids of primeval ages are a part of his
composition ; his bones are built out of the elemen-
tal solids ; the habits and motives of the animal
world linger within him, and show their lineaments
in his own ; the appetites and passions and tempers
of beasts still assert themselves in him, even as we
name them, — beastly. Being such, the whole pro-
cess of evolving nature is repeated in him as a free
moral being. He becomes, as it were, the whole cre-
ation, and its whole struggle is repeated in him and
by him, but in conjunction with other factors and
on another stage. Heredity conserves and strives
to fix the past, but the moral within him, and the
spiritual environment made for him, contend against
heredity, and select and nourish that which is best.
The animal is kept down and crowded out, giving
place to intellectual and moral and spiritual habits
and qualities. In this process man himself is a free
actor, sinking backward into brute conditions, or
rising into the divine life of which he has become
conscious. The methods and features are evolu-
tionary, but he himself is the force presiding over

302 MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION.

tliem — resisting or cooperating with him who is over
and in all. Hence the process is moral, and em-
braces the whole circle of moral truths, — sin, re-
pentance, conversion, regeneration, aspiration, and
struggle after the highest; for all of these turn on,
and have their meaning in, a yielding to the animal
nature or a striving after the spiritual nature. Ten-
nyson, whose 23oems are impregnated with the evolu-
tionary idea, — an idea that corrects and redeems
what otherwise would be a pessimistic muse, — j^"*^
the truth into the lines of In Memoriam^ where he
ascribes a high destiny to man : —

" If so he type this work of time

Within himself, from more to more."

Such thoughts do not invalidate any moral duty,
or contradict any Christian doctrine. Instead they
provide a rational philosophy for sin, conscience,
regeneration, and life in the Spirit. They open a
path from lower life to higher, and pave a way be-
tween this world and the next. They fortify Chris-
tian truths by universal truth, and put underneath
their problems the base-line that runs through
creation as a basis for expectations that converge in
heaven. Man needs the whole world to stand on,
and all truth to supjDort him ; for so only is he the
head of creation, and so only can he find his way
out of its lower forms into that higher order from
which creation sprang.

Still, such considerations might be considered as
mere speculations were it not for the fact that we
have them in the form of a reality. Man's nature

MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 303

and destiny are not only matters of theory but of
fact ; his history and its stages have been gone
through and ultimated in One who was Humanity
itself. It is possibly more than a religious fact that
Christ lived out the life of man in its highest degree
and to its last form on the earth, and that he thus
illustrated the movement and destiny of humanity.
The presiding feature of that life was his conscious-
ness of another world from which he came and into
which he returned. If it was a dream, then all is
a dream and all may go. But we have no right to
pass by that life and consciousness without testing
them to see if they will not fit into and explain this
lofty hypothesis of man that we are considering.

The reality and fullness of Christ's human life,
and the consciousness of another world, each inter-
23enetrating and swelling the volume of the other,
this is the fact that holds the eye of the world and
challenges its thought. He lived a j^erfectly human
life, and yet upon the basis of it, and as it were out
of its nature, predicated another life. He does not
bring immortality into the world as the far-off secret
of highest heaven, but he instinctively predicated it
because he was perfectly the Son of Man. It was
no problem for discussion to him, but simply a nat-
ural assertion, — the outcome of his insight and
outlook as he turned to the world and measured it,
and then into heaven and saw what was there, and
then upon himself, and found that he belonged both
to this world and to heaven. Son of man and Son of
God, each because he was perfectly the other. He
saw all things ; he pierced to the meaning of the

304 MAX THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION.

world ; he understood day and night ; he compre-
hended the morning and the evening ; he looked into
the heart of the rose ; he knew the secret of history ;
he entered into the depths of humanity, and knew
life and man ; he saw all things and himself in God,
and God in all ; and out of such ^^sion sprang the
spontaneous conviction of eternal life as the key to
all and the end of all. Life in another world is what
nature and man and God mean, and he was the illus-
tration and realization of it. The destiny of man is
thus outlined in the Christ. His resurrection was a
real entrance into that world, and is the next stage
in the development of humanity. His history be-
tween that event and his ascension cannot be under-
stood and measured until it is connected with some
theoiy of man and made a part of it. As mere
attestation to previous works and words, it has no
weight with thought, and no dignity in a large the-
ology. The facts are too gi-eat for such an end ;
they must have in them the scope and swing of hu-
man destiny. What if the natural history of hu-
manity on this world be finished not by evolution
into some finer form of physical life, not by death,
but by resurrection and ascension ! Such would
not only be a worthy end of the long, blind upward
struggle of creation, but an explanation of it. To-
wards some high end creation has been pressing witli
age-long steps and yearning throes. Does the uni-
form process that has wrought to ever-finer issues
till it has produced man, cease on the borders of
the grave, when, if at all, it is taken up by forces of
which we know nothing, and man is transported across

MAN THl<: FINAL FORM IN CRKATION. 305

the bottomless gulf of death by the sheer force of
Omnipotence ? or is it probable that this process —
working ever to finer issues — completes the history
of man, and lifts him by resurrection and ascension
into his final state, returning him as a perfect cre-
ation to the world whence his life was drawn, and to
the God in whom all along he has lived and moved
and had his being ?

■ Three objections may be suggested : First, that
such a view identifies man with nature, and leaves
him in its grasj). Whether this is ,an evil thing
or not, depends upon the conception of nature. It
is a fact that we are in nature, and there seems to
be no way of getting out of it ; but under a concep-
tion of it as rooted in God, and as mounting ever to-
wards the spiritual, there is no need to be delivered
from it ; it might be separation from God himself.
Nothing is gained for man by disdainful thought of
nature ; it is the mother of whom we were born, over
whom the begetting spirit broods perpetually. Sec-
ond, it is objected that it represents Christ as the
product of nature, and the mere culmination of an
evolutionary process. But what if this process be
met by one in the heavens, so that the phrase, Son
of Man and Son of God, becomes one that takes
in perfect man and real God, — the revelation of
the mystery of eternity ? Give full and equal sweep
and reverence to each, and no violence will be done
to faith and revelation : rather are they thus ful-
filled. Third, it is said that if such a destiny awaits
humanity, no room is left for the full play of char-
acter, and for its final destiny as turning on morals.

306 MAN IHE FINAL FORM IN CREATION.

To this It may be said that, while the line of destiny
for humanity runs in the direction named, it is com-
plicated by the great fact of freedom which may
modify its action in the case of individuals. The
eternal march is in this direction : woe be to him
who falls out of its line !

Theology must not disdainfully separate itself
from science while it refuses to be measured by it.
It must come into harmony with nature, if it would
be true to itself. It is not apart from nature, nor is
it parallel with it, nor is it s-uperinduced upon it ;
it is rather the projection or extension of nature into
the world of the spirit, — that left behind which can-
not be carried forward, that added which could not
earlier be included, but nature still in its essential
meaning and purpose, and in that larger sense in
which nature is the revelation of God in all his
works.

There has been a fatal tendency in the past to
make theology a thing by itself, — a play of divine
forces in the air or above it, or a by-play to the
drama of creation. It has already come somewhat
nearer the world, but it must come nearer still, and
cast itself into the stream of human life, where, if it
is true to itself, it will not be submerged and lost,
but instead will ride on the waves, point out the di-
rection they are moving, and preside over the destiny
of every child of humanity borne on the mysterious
tide that sets towards eternity.

MUSIC AS REVELATION.

" All inmost things, we may say, are melodious ; naturally utter
themselves in song. The meaning of song goes deep. See deep
enough, and you see musically ; the heart o£ nature being every-
where music, if you can only reach it." — Carlyle.

" God is its author, and not man : he laid

The key-note of all harmonies ; he planned
All perfect combinations ; and he made
Us so that we could hear and understand."

"It is the function of art to see and to portray the invisible, the
ideal, in its true relation to the laws of the universe and of the
kingdom of God ; to implete the massive chord-structures and the
tender melodies with a deeper sentiment or a grander, one more
tender or more triumphant, than the heart could otherwise express
or receive." — Prof. B. C. Blodgett, Mus. Doc, The Mission of
Music to Mind and Heart.

" Theology and music unite and move on, hand in hand, through
time, and will continue eternally to ilhxstrate, embellish, enforce,
impress, and fix in the attentive mind the grand and important
truths of Christianity." — Andrew Law, Essay on Music.

' ' The creation that now groans will some time sing. ' '

Prof. J. F. "VVier {in coUoquio).

"There is something sacramental in perfect metre and rhythm.
They are outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace,
namely, of the s If -possessed and victorious temper of one who has
so far subdued nature as to be able to hear that universal sphere-
music of hers, spe iking of which Mr. Carlyle says that ' all deep-
est thoughts instinctively vent themselves in song.' " — Charles

KiNGSLEY.

" There is music in heaven because there is no self-will. Music
goes on certain laws and rules. Man did not make the laws of
music : he has only found them out, and, if he be self-willed and
break them, there is an end of music instantly ; all he brings out
is discord and ugly sounds. Music is fit for heaven. Music is a
pattern and type of heaven, and of the everlasting life of God
which perfect spirits live in heaven ; a life of melody and order in
themselves ; a life in harmony with each other and with God." —
Charles Kingsley.

MUSIC AS REVELATION.

Praise the Lord from the earth,
Ye dragons and all deeps :
Fire and hail, snow and vaj)or ;
Stormy Avind, fulfilling his word :
Mountains and all hills ;
Fruitful trees and all cedars.

Psalm cxiviii.

And they sing- the sons' of Moses the servant of God, and the
song- of the Lanih, saying, Great and marvelous are thy works, O
Lord God, the Almighty ; righteous and true are thy ways, thou
King of the ages. — Revelation xv. 3.

If SO simple yet absurdly general a question were
raised as this, — What is the use or object of crea-
tion ? an equally simple and general answer might
be returned, namely, that it is the path by which
God gets to man, and also the path by which man
gets to God : that is, creation is the medium of the
revelation of God. By calling it a path we some-
what define it, for it thus implies a distance that is
overcome and an end that is reached. God may be
regarded as starting towards man at the beginning
of creation, and drawing steadily nearer until he
reaches man, when — being present and now fully
revealed — he no longer requires the path, but may
be known directly. So man may use creation — its

310 MUSIC AS REVELATION.

laws, processes, forms — as a path to God along
which he climbs till he reaches God whom he thus
comes to know directly. When God and man have
thus gone over this common path, there is, in a cer-
tain sense, no further reed of it, for each has reached
the other. We use creation aright when we use it
as a path between God and man. It has of itself
no end or use, and so doubtless will pass away, or
be left behind like a cloud of dust that rises from
the wheels of the traveler. Creation is the true
Jacob's ladder on which the angels of heaven and
the angels of humanity pass and repass — itself a
dream but the basis of an eternal reality.

Creation is interpreted to us by the five senses,
all of which act by some kind of impression and
form the one bridge between ourselves and the world
of matter — one bridge of sensation but dividing, as
it were, at the end where it touches man, and be-
coming sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. If
man were considered as made up of mind and heart
and an animal nature, sight might be regarded as
revealing creation to his mind, hearing to his heart,
smell and taste and touch to his animal nature.
The distinction is only apparent and is vaguely gen-
eral, for as the five senses are but one sense of
touch, so man is a being who cannot be divided into
parts; man is one. But the distinctions are practi-
cally valuable, and are necessary to a classification
of knowledge. By the eye we discover an immeas-
urable universe filled with thoughts, or laws and pro-
cesses which are based on thoughts — chiefly math-
ematical ; for whatever else the universe may be

MUSIC AS REVELATION. 311

and may express, it is matliematical, and mathe-
matics, as all will confess, reach only the intellec-
tual side of us. It is true that we can feel by
seeing', but if creation were revealed to us only
through the eye, we should know far more than we
should feel. So another organ is provided that shall
bring creation to us as emotional beings — the ear
conveying sound. It is true that the eye can feed
the heart, and the ear can minister to the mind ;
they play into each other ; still, the distinction is
real. Hence, if using the eye we look at creation
and find mathematical laws in gravitation and crys-
tallization, and so infer, as we must, that there is a
mind behind the laws which speaks to our minds
through them, so using the ear and hearing sounds
that touch our hearts, w^e must infer that there is a
heart behind the laws of sound which seeks to reveal
itself to us through them. We cannot escape this
conclusion. For as the mind can get out of creation
no more mathematical relations than were put into
it, so the heart cannot get from sounds more emotion
than was originally lodged in the laws that produce
sounds ; the effect never exceeds the cause. If the
laws of nature seen by the eye reveal an infinite
thought or thinker, so these laws heard by the ear
and acting on the heart reveal an infinite heart that
ordained them. But the laws of sound rest as fully
on mathematics as do the laws of gravitation and
crj^stallization, and so point to the same source —
eye and ear, mind and heart, resting on One who is
both mind and heart. There are theories which con-
ceive of the source of creation as only thought, be-

312 MUSIC AS REVELATION.

cause they find everywhere thought-relations ; other
theories which claim that it is force because they
find a universal and indestructible energy ; but it
would be as logical to claim that this original source
is feeling or emotion, for there is as much in the
imiverse to awaken emotion as there is to indicate
thought or energy. Indeed, as we only come to full
consciousness of ourselves in emotions — emotion or
feeling being the highest exercise of our nature —
so far as we can reason from our nature to its ori-
gin, it indicates that we spring from a source of
feeling, or an infinite Heart. Hence the highest
wisdom has declared that God is Love and that the
worlds were made by the Son of God — the eternally
begotten manifestation of Love; and the severest
science cannot logically assert the contrary.

Leaving the field of metaphysics, let us enter the
world of sound that lies about us and see how vast it
is — how filled with emotions — how thoroughly at-
tuned it already is to the heart of man — a very voice
of God which, if it could utter all its notes at once,
would give forth an infinite and eternal harmony.

There is lodged in all substances, so far as we
know, a capacity for sound. There is none so coarse
and unyielding, except perhaps some clays, but has
its note, which may be brought out under condi-
tions either of concussion or tension. Strike any
solid thing, and in addition to the noise caused
by the vibrating air you will hear a certain note
or key that belongs to the thing itself ; or stretch
any tensible thing and it will give out a note
peculiar to itself w^hen it is sufficiently touched.

MUSIC AS RKVELATION. 313

We do not hear gases wlien they are gently moved,
nor a bubble when it bursts, but only because our
ears are dull to their fineness. The pipes in the
organ have had no capacity given them, but simjily
yield up what their original substances contained.
Once they were solid woods, gross tin or lead hidden
in the heart of the earth, but even there they had
this capacity for sound, and their note and quality,
as they had color and chemical affinity. Man has
only developed what was within them. By arrang-
ing their shape and size and passing a current of
air through them, we obtain a sound which the ear
pronounces a musical note. Thus we speak of a
brassy sound — referring it not to a law of vibration
nor to the shape of the instrument, but to its sub-
stance. Not only a certain kind of wood is required
by the violinist, but oidy a certain quality of that
wood will give him the quality of sound he desires.
Some substances give forth their notes without rear-
rangement, by simple concussion, or friction, or ten-
sion. Water falling from various heights, and reeds
of different lengths swept by the wind, and branches
of trees bending under the storm utter their notes,
sometimes forming almost harmony. And so we
may consider the earth as a vast harp strung with
innumerable strings, silent but full of tuneful sounds,
and needing only the skill of man to bring them out.
This universal capacity for sound or tone is not a
bare and unrelated thing, but is connected with a law
of music which has its seat first in the air and then
in the mind of man. We find in the air the mu-
sical scale or octave consisting of eight* notes formed

314 MUSIC AS REVELATION.

by quicker or slower vibrations and so having a
mathematical basis. All we can say of this law is
that it is a law — why and how we cannot tell. Cor-
responding to this law of the air is a law of hearing,
so that the musical sense with which we are endowed
accords with the musical law of vibration. Thus the
scale or octave has two apparent sources or founda-
tions — one in the air, the other in man ; the octave
does not more truly exist in one than in the other.
We speak vaguely if we say that man has a capacity
for hearing the octave in the air ; the law of the
octave, with its mathematical exactness, is wrought
into his nature as thoroughly as it is wrought into
the external world. The wonderful thing here is
not the adaptation of nature to man, but the absolute
identity of the law in nature and the law in man ;
for if we only silently think the octave, we think it as
under the same mathematical law as when we hear it
in actual vibration. We behold here a manifestation
of God that goes far beyond that of a skillful de-
signer — forcing on us the thought that God is in
the laws themselves. And so, at once, we leap to
the grand conclusion that it is because God is so im-
mersed, as it were, in these laws that we can use
them for his praise beyond any others revealed to us.
The subject is full of suggestion at this point.
Most impressive is the teleological aspect of it.
Begin as far back in creation as you will, — in the
geologic ages when there was no ear to hear, — and
you find this capacity for sound in all material
things — no harmon}^, no music as yet, but only a
note ready to be brouglit out, and in the forming air

MUSIC AS REVKLATIOX. 315

a law of vi]3ratIon ready to turn the notes into har-
mony, and finally the ear of man ready to catch the
harmonies that his skill evokes, and behind the ear
the soul ready to 2:)raise God in the sounds and har-
monies so prepared from the beginning. Here is an
orderly sequence of steps and adaptations mounting
continually higher — 2)roceeding from God and at
last ending in God in the accorded praise of his own
conscious image. In a loftier sense than they were
written, we may use the words of Dryden : —

" The trembling notes ascend, the sky,
And heavenly joys inspire.
The song began from Jove,
Wlio left his blissful seats above
(Such is the power of mighty love).

So love Avas crowned, but music won the cause."

We do not find in nature what may properly be
called music, but only its materials and its laws.
Man only can create music, for nothing is perfect
until, in some way, it touches or passes through
man. He is the end and object of creation, and its
processes are full and have meaning only when they
are completed in him. Everything in nature is a
puzzle until it finds its solution in man, who solves it
by connecting it in some way with God and so com-
pletes the circle of creation. Like everything else
in nature, music is a heco7ning, and it becomes its
full self when its sounds and laws are used by intel-
ligent man for the production of harmony, and so
made the vehicle of emotion and thought. But
sound even before it becomes music may be the occa-
sion of emotion though not of complex or intelligent

316 MUSIC AS REVELATION.

emotions. It is the peculiarity of the sounds of
nature that they awaken but a single emotion ; each
thing has its note and some one corresponding feel-
ing. Enter at evening a grove of pines and listen to
the wind sighing through the branches ; the term by
which we spontaneously describe it indicates the one
feeling of pensive melancholy it awakens, but an
orchestra could not render it more effectively. It
lacks, however, the quality of intelligence, because
it is not combined with other sounds for some end.
The song " What are the wild waves saying ? " raises
a question hard to answer. It is not a hymn to the
great Creator until it has passed through the adoring
and reflecting mind of man. But even if there is
no music in nature — not even in the notes of birds,
as the men of science tell us, for the birds but
whistle — there are the materials of music, all fur-
nished with their notes set to corresponding emotions.
The gamut is broader than has been compassed.
Beyond the reach of the ear of man is a universe of
sound — vibrations slower and deeper than those of
Niagara, quicker and finer than those of the mos-
quito's wing, and each is dowered with power to
awaken some emotion that now we do not feel because
we do not hear the sound. The materialists are much
concerned about the possibility of an environment in
case of a future life. Where and of what? — they
ask. Well, here is an environment of possible emo-
tion transcending present knowledge, and so perhaps
awaitins: minds to feel it. It is difficult to believe
that God has put himself into creation in the form
of emotional sounds and no ear be made to hear

MUSIC AS REVELATION. 317

them. If a part of creation comes to a realized use
in man, why not the whole ? If creation is the
path between God and man by which they come to
each other, must not man journey along the whole of
it, even as God has ?

But if there is no music in nature, there is a
prophecy and some liint and even faint articulation
of it. In a favoring spot an echo often starts an-
other echo, but an octave above, and in rare places
still answering echoes not only on the same key but
always in harmony, softer and sweeter. This is al-
most music, and seems a call to man to liberate it
from the prison of matter and suffer it to become the
harmony it is striving to express — reminding one
of that striking passage of Goethe's child corre-
spondent : " When I stand all alone at night in open
nature, I feel as though it were a spirit and begged
redemption of me. Often have I had the sensation,
as if nature, in wailing sadness, entreated something
of me, so that not to understand what she longed
cut through my very heart." The child uttered the
deepest philosophy and touched the very secret of
creation — even this, that God is not above creation
as a mechanician, but is in it by indwelling 2:)res-
ence, one with its laws, himself the secret energy of
its processes, and the soul of the sentiments and
thoughts lodged within it, and so coming to man for
recognition. Therp is no fuller revelation of God
in nature than is found in these laws of sound by
which he comes into the very heart of man, even to
its inmost recesses of love and adoration ; and it re-
quires only a sensitive, child-like heart to interpret

318 MUSIC AS REVELATION.

this speechless music locked within nature as the
Toiee of God pleading to be let out into music and
praise thi-ough the heart of man, for so only can his
works praise him.

I turn abiiiptly from this world of sound as a rev-
elation of Goil, to music as a revehitiou or prophecy
of the future. I do not say the future world nor the
future of humanity in this worhl, as I mean both
and resrard them as one. There is a futui-e of this
world in a historical sense, and there is a future
world that is above history ; if death is all that
divides them, and if death is abolished, they become
one. Hence, while the distinction in some ways is
to be i-etained. in moral ways the two worlds are to
be re£:ai"ded as one. Kes:enerated humanitv and
heaven are interchangeable terms ; they are alike,
and one simply passes on and up into the other. It
is a central conception of Christianity that death is
but an incident in the external history of man.
Hence Christ sweeps it out of his path almost as
with the scorn of indifference. Hence also in the
Apocalypse, with this principle to guide us, we read
of heaven and find it refers to this world ; the new
Jerusalem comes down from God out of heaven, and
the tabernacle of God is with men. Is it here or
there ? We need not answer except to say that it is
both, but under a conception of eternity and not of
time. This inseparable blending of moral perfection
and heavenly existence, so confusing to ordinary
thought, is itself a revelation not to be passed by,
and one tmder which we should teach ourselves to
think and act. In its strusfile viixh. thought and Ian-

3IUSIC AS REVELATION. 319

guage to unfolfl the way to future perfection, the
universe itself is taxed for forms of expression. The
sun and moon, the stars, the sea, thunders and liglit-
nings, the four winds, the rocks, mountains, and isl-
ands, fire and earthquake, hail and smoke, trees and
green grass, horses and lions and locusts and scor-
pions, the clouds an<l the rainbow, dragons and
floods, eagles and nameless beasts, the serpent and
the lamb, the forces of nature in their mightiest ex-
hibition, the travail of birth, the cities and the na-
tions, all angels and men, temples and altars, kings
and queens and wine of wrath, bottomless pits and
fiery lakes, death and mourning and famine, mer-
chants with their merchandise of gold and the souls
of men — such are the materials of which the drama
of human society is composed as it moves on towards
perfection. But as the end draws nigh, this tumul-
tuous scenery of the elements and of lower nature
passes away, and another order of imagery appears.
Now we behold a city lying foursquare, open on all
sides, paved with gold, watered by a river of life and
fed by a tree of life and lighted by the glory of God.
But underneath the whole mighty process of advanc-
ing righteousness and continuous judgment is heard
the note of praise — harpers harping with their harps
— and, at the end. the song of Moses and of the
Lamb — the song of deliverance and victory. The
underlying or central image of the Apoclypse is
song, the voice of harpers mingling with the voice
of great thunders and of many waters and of a great
midtitude, heard throughout and heard at last in the
universal ascription : " Hallelujah : for the Lord God
omnipotent reigneth."

320 MUSIC AS REVELATION.

If we take this central image and ask why it is used
to describe heaven or the future of regenerated hu-
manity, the answer would be, because of its fitness.
If this final condition were defined in bare words, it
would be as follows : Obedience, Sympathy, Feeling
or Emotion, and Adoration. These, in a sense, con-
stitute heaven, or the state of regenerated humanity.
By the consent of all ages, heaven has been repre-
sented under a conception of music, and will be in
all ages to come. It is subjected to many sneers,
but the sneer is very shallow. The human mind
must have some form under which it can think of its
destiny. It is not content to leave it in vagueness.
It is a real world we are in, and we are real men and
women in it. We dwell in mystery and within lim-
itations, but over and above the mystery and the
limitation is an indestructible sense of reality. I am
and I know that I am. Standing on this solid rock,
I find reality about me, nor can I be persuaded that
other beinofs and thino;s are dreams or shadows.
It is in my nature to believe in reality, and so I
demand definite conceptions, nor can I rest in vague-
ness or be content with formless visions and their
abstractions. Thus the human mind has always
worked and thus it always will work, leaving behind
it the logicians and plodders in science, in the free
exercise of the logic of human nature. I do not
absolutely know what sort of a world this will be
when it is regenerated, but I must have some con-
ception of it. I do not absolutely know what heaven
is like — it will be like only to itself — but if I think
of it at all, I must do so under some present definite

MUSIC AS REVKLATION. 321

conception. The highest forms under which we can
now think are art-forms — the proportion of statuary
and architecture, the color of painting, and music.
The former are limited and address a mere sense of
beauty, but nmsic addresses the heart and has its vo-
cation amongst the feelings and covers their whole
ran ire. Hence music has been chosen to hold and
express our conception of moral perfection. Nor is
it an arbitrary choice, but is made for the reasons
that music is the utterance of the heart, it is an ex-
pression of morality, and it is an infinite language.
Before the sneer at heaven as a place of endless
song can prevail, it must undo all this stout logic of
the human heart. We so represent it because when
we frame our conception of heaven or moral perfec-
tion, we find certain things, and when we look into
the nature and operation of music we find the same
things, namely: Obedience, Sympathy, Emotion,
Adoration. Of this relation we will now speak.

1. Obedience. The idea that is fastest gaining
ground in all departments of thought, is that of the
reign of law — law always and everywhere and noth-
ing without its range. It does not antagonize a per-
sonal God, but requires it ; for law is not an abstrac-
tion, nor a mere force, but a thing of intelligence
and feeling and purpose, and so must be grounded
in a being having these characteristics. We cannot
say that God is above or under law, nor that he
makes laws, nor that he obeys laws. He is himself
the laws, which are but ways of his acting. This
idea does not antagonize liberty, for there is a law of
liberty. A free-acting agent is free only because he

322 MUSIC AS REVELATION.

obeys the law of his own will and obeys it intelli-
gently. He has power to disobey a law but he can-
not really break it — it is law still. Nor does the
reign of law antagonize grace, for grace has laws as
imperative as that of gravitation. Nor does law con-
tradict miracde. The reign of law went on when
Christ multiplied the loaves and raised Lazarus from
the dead ; he simply disclosed laws to which we are
unaccustomed, but which may come to view in far-
ther stages of human progress or in another stage of
existence. We do all things through laws, and life
itself, down and up to its widest complexity, is the
product of law, so that the exact and absolute cor-
relative of life is obedience. As human life goes on
towards perfection and mounts into higher stages
here and hereafter, it is simply gaining in obedience.
The will grows freer, all the faculties act more spon-
taneously, the parts of our nature grow more coor-
dinate and tend to reinforce each other, until, like
some well-made engine, the whole fabric of our nat-
ure works in swift, silent, and frictionless activity ;
but it is still the action of obedience, and the per-
fection of the life is but the perfection of the obe-
dience. The New Jerusalem descends out of heaven
as the world rises into the obedient order of heaven.
But under" what art-form shall we express this? for
expression we must have. It must be an art that is
itself full of obedience and covers, so to speak, its
history, and discloses its results. Sculpture and
painting have their laws which they must rigidly
obey, but they address chiefly the sense of form and
proportion and color, and end chiefly in a sense of

MUSIC AS REVELATION. 323

mere beauty or fitness ; they are largely intellectual
and yield their results chiefly in the intellect. But
music goes further. While its laws are as exact and
fine as those of form and color and even more rec-
ondite, any breaking of them begets a deeper sense
of disobedience. When we see a distorted form or
ill-matched colors, the eye is offended, but there is
no such protest as that of the ear when it is as-
sailed by discord. False proportion and crudely
joined colors provoke mental indignation, but hardly
more ; the borders of feeling are reached but not
deeply penetrated. But a discord of sounds lays
hold of the nerves and rasps them into positive
pain. In fine natures it may even cause extreme
ph3^siological disturbance. A statue could not be so
ugly nor a painting so ill colored as to produce
spasms, but such a result is quite possible through
discord. The sensitiveness of musicians is not a
matter of sentiment, and is the farthest from affec-
tation, but is a matter of nerves. The protest and
tlie pain are of exactly the same nature as those
caused by a fall and concussion. But, reaching the
mind along the wounded nerves, it awakens there
the same feeling of anger and resentment that we
feel when we have been ruthlessly struck. A dis-
cord of sounds is unendurable, but we hardly say
that of violations of form and color. This shows
that we are more finely related to the laws of sound
than to those of form and color, and that the rela-
tion covers a wider range of our nature ; or, in other
words, that music is a better type of obedience.
When its laws are broken, the history of disobedience

324 MUSIC AS REVELATION.

is written out in the protests of our whole being —
from quivering nerve to the indignation of the heart.
There is also an exactness in the laws of harmony
that makes obedience to them specially fine and so
fit to be a type of it. While, as in every art, it can
only approximate an ideal — never reaching, per-
haps, actual harmony — it is more rigidly under law
and comes nearer its ideal than any other. It is
able more thoroughly to overcome the grossness of
matter and to use it for its own ends than is statuary
or painting ; nature is more pliant to it. There is a
latitude in other arts that admits of defense, but
there is none in music. The sculptor may trench
on the laws of form for the sake of deepening expres-
sion, but the musician seeks higher effects by an
increasing adherence to the laws of his art. If he
admits a discord it is not as a variation from har-
mony but as a denial of it, and is used to shock the
hearer into a deeper sense of the prevailing concord.
Nor is any other art so fine in the distinctions it
makes. Nothing can be more exact and more mi-
nute than the laws of light by which form is re-
vealed, but the eye is not so keen to mark slight de-
partures from the law of form as is the ear in noting
variations in its realm. A highly trained musician
can detect a variation from the pitch of ^^th of a
semitone, but the best mechanical eye could not de-
tect a correspondingly fine variation of a line from
the perpendicular, nor could the nicest sense of color
perceive a like variation of shade. There is also this
peculiar and suggestive difference between the eye
and the ear and their action : the eye never tran-

MUSIC AS REVELATION. 325

scends the laws of light and form ; it always acts
within the limits of mathematical laws, and is tran-
scended by them, but the musical ear recognizes
laws for which no scientific basis is yet found. In
the tuning of any stringed instrument certain re-
quirements of the ear are obeyed for whicli no rea-
sons can be given: the problem is too subtle even
for Helmholtz — suggesting that music is that form
of art in wliich man expresses his transcendence of
nature. As man himself reaches beyond the material
world and its laws, and goes over into another, even
a spiritual world, so music is the art that lends itself
to this feature of his nature, going along with it and
opening the doors as it mounts into the heavens.

This fine obedience in music is best seen, however,
in its execution. When voice joins with voice in
the harmony of their contrasted parts, and instru-
ments add their deeper and higher tones, — trumpets
and viols and reeds each giving their various sounds
— voices as of a great multitude and instruments as
of the full orchestra, — and all, binding themselves
down to exact law, conspire to j:he utterance of
manifold harmony, we have not only the most per-
fect illustration of obedience but the joy of obe-
dience ; one is immediately transmuted into the
other; we are thus let into the soul of obedience
and find it to be joy — that its law is a law of life.
The pleasure we feel in music springs from the
obedience which is in it, and it is full only as the
obedience is entire.

Thus we see how this art becomes prophetic.
There is a double yet single goal before humanity —

326 MUSIC AS REVELATION.

the goal of obedience to the eternal laws and the
goal of bliss. The race is long, and slowly are the
mile-stones of ages passed, but when the foot of the
runner has touched the last bound, Lis hands also
touch either pillar of the goal ; he has obeyed and
he is blest. But in all the race he has a continual
lesson and a constant presage in this divine art of
music — its laws glorifying obedience and its joy
feeding his tired spirit.

2. Music is, beyond all other arts, the expression
and vehicle of synipath}^ In the evolution of matter
the progress is from simplicity to variety ; in the brute
world the progress is the same in the form of fierce
antagonism which yields the semblance of almost
entire selfishness — not selfish because not yet moral.
When humanity is reached, this brute inheritance
becomes true selfishness because it encounters laws
of conscience and welfare that require the contrary.
The order of creation is reversed in man. The
isolating struggle of self against others ends, and
a law of preservation takes its place. The watch-
word is no longer destruction but salvation. The
line of progress does not run through isolation and
antagonism, but through union and sympathy. The
aspect of creation before and outside of man shows
repellence ; in man creation draws together. Before
man, destiny lay in a destructive struggle between
species; in man the process ends and he achieves
his destiny by loving his neighbor. Whatever bur-
dens of brute inheritance and ignorance and volun-
tary evil linger on, thither the destiny of man tends.
The highest action of man's nature is the free play

MUSIC AS REVELATION. 327

of sympathy — not agreement of thought nor con-
currence of will, but feeling with another. This
alone is true unity. If the human race achieves
any destiny it will be of this sort ; if there be a
heaven it will be one of sympathy. The promise
and presage of it are not only wrought into our
hearts but into the divine art we are considerinsr.
No other art, no other mode of impression, equals
music in its power to awaken a common feeling.
The orator approaches it, but he deals chiefly with
convictions, and conviction is a slow and hard path
to feeling, while music makes a direct appeal. A
patriotic hymn does its work far more surely and
quickly than does an argument for the Constitution ;
and the orator is not effective till he borrows from
music something of its rhythm and cadence and
purity of tone. The most persuasive orator ^ of the
age spoke in as strict accord with the laws of music
as a trained singer, and often it was the melody of
his voice that " won the cause." Music leaves logic
behind in the race towards sympathy and action ;
if it w^ere not itself noble and true, if it did not
hide and lose its power when yoked to a bad cause,
it would work great mischief in society. It abets
reason, and only discloses its full power and works
its mightiest results when used in the service of
truth. Hence there is no music in nations and races
that are without nobility of thought, and there is no
truer test of the quality of a nation than its music.
Bach and Haydn and Beethoven would be impossible
in a nation that did not produce a Kant, a Schelling,

1 Wendell Phillips. See Andover Review, vol. i. p. 309.

328 MUSIC AS REVELATION.

and a Schlelermacher ; and the former are as truly
exponents of its character as the latter.

The main office of music is to secure sympathy.
When a great singer, taking words that are them-
selves as music, joins them to notes set with a mas-
ter's skill, and, pouring into perfect tones the passion
of a feeling heart, so describes some tragic tale of
death, every heart of a thousand hearers beats with
a common feeling, and every mind, for the time,
runs in the same path of pity and sadness ; for the
moment there is absolute S3^mpathy. If instead a
truth or principle underlie the song, there is also a
temporary agreement in thought. The moral and
social value of such experiences is great ; they lead
away from selfishness, and point to that harmony of
thought and feeling towards which humanity is
struggling.

So too in producing music, its highest effects can
be gained only when the performers not only read
and utter alike, but feel alike. Hence there is in
music a moral law of sympathy as imperative as its
mathematical laws. Hence also no one who is cen-
trally selfish ever becomes great either as composer
or performer; and often, when everything else is
perfect, the defect lies at this very point. " If I
could make you suffer for two j^ears," said a teacher
to a noted singer, " j^ou would be the best contralto
in the world." It follows with sure logic that no
one can truly sing God's praises who does not adore
God. No training of voice or touch can compass
the divine secret of praise. The feeling of praise
— not as mere feeling but as solid conviction — must

MUSIC AS REVELATION. 329

enter into the utterance or it lacks the one quality
of highest effectiveness. It is said that the unde-
vout astronomer is mad, but the undevout musician
is an impossibility. If we fail to distinguish be-
tween what may be called fine and genuine render-
ing, it is because it is not always easy to distinguish
between reality and unreality. What is the matter
with the music? is a question often asked. The
technical rendering may be faultless, and the defect
lie in that inmost centre whence are all the issues of
life and power. In the nature of things there is
the same reason for faith, consecration, devout feel-
ing, and holy living in the choir as in the pulpit,
and there is nothing unbecoming in the conduct and
feeling of the preacher that is not equally unbecom-
ing, and for the same reasons, in singers of the
divine praises. It is not a matter of appropriate-
ness but of effectiveness, not of tlie fitness of
things but of the nature of things, which is always
sincere and can yield results only as it is kept true.
We are guided in this matter by nature itself. Any
musical sound, however produced, immediately seeks
to ally itself with other sounds, but it selects only
those that are in agreement with it, and passes by
all others. Strike a note on any instrument and
the sound will start into audible vibration other
sounds, but only those harmonious with itself. Thus
in the very depths of music there is planted this law
of sympathy — like seeking like and joining their
harmonious forces. Hence it is that those who feel
alike, and are keyed in their nature to the same
pitch, turn to music for expression ; voices that blend

330 MUSIC AS REVELATION.

lead to blended hearts. Love often has this origin
and grows through the mingled song of two voices.
Households that sing are the most sympathetic and
harmonious in all their order. Christian altruism
and mutuality find their highest expressions in song
and are fostered by it. Upon the whole, men agree
in the matter of music better than in anything else.
Call a synod of all the churches — orthodox and het-
erodox, Puritan and Prelatical, Protestant and Cath-
olic — and while they could not put ten words together
in which they would agree, they would all unite in
sin^inp' the Te Benin, The Prelatical churches cer-
tainly touch a great truth when they sing their creeds,
for a creed is in reality for the heart with which we
believe unto salvation. Here we come close to the
fact that music is a revelation of future perfection.
That ultimate condition will be one in which the sep-
arating power of evil is ended, and men have attained
to the wisdom of love. They are no longer devel-
oped by antagonism and isolation but under a law
of mutuality. Then each life shares in the power
and volume of every other, and the peculiar value
and quality of each is wrought into a total of perfect
unity. We search in vain for any expression or
type of this destiny until we enter the higher fields
of music, where it is written out with alphabetic
plainness in the eternal characters and laws of na-
ture. The united action of the full chorus and or-
chestra is a perfect transcript, down to the last and
finest particular, of perfected human society. The
relation of voices to instruments and of instruments
to each other, the variety in harmony, the obedience

MUSIC AS REVELATION. 331

to law drawing its power from sympathetic feeling,
the inspiration of a noble theme, the conspiring to-
gether to enforce a m*ghty feeling which is also a
thought — we thus have an exact symbol of the des-
tiny of humanity. If it is never reached, then in-
deed prophecy will have failed and love also ; then
the noblest art we know will have turned into a
delusion, a nourisher of sickly dreams, the chiefest
vanity of a vain and meaningless world.

3. Music as an expression oi feeling is a prophecy
of that grander exercise of our nature for which we

hope.

It is the nature of feeling to express itself.
Thought may stay behind silent lips, but when it
becomes feeling it runs to expression. So far as we
can reason from ourselves, we cannot believe that
the universe sprang out of thought. Thought would
not have made this mighty expression that we call
creation; it is an expression of feeling— some infi-
nite emotion that must find vent or the infinite heart
will burst with its suppression. Music is an illustra-
tion oi this law of our emotions, and is the natural
expression of deep feeling. When great crises fall
upon nations and oratory fails to give full vent to
the heroic purpose of their hearts, some poet links
hands with some composer, ajid so a battle-hymn
sweeps the armies on to victory — the fiery clan-
gor of the Marseillaise, or the sad, stately rhythm
of the John Brown Hymn. History aU along cul-
minates in song. The summits of Jewish history
from Miriam to David are vocal with psalms. There
is nothing grand in thought, deep in feeling, splen-

832 MUSIC AS REVELATION.

did in action, but runs directly to song for expression.
When feeling reaches a certain point, it drops the
slow processes of thought and speech and mounts the
wings of song, and so flies forward to its hope. " O
that I had wings as a dove ; " the feet are too slow
to bear us away from our sorrow to our rest. In
the simplest life there is always this tendency of
feeling, whether of joy or sadness, to voice itself in
melody. When night draws its curtain gloomily
around us, and all the weariness of the day and the
sadness of past years are gathered into one hour,
forcing tears, idle but real, to our eyelids, deepen-
ing and swelling into a burden of despair, how nat-
urally we turn to music for utterance and relief!
Some gentle strain is sung by tender lips, or per-
chance some chord of harmony is wafted from the
distance, and the sad spell is broken. Goethe
makes a chance strain of an Easter hymn defeat the
purpose of a suicide — a thought that Chopin has
wrought into one of his Nocturnes. As in nature
there is a resolution of forces by which heat becomes
light, so emotion, of whatever sort, if intrusted to
music, turns into joy. What a fact ! Here is the
world of humanity tossing with emotions — love,
sorrow, hope — driving men hither and thither,
and here is music ready to take these emotions up
into itself where it purifies and sublimates them and
gives them back as joy and peace. What alchemy
is like this ? how heavenly, how divine ! If, in the
better ages to come, there still be weariness, sorrow,
disappointment, delayed hope, may we not expect
that this transmutation of them into joy which goes

MUSIC AS REVELATION. 333

on here, will continue to act there ? We are moving
on towards an age and a world of sympathy, and
sympathy is the solvent of trouble. If so, there must
be some medium or actualized form of sympathy, for
there will never come a time when mind can act
upon mind without some medium, and the art-idea
is probably eternal. In some supernal sense, then,
music will be the vocation of humanity when its full
redemption is come. The summit of existence is
feeling; the summit of character is sympathy, and
music is the art-form that links them together.

4. Music is the truest and most nearly adequate
expression of the religious emotions, and so becomes
prophetic of the destiny of man as a religious being.
" The soul of the Christian religion," says Goethe,
" is reverence." It is also the great, inclusive act
or condition of man as he comes into perfection.
Goethe adds, with profound suggestions, that it must
be taught. The highest conception of the use of
creation is as a tuition in reverence. Whatever else
it may teach, it teaches this, or, if it fails in this, it
teaches nothing. There is no severer condemnation,
no surer refutation of the agnostic and mechanical
theories of creation than that they rob it of this
special function. There can be no reverence for an
unknowable cause of creation, nor for a universe
whose processes are only mechanical, nor for human-
ity if it is the automaton of unconscious forces. The
whole tendency and operation of physical science at
present — if men would but see it — is towards a
world not of mere mystery but of wonder, where the
only proper feeling is adoration. Materialism is

334 MUSIC AS REVELATION.

breaking up and disappearing under the discovery of
laws and processes and causes for which it has no
explanation, and all things are resolving into mere
symbols of will and mind and feeling. Already mat-
ter has eluded the touch of our senses, and our recog-
nition of it as a thing in itself is a mere convention-
ality of speech. The resolution of it into force or
motion and of its processes into forms of thought is
a drawing out of more than every alternate thread
from the veil that hangs between creation and its
Source : the veil may never be wholly put aside but
it grows continually thinner, letting through reveal-
ing rays of truth and glory. When this process gets
full recognition — as it surely will — and men be-
come tired of the senseless play of agnostic phrases
and catch-words, and philosophy triumphs as it al-
ways has triumphed, there will be but one voice issu-
ing from creation — the voice of praise, and but one
feeling issuing from the heart of man — the feeling
of reverence before the revealed Creator. Then the
heart of man will require some form of expression
for its mighty and universal conviction. We have
already a great oratorio of the Creation, but we shall
have a greater still, profounder in its harmonies and
more majestic in its ascriptions.

We have in music the art-form that is not only
fitted to express our religious feelings, but is wholly
fitted for nothing else. I mean that music is cre-
atively designed for religion and not directly for
anything else. Like all great arts it has a large
pliancy through which it may be adapted to many
uses. Music may be made degrading and a minister

MUSIC AS REVELATION. 335

of sensuality or trivial pleasure, but never by its own
consent nor with a full use of its powers. "When
music is used to pave the way to vice, certain instru-
ments are rigidly excluded and the nobler tones are
exchanged for " soft Lydian airs." This exclusion
and perversion every true musician detects as a
lack in the music itself, and the spirit of music —
like a fettered Sampson — pleads with him for a
better use and fuller exercise of its nature. Such
use of music is like the look of scorn in the face of
beauty ; no other face could express the scorn so well,
but the beauty is still a protest against its use for
such an end ; it is made for something better. So
music lends itself to almost every human feeling
down to the vilest, but always with sup^^ression of its
power. It is not until it is used for the expression
of that wide rangfe of feelino^ which we call relijj:ious
that it discloses its full powers. Then it is on its
native heath ; it gathers its full orchestra from the
organ to the drum, from softest viols and flutes to
tinkling cymbals, from instruments that are all pas-
sion to instruments of almost passionless dignity ;
then it covers the whole scale of its vast compass,
from one pure note of voice or instrument to its
highest possible combinations, from a slumber song
to a Hallelujah chorus. It is not a matter of fancy
but a fact of science that music never seems to be
satisfied with itself except when it is used in a reli-
gious way ; it is always seeking to escape into this
higher form, even as man is himself. We hardly
leave scientific ground when we say that music itself
is a holy thing, and is always seeking to create holi-

336 MUSIC AS REVELATION.

ness by some inherent law. It always strives to de-
stroy and overcome its opposite — not by absolute
destruction but by conversion. Strike all the keys
of a piano and some strong, righteous notes will
gather up the agreeing notes, silence the others, and
create a harmony out of the discord. When a rough,
loud noise like an explosion is made, the harmonious
notes sift out and drop the discordant ones, so that
the final vibration in the distance is no longer jar-
ring noise but a soft and pleasing tone. An over-
refinement of thought this may seem, but it is no
finer than the laws of nature. It is, at least, an
illustration of what it does in man, silencing the dis-
cord of his tossed life and refining every sentiment
and purpose into sweet agreement.

Beethoven put this process into musical form. In
one of his symj^honies, he opens with four full,
strong chords from the entire orchestra'; then the
separate instruments begin to war upon them, strive
to overpower them with the blare of trumpets, to
drown them in the complexities of the violins, to
silence them under the rattle of the drums ; but the
primal chords, yielding at times, still hold their own,
gather force, reassert themselves, and at last over-
power their antagonists by patient persistence and
all-conquering sweetness, rise into full possession of
the theme, and sweep on into harmonies divine in
their power and beauty.

The truth that music is for religion is equally evi-
dent in the fact that nothing calls for it like religion.
Men fight ^better under the stir of music, but they
can fight well without it. Business does not require

MUSIC AS REVELATION. 337

it. Pleasure craves it, but the voice and the zest of
young life supply its lack. It is not needed In the
enacting of laws, nor in the pleadings of courts. It
might be left out in every department of life save
one, and nothing would be radically altered ; there
would be lack, but not loss of function. But religion
as an organized thing and as worship could not exist
v/ithout it. When song dies out where men assemble
for worship, the doors are soon closed. When praise
is repressed and crowded aside for the sermon, the
service sinks into a hard intellectual process for
which men do not long care. Eloquence and logic
will not take its place — why, it is difficult to say
unless it is recognized that music is the main factor
of worship — a fact capable of philosophical state-
ment, namely : worship being a moral act or expres-
sion, it depends ujion the rhythm and harmony of
art for its materials ; they are the substances — so
to speak — ordained by God and provided in nature
out of which worship is made. And so the Church
in all ages has flowered into song. It takes for itself
the noblest instrument and refuses none. It draws
to itself the great composers whom it first attunes to
its temper, and then sets to its tasks, which invariably
prove to be their greatest works. In no other field
do they work so willingly and with so full exercise
of genius. There is a freedom, a fullness and per-
fection in sacred composition to be found in no other
field. In all other music there is a call for more or
for something different, but the music of adoration
leaves the spirit in restful satisfaction. Dry den, the
most tuneful of poets, divided the crown between old

338 MUSIC AS REVELATION.

Timotheus and the divine Cecilia, but surely it is
greater to " draw an angel down " than "lift a mor-
tal to the skies."

The fact that all religious conviction and feeling
universally run to music for their full and final ex-
pression certainly must have some philosophical
explanation. In rough and crude form it may be
stated thus : music is the art-path to God in whom
we live and move and have our being. We may get
to God by many ways — by the silent communion
of spirit with Spirit, by aspiration, by fidelity of ser-
vice, but there is no path of exj^ression so open and
direct as that of music. The common remark that
music takes us away from ourselves is philosophic-
ally true. When under its spell we transcend our
ordinary thought and feeling, and are carried into
another world ; and if it be sacred music, that world
is the world of the Spirit. When the spell ends
and we come back to this present world, we do not
cease to believe in that into which we were lifted.
While there, lapped in its harmonies and soaring in
its adorations, we felt how real that world is, and
how surely it must at last be eternally realized. To-
wards that age of adoring harmony humanity is
struggling, and into that upper world, where the dis-
cords of time and earth are resolved into tune, every
earnest soul is steadily pressing.

Meanwhile we have some foretaste of —

" That undisturbed song- of pure concent,
Aye sung before the sapphire-color' d throne
To Him that sits thereon,
With saintly shout, and solemn jubilee ;

MUSIC AS REVELATION. 339

Where the bright seraphim, in burning row,
Their loud uplifted angel-trumpets blow ;
And the cherubic host, in thousand quires,
Touch their immortal harps of golden wires ;
With those just spirits that wear victorious palms,
Hymns devout and holy psalms
Singing everlastingly."

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