Chapter 5

After all, what life is to every one of us depends not on the demands of outer circumstances, but on the development of the life within. The heart determines the worth and beauty of life. It makes all the difference whether the physical determines its circumference or whether you have an intellect that is reaching out to the things unmeasurable and a soul that grows into glory indescribable.

You can tie a great soul down hand and brain to a loom or a machine and he will still see his visions and dream his deep, refreshing dreams; you can set the brutish being down in a gallery of the world's treasures of art and beauty and he will think of nothing and see nothing but bread and beer.

We must do our dull and heavy tasks, but we can do them and not be crushed by them so long as within there are fragrant memories, high aspirations, great thoughts; so long as the task does not set the boundary of the life. And it is the cherishing of these eternal riches within that lifts any life and makes it worthy of higher tasks.

We need to seek out the springs of noble thoughts, to find in the riches of the world's literature, in music, and in beauty of art the food for that inner life in the strength of which, drawing often on its secret resources, we can go many days through the desert of toil.

The wise life uses every opportunity of refreshing; it drinks of every spring of the up-welling waters of life; it seeks communion with every great soul. Holidays and rest days are to it times of replenishing when the eyes that ache from bending over the machine or desk lift themselves to the eternal hills and the heart turns to the things that are infinite.

THE SENSE OF THE INFINITE

One does not have to believe in the same kind of a god as did the seers and singers of long ago in order to obtain the spiritual values which they found in the thought of his nearness to them. David and Browning, Isaiah and Whittier, with all the centuries between them, still come to the same thought--we know that Thou art near.

Through all ages and in all peoples this sense of that which is other than ourselves, from which our highest good comes, towards which our ideals and aspirations strain, the ultimate force of our being, this feeling after the infinite is universal. It is the essential and determinative mark of every religion.

When those singers of long ago tried to express their sense of the infinite life and love they used words which make it appear that they thought only of some being larger, mightier, wiser than themselves, yet, after all, like themselves, a great man deified because He was great. Perhaps that really was their conception; still, we use precisely the same language, even though our ideas are entirely different.

It makes relatively little difference what their conceptions were, so far as ours are concerned. Their words are not accurate, detailed pen pictures of some being who can be described or photographed. No man has seen the infinite at any time. The great thing is that ever and everywhere men find themselves with a hunger after this sublime unseen.

One may use terms of personality and another terms of power; to one the infinite may be but a local deity; to another, that which embraces all spirit and being, and each may have all of the divine his heart is capable of containing. Here none may dogmatize for others.

Religion does not depend on uniformity of conceptions of the divine. It depends more upon universality of consciousness of the infinite and openness of mind and life to whatever we may feel and know, from any source or through any means whatsoever, of that life or energy which lies back of all life and energy, of that love and light which cheer and lighten every son of man.

Definitions determine nothing, but they do work great damage when minds capable of being stereotyped to them agree to impose those definitions on their fellows as final, authoritative, and essential to their welfare. The divine is neither infinite nor sublime when you can say, Here are His lineaments and He has no other likeness or appearance.

To the question, How shall we think of the divine? there can be but one answer--in higher, wider, deeper, nobler, purer ways than yesterday. The conception must be a developing one. A man's spiritual capacities develop as his inner vision becomes more keen. The soul takes wider flight, and in our deep thoughts we discover that which language cannot compass.

There are those who think they must be atheists because they cannot believe in the God of the Hebrews, the God of the Old Testament--a limited personality. But the genuine atheists are more likely to be those who are without a sense of the divine, because they have taken definitions and descriptions prepared by others instead of seeking truth for themselves.

We are but poor learners of those ancient teachers if we have not discovered that their greatest lesson to us is not truth, as they had found it, but the blessing of the persistent search after truth. To cherish as final past presentations of truth is to be false to its present possibilities.

We do not need to worry over definitions of the divine. We do need to cultivate the temper of mind and the sensitiveness of spirit that will save us from blindness to the higher facts of life, that will save us from the blasting whirlwind of materialism, with its sense of nothing but a soulless world of things.

We need to avoid the mind that shuts the divine up in some far off heaven to be reached only by formal telephony called prayer; that fails to see the infinite in all things--in sunlight and flower, in children's laughter, and in misery's wail, in factories and stores, as well as in churches. We need the mind that argues not about omnipresence, but in duty and delight cries, Always and everywhere, Thou art near.

THE GREAT INSPIRATION

Christianity is distinguished and dominated by the ideal of the life and character of Jesus of Nazareth; it is a philosophy and a system of individual and social ethics under the inspiration of a glowing ideal. No matter how greatly its people may differ on other points, all are agreed in recognizing in Jesus the fairest of the sons of men.

There never was a time when the thought of this life was more potent than it is to-day. Men think of Him as a fellow being, one who went about doing good, who looked out on life with the windows of His soul unsullied and who lived out ever the holiest and highest that came to Him.

The thought of such a one has become so real to men that they do not stop to argue about His existence, as once they did. If it was possible indisputably to disprove the historic Christ men still would cherish, as highly as ever, the ideal, the vision of such a life, and in their hearts would know that such a picture could only have been born of such a person.

This goodly, glorious man no longer is one who now sits on the throne of heaven. Men are not particularly concerned as to whether He is artistically glorified and perpetuated by some divine decree. He has crowned Himself in the glory of a pure and beneficent character; He has perpetuated Himself in human loves and admiration.

Because He once showed Himself as the friend of all, the pure, high souled friend of the down-trodden and the outcast, the strong, invigorating friend of the rich and successful, He to-day walks by many a man as His unseen friend, and in busy mart or office men feel the presence of a heavenly guest.

Once men made that life the centre of dispute; they sought to prove His divinity by His unlikeness to ordinary humanity. But the facts defeated them. This man whom men so learned to love that they became willing to die for Him was in all respects a man. His life is worth so much to us because He was so much like us.

It has come as a new revelation to the world that the supreme religious soul of the ages should be so tenderly, naturally human. We cry "Father!" with a new sense of relationship and fellowship when we see the likeness of the father in the face of such a son.

We are coming to believe that just what the great friend of mankind was so is the great father of us all to us all, that just as the Son of the most high moved amongst men seeking to help, cheering, comforting, loving, so is the eternal spirit moving in our world, going about doing good.

Once every effort of the theologian was bent to setting this majestic figure apart from mankind to secure Him sovereignty over us by separation from us. How different is that from the simple pictures drawn of Him, from the naturalness of His life, from the love which He had for homes and human friendships, from the life which earned the illuminating rebuke of being called a friend of sinners.

It is a good thing for us all often to remember that there has been such a life, that one born in poverty and unknown, far removed from centres of culture and wealth, living the hard life of a peasant, knowing all our temptations and weaknesses, yet should open His life so fully and completely to spiritual influences as to become to all the ages the greatest of all spiritual leaders.

What one has done another may do. What He has been we may be. He but shows the possibility of any life. He had no advantage over us; we know no disadvantages against which He did not have to strive. The divine heights have been scaled by human feet; His footprints beckon us on.

IX

Finding Foundations

_The Passing and Permanent_ _Facing the Facts_ _The Real Foundation_

_Things not right can never be religious._

_Bigotry puts blinders on the best of men._

_Submission is the first step to sovereignty._

_The principle of expediency expels all other principle._

_Quiet lives are often eloquent._

_The love of wealth steals wealth of love._

_It's the common virtues that make uncommon saints._

_Many a man is shouting his convictions to drown the voice of conscience._

_A little learning is dangerous if you are planning to get to heaven by degrees._

_When a man gets over anxious about the gnat it's time to hang on to the camel._

IX

THE PASSING AND PERMANENT

When the walls are being rebuilt it is easy to imagine that the foundations are being destroyed. Old creeds pass away, but truth remains; if they were true in their day they do but give place to the larger truth of the new day. We need to distinguish between the turmoil attendant to the process of building and the beauty of the new temple that arises.

The old folks hear the new truths and ask, where are the foundations gone? The young hear the discussion between the old and the new and ask, is there anything settled, anything worth believing? What are the permanent elements in religion on which the life may build while the things that are but temporary are adjusting themselves?

It would be the height of folly to assert that there is no change. Some say that we must believe precisely the same things as our fathers believed. To do so would be to be false to our fathers, for they refused to accept the traditions of their elders. The landmarks we leave behind once were far in front of the seekers after truth.

Truth never changes but our vision is ever enlarging. The road remains, but the traveller moves on. With the living every day has some new light. Creeds are crystallized statements of truth; truth is vital and cannot be contained in unchanging forms. Credulity blindly accepts yesterday's picture of truth; faith, with open eyes, seeks to-day's truth itself.

Skepticism is much less sinful than credulity. The sloth of the man who will not examine things, will not prove them, who prefers to buy his garments of truth ready made, results in what is worse than unbelief, and that is blind belief in the false. It is a religious duty to question every teaching, to prove all things.

How may we find those things that are certain? How may we discover the truth for our day, the truth upon which we may build? Surely there are some things fixed and certain, there is somewhere pole star and compass. How may we find that truth which belongs to our day and in which we may have the confidence that our fathers had in their truth?

The test of the vital truths is a practical one. Only those truths are vital which concern the present business of living in all its wide sweep.

It is a matter of indifference what we may think of the colour of angels' hair or the number of strings to their harps; it is a vastly different matter what we may believe as to moral obligations, human rights, and duties.

The test of creed is an ethical one. What things work out best in living, what are the ideals, doctrines, beliefs that make the noblest characters and the most useful citizens, the best sons, and daughters, and parents, and neighbours? What are the things that help me most in my life, the things that give me moral stimulus and bracing, the things that lead me to covet the best?

The way to find the truth is to do the truth; only the truth that we can do is worth discussing. If you will give yourself to the business of living the truth you have you soon will have the living truth for this new day.

Too many people are holding up as saving doctrines matters of philosophy and speculation, matters of childish curiosity, because it is easier to hold these things theoretically than to hold living truth practically. The truths that save men are the ones that change their characters; the great authorized and divine translation of the Bible is its translation into present day lofty living.

Build your life on the belief in goodness, in eternal, infinite goodness as the order of the universe, on the superiority of love to hatred, on the final victory of love and goodness, on the ideal of this great human family of ours that shall come to live in unity and brotherliness, and so fulfill the will of the infinite father of all. These things work well.

FACING THE FACTS

This is the age of the dominance of science. When a man asks, What shall I believe? only one answer can be returned: Believe the things that are. An age now past found it easy to believe that it believed what it was told, even the things that it knew were not so. But to-day at least has the merit of finding no merit in that form of self-deception.

The passion for absolute truth and rightness is one of the noblest that can spring up in any breast; it is a ripe fruit of religion. The scientist, by his devotion to exact facts, to pure truth, is the religious man of our day, and the schools become religious educators in their power to instill a primary love for truth and to lift up ideals of exactness and equity.

When we translate religion into terms of life, into actuality as contrasted with imagination, we begin to discover the necessity for foundations deeper than legend or romance. So long as a man's religion consisted in what he might picture in glowing colours of imagination on the canvas of fancy about his past or future he did not need to take his designs from facts.

But when religion becomes the science of right living, the process of securing right social relationships and character as the expression of ideal personal and individual character, it is evident that in such a work religion must proceed on ascertained, indisputable verities.

We may be satisfied with myths as to the ordering of the first family, and we may leave to the play of fancy the specifications of an ideal heaven; but when we begin to order our own families and adjust our social and civic affairs we are compelled to wait for principles based on facts, for truth. Religion thus becomes a science.

Much eloquence was spilled over the conflict between religion and science. It was only a conflict between the old religion and its new form, between the gray dawn and the growing day. Our fathers were not wilfully false, holding on to darkness when the light came; but they so long had held sacred the pictures seen in twilight they were loath to give them up for those of the full day's printing.

The most damaging infidelity is the lack of faith in truth, the fear that it might not be safe to allow all the facts to be known. He who in the name of religion seeks to prevent our seeing and accepting the full facts is religion's greatest foe. Only the full truth can set us fully free, intellectually, spiritually, morally.

Why should we fear the light of investigation on the things of religion? There is more sacredness in simple truth than in secrecy. It were better to be lost forever seeking truth than saved by sophistry. How foolish to attempt to adjust our lives by laws built out of speculation, to attempt to steer by a compass when there is no pole of truth?

In to-day's changing tides of thought, when the old faiths seem slipping away, when we wonder why we have lost the simple faith of our own youth or our father's, looking for some firm ground for our feet, we do well to set them down on nothing but facts, to discriminate among the sands of time and the alluvial deposits of tradition till we find the rock of truth.

But facing the facts we find everywhere one writ large, over all one great principle of unchanging law, one great purpose moving through all nature and all history, and what we once only dared to hope and dream, that back of all there throbs infinite love and there rules infinite wisdom, now is attested by the impressive array of the witnesses of science.

Truth always is safe. The holiest error must be born of hell. We can make no mistake in refusing to go beyond truth, and we will find that she leads to the ordering of life according to eternal laws, to the doing of duties and finding of sweet joys as old as the hills and as unchanging; she will lead in the paths of rightness.

Some day our race will know all the alphabet of nature and be able to read the story of the unchanging goodness; some day we shall comprehend the wavering handwriting of history; some day we shall catch the harmony of love and law; we shall know the full truth that is religion; shall know things as they are and be what we should be.

THE REAL FOUNDATION

A good many thousand sermons have been preached on the parable of the houses built on sand and on rock, probably nearly all of them with the intent to prove that the way to build the life on a rock foundation is to pass through the experience known as conversion, obtain saving faith and join the church. This is typical of a popular way of interpreting the scriptures: First, determine what you wish them to mean and then make them mean that. The purpose being to persuade people to join the church, then by hook or crook that duty must be discovered in every divine precept.

But this is simply to ignore the plain words of the great Teacher. It would be impossible to clarify His statement: "If any man hears and does the things I have been teaching he is like one who builds on a rock." One thing marks the rock founded life, the doing of Christly deeds. The course of conduct, the kind of character He has just outlined in the sermon on the mount gives the established staple character.

The enduring life is not built on dreams. Many people think that their lives are rock founded because they have a nebulous admiration for the moral teachings of Jesus. On the whole they admire the sermon on the mount; having taken the trouble to say as much as this they sit back with the comfortable feeling that they have set themselves right with the universe, that the Almighty will be delighted with their indorsement.

One of the most dangerous hypocrites is the easy-going, thoughtless being who fancies that the indorsement of a duty is equivalent to the doing of it. He evaporates his convictions into compliments instead of crystallizing them into conduct. So far from being built on a rock he floats around like a wisp of hay in a high wind. A butterfly might better hope to drill and quarry out a foundation than he. Besides this, his hypocritical praise of right precepts makes them only offensive to those who might desire to practice them.

Others imagine that an intellectual assent to certain statements concerning the church or the Bible or Jesus is sufficient to fix the life in stability. But the great Teacher does not place the emphasis so much on what men may think of His character or mission, nor even on their honest opinions on the theories of the past and the future, which have delighted mental gymnasts since the world was young, to Him the great differentiating fact touches those dynamic convictions that are determining your conduct this day.

He places conduct before creed. He long ago took that method of teaching which modern pedagogy approves. He taught religion by the manual method. Instead of saying, as theologians do, first comprehend these doctrines and then you will be able to do them, He says, first do these things, practice My precepts, and they will ere long become plain to you. Men learn religion by doing. Begin to do the right and you will get the reason; get the rule through the example. Deeds are the solvents of doctrines.

The house of life is built differently from any other; we get the plans by erecting the structure. In the realm of character it is houses rather than architecture we need. Build but one hour's conduct squarely on the plain, cogent teachings of the man of Nazareth and you will serve the world better than if you gave a lifetime to the explanation of His words.

Doctrines are but teachings intended to be done into deeds. Doing them you gain a larger peace of mind and sense of stability of life than in any other way. If you want the equilibrium of faith you will find it by simply laying life's daily details on the plain foundation of His principles. Nothing could be plainer; there are no hair-splitting metaphysics, no subtle questions of policy here; do these things and the heart finds calm, the life certitude, the soul satisfaction.

X

The Passion for Perfection

_The Great Search_ _The Hunger of the Ages_ _The Sole Satisfaction_

_Pain is the parent of power._

_Marking time leaves no mark on time._

_The proof of love is loving the unlovely._

_Truth never is found by twisting the facts._

_Wings come not to those who refuse to walk._

_An ideal usually is what we want the other man to be._

_There is no righteousness without some self-respect._

_You cannot lead men to the divine by crawling in the dust._

_The real saints have no time to write their autobiographies._

_When a man boils over quickly you soon find out what is in him._

_True piety simply is the prosperity of the eternal things in a man._

_The world never will be won from the love of evil until we make the good lovely._

X

THE GREAT SEARCH

The cry, "How may I be right?" is the cry of the ages. Human history is the record of our attempt to answer it. Man is naturally a truth seeker, and this is the search of all truly great souls. The enduring monuments of literature are those that have in some measure answered this question. All things that have been worth while have helped us to know and to realize the right. Health, happiness, freedom, morality, all are but parts of the right; all are but sections of the sublime whole for which man ever seeks. The search manifests itself in different ways; it may be as science, the passion for the knowledge of the right relations of things; as justice, for right relations amongst men; as philosophy, as ethics, as religion. Back of all our life is the instinct of progress; we push towards the perfect. And perfection we now know rests not in more things but in bringing all the things that are into right relations with one another.