Part 7

And look at the swelling tide of human goodness down through the ages! Look at Livingstone laying down his life to carry light into the dark continent! Look at Cromwell fearing God and none else, neither king nor pope, neither nobles nor bishops, and giving his life that he might win constitutional and religious freedom for the English-speaking race! Look at Lincoln counting not his life dear if he might serve the cause of the Union and the interests of his brothers in bonds! Look at the vast array of human goodness massing itself in saints and seers, in heroes and martyrs, in teachers and mothers, going forth not to be ministered unto, but to minister, giving their lives for the betterment of the world! Look at it all and then ask yourself if you can believe for one moment that all this goodness originated itself, persisted, and increased in opposition to the will of the Creator or in the face of his moral indifference or without creative goodness in him! The claim would be monstrous! This wide induction of fact begets a profound faith in the moral character of God and when we cannot see we trust, because as to the final meaning of many strange experiences we know in part.

Take the matter of prayer and the way it enters into the formation of character and the shaping of events. We know that prayer registers a definite and wholesome influence on many a life. Those who loudly assert that virtue and vice are as purely physical products as sugar and vitriol, that all right action and wrong action can be accounted for on material grounds, have not made out their case, they have not begun to make it out. There is something unseen, mysterious, but real and powerful, which impels certain people to love the unlovely, to make sacrifices for the thoughtless and ungrateful, to stand firm in the path of duty when it is anything but the line of least resistance. The love of right, the sense of obligation, the habit of adherence to principle, all these are as real as granite. But the forces which make them strong are spiritual, and these forces receive constant reenforcement from the habit of prayer.

This part we know. We have seen the hearts of men turned from anger to love, from unholy to holy purpose, from weakness to strong resolve by prayer. We have seen home life made sweeter because once at least in every twenty-four hours the members of the household came together and knelt before God, confessing their faults, asking his guidance and allowing that which was true and right within them to grow by its communion with him who is altogether true and right. Any sensible man would feel that his life, his property, his family were all safer in a community where men prayed, than in one where they only used the name of God profanely. This part we know about prayer.

But as to the ultimate effect of it, the final philosophy of it, the precise way in which the finite spirit becomes a colaborer with the Infinite Spirit in shaping events, I freely confess that there is a great deal which I do not understand. I know in part, but the part I know is so full of blessed and beautiful results that I want my prayer for the coming of God’s kingdom, for the doing of his will on earth, for the gift of bread for the daily need, for forgiveness, and final deliverance from evil--I want that prayer to go up, winging its way to the throne backed by all the faith and hope and love I can put into it. And I am not troubled by the fact that I cannot explain all the grounds of my confidence, for, like Paul, I know in part.

Take the matter of the future life! There is much here we would like to know. What are our loved ones who have gone on doing now? Are they witnesses of the blunders and the failures we make here? Just how is right rewarded and wrong punished when the two are so intricately interwoven? No man is so white a sheep but that there are patches of goat about him here and there. No man is so bad but that there is some good in him if we observingly distil it out. And what of the final outcome--can good people be happily content if the sinful souls they loved are in conscious pain or even if they have been remorselessly wiped off the slate of existence? Is it too much to hope that God’s persuasions to righteousness being infinite may prove irresistible and so at last successful in every case? So men and women who have loved and lost those who passed out of this world without a sign of genuine repentance or of saving faith have queried ever. A child can ask more questions here in five minutes than all the philosophers and theologians on earth can answer in as many years.

We know in part! We cannot measure off the streets of the new Jerusalem in kilometers. We cannot describe its attractions in any kind of Baedeker. We cannot lay out a detailed program of God’s dealings with the good and the bad people of earth in all the unending years. Nor is there any obligation whatsoever upon us to undertake the construction of such a program.

We know in part and the part we know is something like this: I feel a profound confidence that I shall live on after death. The grounds of my hope are many. The mass of unreason and injustice I would have left upon my hands unexplained and unexplainable if I were to undertake to deny the truth of immortality is one. The all but universal and persistent desire of men for future life is another. Somehow the integrity of the universe is such that it does not develop in men normal, wide-spread, and persistent desires unless there is somewhere to be found a corresponding satisfaction for such desires standing over against them. The fact that the clear visions and the bright hopes of the best poets and prophets the world has known have been on the side of immortality means much. The seers have sung and the prophets have uttered their high anticipations by the power of an endless life. The words of the supreme figure in history, Jesus Christ, as to the truth of immortality mean still more. He saw clearly, spoke wisely, lived divinely, and I cannot believe that here he reared his expectations on a fundamental mistake.

It ought to be remembered that for those who affirm and for those who deny the truth of immortality, it is alike a matter of moral faith because no convincing demonstration has been made out either for or against. The men who deny immortality are not opposing knowledge to faith; they are only meeting a positive faith with a negative one. But inasmuch as reason and experience, the best in literature and the One who has taken the moral government of the world upon his shoulders as none other ever did, stand so strongly upon the side of the positive faith, I feel confident of an unbroken life.

As to the final judgment, I know that righteousness and love which are useful and beautiful here will be useful and beautiful always and everywhere; the clearer the light in which they stand the more their glory will be revealed. I know that sin and selfishness are mean and hateful here, and they will be mean and hateful everywhere; the clearer the light in which they stand the more their hatefulness will be manifest. What shall be their final fate I do not undertake to say. We know in part, but the clear prospects of the life to come, where righteousness and love shall have their freer chance to be and to do, where sin and selfishness shall meet with more awful rebuke, are sufficient to stimulate right action and to give warning to those who would identify their destinies with evil. As to the rest, in the incompleteness of our knowledge, we may safely leave it to the wisdom and the justice of God.

I might carry this idea in other directions, but let me turn at once to the other phase of the topic. In part we know, and the part we know is naturally the part we use. We wish that we knew more. We hope to know more some time. In the meantime we recognize that the way to make progress along that line is to use the part we already know.

In almost any direction, unless it be pure mathematics or formal logic, our knowledge, even in the sophomore year, stops a long way this side of complete understanding. No man knows the length and breadth, the height and depth of his wife’s love for him, if she is a good woman. Some part of it he knows, but the love she might show in some emergency, nursing him through a long illness, sharing with him some painful experience, bearing with him some heavy burden--that fuller love he does not know and cannot know until the time comes for its manifestation. But the part he knows about his wife’s love for him is the part he uses and the very thought of how beautiful it is and of the unrevealed capacity it may contain for willing and joyous sacrifice on his behalf, makes him feel that he ought to be a better man to be deserving of it. Thus he moves along in that part of the strength and beauty of a woman’s love which he knows, allowing the fuller knowledge of it to come as it may. And this is precisely the attitude of the reasonably religious man--those realities with which he deals, God and redemption, prayer and duty, immortality and the final judgment, are confessedly too great for final statement, but he knows something about them and the part he knows is the part he uses.

Next door to my home I have two little neighbors, boys of three and five. They are close friends of mine and they have taught me much. Their father is a physician, a busy, useful, Christian man. The boys understand their father’s life “in part.” They know that he is a doctor and that he goes to see sick people and make them well. But as to the methods he employs and the remedies he uses they know nothing at all. They know in a dim sort of way that he makes the money which pays the bills and keeps them in a home full of comfort and beauty. But as to his financial standing, his investments, and his prospects, they know nothing. They know that along with the hearty good-will which he feels for everybody, he loves their mother and them supremely; but how he came to love that particular woman rather than some other one, and how they were born of that love, or how far that love might go in defending and providing for them, they do not concern themselves for one moment. They know their father’s love in part.

But the part they know is the part they use. They live in their father’s house; they sit at his table; they greet him with a shout when he comes in from his practise. They obey him and trust him and think he is the best man in the world. They climb up into his lap and talk to him, not about his practise, but about their own small affairs, their tops, their marbles, their little wagon--as he wants them to do. He meets them always on their own ground and deals with them in the terms and interests of their own lives. Thus my two little friends live and grow, knowing their father’s life in part.

“Except we become as little children” in the house of our Father, whose total life exceeds our present comprehension, whose plans and purposes for us are too high for complete understanding, whose outlook for us is vaster every way than our own outlook--“except we become as little children we shall in no wise enter his kingdom.” But if we take the part we know and use it, acting on it and living by it, we will be treading the way which leads to a fuller and more blessed experience of the Father’s wisdom and love as surely as my two small friends are doing as they grow up toward their manhood in their father’s house.

In how many ways Jesus made plain this duty of utilizing the near and the familiar when we would learn the remote! He seemed to realize that religion would be crusted over with misconceptions so that ordinary people would find it hard to get at; that some men would write big dull books about it, which no one would want to read; that other men in talking about it would use words which would not go into a suit-case without being folded twice, thus confusing the people. For that reason, perhaps, he made his own teaching simpler than that of any one whose words stand recorded in Holy Writ.

He stood once at midnight among the trees talking with a thoughtful man as to certain aspects of the religious life. “How can these things be?” the man asked. “How can a man be born when he is old?” Just then the wind rustled the leaves at his side and Jesus remarked: “The wind bloweth where it listeth. You hear the sound thereof, but you cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth.” We cannot tell why the wind blows one day from the north and we have cold, another day from the south and we have heat, another day from the east and we have rain. We cannot explain satisfactorily many of the mysteries connected with the wind. But a man who is a fisherman can put up his sail and fill it with this wind which is such a mystery. He can sail out through the Golden Gate and come back in the evening with a boatload of fish for the needs of his family and for other hungry men. The wind that fills his sail he knows, but the origin, the ultimate destiny, and all the relationships it sustains to the other forces in the universe he does not know. The part he knows, however, is the part he uses by relating it to his own life. And this is the act of a man of sense in matters spiritual as well. He knows the life of the Infinite Spirit in part, but he uses the part he knows by relating it helpfully to his own life.

When we start in after that fashion it is a straight course. The boy begins his study of mathematics by learning to count ten--one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. He moves straight along by that path until, with these same ten figures, he is computing the courses the planets take and measuring the distances of the fixed stars. He begins his study of literature by learning his letters, a, b, c, etc. By and by, using these same familiar letters, he is making his way through the intricacies of “Hamlet” and “Macbeth”; he is walking with Emerson and Hegel across the fields of philosophy. He begins his study of music by learning the elementary sounds, do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do. Presently, with these same tones, he is singing in a great chorus which renders “The Messiah” or playing his instrument in some orchestra which is producing the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven. In every situation in life progress is made not by being appalled over the amount we do not know, or by vainly wishing we knew more, but by taking the part we know, relating it to our lives, and making it the instrument of gaining that fuller knowledge.

God is greater than any wise and good father but not different. Carry the love of a wise and good father up to the _nth_ degree and you have the love of God for his people. The life of the spirit is nobler than the life of the flesh, but it stands closely related; it is a life which hungers after righteousness, thirsts for the living God, and grows strong by exercising itself in useful service. Heaven is finer and purer than earth, but not unlike. It was for the Jew a “New Jerusalem,” and it is for every man a “new --” whatever may be the name of the city where he dwells. It is the ordinary life ennobled and glorified by the infusion of a finer spirit. The glorious fulfilment comes through the richer combinations and the fuller development of the simpler parts we know already.

I wish I could persuade the college man who has never entered into an open, joyous, Christian life to just begin. There are many things which he does not understand nor, perhaps, believe. We will put them aside for the moment, not ignoring them, but postponing their consideration. Let him take the part he knows, the moral imperative of living the best life one sees, and no finer life than that of the Christian can be named; the necessity for some competent guide, and none better than Jesus of Nazareth has thus far appeared; the clearly ascertained benefits to be gained by trust and obedience; the helpful reactions which come through prayer and the reading of the Bible; the manifest advantage of cherishing the hope of a future life and of facing squarely upon the fact that what we sow we reap. All this he knows! Let the part he knows be the part he uses. If he will only act upon it, building it into his own life and following where it leads, he will be on his way toward the place where he will know even as he is known.

X

FIGHTING THE STARS

In an ancient song we find this striking statement, “The stars in their courses fought against Sisera.” This is poetry. It must be dealt with according to the rules which govern poetical expression. The plain prose facts underlying the statement were these: The northern tribes of Israel were being oppressed by the warlike Canaanites of that region. Israelites living on the outskirts were frequently slaughtered until certain villages had been entirely destroyed. The oppression became so bitter that it was not safe for an Israelite to travel the ordinary roads. “In the days of Shamgar the highways were unoccupied, and the people walked through by-paths.” They were in constant fear for their lives and the situation at length became unendurable.

Then there came an armed revolt of the Israelites against their oppressors. Ten thousand men under the leadership of Deborah and Barak went out to give battle in the plain of Esdraelon. The commander of the opposing army was Sisera. He had been uniformly victorious over the Israelites chiefly by his use of chariots and war-horses, riding his enemies down before they could accomplish anything with their slings and arrows. And into the famous battle referred to in the song the author says, “Sisera brought nine hundred chariots of iron” to fight against the army of Israel.

But just as the battle opened there came a fierce storm converting the black loam of that fertile field into a morass. The heavy war-horses and huge chariots were unable to charge. The song pictures them as floundering, helpless, in the deep mud. The cold rain turned gradually into sleet and the sleet driven by a fierce wind directly into the faces of the advancing Canaanites made their use of sling and spear comparatively ineffective. On the other hand, the Israelites, with the storm at their backs and with their courage heightened by the feeling that all the circumstances of the situation were in their favor, fought splendidly and successfully. They slaughtered the helpless men who were trying in vain to use the heavy chariots; they put to flight the foot soldiers who could not properly defend themselves with the storm beating in their faces, and thus they won a notable victory over the army of Sisera.

When the Israelites came to add up the forces which entered into the result, they were not so short-sighted as to fancy that their own right arms had gotten them the victory. They saw that certain other forces which they had not created, which they did not in any wise control, had entered decisively into the determination of the issue. “The Lord discomfited Sisera, and all his chariots,” they said. “The stars in their courses fought against Sisera.” The wind and the rain, the hail and the sleet, coming down out of the skies by no act of theirs, had lined up with them as effective allies; and as their eyes ran over the complete muster roll, the forces from above combining with their own determined valor, they knew that Sisera was foredoomed to defeat because he had been fighting against the stars.

The stars in their courses fought against Sisera--this is poetry! It is a bold literary statement of a splendid moral truth. In the long run the forces of earth and sky are alike hostile to the low type of life which Sisera represents. Cruelty, oppression, inhumanity, are doomed to defeat. Individuals or nations cultivating those qualities are fighting the stars, and the stars will be too much for them. As it was with Sisera, so it is now and ever shall be, world without end! Those evils are sometimes victorious in a skirmish; now and then they win a battle, but the war goes always against them. When the end comes and the articles of capitulation are signed, they are to be found with Sisera, biting the dust. Forces, human and divine, seen and unseen, are perpetually at war with wrong-doing and the combination of all these mighty energies makes the outcome inevitable. The man who, in any wise, undertakes to live a wrong life is undertaking to fight the stars.

The presence of universal moral forces is here symbolized. All about us are familiar forces which we did not originate, which we do not control--the light and the heat of the sun, the power of gravitation, the movements of the winds, and the pulsating tides. We cannot control them; we can only adjust ourselves to their movements and wisely cooperate with them for certain ends. Even while I am speaking this huge mass under our feet is whirling us swiftly onward, covering the whole twenty-five thousand miles in a single twenty-four hours. Scientific men thus far have nothing to offer as to how it gained its initial velocity; we find it moving and it carries us with it whether we will or no.

This is a symbol! There are other forces, unseen but mighty, moving the race up out of darkness into great and ever greater light. With all its groping and stumbling the race has never been allowed to lose its way altogether. Yesterday it thought as a child and understood as a child; today it puts away childish things and knows in part; tomorrow it will know still “in part,” but a larger part. And it is the sublime conviction of serious men that it is on its way to know even as it is known. This movement is as resistless as the motion of the planets.

The race is also making headway in righteousness. Certain forms of evil which once stood out naked and unashamed have been driven into rat-holes. Presently these holes will be stopped up from the top and those forms of evil will be seen no more. The power of conscience grows and its dominion widens. Matthew Arnold, speaking as a poet, said, “There is a power not ourselves which makes for righteousness.” Herbert Spencer, speaking as a philosopher, said, “There is an infinite and eternal energy from which all things proceed,” and in his judgment it was, on the whole, friendly to righteousness. The Psalmist, speaking as a religious man, said, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether, and in keeping of them there is great reward.” It does not matter what words are used; it all amounts to the same thing. The very stars are symbols to us, as they were to this writer of old, of forces unseen, august, cosmic, which are insistently set upon righteousness. Sisera and all the horde of wrong-doers are compelled to look that fact in the face.

The antagonism of these universal forces spells defeat for those who are willing to do wrong. Sometimes the letters which spell out defeat are formally arranged in order; at other times the letters must be selected from a mass of confusing details, but they are there, and they spell the same word, “defeat.” The stars never tarry long in bringing in their verdict upon the coarser sins of the flesh, murder and adultery, stealing and lying, drunkenness and gluttony. But the operation of this law reaches all the way down to those subtler sins of pride and envy, meanness and selfishness, moral indifference and spiritual neglect--all these in their final outcome make for misery and discontent as surely as two and two make four. No man ever outwitted or vanquished the stars, no man ever will. The sun rises when it is due, no matter how he chooses to set his individual clock, no matter what lies he may tell in his particular almanac. No man ever outwitted the moral order of the universe which is august and irresistible in its ongoings. He may have sought out many devices, but at last he is compelled to settle by the books. He must reap what he has sown, no matter how terrible the harvest may be.