Chapter 18

For this alone is the Life Radiant. It may not be ease or pleasure, but it is that ceaseless joy of the soul that may be the daily experience of every human being. And to gain the deep inner conviction of this sublime truth is worth whatever it may cost of tears or trial. It is the threshold of joy. It is the initiation into a higher spiritual state which one may gain in his progress while on earth as well as in heaven. In fact, no one is really fitted for the highest privileges and sweetness he may crave until he has learned to live well, to live joyfully, without them. No one is fitted for joy until he can live well _without_ joy. It is the law and the prophets.

One may tread,--not the "whole round of creation," as Browning phrases it, but a minor segment of it, at least, and come back with added and more profound conviction that happiness is a condition of the spirit; that "the soul is ceaselessly joyful;" that the incidents and accidents of the outward life cannot mar nor lessen that sense of higher peace and joy and harmony which is the atmosphere of any true spiritual life. One may recognize and affirm this truth by spiritual intuition, and he may then be led through many phases of actual tests in actual life; he may for a time lose his hold on it and come to say that happiness is a thing that depends on so many causes outside one's own control; that illness, death, loss of friends, adverse circumstances, failures and trials of all kinds, may come into his experience, and that one is at the mercy of all these vicissitudes. Can the individual be happy, he will ask, when all that made happiness is taken away? Can he be happy if he has lost all his worldly goods? or if death has taken those nearest and dearest to him? or if the separations of life, far harder to bear than those of death, have come to him? And yet, until he has learned to answer these questions with the most triumphant affirmative, he has not learned the measure nor sounded the depth of a true and noble order of Happiness. The difference is that of being safely on board a great steamer when wind and wave are tempest-tossed, or of being helpless in the raging waters. The storm may be precisely the same; the tempest may rage as it will, but safe and secure in the cabin or stateroom, the voyager does not mind its fury. And truly may this analogy be held in life. It is possible to emerge from the winds and waves; to enter so entirely into the sense of security in the Divine; to hold so absolutely the faith in the Divine leading, that even in the midst of trial and loss and deprivation and sorrow, one shall come to _know_, through his own experience, that "the soul is ceaselessly joyful." For it is one thing to accept a truth theoretically, or believe it intuitively, and another to prove it through experience that shall test the quality of faith and conviction. Learning this supreme truth of life through outward experiences as well as through inner revelation is a victory of the will that may even make itself an epoch, a landmark, in spiritual progress.

It is the complete recognition of that invincible aid given to the soul through the "ever-present" aid of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter.

"Jesus, the Christ, this one perfect character, has come into the world and lived in it; filling all the moulds of action, all the terms of duty, and love, with His own divine manners, works, and charities," wrote Doctor Horace Bushnell. "All the conditions of our life are raised thus by the meaning He has shown to be in them and the grace He has put upon them. The world itself is changed and is no more the same that it was; it has never been the same since Jesus left it. The air is charged with heavenly odors, and a kind of celestial consciousness, a sense of other worlds, is wafted on us in its breath. It were easier to untwist all the beams of light in the sky, separating and expunging one of the colors, than to get the character of Jesus, which is the real gospel, out of the world."

The one deepest need of the world to-day; the one deepest need of each individual, is the more actual realization of the personality of Christ. The perspective of nineteen hundred years only brings more vividly before the mind, more close to the spiritual apprehension, the personal holiness of Jesus, and enforces the truth that shall redeem humanity,--the practical possibility of the increasing achievement of this personal holiness for every man and woman. "Because I live ye shall live also," He said. But what is it to live? Certainly, something far above and beyond mere existence. Life, in its true sense, is to know God. This is the life eternal. No one can "know God" save in just the degree to which he lives God's life,--the divine life,--and in the degree to which he is living the divine life does he live the life eternal. The life eternal may be lived to-day as well as after death, in some vague eternity. The life eternal is simply the life of spiritual qualities. It is the life in which truth, honor, integrity, sacrifice, patience, and love abound, and in which all that is selfish and false is cast out. Now, however exalted a definition of the present, daily life this may seem to be, it is in no sense an impossible one. The more exalted is one's standard for the perpetual quality of his life, the more stimulating it becomes. The exalted ideal inspires; the low standard depresses. An invincible energy sweeps instantly through the atmosphere to sustain him who allies himself with his noblest ideals. A force that disintegrates and baffles sweeps down upon him who abandons his nobler ideals, and substitutes for them the mere selfish, the commonplace, or the base. The "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve" is no merely abstract phrase or trick of rhetoric. Every hour is an hour of destiny. Every hour is an hour of choice. Legions of angels are in the unseen world surrounding humanity. Not one thought, one aspiration, one prayer, is unheard and unnoted. No conditions or circumstances are sordid or material unless he whom they invest make them so by sordid and material thought; by turning away from that life of the spirit whose very reality is made and is tested by these circumstances. "All the conditions of life are raised," says Doctor Bushnell, in the extract quoted above, "by the meaning He has shown to be in them, and the grace He has put upon them." Might not one, with profit, dwell for a moment upon this statement?

There is a current sweeping through latter-day life and reflecting itself largely in miscellaneous literature, to the effect that what the writers are pleased to call "success in life" is achieved by self-reliance; that a man must believe in himself; and the final triumph is illustrated as that of the man who begins as an errand boy at two dollars a week and ends as a multi-millionaire. Between these two points in space the arc of success subtends, according to this order of literature, and the word is: make a million, or a hundred millions of dollars,--honestly if you can, dishonestly if you must, but, at all events, the point is to "arrive." Now there is both a most demoralizing fallacy and a strong and valuable truth mixed up in these exhortations. "Trust thyself," said Emerson; "every heart vibrates to that iron string."

"I thank whatever gods there be For my unconquerable soul,"

sings William Ernest Henley, and he closes with the ringing lines,--

"I am the Captain of my fate, I am the master of my soul."

And Emerson and Henley are right--so far as they go. And the man who has been industrious, and economical, and has accumulated a fortune, has, at all times, some elements that are right; and rigid economy is far better than selfish indulgence. But whether a rigid economy is always a virtue--depends. "There is that scattereth, yet increaseth." Whether it is nobler to increase one's bank account at the expense of all the personal expansion of life, through study, social life, travel,--all that makes up a choice and fine culture, and at the expense of depriving one's self of the untold luxury of service, as needs come in view,--is certainly an open question, and one in which there is a good deal to say for other uses of money than that of establishing an impressive bank account; but leaving this aspect of the problem, one returns to that phase of it represented by self-reliance. It is a great hindrance to the infinite development of man to conceive of courage and self-reliance as capacities or powers of his own rather than as fed from the divine energy. A stream might as well cut itself off from its source, and from its tributaries, and expect to flow on, in undiminished current to the sea, as for man to regard courage and force of will as generated in himself. Thus he dwarfs and hinders all his spiritual powers that are found to lay hold upon God. Thus he stifles himself, rather than open his windows into the pure air. "All the conditions of life are raised by the meaning Jesus has shown to be in them."

Certainly, it was not for nothing that Christ came into the conditions of the human life. His experience on earth comprehended every privation, every limitation, known to the physical life. Not only these,--but He experienced every phase of sorrow, of trial, of mental pain, of spiritual anguish. He was misunderstood, He was misrepresented, He was assailed and crucified. He understood the needs of the body as well as of the spirit. He had no contempt nor condemnation for comfort, prosperity, or wealth, in and of themselves. He simply regarded them as means to an end, and if nobly used to noble ends, life was the better for whatever phases and factors of power it possessed. But He taught the truth that here we have no continuing city; that this temporary sojourn on earth is designed as a period in which to develop qualities rather than to heap up accumulations. "What shall it profit a man," He well said, "if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

So here was a man, living the earthly and physical life; comprehending all the earthly and physical problems involved in relation with the physical world; not ignoring or denying them like a mere fanatic, but estimating them in the true scale of values,--here was a man who by his experience and example proved that personal holiness of life is not incompatible with personal attention to every detail of human affairs. Jesus did not isolate Himself in a monastic cell in order to live the life of the spirit. He practically taught that the very supreme test of the life of the spirit is to live it in the heart of human activities. It is in the resistless tide of daily affairs,--in the office of the lawyer, the journalist, the physician, the architect; in the studio of the artist, in the counting-room, the bank, the salesroom, and the market-place, that the life of personal holiness is possible, and it is possible to man because Jesus, taking upon Himself the human life, so lived it in these very circumstances and under these conditions. Christ and His all-quickening life remain in the world. They did not leave it with His physical death. They remain as the incorruptible, the glorious, the priceless possession of every man and woman to-day. To this divine example of a perfect character revealed in the guise of the human life, each individual in the world to-day can turn, as the most practical ideal by which to shape his own life and to ultimately realize the command, "Be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." If this transcendent ideal were not a possibility for the soul, surely God would not have given it as an idle command; but man, as a spiritual being, is designed to live the spiritual life, and this life is that of perpetual spiritual progress and ideal achievement; of entering into that golden atmosphere in which he shall not only

"--dream of summers and dream of flowers That last alway,"

but find, in an ever-increasing degree, that the dream is merged into the profoundest reality of experience.

"Present suffering is not enjoyable," said the late Rev. Doctor Maltbie Davenport Babcock, "but life would be worth little without it. The difference between iron and steel is fire, but steel is worth all it costs. Iron ore may think itself senselessly tortured in the furnace, but when the watch-spring looks back it knows better. David enjoyed pain and trouble no more than we do, but the time came when he admitted that they had been good for him. Though the aspect of suffering is hard, the prospect is hopeful.... The tests of life are to make, not break us. The blow at the outward man may be the greatest blessing to the inner man. If God, then, puts, or permits, anything hard in our lives, be sure that the real peril, the real trouble, is what we shall lose if we flinch or rebel."

Doctor Babcock's words suggest that there is perhaps nothing in all the divine teachings that is less understood and less accepted than the assertion of Saint Paul, "We glory in tribulation also." The general reader of the gospels and epistles--even the prayerful and reverent reader--relegates this expression to some abstract conditions, as something that might do very well for Saint Paul and a rudimentary civilization; as something that might be a very appropriate and decorous sentiment for Saint Sebastian on his gridiron, or Saint Catherine keeping her vigils in the vast and gloomy old church in Siena, but which certainly can bear no relation and hold no message for the modern reader. For the electric life of the hour,--full of color and vitality; throbbing with achievement; the life that craves prosperity as its truest expression, and finds adversity a poor and mean failure quite unsuitable to a man of brilliant gifts and energy; the life that believes in its own right of way and mistakes possessions for power,--what has _it_ to do with "tribulation" except to refuse it? If it comes it is met with indignant protest rather than as a phase of experience in which to "glory;" it is evaded, if possible; and if it cannot be evaded it is received with rebellion, with gloom, with despondency, and perhaps, at last, an enforced and hopeless endurance, which is not, by the way, to be mistaken for resignation. Endurance is a passive condition that cannot, and does not even try, to help itself. Resignation, in its true reading, is wholly another matter; it is active, it is alive, it is conscious and intelligent and in joyful co-operation with the will of God. It is no poor and negative mental state; it is rich in vitality and in hope, as well, for in its absolute identification of itself, this human will with the divine will, it enters into a kingdom of untold glory, whose paths lead by the river of life to the noblest and most exalted heights of achievement and of undreamed-of joy.

If this be true of resignation, what shall be said of tribulation,--of glorying in tribulation? A man awakens to find himself in poverty instead of in wealth; his possessions suddenly swept away; or from health, he, or some one whose life is still dearer to him than his own, prostrated with illness; or to find himself unjustly accused or maligned, or misunderstood, or to encounter some other of the myriad phases of what he calls misfortune and tribulation. How is he to endure it? How is he to go on, living his life, in all this pain, perplexity, trial, or annoyance, much less to "glory" in this atmosphere of tribulation? One is engaged, it may be, in a work for which it would seem that peace of mind and joy and radiance were his only working capital; his essential resources; and suddenly these vanish, and his world is in ruins. Clouds of misapprehension envelop him round about, and he can neither understand, himself, what has produced them, nor can he, by any entreaty or appeal, be permitted the vantage ground of full and clear explanation. And his energies are paralyzed; the golden glory that enfolded his days investing them with a magical enchantment, has gone, and a leaden sky shuts him into a gloomy and leaden atmosphere. It is not only himself, but his work; not only what he may feel, but what, also, he may not accomplish. And his work is of a nature that is not only his own expression, his contribution to the sum of living, but one which involves responsibility to others, and some way,--well or ill, as may be,--it must be done. Shall he, _can_ he, "glory" in this paralyzing pain and torture that so mysteriously has fallen upon him,--whose causes do not, so far as he can discern, lie in his own conduct, but in some impenetrable mystery of misapprehensions and misunderstandings; a tangled labyrinth to which he is denied the clue? Can he, indeed, facing all this torture and tragedy, with all that made the joy and light of life withdrawn,--can he encounter this form of tribulation with serene poise, with unfaltering purpose, with an intense and exalted faith? It is "not enjoyable," indeed, as Doctor Babcock, in the quotation above, at once concedes; but that the experience has a meaning,--a very profound meaning, one must believe; and believing this, he must feel that the responsibility rests on himself to accept this new significance that has, in an undreamed-of way, fallen into his life; to read its hidden lesson; to transmute it, by the miracle of divine grace, into something fairer and sweeter; to let its scorching fire make steel of that which was only iron. To accept, to believe, to _feel_ this, in every fibre of his nature, is to "glory" in the tribulation. It is to extract its best meaning, and to go on in life better equipped than before. "The tests of life are to _make_ and not _break_ us." Here is the truer view, and one that reveals the divine significance in all mysteries of human experience. Beyond all these views, also, is that inflorescence of joy that springs from this more complete identification of one's own will with that of the divine. One comes into the full glow and beauty of that wonderful assurance of Jesus: "These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full."

This fulness of joy is a condition freely offered for perfect acceptance. The varied experiences are, as Browning has said, "just a stuff to try the soul's strength on." The kingdom of heaven lies open to all; it is _at hand_, not waiting afar in some vague futurity. Shall we not enter to-day into this kingdom of heaven which is at hand? Shall we not enter to-day into the very joy of the Lord? Pain and sorrow may invest the conditions of the moment, but they are forces which are transmuting the inconsequential into the significant; the common and trivial into the exalted and the sublime. The discord is merged into sublime harmonies that thrill the air; the glory of the Lord shines round about, and we enter into its illumination; we are ascending the Mount of Vision and the soul looketh steadily onward, discerning the beauty of holiness, in whose transfiguration gleams the fairest ideal revealed to humanity,--even the Life Radiant.

INDEX.

Abbott, Rev. Dr. Lyman, 83, 223. Academy of Science, 10. Adams, Hon. Alva, his tribute to Nathan Cook Meeker, 248. ----, General, 250. Africa, 230. Albertson, Dr., his invention, 151, 152, 153. Altar of Perpetual Adoration, 19. Ames, Dr. Charles Gordon, his uplifting sermons, 223, 322, 324. Andes, the, 125. Arizona, 205, 226. Armstrong, Gen. Samuel Chapman, 247. Arno, the, 251. Arnold, Sir Edwin, 65, 68. ----, Matthew, 198, 313. Atlantic, the, 125. ---- cable, 116. ---- coast, 92. "Aurora Leigh," 345. Austrian, 135. Avernus, 51. Ayrton, Prof. W. E., 124, 126.

Babcock, Rev. Dr. Maltbie Davenport, his noble words, 359, 360, 363. Balzac, Honoré de, 103. "Banquo," 253. Baptist belief, 169. Beethoven, 228. Behmen, Jacob, 255. Besant, Annie, her theories on Prayer, 298, 299, 300. Bible, the, 126. Bonus, John, 256. Boston, 150, 234. Brewster, Elder, 241. "Bright Angel Trail, The," 233. British Isles, 142. Brooks, Rt. Rev. Dr. Phillips, 31, 53, 62, 183, 192, 204, 267, 268, 293, 347. Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 345. ----, Robert, 265, 364. Bunsen, Dr. Robert Wilhelm, 337. Bushnell, Rev. Dr. Horace, 351.

Cache la Poudre, 244. Carboniferous, 229. Centennial Exhibition, the, 245, 246. Chemical Society, 48. Cheyenne, 240. ---- Cañon, 226, 232, 233. Chicago, 93. Christmas, 242. "Clothed with the Sun," 255. Colorado River, 230. ----, State of, 191, 237, 238, 239, 240, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 251, 252, 253. Columbia University Chemical Society, 48. Congress, 246. Connecticut, 241. Cooper Institute, 240, 243. Copley Square, 169. Cosmos, the, 140. "Courier Journal," 238, 241. Crookes, Sir William, 9, 11. Crusaders, the, 226. "Culture," 198. Curie, Professor, Radium discovered by, 9, 10. ----, Madame, 9, 10. Cushing, Frank, 235.

Daniel, Book of, 163. "Daniel Deronda," 222. Dante, 185, 309. "Data of Ethics," 204. Darwin, Dr. Charles, 83. De Caussade, Père, 275, 280, 281, 284, 290. Denver, 240. Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, 251. Discovery of the Future, 81. Donald, Rev. Dr. E. Winchester, 223. Divine Creation, 171. ---- Love, 206, 288. ---- Perfection, 300. ---- Pressure, 199, 332. ---- Truth, 286. ---- Word, 314. ---- Will, 89, 294.

Echo Cliffs, 236. Edison, Thomas, 116. Edwards, Jonathan, 171. Egyptian, 80. Eiffel Tower, 226. Electricity, 174. Eliot, President Charles W., 198. Elizabeth, 242. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 32, 40, 42, 45, 49, 61, 78, 81, 93, 175, 177, 196, 197, 202, 203, 214, 217, 221, 237, 241, 242, 309, 324, 339, 354, 355. Empedocles, 78. England, 256. Episcopalian, 169. Eros, 145. "Esoteric Christianity," 298. Europe, 137, 150. "Evangeline," 250. Evolution, 330. "Expansion of Religion," 223.

Faraday, Michael, 338. Faust, 49. Fénelon, 302. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 68. Field, Cyrus, 116. Fiske, Dr. John, consummation of organic evolution, 113; degree of achievement above the level of death, 327. Flagstaff, 234; cosmopolitan influence of, 235. Florence, 251. Foretelling of the future, 24. Fort Steele, 249. "Forum, The," article of Edward Everett Hale in, 79. Fuller, Margaret, defines social sympathies, 217.

Galilee, 264. Garden of the Gods, 242. German, 334. "Giver of all Good," 320. Goethe, 198. Gogol, 126. Gordon, Rev. Dr. George A., 223. Grand Cañon of the Colorado, 226, 228, 229, 233, 236. Greek, 249. Greeley, Horace, presided at meeting in Cooper Institute, 240; invited Nathan Cook Meeker to place on "Tribune," 241; encouraged founding of town, 243, 248; portrait of, 253. ----, town of, founded by Nathan Cook Meeker, 237, 240; beautiful situation of, 244; interest of, 245, 247. "----, Tribune, The," founding of, 238.

Hale, Rev. Dr. Edward Everett, prediction of, 79, 80; memory of, 150. Hall, General, writes of Nathan Cook Meeker, 247. Hamilton, Gail, 42. Harris, Dr. William Torrey, 190. Harvard, 55, 198. Hayes, Hon. Rutherford B., appoints Nathan Cook Meeker Indian Commissioner, 236, 247. Heavenly Vision, 302. Helbaicy, M. Tessier d', theory of, 135, 136. Helmholtz, Hermann Ludwig, 338. Henley, William Ernest, 355. Hilty, Carl, his ideas on Happiness, 343. Himalayas, 233. Holland, Canon Scott, discussions of, 163; arraigns modern teachings, 164, 165; characterizes the ether, 166. Holmes, Dr. Oliver Wendell, counsel of, 47. Holy Spirit, the, 280, 331. "Hope of Religion," 223. Hugo, Victor, lines of, 273. "Human Freedom," 55. "Human Personality," 129, 148. Humanity, 221.

Indian, the, 247. Indian Commissioner, 238. Indiana, 205. Indians, legislation for, 246, 248, 249, 250. Isles of Patmos, 226. Italy, 257.